Donnel's Promise (16 page)

Risha looked out. Beams protruded at floor level from the side of the building, each jutting no further than the length of her foot. Clik was stepping cautiously from
one to the next, apparently unperturbed by the drop below. Wiping her palms on her skirt Risha slid over the sill, found the first beam with her toes, and stretched her foot sideways for the next. Face-in to the building with her fingertips gripping the beam-ends above, it was impossible to look down — which proved an advantage.

Croft let out a low expletive behind her. She turned her cheek to the wall to look back. He was kneeling on the window ledge, hands gripping the frame to either side.

‘Easier if I wasn't dizzy already,' he whispered.

‘It's not far.'

Clik hissed, and Risha resumed her crabbing progress along the wall.

Beyond the corner a flat roof linked the inn to the neighbouring building. Risha caught the scent of a stable yard as they scuttled across, then they were scrambling along the angled face of another roof and onto a lean-to beyond. It creaked under Croft's weight and they froze, but nothing happened. Clik turned on his belly and slithered over the edge. Risha peered cautiously after him. They were above a narrow,
litter-strewn
lane. She pulled her head back and lay flat, feeling the sun on her back, then turned and wriggled over the edge. There was a sharp rip as her skirt caught on a nail then she was over and hanging — her wrist shrieked a protest and she dropped, landing in an awkward tangle. A thud and hushed curse announced Croft's arrival at her side. Risha adjusted the saddlebags over her shoulder, checked her dagger, and wrapped her left fingers around her aching right wrist.

Clik jogged through a narrow passageway then led
them along a dog-leg path through a string of cluttered alleys. Most were deserted, though occasionally Risha glimpsed a face at a shadowed window or a young child squatting on a doorstep. Clik paid the watchers no
attention
. At a door made from broken palings he reached through a gap, tugged something free and pushed two boards aside with a tired creak.

Slivers of light shone between gaps in the makeshift door and walls. Clik held a curtain aside and motioned Risha through a low doorway. The second room had none of the sense of abandonment of the first, offering a nest of blankets, a chair and a table. On a shelf above the bed Risha caught sight of a bowl of Torfell stone.

‘Is this your place, Clik? I thought you lived at the castle.'

He waggled a hand. Sometimes. Croft dumped his saddlebags and sank to the floor, his head dropping into his hands.

Risha sat on the chair. ‘What now?'

‘Don't know about you, but I could do with staying still,' Croft said.

‘What about Nolan? If he gets back and finds us gone—'

Croft made a noise halfway between a grunt and a groan.

‘Those men were looking for us. For me.'

Croft sighed. ‘Question I'd be asking is who sent them.'

‘And how much they know.'

‘I was hoping we'd get a few answers on that.'

An image of Dora, and the dark ooze dripping from the man's hair, flashed through Risha's mind. She shook her head to clear it. ‘Do you have any idea who they
were Clik?' He shook his head. ‘Or who Skep is?'

Clik nodded. Risha straightened. ‘Can you tell me? Have you met him?' A shake. ‘But you've heard of him; heard his name?' A nod.

She shuffled her questions into simple yes–no options. ‘Do you know him by sight?' A nod. ‘He lives in Fratton?'

Clik pointed but Risha had lost all sense of direction in the tangled alleys. ‘I don't know where you're pointing: the old market? The new town? The lake perhaps?'

‘Castle?' Croft asked.

Clik's head bobbed vigorously.

Risha's mouth had gone dry. ‘Do you know who he works for, or where his allegiance lies?' A side to side waggle. ‘He's not sure,' she translated for Croft. ‘Would Muir know?' Another waggle followed by a shrug.

Clik stood with his head cocked to one side. When it was clear she had no further questions, he tapped Nolan's saddlebags then pointed to his eyes and the door.

‘All right. Be careful, Clik.'

He flashed a smile and was gone.

Croft was watching her. ‘You trust him?' he asked softly.

‘Yes.'

‘Who else?'

‘Muir and Emett. Margetta, but …'

‘Aye,' Croft said, and blew out a long breath.

When Clik returned with apples and half a cob loaf, Risha's belly twitched with enthusiasm, her appetite fading only slightly when it became clear that the boy had no news of Nolan.

‘Doesn't mean anything's wrong,' Croft said. ‘You
went back to The Red Door? They still watching?'

Clik nodded.

‘Rules out the horses,' Croft muttered.

He ate his share of their small meal and eased back against the wall. ‘Headache's quietening down,' he said.

Risha had checked the bruising on his skull. There was swelling but nothing worse.

Clik brewed water for tea.

