Chapter 3

Chapter

Three

Z ev's muscles strained as he lifted the bale of hay, depositing it on top of the others in the corner of the barn. Four more to go and he was done.

The impatience wasn't like him. He wasn't generally in the habit of counting down his tasks. But lately he'd been finding indoor work increasingly oppressive. He wanted to be out in the open air, where he could breathe and think.

Or at least that's what he told himself. It was better than acknowledging that what he really wanted was to be back on the road, heading northward. Never before had he felt restricted or trapped on his family's farm, and he hated that he felt that way now.

But he didn't hate the cause of his restlessness. He didn't even resent her. None of this was her fault, after all. If anything, she was the one who should resent him. She probably did.

Not for the first time, her face appeared in his mind's eye, her voice clear in his ears, right down to the shyness of her tone, uncharacteristic as that was for her.

I'm not really done looking for answers. Perhaps we can try to unravel it all together .

She'd looked so hopeful as she said it. Zev didn't think himself conceited, but he would have had to be blind to miss her meaning as she'd shifted toward him in that moment. She'd been so near, her skirt swishing against his legs with the movement as she'd tilted her face up toward his.

She'd wanted him to stay with her, to help her with the overwhelming task of trying to solve Oleand's troubles. But it was more than that. She'd wanted him . Unless he was mistaken, she'd wanted him to kiss her again, like he had after he'd almost been too late to stop Gorgon from killing her.

A thrill that was some tangled mixture of pain, elation, and regret passed over Zev as he heaved the final hay bale into place. It didn't feel conceited to acknowledge what Marieke had wanted. He'd wanted the same thing, after all. But instead he'd walked away, constrained not just by his own circumstances, but by generations of complexity.

And he wasn't conceited enough to assume she was pining for him. It had been a month—a long and restless month—since he'd left her. She may be angry with him for entangling her in whatever had started to grow between them and then just abandoning her. Or she may have gotten past any attraction she'd felt. She may be too consumed with trying to solve her country's troubles to think of him at all.

Or , a hard, cynical voice said in his mind, she might have gotten herself hurt, imprisoned, or even killed by her council in her attempts.

He tried to push the dark thought aside, as well as the guilt that came with it. When he'd left Marieke, he hadn't thought her in imminent danger from her country's Council of Singers. Not if she kept her head down. But as the weeks had passed without any contact with her, his certainty had ebbed. How long would she lie low for? If he knew her, not much longer. And he'd left her all alone in her fight, in spite of knowing that at least one member of the Oleandan council would be untroubled to see her dead.

But what could he have done? If he'd stayed with her, he'd be embracing a fight that wasn't his. And he'd be consumed with guilt over abandoning his family instead of abandoning her. After all, they had just as much to lose. More. Surely his first loyalty should be to his own flesh and blood, not to a girl he'd only known a matter of months, no matter how captivating.

So why did he feel like he'd betrayed himself by leaving Marieke behind?

"Zev!"

Azai's voice from outside the barn broke into Zev's thoughts, the sharpness of the tone catching his attention. Something was wrong.

Zev strode from the building, his muscles tensed as his eyes scanned the area. He spotted his brother quickly, standing near the front gate with his eyes fixed on something outside the property. Zev joined him in a few swift paces, searching the trees on the far side of the dusty road.

"What is it?"

"That." Azai pointed.

Following his gaze, Zev squinted at the object caught in the trees. It was a large, white rectangle, although it had lost its shape somewhat, tangled as it was in the branches.

"Is that parchment?" He frowned at it.

"Looks like it, doesn't it?" Azai agreed.

Zev raised an eyebrow at his brother. "A loose bit of parchment is what made you call for me like you were under attack?"

Azai rolled his eyes. "You're exaggerating. And it's not just a loose bit of parchment. There's something not natural about it."

"Why do you say that?" Zev asked .

"I saw it get tangled up," Azai said. "It was wafting back and forth, like a kite on a string, but there's no string, and there was no wind. Barely a breeze, definitely nothing that matched the parchment's movement."

"That is strange," Zev acknowledged.

Maybe Azai could hear in his tone that he wasn't entirely convinced, because he added, "It's not just that. I could feel something when it was approaching. Something in me responded to it."

"Something in you?" Zev repeated.

"Not in me, exactly." Azai seemed to be searching for words. "In…"

"The land," Zev finished for him. He turned his eyes back to the parchment, taking his brother more seriously. The connection he felt to the land didn't belong just to him. It played out differently for other members of his family, but it was just as real. If Azai said that the land had given some kind of indefinable response to the presence of the strange object, Zev believed him.

