Elfling (U.S. Edition)

by Corinna Turner

  PRAISE FOR CORINNA TURNER’S BOOKS

  LIBERATION was nominated for the Carnegie Medal Award 2016.

  I AM MARGARET was one of 2 runners-up for the ‘Teenage and Children’s Fiction’ CALA Award 2016 and LIBERATION won 3rd place for ‘Teen and Young Adult Fiction’ in the CPA 2016 Book Awards.

  PRAISE FOR ELFLING

  I was instantly drawn in.

  EOIN COLFER, author of the Artemis Fowl books

  PRAISE FOR I AM MARGARET

  Great style—very good characters and pace. Definitely a book worth reading, like The Hunger Games.

  EOIN COLFER, author of the Artemis Fowl books

  An intelligent, well-written and enjoyable debut from a young writer with a bright future.

  STEWART ROSS, author of The Soterion Mission

  PRAISE FOR SOMEDAY

  “Someday is an important novella that highlights the largely unsung heroism of persecuted Christians, and should make those of us in 'safe' countries consider: are we ready to count the cost?”

  REGINA DOMAN, author of The Fairytale Novels

  PRAISE FOR DRIVE!

  “A cross between Jurassic World and Mad Max! I read it 3 times in 2 days!”

  STEVEN R. MCEVOY, Blogger

  ~+~

  ELFLING

  CORINNA TURNER

  US Edition

  Copyright 2018 Corinna Turner

  ~+~

  Contents

  1. Raven

  2. Winter’s Tail

  3. The Price of a Ring

  4. The Duke of Albany

  5. Lover’s Rings

  6. A House of Stone

  7. Siridean

  8. The Portrait

  9. Warrior

  10. Mistress of the House

  11. Elfindale

  12. The Mirror

  13. Confession

  14. Baron Hendfield

  15. Witch Child

  16. Grace

  17. A Horse of My Own

  18. Of Bolts and Brandy

  19. Acorns and Willow

  20. Sacrifice

  21. Truth

  22. In Search of Hope

  23. The Fate of the Dog

  24. The Angel in the Graveyard

  25. The Cure

  26. Serapion the Groom

  27. The Wild Places

  28. Memory

  29. Lord Ystevan

  30. Sir Allen Malster

  31. The Guardian of the Fort

  32. Of Safyr and Sorcery

  33. The Clothes’ Problem

  34. The Audience

  35. Cutridge Lane

  36. The Fort of Torr Elkyn

  37. Of Curses and Creation

  38. The Pursuit of Lord Alliron

  39. A Guardian’s Duty

  40. Nightmares

  41. Lord Vandalis

  42. Hounsdiche

  43. Mercy

  Epilogue

  Other Books by Corinna Turner

  DRIVE! Sneak Peek

  I AM MARGARET Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Boring Legal Bit

  ~+~

  US Edition, License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ~+~

  CHAPTER 1

  RAVEN

  I was hungry. So hungry that most twelve-year-old girls of my rank would have been crying, throwing a tantrum, or fainting. Perhaps all three. Not me. I was thinking what to do about my hunger. I began each day with the same all-consuming thought.

  I sat on a thin blanket under the overhang of an old, crooked stone house near Smart’s Quay. I had to bend my head to sit up, but I scarcely registered the minor discomfort. Rain splashed from the eaves to the cobbles of the street only a few feet in front of my nose, but under here it was fairly dry; a good sleeping place. I contemplated the various possible solutions to this particular morning’s hunger, until a tiny scuffling noise preceded a whiskered nose from a narrow crack in the wall. When I remained motionless, the rat scurried almost soundlessly to the side of the blanket, attracted by a few crumbs so tiny even I hadn’t noticed them.

  My hands shot out and seized the rat, wrapping around its plump body. Ignoring the squealing and the snapping teeth, I gripped the head and twisted, feeling the sudden give as the vertebrae in its neck parted company. Laying the twitching rodent beside me, a rare smile snuck onto my face.

  So early in the morning and I had already acquired my day’s meal! I would take the rat along to the Water Lane cookhouse, where I would skin it, cook it, and eat it. The bones would go to Old Joe the gluemaker as payment; the skin to the skin man in return for a precious half copper. In the new language I had learned since my mother’s death, a half copper equaled a piece of bread. If I was extravagant, I would eat it for supper. Otherwise it would go some way towards staving off the hunger on the morrow.

  The smile fading, I shuffled to one side, picked up the blanket and knotted it around my shoulders like a cloak. The rat I tucked out of sight in my jerkin. I wriggled out into the street, straightened and froze.

  Two urchins stood waiting. Unlike me, who merely dressed as a boy, these were actual boys, bigger than I. Born in the gutter and never slept on a feather bed in their lives. They would cut my throat for the rat.

  “We heard a squeaking,” said one boy, holding out a hand, his eyes cold.

  “Do you see anything?” I said—running even before I had finished speaking.

