Thief With No Shadow (42 page)

I
T TOOK
B
ASTIAN
half the morning on his hands and knees searching in the brittle stubble of Gaudon’s paddock to find the tiny stone. The horse was curious, coming close to watch. In the end it was Endal who found the pebble, covered in dust.

Is this it? I smell you on it. And Melke.

Bastian rubbed the stone clean, kneeling in the dirt. It was small and smooth, red. He closed his eyes briefly.
Yes. Thank you, Endal.

The dog cocked his head.
That is what she cried for? Why?

Because it reminds her of home.
Bastian held the stone tightly.

The dog considered this answer for a moment.
Why did you throw it away?

Bastian opened his hand and looked at the stone, a milder red than the salamanders, flecked with black.
Because I am not a nice person.

Endal disagreed. He tried to climb into his lap.

Bastian hugged the dog to him.
I make too many mistakes, Endal
, he said, and he rested his cheek against warm, black fur.

You don’t make any mistakes
, Endal said with such pride in his voice that Bastian managed to laugh.

He put the stone carefully beside the other three on the little shelf where the candleholder stood, and took Gaudon to fetch water. The river tugged more fiercely today, breaking the rope and carrying away the bucket when he still had three waterskins left to fill.

Bastian took a stronger rope the next morning and tied it to his stoutest bucket. The river snapped at the bucket as if it had jaws, ripping and tearing hungrily. He fought the water, panting, straining with every muscle in his body. The river stilled for an instant, and then the water gave a huge gulp and swallowed the bucket. Bastian skidded on dry dirt, slipping, falling—

Only Endal’s teeth, buried in his arm, stopped him from tumbling into the river.

It was a frantic scramble up the bank, clutching at dry grass and crumbling dirt while the water snatched at his feet. Endal didn’t let go until Bastian lay gasping on solid ground. His heart thundered in his chest. Sweat poured off his skin and blood trickled down his arm.

The river wanted him dead.

If he died, Liana would be alone with a crumbling house and a dead farm and a curse.

Bastian groped in his pocket for the necklace. Relief dripped off his skin, mingling with the perspiration and the blood. He hadn’t lost it.

He sat up slowly while his heart hammered in his chest.
Thank you, Endal.

The dog whined and pressed close to him, trembling.
I hurt you.

I’m glad you did.
He hugged Endal roughly.

His hands were bleeding, his arm was bleeding, and he’d filled only two waterskins. When he took one of those waterskins up to the sickroom, he found not Liana, but Hantje. The young man didn’t see him. He sat at his sister’s bedside and cried, hunched into himself.

Bastian stood in the doorway. He had heard a man cry like that once before, with heart-deep despair. He’d felt the same clenching in his chest as he did now, the same sense of helplessness.

Is she dead?
he asked Endal, the waterskin hanging limply from his fingers. Numbness grew beneath his breastbone, spreading swiftly.

Endal raised his muzzle. His nostrils flared.
I
don’t smell it.

Bastian clenched his fingers around the waterskin and inhaled a deep breath. Not dead. Not yet.

He wanted to enter the bedchamber and offer comfort, but he didn’t know how. He was nine years old again, frightened by the depth of a man’s grief, not knowing what to do or say.
I’ll get Liana
, he said as Endal trotted into the room.

He walked quickly down the hall, the waterskin still dangling from his hand, and knocked softly on her door. “Liana? Are you still awake?”

He heard a rustle of movement, light footsteps, and then the door opened.

Liana’s face was shadowed and exhausted. The covers were pushed back on her bed. She wore her nightgown.

“I woke you.”

She shook her head. “I’d only just... Is something wrong? Your arm!”

“No, I’m fine, it’s—”

“Melke!” Her eyes were wide and alarmed.

“No. At least, I don’t think so. It’s Hantje.”

Liana pushed past him and ran down the corridor on bare feet, the nightgown swirling around her ankles. She stopped in the doorway to the sickroom.

Bastian’s boots were loud on the wooden floor. The waterskin sloshed in his hand. Liana turned her head as he came to stand beside her. He saw tears shine in her eyes.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said beneath the sound of Hantje’s grief, ashamed.

Liana blinked back her tears. “I do.” She took a step into the room.

“Is she dying?”

Liana turned her head and looked at him. “She’ll be dead by tomorrow morning if the fever doesn’t break.” She made a helpless gesture with her hand.

There was nothing to say. Bastian watched as Liana crossed the room and touched Hantje’s bent head. She put her arms around him. Her voice was a low murmur, soothing.

Something ached in Bastian’s chest. He cleared his throat roughly.
Endal, come on.

I’ll stay.

Bastian pressed his lips together and swung away from the door. It hurt that Endal preferred to stay with Hantje.
He’s only a scabby wraith
, he wanted to shout at the dog, but shame twisted in his belly that he could even think such a thing. Hantje was more than a wraith. Much more. Just as Melke was.

She would be dead by morning.

Bastian threw the waterskin on the kitchen table and walked outside. He took the path blindly. The image he saw wasn’t bleached grass and gray dirt, it was his bedchamber, with Melke lying as still as death in the bed he’d always slept in and Liana holding Hantje while he wept.

