“How is Finder?” asked Fenris, stemming the flow of words.
Agnes rummaged around in her scarf and produced Finder, who was half asleep and clearly indignant at being awoken.
“You need to train him to sit somewhere else,” said the dust-wife disapprovingly. “Otherwise you’ll have a rooster who thinks he should dive headfirst into your cleavage when he wants to roost.”
“It’s been a while since any man wanted to dive into my cleavage,” said Agnes. “It might be a nice change.”
“Not when the spurs grow in.”
“Oh, well, probably not.”
They got Fenris into the wagon and Marra handed up the bag slung across her back. It rattled as he took it. “What’s in here?”
“A friend.”
His eyebrows went up. Marra climbed up beside him and she and the dust-wife arranged empty feed sacks to conceal him. He sneezed a few times but did not argue.
“I see you have much to tell me,” he said. “Ah … not over the face unless it looks like we’ll be stopped. I was in that box too long, and having things on my face…” He smiled up at her, but it was a thin layer over deeper horror. Marra found his hand under the layers of burlap and squeezed. Another wound for Vorling’s tally. But if we get away, then it is done. It is all done, at last.
“No talking now,” said the dust-wife. The wagon wheels creaked as they left the quarry, going away from the city. Marra pulled the nettle cloak tight around her shoulders, chilly in the predawn cold. Fenris’s fingers were warm in hers.
By the time the sun had risen, the white city was behind them. She could still see it, like a canine tooth in the earth’s jaw, but it was far away and had no more power to bite.
And I will never go back.
When she had taken leave of her sister for the last time, they had both known it. Kania had said as much. “I do not know how long I can keep you out of this. I can try, but…”
“I know,” said Marra. “I know. Someone will remember seeing me. Someone will make a connection. As long as I’m here, there’s the risk. It’s better if I go.”
“It’s not quite that,” said her sister. “Although that is certainly true. You are now the sister of the queen regent of the Northern Kingdom, and you are no longer staying unwed to appease Vorling’s paranoia. Mother will begin thinking where to put you.”
For a moment, Marra was too astonished to be appalled. “But I’m … I’m not a virgin and not a princess. I’m almost a nun!”
“Almost is the key,” said Kania a bit dryly. “You could rush home and try to take orders, and I will bet you the finest horse in the kingdom that the abbess won’t accept them.”
Marra inhaled sharply. To be wed for politics. To be shipped off to a strange man’s bed, while Fenris lay in a box in the palace of dust, waiting for rescue …
“She doesn’t mean to be cruel,” said Kania. “She isn’t. She stopped a war by marrying our family into Vorling’s. The Northern Kingdom would have rolled over us like a tide and our people would all be feeding the crabs by now. She had to choose the people over us, and use our bodies to seal the deal.” She rubbed absently at her forearm, where the bruises were yellow and faded. “She saved thousands of lives.”
“I know,” said Marra. “I know.”
Kania had given her two gifts before she left. One was a pouch full of money and one was a sack full of bones.
“They gathered them all up,” her sister said. “Every one, down to the smallest claw. They were terrified that if they left any, it would give evil magic a way into the room. I told them that they needed to be disposed of properly and that my sister would take them to Our Lady of Grackles for the nuns to sanctify before they were burned.”
Marra could not see through sudden tears, but Kania wrapped her arm around her sister’s shoulder. “Go,” she whispered in Marra’s ear. “Run and be free. They cannot use what they cannot find.”
And Marra hugged her back and went out through the godmother’s palace door with her hood over her head, then slipped away into the city to meet the dust-wife and save her friends.
* * *
They meandered south, day by day. The wagon was drawn by an exceedingly patient mule who tolerated the brown hen standing on his back. Marra sat in the back of the wagon and worked as well as she could with everything moving and rattling under her. At night, by the fire, she made much better progress, but then the light was bad and she jabbed her fingers bloody again. Agnes tutted and salved her fingertips. The dust-wife watched her, her long face expressionless.