“Well then,” said Gerry. “I think it’s time to decide what to do next, isn’t it?”

  The former prisoners had set up camp next to a small pond. Gerry had designated it a camp, even though without any camping supplies it was more of a huddle beneath the trees. The fire on the edge of the forest had been extinguished and a new one made here, so they would have some warmth, but it would be a rough night.

  Everyone turned to look at her as she spoke. Gerry examined them all – scared, hungry faces, the lot of them. The deer that Warren had fed them had helped, but they had gone without enough food for far too long. They were giving her a look like they expected her to have answers, ones that she didn’t feel comfortable handing out yet. Nevertheless, she maintained a smile.

  “Basics first,” she said. “Raise your hand if you think you have a home still standing that you can return to.”

  Only a few people raised their hands. Root the fey-kind was one of them, though he did so reluctantly, as though he was trying not to have others look at him. Another was Kiara, who winced as she moved, the pain from her whipping the day before clearly still present. Another was Carij, a dark-skinned man with a long, thin beard and bright eyes.

  “My home is far away, and far from this war,” Carij said. “But I doubt if I can reach there. It has been so long since I last went home.”

  “I come from a nomadic tribe,” said Kiara. “I know that they’re still alive, but I wouldn’t even begin to know how to find them.”

  Gerry turned to Root. After a moment, he sighed. “The realm of the fey queen is safe from this war,” he said. “Neither human or goblin king would dare venture there with an army. But even if I could make it there, she would not accept the rest of you, even if I begged her for entry.”

  “Well, that settles it then,” said Gerry. “We have nowhere to go. So, we need to choose what the next step for all of us is going to be.”

  “All of us?” Tristan stood up. “Gerry, I’m sorry to interrupt. But I can’t abide by all of us.” He turned and pointed at Root. “We aren’t powerless anymore, and Root killed Dorbin. I think it’s time he faces justice.”

  Gerry sighed. She had been expecting something like this to happen. “Raise your hands,” she said. “Who thinks that Root should face justice?”

  About half of the group raised their hands. “Now, who thinks that Tristan is just as guilty as Root, and should face the same justice?”

  There were less people who raised their hands this time, around ten at a glance, and Gerry noticed that some of them had raised their hands the first time as well.

  “Mother!” Lenore protested. “What are you doing?”

  “Quiet, dear,” Gerry said. She looked intently at Tristan, then at Root. “Do both of you see? There are people here who want both of you to face justice. People loved Dorbin, so it’s only natural. Why, if we had met in another way, and we didn’t have those cages separating us…” she stopped when she saw Lenore’s horrified expression. “Regardless, both of you bear responsibility for his death. Root, you said last night that you blamed the people who took us all as slaves for what happened. Do you stand by that?”

  “I do,” said Root.

  “So do I,” said Gerry. “But, justice must be served.” She stepped towards Tristan, then slapped him hard across the cheek.

  “Mother!” Lenore cried, but Gerry was already moving towards Root. He clearly knew that it was coming, but didn’t do anything to stop her as she hit him hard on the cheek. Only when she was done did he move, and that was to bring his hand to his cheek to feel the tender skin.

  “Now,” Gerry said. “Let that be justice, and let that be the end of this. We are not powerless anymore, but we do not have any power except for power over ourselves. We will not be made to die in a mine, or whipped for dropping a weapon. We will not be starved to keep us compliant, and we will not live in cages. I am not asking for anyone to forgive, but this here…” she spread her hands to the entire group, “is the only thing that we have. If we allow feuds between us to continue, then we will split ourselves in half taking sides, and then we can’t survive. From now on, it’s everyone as one. Is that understood?”

  She saw hesitant faces, so she kept going. “I know that some of you may dislike one another. Our time at that fortress brought out the worst in some of us, but we also cared for one another. I want to ask all of you to do that for a little longer. Not forever. Once everyone is safe, then you may all fight each other to the death. But while the fortress still looms over us, and dragons fly overhead, we can’t turn against one another. Or we all die. Do you all understand?”

  Tristan looked at the ground as though the scolding had come from his own mother and not his mother-in-law. “I understand,” he said. Gerry counted that as a victory.

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  “I suspect I will not be wanted,” said Root. “But rest assured, all of you who want me dead. I will leave for my homeland as soon as I am able, and you will never need to see me again.”

  “Very well,” said Gerry. “Now, the question remains: where do we go?”

  A hand went up. It belonged to a young man who squinted as though missing glasses. Gerry knew his name to be Nial, but she hadn’t spoken much to him.

  “I was in training to be a cartographer,” he said. “Before.”

  “Cartographer?” Orid asked.

  “A maker of maps,” Nial explained. “Actually I was surveying area when I was taken. Um, does anyone have a stick that I could draw with?”

  Someone handed him one. “Are you able to see?” Gerry asked.

