Page 5 of Cage of Starlight

CHAPTER THREE

T hree days, Tory said. He’s so stupid. He should have left years ago.

Stormclouds sap color from the world as he hurries toward Thatcher’s shop. He owes him a few words—enough to keep him safe when Vantaras’ soldiers come with their questions. The shrapnel bells clang his arrival, jolting Thatcher from his vigil by the door.

Tory falls to his knees. The first words from his lips are, “I’m sorry.”

“Tory!” Thatcher grabs his forearm to help him stand. “Oh, dear, did you take on another healing? Here. Stand up, we’ll get you someplace comfortable.”

Tory can count on one hand the times he’s cried since he left the camp.

His eyes burn now, because when he looks up, there’s Thatcher, face lined with worry and gray-brown hair unbrushed.

Two steaming cups of tea sit together on the table―one for each of them, because Thatcher’s grumpy old mom always touted the restorative effects of her special herbal blend.

Tory forces himself up. “I have to go.”

If Vantaras’ soldiers catch him, they’ll lay the red tattoo over the blue cuff already etched into his skin. Red for a criminal, blue for children born to them in the camps, and the bruise-purple of the two for Tory, who couldn’t run far enough away.

“Not another job! You know I try not to interfere in your work, but—”

“No, I have to go . I won’t see you again.” Tory shoves out a hand when Thatcher opens his mouth to interrupt. “If they ask, you took me in out of pity. You don’t know about the healing, okay? You don’t know anything.”

“Tory—”

“No!” Damn it, he really did let himself grow roots here.

Thatcher has always been patient and foolishly kind, the sort of man who takes in angry boys and asks for nothing but offers a home.

He’s the type death snatches young, the stupid and selfless type who meets the world with wisdom and wonderment and infinite patience.

And tea. That ridiculous herbal tea, sweet with mountainside medicinal flowers and treeberries. Tory won’t drink it again.

Tory bites the inside of his lip to keep his voice from shaking. “I need to get my things. There were witnesses. There’s no way the soldiers haven’t called for backup.”

“Soldiers? Tory, please—” Thatcher’s warm hands wrap around his upper arms. He casts Tory in his shadow, a head and change taller and twice as wide.

In the shop, he’ll carry brick-mix bags two to each arm like sacks of feathers.

His face with its wide eyes etched with smile lines and the thick hands that hold his mother’s floral teapot so delicately say father .

His body says fighter . “Tell me. I can help. You don’t have to go. ”

Maybe he doesn’t.

But one man’s strength means nothing. If Tory stays, Thatcher will become an accessory to the crime of unlicensed healing and whatever happened with the carriage. If he stays, Tory will make a million more excuses, and one of them will land him in his grave.

The stairs up to Tory’s room go on for days. He clutches the rail.

“Tory!”

Thatcher’s heavy cloak hangs over the window. Tory slept until almost midday because of it, slept through Thatcher chopping firewood and cleaning the shop—Tory’s chores.

He pulls the cloak away, and light floods in. In the back-slung canvas sack Thatcher made for him, he shoves some money, matches, and a small knife. Thatcher’s standing in the doorway when he turns to go. He tries to edge past, but a hand lands on his shoulder.

“I knew pretty quick what I was getting into when I took you in.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Tory trains his eyes on the well-loved wood beneath his feet. “Thanks. I really . . .”

Thatcher tries a nod, like he understands, but this must feel like betrayal. Another son running off and leaving him behind.

“The cloak.” Thatcher snatches it from the bed and presses it into Tory’s hands.

It’s warm and smooth, heavy like an embrace.

Thick thread along the bottom draws a rudimentary outline of the flowering vines that spill over Hulven’s walls, of buds like bells, painstakingly sewn.

“The hide’s been treated so it’s waterproof.

You might need it in this weather. It’ll cover you and three more people besides.

Find some folks to share it with, won’t you? ”

Thatcher’s hand on his shoulder burns like a brand.

Tory leaves him at the top of the staircase without an answer, bell tinkling against the door when he leaves. He shouldn’t look back, but he can’t help it.

Thatcher waits halfway down the stairs, mouth open as if to call out. When he sees Tory, he stops and looks away.

Tory runs.

On the opposite side of town, a sturdy tree leans over the wall in the deepest part of the woods. It’ll take only a moment to climb up and drop down on the other side. He’ll be safe there. Before he came to this town—properly came here—he watched from the branches of those trees for days.

He’s not even halfway there, slipping through muddy back alleys that have pretty much zero foot traffic on market day, when he spots a group of soldiers with a woman and a little girl.

