So…number two was…unseen. Siridean, I noticed, had closed his eyes.
Unseen. I tried to think of nothing else as I stepped the short distance between us and reached up to slide my hand through the right-hand pocket slit of his doublet. He didn’t react. My fingers touched the purse, closed around it, drawing the strings free of his belt; I began to lift it out…
Yes! I’d done…
His hand darted up with that frightening speed and snagged my wrist. His brown eyes—open again—studied me curiously, as though he had perhaps not been so positive I could do what he asked after all. Almost do what he asked…
“Very good,” he said. “You found it all right. And you got hold of it. Then you rejoiced too soon, did you? A mental pat on the back? Save that until you are completely out of sight, or you will reap a very different reward. Say rather, you will be the one reaped.” He spun away from me to stow the purse away somewhere, then with his back still to me, said, “Again.”
I bit my lip. He was right. I’d let my concentration waver. Concentrate, he’d said. That was clearly the secret. Again I built the image of the purse. Again, that subtle certainty slipped into my mind. Tucked inside his doublet, this time, on the top right hand side. Unseen. I held the thought in my mind like a protective barrier, held it tight as I slipped forward, as I eased three small buttons undone, as I slid my hand into his doublet, as I drew the purse all the way out, as I slipped back again. Only then did I let it go.
“Does here count as out of sight?” I asked.
He turned, a faint, almost-smile skittering across his face in a way that made me suspect he’d already known I had the purse. But someone else…wouldn’t have known?
The sun was almost gone.
Siridean stared at the orange sky as though he’d forgotten my presence again. Finally, he shot an unquiet glance at me. “I’m free,” he muttered rapidly to himself. “I’m free and I’ll stay free. Only one way to be free; there’s no such thing as staying free after getting free, but I am free and I shall be free. I think the price cheap...”
He fell silent and stared at that fast-diminishing orange for some time before finally turning back to where I stood, waiting in anxious silence, still clutching the purse. I might already be growing accustomed to it, but I was not too young to perceive that my protector didn’t behave...entirely like normal people did.
“Don’t worry, elfling,” he said, his eyes calm again, “first thing tomorrow we’ll see about finding this Duke.”
I blinked up at him, all previous confusion forgotten in the face of this. I hadn’t told him about the Duke I needed so desperately to find. He seemed to have gleaned an awful lot from that croaked, ‘my uncle’.
“We’ll find him,” he repeated, and I had the strangest feeling that whilst he meant what he said, he didn’t believe it in the slightest and I could not understand that at all.
Silently, I offered him his purse. He looked at it with utter disinterest, as though he could hardly be bothered to take it back from me, but after a moment accepted it and refastened the strings to his belt.
Settling himself in the chair again, he held out a hand and drew me towards him, and I perched on his bony knees, staring up at his face as he again watched the sunset slipping from the sky. He looked afraid. Just a little. But mostly tired. So tired. Even in my current state of exhaustion, I could tell I’d never felt as he felt. It was no bodily tiredness in his eyes but something worse, something deeper, something inside. When he finally turned back to me, I gazed up at him, seeking the reassurance that his eyes gave and his presence most emphatically did not.
He ran a strand of my jet black hair through his fingers, returning my scrutiny. “You’re not much of an elfling, are you?” he murmured. “Still, elfling enough…”
I curled in on myself, wishing he could not see it. “I don’t mean to feel those things.”
And then, because he was the very first person I’d ever actually dared to ask, I added, “Am I evil?” I didn’t really believe that; my mother had never acted as though the things I felt were bad like that...
Siridean snorted. “These things you feel are not evil. Evil is what you do.”
“I don’t do anything,” I replied, baffled.
He looked down at me, and for the first time a real smile played on his lips. “Then you’re not evil, are you?” he retorted rather sharply, but his hand ran gently over the back of my head.
I wrapped my arms around his narrow chest and cuddled close, my wariness overwhelmed by the acceptance even my mother had failed to provide.
Hand running again over my hair, he added ever so softly, “Nay, for you clearly would not know evil even were it right before your eyes.”
His arms settled around me, thin and sinewy and strong as an oak tree’s roots, and for the first time since my mother’s death I felt safe. I snuggled my cheek to him and twisted my head so I could see his face. His distant expression made me think of lost things.
Lost things...my mother...
And finally the tears came, the numbness broken and washed away by the knowledge that the worst of my ordeal was over. I wept and wept until my throat felt raw and his coat was soaked. Not blind to this much greater distress, Siridean rubbed my back in silent comfort, pausing only once to address some muttered thoughts to the darkened window.
“Weep and survive,” he murmured in my ear when his attention returned to me. “Weep, but survive. Don’t ever let anyone take your life away from you. Yield it to no one. No one!”
He continued in the same vein until his quiet voice lulled me to sleep, but I stirred as he settled me in the bed and drew the blanket over me.
“Where will you sleep?” I mumbled drowsily, shyness and fear largely gone now. Everyone at home had their own bed, even the scullery maid.
“I will just sit here and look at the stars,” he replied, reseating himself as he did so, and then to himself, he growled with soft malevolence, “How I hate the stars. I hate the night. The stars are cruel and the night crueler still. How I hate the night...”
