By then she had been traveling steadily back the way she’d come for some time, and the road was not so far away. She and Lilan covered the distance in a silence Rosia could not find the words to break.
Once they got to the road, Lilan nuzzled Rosia one last time. :Thank you. Watch yourself out here. People can be as dangerous as wild beasts, you know.:
With these words, she trotted gracefully away, leaving Rosia standing alone in the road.
* * *
* * *
Despite her protests, Rosia had not expected that the Companion would truly abandon her. She trudged back in the direction of the nearest village in a state of near despair, her spirits lower than at any time since—well, since Ma and Pa had gone. Her feet hurt in her threadbare shoes, and the morsels of nature’s fare she had scrounged up in the forests would not ward off the hunger for long. She had no coin, and winter was coming.
The feather, tucked securely away inside a pocket, seemed to be burning a hole there. Rosia felt it almost as a physical weight, her hope and her despair, the two opposites somehow bound up in the one tiny thing.
It wouldn’t do to sell it in the village; she would not get a fraction of its fair price. But she did not know how far she could go before she collapsed, from hunger or weariness or both. Nor had she any great familiarity with the area; how far away was the nearest town?
No matter. She would go as far as she could, sell the feather for as much as she could get, and . . . go on. Find somewhere to weather the winter. In the spring, she could fill up Pa’s packs again with salable goods and take to the roads. Someday, it would be as though she had never stolen the feather at all.
She knew, even as she formed her plan, that this would never be true.
Such were the conflicting reflections occupying her troubled mind as she trudged southward. Her preoccupation rendered her oblivious, or more so than she ought to be out there on her own. Then again, what did it matter if she was robbed? It was no more than she deserved, and she had nothing worth stealing anyway.
The sound of hoofbeats on the approach jolted her at last out of these dismal ideas. Her head came up; in spite of herself, a surge of hope swept away all her despair. Lilan had come back after all.
But in another moment, she knew herself mistaken. There was a Companion coming up the road ahead, but it was not Lilan. This Companion had her Chosen with her: a woman, much older than Rosia, with gray threaded through her dark hair. She was on foot, for some reason; her Companion trotted sedately beside her. Rosia instinctively fixed her eyes upon the dirt before her feet, but not before she had caught the Herald’s cheery greeting.
“G’afternoon,” mumbled Rosia, moving over to the side of the road.
She waited there for the Herald and her Companion to pass—fortunate pair!—but instead the hoofbeats paused.
“Going far?” asked the Herald.
Rosia risked a glance up. She was being inspected, with what intention she could not fathom. The Herald’s look remained friendly enough, however. “I . . . don’t know,” said Rosia, and then thought. “How far’s it to a town?”
“A long way,” came the dispiriting answer. “Farther than you can walk in that state, I’d wager.”
A wave of weariness swept over Rosia, so profound as to set her swaying on her trembling legs. “Thanks,” she said shortly, and she would have moved off except she did not think she could manage to do so without falling down.
“Steady,” said the Herald. She caught Rosia in strong hands and set her aright again.
Rosia nodded her thanks, her thoughts too busy and her spirits too low for further speech. She would have to beg; there was no help for it. Swallowing her pride, she began with: “Please. Could you spare—”
She stopped, for the Herald had begun idly juggling two or three small objects. To Rosia’s confusion, she recognized them. One was a pale, smooth pebble her Pa had given Rosia, a common thing, with no value to anyone else. He had collected it from the bank of a river, shortly before the fever. Another was Ma’s blue hair ribbon, a threadbare thing now, but Rosia had made a treasure of that, too.
“You—you—how did you get those?” Rosia gasped.
“You should keep a closer watch on your pockets,” the Herald said with a wink.
Rosia gaped.
“Especially when you’ve valuables about you,” she went on, and produced Rosia’s Firebird feather.
“But—” Rosia struggled to find words. “But—Heralds don’t steal.”
“That’s true,” said the Herald. “But I was pretty light-fingered when I was your age. Had to be, or I’d have starved.” She grinned, and offered Rosia’s three treasures back to her.
Rosia gathered them up with shaking hands and stuffed them back into the now dubious safety of her pockets. “I don’t understand. How—”
“How can I be a Herald if I was once a thief?” She wasn’t smiling now; she looked Rosia over with a kind of warm sympathy. “Heralds aren’t Chosen for what we did in the past. We’re Chosen for what we’ll do in the future. You’re Rosia?”
Rosia nodded, wordless.
“My name is Danna. I heard you were in some kind of trouble.”
“Heard . . .” Rosia’s head turned, for there were the hoofbeats again, and this time it was Lilan: bells ringing, coat shining, her white mane flying in the breeze. Seeing Rosia, she snorted—the sound a mixture of exasperation and, according to the feelings swamping Rosia’s mind, relief.
Danna nodded in the Companion’s direction. “She looked us up on purpose. Lucky for you we weren’t too far away.”
“Lucky for me?” Rosia repeated numbly.
Danna nodded. “We’re going to need you at the Collegium, but Lilan is right. You’re in no condition to make it that far without help.”
“I can’t go to the Collegium,” said Rosia automatically.
“Mm. And why is that?”
“Heralds are—good people.”
“Good people, yes,” said Danna briskly. “Not perfect people. Were you planning to continue thieving?”
“Never,” said Rosia vehemently. “But that—I never should’ve—”
Danna smiled, but it was to Lilan she spoke. “She is stubborn, isn’t she?”
Lilan snorted again, and nudged Rosia with her nose—quite hard. :Stop fighting it, Chosen. Don’t you know that Companions never Choose wrong?:
Danna rolled her eyes, apparently at Lilan’s comment. “Come on, Rosia. I’d really like to get a good meal into you. If you starve to death now, Lilan will never forgive any of us.”