Songbird's Cage

Chapter 14

Letting the reins go slack, Lark put her hands against the saddle, pushing herself up to take the weight off her hips and legs. So much time on horseback was starting to chafe the insides of her thighs. Grimacing, desperate to find some hint of civilization, she reached back, taking out Silas's map and compass. As she did, the carved stone pendant slipped out from beneath her shirt. She stopped, staring at it for a long moment. Silas had shouted after her before she'd passed through the gate, and pulled off the necklace.

"This will protect you," he'd breathed, slipping it to her. "Don't take it off."

It had been warm from being against his skin. Now it made her feel cold, another mystery in a strange, haunting land.

Shivering, Lark spread the map out. The road she was following was winding north, just as the wide line on the old vellum did.

As she lifted her head from the map, she smelled smoke in the wind, and knew she was getting close. Replacing the gifts from Silas, she peered down the road. Standing briefly in the stirrups to stretch her tired legs, she pushed Flyte forwards. Not a quarter hour later, she reached the first hint that people existed in the Wilds other than the road. The forest fell away to a few mossy stone buildings - short, cramped houses with wide farmyards, edged with a thin wooden fences that mourned their previous lives as the great oaks that surrounded them. Beyond them was a town cobbled together with stone, wood, canvas, and clay. The dirt streets were rutted and muddy, but far from empty.

Her gaze forward, keeping herself from watching the people around her too closely, she rode until she reached a long, low building in the center of the town. The flaking paint of the sign above the door read The Hemlock Grail, and she dismounted. She would find nowhere with better information than an inn. Along with her need to find Rory, she was half-starved, and the sun would be going down soon.

A small stable was beside the inn. Lark dismounted, leading Flyte into the shelter. The stableboy jumped up from his chair as she entered, and she let him take the reins after unstrapping her saddlebags and shouldering them. Digging into one of the pockets, she tossed the boy a coin.

Her legs and back were sore and unwilling as she walked toward the door of the tavern. Even the step up over the threshold made her grunt. Several eyes turned to her as she entered, but attention didn't linger on her for long. Lark wondered how many strangers passed through the town, the closest settlement to the border.

The woman at the bar looked at Lark through narrow eyes.

"What do you want?" the barmaid said. She had a lilting accent.

Lark wasn't used to the brusque manner of those around her, the hard eyes and rough words. Instinct took over, and she replied in kind.

"A drink and a meal," she said, "I don't care what. And I need a room."

She slid a handful of coins over the wooden bar. The woman muttered the location of her room, and a few minutes later, Lark received a bowl of something dark and hot and a tankard of an unidentifiable alcohol. Questioning her appetite, she picked up what she'd been served.

"I'm looking for a man," she said, and the barmaid's gaze went back to her.

"What kind of man?"

"Tall, with light hair, and a tattoo on his shoulder. He would have had bruises on his knuckles. And he would have been armed."

"A bad man?"

"A friend."

The woman nodded slowly. "He might've been here. Maybe a week back. He could have been working.
Or maybe that was just another stranger."