The Lost Heiress

5

Flain’s anger made the sky shudder. Stars fell; the new seas boiled.

Before them all, Kest swore he would make no more creatures; he abjured his poisons and philters and alchemies. But his heart was full of resentment. And he lied.

Book of the Seven Moons

THE HEDGEROWS WERE RIPE with berries, swelling russet and red in the long five-month autumn of Anara. As he walked, Raffi picked handfuls, eating some and tossing the rest into a small sack on his back. Far ahead, Galen leaned impatiently on a field-gate.

Tall fireweed blazed scarlet; the leaves of hawthorn and elder and strail clogged the ruts, and from somewhere not far off the smell of smoke drifted—a stubble field burning, or from the chimney of a house. Raffi pulled a maggot from a fat blackberry and tossed it aside, into a patch of withering white-lady that glinted with dew.

“Come on, boy,” Galen growled.

They were two days’ walk from Rocallion’s manor, and deep in the network of tracks and lanes called the Meres. This was flat, marshy country, wet underfoot, the rich grasses sprouting from saturated peat. All day the two of them had squelched through it, Galen morose, brooding, striding relentlessly for hours and then sitting silent while the mists and fen fogs gathered around him.

Picking a last berry, Raffi walked down the lane. The day was waning. Fog was thickening on the fields; in a copse on the horizon, woses chattered. Galen stared out grimly at the wood. “Hear it?”

Raffi nodded bitterly. He’d hoped they’d spend the night under those trees, but not now. Woses were filthy and noisy, and savage in packs.

“We’ll keep moving,” the keeper said.

The fog gathered, swirling out of ditches and dykes. As they trudged on farther it closed in, and they lost sight of what was behind, pushing through a rich bruised smell of berries and hawthorn, the wet branches swinging back into their faces, stumbling in hidden ruts and puddles.

Halfway up a long slow climb, Galen stopped. He turned his head. “Listen.”

Glad of a rest, Raffi hitched his pack up, breathing hard. A bat squeaked in the twilight just above him.

And then he heard it: the slow, wet clopping of a horse’s hooves. It was behind them, coming up the hill.

Galen turned, the drops of fen fog glinting in his black hair. On each side the hedge was dim, spiny, unbreakable.

“Quick!” he breathed.

They climbed hastily up through the mist, moving in a strange luminous grayness. One of the moons must be out—Cyrax, perhaps—and her pearl-pale shimmer blurred the haze.

As he hurried, Raffi sent a sense-line back, feeling the hot breath of the horse, the sweaty strength of it, the heaviness of its rider.

Then Galen grabbed his arm, tugging him into the fog. Bushes loomed up and at their base a hole, wormed by some animal. Even as he fell on his stomach and wriggled in, Raffi knew they were taking a risk, and he tore his coat recklessly off the thorns. The hedge cracked and snapped; he breathed prayers of silence at it, apologies, feeling the trees’ reluctant, displeased hush.

With a hiss of pain Galen was in too. He raised his hand and Raffi saw, with a shiver of fear, that a Kest-claw clung to him. Galen flung it off and stamped on it, over and over. Blood ran between his fingers.

“It’s bitten you!”

“I’ll live. I’ve had it before.” But Raffi knew this was bad. A Kest-claw bit deep, poisoning the blood, sending dizziness and sickness, sometimes for days. It could kill.

Galen wrapped the wound tight, crouching.

Hooves thumped close on the track. From here, deep in leaves, his ear next to the ground, Raffi felt the heavy thump in his head like a pulse. A harness jangled. The horse blew and whickered and a man coughed.

Carefully Raffi parted the leaves. He saw the horse’s legs. It had stopped.

There was no doubt it could smell them both, hear them too. Galen was still; Raffi knew he had sent a thoughtline out to the beast, was soothing it, speaking words of comfort to it. Inching to one side, he saw the rider.

A man, muffled in coats and a hood. Difficult to see; a misty figure, its head turning to look around, until a wraith of fog drifted away and the moon glimmered suddenly on armor, a heavy crossbow.

The man turned. Raffi glimpsed eyes, beard, wet hair.

Then the horse clopped on, vanishing strangely into the mist.

For a long time they crouched, hearing it toil up the invisible hill, until the harness creak faded into silence, and only the smell of its droppings hung on the air.

