Beneath the suffocating stench of the midden, she smelled his hound-scent, clean. “Wait,” she said against his throat, while behind her the flies buzzed and swarmed and crawled.
Endal let her push him back, so that all four paws were on the ground again. Melke gave the command one last time, soft and fierce, afraid he’d follow. “
Wait
.”
She turned her back on him, clenched her teeth together, and forced herself to take one step. Another step. A third. Flies rose, sluggish, as her shoes sank into the decaying refuse, sliding and squelching. They buzzed around her, becoming unseen as they landed on trousers and blouse, on skin. She brushed them off, batting with her hands, holding her breath and gagging at the same time, choking on the foulness of it all.
Where the debris was at its thickest was an opening into the den. It was a slit at waist height, wide and low, dark.
Melke glanced back at Endal. He had done as she asked, stayed and waited.
There was nothing graceful or elegant about her entry into the salamanders’ den. It was an awkward, stealthy scramble. The precious satchel of oils swung and scraped against the filth-encrusted lip of the opening, a tiny sound that almost caused her heart to stop beating.
Melke landed on her knees. She stayed crouching, her palms pressed to the rough, warm floor.
It was hot. It was dark. The rich musk of the salamanders pushed into her nose and mouth. She groped with one hand for a phial of oil. Her heart beat frantically, thumping so loudly that she heard nothing else. She was deaf and she was blind and the scent of the salamanders was thick and choking and—
The blackness became gray. Her heart beat slightly less loudly in her chest. There were no salamanders here.
Melke straightened cautiously, the phial clenched in her hand. She was in a small space, as black as pitch when she’d scrambled in, but easily seen now that her eyes had adjusted to the gloom. A rough-walled passage curved out of sight.
She inhaled a breath, and another one. Hantje had been here. He’d stood where she was standing now. He had done it, and so could she.
Had he felt it, too? That emotion beneath the fear? There was no word for it: a treacherous flicker of pleasure in her wraithness, a tingle of exhilaration, a sense of invincibility.
It was wrong, she knew, wrong and shameful, and yet inside herself, in some dark part of herself, she reveled in being a wraith.
Guide me, Moon
, she whispered soundlessly.
Don’t let me stumble from myself. Don’t let me become what I don’t wish to be.
The red clay of the walls was coarse-textured and warm to touch. Melke pressed close. She walked slowly, breathed slowly, gripping the phial in her right hand with her thumb against the cork, ready to open it and throw the scented oil. The ceiling was lost in darkness. As the passage curved, shadows slid down the walls and crept towards her across the uneven floor. And when darkness seemed about to swallow her, light came again, the glow of living flame. A torch, thrust into a bracket, fierce and hot, smoking. And beyond the torch...
This was the chamber Hantje had described, a vast cavern with a pit of fire burning in the center.
Half a dozen narrow fissures in the walls let in thin slivers of daylight. Shadows pooled on the floor and cringed away from the torches and gathered as black as storm clouds beneath the high, arching ceiling. There were only two openings: the one in which she stood and another, like a gaping mouth, which must lead to the entrance with its iron door.
Heat smothered her. Perspiration beaded on her skin and trickled down her cheek. The scent of musk was thick. She tasted it on her tongue, just as she tasted the smoke. Her eyes stung with it.
And in the glare of flame and darkness of shadow, jewels glittered. Amethyst brooches and sapphire and ruby rings, necklaces of emeralds and diamonds. The gleam of gold and glint of silver, chalices and bowls, beautifully crafted, lying tumbled on the floor. And more gold, a deep spill of coins across the red clay floor, thin and round, thick and oblong, some smooth-edged, others serrated, all stamped with the crests of ruling houses and the faces of kings and queens, living and long-dead.
And as brilliant as any jewel or precious metal, as vivid as flame, were the salamanders.
They slept, sprawled on the thickly-piled golden coins. Five of them. Four kits and their mother.
