Ulo and I had done a remarkable job ignoring each other for the past three days. She kept close to Nii and I kept to myself. We didn’t even look in each other’s direction if we could help it. Better to not set off another fight that way.

She might have liked to put me in my place and get retribution for her defeat, and I couldn’t deny that beating her down again didn’t have a certain appeal, but we both wanted to complete this new trial as quickly as possible. I might not like having anything remotely in common with the other girl, but I could tell she was nearly as driven as me to rise as a whisper woman. Ulo didn’t seem to have the same perception.

My mouth tasted sour at her rude interruption. Apparently, her need to be recognized had finally overridden her restraint. The sweet taste of gratification came after. My own restraint hadn’t broken first.

Then again I had more than enough practice at biting my tongue when letting it loose wouldn’t get me anything but more time in the tent and a verbal lashing I never could match. She had never ranted, but well chosen silences and words had always cut worse.

I paused.

Prevna wasn’t here and Ulo’s opinion about me couldn’t get any lower. She was spoiling for a fight. I likely wouldn’t win another physical contest, not if it was fair, but words? She didn’t seem like the type with much practice with those. Juniper’s opinion of me might sink, but Jin wasn’t breathing down my neck to get along with everyone anymore. It was still safer if there was at least a bit of distance between me and everyone else.

Besides, I could keep my focus on Ulo.

Juniper tilted her head up to look at the other girl. “I’ll listen to anyone who has something worth listening to.”

There was an obvious insult I could follow that statement up with, but it was so easy it would have hardly any bite. If I was going to go through the effort of insulting her I wanted it to hurt.

The smart thing to do—the peaceful thing—would be to keep quiet and continue to ignore her, keeping up my half of our silent truce. But Ulo had marched over here and interrupted my training and my restraint felt more than a little frayed.

Prevna wasn’t here and that change pinched at me even as the fact that it bothered me pushed my irritation further. Being followed by the yammering, useless healer anytime I traveled with the group, sharing a tent with Wren, having others stick their nose in my business without asking…

Why not take advantage of this situation to release a bit of tension when Ulo had been dumb enough to walk right into it?

Ulo used the obvious insult to follow up Juniper’s words as she pointed at me. “She’s not worth listening to. She’s life ridden.”

I let my gaze trail up over her and back down. Nothing was quite as infuriating as passive disinterest when you wanted to fight someone. “Because of my blessing?”

Ulo’s gaze snapped to me before she shifted to clearly focus all of her attention on Juniper. “You’ll just corrupt yourself.”

“She fought on the shore,” Juniper said, her tone edged with challenge. “Can you say the same?”

I continued my own part of the conversation as if they hadn’t spoken. “Because you might want to look at your blessing again, Ulo. I might not be able to die, but you can’t drown. Might be more than a little life in that, hm?”

“I’m not like you!” Ulo hissed. Promptly forgetting her resolve to pretend like I wasn’t sitting there.

I shrugged as a malicious little smirk curved my lips. “Perhaps She wanted to keep me around more.”

Oh, that stung. She visibly flinched back as her jaw worked. If she said the goddess wanted her more it could come off with the insinuation that she was more life ridden than I was given how I linked our blessings, but if she didn’t, she was allowing the implication that I was more desirable than her to stand.

From what I had seen of her so far Ulo was a girl who thrived off of recognition.

“The goddess doesn’t favor life ridden degenerates,” Ulo bit out.

“Better keep an eye out on your fortune then.”

“I’m not life ridden!”

I smiled at her lack of control and didn’t let any part of my reaction show that I agreed with her. She wasn’t a healer or a man, and Rawley had even been able to find a perspective where my own blessing wasn’t inherently life ridden. Ulo’s situation was much less severe than my own, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t use her fears against her.

I cast a glance at Juniper. “Do you think she’s protesting too much?”

Juniper turned her attention back to the scenario of sticks and stones between us. “I think she’s wasting time to train.”

Ulo glared down at both of us. “How can you side with her?”

“Have you ever killed a giant sea snake? A crawler?” After a long pause Juniper dragged her gaze back up to Ulo. “Challenge my decisions again when you’ve done something real.”

My eyes widened at the younger girl’s clear dismissal. I hadn’t expected Juniper to take such an active role in smacking down Ulo.

Ulo’s fists clenched. “She’s dangerous.”

“That’s what I’m counting on.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, but I didn’t want to confront Juniper on it in front of Ulo. “Go away, Ulo.”

Her jaw worked again and I think her arms shook from the effort it took to keep from slugging me, but after a handful of heartbeats she turned on her heel and left. I doubted that would be end of it, but at least I wouldn’t have to deal with her for the rest of the night.

Juniper tried to bring my attention back to our practice as if nothing had happened. She gestured to the scene set up between us. “Do you have an idea of how to get out of an ambush of fifteen Pickers who want to take our things without killing anyone? In an open clearing that provides no place to hide but the enemy has their pick of bushes and other undergrowth?”

