Page 35

Brier swallowed her words. Thorn would not yell at Master Tuwain, though Brier had many times urged her to do so.

“I’m sorry,” Brier lied, trying to sound meek. “I... Brier left. She may never come home again, is what I’ve heard people saying. I’ve been...” Suddenly Brier didn’t have to pretend. The world blurred hotly. “I miss her.”

Mazby’s claws gently kneaded Brier’s shoulder. The normally soothing sensation felt like someone digging knives into her skin.

Master Tuwain smoothed his shirt back into place. “Yes, well. The whole city misses her, don’t we? But that doesn’t mean we can skip work three days in a row. If you weren’t Brier Skystone’s sister, I’d have dismissed you the first morning you didn’t show up for your shift.”

Brier nodded, fists clenched in Thorn’s coat pockets. “I understand.”

“Good. Now, get to work, or I really will fire you.”

Then Master Tuwain clapped her hard on the back.

Mazby squawked and shot into the air.

And Brier... Brier couldn’t move.

Fresh pain spiked her chest. Her burn flared to life. Suddenly it felt like a thousand tiny bugs were swarming underneath her skin, desperate for escape.

She gasped, biting back a curse.

Master Tuwain turned at the front gate to glare. “What was that? What did you call me?”

“Nothing, sir,” Brier managed. “I... had a cough.”

“Cover your mouth next time,” he said, scowling. “And get to Sixth Street in the next five minutes, or when I fire you, I’lldo it in the middle of Center Square, in front of everyone, no matter who your sister is.”

Then he turned on his heel and marched away.

Brier waited until he’d disappeared and pushed herself after him, Thorn’s broom in hand.

Mazby fluttered beside her head. “What are you doing? Please, you must return to bed. You can’t work like this! Brier, you look—”

“I know how I look.” She’d seen herself in the mirror early that morning. Her skin looked drained, paler and waxier than usual. The skin under her eyes: shadowed and raw. Her lips: chapped and crusty.

At the end of the path, Brier turned left. She passed through crowded Third Street, then up narrower Half Street, then up even narrower Spare Street, all the while leaning on Thorn’s broom and trying hard not to limp.

Normally Brier Skystone wouldn’t be able to travel through the streets of Aeria during the crowded mid-morning hours without being stopped for handshakes and questions from worried citizens asking about the latest harvest.

But when she was dressed as Thorn, no one glanced Brier’s way. She made it to the city’s edge in ten minutes flat, even withher chest burning and her skin crawling and her body aching like it was being pulled between a dozen sharp-toothed clamps.

She leaned against a garden wall, soft and green with moss, and caught her breath. Before her rambled one of the pebbled harvester paths. Past that stood the mountains.

“Brier, talk to me,” Mazby whispered, hovering near her cheeks. “Where are we going?”

“I’mgoing to find whoever or whatever did this to me,” Brier said, jerking her chin down at her chest, “and figure out how to make it go away. I don’t know whatyou’redoing.”

Mazby’s feathers fluffed. “I’m going wherever you’re going.”

“Fine. Just don’t make too much noise.”

“I’ve hardly said a thing!”

Brier was not the sort of girl who melted very often, but Mazby’s wounded expression did the trick. “I know, Mazby, it’s just...”

She looked away. She had spent every day for the last four years harvesting lightning on these slopes. But now, with this strange pain taking over her body, the idea of the mountains felt wild and foreign, like standing on the edge of a vast, unfamiliar forest without a map.

But she had no choice.