Shadowfell (17 page)

The water began to cool and she got me out. I could not stand up on my own. The woman dressed me in someone else’s garments: a shift, a gown, a shawl. She put a comb in my hand, sat me down on a stool and went out, taking my filthy clothing with her. My big cloak, the one Flint had given me the day we first met, she had draped before the fire to dry. My shoes, too, she had left behind, placed neatly together by the hearth. My fey-mended shoes. I wondered how much Flint had paid this household for its silence.

He came in after a while. Even without his Enforcer’s cloak and gauntlets, he looked formidable. I was struggling to get the knots out of my hair. This was the first time it had been properly washed for many moons – the kind of shelter folk had given Father and me had not included warm water and cleansing herbs.

Flint stood by the table and watched me in silence, his arms folded. I could see only one of him now, but he wavered in and out of focus. I tried to guess what he would say when he finally decided to speak. He would ask me about the shoes, perhaps. Try to make me tell him I had friends among the Good Folk. Beat out of me the names of everyone who had helped me. Or maybe hand me over to a mind-scraper right away. A shiver ran through me, despite the warmth of the chamber. Tears built behind my eyes, and I willed them back. Stupidly, what seemed to hurt most was that I had almost trusted him.

‘You’re cold,’ Flint said.

I shook my head. The comb snagged in a tangle, and I pulled it out with more violence than I intended.

‘You lied to me,’ he said. His tone was flat.

I looked at him, but his expression was expertly guarded. He had, no doubt, conducted hundreds of interrogations before and had it down to a fine art. I did not answer. What did he expect, that I would come straight out with a confession?

‘You said you could look after yourself.’ His eyes were no longer on me but turned toward the hearth, where my shoes sat side by side. ‘You’ve done a pretty poor job of it so far.’

Had I told him that? It seemed so long ago, the night Father died. Now I was sick, weak, dispirited, afraid. I had allowed myself to be caught. I could not argue with him. I wanted to tell him that he had lied too. He had said that with him I would be safe. How dare he say that when all the time he was an Enforcer?

‘Here.’ Suddenly he was standing right beside me, a knife in his hand.

I shrank away, lifting my arms to shield myself.

‘Your hair,’ Flint said. ‘You won’t get that out by combing.’ With a swift motion of the knife he severed the knotted lock, catching it in his free hand. He stepped back and sheathed the weapon. I breathed again.

‘We won’t be staying here,’ Flint said, resuming his stance by the table. ‘We’ll be moving on.’

‘Now?’ I croaked, imagining stepping out of the door into the cold night, getting on the horse again and riding all the way to Summerfort.

A glimmer of expression crossed his impassive features. ‘In the morning. I told you.’

I couldn’t bear this. My stomach was in knots of anxiety. If he was going to hurt me, if he was taking me in for questioning, let him get started on it now so I need not endure this fearful time of waiting. ‘Move on where?’ I managed.

‘One step at a time.’ His voice had fallen to a murmur. ‘Tonight, eat, sleep. That’s all.’

‘But –’

‘Don’t waste your strength arguing. Do as I tell you and keep your mouth shut.’

‘But I –’

The door opened and the woman came in, followed by a tall, thin man. The man dragged the tub of water out; the woman took foodstuffs from a shelf and assembled a meal of bread, cheese and onions, with a jug of ale. All the while Flint stood there in silence, watching her, watching me. His presence made the whole room feel dangerous.

I had no appetite. I swallowed a morsel of bread and a sip of ale, then began to cough uncontrollably. Nausea churned my belly. I struggled up from the table and staggered over to the hearth, where I stood with my back to the rest of them, struggling to keep down what little I had eaten. After that, it was all a blur. Someone carried me to a corner, someone put me into a bed, and darkness rolled over me.

Flint’s mount was as tireless as its master. The miles of the Rush Valley passed beneath its hooves as the last leaves fell from the oaks and the winds of autumn whistled down from the mountain passes, singing songs of snow. The days were a tangle of waking dreams. The nights saw me fall into exhausted sleep in one makeshift camp after another. Later, I could not have said how long we travelled, five days or five-and-twenty.

My cough grew worse. I was hot and cold, sleepy and restless. My body ached; I could not remember a time when I had been so weary. Somehow, at the end of each day’s ride, there was a fire, food, somewhere to lie out of the wind and rain, under an overhang, or beneath a shelter of fallen branches, or in a cave. I was beyond wondering where, why, how. When I became so weak that I could not go into the woods to relieve myself without collapsing, Flint took to coming with me and holding me up, his gaze averted, until I had finished. I was past caring.

If Flint was worried that his prize might die before he could do whatever it was he planned to do, he hid it expertly. Only, sometimes, I saw a flicker in his eyes as he knelt to lay a hand on my brow, to feel if it burned hotter than before. He went about the routines of making and striking camp with orderly calm, as he’d done on that very first night, the night we walked out of Darkwater, setting our backs to the scene of flame and death. But it seemed to me each day saw his mouth set a little grimmer and his eyes a little narrower.