‘I think our best option might be to head after Fenn,' Croft said. ‘We've done the best we can in terms of getting a message to your father, and the people who matter know the truth of your abduction. The last thing we need is to get entangled in the murky politics of Fratton. I say we cut our losses and get out while we can.'

‘What about Nolan?'

‘We leave his gear and a message with Clik. He'll show up eventually, and follow when he can.'

Risha stared at her hands. Nolan wasn't her only concern. ‘And Margetta?'

‘She could use a big sister, and it's clear she'd like you to stay. But is that what you want?' Croft asked, pursing his lips at the look on her face. ‘I didn't think so.' He paused. ‘Any other objections?'

She bit down on the one that stood on the tip of her tongue. ‘I'll need paper and a quill — or charcoal.' Remembering her first writing lessons with Pelon she picked a blackened stick from the hearth and smoothed its point against the stones.

Clik ducked beneath the curtain. The parchment he brought back was soft vellum, trimmed to a large square, the ink that adorned it faded to illegibility by time. Risha studied it. ‘Where did you get this? It's very old.'

Clik shrugged. Slicing the vellum into three strips Risha wrote succinct notes for Muir and Nolan. Wording a message to Margetta proved more difficult; she knew the girl would be hurt by her abrupt departure. Sharpening the tip of her stick she wrote in neat strip:
M, something urgent has arisen and I must leave. I will see you again very soon. Take care. Believe you are brave — it is true! R
.

‘If we catch up with Fenn, what then?' she asked Croft.

‘I've been thinking about that. Strikes me there's a chance Webb might still be in Deeford, else a day or two behind us on the road. With decent horses we could have you home in LeMarc within the week.'

Risha considered the plan in silence.

‘We'd need to get out of Fratton on the quiet.' Croft turned to Clik. ‘You think we can manage that, lad?'

The boy pursed his lips then mimed sleeping and walked his fingers across his palm.

‘After dark,' Croft confirmed. ‘Fair enough. And you'll help us?'

Clik looked at Risha for confirmation before nodding. She smiled, wishing there was something she could do for him in return, then, remembering her conversation with Muir, she turned over her note to Margetta and wrote a postscript.
PS: this comes via my friend Clik, who has twice saved my life. Could you please teach him to write? Your friend and cousin, R
.

‘This one is for Margetta,' she said, as she rolled the note and handed it to Clik. ‘You should ask Muir to take you to see her so that you may give it to her yourself.'

The boy looked sceptical, but tucked it with the others inside his shirt.

After that there was nothing to do but wait.

Clik crept ahead through the lengthening shadows.
Curfew
was not far off and the streets had already emptied. Risha gripped her dagger as they darted across an empty square and negotiated the network of alleys beyond. Fifteen minutes took them to the southern side of the old town, the lake a dark sheen on their right, sheds and jetties sprouting along its shore.

A watchman passed to their left. Croft's sword was in his hand, but the man walked on without seeing them. Clik scrambled over a stack of pallets and ducked between two wooden tubs that lay rolled on their sides against the wall of a shed. With a grunt of effort he lifted a panel of cladding aside. The smell that had been twitching at Risha's nose — of ammonia and decay and something sharp and acidic — was suddenly strong.

‘Tannery,' Croft murmured.

She squinted into the darkness. Clay vats honeycombed the floor. Huge nubbing stones stood against the far wall beside bales of hides, raw and finished. Clik led them through and out into a courtyard crowded with wooden drying racks. A sluice in one corner was clearly used for washing lye from the skins; the smell was unmistakable. Nearby a channel had been cut to bring fresh water into the yard. It was a pace wide, its brick sides splashed with offal and dyes. Clik lifted a worn skin to reveal an up-ended coracle. It looked as watertight as a sieve. Clik turned it into the channel and reached for the saddlebags Risha carried.

‘How far are we going?'

Clik pointed out across the lake.

‘In that?' Croft made no effort to mask his scepticism.

Ignoring him, Clik nudged Risha towards the craft, near wedged in the channel, and scrambled in after her.
The guardsman licked his lip without moving.

‘Can you swim?' Risha asked.

‘Aye, like a brick. You sure the road wouldn't be better?' Croft ventured.

‘Without horses?'

‘We'll be without horses anyway, come the other side.'

Clik made an impatient noise in his throat and
beckoned
him aboard.

With a sigh Croft lowered himself gingerly into the small craft. It sank several inches beneath his weight. ‘I'm no riverman, but that paddle looks worse than useless,' he said.

