Below her, someone suddenly called out.
Mienthe didn’t glance down. She was obviously a woman. Would they shoot a woman when they didn’t even know who she was? Or, if there was a mage with them, would he know who she was? Then they might shoot her—or just climb after her—probably a soldier would think nothing of this climb. Mienthe gripped the edge of the roof with both hands and scrambled to get her foot up to the top of the trellis. For a sickening moment she thought she would lose her hold and fall. Her arms trembled with the strain. Then she got a proper foothold at last, kicked hard, heaved, and managed to haul herself up to the roof.
The roof tiles proved more slippery underfoot than Mienthe had expected. She made her way up the slope of the roof as quickly as she dared and then over the peak and down the other side. Behind her she could hear soldiers scrambling up the wall after her, and then a loud ripping, tearing sound as—she guessed—the trellis pulled away from the wall under their greater weight. The crashing noises and curses that followed were gratifying, but how long would it take the rest of the soldiers to get out of the lane and around to the other side of the buildings? So long that Mienthe would be able to get down and run for some other hiding place? What hiding place, that they could not immediately find?
Reaching the edge of the roof, she indeed found a handful of soldiers there before her, along with a mounted officer. Two of the soldiers had bows, but it was the officer on the horse who frightened her. Without even thinking about it, Mienthe crouched, ripped up a heavy tile, and flung it down. Though she had not stopped to aim, the tile sketched a wide curving path through the air and hit the man in the face.
The Linularinan officer crumpled backward off his horse, but Mienthe, in flinging the tile, lost her precarious balance, staggered sideways, tried helplessly to catch herself on the empty air, and fell off the roof.
She did not have time to cry out, but also she did not exactly fall, although she did not know what other word she could use to describe what happened. It was as though she followed the same curving path along which she had thrown the tile; it was as though she rode a sense of balance she had not recognized until she fell along an invisible current in the wind or an unseen ribbon of moonlight. There was no time to be amazed. She fell, and then she was standing on the muddy ground next to the startled horse. The animal shied violently, only Mienthe caught his rein and flung herself into the saddle, wrenched his head around, and let him go.
Only one soldier tried to catch her, and he missed his grab for the horse’s rein. The horse’s shoulder struck him and flung him aside, and then Mienthe was past, weaving through the maze of the town’s last scattered buildings and then pounding along a muddy moonlit road, heading out into the marshes and sloughs of the wide Delta.
She did not look back. If anyone followed her, she did not know it.
Mienthe did not stop again until near dawn, after putting miles of tangled, difficult country between herself and Tiefenauer. She had not kept to the road but headed straight for Kames. Or, at least, straight for Tan. She knew exactly where he was. Despite everything, she felt a great lightening of her spirits to know that he was far away to the east and that she was heading toward him. She found it difficult to imagine how she had let him ride east without her, almost impossible to picture herself heading, now, either north after the queen or back toward Tiefenauer.
The ordinary night sounds of the marshes surrounded her: the rippling splash of a stream, the rattle of the breeze through reeds, the rustle of leaves and the creak of leather as her tired horse shifted his weight. Above, the moon stood low over the dark shapes of the trees. To either side, water glinted like metal. Mienthe was cold, shivering; she could not feel her feet and her fingers were cramped on the reins. No one else was in sight, and though she held her breath and listened, she could not hear any voices calling.
Birds called, though, sharp trills and buzzes and one rippling little song that rose and rose until it seemed it must go beyond sound to silence, but after the song had climbed as high as it could go, it tumbled down again in a burst of notes. Mienthe knew the bird that made that song. It was a little speckled brown bird with a yellow throat. Though she could not see it in the undergrowth, she realized that she could see branches against the paling sky and that dawn had arrived.
There was a raw chill in the air. Though she worried a little about the smoke, Mienthe made a small fire. Steam rose from her clothing and boots. The boots, which had been good ones, ankle-high and embroidered around the tops, were undoubtedly ruined. She hoped they would be wearable for a little while yet; a day at least, until she reached her father’s house in Kames. She did not know what she would find there. She did not actually expect a welcome, or, unexpectedly determined as Tan’s enemies seemed to be, much safety. But she thought she might at least hope for dry boots.