  The boys followed close on my heels. So close that when my bare foot slipped from under me on a slimy cobblestone the first was on me immediately. As I fell I caught sight of a mangy dog lurking by the side of the street. I struck the ground painfully, one hand already inside my jerkin. The boy landed on top of me, a knife appearing in his hand like magic. Dragging the rat free I flung it towards the dog, which moved in a brown streak. The urchin had a choice of cutting my throat or getting the rat. It was no choice at all; he was already in mid-air after the meal. Back on my feet even as the rat struck the ground, I bolted.

  I stopped in the comparative shelter of a lopsided building off Lowe Lane, wet, tired and sore. I didn’t bother contemplating the downturn in the day’s fortunes, too busy checking over my clothing. My knees and elbow were badly bruised, but nothing was torn, so I headed for a disreputable inn I knew where the landlord did not keep a porter on and usually allowed me to earn a few pence carrying the luggage.

  When I arrived outside the Fylpot Arms, the cheap coach was throwing out a passenger at the door. It was nothing personal; that was just how the cheap coaches went about things. The passenger, having gained the cobbles, ducked as his two cases were thrown down beside him. The coachman flogged his broken-down horses for a good few seconds before they were convinced to move and the coach swayed unsteadily away through the wet streets of London town.

  I was already in motion. Stopping beside the passenger I put on my stolid, dependable expression and, with a tug of my forelock, took hold of the cases.

  “I’ll get those, sir,” I said, in my feigned gutter accent. Was it really feigned? When had I last spoken as myself?

  The traveler did not want to spend money on a bag boy, I could tell. He had planned to carry them quickly into the inn himself. Recoiling from appearing miserly when actually put to it, with a poor attempt at grace he gave me a curt nod and entered the inn, lookin
g back only three times to check the luggage was following.

  I dragged the heavy cases up the stairs, appreciating why the man had ducked their descent from the coach top. But my scrawny frame was up to it, and I set them down carefully in the room and waited. I only ever stuck my hand out as a last resort, it frequently seemed to do more harm than good. The traveler noticed my continued presence with a flash of irritation, dug a coin from his purse and threw it in my general direction.

  I caught it and left quickly. It was a good-sized copper, and I was hungry enough that I went straight down to the inn kitchen and swapped it for a half copper and a chunk of bread. Retreating to the inn courtyard to eat my meal and watch for the next traveler, I eyed another urchin lingering there. Did he also have the landlord’s permission to carry bags?

  The bread was finished all too quickly, as always, and I sat wishing another traveler would arrive. More at that moment for the distraction from my own thoughts, than for the coin I could earn. Only when I had some amount of food in my belly was I troubled by thoughts of the future. It was the only time I could afford to be.

  I had lasted three years on the streets, three long, painful years since my mother died and my uncle threw me from the place that had always been my home.

  “Be gone, witch child,” he’d snarled at me, “or I’ll duck you in the pond till you’re clean and cold.”

  Even at nine years old I’d recognized a death threat when I heard one and I hadn’t tried to go back. Of course, I had always known my uncle hated me, but to be thrown from my own home to what should’ve been almost certain death? It had been utterly unexpected. The house in which my uncle now lived was mine, was it not? My rank came to me from my mother and there was nothing legal to take the property away from me.

  Legally, though, my uncle was my guardian. No doubt he assumed me dead long since and it was a fair assumption. Serapion the urchin had no more chance of reclaiming what belonged to Lady Serapia Ravena than the morning’s rat had of breathing again.

  In fact, Serapion the urchin had only one chance in the world and it was tied around my waist, carefully concealed under my clothing...

  I looked up as the kitchen staff burst from the doorway, chattering excitedly to one another and followed by the cook, who swept something ahead of her with an expression of grim courage. They were calling for the landlord and I darted over to see what the to-do was about, slipping to the front. I’d have seized any distraction.

  The heap of ash was tipped over the doorstep onto the cobbles of the yard. The landlord came striding out of the building even as I crouched to peer more closely at the tiny creature floundering weakly in the midst of the soot. As grey as ash, it resembled a bird, for it had a curved, beaky upper lip and a pair of little things that were clearly undeveloped wings on its back. But it was entirely featherless and had two tiny front paws, just now making feeble movements in the ash. Fragments of broken, blackened eggshell lay around it, showing it to be newborn. Or rather, new-hatched. I had never seen anything so intriguing.

  “A demon-creature, sir, a demon-creature in the fire...”

  “I was sweeping out the grate, sir, and I sees it...”

  “It ain’t nat’ral, sir, ain’t right...”

  “Shall we have a priest, sir? Don’t like the thought of it otherwise...”

  A priest? Whatever for? I’d sensed evil often enough, and there was nothing of it here. But I’d learned long ago that other people just didn’t seem able to sense things as I could. Even my mother couldn’t. I had stopped mentioning my strange sensitivity only a short time after learning how to talk about it at all.

  The landlord leant over to scrutinize the ‘demon-creature’. “Evilest looking blighter I ever did see,” he pronounced, “but soon sorted.” He raised his foot. His intent was obvious.

  The baby animal raised its head and peered around with a pair of huge golden eyes. It gave a little cough and a cloud of ash came from its beak. It must be half choked. Without even considering it, I reached out and snatched it from the path of the landlord’s foot.