"Come on," he said, vaulting the section of fence on which he'd been leaning. "Let's have a closer look."

Azai followed him across the wide strip of dirt that served as the road to their farm. Zev pulled himself up onto a boulder lying on the far side, to better search the branches above him.

He knew instinctively where the family's property ended, and it didn't seem coincidental to him that the parchment was just outside the boundary line. Squinting at it, he realized that it didn't look like normal paper.

"It's sort of waxy," he commented to Azai, who was climbing the boulder. "To make it weatherproof, I suppose."

"Is it a proclamation of some kind, intended to be posted in a village square or something?" Azai speculated.

Zev shook his head slowly, grabbing a nearby branch to steady himself as he leaned upward. "I don't think so. Look—there's writing on it, but it's too small for a proclamation. It looks more like lists."

It was hard to read any of the words, especially with the way the parchment was twisted around a branch, but Zev could see that the page was about half full. Straining his eyes, he caught a few words.

"It looks like an inventory of the area," he said. "Crops, acreage…"

He trailed off as Azai swung himself into the relevant tree, climbing up until he was close to the parchment.

"You're right!" Azai declared, scanning a line of the neat, even writing. "I think this last part is describing the farm just west of here! And—" Azai's words cut off with a gasp after this mention of their neighbor.

"What is it?" Zev asked sharply.

"More words are appearing!" Azai said. "At the bottom here! But it's slow, like the words are struggling."

Zev scaled the tree quickly, holding his balance on a branch just below the parchment. "You're right," he breathed. It was like watching someone trying to write by the light of a candle that was sputtering out. Except there was no someone. The words were just appearing.

And disappearing, he realized with a start as he watched a word erase itself letter by letter, replaced sluggishly with a correction. Zev's gaze was drawn to his brother's movement, and he held out a restraining hand.

"Stop, Azai! Don't touch it."

Azai paused, his fingers an inch from the edge of the parchment. "Why not?"

"There's obviously magic involved," Zev said. "A singer must have enchanted it. Possibly multiple singers, who knows? "

"All the more reason to get hold of it and destroy it."

Zev wasn't looking at Azai, but he could hear his brother's scowl in his tone.

"I think it's some kind of tracking document, Azai," he said impatiently. "If it has a description of the next farm over, it must have some magical method of taking in information from what's around it. Who knows what it might record about you if you touch it?" He sent his brother a piercing look. "Or about our family if you take it into our home?"

"I don't need to take it inside in order to burn it," Azai muttered. But he'd already withdrawn his hand. "So what do we do with it? You want to just leave it there?"

Zev considered the matter. "No, I don't like the idea of it hovering here," he said. "Not if it's recording information." It would be like having someone hiding in the tree, spying on them. "Let's prod it free with a stick and see what it does."

"You want to free it to enter our property and make notes of everything it sees?" Azai protested in outrage.

Again Zev took a moment before responding. "No," he said at last. "If it enters our property, I think we should destroy it rather than let it leave again."

"Finally you're talking some sense." Azai wrapped a leg around a thick branch to steady himself as he pulled a dagger from his hip. With a few swift strokes, he hacked himself a stave of sorts from the tree.

Zev watched as Azai pushed and poked at the parchment with his stick, trying to get it loose. It was properly tangled in the branches, but eventually he managed to free it. At once, it took to the air, and Zev instantly saw what Azai had meant. The way the parchment darted from side to side definitely wasn't a natural response to any wind Zev had ever experienced.

As the parchment swooped toward the nearby road, both brothers tensed. But they didn't need to. The mysterious item didn't make it onto their property, once again thwarted by the line of trees that marked its edge. Zev felt a rush of what he thought was elation at this protection of his home. But as the feeling shifted and subsided upon the parchment going still, he realized it was more than just emotion. It was more like intuition, and it had seemed to come not from his heart or his head, but up from his feet.

Interesting. Just like Azai had said, the land had somehow responded to the parchment's approach. Specifically, their land. Their family's property.

"What do we do now?" Azai asked. His expression was disgruntled, but Zev caught the smile in his words. He was also pleased that their farm remained un-breached.

By way of answer, Zev snapped his own rod from a nearby tree, pulling himself hand over hand until he could reach the parchment. He deftly inserted the stick into the folds of waxy paper, flicking it away from the entangling foliage.

Again it flew toward their farm, and again it didn't make it. The brothers had to redirect it four more times before it eventually gave up and drifted off toward the north.

