Mihn watched Seliasei as the Aspect, followed closely by Morghien, made her way around the earthwork and disappeared from view, then he shook himself and followed them until they reached a corner of the compound that was, according to Xeliath’s description, in easy reach of her bedroom.
Less than a hundred yards away stood a great circle of tents where the household were celebrating Meqao’s Day. Mihn could hear voices raised, haunting and beautiful in the cool summer air. He smiled slightly, remembering how much he had enjoyed feast days as a child. Without thinking, his lips began to move and silently join in. The song the Yeetatchen were singing was one of the oldest known, written before the Great War, when Amavoq and her Aspects regularly walked among the Yeetatchen people. The rapturous silence that greeted the singers at its close tugged at his heart.
‘Well, lad,’ Morghien said at last, ‘up you climb.’ He gestured to the fat creeper entwined around the oak-bough wall.
Mihn gave the creeper an experimental tug. It seemed sound. ‘I hope she’s right about being able to make it out of here by herself,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t fancy having to lower a white-eye down on my rope.’ He checked again for servants or guards, then began to climb. There were plenty of handholds and within half a minute he’d slipped a knife up between the shutters and opened the catch.
He looked down at Morghien, barely seen in the shadow of the wall, who nodded. Mihn pushed open the window and slid over the window sill onto a large rug. He looked around, cataloguing the spartan room. There was an ornately carved bed, with posts carved like bent branches, leading up to a canopy of leaves above, and a massive chest along the wall opposite the bed.
The only personal details Mihn could see were a silver-backed hairbrush on the chest and a stuffed horse, a child’s toy, on the foot of the bed. Mihn took a step towards it; the small horse looked old and well loved. No doubt Xeliath kept it still because she could no longer ride in real life, something any Yeetatchen would mourn.
A sound came from the bed, hoarse and strained, as if the voice was rarely used. Mihn thought perhaps it was his name being spoken, but he couldn’t be sure. He took a step closer, still not able to make out who was under the dark blankets. He was afraid to speak in case they had made a mistake and he was in the wrong room.
The person in the bed moved and suddenly a soft light spread out over the blanket. Mihn froze; he’d spent enough time around Isak to know this wasn’t lamplight.
‘Xeliath?’ he whispered. The light grew, mapping out the lines of her body under the blanket.
‘You are Mihn?’ she croaked, her hand twitching as she struggled to prop herself up. He strained to hear the musical notes of the Yeetatchen dialect, but she sounded more like a withered old woman than a girl in her prime. He tried to reply, but the words caught in his throat for a moment as he studied the ruin of her face in the magical light. Her short-cropped hair exposed her left side, and the damaged flesh, the slack muscles underneath trembling occasionally, on the brink of spasm. The eyelid drooping over her left eye hid the tiny pupil, and made the bright white iris of her right eye all the more startling.
‘I -yes, I’m Mihn,’ he said before realising that he’d spoken in his original tongue, a language he’d not used aloud in years. He repeated the words in Yeetatchen and saw the beginnings of a smile.
‘He didn’t say you’d be handsome.’
Mihn looked down, caught between embarrassment and amusement. ‘Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.’ A floorboard outside the room creaked and the latch clicked, and Mihn covered the ground in two quick steps to reach the person entering. He smashed an elbow into the person’s head, a boy, he saw, who dropped like a stone. Mihn caught him just before he clattered to the floor and eased him quietly to the ground, then closed and bolted the door against further interruptions.
Xeliath grunted in effort as she tried to get up, but Mihn ignored her while he checked out the servant boy. He was out cold, but hadn’t suffered any lasting damage. Mihn pulled a length of rope from around his waist and a cloth from around his arm and soon had the youth bound and gagged. Then he took the boy’s small knife from his belt and shoved him under the bed.
‘Are you finished now?’ Xeliath asked.
‘Not quite.’ He worked the chest onto the rug, then dragged it to the door. Like that it wouldn’t be enough to stop a determined man, but Mihn was inventive: he jammed the servant’s knife and one of his own spare blades between the floorboards right up against the chest so it was wedged tight up against the door -it wouldn’t hold forever, but it would give them a few precious minutes. He chuckled to himself. Close inspection of his knife would show its local origin, courtesy of the merchant who had unwittingly provided it a few days before. A little bit of luck and a few hot tempers should send the chase in entirely the wrong direction.
