Ke and River charged out of the house hard on Talen’s heels. At this point Talen was most worried about River. He darted left, and thanked his instincts. A short length of firewood flew past him. River, in addition to being a healer, was a thrower, deadly with spoons, pots, and sticks at twenty yards. She could whip off a wooden garden clog and fling it with ferocious aim at your head before you’d even taken five steps. Talen knew: he had the bumps to prove it.

Talen ran past Nettle. “Trip them!” he said.

Nettle, the Mokaddian traitor, did no such thing. He cut a link from one of the hanging sausage chains, took a fat bite, and stood back to enjoy the show.

Talen raced toward the woods beyond, but River had the angle on him and sprinted to cut him off. Thank the Six she hadn’t had time to pick up anything but a stick. Talen veered toward the garden.

“Pick up the pace,” Nettle called out. “They’re gaining on you.”

“Coward!” Talen yelled back. He dashed around the garden fence, turned to avoid Ke, ran back toward the house, and found himself boxed in between the midden and the barn.

He had two choices. He could make a run at one of his dear siblings and hope to blow by, or he could go up the old walnut tree and hope they would stay at the bottom and do nothing more than shout insults and threats up at him.

He wouldn’t get by Ke and his long arms. Talen had enough room to get by River, but she was daring him, grinning at him to just try.

He made his decision.

Da had fashioned a wooden slab bench and put it next to the trunk of the giant walnut tree. Talen ran for the bench. When he was close enough, he took one running step to the bench then another to an old knob sticking out about five feet up the trunk. He followed the momentum upward, grabbed a branch, pulled himself up, and stood on a fat arm of the tree well out of the reach of his brother and sister.

“That’s about the dumbest place you could have chosen,” said Ke.

Talen climbed a few branches higher and looked down at the two of them. “The joke’s up.”

“We don’t have your hog-worn trousers,” said Ke. “You’re the one who loses things on a regular basis.”

Talen did not lose things on a regular basis.

He saw Ke bend over and pick up a number of rocks. “You come out of that tree or I’ll knock you out,” said Ke.

“No,” said Talen. “I think you need to give up your childish games.”

But Ke threw a rock instead.

Talen ducked. The rock flew straight and true and would have made a pretty bruise, but a small branch stood in the way and sent the rock wide. Goh, he needed to put more branches between him and those rocks, so Talen climbed until the branches were no bigger than his thumb.

He couldn’t see Ke or River from this height. Nettle stood over by the well, finishing his sausage, and using one hand to shade his eyes from the sun.

“You smelly bum,” Talen called down to him. “Do something!”

“Jump!” shouted Nettle. “He’s coming up.”

Talen heard the leaves rustling below as someone ascended toward him.

Nettle was a fine one to stand there and call out instructions. Talen must have been at least forty feet up in the air. The barn roof would have been perfect had it not been thirty feet away. There was nothing else around him but hard ground below. He had nowhere to go. He could not simply jump out of the tree at this height.

Ke was right-running up this tree had been idotic.

He caught a glimpse of Ke climbing below him and to the left.

Maybe he could get around him. Talen did not want to be at his mercy in the tree. He climbed down toward Ke. He would get close, then move to the other side and away.

“I’m going to give you one last chance,” said Ke. He looked up at Talen with that happy look that said Talen was a rabbit and he was a dog that had just found his next meal. He was maybe only six feet away.

Talen scuffed the branch and sent small particles of bark down into Ke’s face.

Ke ducked, and Talen made his move. All he needed to do was get to a branch four feet below him and to the right. It would be a quick climb from there to the ground.

He swung down, but Ke had been expecting the move, and suddenly he was grabbing at Talen’s leg.

Talen moved out on his branch. Ke followed. Talen jumped for another branch. He grabbed it with both hands, pulled himself upward, but before he could get a leg up, the branch cracked and swung him to the side.

It was dead and rotted.

Talen looked for something else to grab, but he couldn’t see anything close; then the branch popped again and broke entirely from the tree.

Talen reached out, grabbing for anything, but it was too late, and then he was falling headfirst. He yelled. He saw Ke’s face then a wide-open space beyond with nothing between him and the ground but a branch that would most assuredly break his back.

2

If this fall lamed Talen, he’d be good for nothing but the war weaves. An image of him at the wizard’s altar in Whitecliff flashed in his mind, the Divine draining his Fire away, the essence that fueled the days of his life, so it could be used by a better vessel-by a dreadman. The dreadman would give Talen homage for the gift, but Talen didn’t want any homage.

He yelled, a long “Nooooooo!”

A stick poked Talen’s eye. Then his ankle caught, and Talen swung into the center of the tree and smacked his head.

Ke grunted. “Grab a branch,” he said.

Talen looked up. It felt like a piece of bark the size of his thumbnail was stuck in his eye; he could barely see, but it was clear that his ankle was caught not in a fork of two branches, but in Ke’s iron grip. Ke bent over a branch holding on to Talen’s ankle, his face set in determination.

“You’re slipping,” he said.

Talen twisted around and finally found a branch. He grasped it with both hands. “I’ve got it. Let go.”

But Ke did not let go. He repositioned his grip and said, “You’ll hang here until you tell us where you’ve hidden our stuff.”

Talen’s eye ran like a river. “What about my trousers?”

“Goh,” said Ke. “If I come across your trousers I’m going to burn them. Then you’ll have something to yell about.”

“Hoy! What’s going on here?” It was Da, standing at the base of the tree.

“They’ve taken my work trousers,” said Talen.

“Is that so?” Da asked Ke.

Talen still hung mostly upside down, the blood rushing to his head.

“It is not,” said Ke.

“You three,” Da said. “Today I come out of the barn to find one of you hanging naked in a tree. What am I going to find tomorrow? Get down. Both of you.”

Ke looked down at Talen. “You’re lucky.” Then he flung Talen’s legs away.

Talen clutched the branch. His body swung around like a festival acrobat’s. His grip on the branch slid. Then he reached out with one foot and caught another branch to stand on.

Talen steadied himself. When he’d finally cleared his eye enough to see, Ke stood next to him. “You should thank me for saving your neck.”

“You’re the one that put me here,” Talen said.

“I’m the one who didn’t murder you,” he said, and then descended to the ground.

Murder indeed. Talen watched Ke go and realized the truth was he had been lucky. Lucky Ke had been that close. Lucky he’d tumbled just the right way for Ke to grab his ankle. And Ke had held him as if he were nothing more than a sack of potatoes. Why couldn’t he have gotten at least half of Ke’s strength?

He sighed. It was going to be annoyingly inconvenient to have to wear his fine pair of pants to work in. And at week’s end, when he cleaned them and hung them out to dry, he’d have to sit around in his underclothes and bat the biting flies away.