Page 165 of Thorn Season
I wasn’t about to Wield that power against anactualman,no matter how irritating he was.
So, I maintained the arrogant sneer I’d perfected at court, and eventually he sighed.
“What was the name?”
“Dinah Summers,” I lied again.
“Proof?”
“I don’t have identity papers.”
“Not proof of identity,” he said, impatient.
Then I understood. So I took a tight breath—he really was pushing his luck—and aimed one hard blow toward his book of names.
The book shot fiercely out of his hand. Skidded across the dock. Would’ve fallen into the water if another power—probably his own—hadn’t kept it from slipping over the edge.
Ed rolled his eyes, seeming neither surprised nor impressed. “On you go, then. You’re holding up the line.”
I hurried aboard, wobbly with relief, and followed a deckhand’s instructions toward the hatch.
Dust spun through the beige-washed cabin—so vast it must have once been a cargo hold. Sleeping mats scattered the wooden panels, and a dozen people already sat atop them, wringing their hands and whispering nervously. The smart ones would stay vigilant until we departed, to make sure this voyage wasn’t a trick—atrap.
I was too exhausted to be smart. So I chose a mat, propped my saddlebag under my head, and collapsed into sleep.
I didn’t open my eyes until my stomach growled loud enough to wake me.
For a moment, I was disoriented. My tongue felt fuzzed with a sawdust taste, and a rumbling filled my ears. Then I remembered where I was, and I jolted upright.
The ship was moving. We’d left Daradon.
“The overseer handed those out while you slept,” someone said. A young curly-haired woman on the mat beside me pointed toward a brown-paper bundle. Inside I found corned beef, bread crammed with seeds and raisins, and a warm bottle of ale.
I was halfway through the food when I had to stop and blink at my surroundings.
With so much talking and moving, it was impossible to keep count. But I reached over a hundred before I lost my place.
Over a hundred Wielders that Carmen had helped liberate from Daradon.
I wish I’d asked her how she’d found them all—the people I’d waited eighteen years to meet. A few months ago, this sight alone would have sent me careening out of my body.
It might still have, if a slow throb wasn’t radiating down my arm, dampening every other feeling.
My wound had been a gory mess by the time I’d reached the Avanish harbor, and I’d had to visit a back-alley physician who may well have been a butcher for all the bloodstains on his overalls. He’d handed me a bottle of white spirit and told me to drink while he stitched. Then he’d given me a tonic to stave off infection—though I suspected it was mostly water—and I’d staggered from his workroom to empty my stomach in the canal.
Now I shimmied up my sleeve and peeled away the bandage. The tender skin pulled, and I hissed. Even in my drink-muddled state, I’d known that stitches shouldn’t look like this—bumpy and ugly and flaking dried blood.
“Need help?” the curly-haired woman asked.
“No.” I cleared my throat and added, “Thank you. I’m fine.”
The physician had been a necessity. I didn’t want anyone else’s hands on me for a while.
As I rewrapped the bandage, the woman glanced at my wrists—at the bruises and chafe-marks distinctly produced by manacles. I shouldered my saddlebag and labored above deck to escape the pity in her eyes.
I wasn’t the only one who’d needed escape. More people—Wielders—crowded the deck in groups, their voices lost over the rushing sea. Salt-fresh air blustered against me as I approached the rail, sunlight glaring across the water.
The coastline of Daradon was a smudge on the horizon.
