Thief With No Shadow (22 page)

“Inadvertently. Yes. And if a midwife is present, then...” Her shoulders lifted in a shrug again.

Then the family secret is a secret no more. Bastian nodded to show he understood.

“Soldiers came.” She turned her head and looked out the door again. “They knew about Da. We were taken to the fort, all of us.”

Her father had been burned alive. Horror clenched in Bastian’s chest.

“Wraiths are useful, you understand. They can be spies or assassins.” She met his eyes again. “The king forced my father to work for him.”

Forced. An ugly word, as ugly as him standing over this woman and making her tell him her story. Bastian cleared his throat. “How?”

“Us. He used us. Hantje and me and Mam.”

“Hostages.”

“In a fashion.” Her face became even more expressionless. She could have been carved of marble.

“How?”

The wraith’s arms tightened across her chest. She turned her head again, showing him her profile. “We were put in cells,” she said, staring out at the dusty yard. “Under the ground. In the dark.”

“For how long?”

“Da said it was three weeks.”

Bastian opened his mouth, and then shut it again. Three weeks. In the dark. “Cells? You weren’t together?”

“No. We were each alone.” She glanced at him, and perhaps she saw the horror on his face, for she said, “It was worst for Hantje. He was younger.”

Bastian shook his head. They were wraiths, yes, but even so. “How old were you?”

She looked away again. “Hantje was ten. I was thirteen.”

Inhuman
. Wraith or not, she’d been a child. In a cell alone. For three pitch-black weeks.

The wraith continued in a toneless voice: “When Da agreed to work for the king we were moved to one of the towers. We lived there for five years.”

Imprisoned in a tower. It was a storyteller’s tale. Bastian closed his eyes. He shook his head again. He should never have asked. He should have kept on hating her.

“My father came sometimes, for a few days. He never said what he did for the king. Mam told us not to ask.”

Bastian opened his eyes. “But you escaped.”

“Yes.”

The silence lengthened. He knew before the wraith took a long breath, before she opened her mouth again, that he didn’t want to hear the tale,

“Da died. We don’t know what happened. He never came back.” He saw her knuckles whiten, saw her fingers dig into her arms. “They came for me and Hantje. They didn’t know we were wraiths, but they...wanted to find out. We’d always known they would, one day. We had a plan. We knew what to do.”

She fell silent. Her lips were pressed tightly together.

Bastian cleared his throat. “What was the plan?”

“To become unseen. To escape.”

“Obviously it worked.”

The wraith made no reply. Her mouth tightened further.

Bastian waited.

The wraith looked at him. Her eyes were as hard as chips of granite. “Mam died. We escaped. We came here. Do you have any other questions?”

“How did she die?” His voice was quiet.

“Crossbow.”

Silence. Bastian cleared his throat again. “How did you get here?”

“We walked. It took six years.”

More silence. He heard Endal’s breathing, the soft inhalation and exhalation of air.

“Why here?”

“We wanted to be by the sea. We wanted somewhere safe.”

Where they exiled wraiths instead of burning them.

“You stole.” But her crime, her terrible misdeed, had shrunk in the past few minutes.

“No!” Anger flashed across her face. “We earned our money.”

He’d forgotten the silver coins.
A lie?
he asked Endal.

No.

So the coins had been untainted.

“I meant the necklace,” he said, flat-voiced.

Faint color flushed the wraith’s cheeks. Her chin rose. “To save Hantje. Yes.”

Is she afraid?

No
, was Endal’s reply.

Not fear then. Defiance. Pride.

Bastian narrowed his eyes. “Tell me.”

The wraith’s jaw tightened.

He waited, leaning against the wall, the stone hard at his back.

“I don’t know why he did it.” Her voice was almost bitter. “He didn’t tell me. But...there’s a farm down the coast, past Thierry.” She stopped and bit her lip.

He shifted his shoulders against the stone. “A farm?”

“We couldn’t afford it.” She looked out the door again. “Even small farms cost more than a few silver coins.”

Bastian pushed himself away from the wall. “So you decided to steal from the salamanders.” Contempt was sharp in his voice.

“No,” she said, turning her head. Her glare was fierce. “We did
not
decide that.”

Does she lie?

No.

The wraith looked away again. “Hantje was gone the next morning. I don’t know why he did it.”

Bastian knew. “He wanted the farm.”

“He wanted a home. We both did.”

I have a home. It hasn’t brought me any joy
. But Bastian understood her brother’s motive. He understood the need to have a place to belong, a place to be safe, to have a family.

The wraith met his eyes. She stood slightly taller. “I didn’t know what the necklace was. The salamanders didn’t tell me.”

Does she lie
? he asked again.

No.

Even so, he curled his lip at her. “Psaaron tears are unmistakable.”

“We have no psaarons in our oceans. It’s too cold.”

Was he meant to forgive her now? “Congratulations.” His tone was cutting. “Your first theft.”

Color rose in her cheeks. Bastian waited for an apology from her but she said nothing.