Galen leaned back. “Well, well.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you recognize him?”

Raffi scrambled around. “No. Who?”

“Godric. Remember him? One of Alberic’s men.”

A drop of dew slid into Raffi’s ear; chilled, he shook it out. “Alberic!”

“Who else?” Galen eased his legs out, flattening nettles. “I’m not that surprised. Carys warned us. And when a thief-lord screams out that he’ll kill you, he usually means it. He must have men out on all the roads. They’ll ask in every village too. We’ll have to go twice as carefully. And we’ll have to get to the Sekoi before they do.”

“How far to the meeting place?” Raffi asked anxiously.

“About a day. We’ll spend a few hours here and travel on before dawn. You can get the food out.”

Raffi nodded, unhappy. “But what about your hand?”

The keeper glared at him. “Leave that to me.”

As Raffi pulled some dried fish from the pack and ate it, Galen worked. He took leaves from the pocket at his waist: salve-all, Flainsglove, agrimony. Some he chewed, others he steeped carefully in cold water, binding them tight against his palm. The water should have been hot, Raffi knew. “Look,” he said, “we could make a fire. The fog will hide it.”

“No time. A few hours’ sleep, that’s all. Then I’ll wake you.”

Raffi lay down. It was useless to argue. Carys might have tried, but he knew better. There was something in Galen that was dark, untouchable: a grimness that all the unhappiness of his life had bred—the destruction of the Order, his hatred of the Watch. “A driven man,” the Sekoi had remarked once, and Raffi knew what it meant. And since Tasceron, since the Crow had possessed him, it was stronger.

He began the night prayer wearily and fell asleep in the middle of it.

When he woke he was stiff and cold and damp. It was still dark. Nettle-rash itched all down his cheek.

Galen was gone.

Instantly, Raffi was alert. He sent sense-lines sprawling and touched the keeper, close, scrambling out of the hole anxiously. In the lane it was deep midnight. The mist had gone; huge and still over the black land hung six of the great moons—Atelgar, Agramon, Pyra, Karnos, craggy Lar, distant Atterix. Fingernails and crescents of pink and blue and pearl.

Galen was standing in the blended light, his arms folded, staring up. As Raffi splashed a puddle he turned, and for a second there was something other in him that looked out, sharpening the blackness of his eyes, his long glossy hair, the muddy coat.

Then it was just Galen.

Raffi swung his pack on reluctantly.

“Slept enough?” The keeper strode off without waiting for an answer, down the moonlit track. “Sleeping and eating, boy. All you’re good for.” He swung his stick down from his back. “Now we step out. We’re meeting the Sekoi at Tastarn, and we need to get there fast.”

“Then what?”

Galen looked at him sidelong. “Then the Interrex.”

“Where do we start looking?”

Galen laughed, that sudden laugh that always turned Raffi cold. “You’ll be surprised,” he said.

ALL THE REST OF THAT NIGHT, as the moons swung slowly above them, they walked, silent; out of the dark and into the morning, the sun breaking through infinite veils of haze over watery fens. Herons rose and flapped; acres of bleak rushes moved and stirred, their seed rising in clouds. The long track led down into hollows and marshy swamps, through endless plantations of spindly willow, and as the sun rose so did the midges, biting and stinging.

At midday, worn and thirsty, they stopped. Galen was sweating, his coat hanging open, and as he ate, Raffi took a sideways look at him. The keeper was ashen, dark hair plastered to his forehead. The Kest-claw’s venom was working in him.

“You should rest.”

Galen rubbed his face with the back of his hand. “Two hours from here,” he said hoarsely, “is Tastarn. I’ll rest there.”

But they went slower, all afternoon. It grew warm, even sultry; far off in the hills thunder growled and cracked. Galen stumbled, as if the energy of it had struck him like a wave. They left the track and crossed a stream, keeping east, through woods of delicate silver sheshorn trees that threshed in the faintest stirring of air. Munching berries, Raffi watched Galen anxiously, but the keeper walked fiercely, relentlessly. It was only when the roofs of Tastarn rose up among the trees that he staggered, crumpling against a great oak by the track.

Raffi raced up. “Sit down!” he said. “Take a rest.”