Melke’s throat was too tight to breathe. She couldn’t inhale, couldn’t exhale, could only stand with the phial clutched in her hand and stare. The mother...she was a beautiful creature, blood-red, with a cruel crest of spines. Larger than her kits, taller and stronger, more dangerous.
One of the kits opened its eyes. Its head lifted, alert, seeking. She’d seen that movement before. Hantje had mimed it.
Terror held Melke still while her heart beat loudly beneath her breastbone, once, and then the cork was gone and she threw the oil as far as she could. Aniseed. The scent came to her strongly, overriding smoke and musk. A second phial, while the salamanders came to their feet in swift, lithe movements. Peppermint. A third phial, over herself and the floor, while she moved away from the passage, sidling sideways. Peppermint again. A fourth phial, a fifth, casting them wide.
Hair rose sharply on her skin as one of the kits uttered a high, hissing shriek. Time blurred in a rush of heat and fear as the salamanders erupted into movement, sleek-skinned and agile and terrifyingly fast.
Melke made for the pit of fire in the center of the chamber, low to the floor, a spider scurrying. Her heart jerked fast in her chest as the salamanders shredded the shadows where she’d stood.
Careful. Make no noise.
A kit darted so close that she felt the brush of air. It was gone before her heart had a chance to falter. The razor-sharp claws passed over her head. It didn’t smell her, didn’t hear her.
It was hotter here, close to the flames. The sweat evaporated from her skin. Melke crouched and searched frantically with her eyes. The rough floor was hot under her palms, hot through the soles of her shoes. She saw gold coins, round and thick, emerald rings and a necklace of rubies and diamonds, an upturned silver bowl, studded with garnets. And there—
there
—where the mother had been lying, the gray-green-blue of the psaaron tears.
Melke snatched up the necklace. Smooth stones, cool, the color of the sea, deep and shadowy,
precious. Once in her hand, the necklace became unseen. She wrapped it swiftly around her wrist and turned back to the passageway.
But Bastian had been right. These were no sheep to run at random, caught in a mindless panic.
Her escape was blocked. Two kits barred the passage to the midden, two more the passage to the iron door. And between her and them was the mother, fierce and clever and furious.
She was trapped.
Melke experienced a moment of blank terror, when thought and reason were impossible, when her heart failed to beat and she was incapable of breathing. It was a moment of flaring torches and leaping flames and fierce, fire-bright eyes, of utter terror. And then clarity of thought returned. She couldn’t fail. For Liana and for Bastian, for Hantje, she had to succeed.
She had to.
The heat was stifling but Melke was cold, as cold as ice, clearheaded. She backed away from the adult salamander slowly, placing her feet with caution while she lifted the flap of the satchel and felt inside. This time she threw the phials—two, three, four—so that they hit the walls and rolled across the floor spilling oil.
The salamander jerked her head swiftly, following the sounds and movements. Her slitted nostrils flared. Peppermint and aniseed mixed with musk and smoke in a nauseating blend of smells.
A dozen quick steps and Melke was pressed against the wall, alongside one of the thin cracks that let in air and daylight. The four corks were clenched in her hand. One of the phials she’d thrown lay at her feet, empty. The scent of peppermint was sharp.
There was heat from the fire-warmed air and from the clay at her back, as hard and uneven as rock, and coolness around her wrist from the necklace of tears. And coolness inside her head, where each thought was as clear and hard as ice.
“You can’t run, little wraith. You can’t hide. There isss no essscape.” The hiss and crackle of flames was in the salamander’s voice. Her crested head turned as she sniffed the thick air and listened. “No one can sssteal from usss.”
Melke inched sideways until she felt the feather-light touch of a fresh breeze at the nape of her neck and knew that she stood in front of the crack.
“We will find you, little wraith. And when we do, you will wisssh you were dead.” Flame curled from the salamander’s lipless mouth as she laughed.
Melke ignored the words. Her head was clearer than it had ever been, her vision sharper. She saw the glinting edge of a gold coin, the reflection of firelight in the curved side of a silver chalice, the pulse beating in the salamander’s throat, fast, beneath scales as finely grained as skin.
