The Fork-Tongue Charmers (27 page)

“After all the years I have searched,” Slinister bellowed, his tone anguished, “won't you join me? I've gathered resources . . . everything we need.”

“I've no more appetite for what you offer,” came the reply. The voice didn't belong to Harmless. It was a woman's lilt, but old and gritty, like sand stuck in the folds of your ears.

“I've just sailed from Pest,” Slinister implored. “I spared them for now, but when I return it will not be to build some noble's trading post. I'll bring an army that will raze the isle into dust . . . and fulfill your greatest wish.”

“Those were the words of a desperate woman,” the voice said wearily.

“But that is what you promised!”

“Those words alone had no power,” she said. “Only a wrathful son who clung to them could give them truth.”

“You scorn me.”

“I have never thought of you with anything but a warm heart.”

“Then stay in this tower and rot in your warmth!” Slinister railed. “I'll not return here again.”

“Is vengeance really all we have to share?”

But Slinister did not reply. Instead, Rye heard his heavy boots on the stairs. She darted inside her room and pressed herself against the wall.

Slinister's broad frame filled the stairway just outside her door. His elaborate braid fell down his back and the skin of his shaved skull was pink with anger. Rye gasped as he turned and looked back over his shoulder, but his gaze was up at the Bellwether. His jewel-like eyes were dull, his face crestfallen. He turned and hurried down the stairs without further words.

Rye found herself shaking, unnerved by the ragged emotion in his voice. She wanted to follow him but feared this time he might not spare her. Her concern turned to the other voice in the Bellwether. She waited until Grabstone was silent, then continued cautiously up the stairs. The Bellwether's door remained open.

She stepped into the unfamiliar room and came to a halt. Several gulls stopped pecking at the breadcrumbs strewn across the floorboards. More fluttered in from the windows, cocking their heads nervously as if just returning home after a storm.

Harmless was not in the Bellwether.

But someone else was.

A small, withered woman sat hunched on a stool. Her white hair dangled in long stringy snarls past her creased and weathered face. Her earlobes hung low and the folds of her neck seemed to melt into her frock. Any eyebrows she once had must have fallen away with age. But when she raised a keen eye, it glinted like sea glass.

“What a nice surprise, child,” the woman said. “I've been wondering when you'd finally get around to visiting me.”

R
ye opened her mouth but no words escaped her lips.

The woman raised a gnarled twig of finger and beckoned. “Don't just stand there slack-jawed like a hatchling. Come in.”

Rye didn't move. She glanced over her shoulder to the stairs.

“He's gone. You have nothing to fear.” The old woman patted a rickety-looking stool next to her own. “
Come
,” she said more firmly, “before my beaked companions are frightened away again.”

Rye took a careful step forward and sat down.

“You haven't brought me a treat in weeks,” the woman said, and tapped the petrified remains of a stale crust against the floor. The birds hopped after the crumbs. “My friends enjoyed your bread. Alas, I don't have the tools to eat it myself.”

She grinned wide, displaying her empty gray gums. Rye pursed her lips. Maybe she should have offered Harmless's snail stew.

Rye looked around the small circular room. The expanse of windows on all sides afforded the extraordinary view she'd always imagined. But the space was empty except for the two stools and a bed of old blankets rumpled in a corner. The Bellwether was surely no treasure trove. If Harmless had hidden Slinister's treasure at Grabstone, it wasn't here.

“The man who came here,” Rye said. “Did he harm you?”

“We spoke for a long while. He has quite a temper, that boy.” She clucked her tongue. “There's a rage in him that has yet to cool. But no, he did no real harm.”

“He came seeking treasure—” Rye began, but her voice failed her. Slinister's words suddenly ran through her head. His answer when she had first asked him what Harmless had taken from him:

Something I have never seen nor touched but that
made me who I am. Something that remains mine and only mine, whether I live or die, and that even the High Chieftain cannot deny.

Slinister had been speaking about his own mother.

“Black Annis,” Rye whispered.

“None of my friends call me that, duckling. Just Annis will do.”

Rye shook her head. “When Slinister spoke of treasure . . . I thought he meant gold, or riches.”

Annis raised a fold of skin where an eyebrow once was. “And yet, don't our greatest treasures shine brighter than any coins or jewels?”

Waldron's story of Black Annis's curse flooded back to Rye, and she pushed herself up in alarm. The startled gulls fluttered their wings.

“Are you a witch?” Rye asked, her voice rising.

“Don't get your knees in a wobble, young lady,” Annis said firmly, but not unkindly. “And no name-calling please—I assure you I know far uglier slurs than you. I am no witch.”

She pressed her colorless lips into a thread of a smile. “I was but a simple island girl with the clarity of Sight. I wasn't the only one—perhaps I was just more outspoken than most.”

“Sight?” Rye repeated. She had heard Slinister speak of it in the Wailing Cave.

“Longsight. Intuition. Perception. Call it what you will. You've got a touch of it yourself. Someone in your line was a Low Islander, I can see it around your eyes.” Annis swirled her finger in the air, gesturing at Rye's face. “Your gram, or great-grammy. The gift has been known to skip a generation.”

Rye thought of Padge, her distant cousin with the uncanny knack for divining information from her dreams.

Annis let out a long and deep sigh. “But Slinister's Sight flowed directly from me. It's strong in him—undiluted. Sight can be a cruel gift. Unfiltered, it can drive one to madness.”

Rye's confusion grew. “I don't understand. You were banished . . . do you live here in the Bellwether?”

“I have for a short while, yes. Ten years. Twelve. Maybe fifteen. A blink of an eye, really.”

“That doesn't sound like a short while,” Rye said. “How old
are
you?”

“That's an impolite question to ask a lady,” Annis said with a scowl. “Even a withered old relic like me.”