I closed my eyes again, sleep sucking at me until I realized that I’d forgotten my prayers. Too tired to drag myself from the warm bed and kneel down, I simply formulated some sleep-garbled thanks for my deliverance. The familiar prickling at the nape of my neck reassured me that my informality was not taken amiss. Sleep would have claimed me then if three words had not reached me from my protector, so soft I might have thought they came only to my mind: “Pray for me.”
“Of course,” I whispered, and holding Siridean’s name in my mind, I finally slipped into that velvet blackness.
~+~
I twisted, moaning, and gentle hands soothed me, replacing the damp cloth on my brow. A soft voice comforted me, and I braved the light to find my father’s face still hovering over me. Quieting, I felt Raven’s cool little body curled against my burning neck. There were voices, and I could understand them now.
“My lord,” that was a woman’s voice, “my lord, you must get some rest yourself. It’s been two days...you haven’t even eaten.”
“Make more tea for the child, Anna, and leave me be.” That was my father’s voice, inflexible as granite. “I will not allow some chill to snatch her through my fingers just when I’ve found her!”
He spoke with such determination that I pictured him locked in combat with the grim reaper. The grim reaper was just a story, though. Death was an angel with black wings. I wasn’t sure how I knew about the black wings, but I was sure it was an angel. I’d felt it brush me from time to time.
~+~
I woke with a start to find the room lit with the grey light that signaled dawn’s arrival perhaps an hour hence. Looking for the cause of my awakening, I saw Siridean on his feet, his whole body rigid as he stared at the window. Something was wrong. My nape all but burned and the air seemed suffocating-thick.
“Siridean?” I quavered.
For a moment his head twitched from side to side as though
he did not wish to look at me, then it snapped around. As his eyes fixed upon me I jerked back with a little cry. Every foreboding of darkness his presence had evoked had come to fruition in his eyes. My mind struggled to name it, but some more primal part of me knew that I was in the presence of pure evil. He moved towards me with stiff steps, drawing the dagger from his belt. The horrors his eyes promised me—promised to enjoy doing to me—locked my muscles with terror and confusion. Where had my kind protector gone?
Siridean was almost at the bed now, the dagger tip moving slowly from side to side as though its first use was under consideration. I flinched back against the wall. Siridean paused. The dagger wavered. Was raised to strike. Another hesitation and it drove forward...and slammed through the palm of his opposite hand with a crunch of breaking bone. His lips drew back in a silent scream of pain and fury and something strangely akin to defiance.
“I am free of you!” he screamed. Tearing the blade from his mangled hand, he spun around and lunged with all his strength at the place in front of the window at which he had originally been staring.
The next moment he stumbled backwards as though under the force of a heavy blow, his dagger flying from his hand. My eyes widened in shock as I saw the gashes appear across his chest. I could only watch helplessly as he jerked again, most of his face disappearing in bloody ruin, and once more, scarlet spraying across wall and window as another slash ripped open his throat.
He fell slowly to the ground, arms out flung; a pool of crimson collected quickly around his shoulders and then he lay still.
A gentle presence brushed past me, and by the time nature forced me to breathe again, I realized that the evil feeling was also gone, leaving only emptiness behind. For some time I could only sit and shake. Finally, I tried to move forward and stopped to disentangle myself from the blanket. And the cloak. The cloak that Siridean had laid over me at some point in the night. Breathing in shocked gasps, I lowered myself onto the damp-specked floorboards and approached hesitantly on hands and knees.
I’d seen that utter stillness too recently to hold out any hope; had already learned that all the tears and shaking and pleading, however heartfelt, would achieve nothing. But I had never seen a human body that resembled the meat that day Cook really lost her temper and laid to it with her cleaver.
I fought it, but my insides tried to escape me until finally I crouched, feeling strained and empty. Eventually I edged the rest of the way and surveyed what was left. One eye still stared out, undamaged, though his spectacles had been torn from his face and lay nearby. I picked them up, ignoring the shattered lens, and reached out to set them back in place, only to hesitate, leaning closer as I peered in the pre-dawn gloom.
The blank eye that stared up at me was no longer that lovely brown I remembered. In fact, it was like no eye I had ever seen. It was gold around the iris, actually gold in color, radiating to green around the edges. I stared for a while before finally sliding the lid down over it with a trembling finger and slipping the spectacles back into place as best I could.
Sitting back on my heels again, I closed my eyes. I could feel myself going numb again, but I took a moment to try and fix Siridean’s face in my mind, alongside the image of my mother. It wasn’t too difficult; his thin sharp face had been very distinctive, until this bewildering, unknown thing had happened. At last I opened my eyes again, stuffing the ball of screaming panic-stricken grief to the bottom of my hollow stomach and squashing it down as hard as I could.
‘Just in case’, I remembered. He made a point about two things...
Tentatively, I reached out and peeled what was left of the coat away from the still chest. The purse was still tied to his belt, damaged, but holding together. I transferred it to my own belt and looked around for the dagger. Pausing to disentangle the sheath, I settled the reunited weapon at my own waist, tucked awkwardly inside my breeches for concealment. For a young lady to carry a blade... I felt ashamed.