Do it now.
Melke took one of the corks between thumb and finger. She held her breath, focused, and threw with careful precision. The cork landed on the sprawling pile of gold coins with a soft, wary
chink.
The salamander’s head snapped around, her sharp crest becoming more erect. The colors of flame pulsed brightly on her skin.
Melke turned her back on the creature and crouched and peered into the crack. It was too narrow for escape, perhaps too narrow for what she had in mind, perhaps too deep. Fresh air touched her face, a caress as light as a butterfly’s wing. It was sweet in her nostrils, clean and cool.
Please, Moon
, she begged silently as she reached her arm into the fissure. Rough clay scraped at her sleeve, snagging the cotton, and then...air, cool on her fingertips. Relief swelled in her chest. She glanced back, over her shoulder.
“Imposssible to sssteal from usss, foolisssh little wraith,” the salamander hissed. She moved lithely, in a circling, sidling movement that brought her closer to the thick spill of gold coins. Her head tilted as she scented, as she listened. The snake-like tail was taut, the slender tip arching upward.
No. Not impossible. Not if Endal’s ears are sharp enough.
Melke scratched her fingernails against the outside of the wall,
scritch, scritch, scritch.
The sound didn’t penetrate the den.
“Do you know how we punisssh thievesss, little wraith?”
Melke paid no attention to the question. She watched the salamander, and scratched, dragging her fingernails across the hard clay. Seconds were as long as hours.
Come on, Endal
. It was fifty paces, no more, to where she’d left him. Surely he’d hear.
“We have a hole for thievesss, little wraith.”
A wet nose pressed against her fingers, so sudden that Melke’s heart jerked in her chest.
The salamander laughed again and flames spilled from her mouth. “A grave, little wraith, filled with the bonesss of thievesss.”
Melke withdrew her arm from the fissure. Her head was so clear that the chamber seemed as bright as day, the shadows dissolving and the smoke drifting away. Yellow and orange flames leapt in the firepit and sooty torches flared. Golden coins reflected the firelight. She saw the glint of ruby and amethyst and emerald, the iron-red of floor and walls and arching ceiling, the fierce sheen of the salamanders’ skins, the fire in their eyes.
“No one stealsss from usss.”
She unwound the necklace from her wrist and placed it carefully around her left hand. It hung in two long loops, unseen.
“Essspecially filthy little wraithsss.”
Wrong.
Melke took another cork and held it in her right hand, lightly, carefully.
I am stealing. Now.
And she threw the cork.
It landed on the coins again, with another soft and wary
chink.
The mother salamander leapt, a movement so fast that Melke’s eyes couldn’t follow it. Curved talons slashed through the air, tossing gold coins high. A piercing shriek made the hairs on her scalp stand on end, but the clarity in her head left no space to be afraid of such fury, such speed and agility.
She stretched her left arm into the fissure, while coins spun in the air and struck the floor loudly. Her fingertips touched Endal’s wet nose again. She felt the warmth of his muzzle, the prickle of whiskers and the dome of his skull. It was a scrabble to push her fingers over his ears.
The coolness of the necklace was gone. Endal had it now.
The salamander shrieked again and more coins dashed against the floor. Melke withdrew her arm. She pressed her face into the crack. Clay was hard and gritty against her cheeks and sunlight bright in her eyes, blurring her vision. “Go home,” she whispered. “Find Bastian.”
The dark shape that was Endal didn’t move. If he whined, she didn’t hear him.
There was silence behind her as the last of the coins stopped rolling over the floor. “Tricksss,” the salamander said, rage burning in her voice. “The little wraith playsss tricksss.’“
Melke took another cork in her fingers, blindly, still watching Endal. Had he heard her?“
Go!
” It was a fierce whisper. She had succeeded, had stolen the necklace and given it to the hound, and clear in her mind was what she had to do next: confuse the salamanders with scents and sounds, draw them away from the—