Thief With No Shadow (21 page)

Bastian stopped glaring at Endal. He raised his eyes and watched the wraith as she read aloud. “Her name was Ennia, and she lived high in the mountains of Gaillac, where the gales blew strong and wild.”

Not feral, not if she read so well. She had been educated somewhere. Where? Who’d taught her to read? Who’d taught her to cook?

“Ennia’s eyes were the color of storm clouds in the sky and her skin was as pale as the winter snow. She rarely spoke, for she was listening to the wind.”

Where was the wraith from, and how had she come to be in Bresse? Why was she here?

“‘Come run with us,’ the winds cried, as they howled through the sharp mountain peaks, tugging slates lose from the roofs and making doors slam. But only Ennia heard their invitation. She raised her face to the sky and whispered: ‘I can’t.’“

Bastian turned away from the door, frowning. The wraith had been at Vere a week, and he’d not thought to ask those questions. He had a creature in his house he knew nothing about. Nothing.

C
HOPPING ANOTHER FALLEN
tree into firewood didn’t ease Bastian’s disquiet; it merely made him tired and irritable. He ate his dinner in the empty kitchen.

He was chewing the last of his meal when he heard footsteps. He put down his fork, ready to snarl at the wraith, but it was Liana. The kitchen was suddenly warmer, cozier.

She bent and kissed his cheek. “How are you?”

He grunted.

“Grumpy.” She touched his cheek lightly with her fingers, where she’d kissed. “Another sheep?”

Bastian pushed his plate away. “How could you give her the book?”

Liana’s eyebrows rose. “What?”

“It’s
our
book. I don’t want her touching it.”

“Bastian.” Her tone was quiet and disappointed. It made him feel like a small child.

He clenched his jaw. “She’s not to have it.”

“I know you don’t like her Bastian, but you go too far in your hatred.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Bastian.” Just his name, quietly, and disappointment in her eyes.

When had Liana become an adult? He kept thinking of her as a girl, young and in need of his guidance, but she was eighteen. Old enough to marry, old enough for motherhood. An adult.

“All right!” Bastian lifted his hands in a gesture of defeat. “All right. Let her read the book.”

Liana smiled and touched his cheek again lightly with her fingertips. She turned towards the stove. “Something smells delicious.”

“It’s...”
Edible
, he’d been about to say, but the word stuck on his tongue. Too petty, too churlish. Too childish. “It is delicious. Have some.”

“I’ll eat in a little while,” she said. “With Melke.”

Melke. The wraith’s name. An eastern name, to match her accent. “Liana, has she told you anything? Where she comes from? Why she’s in Bresse?”

Liana tilted her head to one side. Her brow creased. “No. She hasn’t.”

“Nothing?”

Liana thought for a moment, and then shook her head. “No.”

Bastian’s mouth twisted. Anger kindled in his chest. It was his fault. He should have asked, should have insisted that the wraith tell him everything before he let her set foot in the house. He pushed back his chair. “I’ll ask her now.”

Liana stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Tomorrow,” she said. “You’re too grumpy.”

“I am not—” he started to say, crossly, and then realized how ridiculous he sounded.

Liana met his glare without flinching. Her mouth tilted in a small smile. She rose on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Go to bed, Bastian.”

When had she stopped being a child?

He went to bed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

B
ASTIAN HAD NO
doubt that the discussion with the wraith would be an argument, loud and ugly. She would try to lie, to hide her sordid past. He waited until she came into the kitchen; he didn’t need Liana to tell him that raised voices in the sickroom would distress the patient.

The patient. Another wraith. He almost spat in the dirt. What did he care about a thieving wraith? Nothing. But he waited with the sun warm on his face, sitting on the kitchen step, until Endal pushed his nose against the back of his neck and he heard footsteps on the flagstones.

Morning, Endal
, he said silently as he stood.

He rested his hand on the dog’s head and let his eyes adjust to the relative dimness of the kitchen. The wraith was measuring tea into a pot. He recognized the packet. He’d bought it at the apothecary.

She stood tall and straight-backed, with a haughty tilt to her chin. Two days ago it would have made him angry; now it told him she was afraid.

He stepped into the kitchen.

The wraith paid him no attention. Her hand was steady as she sprinkled dried herbs into the teapot.

Bastian leaned his shoulders against the wall. Stone pressed hard and cold through his shirt. He folded his arms across his chest and watched the wraith, letting the silence grow.

She closed the packet of tea. Her chin was higher than it had been before. Not disdain, but fear. Bastian smiled. He was going to win this argument.

“You’ve not told us where you and your brother are from, or what you are doing in Bresse.” The accusation was mildly spoken. There was no need to raise his voice yet.

The wraith glanced at him. “You haven’t asked.” Her tone was coolly polite.

“I’m asking now.”

The wraith lifted the lid of a pot on the stove, the one they used to boil water. Faint steam rose from it. She replaced the lid and turned towards him.

Bastian straightened away from the wall, ready for bluster and evasion.

“What would you like to know?”

He narrowed his eyes. Lies, then, not bluster. “Where are you from? Precisely.”

