Page 61 of Thornlight

Farver sank onto one of the beds and wiped his brow. He had lost his cap as they ran; his gray hair was wild from the wind.

“Thorn, what are you doing up here?” he rasped. “My dear girl, these mountains are no place for an untrained sweep.”

“Forget that,” Gert snapped. She crossed her muscly arms over her chest. “Who were thosepeople? There must have been a dozen of them up there—and all of them white as snow from head to foot!”

Brier perched on the other bed, clutching her collar closed. She wanted desperately to look down her shirt and see if the burn had worsened.

And Mazby... oh,Mazby. He’d gotten loose and thrown himself at those awful people. What would they do to him?

Brier gritted her teeth against her fear and said tightly, “They call themselves stormwitches. Though I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”

Then Brier remembered Zino’s words, and felt a chill that was neither from her burn nor the howling wind outside, which had begun to rattle the hut’s wooden door.

“One of them said...” But they were difficult words for Brier to say. “He called you my murderous friends.Murderous.”

The word dropped like a hammer.

Brier waited, expecting Farver or Gert or Eldon to protest. “Murderous” was not the proper word to describe the queen’sharvesters. A proper word would be “courageous” or “talented” or “irreplaceable.”

Eldon shifted from his left foot to his right foot, absently rubbing his wind-bitten brown cheek.

Gert glared at the floor.

And Farver leaned forward, elbows on knees, and lifted weary eyes to Brier’s own.

“What is it?” Brier glanced from Farver to Gert to Eldon to Farver, searching their faces for some reassurance and seeing only terrible exhaustion. Farver’s shoulders slumped, as though something heavy had just landed on his back.

“He’s not...” A hot sour taste climbed up Brier’s throat. “That boy. The stormwitch. He was lying, wasn’t he? He’s got it wrong. None of you have killed anybody.”

“No, Thorn.” Farver dragged a hand down his face. “He hasn’t got it wrong.”

“We decided not to tell Brier,” Gert said sharply, still glaring at the floor. “She was so talented, right from the start. Too talented not to recruit her, even though she’s so young.”

“Too young,” Eldon mumbled, from the door. His black curls fell over his eyes. “We should never have let her enlist.”

“Well, we did,” snapped Gert, “and we decided—all of us—not to tell her the truth.” She glanced at Brier. “Usually we do.” Gert’s mouth twisted around like she was chewing on something rotten. “But we needed Brier.”

“To help us find lightning,” Farver continued reasonably. “That’s the most important thing. That’s why we do what we do.”

“Even though with each bolt we capture,” said Eldon slowly, “we send a witch to their death.”

The silence in the room grew, and grew, until it was so heavy and thick that Brier felt like she was breathing in water. A blast of wind hit the door. She gripped the bed’s stiff, scratchy blanket.

“You’re lying,” she whispered.

“I wish I was,” Farver replied. “Every bolt of lightning in the Vale has a witch inside it. They’ve been trapped in storms since the breaking of the Vale. And their power, which we harness inside our eldisks, is what keeps the Gulgot at bay—and keeps the Vale from shattering.”

Brier listened to the wind howl and the door rattle as her own blood surged and rolled. Farver and Gert and Eldon watched her, their eyes tired and angry and sad, and she wanted to kick each of them in their soft, lying guts.

But instead she clutched her blanket, remembered that shewas supposed to be her sister, and kept her voice soft.

“And you knew this whole time?” she asked at last.

Farver nodded. “Every harvester’s told when they’re matched with their unicorn.”

Brier looked sharply at him. “Every harvester except Brier.”

Farver closed his eyes. “Every harvester except Brier.”

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