Otherbound Page 3

  Nolan didn’t want to linger on them, though. Pat should be more important than some distant girl he’d never meet, no matter how much that distant girl slathered herself across his eyelids and pushed between this thought and that. “Nothing. Doodles.”

  “Huh. Didn’t you draw those in your journals, too?”

  Nolan froze. He tried not to sound upset: “You—read my journals?”

  “How could I? I can’t open your cabinet.” Pat shrugged. “I walked past once while you were writing. I don’t want to read about your sexcapades, anyway.”

  Pat had that fake casual air, as though she said the word every day and it wasn’t just something she’d read online and thought was funny, but Nolan didn’t call her on it. If she’d read his notebooks, she’d be asking different questions entirely. Who’s Amara? And Who’s Cilla? And How come you’re not more heavily medicated, Nolan?

  “OK,” he said, still leaning against the sink, the counter pressing a straight line into his elbows. He cleared his throat. “OK. Sorry.”

  “Anyway, Mom said she’d be home by five, so we’ll eat early. We’re having leftovers.”

  “I thought we finished those yesterday.”

  “That was Grandma Pérez’s carnitas. We’re having the Thai now.”

  From three days ago? Nolan swallowed the words. The rule was that you didn’t toss out food until it turned suspicious colors. “Sounds good,” he replied, and managed a halfway genuine smile.

  “Patli, do you really need those gloves during dinner?” Mom said wearily.

  “Yeah?” Pat shoveled more rice into her mouth. “If I only wore them at school, it wouldn’t be authentic. And I take them off during rehearsals for the play. Sometimes. My drama teacher said we need volunteers, by the way.”

  Nolan rolled a piece of corn around the rim of his plate. As long as he played with it, he didn’t have to consider the horrifying notion of actually eating it. His stomach rebelled at the thought. The spicy smell from Mom’s beef was bad enough already—

  —Amara rushed to clean up after lunch, scrubbing the plates, the cups. Next to her, Maart’s legs stuck out from the nearest alcove as he made Cilla’s bed. Amara was doing fine, Nolan thought, Nolan hoped—

  —throughout Mom and Pat’s conversation, Dad’s wide grin stretched even wider. All Pat’s weird choices in fashion and music and friends just seemed to amuse him. When his eyes fell on Nolan, all he said was, “Don’t forget to mention that nausea to Dr. Campbell tomorrow.”

  “Do you feel up to swimming yet?” Mom asked. “I’m working tonight. I’m leaving in twenty minutes, if you need a ride.”

  Nolan had almost forgotten: Sunday was his standard swimming day. He’d missed going that afternoon, but the pool closed late. He smiled a Mom-smile. “I’m much better”—such a lie—“but I think I’ll skip today.” Swimming would take his mind off things, but after what he’d found out about Mom, he had other plans. “I appreciate the offer, though.”

  Pat gave a roll of her eyes and—

  —downstairs, the nonstop raucousness of the inn’s pub increased. Jorn was down there, which meant Cilla was, too. They never left her alone—

  “—he’s just being polite, Patli.” Mom tucked some hair from Nolan’s forehead behind his ear. He flinched at her hand entering his view unannounced. He was seventeen, and still she did this—she’d even check the gel in his hair before school, and some mornings she barged into his room to wake him up, and, before he knew it, she’d be rummaging through his closet and tossing slacks and a shirt onto his bed as if he was five years old. She wouldn’t dare do that to Pat.

  Mom probably felt she needed to take care of him. Nolan didn’t know if it was his leg or his seizures or something else. He’d complained about it once, two years ago. Then he’d seen the look on her face. Ever since, he’d let her baby him. If she needed this, he refused to cause more hurt—

  —a sharp noise—

  —Nolan closed his eyes. Noise meant bad things. Jorn’s temper. Cilla getting hurt—

  —Amara and Maart went dead still, alert for further sounds. “I should check on Cilla,” Amara signed. A second later, the pub crowd downstairs burst into cheers. Relief washed over her—

  “—Nolan? Polite? I’m shocked.” Pat laughed.

  Nolan took a second to replay her words. His parents would be waiting—hoping—for a smart-ass big-brother response. Pat knew better. Her eyes only met his briefly before she gave her plate her full attention again.

