Page 23 of Blood Red Woes

I raise an eyebrow at him, my mouth full.

“It sounded fitful. I almost woke you up. Debated on it quite a lot.” He gives me a sheepish look before resuming packing the bag. “Anyway, I’m packing you as much food as this can carry. Mostly smoked meat and cheese. The map is in the front pocket. It should be easy enough to follow. I also gave you a piece of flint.” He taps a side pocket on the bag.

“Flint?” I ask. “For, like, fires and stuff?”

The look he gives me after that tells me that was a stupid question on my part. Whatever. I didn’t grow up in a time period where knowing how to start a fire was important. I grew uponline, learning things way before I should—none of it essential for surviving alone in the wilderness.

Frederick rubs his cheek. His eyes, I notice now that there’s ample daylight, are a warm, amber brown color. “Do you not know how to start a fire with flint?”

I have a know-it-all tattoo on my wrist that can probably guide me well enough, so I shrug. “I’ll be fine. Thanks.” I take another bite of the apple.

“If you say so. Just to remind you, then: a fire at night will attract things you don’t want to attract, so if you’re going to make a fire, I suggest doing it during the day. Make sure whatever materials you burn are dry—”

“Yeah, yeah, I said I got it.”

Frederick takes a step toward me, lowering his voice to a bare whisper as he says, “Look, if I could go with you, I would, but since you’re the only one who can walk through a shadowstorm, it has to be you. I do not feel good putting you in harm’s way with the small chance that you’ll be able to find where my father…” He sighs. “…where the woes got him.”

He pulls out the map from the bag and lays it flat upon the table. I move beside him to look at it, but I must stand too close to him, because he immediately takes a step to the right.

The map is generic, for sure. I recognize Laconia city smack in the center. My highlighted route takes me south, to Acadia. My first stop is a settlement called Vermyr.

Frederick’s finger traces the route. “Prim will take you to a small hole in the wall near the pond. You’re small enough you can squeeze through. You’ll want to follow the small creek away from Laconia until you hit the southern river. Stay close to it as you go. Vermyr should be a four-day walk from here. It’s a relatively large settlement, one of the last to fall.”

Hearing about all of these settlements that fell makes me wonder just how many people lost their lives to these woes.

“After that, you’ll want to keep following the river until you come across Catarin Tower. It’s an old watch-tower. They’re all over Laconia. They were originally constructed during the First Contact War, but since then they’ve all been decommissioned. Some were used by researchers, like my father,” Frederick goes on.

“After that, it’s a long stretch until you reach the castle. You’ll have to go around the basin the river empties into. You won’t miss the castle. It’s the only structure around, in the middle of the flattest plains of Acadia. If my father made it there…” He trails off and looks at me.

“What?” I ask.

“If he made it there, it’s possible the empress was already mad. She might’ve…” Frederick has the roughest time saying this next part, but he manages: “She might’ve killed him. Or locked him up. Confiscated his research. Either way, you may have to search the castle.”

Okay, I can see why he didn’t want to tell me that.

“Is there any way the empress might still be alive?” The last thing I want to do is come across a raging, vengeful, totally out of her mind empress.

“It could be that Empress Morimento is still alive, along with the personnel at the castle. If anyone could be self-sustaining, it’s her. But… we can’t know for sure. The older folk in Laconia still worship the empresses, but to the kids like Prim, they’re nothing more than superstition. It could very well be they all died years ago.”

For some reason, I think that’s too much to hope for. If I have any luck whatsoever, I’ll find his dad’s stuff in the first stop or somewhere along the way. With no luck at all, I’ll have to drag my ass across all of Acadia and search the freaking castle from top to bottom while praying the empress isn’t around to kick my ass.

After that dragon, I prefer no more ass-kickings, thanks.

Frederick folds up the map and sticks it into the bag, into the front pocket. “Remember, if you come across anything the woes have touched, there’s no harm in running like your life depends on it. Be careful where you set up camp for the night.”

“I’ve never been camping before. This should be fun.” I might apply the sarcasm a bit too much, because Frederick gives me a quizzical glance. I grab the bag and sling it over my shoulder. I’m keeping the damn cape.

I take another bite from my apple when Frederick nods and says, “Right.” He leads me outside, where Prim is waiting, playing with a gray-striped tabby cat in the dirt.

“Oh, a cat!” I hurry and swallow my mouthful of apple. “I love cats.” I kneel beside her and give the kitty some nice head scratches—after I let him sniff me, of course. You can’t go balls to the wall with a cat before letting it sniff you, first.

Prim giggles as she watches us together. “He likes you,” she says. “Usually he doesn’t like grown-ups. You and Frederick are the only ones.” She wears the same clothes she did last night, a patched-up dress that’s not quite her size. Her dark hair is pulled back in a braid today, and the sun shining over our heads makes her skin look more tan than dirty.

I scratch the cat under the chin and talk nonsensical baby-talk to him. He reminds me of the one in the alley by Frank’s bar. I wish I could take him with me, pack him up in my bag for cuddles at nighttime.

He’s lucky he’s here, in the city, instead of out there, where he would’ve turned into something terrible and vicious.

I pull away from the cat as I take another bite of my apple. I meet Frederick’s stare; he watched that entire thing with a soft smile on his face. Okay, in the daylight, he is cute, but I was right last night in describing his looks as a bookish sort of cute.

---