Pathfinder (Pathfinder 1)

“That works in the forest. But long before I get to Aressa Sessamo, it’ll all be towns and farms and fields. I hear they whip you for stealing.”

“Or put you in jail, or sell you into slavery, or kill you, depending on the town and what mood they’re in.”

“So I’ll need money.”

“If you make it out of Fall Ford.”

Rigg said nothing. What could he say? She didn’t owe him anything. But she was the closest thing to a friend he had, even if she wasn’t his mother.

Nox sighed. “I told your father not to count on my giving you money.”

“He didn’t. He saw to it I had a good-sized bundle of furs—all I could carry.”

“Yes, yes, so I will give you something, but it won’t be enough for you to ride a carriage. It won’t be enough for you to ride anything. And you’d be wise to keep off the roads for a good long way. I have a feeling that nobody’s going to get new shoes or shoes repaired in Fall Ford until a certain cobbler gives up on finding you and gutting you like a fish.”

Rigg heard something outside the pantry. “When did we decide to stop whispering?” he asked.

Nox whirled around and flipped open the pantry door. There was nobody there. “We’re fine,” she said.

Then there came a pounding on the front and back doors of the house, both at once. “We know you have him in there, Nox! Don’t make us burn down the house!”

Rigg shuddered with panic, but otherwise he couldn’t move, he couldn’t even think.

Nox pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m getting a headache. A big fat throbbing one, relentless as a moth.”

She spoke as if it were a mere annoyance that they had realized where Rigg was hiding. Her calmness dispelled most of his fear. “Do you think we can talk them out of this? Or will you try to keep them busy while I climb out on the roof?”

“Quiet,” she said. “I’m building a wall.”

Since her hands were doing nothing at all, Rigg assumed her wall must be metaphorical. A wall between herself and her fear?

As if he had asked aloud, she whispered an explanation. “A wall around the house. I’m filling it with a will to turn away.”

He should have known that Father would have become her teacher because she had some kind of interesting talent. “They’re already at the door.”

“But nobody will want to come any farther. For as long as I can sustain it.”

“How long is that? Minutes? Hours?”

“It depends on how many wills are attacking it, and how strongly determined they are,” she answered.

She took her fingers from the bridge of her nose and walked to the back door, then spoke through it to the guards in back. “I’m opening the front door in a moment, so you might as well go around.”

“Do you think I’m fooled?” asked a male voice from the other side. “As soon as I leave, you’ll come out the back.”

“Suit yourself,” said Nox. Then, to Rigg, she said softly, “That’s how you get people to outsmart themselves. If they think they’ve found your plan, they’ll stop looking for it.”

“I heard that,” said the man on the other side of the door. “I can do that spell myself.”

“We weren’t doing a spell,” said Nox. “We were just talking.”

As they walked to the front door, Nox added, for Rigg’s ears alone, “Don’t go through the door when I open it.”

She opened the door. Standing right there were two burly men. One was the blacksmith, and one a farmer from an outlying homestead. Just behind them, but off the porch, stood the cobbler Tegay, father of the dead boy Kyokay. His face was streaked with tears and Umbo was clinging to his arm, half-hidden behind his father’s bulk.

Rigg wanted to run to Umbo and tell him what had happened—tell him everything, the magic and all, so that Umbo would understand that Rigg was only trying to save Kyokay, and had risked his own life to do it. Umbo would believe him, if they only had a chance to talk.

The two men at the door made as if to come inside—to burst in, from their posture—but after a shifting of weight they remained outside after all.