  It wasn’t as if he didn’t try. He laughed, which seemed to please Dad, but when he racked his brain for a response, nothing came.

  This act used to be easier. He’d always been the good big brother and the ideal son, who might be aloof but at least didn’t do drugs or smoke or hang with the wrong crowd. At least he didn’t splurge on video games or stay out all night. At least he no longer had those hallucinations.

  But lately, people wanted more than tailor-made smiles, and he didn’t know what to give them.

  Whenever Nolan read, he lost his spot on the page, every page. Music interrupted and paused but was low-key enough to be bearable, unlike TV, which had him zoning out within minutes.

  Homework? Out of the damn question.

  What Nolan could do was this: open his journals and report on every blink without thinking. The Dunelands took up five dozen notebooks and counting.

  He wanted more than that. Something that was his.

  Without the money for a running leg, sports were out, whether it was disabled sports two hours away in Mesa or regular sports here in tiny Farview, Arizona. He’d get too distracted, anyway, and anything involving running or jumping was too dangerous with the Dunelands catching him off guard at any moment. What’d happened ten years ago proved that: Cilla had tripped and skinned her palms. Blood welled up in tiny drops. The curse awoke, sending ripples through the earth; they had only seconds before it would strike.

  By then, Amara had been with Jorn and Cilla for a year. She’d lost track of how often she’d had to cheat the curse, but she knew her script and everyone else’s.

  It didn’t make her shake any less when Jorn grabbed his knife. He slashed open Cilla’s skin further, then thrust Amara’s hand into the cut and dragged her arm along it. Then, pushing her out of reach, he helped Cilla wrap up, shielding her palms from the air so her blood couldn’t call louder than the fresh smears on Amara’s skin.

  The earth drew open. Roots wrapped around Amara’s ankles. They dragged her down, slicing her legs through the thick fabric of her winterwear. When she stumbled to all fours, the next root coiled around her arms, up to her throat. One wormed its way between her lips. Pushed into an empty mouth, past the remains of a sliced-up tongue, and beyond.

  All in all, it might’ve taken five minutes. When the roots drew enough of Amara’s blood to block out the final whispers of Cilla’s dried streaks, the curse backed off, leaving Amara to cough and choke and claw and heal.

  She must’ve been seven. She was thinking: I don’t want to heal anymore I don’t I don’t

  Nolan was seven, too. Five minutes was more than enough for him to lurch off his bike on his way to school and fall to the street, groping to free himself from roots that weren’t there. He barely saw the Jeep in time. Adrenaline flooded him. He crab-walked out of reach, but too slowly, leaving his left foot and a child-sized bicycle for the Jeep’s tire to crush.

  The good part was that Nolan passed out from the pain. The bad part was that Amara’s world offered him just as much pain as his.

  So he avoided sports. Even a regular fall with only half a leg was a pain in the neck.

  Just as Nolan’s family couldn’t afford a running leg, they couldn’t afford a swimming leg. What they could afford—or would make sacrifices for, anyway—was a season’s membership to the nearest pool and an adjusted flipper. It wrapped around the stump of his shin, allowing him to push off and keep afloat.

  So he swam under the lifeguard’s watchful eye, redu
cing the world to kids’ screams and the kick of his legs and chlorine in his nose. Swimming meant moving on autopilot, making it ten times easier to deal with the back-and-forth between worlds. It made his parents happy, too. They thought he had a hobby.

  Right now, Nolan really wished he was swimming.

  Instead, he’d gone upstairs after abandoning his meal, leaving Pat to her Nahuatl studies and Dad to sort through bills and write angry letters about banned books at Nolan’s school. Nolan made a beeline for the bathroom, where dirty laundry was stacked knee-high in one corner despite the quick load Dad had run yesterday. Mom normally handled the laundry. Working two jobs probably explained the size of the pile.

  How had Nolan not noticed? When had she started at the Walgreens anyway—and why?

  Nolan suspected he knew. Dad’s insurance from his hospital administrator job covered only part of the cost of the latest pills. Nolan had known they were in a bad situation, just not how bad.

