Rebel Children

Rose had a lot on her mind as they navigated through the Alden Wood, though she tried to keep one eye focused on the trees around them. Sometimes the trees would get malicious and shift around to change the paths. Two years ago Rose and Tobias had begun making markings on the trees so they’d know if any had moved and altered the path to Brimsey. It had been a while since she’d been there, but the path seemed unchanged because she recognized the marks they’d made.

Rose turned her head back and forth so much her neck started to get sore, but she didn’t see anything moving in the trees besides a few deer and a rabbit.

“These woods were a nice place to be once,” she remarked. “Before Lorena. There’s so many of her unnatural monsters out here now that I’m worried they’ll start moving into the towns.”

“Is that why you were all living way out here?” Eli asked.

“Yes, though there used to be a lot more of us. It’s just gotten too dangerous so most of the people who used to help keep guard out here left. I think when my aunt and uncle brought me here there were about twenty-five or thirty people, and a lot fewer monsters. Now it’s just us. Though I suppose now it’s no one.”

“Well you must have done a decent enough job. You impressed Charlie.”

Rose laughed lightly. “To be fair I think just about anyone wielding a weapon impresses Charlie.”

“Yeah, you might be right about that.”

Rose knew Tobias would be dividing his attention between watching for any creatures in the woods and watching her. She glanced over her shoulder at him and threw him a sunny smile, which made him roll his eyes. Maria nudged him in the ribs with her elbow and Rose faced forward again, trying not to giggle at Tobias’s irritation. He wasn’t even really her uncle but he could behave very much like a dad sometimes.

They made it to Brimsey as night was falling. They had made it without incident, though Rose felt a bit uneasy as they spotted rooftops through the trees. Brimsey wasn’t a huge town but she usually didn’t venture very far into it. Ordinarily Tobias and Philip would venture into town while Rose remained on the outskirts with Maria. There was always a trace of worry that someone might recognize Rose or that some of Lorena’s shadowy half-human knights would have ventured into a small town like this one.

Tobias and Maria rode up beside her as they reached the edge of town.

“Keep on alert, and keep your hood up as much as you can once we’re into town,” Tobias said in a low voice. “At least until we can be sure none of Lorena’s shadow spies are here. We’ll talk more when we have some more privacy.”

Rose nodded. They rode up to the market on the edge of the city; which was as far as Rose and ever gone. Despite it growing dark, Rose still pulled her hood up and kept her head ducked as they moved further into town, like Tobias had asked. They stopped and dismounted from the horses so that Eli could return the one he’d borrowed to go find Charlie. Charlie himself came over to ask Rose about where they were going to stay.

“I don’t know yet, Charlie.”

“Maybe you could stay with us,” he suggested.

“Charlie, that’s very sweet of you but we couldn’t possibly invade your house,” Rose replied, amused.

“Yeah but you could-“

“Hey, why don’t you go ask Philip if he can show you the crossbow. It’s wrapped up in the cart.”

Charlie’s face lit up and Rose saw poor Philip’s eyes go wide before he glared at her. She threw him an apologetic smile. She knew the kid was driving him crazy but Tobias and Maria were clearly waiting to talk with her. They moved slightly away from the cart and left Philip at Charlie’s mercy.

“Eli told me that there’s some man here in Brimsey who’s involved in the rebellion,” Tobias said quietly. “I don’t know if I like the sound of him, though. He likes to keep tabs on whoever goes in and out of town. Worried about spies taking any information back to the cities. Which is fine and dandy, but I’m worried that he’ll sense something amiss with the three of us and cause a problem. Apparently we have to ‘convince’ him to let us leave, when the time comes. I’m not sure how we’ll go about earning the man’s trust.”

“Let Rose talk to him for five minutes,” Maria suggested with a laugh. “The girl can talk her way into or out of just about anything.”

“Be that as it may, I’m not entirely sure I want Rose even meeting him,” Tobias muttered. “This Reeves guy might be on the paranoid side, but he has nothing on me. We really don’t know who we’ll be able to trust.”

“We can’t afford to be too paranoid,” Maria pointed out. “Maybe we’ll be less likely to arouse suspicion if we all talk to him. We’re strangers here and if we seem to be acting shifty someone will think we’re shifty.”

“Acting shifty,” Rose repeated. “You mean like all the huddled whispering we’re doing right now?”

Tobias shot her a look and she smiled innocently back.

“We’re going to have to find someone who can help Rose with magic too, and that might be the trickiest part,” Maria added. “We’ll have to tread very carefully, but there can’t be many mages in Brimsey anyway.”

“We should probably give Philip the opportunity to leave if he wants, too,” Rose said. “He doesn’t know about any of this and I’d prefer not to drag him into it from here. Frankly he might be sick of us by now.”

“I’ll talk to him later,” Tobias said, nodding. “We should probably sell the horses while we’re here too,” he added. “We’ll have to find other means of transportation when it comes time to leave, but we can hardly afford to stable them right now.”

Rose pouted. “I’ll miss them.”

“When you’re queen you can buy them back,” Maria said, winking at her. Eli came out of the pub then, and Philip looked incredibly relieved when Charlie directed his attention toward jabbering at his brother instead.

“We should probably stop standing over here whispering conspiratorially now,” Rose said.

“Right,” Tobias muttered. “Because we’re trying not to look shifty. Let’s go.”