"It won't find much that way," Azai said in satisfaction. "It'll be at Sundering Canyon before long." He frowned. "Unless you think it will try to find another way onto our farm."

With a casual flick, Zev sent his makeshift rod spinning into the undergrowth. "If it does, I have a feeling it won't have any more success than it did here."

"It was more than just luck, wasn't it?" Azai said, following Zev as he strode across the dusty road and through their gate. "Do you think the land somehow kept it off our property?"

Zev ran a hand across the back of his neck in thought. "Seems that way."

"Huh." Azai sounded pleased, and Zev could understand why. "I guess generations of defensive power have had some effect."

"Of course they have," said Zev, a touch of impatience in his voice as his gaze darted over his shoulder, scanning the solid line of trees that bordered their property and taking in the glimpses of the closest circle of hills beyond. He knew his history. Neither feature of the land had been there when his ancestors first settled in this area.

He understood Azai's surprise, however. Subtle changes to the land over generations were one thing. Whatever had happened with the parchment was more immediate. More concrete.

Was their power getting stronger, or was the magic of the Council of Singers getting more aggressive?

"Too bad the defensive effect isn't broader. It would be great if it could keep out not just enchanted objects but the singers who create those enchantments," Azai said. His voice dropped to a mutter that he nevertheless clearly wanted Zev to hear. "One in particular would have been nice."

"Let it go, Azai," said Zev in irritation, his moment of fellow feeling with his brother fleeing rapidly.

Azai scoffed. "Let it go? I don't think I'm the one who needs to hear that advice."

Zev felt his face set like steel. He refused to engage with the conversation.

"Seriously," Azai pressed, unwilling to drop it as usual. "You've been moping ever since you came back from Oleand. If Ramsey hadn't spilled your secret, would you have even told us you were with Marieke the whole time you were across the border?"

Zev gave a grunt of annoyance. "Don't be a fool, Azai. None of it was a secret. And Marieke wasn't with us the whole time we were there. How many times do I have to tell you that I ran into her by coincidence, not design?"

"Then it's quite the coincidence," Azai said dryly. "You know one Oleandan, and that's who you run into, in the whole country? You expect me to believe it wasn't by design?"

"Well, not by my design anyway," said Zev. "Or hers. So if you're determined to believe it wasn't coincidence, maybe we should conclude that the power of the land brought us together again. In which case, who are we to protest?"

Judging by his scoff, Azai was unimpressed with this argument. "You weren't in Aeltas, Zev. You were in Oleand. Even if that land had power—which I doubt, given the way it's dying and crumbling from under its people's feet—then it would have no reason to respond to your presence. It wouldn't bring you together with anyone."

Zev frowned. Something in Azai's words tickled at the back of his mind. More specifically, the part of his mind trying to understand what was happening to Oleand. He pushed the thought aside, reminding that corner of his thoughts yet again that it wasn't his mystery to solve. He would be wisest to stay well away from whatever was destroying Oleand from the inside.

Again that ghost of an idea wafted just out of reach. This time it was Azai's words which forced it further afield.

"So don't try to portray yourself as being thwarted of your fate or any nonsense like that."

Zev gave him a pitying look. "I'm not trying to portray myself as anything. What are you yammering about? It's that parchment we should be focused on."

Azai subsided with a grunt. "That's true enough. What are we going to do about it?"

"Tell Father, first of all," Zev said absently. That part was a given. With some glaring exceptions relating to a certain dark- haired Oleandan singer, he didn't keep important information from his family.

His conscience tugged at him, remembering how his brother had just accused him of wanting to keep his interactions with Marieke a secret. Azai was closer to the truth than he realized. But Zev couldn't see anything to be gained from telling any of them about the kiss he and Marieke had shared—the one that still kept him awake at nights. And he couldn't bring himself to tell them that she was straying perilously close to investigating heartsong in her search for answers about Oleand's deterioration. Even though his family would undoubtedly want to know that information.

Traitor , whispered a voice in his mind. He scowled at no one in particular, wishing he could tell his conscience to either pick a side or shut up. It couldn't punish him both for abandoning Marieke out of loyalty to his family and for keeping things from his family in a bid to protect her.

Or at least, it shouldn't be allowed to. Clearly it had found a way.

"Yes, Father will know what to do." Azai was mercifully unaware of Zev's thoughts.

"How about you tell Father?" Zev said abruptly. "I'll try to follow it, see where it goes."

Azai stared at him. "I thought you said you didn't think it would be able to get onto our property."

"I don't," Zev said. "But it doesn't hurt to make sure of it."

He turned on the words, not waiting to see if his brother found his excuse convincing.