  “Yes,” Nial said. “It’s the things far away I have an issue with. Now.” He drew a crude map in the dirt, which Gerry vaguely recognised as the continent of Ariesa. “As you all know, the human kingdom of Risé and the goblin state of Ya-Les have been at war for the last few years,” he said, drawing both lands on his map. Everyone craned to see the thin impressions on the dirt. “This area that we’re in now represents what was formerly a series of independent city states that got absorbed when the two went to war. We’re here.” He jabbed the stick on the map. “The bad news is that we’re more than a half a hundred leagues from any neighbouring kingdoms, which means that it’d be a trek to get to anywhere neutral, and that’s assuming that they’ve stayed neutral.”

  “So?” Zacharias asked. “What else can we do?”

  “Luckily, this area has always been quite wild,” said Nial. “So much of it isn’t settled, which is why maps of the area aren’t accurate to the same level as, say, the northern plains. Most of what we know was recorded from cartographers who flew overhead in chartered airships. That means that it might be possible for us to find a place to hide for a while.”

  “If we’re looking for a long-term place to live, then what do we need?” Gerry asked. “Nial, I need you to hold all the places you know in your head, and discard them if there’s something said that we can’t get there.”

  Nial’s face went white. “I don’t know if I can do that. The responsibility of choosing a place? What if I get something wrong?”

  Gerry shook her head. “You seem a bright lad. I’m sure you can do it. Now, all of you, start throwing out ideas.”

  “Well…” someone said. “We need food for start. Preferably a place to grow, and a place to graze.”

  “And water, of course,” someone added. “For us and for farming.”

  “Wood. We need it to build shelters.”

  “Maybe a source of iron as well, if we can find a way to mine it.”

  “That’s easy, what we need is stone, we need to be able to make a mill.”

  “But we need more than just a place to grow, we need to have something to grow in the first place. Seeds don’t just fall out of the sky.”

  “It needs to be safe, too. The sort of place people couldn’t just appear and take us all prisoner again.”

  Nial’s eyes were closed, and he was muttering to himself. Gerry didn’t catch the words – they sounded like places, but he sounded like he was having a conversation with himself as well. A lot of yeses and noes and nodding and head shaking.

  “Mother,” Lenore said, taking Gerry’s hand. “Can we talk?”

  Gerry nodded. Lenore led her over to the edge of the pond, which was clean enough that Gerry could glance at it and decide that she definitely didn’t need to be looking at her reflection after months in captivity.

  “What is it, my love?” she asked. “Is it the baby?”

  “The baby is fine,” Lenore assured her. “It’s you. When you asked if people wanted to hurt Tristan, it worried me. What would you have done if people had decided that they wanted him dead?”

  “It wouldn’t have happened,” said Gerry.

  “How do you know that?” Lenore asked. “And how would you have even stopped it if you were wrong?”

  “I knew that I would be right,” said Gerry, speaking truthfully. “I know people, my darling. People love to be angry, it’s what they do best, but people are tired more than they’re angry. No-one wanted to tear anyone apart, they just wanted to rest. That’s all there was to it. And I would have slapped anyone who actually tried anything.”

  She smiled. “Lenore, I know that when I first met Tristan I might not have been the nicest to him.”

  Lenore rolled her eyes. “I believe you told him you’d castrate him for getting me pregnant.”

  “Things were said by all sides,” said Gerry. “Anyway, I saw him in those cages. No-one asked him to, but he gave every spare bit of food he had to you. People might be upset at him for letting Dorbin stay behind, but I know in my heart of hearts that the reason he came back was because he couldn’t stand the thought of you having any less to eat. He’s a good one, that boy, and I wouldn’t let anyone touch him.” She cupped Lenore’s cheeks in her hands. “And more importantly, I know that you love him. There’s no better reason for me to ensure his safety than that.”

  Lenore seemed to relax. “Okay, mother.”

  From the rest of the group came a small yelp. Nial had apparently opened his eyes and seen that everyone was leaning towards him expectantly. Gerry hurried back over.

  “Well then, my lad,” she said. “Did you find a good place for us in that mind of yours?”

  Nial nodded. “I can’t be sure… of course, the area isn’t mapped so well, so I don’t know about mineral deposits and available food, but I’m hoping that…”

  “Nial,” Gerry said firmly.

  “Right,” he said. “There’s a place, I think. Twenty miles south of here, just up against the border of Risé, is the northernmost point in the Filel mountain range. The higher peaks might be hard to live on, but the lower land areas might have everything that we need.”

  “So it’s in Risé?” Tristan asked.

  “Yes, but the mountains are largely uninhabited,” said Nial. “There used to be a society of mountain dwellers a long time ago, but they all died out, and they say that the mountains are cursed.”

  “Cursed!” Midge shuddered. “I don’t know about cursed!”

  “It’s the only place I could think that met all the criteria,” said Nial. “I didn’t know I had to search for no curses either.”

  “You did a good job,” Gerry assured him. “There’s no need to take stock in curses. Let me tell you, as an old wife myself, we’re the ones that tell the tales about them, and most of them are just to scare children like you. I think it sounds lovely.” She looked around. “Does anyone think otherwise?”

  In the end, the possibility of a curse was the most enticing offer that they had. The former prisoners had a new destination.

  “We leave in the morning,” said Gerry. “For now, we get some sleep.”