I nodded and Tobias immediately set to work, asking Mott to return to our horses for a clean rag and a waterskin. Turning to me, he described a plant with thick, pointed leaves that would need to be cut free and gathered. He said it had a gel inside that Mavis needed.
“Where do I find it?”
“Near water, and in full sun.”
I nodded at him and hurried toward the stream. After Mott and Tobias had kept such a careful watch over me these past few days, it was disconcerting to be alone and my senses were heightened. We were so close to Avenia. Surely others in his group would eventually notice Mavis’s absence and come back to look for him.
I scanned the ground, looking for any plant that fit Tobias’s description, and questioning my decision to spend so much precious time here. It was the right thing to do. I knew that, and yet Mott’s suggestion that I was strengthening an enemy also lingered in my mind. Mavis might not be any sort of warrior, but that didn’t mean he was incapable of doing us damage.
Finally, I had wandered far enough downstream that I saw Tobias’s plant. I pulled out my knife to collect some of the leaves, but from this angle, something caught my eye, a sparkle of ruby, cut in the shape of a diamond. That was odd.
When I turned to look at it, I immediately recognized the object the ruby was attached to. It was a shoe, but not just any ordinary shoe. With nothing better to do while riding in Tobias’s escape carriage so many days ago, I had stared at that same ruby for some time, and I knew it now. This shoe belonged to Amarinda. The princess had at some point been in this exact place.
I grabbed the shoe and leapt to my feet, hoping for any sign of her, or at least some clue as to where she might be now. Nothing indicated how long the shoe had been here or what direction she had traveled. Was it possible she had passed through as a captive of Mavis’s army?
I cut the leaves, then ran back to Tobias. Mott was already there with him and stood vigil, listening and watching for anyone’s approach while Tobias continued washing Mavis’s ankle. I pushed past him and thrust the shoe in Mavis’s face. “Do you know where this came from?”
Mavis’s eyes widened, though it wasn’t clear whether he recognized the shoe, or because he was surprised to see a woman’s shoe of that quality in a place like this.
“I asked you a question!” I yelled. “Now answer me!”
“You’re not Avenian,” he replied coolly. “That was easy enough to figure out. You lost your accent just now and these two others with you have the accent of Carthya. You are the youngest of them all. Why do you give the orders?” His eyes brushed over me, resting briefly on my forearm with the mark of the pirates, the bruises that were still visible on my face, and the sword in my hand. “I know who you are . . . Jaron.”
So Mavis was not as stupid as I had thought. Either that, or I was less clever than I wanted to believe. Neither improved my opinion of myself, or boosted my hopes to pass through this area unnoticed.
In his protective way, Mott walked toward us, but I didn’t think Mavis was in a position to harm me. I knelt beside him with the shoe still in one hand and the plant he so desperately needed in my other.
“Help me,” I said. “Then I will help you.”
His eyes remained focused on the plant. “I see. Either I tell you what I know about that shoe, or you will let me die. Is that right? Carthyans are no better than Avenians.”
“You dare say that, after we rescued you, knowing who you are? You are on my soil. You attacked us!”
Mavis turned away. “I follow my orders without question, as a good soldier would. You ask the same from your soldiers.”
“No, I ask them to be good people. That way, if they follow my orders, I will know I am doing the right thing.” Tobias extended his hand, and I thrust the plant leaves at him. “Do what you must for this boy and let’s be on our way.”
But Tobias only gripped the leaves tighter. “If he knows about Amarinda —”
“He wants to play games with us. We’d do better to just pick up her trail while it’s still fresh. So wrap his leg and we’ll go.”
Tobias stripped open the leaves to reveal a sticky yellow gel. He ran his fingers through it and then applied the gel to Mavis’s leg. Mavis arched his back as it stung the wound, but the worst of the pain seemed to pass once Tobias wrapped it with a rag from Mott’s saddlebag.
Tobias handed the boy the remaining leaves. “You need to check that wound often and keep this gel on it until you’re entirely healed. It might not stop the infection entirely, but if you do as I say, it should keep you out of danger.”
With that, Tobias stood and we hurried to our horses. Mott even lifted his saddlebag and found a spare roll, which he tossed to the boy to eat. “You are in our debt now,” Mott said. “Remember that.”
“I’m the lowest soldier of Avenia,” Mavis said. “I cannot repay anything to a king.”
“You’ll find a way,” I said.
“Let’s leave.” Tobias started away with his horse. “We must hurry.”
Mott and I followed, but before we had gone far, Mavis called after us, saying, “We saw the girl who wore that shoe and chased after her, but she got away. I don’t know where she is now, but she’s not with my army.”
I met his eyes and nodded in gratitude. Then without a word, I turned and hurried after Mott and Tobias, already on their way to find the princess.
Mott had told me once that he was skilled in tracking, but I hadn’t appreciated his claim until I saw him at work. Once we lost the princess’s footsteps in the soft soil around the stream, he got off his horse and began showing me how he worked.
There were some things I already understood — to look for crushed grasses or bent twigs that indicated a person had passed that way. But Mott used a stick to measure the distance in her stride and then used that information to estimate where her footsteps should fall to find the trail again. It was slow work, requiring our horses to be led on foot, but after we had gone some distance, the indents suggested she was walking, not running, and the prints were less than a day old. If we kept at it, we should find her.
We continued this way for several hours, until the sun began to sink in the sky, and along with it our hopes of finding her before nightfall. That decision was sealed when we came upon another stream with no visible footsteps on the other side.
“She could’ve walked in the water, upstream or down, and exited anywhere.” Mott’s frustrations were clear. “It’s too dark for us to follow now. We should make camp and start again tomorrow.”
“We must keep going or she’ll get even farther away,” Tobias said. “Let’s try upstream. That would take her closer to Drylliad.”
“And closer to the soldiers who chased her,” I reminded him. “She’s already much farther south than I’d have expected. She may go south yet again.”
Faced with one choice no more certain than the other, Tobias reluctantly agreed to make camp. Mott prepared us a fire while Tobias and I put together a simple stew. After eating, we sat around the fire with little to say. Tobias went to sleep first, insisting we begin again at first light. Mott followed shortly after, and I lay down near the dwindling fire, but sleep would not come. I should have arrived at Falstan Lake that day, and although I had no regrets for helping Mavis, and certainly the search for the princess was a priority, I still felt disconnected from the war I was supposed to be leading. I worried that my country was collapsing from the center, even as I rode uselessly in circles around the action.