Galen slid down the tree till he was sitting, and leaned his head back. He looked gray; his hands shook as he dragged the water flask to his lips, then poured it over his face.

Raffi crouched next to him. “Listen. You can’t go into the village, not like this. It’s not safe! We could both be caught too easily.”

The keeper shivered. “Are you trying to give me advice?” he snapped.

“Yes. Stay here. I’ll go in and fetch the Sekoi. He’ll be easy to find.”

There was silence. A soft warm rain began to fall on them, pattering lightly on the leaves overhead. Galen dragged his hair back. Raffi knew he was struggling to think; the fever was confusing him.

“I won’t be long. You’ve got plenty of water. You could sleep.”

“I don’t need sleep.”

“Well, rest. Can you manage some sense-lines?”

Galen glared at him. “Just about.”

“And you’d have the box.” The box was the relic, the light-weapon of the Makers they’d stolen back from Alberic. Since then neither of them had used it. The dwarf might have emptied it of power, Raffi thought suddenly. But no. He wanted it back.

Sweat or rain ran down Galen’s chin. “All right,” he whispered at last. “All right. But be back by dark, Raffi, or I’m coming in to find you.”

Nodding, Raffi slipped off the pack and pushed it into the bracken.

“Wait,” Galen said. “Leave your beads.”

For a moment Raffi hesitated; then he slipped off his two threads of blue and purple beads and put them in the keeper’s hot hand. Without them he felt strange; as if some protection had gone. But Galen was right. It would be safer.

He stood up. “Will you be all right?”

Galen glared at him, furious. Then he said, “Nightfall. Remember.”

With a grin Raffi turned and ran down the track into the soft rain, and only when he got down to the stream did he glance back.

Galen was gone. Only a quivering of branches showed where he’d moved. For a moment Raffi felt guilty, leaving him, but there was no choice. And it should be easy to find the Sekoi.

Oddly happy, he jumped the stream and crossed a field of sheep, climbing a wall into a narrow road. Small houses loomed out of the rain, a goat chewing thoughtfully outside the nearest.

He walked warily into the village. It was busy. A small market was going on in the main street; he heard and smelled it even before he turned the corner. Pens of squalling hens and slow black cattle bellowing their discomfort; men standing around a great bull; stalls of hot bread and cooked meats, clothes, garish rings and belts. He wished he had some money, just to buy something. Not wanting to speak to anyone, he wandered around, hands in pockets, watching carefully. Above the marketplace rose the ominous black Watchtower; he could see men on its roof. A group of them moved through the market too, wearing the usual dark motley of worn armor, whips tied around their waists. The crowd opened for them, no one looked around.

Raffi backed away, behind a food stall. An old man was there, his arm deep in a barrel puling out apples.

Raffi decided to take a risk. “I’m looking for a Sekoi,” he said quietly. “Tall. Brindled, a zigzag under one eye. Have you seen it?’

“Seen it!” the old man grunted, straightening. He looked at Raffi curiously. “It’s been cleaning everyone out for days. In Marcy’s, it’ll be.”

“Marcy’s?”

The old man wheezed. Then he turned Raffi around and pointed. “Marcy’s, son. Not for the likes of you.”

It was a low, squalid building, the roof patched and the windows all but smothered in ivy. One dim door hung open; even from here he could smell the stink of the place.

“Take my advice.” The old man leaned back into the barrel. “Keep your hand on your money.”

“Thanks,” Raffi muttered.

Squeezing between cattle, pigs, sausage-sellers, jugglers, he made his way up to the broken hanging shutter of a window and peered in.

The room was smoky; fires burned there, and lamps were lit. It was crammed with men, a noisy, jostling, uproarious crowd. In the middle was a table and around it some players were gambling at cards. Large piles of gold coins were stacked in front of them. Three of the players Raffi could see, the other was hidden by the passing crowd.

Then he ducked back with a sudden indrawn breath.

The horseman, Godric, was standing by the hearth. He had a gray tankard in his hand, its lid open, and he was drinking from it now, his eyes fixed on the card game.

Someone laughed. Men moved away.

And through the gap Raffi saw the fourth player, chatting and shuffling the cards with its seven fingers, a great stack of yellow gold heaped in front of it.

It was the Sekoi.

And Alberic’s man was watching its back.