Page 60 of The Threadbare Queen

“Not now,” her father said. “We’ll have breakfast and then we are back on the road.”

Melodie hesitated, on the verge of complaining, and then she darted forward, touched a hand to Ava’s knee, and leaned in on a whisper. “It’s good you aren’t being eaten any more.” She met Ava’s gaze with solemn eyes and ran back to Gregor and took his hand.

Ava could hear her bright questions and tinkling laugh as they moved toward the fire pit.

“Don’t let that child get close to you.” Sirna appeared behind her at the top of the step.

Ava’s heart leaped in her chest. Had he heard Melodie’s soft comment?

She didn’t think so. Hoped not.

She tried to turn to look up at him, gave up and bent her head. “I can’t even stand on my own two feet. How am I supposed to do that?” Her voice was raw and faint.

Sirna didn’t answer. Instead, he hooked his hands under her arms and hauled her up, dumping her on the floor just inside the cart’s interior. It stank of sour beer and sweat.

He had the gloves waiting on the bed and he pulled them on.

“I’m taking the rope off you. I’ll put it back on at night, maybe with a bit more fabric between it and your skin. But don’t think that means you’re free.” He carefully unknotted the braid, his fingers clumsy with the gloves, and stuffed it into the bag. He lifted it up and carefully set it on the shelf and pushed it to the back. He stripped off the gloves and tossed them onto the crumpled bed, then crouched down in front of her.

“You’re weak. I can almost see through you in some places, which is a problem more clothes will have to solve. That means you don’t have a chance against me.” He grabbed her chin with hard fingers and tilted her head up to look at him. “You keep quiet and keep your eyes on the ground while we’re with these people. It suits me to use the caravan to hide in plain sight while there are people coming for you. I’m not quite as convinced asHimselfthat your people will follow the false trail he set. But they’ll be looking for a lone traveller and a Grimwaldian.” He put his hand into the inside of his coat and pulled out a knife, blade encased in a sheath. He slid the leather sheath off and the light coming in the doorway caught a curved, finely-honed blade.

“Luckily, I’m from Cattha. It’s whyHimselfchose me. If I get caught, Grimwalt wouldn’t get the blame. I also know one of the members of this caravan.” His gaze lingered on his knife, and Ava remembered hearing something from her days with her parents about Catthans and their knives. The small principality lay to the east of Venyatu, along a section of the cliffs on Venyatu’s coastline.

“You’re weak enough, I don’t think you can walk fast, let alone run.” Sirna touched the knife to her cheek, skimming the cool edge down to her chin. “If you try, though, I’ll catch you easily. I won’t kill you. That would defeat the whole purpose of what I’ve done. But I’ll cut you in a place the guards at the Grimwalt border won’t see straight away. I’ll cause you pain, I’ll put you back in the rope all day, and I’ll kill that old Croter woman and the child, at the very least.”

She stared at him, her breathing harder and more labored.

He meant what he said.

She didn’t have to worry about the rope either way, she reminded herself as the fear blossomed and grew from her gut up through her throat, so she could barely swallow.

But Melodie and Madame Croter. He would kill them. And likely others, too.

It would inconvenience him, though.

It would lose him his hiding place and put him on the road alone with murder and death behind him.

And it would be risky.

He said someone in the caravan knew him—they would have told the others about him. That meant he could be identified as the killer by any of the survivors unless he truly meant to kill them all.

Also, Gregor, Melodie’s father, didn’t look like someone who would be easy to kill, and he didn’t look like he’d take his daughter’s death in stride. He’d hunt Sirna down, and she had to believe Sirna knew that.

It would help to stay his hand.

The thought calmed her and she felt a sudden flare of disgust at herself for the panic that had gripped her moments earlier.

The old her of just a week ago would have laughed in Sirna’s face and turned his plots around on him.

But Sirna himself said he could almost see through her in parts.

She was not the woman of a week ago.

She was diminished.

The sound of a boot on the step stilled Sirna, and he turned his head.

Ava looked out from the corner of her eye, the knife still resting, sharp and dangerous, on the edge of her jaw.

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