There was silence in the kitchen. He heard the hiss of water boiling in the pot, felt the hiss of anger low in his belly.

“Do you have any more questions?” The wraith’s voice was cold.

“No.” He turned on his heel and walked out the door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

B
ASTIAN SPENT THE
rest of the morning sitting on the dunes, watching as the sea ate into Vere. The sheep were safe in the pen, with food and water, and the bridge would fall no matter what he did. There was enough firewood.

Hatred and pity. They were incompatible. One or the other, but not both. He hated her. He pitied her.

It was barbaric that they burned wraiths in Stenrik. It was barbaric that children were put in dark cells underground and that the king could keep a family locked in a tower.

Isn’t that what I’m doing? I keep her brother hostage so that she’ll do my bidding. I force her to act against her will.

No. This was undoing a crime. What he did was
right
. She had stolen the necklace. Her theft, any theft, was unforgivable.

But if she hadn’t known. If her brother’s life was at stake...

Bastian frowned at the foaming surf. Waves clawed at the beach and cast themselves on the rocks and beat against the distant cliffs. There had been a pier once. The sea had swallowed it. If he set foot on the beach, the sea would swallow him too. The waves would snatch him off his feet. They’d pound and drown him.

A breeze tugged at his hair and shirt. The salt-tang of the ocean was in his nostrils, fresh and dangerous. Despite the hot sunlight on his skin, Bastian shivered. He had another question to ask the wraith. He should have asked it in the kitchen:
Will you get the necklace back?

Endal would tell him whether she intended to keep her promise. And if she didn’t...

There was no way to physically force the wraith to become unseen, no way to make her to enter the salamanders’ den. He could threaten violence, but that was all it would be, a threat.

Bastian pushed to his feet. He needed to find out now, while there was still a week left. While he and Liana still had time to flee.

H
E HAD SAT
too long by the sea, with the salty wind blowing through him. One of the ewes was in labor. Bastian’s frantic haste was too late. The ground jarred his knees as he knelt. A breath, a heartbeat, a flicker of life, and then nothing. The sheep was dead.

“No,” he said. “No!”

But the loudness of his voice couldn’t make the animal breathe again or make its heart beat.

Bastian pulled the knife from his belt and cut swiftly. Blood spilled over his hand, hot. The scent was rich and thick, and the lamb...it was too limp. He tried to make it live, tried to breathe life into it, while its mother’s blood soaked into the dry ground. It was a futile effort; there was no milk for the lamb if it lived.

Too late. Always too late.

He knelt with the lamb in his hands and the scent of blood choking his throat. Sunlight burned through his closed eyelids.

This death, these deaths, were his fault. He had intended to check every hour, but instead he’d sat on the dunes and stared at the sea. The blood on his hands was his punishment.

Bastian opened his eyes. Already the first fly buzzed around the sheep. “Get away,” he snarled at it.

The sheep filled his afternoon. Draining the blood, butchering it, burying the lamb. He was filthy, sticky with blood and sweat and dust. His clothes and skin stank.

He stood in the dusk with his trousers and shirt stiff with blood. His skin was tight where it had dried on him.

He wanted to scrub himself clean. He wanted the bathhouse. Or failing that, the public baths in Thierry. He didn’t want a bucket of cold water from the well.

Candlelight glowed in the kitchen.
Please let it be Liana.

It was the wraith. She turned her head and her face lost its customary cool blankness.

They stared at each other for long seconds.

“Are you all right?” she asked, finally, and he heard faint shock in her voice.

Endal was at his feet, whining, pressing close.

Don’t touch me.

“I’m fine.” His voice was grim. “Will you haul water from the well for me?”

She didn’t move. “The blood...?”

“A sheep died.”

She said nothing more, but wiped her hands on a cloth and walked to the door. He stood aside for her to pass.

He stripped off his shirt while she lowered the bucket. “Pour it over my hands.”

The sun sank behind the hills while she did so. He rubbed his hands together, scrubbing with his fingers, letting the water wash his skin clean. Blood and sweat and dust were gone. When the bucket was empty he didn’t look at her. “I need no more assistance,” he said stiffly. “Thank you.”

Darkness lapped at them. The wraith put the bucket down, and then she surprised him. “You’re welcome,” she said.

He watched as she walked across the yard. “There’s meat in the cool-cellar,” he said curtly.

She turned her head. In the encroaching darkness she was monochrome, white face, black hair.

“Liana will show you. Use it.”

The wraith didn’t speak, merely nodded. She entered the kitchen without looking back. Endal lingered in the doorway.
I’m fine
, he assured the dog silently.
Don’t worry.

And then he pulled off his trousers and washed his body. Two buckets. Three. It seemed he’d never feel clean.

It was fully dark when Liana came. “Bastian?”

He turned from her. “Go away.”

“I have fresh clothes for you. Melke told me.”

Bastian closed his eyes. He stood with his toes buried in mud. How many buckets? Too many. They hadn’t water for him to waste like this. “Thank you.”