At a certain point I ceased even to notice this. I simply lay shivering and shaking, and the only thought in my mind was,
I want to die.
And not long after that, the travelling stopped, and I was in a house or hut, and in a bed, and there was a little fire on a hearth, burning steadily. I thought maybe it was a dream, a wishful sort of dream, and that I would wake soon on the horse’s back with long miles to go before nightfall.

I woke, then I slept. It was light, then dark. Perhaps I dreamed, but those dreams were like none I had experienced before; they were twisted and strange, and I could not tell what was real and what was not. I did not know where I was, and I did not care. I would open my eyes a crack to see Flint there with a cup of water or a bowl of gruel, and I would swallow obediently, my throat tight and sore, then close my eyes and sink back onto the pillow. I would feel myself being lifted and taken out to the privy, brought back in again, tucked under the covers. Sometimes he wiped my face with a cloth dipped in warm water; sometimes he bathed other parts of me. He made a sombre nursemaid.

There were sounds: a bird screeching outside, small creatures rustling in the thatch, shutters rattling in the wind. There was light: the flames of the fire, always burning, as if Flint feared a chill would carry me off; the warm glow of the lamp in the evenings. There was the profound darkness of night, and the knowledge that he was there, sleeping on a bench by the door, guarding the house. Guarding me. Wasn’t he supposed to be the enemy? That couldn’t be right. He was keeping me safe.

Despatch: for the eyes of King Keldec only

Three Hags district; late autumn

My respectful greetings to you, my lord King, along with my profound regret that there was no way of sending word to you earlier. It has become necessary for me to go to ground, beyond reach of Summerfort and my comrades. The matter of which I wrote earlier is still unfolding, but unforeseen complications have delayed its resolution. It is a delicate mission. Undue haste could precipitate disaster. Rest assured that, should the venture bear fruit, a season or two’s delay will weigh nothing against the strategic advantage to be gained.

The autumn being now well advanced, I anticipate that this despatch will not find you at Summerfort, my lord King, but that it must be carried to you in the east. That will take time. Since Stag Troop must depart for Winterfort soon, I am entrusting the message to the capable hands of Rohan Death-Blade, who leads the troop in my absence.

(signed) Owen Swift-Sword, Stag Troop Leader

At last the fever abated, leaving me limp and weak, but lucid. I lay in bed, watching Flint as he brought in firewood, chopped vegetables at the table, concocted herbal brews. Sometimes he went away for a while, returning with a hare or bird to skin or pluck and prepare for supper. He didn’t talk much; he hadn’t for a long time. His blunt features seemed thinner. The glow of lamplight on his face served only to accentuate his pallor.

The past began to return to me, but I could make little sense of it. Flint was here, and I was here. But where, exactly? And why? On the few days when it was warm enough, he opened the shutters to let a patch of sunlight fall across my coverlet. But the window showed me only the limbs of a leafless birch, and beyond them pale sky.

I thought perhaps I had nearly died. Under the blankets, my stomach was hollow between jutting hipbones. My knees and elbows were as sharp as an old woman’s. If I looked in a mirror, I imagined I would see a ghost’s face staring back. How long had I lain here helpless? There were a hundred questions I wanted to ask, but I could not find words beyond
yes, no, thank you
. The moment I began to question, Flint and I would be enemies again. But I grew a little stronger with each day, and there came a morning when I sat up on my own, looked across at Flint and said, ‘I’m hungry.’

He smiled; his eyes lit up; briefly, he was a different man. As quickly, he clamped control over his features and the smile was gone. ‘There’s porridge,’ he said. ‘It seems a fitting breakfast.’

It took me a moment to recall that our first meal together had been a lumpy porridge cooked in the camp near Darkwater, when the worst fear I had of him was that he would take me to his bed. ‘Where did you get the oats from?’ I asked.

‘Don’t waste your strength asking about oats,’ Flint said, turning his back on me and busying himself at the table.

What should I use my strength for, then? Asking questions whose answers I was not sure I was ready to hear? I gazed around the hut – anything other than stare at Flint – while I considered this. I knew the place well by now. It was so small I could see almost all of it from my bed. Everything here was rough-hewn, from the blocky table to the hard bench on which Flint slept, a bed devoid of blankets and pillows – his cloak lay folded at the foot, and a rolled-up sack was at the other end. My bed, by contrast, had several blankets and two feather pillows. A shelf by the table held a cook pot, a few platters and cups, various implements. Beside them was a row of bags containing foodstuffs. The limp form of a rabbit hung from a string, waiting to be skinned for the pot. Close to the door, weaponry stood against the wall: a bow and quiver, a sword in a black scabbard, an axe that did not seem the kind with which one would chop firewood.

What should I say to him? Each possible question gave rise to myriad others. Anything I said, beyond a simple query about oats, might give away what I must keep secret: where I was headed, whom I had spoken to, who had helped me. I wondered if I had rambled in my fever dreams. I wondered whether, in the throes of a nightmare, I had spoken the word ‘Shadowfell’.