The Bard sweeps back his cloak, reaching for the saddle to swing into it. He doesn’t even glance in my direction.
All my emotions harden into one: determination. My opportunity is rapidly slipping away.
“Wait—” The word falls from my mouth, blunt and awkward. “I’m—I’m not a thief.” Before I can think better of it, I reach out in desperation to grasp the hem of his cloak right as he pulls himself astride the horse.
The movement makes his hood fall to his shoulders, revealing his look of surprise and affront. It doesn’t help my racing heart to see the Bard is actually quite handsome. His thick, raven-black hair is striking, swept neatly back from his forehead. His skin is pale, and his features are soft, offset by high, angular cheekbones and a square jaw.
His mouth twitches, and I think of the words stored in his throat, how they are like snake venom—each with the power to cure or kill.
There’s a sickening tightness in my gut, but I push on. “I’m sorry, but I must ask a favor—”
“A favor?” He repeats the question back at me with deliberate slowness, as if he is not sure I understand what I have asked.
Help me, I want to say. But the look on the Bard’s face makes it painfully clear: I’m nothing. How foolish was I to imagine that the towering figure before me would lower himself to help a peasant like me? That he would care?
I think of Grandfather Quinn being dragged into the shadows of town hall, the sting of the blade as it pressed against his tongue. If I am sick—cursed—I must fix it. Before anyone else gets hurt. It’s the right thing to do.
“I’m … I believe I’m cursed by the plague,” I whisper. “I humbly ask your blessing for a cure.”
The Bard’s expression remains the same, as his eyes move downward to where my fist still clutches the tail of his coat. I quickly release it.
To my surprise, he dismounts with an irritated sigh. Turning from his horse, he reaches for me, this time taking my arm in his gloved hands. He turns my wrist over so that my palm is facing the sky, pushes back my sleeve, and begins to trace his eyes over my skin. Looking for the Blot? I wonder. With his teeth, he tears the glove from his hand, shoving it into a pocket within his cloak. His bare fingers gently press against my flesh. The warmth of it shocks me. I swallow thickly.
“And precisely why,” he asks quietly, eyes searing into my skin, “do you think that you’re cursed by the Indigo Death? Have you been sharing forbidden stories? In possession of ink?”
“No, sir.” My heart falters before racing faster than I thought possible. I wonder if he can feel the pulse in my wrist. “But my brother—” I stop abruptly when a voice cuts in from around the corner.
“Ravod!” I can only watch, slack-jawed, as the other two Bards appear and stride toward their companion. The Bard drops my arm and takes a step back. It takes me a few long seconds to realize that Ravod is the handsome, dark-haired Bard’s name. “Should have known you’d gone off to find some young thing to chat up.”
The speaker takes down his hood, revealing a man slightly older than Ravod, with a tangle of bright red hair and stubble on his white cheeks. He has a weathered look about him, like some shepherds who walk the earth with their flocks—this Bard has probably seen all of Montane. He was the one who addressed the crowd.
The third Bard does not take down his hood. But as he approaches, I gasp.
For he is not a he at all, but a she. A young woman, perhaps only a few years my elder, with dark skin and hair. Brilliantly pale, with amber eyes glowing beneath the shadow of her hood.
I have never heard of a female Bard before, let alone seen one. It is rare for women to possess the gift, they say, and rarer still for a woman to be able to control it. She must be particularly powerful. But before I have time to parse what this means—the awe and confusion of it—her hand moves in warning to her belt, where her knife glints.
Ravod leans in toward me. “Don’t come to us again,” he whispers.
My thoughts scatter at his nearness. He’s easily more attractive than any of the boys in Aster. Including Mads, I think guiltily. He’s looking right into my eyes, and up this close, I detect the faint scent of cedar on his uniform.
“But—”
“I said go,” he hisses before mounting his horse once more in a single, swift motion.
The horse rears, and I stumble back, confused, but I know better than to press my luck.
The three Bards unite and exchange a few more words before turning their backs on me and galloping away in a blur. I look around, blinking, dazed, and filled with more emotions than I have names for. They are gone. The spot where Ravod was standing is vacant, the earth undisturbed, as if he were never even there.
Even the rain has stopped. The blessing granted to us by the Bards has departed with them, leaving me alone in the street with no answers, and nothing to show for my efforts. With no proof that the Bards had ever arrived in Aster at all, save the damp clothes clinging to my skin.
4
Ma is at her spinning wheel, her back to me, hands moving dexterously over the fibers she’s working while I prepare dinner. On any other night, this would feel comfortable. The sounds of her wheel turning, the steady chopping of my knife on the cutting board, and the wind against the walls of the house would slide together into a natural rhythm. But this evening, the spinning wheel creaks too loudly. Ma’s silence cries out even louder.
Does she know where I went today? Did one of the villagers inform her? Am I just imagining things?
Maybe it’s only the rain. Now that it’s gone, we don’t know when, or if, it will return. Many others in town are probably wondering the same thing.
Over the years, I’ve come to realize Ma’s silence speaks its own language. I wince, hoping Grandfather Quinn’s family figures out the same. But now my mother’s body is saying something I can’t decipher. There’s only the heaviness in her shoulders and an agitation in the way she taps the treadle. Her long fingers have slipped three times tonight. She never slips.
I worry that she senses what’s happening to me too.
Time passes in this stiff, punctuated silence: the creaking of the wheel, the chopping of the vegetables, and the wind on the wooden walls of our home. The silence keeps my thoughts returning to the Bards. To High House. To Ravod’s dark hair, the softness with which he spoke to his horse, and how abruptly he changed, harshly making me go. Confusion floods me, pierced only by anger—the Bards are meant to protect us. He should have helped me.
No matter how many times I remind myself not to, I wonder if the answer is waiting for me to find it, somewhere far from here. Maybe I am not meant to stay. Not if I could bring the plague back to our village. Or end up like Grandfather Quinn.
I glance over and the hunch in Ma’s back reminds me that she cannot manage the farm on her own. We struggle enough together.
Back to work, Shae. I pick up the chopped carrots and carry them to the big black pot bubbling over the fire. With a practiced toss, I launch them in and avoid splashing myself with boiling broth. At least I can make a decent stew.
As I stir, I watch Ma, her attention fixed entirely on her spinning. The sight is an added weight on my heart. I taste the stew to see if it’s done. Bland and watery, as usual.