says he’s forgotten. Like that’s an excuse.”
“You don’t like deserters then,” Jack said. It wasn’t a question.
Dahlia shrugged. “What’s to like? The royal army is bad enough, coming out here and making sure we all hand over everything we have to the capital, but deserters… they’re just thieves and murderers. Or they try to be.”
“But you stop them with your crossbow,” Jack said with the barest twitch of a smile.
Dahlia’s smirk wasn’t as carefully hidden. “Mostly I just poison their stew.”
Jack paused for a long moment, the spoon poised halfway to his mouth. He looked from the old man to his daughter, then he kept eating.
“Good,” Henry said. “It’s important to trust people. And Dahlia wouldn’t poison a guest’s stew.”
“I poisoned the main pot instead,” Dahlia said.
Jack raised a questioning eyebrow. “Why would you do that?”
“I figured that if you killed us, you’d still take that for food, and I’d know that you weren’t going to hurt anyone else.”
“But that only works if I’d killed you,” Jack pointed out. “What if I’d taken you with me, and used the food as rations? You’d have been poisoned too.”
“In that case, I’d probably be better off poisoned,” Dahlia said, matter-of-factly, like they weren’t talking about the possibility of the two of them being killed. “And in that case, it would be worth it to stop you hurting anyone else.”
Jack wasn’t sure he could understand that. “It would be worth dying to stop me hurting anyone?”
“I wouldn’t expect a deserter to understand,” Dahlia said. She smiled again, and there was a hard edge to it. “More stew?”
Jack shook his head, continuing to work his way through the bowl he had. It gave him an excuse to simply sit at the table and try to collect his thoughts. Thoughts about this place, the strange pair who occupied it, and about himself. Jack looked over towards the spot where the bookshelf lay. He could read the words on the spines, and some vague half-memory told him that not everyone could. One title in particular stood out for him.
“Principles of advanced physics?” Jack asked.
“A family heirloom,” Henry said evenly.
“An impressive family then, given that this is a farm.”
Henry spread his hands. “The world shifts and changes. Sometimes we have to change with it, and sometimes we have to know what to hold onto.”
“And you seem to have held onto a lot of books,” Jack said, making a joke of it. But it wasn’t a joke, not really. The army tended to seize books like this. They had standing orders. Something to do with preservation. The phrase was… what was it?
“Let no scrap of information be lost,” Jack said aloud.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dahlia edging towards her crossbow. She was trying not to be too obvious about it, but the very act of trying to sneak drew attention to it. Jack stood and she grabbed for it, but even in his weakened state, Jack was faster. He snatched it up and took the bolt out. Dahlia stood glaring at him, looking around as though she might try to find a knife with which to stab him.
“I’m not here to try to take anything from you,” Jack said. “Your books are as safe as everything else here.”
“And I should trust our safety to a deserter’s word?” Dahlia said.
“Better a deserter than someone still in the army,” Henry said, his tone soothing. “We’d be dead now if a soldier saw them who had any plans to go back. But who is Jack here going to tell? If he really is a deserter, then he’s dead if he goes back.”
Dahlia seemed to consider that for a moment or two, but then nodded. Some of the tension seemed to dissolve, and she held out her hand for the crossbow. Jack handed it over, but he put the crossbow bolt on the table, just in case. It paid to be careful.
“Better,” Henry said. “What interests me more is how you know that phrase, Jack.”
Jack shrugged. That corner of his memory was as closed to him as the rest. “I just know it.”
Henry frowned at that, then gestured for Jack to follow him. “Come with me. We’d better find you somewhere to sleep.”
The change was abrupt enough to catch Jack a little by surprise. Henry led the way out of the main farm building to a small barn behind it. There was a horse there, a surprisingly strong looking bay gelding that whickered as the two of them approached. There was also a ladder, which led up into a hay loft.
“We don’t have a lot of room in the house,” Henry said, “but I think you’ll probably be comfortable enough in here.”
“And you wouldn’t want to trust me too much,” Jack guessed. “Especially not so close to your daughter. After all, you don’t know what kind of man I am.”
“I think you’re more likely to run off with my horse than my daughter,” Henry said. “So I’m trusting you plenty letting you sleep right above it. As for what kind of man you are, I think that’s for you to decide.”
Jack wasn’t sure what to say to that. Instead, he looked around the hayloft. The hay looked comfortable enough to sleep on, and the roof was sound. It would definitely be a lot warmer and drier than any place he might have been able to sleep down in the wilds.
“We’ll fetch blankets from the house,” Henry said. “And uncover the window if you want to make it more comfortable. No candles or lamps though. We don’t want to risk a fire. You can come into the main house for meals, or if you need anything.”
“You make it sound like I’ll be staying,” Jack said. He shook his head. “I just need to stay the night. I’ll be leaving tomorrow, making for the border.”
“Do you think you would make it?” Henry asked. He looked Jack up and down. “You don’t look like much, boy, but I’ve had to learn how to read men in this world. I’ve had to learn how to tell which ones will betray me and which will be firm friends, which ones are there to help and which ones are spies. You might be a deserter, but there’s more to you than that, Jack. My guess is that there are going to be people looking for you.”
“Maybe,” Jack admitted. That was one certainty that had burned itself into his brain. It had been enough to keep him running this far. “Yes. But I don’t know why.”
Henry nodded. “Let me see your head.”
He said that in a tone that just made it obvious that Jack would obey. He sounded the way a general might sound, or a king before a battle. And Jack had to wonder how he knew what either of those things sounded like. He sat on the floor, leaning forward so that Henry could run his hands over Jack’s scalp. Jack hissed as Henry touched a spot just above his temple.
“You’ve got a nasty graze here. You were lucky. A little to the left… tell me, Jack, do you know what kind of weapon could leave this kind of injury?”
“No,” Jack replied. He watched the other man’s face. “But you do, don’t you?”
Henry shrugged.
“What about that phrase from before? The one where you wanted to know where I’d heard it?”
Henry didn’t answer for a long time. “There are some things that are better left unsaid. When your memory returns, if your memory returns, we can talk then. It’s better not to try to force these things.”
“You’re talking again like I’m going to be here,” Jack said. “Hunters or no hunters, my best chance is to run. I can take your horse and be at the border in a matter of days.”
“And what if they