But I left it on my belt and took the cloak from the bed, drawing the blade for the first time to hack off the excess length before throwing it around me. Rolling the blanket as well, I fastened it with Siridean’s belt, then pulled off the sheet and spread it carefully over him, ignoring the way its clean whiteness was instantly marred.
A small voice inside demanded that I break down, that I wait for someone to come and look after me; that I was little and helpless and there was surely nothing else I could do. But I didn’t believe anyone was coming to look after me. And an older, clearer voice whispered that it was not a good idea to be found in that room with a knife when I myself would swear on the Bible no one else had entered.
There is someone who’ll look after me, I reminded myself. My mother told me so. But I have to find him. She didn’t say he would come to me. She told me to find him. And...God’s still looking after me...
Isn’t he?
So I bundled up the bright pink silk dress, in case that too was worth coin, and I headed out, down the dark stairwell and into the street.
~+~
CHAPTER 8
THE PORTRAIT
I woke slowly at first, then all in one go, as a towering mountain of strangeness crashed down on my senses. The soft bed, the warm covers, the smooth sheets, the glowing coals in the fireplace, the bed curtains, velvet and drawn back, the bed itself with its tall posts...
I sat up with a jerk that made the blood rush dizzily to my head, and by the time I had stopped blinking, I’d remembered the carriage, and the Duke. This was my father’s house. For the first time in far too long, I had a home, and this was it. My head was cool now, though spinning slightly from the violence of my awakening. I rested my weight on my arms and looked around more slowly as Raven scrambled up to my shoulder, alternately chattering and wailing her displeasure at being woken so abruptly.
The sun’s rays streamed into the room from the windows. Judging from the quality of the light, it was afternoon. Of what day, I was unsure. I started as my eyes fell upon the Duke, asleep in an armchair beside the bed. A book lay open on his knee and in great danger of falling. I shifted shakily to the edge of the bed and reached out to rescue it. It was a beautifully illustrated Bible, in Latin, and I flicked through it, my mind straining as I read. Before long I bit my lip. I was quite rusty.
“You must be better.”
I looked up to see my father’s eyes were open and guessed that he had been watching me for a moment or two.
“Well, yes.” I blushed and offered him his book.
“You can read it all you like,” the Duke said, stretching as if stiff.
I continued to hold it out. “No, it’s giving me a headache right now. And this is your book.”
The Duke took it back and smoothed a hand over the battered, but still beautiful, leather cover. “Yes, this is my book. You may have one of your own, if you wish. Or would you like it in English?”
“Well, both,” I said rather absently, thinking of my childhood Bible, with which I had learned my Latin in the first place. Then I realized what I had said and felt embarrassed. “I mean, either will do. I’m not greedy.”
My father laughed at that, and pulled a cord on the wall.
“Is that a servant’s bell?” I asked, distracted from my discomfort. A lot of the better families were having these fitted now, at great expense, but my mother had always used a hand bell.
“My father put them in when he built the house,” the Duke explained, as a maidservant entered. “At the time they were thought as odd as the rest of the stuff, so perhaps some of that will be common one day.” He turned his attention to the waiting maid. “Bring food for my daughter; keep it simple, nothing fancy. Also prepare a hot bath and send up whichever of you is best with lady’s hair.”
The maid bobbed a curtsey and left, looking faintly aghast at the last order. I touched my hair in sudden dismay. However many days and nights of fevered tossing had been the final straw. I hoped it could be untangled. I didn’t want it cut; it was still shorter than
it had been when Siridean chopped it off.
My head still swam slightly, so I lay down again and my father tucked the blankets over me. I wondered just how ill I’d been, then frowned as a confused memory crept back into my head. “My mother! I saw my mother!”
The Duke sighed. “Yes, I expect you did. I’ll show you.” He pulled the cord again and gave more orders, this time to a footman. A few short minutes later, two rather more solid men arrived, both in the Duke’s livery, which was black and gold like his crest. They carried a large, full-size portrait, which they set down in front of the bed with suppressed puffs.
I stared at the picture, captivated. There sat my mother, younger than I had ever seen her, wearing a beautiful lacy dress in pale green. Younger, but perfect in every detail. My vague memory snapped into sudden clarity as I stared at those beautiful locks of straight blond, that delicate face, the tiny nose, the big brown eyes, the dainty chin. My mother. Young and beautiful. Not tired and...withdrawn.
Eventually I dragged my eyes away enough to look at the other person in the portrait. My father stood behind my mother, one hand on her shoulder, the other resting on his sword. My mother’s hand was raised to his. He was dressed elegantly in a slightly darker green, and he too was younger. His face was unlined, his hair still the same glossy black as now, only lacking the single streak of white that I had previously noticed. A hound lay at my mother’s feet, gazing up at her, while another stood beside the Duke, face also upturned. A horse stood behind, a magnificent black beast partially armored. Its reins hung on the ground as it waited patiently for its master. A familiar ring graced each of the joined hands.
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