Silvermay (23 page)

‘It's a symbol, Ryall. We can't save Lucien without it.'

Where was Lucien? I wanted him back in my arms. He was what mattered. Ryall's face showed he didn't believe me any more than Theron had done, and I expected him to say,
Let's go now, while we still can
. Only a fool would resist such common sense. But he surprised me, as he'd done many times since Tamlyn had left me in his care. He took the dagger gingerly from my fingers, and kneeling beside Theron's body, slit open his shirt.

‘Nothing on his chest or stomach,' he announced. ‘Help me turn him over.'

I didn't want to touch the body, but it had to be done. Theron might have been lying, after all.

There was nothing tattooed on his back. Ryall ran the razor-edged blade down the seam of his pants and pulled off the boots. Nothing on his legs or hidden under his feet. Only the man's underdrawers remained.

‘Could be on his bottom,' said Ryall. ‘It's not a place you can easily see for yourself, is it.' He held the knife ready.

‘No, don't,' I said. ‘If Theron's mother did tattoo the symbol on his backside, the first person to change his clothes after her death would have seen it and so Theron would have surely known it was there. Yet he seemed so certain it was nowhere on his skin. His mother needed to keep the tattoo out of sight and at the same time make sure it remained forever, in case her son did go to Erebis Felan …'

I was a mother, too, not by blood but because of the tasks I'd performed so many times for Lucien. I'd cleaned the mess from his bottom, washed him from head to toe. Didn't I know every part of a baby's body?

‘Give me the dagger,' I said to Ryall.

He handed it over with a questioning squint. I set to work without a word. He'd get his answer soon enough.

‘Ah, of course,' he said when he saw where I'd turned my attention.

With my knee almost touching Theron's ear, I sliced at his hair, cutting away long hanks with no care for the mess I was making. When there was just untidy stubble, I began to shave his scalp more carefully, and when I cleaned the hair from the back of his head, there it was: an intricate outline no bigger than a coin tattooed just below the crown. Just as Ansuela's mother had told me, it was a bird, although not one I recognised. Its wings and shoulders were like a hawk's, but there were no talons on its feet and its beak was straight rather than curved. It was quite beautiful in a way, although this was no time to study it closely.

‘She must have planned to tell him about it when he grew older and could make his own decisions,' I said, ‘but she never got the chance. Poor thing. She's been dead fifty years, and now her son's dead, too. But her love might still save a little boy from the life of a Wyrdborn.'

Then I did something gruesome, something I could never have done if I hadn't already plunged a dagger into a man's heart. We'd found the talisman and we were taking it with us.

‘Silvermay, no, you can't!' said Ryall when he guessed what I was up to.

This didn't stop me, so he turned away and I could tell he was fighting to keep himself from vomiting. Somehow, his disgust made the task easier. Using the
deadly blade, I made four long cuts in Theron's scalp. They immediately leaked blood, but this was no time to be squeamish. Blocking the horror of what my hands were doing, I sliced away the square of skin, being careful not to damage the tattoo. Then I scraped the bleeding flesh from the underside and slipped the square into my pocket.

‘Now we can leave Ledaris,' I said.

R
yall bribed the gatekeeper with coins he'd taken from Theron's pocket and, an hour after midnight, we passed once more beneath the grinning corpse of the thief.

‘If they catch us, I'll die up there beside him,' he whispered as we hurried away.

‘What do they do to murderers?'

‘I'd hate to guess, especially when they find his head shaved and a patch missing from his scalp.'

Had I really done that? At the time I had forced the revulsion aside. Now, it rolled in around me and, like Ryall before me, I had to fight to hold onto my dinner.

Fear of being captured was enough to keep us moving without a break until dawn. Lucien woke and began to cry with the cold. There would be no comfort for my little Smiler until the sun rose. Despite his constant complaints
from the harness behind me, my thoughts were focused on what we should do next. Theron had sent a message to Coyle telling him we were in Ledaris. Would he set out after us himself? Hallig was closer. Coyle had probably sent his own message:
You've been tricked, Hallig. Stop tracking Tamlyn and go after the baby in Ledaris
. Hallig was probably on his way already so it was doubly important to be a good distance from that benighted city. But our escape brought a new problem.

‘How is Tamlyn going to find us?' I said to Ryall as a rose-pink dawn began to bloom on the horizon. ‘He's expecting to join us in Ledaris.'

‘We could leave word in the villages along the road,' he said.

‘Yes, but we'd risk Hallig getting those messages instead.'

Ryall shrugged and made no more suggestions, and when we finally stopped to enjoy the sun on our faces, we still had no plan to warm our spirits.

We slept a little in a clearing off the road after eating the bread and bacon that Ansuela had given us as a parting gift. ‘I wish I could give you more,' she'd said. ‘You've freed us from the thankless servitude of this house.' Along with the food for Ryall and me, Ansuela had included two little bowls of stewed apple for Lucien. One of those was already empty.

We walked on through the rest of the day and by the time we settled into a different clearing deeper in the forest for the night, I'd made up my mind.

