Thief With No Shadow (33 page)

His urgency and alarm, his fear for her, twisted into anger. Bastian crossed the yard fast and bellowed her name as he entered the kitchen. His footsteps were loud as he strode down the corridor. They echoed, flat, as if the floorboards flinched from his feet.

Liana was in the sickroom, bent over the bed, talking to the male wraith in a low voice.

“Now,” Bastian said. It was a tone he’d never used with her before, harsh with anger.

Liana’s glance was startled. “But—”

“Now.”

There was a long second of silence, and then Liana straightened. “Very well.” Her voice was quiet, calm. She touched her fingertips to the wraith’s hand briefly, where it lay clenched on the sheet, and turned away from the bed.

Bastian couldn’t meet the wraith’s eyes, couldn’t look at his face. He should force the youth to come with them, instead of abandoning him. “Goodbye,” he said roughly, and walked out of his home for the last time, treading on floorboards, flagstones, the doorstep.

He pulled the door shut and allowed his fingers to linger for a moment. The handle was fashioned of metal, dark with age and smooth from use. Generations of sal Veres had touched it.
Goodbye.

Liana stood in the yard. She said nothing as he took hold of Gaudon’s reins.

Tension was rigid inside him, and guilt clenched hard-knuckled at the base of his throat. He couldn’t swallow the guilt away, couldn’t cough it out. The lad would be all right. There was food left, and water in the well. He’d be fine. The psaaron wouldn’t touch him. And by the time he lost hope, he’d be well enough to walk to Thierry.

But the guilt refused to be dislodged. It choked in his throat. And with the guilt, was grief at leaving Vere, sitting on his skin, a cloak as light as cobwebs.

Liana walked beside him, her head slightly bowed. The cobweb cloak of grief rested on her skin, too.

“Liana.” His voice was quiet, rough. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“It’s all right.” She raised her eyes.

“No. It was wrong of me. I didn’t mean to—”

Her hand slipped into his, small and warm. “It’s all right.”

Some of the tension in Bastian’s chest eased, unraveling slowly like a row of knitting, and he found it easier to draw breath. The guilt remained, though, a thick lump at the base of his throat.

He gripped Liana’s hand. The late afternoon sun beat down, scorching through his shirt and glaring into his eyes. The air was hot and dry in his throat, the ground hard and dusty. Dead land. Land his family had loved. Land they’d given their lives for.

The curse would never be lifted. It would be with him forever, like the signet ring on his finger.

Shame twisted snake-like beneath the guilt and grief, the fear. He lost his honor by fleeing, and he risked upsetting the balance of things. The crime hadn’t been his, all those years ago, but it was his duty to accept the punishment, to let the psaaron choose himself or Liana.

Liana.

No. It was better to have no honor, better to take the risk.

The psaaron would chase behind them until they died, but if he was careful and cautious, if he used his wits, they’d be safe. He would learn to live with fear cold in his belly and crawling up his spine, with shame twisting in his guts. He’d learn to look over his shoulder and to sniff the air.

He would learn, and they would live.

The wraith... There was tightness beneath his breastbone when he thought of her, regret. He should have nailed shut her door.

Her name was Melke, and if she wasn’t already dead she would be by the end of the day. And her brother waited for her.

The sun was hot and glaring, so hot and glaring that his eyes watered, and the ground was so hard that his bones ached with each step. But Liana held his hand and said it was all right. She lived. She breathed. She was unharmed. And for now, that was enough.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

S
O MANY DIFFERENT
kinds of fear. The confused, panicked terror when soldiers burst through the bedroom door. The smothering fear in the cell, when time became so vast that she couldn’t count it and minutes had become months, when she’d tried desperately to hold on to who she was. The fear with grief so tightly interwoven that they were one and the same thing—fear and grief, grief and fear—when the crossbow bolt had speared Mam and she’d not been able to stay, had grabbed Hantje and run. The prickling fear of stealing into the farmhouse, reluctant, determined. The sharper fear, edged with desperation, of being up the tree.

She wasn’t afraid of Endal now, and this fear was a new one. It made her retch. Melke’s hand trembled as she raised the waterskin for a final drink. She sweated, even though it was cool beneath the trees. Her heart was a hammer in her chest, beating against her ribs, trying to batter its way out.

Melke retied the neck of the waterskin. She looked around, checking. Splashes of sunlight sneaked through the leaves. She smelled damp moss and sulphur. The horse she’d hired cropped grass beside the tiny creek, young and strong-legged and swift enough to carry her from the valley ahead of the salamanders. It was loosely hobbled, with a knot she could fumble undone in seconds.

Nothing was left on the ground. Her shoes were firmly fastened, the trousers belted at her waist. The knife was in its sheath, her hair in a plait out of the way.

She tied the waterskin to the horse’s saddle, alongside the rolled bundle of her cloak, and checked the satchel of scented oils she carried. The phials were rough, stoppered with blunt corks and wrapped with rags so they’d not clink against each other. She checked that each cork was loose, easy to remove, that the phials were tightly-packed together and wouldn’t spill. Twice she checked them, and the leather strap across her shoulder and chest.

There was nothing more to check. Her heart thudded loudly. Endal pressed against her legs, whining.

Melke touched his head. “I need you to be flexible, Endal. I don’t wish to tie you. I’d like you to be free to go if something should happen to me.”

His ears pricked. The pale wolf-eyes were anxious.

