Thief With No Shadow (18 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

B
ASTIAN ATE DINNER
in his bedchamber. If he saw that wraith again today he’d—

Rage and hunger grumbled in his belly. She’d been as proud as a queen, looking down her nose at him, mocking him. He snarled silently in memory and speared ham on his fork.

He had sworn not to eat her food, those cursed potato things she’d been cooking, but the smell of them... One. He’d taken one.

Bastian cut a piece and lifted it to his mouth, sneering at it. He’d spit it out if he didn’t like it. He’d take it outside and grind it into the dirt with his heel.

The scent of it. The crispness. The delicate spices on his tongue...

Bastian closed his eyes. He hated the wraith,
hated
her.

He went downstairs and helped himself to more fritters. Anger churned inside him. Anger at her, at himself. Curse her for cooking so well.

Four. No, five fritters.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

P
ERHAPS IT WAS
the salve, perhaps not, but Melke’s feet hurt less in the morning. She went downstairs without limping. The sickroom was dark. Her heart constricted. “Liana?”

Silence.

Melke crossed the room with outstretched hands. Panic spurted inside her as she fumbled for the curtains and drew them hurriedly back. “Liana?” she said again, turning towards the bed.

The girl sat slumped and motionless, her head resting on Hantje’s shoulder.

Melke’s heart thudded fast in her chest. She shook the girl’s arm. “Liana!”

Liana sighed, a soft and drowsy sound. She didn’t move.

Melke knelt on the worn carpet and felt for the girl’s pulse. Endal pressed close, whining. He sniffed Liana and licked her cheek.

A pulse, yes, strong and regular.

Melke sat back on her heels. The girl’s face was smooth of care. She was no paler than she’d been last night. “Liana,” she said again, without the edge of panic in her voice.

Hantje muttered.

Mejke stood hastily and looked at him. There was a difference in how he lay, how he breathed. The deep and unnatural stillness was gone. He was close to waking.

Weight sloughed off her shoulders. Hantje was going to be all right.

“Liana.” She bent and shook the girl gently.

Liana smiled faintly and sighed again. Her breathing was calm. It was a sleep of exhaustion, nothing to worry about.

Melke rubbed her face, looking down at the girl. She couldn’t carry Liana upstairs. She hadn’t the strength.

“Where is your master?” she asked the hound.

He looked at her uncomprehendingly.

Melke went back to the kitchen and out into the yard. It helped that she could walk without limping. There’d be no weakness for Bastian to see, no vulnerability.

She narrowed her eyes against the pale glare of morning sunshine and looked around. An old horse stood in a barren paddock, flicking its tail, shaded by a dead tree. There was no other movement. Bastian was nowhere in sight.

Melke took a deep breath and set her jaw.
Stand tall. Show no fear
. “Find Bastian,” she said to Endal.

The hound’s ears pricked and his tail lifted slightly. He understood those words.

She followed him out of the yard. His pace was brisk, the angle of tail and ears jaunty. He was eager to see his master.

The thin strips of cloth that bound her feet were no substitute for leather. Stones pressed through the bandages, sharp. Melke walked slowly. Her shoes had vanished in the river. She’d need new ones if she was to enter the salamanders’ den.

If? When. There was no doubt. It was something she was going to do.

Musk and flaming eyes and heat.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose and she shivered.
Fool
, she told herself. There were no salamanders here. Nothing to fear.

Endal wanted to run, to bound ahead and stretch his legs. He waited for her, telling her to hurry up with the angle of his ears and tail, with his edgy, restless stance.

“How much further?” she asked, glancing back over her shoulder. They were almost quarter of a mile from the farmhouse. The sun beat down and the dirt was hot beneath her feet. Perspiration pricked on her skin.

The ground rose slightly. She heard the sound of an axe.
Thock. Thock.
Sharp noises, the thud-split of wood being chopped. Bastian.

A week ago she would barely have noticed this gentle rise. Her steps would have been fast and striding; now she climbed slowly, fighting the urge to wince, to limp. The bandages were beginning to fray.

Endal waited at the top, impatient. Melke paused and wiped her face with a sleeve. In front of her the ground dipped again. Wisps of brittle grass straggled from the dry dirt. At the foot of the short slope a tree lay fallen, shorn of branches. The wood was the same pale gray as the soil, dead.

Bastian had discarded his shirt. Sweat glistened on his sun-browned skin. He had a fighter’s body, hard and strongly muscled. He’d be able to wield sword and mace and lance easily, to kill. A mercenary’s face, and a body to match.

The hairs pricked at the nape of Melke’s neck again. She squared her shoulders and stood tall.

