“Did you even try to escape?”

Between the capture and my aching head, I wasn’t in the mood to be charitable.

Juniper huffed, “I did.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Did you really think you could win on your own?”

I didn’t bother to respond. She could think what she liked but the rescue operation wasn’t over yet. Wouldn’t be unless I got Juniper away from the kidnapper or I was too incapacitated to do anything, and being tied up didn’t count. As if I’d let this be a failure because a bit of rope and a blanket.

Instead I glowered over at the kidnapper. He stared back. He had searched the surrounding area after putting the fire out. I wasn’t sure if he knew I had traveled through the shadow paths or if he thought the fire had attracted my attention. Either way between the lack of fire and the cloudy sky there weren’t any shadows dark enough for me or Juniper to disappear into.

However, he also didn’t seem very motivated to find a new camping spot or continue on despite the fact that I had showed up out of nowhere and it couldn’t have been later than than late morning or midday. A weird time to camp and a weird lack of urgency given the running tracks the others and I had been following.

“Does he always do this?” I asked.

Juniper didn’t answer for a few long moments before she gave into the question’s importance. “Every morning. He sleeps for four or five hours, I think, before we head off again. Then he travels through the afternoon and night with only small breaks. It should have been about time to leave when you showed up, so I don’t know why we’re staying here.”

The potential storm or my unexpected arrival would be my guess. Maybe both. Though if I was him I’d have been trying to use every spare moment to get out of the goddess’s territory with the stolen harp and Juniper. Then again, I doubt I would have been stupid enough to steal from Her in the first place. I was a little surprised that the kidnapper hadn’t been struck down for his insolence yet.

I kept up my questions, “Do you know what he wants with you? Can he understand us?”

I’d been keeping my voice quiet, just in case, but there hadn’t been so much as a flicker of recognition as we talked a handful of feet from the kidnapper. He also hadn’t fixed Juniper’s gag that had become loosened during the fight or put one on me, which seemed pretty lazy. We could be planning all sorts of things to escape and it’d be pretty simple to stop that basic amount of communication. Arrogance or ignorance. He had to have one or the other.

“I don’t think so. He hasn’t reacted to anything I said except to put the gag on when I tried screaming for help at first.” The induced sleep must have been too strong then for us to hear.

Juniper answered my first question next, “I think he wants the pearl…he was—he was going to take it at first but when he touched it I think he cursed, and then he tied me up to drag me along.”

Of course. The one thing that differentiated Juniper from everyone else in the Rookery—other than making herself easy prey by holing up away from everyone—was the pearl she always wore. The pearl that gave her a unique power.

My gaze strayed to the harp with a unique power. Could they be connected? From the same place? But from what I could tell the pearl had been part of Juniper’s tribe for ages and the harp didn’t seem like it had anything to with them. The powers weren’t even alike: a harp that put people to sleep and a pearl that…made a bubble of water? Manipulated it? I wasn’t sure if Juniper could do anything else with it.

“How would he have even known about the pearl?”

Juniper shrugged, upset, “How am I supposed to know? No one outside of our tribe is supposed to know about it but Mishtaw seemed to and now he ambushed me over it. Clearly he must have heard about the pearl somehow.”

Or he had some other way to search out magical items. Some reason why he wanted them and was willing to take what didn’t belong to him.

“Are you sure your pearl comes from a…snake?”

Juniper tensed even further at the doubt in my voice. “Yes.”

I held in a sigh. Juniper always seemed to get thick headed when it came to her tribe. “Why?”

“Because that’s how it is. The goddess granted the Water Frond Snake a boon for helping protect Her territory, the pearl, and it was passed down to us so that we could help the guardian protect the waterways from the Lady Blue.”

It could be true. It could, but no matter how I searched my memory tent I couldn’t recall a single myth that involved the goddess making items with special abilities except for, perhaps, the portals that made the Beloved’s third trial. Some versions of the story insinuated that the portals might have already been there before her trial and the goddess did seem to deal more in marks and the landscape. Things that couldn’t be removed or changed.

Light, fluffy snow started to drift down. Not a true storm then, not enough to drive a tribe into shelter, but maybe enough to stop someone who didn’t seem to be used to the weather. I eyed the kidnapper’s idiotic sleeveless shirt.