I ignored her questions in favor of one of my own. “Why do you think I’ll do anything for you?”

“I don’t.”

My eyes narrowed. “You want something.”

Juniper’s melancholy thickened again but she didn’t actually answer, so I pressed her.

“I might have supported you to become the leader of our group, but that doesn’t mean I follow you.”

She nodded, utterly tight lipped and composed. “Let’s train again tomorrow.”

“I do fine on my own.”

“Run through these scenarios with me and I’ll help with your shadow walking.”

I pressed my lips together in frustration.

We both knew that she was much better at using our boon than I was, even if she was nowhere near as good as one of the older seedlings. I had practiced shadow walking when I could between my other training and traveling, but I hadn’t progressed since we left the training camp and I was starting to run out of ideas to fix whatever it was I was doing wrong. Juniper was smart, she could probably help me get at least a bit better, but I didn’t like not knowing what her plans were. And there was little doubt that she had something in mind.

I refused to become like Ento and Idra, following after her like a couple of camp dogs.

“I do fine on my own.”

Her lips twitched into the smallest of smiles, before she nodded and left. Somehow it felt like I had played into her hands and the sensation itched. I glared after her.

I doubted that would the last of her particular kind of advance as well. The whisper women might want nothing to do with me after they heard the goddess might have an eye on me, but my cohort only knew that I had been both punished and slightly rewarded during the trial. I didn’t intend for the full knowledge of what had happened to get out, just as the whisper women didn’t seem keen to gossip with us.

Part of me was half tempted to shove the idea that I might have been punished by the goddess Herself in Juniper’s face, so that the other girl would leave me alone. Ever since the shore, I had noticed that she watched me more, came around to train nearby more. I didn’t like the attention and I didn’t like not knowing why I was getting it. She might be one of the most tolerable girls in the cohort, but she also seemed like she could quickly become one of the most troublesome.

After another minute or so of turning over the other girl’s possible motivations and coming up with a few ways Ulo’s ire might turn, and how I could respond to them, I turned back to the sticks and stones in front of me. The solitude felt comforting after the unasked for conversation.

- -

Ulo and Nii had disappeared by the time I woke up the next morning. The sun had barely breached the horizon, so they must have made an idiotic escape in the dark. I was a little surprised that I hadn’t heard them pack up their tent, but they tended to set it up away from everyone else.

Breck confirmed the timeline when Juniper gathered the rest of our group together in front of our tents. She looked and sounded as bored as ever with the whole affair. “I saw them pack up shortly after Gimley went to sleep. They headed southeast.”

Wren rounded on her. “And you didn’t stop them?”

Breck shrugged on shoulder. “They didn’t take any food sacks, just what they gathered.”

Fern wandered over from where she had been talking with her fire starter. “Just so you know, arriving to the Rookery without your full group reflects badly on you.”

Juniper’s expression darkened.

I crossed my arms. “Do we have to go after them? Ulo’s probably trying to get to the Rookery first anyway.”

“We do.” Juniper’s tone was firm. “They’re my responsibility.”

I rolled my eyes and Wren glared at me.

Fern added, “They don’t have a healer. If they get hurt and die, someone will need to be held accountable for the loss of potential whisper women. I suggest you find them quickly.”

It didn’t take a lot of guesswork to realize that “someone” was likely her and she didn’t want the backlash, but she couldn’t interfere too much because this was supposed to be our trial. I also wanted to scoff at the idea that there was any worry about our lives with the situations we kept being put in, but I knew better than to do it to her face. Esie’s admonishment for me to show respect to my superiors still popped up in my mind. I didn’t want to give Jin or Yule any excuse to get me kicked out if I could help it. They might not be here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t keeping an eye on me, one way or another, with that in mind.

“Does anyone here have experience tracking through a forest?” Juniper asked.

Somehow I was the one with the most experience in that respect. Breck came from craggy cliffs, Juniper the coast, and Wren had traveled through more grassland on elk than woodlands like we were about to enter. Wren could talk to the birds which might help, and Chirp could flit ahead, but somehow when it came to actually looking for broken twigs and footprints pressed into a soft forest floor, my months training with Rawley won out.

Breck had more experience tracking, but most of it was connected to the very different landscape of her homeland. I told her what to look out for and she agreed to keep an eye out as she hunted. I didn’t say it, but I think she still could have done a better job than me if she cared to. She hunted the forest animals easily enough, after all.

Granted, I wasn’t particularly keen on tracking the two idiots either, but I didn’t want them to die. However irritating Ulo was. Nor did I care for the loss of performance Fern indicated we would get if we finished the trial without the pair.

So, after we quickly broke our fast and packed up camp, I found myself on point searching out clues for where they went. It helped that one of them had heavier footprints from carrying the tent or food. Hopefully, we would be able to catch them within the day.