He stood on the highest sand dune and stared at the sea without seeing it, while the wind blew through his hair. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. They were being punished for a crime that had been committed a hundred years ago and
it wasn’t fair.

Memory of the sickroom shredded in his mind and blew away. He saw the ocean, cruel and greedy, gray-green. It battered against the shore and ate into Vere. He tasted salt in his mouth, smelled seaweed. Rage swelled inside him. Rage at Alain sal Vere, rage at the psaaron, rage at his father for choosing to die, for leaving them. His hand clenched around the necklace in his pocket.

It was a moment of madness, of grief and impotent fury. He screamed at the waves, cursing them, and he threw the necklace away from Vere with all the strength that he had.

The necklace twisted in the sunlight as it fell into the foaming surf. A tiny splash and then...nothing.

The rage evaporated.

Everything came to a halt, blood and breath, the beating of his heart. It was impossible to draw air into his lungs, impossible to move. He stared at the seething water with eyes that didn’t blink.

What have I done?

He’d never get the necklace back. The sea had swallowed it.

Bastian’s legs gave way. He sat heavily on spiky tussock and sand.
No.

The curse would never be broken.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

B
ASTIAN STAYED ON
the sand dune while the sun marched across the sky, listening to the grass shrivel and the soil crumble and the sea gnaw steadily at the shore. Death was a shroud over the farm, as gray as ashes, and it would never ever go away.

Vere was dead, irrevocably dead. Soon Melke would die too.

He understood now the tears that his father had cried, that Hantje cried. Despair. Hopelessness. The knowledge that it would never be all right again.

There was moisture in his eyes, on his cheeks. He wept silently, hugging his despair to himself.

Awareness came slowly. The sea was quiet and the scent that he smelled was dark and wet, familiar.

Bastian scrambled to his feet, terror choking in his throat.

The psaaron stood before him, massive. Water slid down its dark scales. And around its neck...

Bastian swallowed. “You found it.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I heard it calling to me.” Something shone in the creature’s eyes, sparkling like sunlight on water. Joy. “You have my gratitude.”

Bastian swallowed again. He could only nod. Voices murmured in his ears, faint, as the tears sang to the psaaron.

“I will return what I took, as you have returned my family’s tears.” Waves lapped in that deep voice, as the sea lapped gently against Vere’s shore. “Water is no longer your enemy. Do not fear the sea.” The psaaron turned and walked down the dunes and across the white sand of the beach. It slid into the water, as quick and graceful as a fish, and was gone.

Bastian stood for long minutes, looking at the smooth water in the bay. His anger returned. “You can’t give back what you took,” he shouted after the psaaron. “They’re dead. You can’t give them back.”

His mother was gone, his father, and soon Melke would be gone too.

The anger ebbed, as the tide ebbed on the beach. Bastian sat again. The weight of Vere on his shoulders was too much. It pressed him to the ground.

He had no money to repair the bridge, to re-roof the farmhouse and replace the glass in the windows. No money to buy livestock or furniture or food. The task of rebuilding Vere, penniless, was beyond his abilities. He could only fail.

Bastian watched the sea for long hours. He’d thrown the necklace into boiling surf; now the water was smooth and calm. The psaaron had heard the tears calling. It had
heard.

Twelve years he’d had the necklace. Could he have thrown it into the sea at any time? Would the psaaron have heard? Could the curse have been lifted before Vere withered and the well ran dry, before stock starved and sheep died in lambing? Before Melke went into the salamanders’ den?

Bastian stared at the sea, flat and blue-green, and decided that he didn’t want to know. It didn’t bear thinking about. In fact, it was best not to think at all. To not think about loss. To not think about his mother and father. About Melke. Best just to watch the sea.

But the sparkle of sunlight on water only served to heighten the darkness inside him, the despair, the utter hopelessness of it all. The soft lapping of the waves was a funeral dirge.

“Don’t die,” he whispered. “Please don’t die.”

Something lay on the sand, as small and bright as a fish’s scale. The waves tumbled it gently, left it stranded, and then crept up the sand to tumble it again. Bastian watched for a long time, without curiosity. The advance and retreat of the waves, the widening strip of beach, the shining object on the sand.

A second object gleamed now on the white sand. A third, a fourth. All along the beach, glinting and glittering in the sunlight, small and bright.

I will return what I took.

Hope leapt in Bastian’s chest, jagged and painful. “No,” he said, scrambling to his feet. “No, it can’t be.”

He slid down the dune.
It can’t be, it can’t be.
Hope quickened his heartbeat. He half-ran across the beach, his boots sinking into white sand he’d never dared stand on before.

Silver. A silver coin.

Bastian knelt and picked it up with trembling fingers. The sal Vere fortune. Thrown into the sea by a man desperate to save his children.

The coin lay cold and bright on his palm. With it he could begin to rebuild Vere.

But silver couldn’t save Melke’s life.

Coins glittered on the beach, everywhere. Dozens of them, hundreds, gold as well as silver. Bastian gathered them into piles, but there was no joy in his heart. He understood why his great-grandfather had thrown the money into the sea and why the psaaron had spurned it; wealth could never equate to family, to a person’s life.