He got up to check that the harp was secure against the tree and that none of the snow was reaching it through the pine’s thick branches. He didn’t need to be so worried about it, given that I was sure the harp had been through much worse weather up on the statue but, if it kept us where we were so the others had a chance to make up some of the distance, I’d take it.

Then he did another quick perimeter check, staying mostly under the pine’s branches, and I noticed something odd. The snow would melt an inch or so from his skin. The spot he had been sitting had a patch of melted snow too. There really was something keeping the air around him unnaturally warm. However, it didn’t entirely help him against the falling snow. Once the snow melted it still mostly hit him as little drops of rain. If he ran out in it long enough he’d probably get soaked through as if he was out in a downpour and that didn’t lend itself to traveling comfortably or quickly. This was also probably his best chance to take a break if he didn’t want to worry about whisper women popping out of the shadows. If he even knew about them.

The more I saw and the more I heard, the more I was convinced the kidnapper wasn’t from the goddess’s territory. Maybe he was from some remote corner that spoke an unintelligible dialect, but given the direction he hadn’t deviated from—straight for the Barrier Mountains—and his odd clothes, his willingness to kidnap the harp and a Sprout, and the unnatural abilities he’d displayed between driving a stake into solid, frozen ground with one hand in one motion and the odd warmth around him…it all didn’t add up otherwise. If I could get a good look at one of his wrists to see if he had the common blessing or not, I’d know for sure.

As it was he kept his distance from us and let us talk, but he also kept a close eye to make sure we didn’t try anything. I got the sense that I was an annoying dilemma to his plans. If he had been carrying Juniper and the harp this whole time there wouldn’t be room for me but it also seemed like he didn’t want to kill me. I made sure neither Juniper or I even hinted at my particular blessing in case he could understand us. So his options for me were drag me along behind, which would slow him down, or leave me behind and let someone else rescue me but also risk whatever information I could tell them about him and his abilities.

I liked that I was at least a difficulty given that everything else had gone sideways. If he took me with them that could me more chances to slow him down and escape with Juniper. If I was left behind I could work my way to the nearest shadow and ambush him again or use my new ability with the shadows to return to the Rookery and increase the urgency to rescue her and the harp there. Maybe they’d actually be in touch with whisper women who could help at that point.

Juniper had an odd mix reactions to getting kidnapped. I think she could have tried harder to escape on her own, but she was insistent that she just would have been captured again right away and that the man kept her away from shadows as best as he could so she couldn’t use those. She seemed like she wanted to get away the kidnapper but she also didn’t seem that excited to return to the Rookery. I think if she had her way she’d suddenly reappear at her tribe and carry on as if she hadn’t been away for nearly a year.

Part of me wanted to have that happen, just so that she’d be faced with her tribe’s rejection, be forced to realize that those with bless marks didn’t get to be anything but whisper women, but another part of me was very quietly worried that she might break apart if she was confronted with that reality. Especially when she was still in the middle of a fight with what little she had left of her support system.

The weather got colder but a couple hours later the snow stopped. The kidnapper eyed the sky and seemed to come to a decision. He untied the cord around the blanket but got a firm grip on Juniper and me before we could make a break for it. I still did my best to make his life difficult.

He drove a knee in my gut and used the couple moments of respite as I gasped, stunned and winded, to tie me back up and pull Juniper away. She was gagged again, I wasn’t, and then he tied her to a low hanging branch before hefting the harp onto his back. It dangled diagonally from the straps he had attached to it and he touched one of his armbands again. Immediately after his posture straightened, no longer seeming as burdened by the large instrument’s weight. He untied Juniper, gave me one last look, scooped her up while she struggled a little, and ran off into the woods.

I glared after them. There still weren’t any decent shadows for me to slip into and escape, and he had tied his knots well and tight. I would have yelled after them but I doubted he’d understand any of the insults I wanted to say and Juniper was too out of her element to act and escape like she should. Surely there had to be some sort of chance while he slept?

For now I had to focus on not getting frostbite until the shadows returned. The kidnapper had left me with the fur blanket, so hopefully he had another way to keep Juniper warm, but it didn’t protect my legs very well, so I levered myself up and paced as best as I could.

I wasn’t sure how long it was later when I heard a bird’s cry and looked up to see one of the storm birds circling overhead.