Xeliath had succeeded in pushing back the blankets. Laid out next to her was a man’s riding jerkin and trousers. ‘You’ll have to help me dress myself,’ she said, her voice a little stronger than it had been at first. She pulled feebly at the cotton shift she wore. ‘I can’t manage alone.’
‘My Lady—’ he began, before his heart melted.
She’s a white-eye who’s been crippled
, he reminded himself.
She’ll have been stronger than any normal man under her father’s command until her destiny was linked with Isak’s; this must be doubly painful.
‘I understand, my Lady.’
He went about the task as gently as time permitted, and Xeliath never made a sound, even though her pain was written on her face. Her right side looked perfect, but her left arm was curled in on itself, the tight fist bent around something hard and smooth, pushing the knuckles against her bony hip. The arm was the most damaged part of her body, as if whatever had happened had started in her fist, then spread. Her leg was not badly affected, but it was wasted from under-use, the veins showing clearly through the dry, flaky skin. She stared intently at the pattern of oak and elm leaves carved into the canopy, enduring the manhandling with her lips pinched together.
When Mihn had finished, he sat her up to slip on her boots and lace them up.
At last she looked Mihn directly in the eye. ‘What is he like?’ she asked softly.
‘Lord Isak?’ Mihn was surprised by the question. ‘Don’t you know?’
‘I know what he looks like in his dreams,’ she whispered, ‘but sadly, dreams are only that. They tell me nothing of who he is.’
Mihn helped her upright and let her take her weight. After a little unsteadiness, she looked able to walk. ‘Lord Isak is a young man trying to be a good lord,’ he said after a moment. ‘He’s trying to understand what’s been done to his life.’
‘He fights it, though.’
‘That’s only natural, isn’t it? As a white-eye?’
‘It is in his blood to do so, but it is not always the answer. He may need others to show him that.’
Mihn hesitated, disturbed by the direction of her thoughts. ‘Let’s get you out of here so you can tell him yourself.’ He guided her towards the window, opened the shutter a little and peered out. The area around looked empty of armed men. ‘Can you climb?’
‘I’ll manage.’
‘Are you sure?’ Mihn looked at her sceptically until Xeliath took his hand with her good one. Her fingers, shaking a little as he had helped her out of bed, now clamped around his wrist and began to crush it. After a few moments, Mihn gave a gasp of pain and she released him.
‘I get the point,’ he said dryly. ’You’re still a white-eye.’
‘Good boy.’
‘But without meaning to offend you, my Lady, you are going to find it hard to climb with only one arm. Your left is completely useless, isn’t it?’
She grimaced as her shoulder spasmed, as though responding to Mihn’s question of its own volition. With her teeth gritted against the pain, Xeliath brought her left arm up to chest height, visibly shaking. With what looked like great difficulty, she turned her wrist so Mihn could see what she held.
‘I think we should bring it with us nonetheless,’ she whispered.
Mihn hadn’t been able to identify it as he’d struggled to fit Xeliath’s ruined arm into the shirt sleeve, though it felt smooth, and as warm as her own skin, for all its solidity. Now, in the dull moonlight, he saw a glassy surface and his heart went cold. The last time he had seen something like that, it had been fused to Eolis, Lord Isak’s sword . . .
The Crystal Skull given to Xeliath had done the same thing, only this one had fused itself to the hand with which she’d first gripped it. It had probably attached itself to the bones within as well. To take the Skull of Dreams from Xeliath would require more than theft: it would need mutilation.
Mihn suddenly realised Lord Isak had been right to send him here. Sooner or later someone would try to take the Skull from her, and Xeliath would most likely die in the process.
‘May I be allowed to tie a rope around you, in case you slip? I promised my Lord I would bring you safely to him.’
The young woman shook her head. ‘I have been imprisoned here for the best part of a year; I will escape it by my own strength or die trying. The wishes of the man whose fault this is do not concern me.’ With no small amount of difficulty, she fought her way down the wall, clinging fast to the creeper as she searched for secure footholds. Her gritted determination paid off and she half-fell into Morghien’s waiting arms.
