Sniffing the air, the spirit stalked toward the shop. It gestured, and the others fell in behind it, fanning out. The air spirits hovered inches above the platform. Corinda backed inside. "Hide," she whispered to Naelin. "They're coming!"
Crouching beside the door, Naelin readied the bowl.
Corinda slammed the door shut.
Outside, the spirits howled. Corinda shoved a barrel in front of the door to brace it, and then she was knocked backward as the door burst open. Wood splintered in all directions. Now! Lunging forward, blocking her fallen friend, Naelin hurled the contents of the bowl at the spirits as they spilled through the doorway.
The spirits squealed. Scraping at their bodies, they howled. Their arms lashed out, and Naelin retreated. Grabbing Corinda's arm, she dragged her away as the spirits boiled inside, covered in herbs and shrieking as if she'd burned them.
One of the spirits charged, though, plowing into Corinda. Its claws raked her, and Corinda cried out. Naelin threw herself forward, trying to pull the spirit off her friend. The spirit slipped through her fingers and launched itself at her, sinking its fangs into her shoulder. Naelin screamed, and it bit harder. The pain blanked out all reasoning, all memory, just the desire for it to stop, stop, STOP!
The thought flew out of her like an arrow, and she felt the word yank at her skin as sharply as the spirit's teeth. Her blood on its fangs, the spirit reared back as if she'd hit it. Naelin clutched her shoulder, and saw the spirit had stopped.
All the spirits had stopped.
Cringing, they clustered just inside the shop. Holding her shoulder, Naelin pushed herself up against the wall. She glanced at Corinda. There was blood on her friend's arm, and she was moaning.
The champion and the guard strolled through the smashed doorway. Smiling, they walked past the cowed spirits. "You did it," the guardswoman said. "Congratulations!" Her voice was loud enough to echo across the platform, and Naelin saw people outside, crowded together by the door and window, listening to every word.
"The two things that a true queen needs are the instinct to survive and the instinct to protect," the champion said. "You have both. Your queen and country need you." He held out his hand and commanded, "You will come with us."
Naelin looked at his hand, at her wounded friend, and then at the spirits who were watching her with wide, hollow eyes. This champion and guard had let the spirits come here, where they'd hurt an innocent person and terrified others. The spirits could have killed Corinda. Or Naelin. Or everyone in the market. And the champion and guard would have let them, all in the belief that what the country needed was more important than ordinary people's pain, more important than their lives. Stupidly dangerous, she thought.
Clearly and loudly, Naelin said, "No."
The champion shook his head. "You don't understand."
She understood enough. Fixing her eyes on the spirits, she formed a deliberate thought and threw it at them, Help me escape. Keep them here.
Snarling, the spirits leaped toward the champion and guard. The guard drew her knives, and the champion-Naelin didn't stay to see what he did. Clutching her bleeding shoulder, Naelin bolted past them, out the door, and across the platform.
Outside, the crowd shrank away from her, and she saw people she'd known for years-friends of her late parents, shopkeepers she'd visited weekly, woodsmen and woodswomen who had bought her charms from Corinda's shop, neighbors she'd seen daily on the forest paths and in town-staring at her as if she were as dangerous as a spirit. No one called out to her, and no one tried to stop her.
Naelin ran onto the rope bridges, toward home.
Chapter 8
Home.
Gray roof, bark-brown walls, blue shutters, with pots of pepper and tomato plants on the windowsills and a basket of herbs hung by the door, to soak in patches of sunlight-her home, that she'd bought with Renet, fixed with a hammer and nails bartered in exchange for her charms, shaped with their love and laughter and pain-Naelin had sunk her heart into this place. It had kept her and her family safe from wind, rain, wolves, bears, spirits, shielded them from both winter cold and summer heat. It had cradled them through all the important moments, the momentous moments like Erian's and Llor's births and the quieter moments like when she tucked them in at night or when they shared breakfast on a lazy morning. The kitchen floor boasted scuff marks from all the times they'd scooted their chairs closer to the table, and the bathroom still had water stains from the time Renet had tried to rig a shower. Llor had lost his first tooth in between the floorboards, and Erian had once scrawled doodles on the wall before Naelin had taken away her pencil. She hadn't planned to ever leave.