Clik shot him a disparaging look. It proved a pole rather than a paddle. Once Risha was settled fore and Croft aft, Clik poled them out of the channel and steered left along the shore. The craft bobbed wildly when they reached open water and Croft gripped the sides as if he might somehow hold them steady. Risha saw a small smile dart across Clik's face.

The moon had begun to rise, its reflection scattered across the freckled water of the lake. Water lapped around her feet. ‘Are you sure we'll make it across?' she asked. ‘I think we're leaking.'

Clik hissed for silence. Around a curve of the shore there was a marina of sorts, with craft small and large moored or pulled up on the shingle. Clik held them still while he studied the shadows. Water slapped in a soothing rhythm against clinker-built hulls.

When a cloud slipped across the moon he poled them swiftly forward, between the outermost boats to one that sat long and low in the water. Stowing the pole he slithered over the bow like an eel. A moment later he
reached a hand to Risha. She passed the bags across then scrambled after. The coracle rocked away as Croft stood up. Clik's body stretched out across a yawning chasm of water, his legs in one boat, hands gripping the other. Just in time Risha leant over the side to help pull Croft back in.

The guardsman looked a little shamefaced when he finally lumped himself over the gunnel. He was followed by a spattering of droplets, as if a very localised shower had found them — Risha squeaked as cold lake water ran down her spine. Clik hissed and ducked in beside the upturned coracle.

Someone called, but seemed satisfied to receive no reply.

Untying them from the buoy, Clik rowed them slowly out into the dark.

15

Goads

C
roft let out a gust of breath when they nudged through the reeds that fringed the far shore. Clik used the coracle’s pole to ground them deeper then dropped over the side, wavelets slapping at the wooden planking.

Passing him their saddlebags Risha scrambled after, the alpine chill of the water making her gasp. Clik took her hand, her feet squelching in the soft mud as he guided her to the shore.

‘Are you sure you won’t rest for an hour or two?’ she whispered.

Clik’s face shone pale in the moonlight as he shook his head.

‘Well then. I owe you yet more thanks.’ She hugged him quickly and kissed his cheek. ‘I’ll see you again soon, Clik, I promise. You know you’re always welcome wherever I am.’

Croft patted the boy’s shoulder before wading back into the water to turn the vessel and shove it off into the dark water.

The first luck they had, according to Croft, lay in not
drowning. The second was finding a townsman prepared to add them to the load of chairs and chattels he had balanced near to toppling on his cart.

They’d walked for an hour after Clik left them on the western shore of FrattonWater, resting for another before setting out again at dawn. The cart had passed them midmorning, the driver pulling up and turning back to watch them.

‘Those bags’d be better suited to a horse,’ he said as they trudged alongside.

‘Aye, we had a little ill luck there.’

The man made a guttural snort. ‘In the right place for it.’ He spat a thin trail from the corner of his mouth to the dusty road. ‘How far you goin’?’

‘Deeford.’

He’d waited, as if more information might be forthcoming. Risha had yawned and the man shrugged. ‘Might as well hop on the back. Won’t make no difference, long as you walk the hills.’

Their third piece of luck came late the same evening as they slogged up the steepest hill they’d yet faced. The road had seemed easier, coming the other way, and on horseback.

‘Well, there’s a picture.’

Risha looked up from watching each foot creep past the other. She was hot and dusty, and past wishing she’d chosen to risk running the river with Fenn.

‘About time you showed up,’ Croft said.

It was Webb. And not just Webb: Webb on horseback with three horses roped behind.

She gazed at them. Nolan’s bay was missing.

‘Came up lame,’ Webb said, in reply to her question.
‘That’s what slowed me down.’ He paused. ‘Where’re the others?’

‘Long story,’ Croft said. ‘It’ll keep till we’ve thanked our companion of the day. You passed anywhere that’d make a decent camp?’

‘There’s a site back of the ridge. You want to saddle up?’

Risha didn’t need asking twice.

‘So, the Cap has no idea where you are?’

Risha bridled at the disapproval in Webb’s tone.

‘Didn’t fancy wandering about trying to find him, not when we knew there were others still looking for us,’ Croft said.

‘I left a message with Clik.’

‘The mute boy.’

Webb’s scepticism irritated her. She sat straighter. ‘He’ll deliver it.’

‘Well.’ Webb settled back with his hands behind his head. ‘I’m surely glad I won’t be around when he does. What’d it say?’

‘That we were coming to find you.’ She kicked a log deeper into the heart of their small fire.

There was a pause. ‘You found me,’ Webb said finally. ‘What now?’

‘Now,’ Croft said, ‘we catch up on a bit of sleep. You’re on first watch.’