“You must run, Endal, if they catch me. You’ll be safe outside the valley. Salamanders don’t pursue beyond their territory.”

Endal didn’t understand. He whined again and pressed closer to her.

Melke blew out a shallow breath. It was time.

She kept her hand on Endal’s head while she did it—the concentration, the turning inside out of herself, the swift prickling of it. Her fingers were pale against his black fur, and then...nothing. She wasn’t there.

Exultation jolted through her, sharp. There was a sense of freedom in letting go and being purely a wraith. The shadowless thief, the unseen assassin. She was at once stronger and bolder; there was excitement and calmness.
I am a wraith.

Endal pulled away from her touch. He uttered a short bark.

“Hush,” Melke said. “Hush.”

The hound’s lips were pulled back from his teeth. Hackles stood along his spine, stiff and black. A thin growl came from his throat.

“I know,” Melke said softly, soothingly. Exhilaration tingled under her skin. “He said to bite me if I became unseen. But I don’t think you will. Will you?”

She reached out to him slowly, holding her palm to his nose.

Endal flinched from her. His ears were flat against his head. The growl came more strongly.

“Hush,” she whispered. “It’s just me.” She moved her hand again, so that his breath was moist against her palm. “If you must bite me, do it, but I beg you not to.”

Endal didn’t jerk his head back this time. She saw him inhale the scent of her skin.

Melke crouched and slowly placed her hand on his neck. She stroked him carefully. “See? It’s just me. No need to bite. I know Bastian said to, but you’re smarter than that, aren’t you?”

It seemed that he was. The fearsome teeth were no longer bared and the stiff hackles lay closer to his spine.

“Good hound,” she whispered encouragingly, running her hand over his thick, warm fur. His tail moved a fraction, the tiniest wag.

Sweat was cold on her skin and bile bitter in her throat, and the illicit, shameful wraith-tingle was in her blood. The sun sank towards the hills and late afternoon. She couldn’t put this off any longer. Salamanders hunted at night, and she must be far from here before the sun set. “It’s time, Endal. You may come as far as the den, if you wish.”

The hound followed as Melke stepped from the trees. Long grass brushed against her legs. She heard the hum of insects in the sweet-smelling meadow flowers and the high notes of birdsong. The den squatted in front of her. Two hundred yards, as close as she’d been able to hide the horse.

She walked, her breath coming jerkily from her mouth. Grass clutched at her trousers, pulling, slowing.
Not so fast.
It wrapped itself around her legs.
Slower.

She was close enough to see the coarse texture of the walls, close enough to taste sulphur on her tongue. Close enough to touch.

There was cramping in her belly and the need to retch again. She could only take small, shallow breaths. Her heart hammered against her ribs. And yet, beneath the fear was a flicker of something.

Not excitement or anticipation, not anything she could name, just a tiny flicker of...something.

The rough mass of rock and red, hard-baked clay towered above her, irregular and misshapen, as if it had pushed itself out of the ground. The scent of the salamanders filled her nose and throat. Melke clutched the satchel to her chest, feeling the weight of the oils.

Endal pressed against her leg. His whine was almost inaudible. The sound stopped when she touched his head lightly with her fingers.

He followed closely as she walked the circumference of the den. The few small fissures in the walls were too narrow to climb through, letting fresh air in and the spicy, pungent odor of salamander out.

At the back of the den was the midden. Her entrance, so Hantje said.

The stench was foul, a carnivore smell, thick and heavy; charred bones and old meat, the remains of beasts the salamanders had eaten, and the familiar noisome stink of their scat. A midden and dungheap.

A low wall enclosed the spill of waste. Melke laid her hand on it and felt roughness and warmth beneath her palm. Her heart seemed to be pushing its way up her throat. “You can’t come any further, Endal. You must wait here.”

She swung her leg over the crude wall and stepped carefully into the midden, first one foot, and then the other. Once there, she couldn’t move. She stood frozen, her eyes flinching from the grotesqueness of it all. A goat’s ribcage, the bones splayed wide. The eviscerated carcass of a deer. A leg, with hoof and hide and strands of goat hair, burned. Sinew and bone and skulls with gaping eye sockets. Teeth and hooves and horns and scorched hides. And scat, stinking piles of scat.

Flies rose buzzing. They swarmed everywhere, feasting, black and torpid. White maggots writhed.

If she hadn’t been retching all day she would vomit now, but there was nothing left in her stomach. Her skin crawled, as if the flies were on her hands and face, her throat, her scalp. She couldn’t inhale, couldn’t suck the air into her mouth; it was too rank, too revolting, too thick with decay.

She gagged.

Endal uttered a short bark.

“Hush.” Melke choked out the word, turning to him. His front paws were up on the wall.

He barked again.

“Hush!” And she could breathe again, because she had to. She reached out and circled Endal’s muzzle with her fingers, firmly. “Shhh. You must be quiet.”

Endal whined. She felt the vibration of it through her hand.

“Quiet,” Melke said, reinforcing the command with a gentle flex of her fingers, and: “Wait,” pushing his head back slightly. “You must wait.”

His ears were flat against his head. The sound he uttered was neither bark nor groan nor whine, but a combination of all three, distressed. “Shhh,” she whispered, and she released his muzzle and put her arms around his neck and pressed her face into his thick black fur. “You can’t come, Endal. You must
wait
.”