‘We're staying here until Tamlyn finds us,' I told Ryall. ‘No villagers know we're here, and you must be more careful than ever when you steal from the farmers' gardens. The rest of our food you'll have to trap.'

He grinned confidently as though this was no challenge at all. Once he'd made a fire, he set to work using its light to see by and the rope he'd brought with him from Theron's room of torments to create his traps.

I didn't tell him the rest of what I'd decided until he'd returned from checking the traps the next morning.

‘It's your turn to mind Lucien.'

He looked as though I'd asked him to stand on his head.

‘I'm serious. I have a job of my own to do. Watch him until I get back.'

We were camped at the base of a rocky knoll that rose steadily to the height of the trees surrounding it. Nothing much grew on the outcrops of granite and that was why I climbed to the highest point, which let me look out over the treetops to the horizon. More importantly, from there I'd be easily visible from above; a bird's-eye view, you might say. On that first morning, I scoured the cloudless sky, but, apart from the occasional crow and
some swallows darting playfully about as they chased insects, I saw nothing.

With too much time for thinking, I began to remember what I had done two nights before and prompted by these ghoulish images my hands found the tattoo in my pocket. Talisman, tattoo, it was still a patch of skin that I'd sliced from the head of a man who'd been alive and breathing only minutes before — until I'd killed him. If I ever did return to Haywode, to my parents, to Hespa, would they see the blood on my soul?

Suddenly I was afraid to be alone on this rocky perch in full view of the gods. The person I most wanted to see, to break that loneliness, to soothe away the loathing I felt for myself, was Tamlyn. But he would not come today.

‘Time to go back,' I muttered, standing up from the hard stone I'd used as a seat. Lucien would be demanding the last of the apple by now, and there was always Ryall to talk to.

I played with Lucien all afternoon and, more than talking with Ryall, it was Lucien who helped me forget the blood-red stains on the floor of Theron's room.

Feeding from a spoon meant he was eating more than ever. And growing faster than ever, as well. His grunts and cries were forming into sounds by this time, and I found myself chatting to him as though he could understand.

‘Do you miss your real mother, little Smiler?' I asked him. ‘Or have you forgotten her?'

To a hungry baby, the woman who posted food into his mouth was his mother.

‘Mmm, mmm,' he said.

‘Not mumma, Maymay,' I prompted him.

He ignored me and tried different sounds, as though he was impatient to test them all.

When he drifted off to sleep, I watched him for a few minutes, wondering whether I would stare down at my own baby one day. Would I love it as much as I loved my Smiler?

 

The following day, I climbed the hill again and immediately sighted a hawk, which flew directly overhead, inspecting me with its arrogant eye. But it ignored my signals and again I had to fight disappointment.

Ryall had bagged two pheasants and a woodpigeon overnight and dug up some turnips from an abandoned field. Turnips weren't my favourite vegetable, but cooked in the coals to soften the flesh and mashed in one of Ansuela's empty bowls, it proved a hit with Lucien.

‘Honestly, you'd eat anything I put on the end of a spoon, wouldn't you?' I teased him.

He answered by grabbing at the spoon, and squealing with glee when I let him have it. Ryall laughed
along with Lucien when he brandished the toy he'd won from me.

‘He tried to crawl while you were gone,' he said. ‘I can't believe how quickly he's growing.'

To Ryall it was just a statement of wonder, but to me it was a reminder of the things I was keeping at bay. How long before all those locked-away fears broke free?

My third morning on the rock-strewn hill was no more fruitful than the days before, but on the fourth, when I waved to a distant speck in the sky, it began to grow, and when it was closer still I recognised the powerful beat of a hawk's wings coming straight towards me.

But when I took my eyes from the approaching hawk for a moment, I saw a figure hurrying towards me as fast as the slope would allow. It wasn't Ryall. This was an older man; Theron's age or close to it. He had no sword in his hand but there was a knife sheathed inside his belt.

He glanced up, saw the hawk rapidly swooping closer and quickened his pace. ‘Get down. Hide your face!' he called.

I'd stood here four days in a row to do exactly the opposite and so I remained where I was.

Moments later he reached me and only then did I see how determined he was to make me obey. Before I could jump back, he grabbed me around the waist with one
arm, used the other to flip the legs out from beneath me, and sat me on the hard ground. Ryall had taught me a few new curses in the days we'd spent together and every one of them got an airing on the hilltop as the man held me down with a knee on my chest. As the hawk fluttered majestically onto a boulder nearby the stranger slipped off the cloak he was wearing and threw it over me from head to toe, replacing his knee quickly to keep me pinned.

‘Let me go!' I demanded.

He pressed harder, using his hands on my shoulders to hold me down. It wasn't painful enough to draw a scream, but it was unpleasant all the same.

‘Stay still and say nothing,' he hissed. ‘I'm here to help you, Silvermay. In a few moments the bird will forget why it landed here and take off.'

He knew my name! What should I make of that?

I stopped fighting him and instead looked along a crease in the cloth of his cloak that let me see the hawk. It was staring quizzically at the man who held me down. Then, as quickly as it had arrived, the hawk was gone again and at last the man let me up.

