Read Online The Refuge Song by Francesca Haig - Free Book Online Page B

waiting for me to mirror her.
    â€œThere’s no point if you don’t practice,” she said. “It needs to be so that your knife’s in your hand before you realize you need it. It needs to feel seamless—so it comes to you without thinking.”
    I’d seen how she and Piper moved, and fought—their bodies fluid, not responding to their thoughts but becoming their thoughts. It was true what she’d said— There ’s nothing pretty about fighting —and I knew that however striking Zoe’s and Piper’s movements, the results were the same: blood, death. Flies swarming on sticky bodies. But I still found myself admiring the certainty of their bodies as they inscribed their answers on the world with a blade.
    It was past noon when we stopped.
    â€œEnough,” she said, when I clumsily blocked her final parry. “You’re tired. That’s how stupid mistakes happen.”
    â€œThank you,” I said, as I slipped my knife back into my belt. I smiled at her.
    She shrugged. “It’s in my interests to give you a better chance of getting yourself out of trouble, for a change.” She was already walking away. She was a door, forever slamming shut in my face.
    â€œWhy are you like this?” I called after her. “Why do you always have to cut me down and stalk off?”
    She looked back at me.
    â€œWhat do you want from me?” she said. “You want me to hold your hand and braid your hair? Have we not given you enough, me and Piper?”
    I couldn’t answer. More than once, she’d proved that she was willing to risk her life to protect me. It seemed petty to complain that she didn’t also give me her friendship.
    â€œI didn’t mean to see your dreams,” I said. “I couldn’t help it. You don’t know what it’s like, being a seer.”
    â€œYou’re not the first seer,” she said as she walked away. “I doubt you will be the last.”
    Î©
    It was dawn, two days later, when the bards came. We’d made camp just a few hours before, at a spot Zoe and Piper knew. It was a forested hill overlooking the road, with a spring nearby. Since the Ringmaster’s ambush we’d been edgy, flinching at every sound. To make it worse, for two days it hadn’t stopped raining. My blanket was a sodden load, dragging my rucksack until the straps chafed at my shoulders. The rain had thinned to a drizzle when we arrived, but everything was soaked and there was no chance of a fire. Piper took the first lookout shift. He spotted them in the tentative dawn light—two travelers making their way along the main road, in the opposite direction from where we’d come. He called us over. I’d been wrapped in a blanket in the shelter of the trees, and Zoe had just returned from a hunt, two freshly dead rabbits swinging from her belt.
    The newcomers were still only small figures on the road when we heard the music. As they drew closer, through the thinning fog we could see that one of them was thrumming her fingers on the drum hanging by her side, sounding out the rhythm of their steps. The other one, a bearded man with a staff, held a mouth organ to his lips with one hand, exploring fragments of a tune as they walked.
    When they reached the point where the road curved away, they broke with it, instead heading up the hill through the longer grass, toward the woods where we sheltered.
    â€œWe need to leave,” said Zoe, already shoving her flask back into her bag.
    â€œHow do they know the spot?” I asked.
    â€œThe same way that I do,” Piper said. “From traveling this road many times before. They’re bards—they’re always on the road. This is the only spring for miles—they’re heading right for it.”
    â€œPack your things,” Zoe said to me.
    â€œWait,” I said. “We could talk to them, at least. Tell them what we know.”
    â€œWhen