The soldiers face away from Tory. He tries to slow down so he won’t attract attention, but the woman glances over the officers’ shoulders, mouth slackening with shock when she sees him.

“You said he ran this way?” one of the soldiers asks.

“Ah. Yes, well,” the woman’s attention snaps back to him. “You can take this path to get almost anywhere. It’s not a big town, Hulven. I’m afraid I can’t be sure where he was going . . .”

The girl clinging to the woman’s leg clearly doesn’t catch on to her mother’s game. Just like her mother did, the girl peeks over at Tory, but instead of deflecting, she yells, “Ah!” in gleeful recognition, revealing a missing front tooth.

The girl who broke his fall. Shit.

“Mommy, it’s the nice man!”

Tory runs full tilt, muscles screaming. If anything will save him, it’s his familiarity with this place.

He skids around a clump of bright mudbrick houses moments before the soldiers do, dives into the shadows between two of them, and bolts through.

He slips out front and takes a quick left, but a strong hand seizes his shirt and pulls him into the next narrow passage before he picks up speed.

He jabs his attacker with sharp elbows, but the arms immobilize him before he does any damage.

“Tory! Thank the stars, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Found Thatcher but he said you’d already left. Figured you’d be on the back roads, so—”

The fight drains from him. “ Hasra ?”

She lets go. “The Madam saw what happened at the market and recognized you. Long story short, I’m unemployed.”

“Shit, I’m—”

“That’s not why I’m here. Belmin’s sending someone to extract me, shouldn’t be more than an hour. Come with me.”

He wants to, that’s the thing. Her perfume—like the sun-warmed earth beside rivers—blends with the spice of her pipe to slow his pounding pulse.

Three days, he told her, because he could hardly bear to leave.

Wanting is a sharp ache in his stomach. He’s not supposed to give in to it.

It’s what got him in trouble in the first place.

But it’s fine, isn’t it? If he goes with her, she’ll take him someplace safe.

Yells and footsteps from nearby and a flash of that awful navy uniform shock him from his foolish dream. “I shouldn’t.”

She pulls him closer, out of sight. “No, all the more reason you should .”

Maybe she’s right. She’s his best chance at escape. What would his mother say? Despite everything, she’d probably tell him to go with Hasra. No sacrifice is too great for freedom. But he imagines Hasra cuffed and carted away, tattooed like Tory, and he can’t. “You go ahead.”

“Tory, don’t be like this.”

He sets his jaw. He knows it’s a terrible decision. He won’t defend it to her.

She takes his stubbornness in stride like always. “ Fine. Find me at Serpentshead when you’re out. I’ll wait for you there.”

Tory swallows past the knot in his throat. He lived in the caves down at Serpentshead Rock as a boy, crawled up the sturdy stone and bathed in sunlight far above the trees. She’s the only one he’s ever told about it. “You don’t have to do that.”

Another shout. Another soldier. Closer. “He went this way!” someone calls.

“You hear me?” Hasra grabs his jaw and makes him face her. “Serpentshead. If you don’t show, I’ll tear this whole country down to find you.”

Tory bites his tongue. He needs to leave, now , or he’ll do something stupid like stay.

He shoves away and into the light, pushing his legs as fast as they’ll go. He won’t make it to the other side of town. The woods on this side are sparse and rocky, but they’ll do. There’s another tree out here, a flimsy thing that bows over the wall like a mourner.

The soldiers follow, their huffing breaths and the crack of twigs far too close. The air grows earthy with the tang of coming rain. The first drops spatter cold on his nose and cheeks.

“We can do this peacefully,” a low voice calls—nearer than the rest, gaining on him.

Not if Tory has any say in it.

The dainty spatters shift from a hum to a roar, water falling in gray sheets. The cloak isn’t wrapped right and he can’t stop to fix it. Ice cold rain drips down his neck and into his shirt.

He reaches for the tree and swings up, palms slipping on bark that sloughs off into his hands as he hooks his feet over a low branch. Cries sound behind him. He grabs the sturdiest branch and throws himself over the wall.

He has time only for half a gasp and the adrenaline rush of horror when he loses his grip too soon.

Both palms and one knee crash into wet leaves and grind into the rocks beneath.

His jaw snaps shut on his tongue, but he has no time for pain.

He stands and runs, mouth full of copper and heart clambering in his chest. The yelling behind the wall grows distant.

Tory pushes his aching body faster, trees blurring past, and maybe, maybe—