‘What do you think you're doing?' I shouted while slapping the dust from my dress and hands.

He offered no apology. ‘Thank the gods I found you in time. There are hawks searching half of Athlane.'

‘Yes, looking for me,' I said.

Then a terrible thought struck me. Tamlyn wasn't the only Wyrdborn who could call birds of prey with his will. What a fool I'd been! Four days I'd shown myself on this hilltop and never once had I imagined that Coyle or Hallig might try to find me the same way.

I waited for the man to say as much. He didn't.

‘They are commanded by Tamlyn Strongbow,' he said, staring after the hawk, which had become a tiny dot in the sky.

Had I misheard him? There was something I didn't understand here. ‘Tamlyn. Yes, that's what I was hoping. I
want
Tamlyn to find me,' I said in fury.

‘And you're lucky he won't, not with help from that bird, anyway. If our luck holds, you'll stay out of his hands altogether.'

‘What are you talking about? Tamlyn's a good man. He's been more than good to me and to —' I stopped. What should I say to this stranger? Should I even mention Nerigold and Lucien?

I took a moment to look him over. Not as tall as Tamlyn, and much older, of course. His hair was shot through here and there by flecks of silver that showed his age, but he must have been good-looking in his younger days, I guessed, and he was still fit and strong, as the stiffness in my shoulders and chest reminded me. He was dressed simply in a leather vest and brown britches like
those my father wore when he visited Vonne. Despite the dust of many days' travel, the clothes were well-made, especially his boots. But no matter how he was dressed, what he'd said was still ridiculous and he seemed to know it.

‘You don't believe me, do you, because Tamlyn treated you kindly, just as he was good to Nerigold before you. But have you ever wondered why he worked so hard to keep you all out of his father's hands?'

‘He did it for his mother; at first, anyway,' I answered. ‘The Lady Ezeldi is different. She had done her best to resist her Wyrdborn nature and she encouraged Tamlyn to do the same.'

‘That would be news to those who know her better than you do. Ask anyone in Vonne and they'll tell you Ezeldi is a scheming Wyrdborn like the rest, and Tamlyn is every inch her son. The pair of them must have discovered some clue to the importance of Nerigold's baby — by spying on Coyle most likely — and they've been trying to claim the child for themselves ever since.'

‘That can't be true. It's
not
true. I don't believe you.'

‘I can understand that. You trust Tamlyn because he's protected you. I can hardly blame you for that. But it's time the veil was lifted from your eyes. Tamlyn is determined to control that baby's powers, especially now that he knows what they promise.'

This man knew about our visit to the diggings and what we'd seen in the chamber. What did that prove?

‘How do you know all this?' I snapped. ‘You have no right to accuse Tamlyn like that. If I trust him, it's because he's earned my trust. All you've done is throw me onto the ground. Who are you?'

He accepted my anger without flinching. ‘My name is Miston Dessar,' he said with a little bow. He was expecting me to recognise the name and waited to see as much in my eyes. ‘Arnou was both my cousin and my colleague. Did you know he's dead?'

‘Yes. Hallig murdered him,' I muttered, adding, ‘I'm sorry,' before realising how inadequate the word sounded. ‘Are you a scholar like him?'

He nodded. ‘Along with others, I helped the king understand the reports and sketches that Arnou sent to Vonne from the diggings in Nan Tocha. I was due to join him there, in fact. With each report, it was becoming clearer that the find was of great significance. Then came word of my cousin's brutal killing and the king began to worry the discoveries were a threat to his reign. He set out for Nan Tocha himself and ordered us all to go with him.'

‘The king has seen the mosaics, then. And so have you,' I said, becoming drawn into his story despite the things he'd said about Tamlyn.

‘All of us. Between us, we were able to decipher more from the pictures than Arnou had written of in his reports. There were details he missed out, vital details.'

‘I don't like the way you said that,' I told him bluntly.

‘Neither did the king. He ordered a search for the child immediately. A messenger was sent to Vonne to call for more hands, but those of us already at Nan Tocha were dispatched without delay to all parts of Athlane, even scholars like me. It's only chance that I'm the one who's come across you this way — and none too soon. You were about to deliver yourself into the hands of the wretch who's tricked you so cruelly.'

‘No, you're wrong. I won't believe it. Tamlyn wouldn't betray me like that. He …'

I'd been going to say
he loves me
, but that was mostly a dream, and here, on this desolate outcrop of granite, I had to rely on what I could prove.

‘If you're right, why didn't he simply take Lucien as soon as he was born?' I said. ‘Nerigold was too weak to stop him. Why roam the countryside with a sick woman to slow him down when Coyle's men were already chasing him?'

‘Have you stood before the mosaics yourself, Silvermay?' asked Miston Dessar.

‘Yes, and I wish I'd kept my eyes closed.'

‘But you didn't, of course. They make grim viewing,
I have to agree. But do you remember the image to the right of Nerigold's face? It showed the baby being placed in the hands of an armoured figure, his face hidden in a barbed helmet.'

‘I saw it.'

‘There were words above it.'