Rye's face fell, ashamed at her bad manners. Annis chuckled.

“Pigshanks, child, I'm just pulling your braids. I'm as old as the sea . . . but that doesn't make me nearly as interesting as you seem to think.” She leaned forward,
her keen eyes flickering green, then blue, as they dug into Rye. “I'm here because your father, that young fellow you call Harmless, brought me here.”

Rye swallowed hard. “You're his prisoner?”

Annis snickered and slapped her hands on the bony thighs beneath her frock. “Don't be pigeon-headed,” she said. “The Bellwether's door locks from my side, not his. He brought me here to honor a bargain made long ago.”

“A bargain with who?”

A fond looked passed over Annis's face, and Rye saw a glimpse of the young woman she must have once been.

“He called himself the Sea Rover King. He was
my
treasure, and I his. He had many enemies, some of whom might find a way to seek vengeance upon him even after he'd hoisted his final sail. If anything happened to him, Harmless agreed to watch out for me . . . as if I needed the help.”

She waved her hand, shooing away a memory like a fly. “Alas, men like that never live long enough. I wasn't at all happy when your father took me from my little isle. I was perfectly content sitting by the water and dreaming. But he meant well, and I suppose he thought he was protecting Pest, too, by keeping my whereabouts secret from my boy.” Annis's eyes flickered green with mischief. “After all, you can never be too careful when
it comes to curses.” She let out a girlish chuckle. “I'll get around to forgiving him . . . one of these days.”

Rye bit her lip. Annis might forgive Harmless, but she doubted Slinister ever would.

“Slinister means to do great harm to my father,” she said. “I overheard some of what he told you. Did he say any more about his plans?”

Annis sucked her gums. She opened palms that looked as fragile as late-autumn leaves. “Some things must remain private between a mother and son, even if they are merely strangers to each other. But I will share this much, for you to do with as you choose. Slinister has persuaded your father to meet him this evening at nightfall.” Her hard gaze now held Rye's. “But with him, he brings a storm.”

“Where?” Rye asked urgently.

“At the farthest edge of the Shale. At the place where the forest meets the bogs.”

Rye was relieved—that wasn't far from Mud Puddle Lane. She could make it if she hurried. But an important question still lingered.

“You didn't leave with Slinister,” Rye said. “Will you not join your own son after all these years?”

Annis smiled sadly. “That I shall sleep on, and see what my dreams tell me.” She shook her head, tangled white knots of hair now darkening her face. “A cruel gift
indeed,” she muttered to herself.

There was a noise below them. Both Rye and Annis turned toward the stairs.

“Riley!” a man's voice called.

Rye made for the door. “Harmless?”

“Wait,” Annis said.

“I have to warn him.”

“Child, be careful. All is not what it may first seem.”

But Rye wasn't listening. She ran from the Bellwether and rushed down the steps. She tore into the main room. A cloaked man had his back to her.

“Harmless!” Rye cried.

The man spun around, a grin spreading across his face.

“Bramble?”

Bramble stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders. “Aye, my fair niece. Long time no see.”

Bramble seemed tired, frayed. He was even more unshaven than usual.

“How did you find me here?”

“Frothy told me where you were headed,” he said.

“Folly.”

“I was at the Dead Fish Inn when your friends and Knockmany arrived. She was able to give me an idea of how to get here. Fortunately, I caught sight of you when you started for that shoal—you really need to look over
your shoulder more often, by the way. In any event, it was lucky I did, otherwise I might never have found this place.”

Bramble stepped away from her and wandered around the room, examining the sprawling views.

“It's quite the hideaway your father has here,” he commented with an impressed nod.

“Have you seen him?” Rye asked. “He's in danger. Slinister has lured him into a trap.”

“I know, Riley,” he said gravely. “He most certainly
is
in danger. I wish you had stayed on Pest.”

Bramble stopped and placed both palms against the glass of a window. He stared out at the shoreline. There was a rustling behind Rye and she turned to see Shortstraw ambling down one of the flights of stairs.

“So you must know about Slinister?” Rye asked, turning back to Bramble. “He's pretending to be the Constable. I mean, they are one and the same.”

Bramble nodded. “So I discovered while you were all away. Slinister sheds his skin more deftly than an adder.”

“He just left here. Did you see him on the shoal?”

Bramble gritted his teeth as he scanned the water. “He may have come by boat. I've always known Slinister to be an expert seaman—and I've known him longer than most.”

He dropped himself into a chair, as if a great weight rested on his shoulders.

“He's planning a meeting tonight and—” Rye caught herself and raised an eyebrow. “Wait, you've known him longer than most?”

Bramble nodded. “Since I was just a boy on Pest.”

“You knew him on High Isle?”

Bramble waved his fingers in the air and sighed. “It's a long and winding story,” he said, and his eyes caught sight of the cup and kettle on the table. “Probably best told over tea.”

He picked up the cup Rye had poured and pressed it to his lips.

“Bramble!” Rye yelled. “That's midnight sea urchin!”

Bramble's face looked stricken and he jumped to his feet. Shortstraw jolted. Bramble spat the liquid into the fireplace. He coughed and sputtered, trying to get every drop of saliva out of his mouth. He stuck out his tongue as far as he could and wiped it with the folds of his cloak, then spit again to get rid of the lint.

When he was satisfied that he had expelled the toxins from his mouth, he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and slumped against the wall.

“That certainly wouldn't have been the most glorious way to pawn the clogs,” he said, flashing Rye a relieved grin.

Rye's mouth was dry now too. All the color had drained from her face.

“Don't worry, I'm none the worse for wear . . .” Bramble began to say, but caught himself when he realized what had actually caused her alarm.

Rye took a step back.

She had seen Bramble's tongue.

It was split down the middle and forked like a snake's.