  Three jobs to pay for anti-seizure meds when he didn’t even have seizures, and all Nolan did was fill up one notebook after another and go swimming three times a week. If Amara wouldn’t leave him be long enough for him to help himself, he should at least help others.

  “How difficult can a washing machine be, right?” The words came out angrily. He lowered himself to the ground and started sorting through the pile.

  y late afternoon, Amara had decided that, as dangerous as sneaking downstairs was, she’d do it anyway.

  She hovered at the top of the inn stairs, listening to the noise from the ground-floor pub. The clinking of glasses, shouts and laughter, a flute player’s screech. She smelled greasy bread and alcohol—Jélisse ports and wines, and beers from all over the Continent. She’d never liked the taste but wished for a sip anyway; at least she had enough of a stump in the back of her throat to notice that taste, or any taste at all. Maart rarely did.

  Amara moved down a stair, then two, until she had a sliver of a view of the crowd. Most were Dit workers, sun-freckled, flat-faced, broad-shouldered. Jorn fit right in, sitting at a booth near the bar and shouting for another beer. He’d drunk more in the past few weeks than he had in years. He hadn’t punished Amara so badly in just as long.

  In the deepest end of the booth, with her back safely to the wall, Cilla nursed her own drink—her first and last. They couldn’t risk her losing her coordination. Cilla took a tiny sip and glanced up as a gangly boy leaned into their table with a lopsided smile. His words were lost in the noise.

  Jorn said two words of his own, and the boy stumbled back before Cilla even had a chance to return his smile. Amara relaxed marginally. Jorn was still alert enough to be cautious. No one should come near Cilla, especially after drinking.

  Amara looked for the news sheet pinned to the wall downstairs, in a weakly lit niche. The innkeeper refreshed it every three days. She moved down another stair, keeping a close eye on Cilla and Jorn as she went—part caution, part habit. Most people in the bar gave Cilla a wide berth. Amara didn’t know if that had anything to do with Jorn telling off her last suitor, or just her being Alinean in a predominantly Dit bar; most Alineans had returned to the Alinean Islands after the coup, but the ones who remained in the Dunelands still made all the money, still had the best jobs, and still walked with their heads held high, and that was starting to bother even those who’d supported the monarchy.

  And Cilla—she might not wear her hair the proper way, but she was Alinean through and through, from the way her dark skin blended into the shade of the booth to the way her nose pinched between her eyes, then flared wide. The candle glow accentuated the full curve of her cheeks, her dark, narrow eyes. Her tongue darted out to wash the wine from her lips, then she leaned toward Jorn to ask him something.

  Amara used the distraction to sneak down the most open part of the stairs. She’d be seen if she went too slowly. In this dimness, her skin—though dark for an Elig like her—practically glowed. She dashed into the niche, then waited for a moment. No one came. She put her finger on the broadsheet, following along with the words just as Cilla had. Amara knew she shouldn’t be reading. She especially shouldn’t do it within spitting distance of Jorn. She couldn’t give up, though—and if she was going to do this, she’d do it because she wanted to. Not because Cilla urged her on. Not because Maart liked their futile rebellions.

  Knowing roughly what the article said made it easier to follow. Cilla had summed up the main points. What must not have occurred to Cilla was why Amara would care. Had she forgotten that Amara had lived at Ruudde’s palace, as well?

  Amara had served in Bedam for barely a year, half of that working for Cilla’s family, the other half for Ruudde once he’d taken over. She’d still been a child when Jorn had stolen her away from Ruudde. A healing servant came in handy when protecting a fragile, on-the-run princess.

  If Amara were ever caught, though, her tattoo marked her as belonging to the Bedam palace. She’d be returned to Ruudde, so she ought to know of him what she could.

  —suspect—Alinean—loyalties, Amara read about the woman who’d tossed the stone, but—no—family—members—have—

  “Amara!” a voice whispered. Amara spun. If Jorn saw her reading—or realized how careless she was, getting so caught up—

  Cilla stood across from her. She gripped the sides of the niche. Normally her eyes were narrowed, hidden in the shade of her lids, but now they spread wide, and under her wrap, her chest heaved from exertion or panic or both. Cilla never rushed unless it was important.