Exhausted as she was, Risha didn’t settle easily to sleep. The leaping flames had fallen to embers by the time she drifted into darkness, her final moment of awareness the doleful hoot of an owl.

When Croft shook her out of her bedroll at dawn she
climbed stiffly to her feet. Fog poured off the ridges of the hills and lay dank in the hollows. Risha yawned and stretched.

They rode southwest. By midmorning the sun had burned the air clear and sweat was gathering between her breasts and in the small of her back. ‘Do you think Nolan will catch up before we reach Deeford?’ she asked.

Croft shrugged. ‘If he gets your note he’ll do his best.’

‘But if not? Webb, is there anyone we could trust with a message? An innkeeper or blacksmith?’

‘There’s the place I left the captain’s horse,’ Webb said. ‘Cap would be pleased enough to see him again I should say, though there’ll be money owing for his keep.’

‘We could leave Fenn’s horse as payment.’ Risha glanced sideways, trying to judge Croft’s thoughts. ‘If Nolan hasn’t caught up, we can’t afford to wait.’

He tilted his head. ‘You’re in that much of a hurry to get back to LeMarc?’

She matched his expression. ‘That was a plan I never agreed to.’

There was no sound except the gentle creak of leather and the clicking of insects in the scrubby brush that edged the road. Risha pressed her lips tight to avoid saying more. Eventually Croft spoke.

‘If we cut south before the ford we could pass by Bethanfield and be in Othbridge in two days.’

‘I’m not going to LeMarc without my father. Or Lyse.’

He drew a breath and released it in a noisy gust. ‘The three of us are going to rescue Lyse as well now?’

‘Not alone. But we’re going to make sure someone does.’

‘Begging your pardon, but how exactly?’ Webb asked.

Croft leant forward on his pommel and made a show of turning to study her, brows raised, as he waited to hear her answer.

‘By finding Talben. I have an idea where he is,’ she added. It was not entirely true, though she was almost certain Ciaran might. It was also clear that Minna knew more about the Gift than she’d yet said. ‘In the first instance I thought we might head for Merren Bay. We can leave a message at Deeford for Nolan to say we’ll meet him there.’

Webb glanced doubtfully at Croft.

The older man sighed. ‘We could hog-tie her and ride south,’ he suggested.

Risha smiled thinly and slapped a fly from Mica’s neck.

Even riding at a steady canter it took them another day to reach Deeford. Risha and Croft waited outside the town while Webb rode in to make arrangements with the blacksmith and buy food.

‘I know it goes against the grain, but it’s not too late to choose the safe course,’ Croft said, as they rested in the shade of a heavy-boled chestnut.

She didn’t deign to answer.

‘I thought not.’ He crossed one booted ankle over the other. The horses were grazing in a flowered meadow a little back from the road. ‘The thing is, useful as finding Talben might be, I’m not quite clear how we go about it. Probably easier to find your father.’

‘That’s partly the point,’ she said. ‘Goltoy arranged a public wedding as a goad and so far Donnel has responded precisely as Goltoy planned. But once my father learns I’m safe it will change the way he plays his hand — and
not to Lyse or Ciaran’s advantage.’

Croft scratched his neck. ‘I can see that.’

‘They may not be my father’s priority, but they’re still mine. I intend to see them both safe, Croft. For that I think Talben is our best hope.’

‘It’s a long shot.’

She didn’t deny it. Hundreds of possibilities seemed held in the hot air.

From the field she could hear the measured crunch as their horses cropped. A bird sang in the tree above them, stopping abruptly when Croft sighed. ‘Not that that’s ever held you back before. And we have a week, more or less, to figure something out.’

Two days on, just as the heat of another day began to fade and the wind that had troubled them through the afternoon dropped into stillness, they crossed the border into Havre. They’d ridden hard across the northeast plains, bypassing both Bethanfield and Churton. The southern shore of CaledonWater now lay on their right flank.

‘It should feel good being home,’ Webb said.

‘Never feels like home to me till I’m south of the El,’ Croft replied.

Risha said nothing. She was tired. Mica had been skittish throughout the day, baulking at the wind and fighting her heels and hands.

‘We should make camp,’ Webb suggested. ‘There’s a spot near the lake that I used coming east.’

The signs of his last habitation remained. ‘No one’s used it since, by the looks,’ Croft said. ‘Which is probably good.’

While Croft and Risha tended the horses, Webb disappeared to the shore, returning with four ugly flatfish as broad as her spread hand. Supplemented with potatoes he’d acquired in Deeford and wild sorrel from the verge, they provided a satisfying meal.