Bastian didn’t look up. He raised the axe. Sunlight glinted off the blade. She heard it whistle through the air and flinched at the sound it made—
thock
—and the sharp splitting of the wood.

Melke opened her mouth and found that Bastian’s name was impossible to utter. What lay between them was too hostile.

She swallowed. “Excuse me,” she said, but the axe went
thock
again and he didn’t hear her.

Endal trotted down the slope.

Bastian turned before the hound reached him. Endal had made no sound, but somehow the man knew he was there. There was a moment of silence, while hound and man looked at each other, and then Bastian’s eyes lifted to her.

His grip on the axe handle tightened. She saw his knuckles whiten. The expression on his face was ferocious. “What’s wrong with Liana? Endal says she won’t wake up.”

Melke fought the urge to step backwards. “She’s exhausted.” Her voice didn’t betray her. There was no hint of fear.

Bastian flung the axe aside and reached for his shirt. He came fast up the slope. Dirt and grass crunched beneath his boots.

Never let them see your fear.

Melke stood her ground. “There’s no cause for alarm. She’s deeply asleep, is all.”

He was level with her now. She felt the heat of his body, of his rage, of his fear for Liana. He leaned towards her. His lips drew back from his teeth in a snarl. “She’s
my
sister.
I’ll
decide whether there is cause for alarm. Not
you
.”

Melke saw the green of his eyes, narrowed in hatred, and smelled the fresh sweat on his skin. He could kill her. She had no doubt of that. It would be easy for him to clench his fingers around her throat and choke the life out of her, to snap her neck.

Never let them see.

“As you wish.” She trembled inside herself, but her voice came out coolly, politely.

Anger darkened his face and he made a sound that was part snarl, part growl. The animal savagery of it made her flinch slightly from him.

Triumph flared in Bastian’s eyes. His laugh was hard. He turned sharply away from her and strode towards the farmhouse, shrugging into his shirt.

For a long moment Melke couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She stood, hugging her arms tightly, holding herself, and watched him walk away. Tears pricked her eyes. She had flinched. She had let Bastian see that she feared him.

Melke forced herself to follow him. She didn’t want to. She wanted to turn her back on the farmhouse and leave, to flee. The trembling inside her was stronger. She shook deeply in her chest. There was agitation, and something more than agitation, something that was close to hysteria.

I let him see my fear.

Endal trotted to keep pace with his master. They were a hundred yards ahead of her when they reached the farmhouse. The man didn’t look back, but the hound stopped and waited. He wanted to be with Bastian; she saw it in the way he shifted his weight. His coat gleamed in the sunlight, intensely black.

Endal didn’t follow her into the kitchen; he pushed ahead and led the way down the corridor to the sickroom.

Melke made herself enter, made herself stand closer to Bastian than she wanted to and not show her fear again.

Bastian ignored her. She heard him say the girl’s name softly: “Liana.” He stroked her hair, her cheek. His touch was gentle.

It was a different man, this, to the one who’d just growled at her, who’d shaken her and spat at her outside the salamanders’ den. There was no savagery and rage, only tenderness. He loved Liana. She’d seen it in the way he’d greeted her three days ago, lifting her off her feet and holding her tightly, as if she was precious, his face pressed into her hair.

Melke watched as Bastian carefully gathered his sister in his arms. When he turned towards her, he no longer had a mercenary’s face. It was a strong face, but not the face of a killer.

Melke raised her chin and met his eyes. She stood as tall as she could.

His jaw tightened, but his glare was soft. Having Liana in his arms muted his rage.

Endal followed him to the door and whined as he left. She knew what he said to Bastian:
Take me with you.

The sound of Bastian’s footsteps faded. Endal’s tail drooped. He sat down heavily on the floor.

Melke crossed to the bed. The sunlight was brighter in the room now that Bastian was gone, the air easier to breathe. She laid a hand on her brother’s cheek, a touch as gentle as Bastian’s had been. She said his name softly: “Hantje.”

Her brother stirred. She thought his eyelids flickered. He was close to waking. Close to being able to tell her what had happened in the salamanders’ den.

H
ANTJE CONTINUED TO
improve as the day slid into afternoon. He no longer lay still and silent. He shifted in the bed, turning his head, muttering. Emotions twisted across his face. He quieted when Melke held his hand and spoke to him. She told him stories, the ones Mam had read when they were children, struggling to recall the words.

The morning’s tension slowly faded. She no longer shook inside herself. Hantje would live. That was all that mattered.

She roasted the potatoes this time, with cracked peppercorns and salt and sprigs of rosemary. It meant she didn’t have to be in the kitchen so much, didn’t have to risk encountering Bastian.
Coward
, she told herself. Mam would have been disappointed.