  Amara’s heart sped up, a thump-thump-thump with no pauses in between. With practiced speed, she scanned Cilla’s face and the arms exposed by her loose topscarf; she checked the winterwear that went from right below Cilla’s arms to her horse-fuzz-lined boots. No scratches, tears, scrapes, nothing.

  “Where?” Amara signed, and automatically reached for the knife in her boot pocket. Shit. She’d left it upstairs. If Cilla’s injury was small enough that Amara missed it, Cilla’s blood might not yet have tasted enough air to activate the curse, but when it did, it could bring down the entire inn. Normally Cilla was faster about alerting her where she’d been injured. They had enough experience to know all the moves.

  “We need to leave,” Cilla hissed.

  No injury, then. Mages working for the ministers instead.

  Amara ran up the stairs after Cilla and dove into their room, searching for her knife. Using her voice, she pushed out the single syllable of his name, “Mar!”

  Cilla thumped the closed hatch of Maart’s bunk. “They’re close,” she said, talking fast. “Jorn went out to hold them off. He’s dissolved his detection spell. We can pass safely.”

  Amara slipped her knife into the side pocket of her horse-fuzz boots. “How many?”

  Cilla was helping Maart from his bunk; with her head turned away, she missed Amara’s signs. Didn’t matter. They’d need to run fast no matter what.

  They hadn’t encountered hired mages in months. Jorn normally sensed them coming once they passed his boundary spell, giving him the chance to take the group out of range. He must’ve been distracted. Or drinking. Amara swallowed an oath.

  Maart stumbled on the floor and made for his boots. His shoulders were bare. No time to wrap a topscarf. “Go,” he said, and the pleading in both his hands and eyes told Amara things she didn’t want to know: to be careful, to run, to let whatever happened to Cilla happen. “Go!”

  She pretended not to see, and he grabbed his boots and yanked them on as he scanned the room. They all had their tasks. Jorn fought. Amara fled with Cilla. Maart safeguarded their essentials.

  The mages wanted Cilla, but if they couldn’t trigger her curse, they’d hinder the group any way they could. They’d steal the herbs that stopped Cilla’s bleeds, their money, Jorn’s enchantments. They’d kill the group’s servants.

  They had before.

  “Hide when you can,” Amara told Maart, and ran.

  Cilla followed footlengths behind. Their bo
ots pounded narrow, steep stairs. “They’re coming from the direction of the mill,” Cilla said, a whisper of wine on her breath.

  The nearest mill was two houses south, close enough that they heard the wings creak during quiet moments, the wind fluttering through the fabric. They’d go north, then. The mages could track Cilla by the curse, but only when close enough. All Amara needed to do was get Cilla out of reach and hide.

  Amara paused on the third step from the bottom to look over the pub. If the mages had arrived, they were lying low. She squinted at the smell of fungi, penetrating enough to stab at her eyes. To reach the exit, they’d need to slip past a good ten people in various stages of drunkenness. If Cilla was grabbed, that’d be bad. If Cilla was grabbed a little too roughly, that’d be worse. Amara didn’t want anyone finishing the mages’ job for them.

  A touch on her neck. Her hands flew up to guard herself, but the look on Cilla’s face stopped her. Calm. How could Cilla be calm? There were mages on the street—who knew how close, who knew how many.

  “Your tattoo.” Cilla’s voice cut through the pub-goers’ shouts.

  Amara flattened her hair against her neck. If it didn’t cover her tattoo, they’d be sure to get held up. She dipped her head in thanks and took Cilla’s wrist. After regrowing only that morning, Amara’s nails were in no state to cut skin, but she was cautious, anyway, even with her eyes fixed on the entrance.

  She held her breath when the door opened and people stepped through. The first thing Amara searched for—always—was the knife-wielding mage. Tall and Alinean, she carried that same curved knife every time.

  Instead, the first person to enter was male, and Amara recognized him instantly. He always stood out among the mages who chased them. Elig people like he and Amara stood out in any crowd, no matter how silently they spoke or furtively they walked. And, unlike Amara, this mage was pink-skinned and pale-eyed, with hair like fire—exactly what everyone north of Eligon expected them to look like.