  The assembled group turned a look of astonishment on me and the landlord swelled with rage. “You impudent little...” He took a step towards me.

  For the second time that day, I ran for my life. Or in this case, the life of the creature I held pressed to my chest. I would survive a beating, it would not.

  ~+~

  The landlord did not pursue me beyond his inn gates, but his furious shout followed, ringing in my ears. “If you ever come back...”

  An inn without a porter was rare. One where I was trusted to carry bags was rarer still. I had lost the closest thing to a real job I had ever achieved, and for what? A deformed chick? I must be mad. Panting and heart pounding, I slipped into an alley off Lyme Street and sank down on the cobbles to take a closer look at just what I had saved.

  My hands were filthy with soot and the chick, or whatever it was, still grey, so that must be its natural color. It could not be a chick, I realized, as I looked more closely. Apart from its four legs it also had a tail, a very lizard-like tail. Its little, clawed front feet scrabbled gently at my thumb in a way that reminded me of a mouse. It could hold things in them, I suspected.

  It was, I concluded with a sense of shock, some rare exotic creature from across the seas. How its egg had come to end up in the inn fireplace was a question I did not even bother pondering. But if it was rare and from far away, then it was worth an enormous amount of money.

  I looked at the tiny thing again. It fitted snugly in my palm, leathery hide soft against my skin. I’d never get close enough to the nobility to sell it for a pet. I’d have to sell to a middleman and it would go to an apothecary to be dried and powdered for potions. And much as I usually ignored the fact, I was terribly, achingly lonely. The creature raised its head again and gave another little cough, and I knew I could not sell it. It was mine and I would keep it. It would not eat much.

  Talking of food... I looked again at my new companion in distress. It would need milk, or something. I tucked it securely inside my jerkin for warmth and set off once more along the streets, giving Fylpot Lane a wide berth. Reaching Puddinge Lane I climbed up some abandoned scaffolding to the rooftops and entered the attic of a deserted house through a hole in the roof. The rotten floor groaned under my weight, but I moved lightly to a pile of old rugs in a dry area of the room. There, curled in a little nest, lay a cat and her five kittens. The mother cat regarded me warily with yellow eyes, but did not run or move to attack. The cat and I had shared the loft on many a night.

  Now I put my handful down carefully at the edge of the nest and crouched there, watching, ready to snatch it back out if the cat tried to harm it. This was a very longshot, and I knew it. The creature was unlikely to know how to get to the food on its own, for one thing, and the mother cat might try to savage it if it got close. I’d probably have to catch the cat and hold her down while carefully guiding the lizard-chick to the teat. But I wouldn’t do it immediately when there was just the feeblest chance I wouldn’t have to shatter the trust that existed between us.

  The lizard-chick peered around, coughing again. Its babyish gaze travelled from me to the mother cat and it swayed forward unsteadily, opening its beaky mouth again to let out a soft, quavering cry not unlike those of the kittens. The mother cat went on watching me, seeming scarcely aware of the intruder now easing its way slowly, but persistently, in among her brood. Finally the lizard-chick’s mouth closed around a teat and it began to swallow. Every so often it released its mouthful to give the kittenish cry again. The cat still did not react.

  I watched in something close to wonderment. The mother cat hadn’t noticed the interloper, of that I felt sure, and the back of my neck prickled in the way I associated with my odd senses. My new pet intrigued me more and more.

  ~+~

  Although I usually avoided staying in the same sleeping place for more than one night at a time, I remained in the loft for over a week. By then, de
sperate to sleep elsewhere, I began to consider coming to the loft in the daytime to let my pet feed. But my problem was solved when my casual offering of a crumb of bread was eagerly swallowed by the lizard-chick.

  “You don’t need milk any more, huh?” I said, stroking under the soft leathery chin. “Well, time for a name, I suppose.”

  I turned my pet around in my hands. I had already established as well as I could that the lizard-chick was female, something most young noblewomen could not have done. Now I considered the question of a name. The baby was still a uniform grey all over, apart from her beautiful golden eyes.

  “You are quite like a bird,” I mused softly. “And you’re mine. I’m a Ravena, in name, at least. Ravens are black not grey, but you’re close, and there are girl ravens as well as boy ravens. I’ll call you Raven. Then you’re part of me.”

  ~+~

  CHAPTER 2

  WINTER’S TAIL

  I huddled into my cloak and blanket, shivering, and pressed closer to the chimney wall at my back. That blessed spring weather had been swept away by a very nasty sting in winter’s tail. I needed more food. Food was money, though. Raven fared better than I did in cold weather, of course, tucked away inside my clothes, not only for warmth but also kept from prying eyes.

  I touched the ring tied so carefully around my waist. I hadn’t been out to the palace this week, but I knew I could not go. Not until this weather broke. I could spare neither the time nor the energy. It wasn’t as though I had ever heard so much as a word about the Duke of Albany. A man I had never seen, nor knew anything of, but whom I believed to be my father.