‘I think we should head a bit inland,’ Croft said, as they ate. ‘Coast road’s too obvious.’

‘Never saw a soul till Churton on the way east,’ Webb argued.

‘We’re not heading east.’

In the morning they left the lake to ride south and west. Risha had only once travelled through eastern Havre. It had been her first journey to LeMarc and she’d been little more than a child, ignorant of the politics of the duchies: she’d barely heard Goltoy’s name, and Donnel’s not at all. She’d only newly learned her own.

‘Penny for them,’ Croft said.

She glanced at him. ‘I was only thinking how quickly things change, and how little we really know of what’s going on, even when we’re in the midst of it.’

‘That’s true enough.’

A plump bird lifted with a clatter from the copse that lay ahead. Mica sidled, more in excitement than fright.

If Muir’s pigeon had reached Caledon safely, Minna would by now have heard from Lillet, and Fenn would perhaps be at Leighton. Risha let her attention settle inside herself. Would Marister Hela have moved Nonno somewhere safe? She sought the worn old face amidst the sea of her thoughts. Once she had it clear and sharp in her mind, she opened her heart and thoughts wide. There was nothing. She turned her attention to Ciaran. Something — a blade — stabbed into her. She cried out.
Croft’s hand was on her arm but she shook him off, anger surging through her veins, stiffening her resolve as she threw herself after the thing that had sliced at her. What was it Margetta had said? A feeling as if someone was prying their way into her brain with a needle-thin knife. Kinnoc — that was the name, the scholar Somoran had brought to Fratton to ‘test’ a child. Gathering her fury into a ball, a blade, a lance, Risha hurled it in a screaming flurry after Kinnoc.

Something flinched and fled from her. Something recognised her. Something cried out.

Risha was shaking. Croft was holding her arms, holding her in the saddle. ‘My lady, what is it?’

‘It’s all right. I have him.’

‘Who?’

‘The man who hurt Margetta.’ Part of her knew that she must not be making any sense. Her limbs felt weak, as if her bones had dissolved in the effort of hurling her anger outward. ‘Croft, I think we must stop.’

He cast about. Webb was hovering nearby. At a word he rode off to scout for a place to rest.

Sweat was beaded across Risha’s face. She wiped it away.

‘Was it a vision?’ Croft asked, low, as if the idea of it bothered him.

‘No. Something different. Like that, I suppose, but …’

She had no words. She wiped her mouth and he handed her a flask. The water was lukewarm. Her head had begun to pound. She dropped it into her hands.

‘You all right?’

‘I feel like I’ve been kicked in the head by a mule.’

He gave a grim smile. ‘Did you kick it back?’

She looked up. ‘I think I did.’

It didn’t relieve the worry in his face, but he released her arm and leant forward to pick up Mica’s reins. Webb whistled, and they picked their way toward a small copse that stood at the junction of two fields.

Croft insisted she lie down, tucking her in a bedroll despite the day’s heat. ‘I just need a few minutes,’ she mumbled.

‘Take as long as you need.’

She slept. When she woke she was itchy and hot. She pushed the blanket aside.

‘How’s the head?’ Croft asked.

She placed her fingertips to her forehead. ‘It’s eased.’ She reached for a flask and drank deeply, not able to quench her thirst.

‘You’ve had headaches like that before?’

‘Once.’ She remembered the siege, and wished for some of the willowbark tea Cantrel had given her.

‘You learn anything?’

She shrugged. ‘There’s someone — I think it’s the man Margetta said tested her — I think he’s searching for me.’

‘And he found you? He caused that headache, and whatever came before?’

‘The pain, like a blade digging into my brain. But after that I think I hurt him, and doing that caused the headache.’ She chewed her lip, trying to recapture her sense of things. ‘There was someone else aware of me.’

‘Ciaran?’ he hazarded.

‘I don’t think so.’ She thought about the moments when the woman had been a presence in her mind. ‘It’s someone like Ciaran but not. I think it’s Talben.’

Webb joined them, a couple of fresh rabbits dangling from his hand. ‘Want to camp now or later? I could get a stew going.’

Croft looked at Risha. ‘It’ll be light for a few hours yet.’

‘We’ll go on.’ She pushed upright, reaching for his arm as she wavered. ‘I’ll be fine.’

Neither man looked convinced but they mounted and rode west, making camp at dusk in the lee of an outcrop of cleared boulders piled around a central rib of bedrock. While Webb’s stew simmered Risha dozed, the ache in her temples slowly fading to an all-too-familiar hum of unease. Woodsmoke, drifting to her nose, kept the evening’s insects at bay.