They set off by fits and starts as rainclouds began to gather above. With Seliasei’s ghostly assistance, they got to the edge of the forest as the first fat drops began to clatter through the leaves. Morghien led the way, a throwing axe ready in his hand, while Xeliath allowed Mihn to walk at her side, a secure arm around her waist in case her underused leg muscles failed her.
‘Thieves, are they?’ said a woman’s voice behind them.
Mihn stumbled in shock, almost knocking Xeliath to the floor, while Morghien whirled around with his axe raised. Mihn could do little to help his companion beyond turning Xeliath so she could see who had spoken, but Morghien did nothing once he’d raised his weapon.
Standing a few yards behind them were three young women in long dresses. They had hair curling to their waists. The middle one had skin the same shade as Xeliath’s. The girl on the left was a rich ebony, and the one on the right had a silvery sheen to her patterned coffee skin that caught the moonlight.
‘Thieves they must be, sisters,’ answered the right, smiling like a cat at Morghien as he put himself between Xeliath and the strange women. ‘Thieves stealing the jewel of our household, I think.’
‘And on our father’s day as well,’ continued the ebony-skinned woman. Her flesh was so dark Mihn could see little of her face beyond sharp little teeth and eyes that flashed green. ‘Shall we permit it?’
‘How could we permit it?’ purred the middle sister. ‘Stolen from our domain, when we are bound to protect her family? No, they must be punished.’
‘We’ve stolen nothing,’ Morghien said, prompting all three women to turn their hungry attentions solely on him.
‘Strangers come and creep in through windows, hurrying away before the alarm is sounded, with a noble child under their cloaks. Thieves, we think,’ she spat, with undisguised venom. ‘Avoiding the guards is easy, but us? Not so; we can sense all that goes on in these parts, and how could we not notice a foreign spirit walking our fields?’
Out of the corner of his eye, Mihn saw a brief white flicker around Morghien’s head.
Seliasei
, he thought.
If she’s worried, perhaps we should be too.
‘They steal nothing, wolf-cubs,’ Xeliath replied firmly. ‘Leave and let us pass.’
The middle sister spared her a pitying look, all the time flexing her long fingers impatiently. ‘You do not order us, we grant that boon only to your father.’
‘Wolf-cubs,’ Mihn blurted out. ‘You must be the Daughters of Meqao, the Aspects of Amavoq bound to this place.’
‘We are,’ said the sister with ash-bark skin, ‘and we do not care who you are, so be careful of how you speak to us.’
‘He’ll speak to you however he wishes,’ Xeliath snapped, ‘and you will run back to your trees and hide there until we are far away. In the morning, when you eventually appear before my father, you will say I have run off to be married to a soldier I met when he presented me at court, and he should not follow. He will hear from me soon enough.’
The sisters took a step forwards, hungry expressions showing long teeth and hanging tongues. ‘And why should we do that, little one?’
‘Because otherwise you are my enemies.’
As Xeliath spoke, Mihn felt a sudden warmth in the arm held close to him. He could feel a fire building inside her, one that sent a surge of prickling energy rushing through his body as well. He could see the sisters felt it too, and suddenly they were nervous.
‘What do you have in your hand, little one?’ the middle sister asked, rather more uncertain now. A burst of white light came from Xeliath’s side, shining from the Skull through the ruined hand. The sisters howled and staggered back, shielding their eyes from the light. The lightest-skinned of the three dropped to her knees with a wail that stopped only when Xeliath halted the surge of magic. Thinking quickly, Mihn was ready to take her weight when the effects of the coursing energy hit Xeliath and she sagged onto his shoulder.
‘I am blessed by your mistress, Lady Amavoq herself. Be content you are doing her will in helping me.’
The three sisters stared at her fearfully, then turned and ran as one. They had gone just a few paces when their bodies became insubstantial and vanished to nothing.
Xeliath panted furiously and forced herself fully upright again.
Morghien gave her a curious look and laughed. ‘Lady Amavoq, that great romantic,’ he said and laughed again.
Xeliath gave him an angry glare and he kept his mouth shut as he sauntered past her and back into the forest. An obscure little smile played across his face for the first time in weeks.