“Precisely?” Her eyebrows rose and he’d have thought she mocked him, except that he knew she was afraid of him. “We are from Stenrik. From a village in the south, called Granna.”

Did she tell the truth? He had no way of knowing.

She speaks the truth
, Endal said.

Bastian frowned down at the dog.
How do you know?

I can see when humans lie
.

Bastian stared at the dog, astonished.
You can?

Yes.
Endal lay down on the flagstones. He yawned and closed his eyes.

“Is there anything else you wish to know?”

The wraith’s tone, polite and cool, failed to grate.

Bastian glanced at her and then back at Endal.
Will you tell me if she lies?

The dog opened his eyes.
Yes.

“Yes,” he said firmly, raising his gaze to the wraith’s haughty face. “I have other questions.”

“Very well.”

“Why are you here in Bresse? Why did you leave Stenrik?”

The wraith looked at him for several seconds, expressionlessly, and then turned back to the stove and lifted the lid of the pot. The water boiled. “It is a complicated tale,” she said. “It will take time to tell.”

He recognized evasion when he saw it. Anger sparked faintly in his chest. “I have time.”

She paused, lifting the pot from the stove. Silence, and then, “Very well.” There was more silence as she poured water into the teapot. She put the pot back on the stove and reached for the lid.

His anger kindled into flame. She was preparing lies. “Now,” he said, the word a short, peremptory command.

She glanced at him. “Let me set this to steep.”

“Now.”

The wraith placed the lid on the teapot and turned to face him. She crossed her arms over her chest, mirroring him. “Stenrik has a king,” she said, in her cool voice. “His name is Jonnas. You may have heard of him.”

Bastian shook his head. He knew of Stenrik from the minstrels and the storytellers, from
Tales of Magic and Magical Beasts.
Lamia nested in those cold, stony soils. But rulers? Why would he know their names? Stenrik was almost at the edge of the world.

“His reign has been...very bloody. He is the reason we left. We came to Bresse to find a new home.”

Silence. He waited, but she appeared to have nothing more to say. “That’s it?”

“Yes.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “And your leaving had nothing to do with the fact that you are wraiths?”

“No.”

She lies .

“Liar,” Bastian said loudly, uncrossing his arms and taking a step towards her.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Endal knows when you lie.”

Her eyes flicked to the dog. She said nothing, standing stiff and tall with her back to the stove.

“I’ll ask my question again.” Bastian’s tone was hard, with an edge of anger. “Why did you leave Stenrik?”

“To find a new home.”

“No.” He shook his head, a sharp and angry movement. He took another step towards her, his hands clenched. “The
other
reason. Wraith.”

The wraith met his eyes. She didn’t speak. Silence grew loud in the kitchen.

He had thought that intimidating her into truthfulness would be easy, that it would be a simple matter to stand over her and raise a fist and shout. It wasn’t. However straight-backed she stood, she was still a woman. He was taller than her, stronger. He should be able to threaten her easily and yet...he couldn’t. Not when she had a woman’s soft lips and skin, not when her hair hung so long down her back and the skirt and blouse showed the female shape of her. He felt like a bully, standing, before her. He
was
a bully. And that made him even angrier.

“Very well.” The wraith’s voice was cool and toneless. “If you insist.”

Bastian’s relief was intense. He took a step back, away from her. Another step. “I do.”

The wraith looked past him, to a point on the wall he couldn’t see. “Being a wraith is a magic that runs in certain families. It runs in ours. My father called it the family curse.” Her gaze shifted. She held his eyes. “We didn’t want it.”

Fine words. Bastian leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms.

“Da said... My father said that our family always kept apart from ordinary folk, so no one could learn our secret. In Stenrik they burn wraiths.”

Bastian blinked. Burn?

“My father was a wraith. My mother wasn’t, but she was his cousin and she had the blood in her. They wanted... My parents wanted to be ordinary people in an ordinary town. They moved south and for fourteen years they managed.” The wraith looked out the doorway. She was silent, her gaze on the cracked, brown-gray dirt outside.

“Until someone made a mistake,” Bastian prompted.

Her gaze flicked to him for a brief second. “Not us. Da made us promise that we’d never ever become unseen. Once Hantje...” She shook her head slightly. “He wanted to see if it was true that if you throw salt at a wraith it becomes seen. Da was furious. I’ve never seen anyone so angry.”

A pause, and then she glanced at him again. She didn’t need to speak. He knew what she was thinking.
Until you.

His jaw tightened in memory.

The wraith’s gaze slid from his face. She looked at the wall again. “We don’t know what happened,” she said, her voice flat. “A mistake was made, but not by us. One of our family in the north. A child perhaps, or...” She shrugged and shook her head.

“Or what?”

She hesitated. “Mam said that sometimes, in childbirth—”

“The baby?” Bastian asked, startled.

She shook her head again. “Not the baby. The ability to become unseen doesn’t come until later. No, the mother.” She met his eyes. “To become unseen feels like turning yourself inside out, like
pushing
yourself inside out.”

He thought he understood. “And sometimes in labor...”