by Jo Spurrier
Maggie was pulling at the grass near the wagon, and a little further out a heavy-set chestnut horse grazed as well. Toro. He lifted his head when I emerged, and then hesitantly — shyly, I fancied — he started over with a low nicker.
I collected a bucket from the wagon and started towards the stream. ‘Morning,’ I said to him in short, clipped tones. I couldn’t bring myself to call it a good one. I was in too much of a foul mood. Why does she have to keep doing this? She should have known she was pushing herself too hard. She should have known when to stop and let it go. I tried very hard not to think about how I had been the one to insist that we must do something. She’s going to really hurt herself one of these days, and then where will we be? Doesn’t she know how much it scares me to see her like this?
He followed me to the stream — not too closely, but at a companionable distance, and when I stooped to dip out a bucketful of water he stood back with his head up and ears pricked. It gave me the impression he was standing guard.
When the bucket was full, I set it down on the grass and kept staring out at the dry, stubbled fields, thinking. Worrying. It was only when Toro gave a soft, questioning snort that I realised I was toying with the handle of my wand. ‘At what point does it become madness?’ I said to him. ‘When you keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting something different to happen?’
He shifted his weight from foot to foot, and gave another soft nicker.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Exactly.’
I looked him over, arms folded across my chest. A powerful creature, solidly muscled; just like the man in the circle last night, the one who seemed so cowed and broken by months imprisoned as a beast, running in fear from wild creatures and men alike. My own problems, I remembered, were minor compared to his. ‘How are you?’ I asked him. ‘After last night? It can’t have been pleasant, being shifted back and forth like that. Did it hurt?’
He snorted once, and the ring on my hand hummed again, making me twitch. It distracted me enough that it took me a moment to remember the instructions Aleida had given him — snort twice for yes, and once for no. I realised two things, then — first, he was lying, and second, this ring Aleida had given me worked on animals as well as people. Or maybe, just on animals who used to be people. ‘Huh,’ I said, and, stooping to pick up the bucket of water, I started back to the tent. ‘Do you have any family around? Somewhere you’d have a safe place to stay?’
He snorted no, and added to it a shake of his head, which looked so comical I briefly smiled. ‘Well,’ I said, swapping the bucket to my other hand. ‘I’ve got no blessed idea what we’re going to do now. It’s up to my mistress, I suppose.’
He snorted twice and dropped back, letting me return to the camp alone.
Inside the tent, Aleida was feeding twigs into the fire while she nibbled at a slice of bread and butter. I settled down across from her. ‘So what are we doing?’ I said, setting to work on the coffee beans. ‘What’s the plan?’
‘The plan?’ she repeated. ‘The plan is to pack up and hit the road. That’s it.’
I scowled at her. ‘So we’re not going to help them at all? Just, “too bad and good luck”?’
She watched me steadily as she chewed and swallowed. ‘Well, what would you like us to do?’
I clamped my jaw shut at that. I knew full well why I’d woken up in such a foul mood. I just wasn’t willing to put it into words. This situation didn’t look good at all, and with Gyssha’s death-curse hanging over Aleida’s head I had great doubts as to whether she was in any state to deal with it.
Actually, no. Scratch that. I didn’t have any doubts at all.
At my silence, Aleida went on. ‘You do realise that that creature you feel so sorry for out there has likely killed dozens of people. If not more.’
I thought of his solid shoulders and arms, his scarred face and back. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But I still wish we could do something. This is just awful. Can you imagine it? Not just being homeless, with no shelter and no safety, but being so alone. Nothing to eat but grass, nothing to drink but water from streams, no matter how putrid and foul, knowing that if men catch you the best you can hope for is to be worked like a slave. It’s just awful.’
‘He’s still alive, though,’ Aleida said. ‘You saw the prices on their heads. Lord Belmont and his men would have caught and hanged them sooner or later.’
I grimaced, trying not to think of it. Trying not to think of Kara, and how it would feel if it was my father strung up on the gibbet. He might be a bandit, a murderer and a thief, but I could see that Kara loved him. He was everything to her, the only family she had. ‘It’d still be awful,’ I said. ‘But it’d be justice, at least. This . . . this is just so bizarre. Such a strange and cruel fate. No one could have seen this coming.’
‘I could,’ Aleida said. ‘If you tangle with a witch, strange and cruel is what you’re gonna get. We’re not known for our forgiving temperaments, generally speaking. If they didn’t want to get turned into beasts, they shouldn’t have attacked her.’
‘Or anyone, really,’ I said.
‘Exactly.’
‘But it’s still not right, is it? You can’t just go about punishing injustice with injustice.’
‘So what would you do? Turn them back and then hand them over to the hangman?’
‘Well . . . It’s probably what should be done.’
‘Yeah, but are you going to be the one to do it?’
I pulled a face and shook my head. ‘So what do you do? When there aren’t any good choices, what do you do? Just walk away and pretend you didn’t see anything?’
‘Sometimes. At least that way you aren’t making things worse.’
I didn’t know what to say to that. I was silent for a long moment before another question occurred to me. ‘Aleida?’ I said, still grinding the beans.
‘Yeah, kid?’
‘Could you do that?’ I’d said the same thing, yesterday, but it was a different question now that we knew what had really happened.
Aleida screwed up her face and shook her head. ‘Not like that. That spell, that’s something else, Dee. I mean, sure, if I wanted to badly enough and had enough time to put it all together, I could find a way . . . but eight of them? Bam, bam, bam, one after another? Not a chance. There’s not many who could, I’d wager.’
‘Could Gyssha have done it?’
‘No, never. Not her style at all. She’d make them think they’re turned into beasts instead. Have a chap crawling about on the ground thinking he’s a crocodile, chasing after dogs and chickens and trying to drag them into the pond. Much less effort and far more entertaining. Ugh, I can just imagine her cackling over it.’
The thought was enough to make my skin crawl. I’d only met Gyssha briefly, after she was already dead, but I’d seen enough of her to believe she’d do it, and that the result would be all kinds of ugly.
I shook my head, trying to clear that picture away. ‘All right . . . But what about this witch, then?’
‘What about her?’
‘Oh, don’t play the fool!’ I snapped. ‘You know what I’m getting at! Shouldn’t we find out why she did it?’
‘You know why she did it, Dee. They attacked her. They got what was coming to them.’
‘But why keep them chained up? Why bring the griffins? What’s she doing that’s letting the nether critters come through?’
‘I don’t know, Dee. And it’s not our problem.’
‘How can you say that?’
She heaved a sigh. ‘Dee, put that thing down, you’ve ground those beans to powder. Now, look at me. You saw what happened last night. I can’t break that spell. People who do this kind of thing don’t take kindly to having others poke their noses into their affairs . . . and we kind of already did that. So when I tell you that this is not our problem, what I mean is that we’re going to pack up and leave this bandit-infested godsdamn forest far behind us, as quickly as possible. I’m going to send a message to those n
uns and warn them that something strange is going on out here, and then we’re gone. Is that clear?’
I wanted to argue. It didn’t feel right, to know that something bad was happening here, and to turn our backs on it and walk away. Problem was, there was no part of her argument that I could refute. ‘What about Kara?’ I said. ‘We can guess what happened to her father, we even have a fair idea of where he might be. Shouldn’t we tell her?’
Aleida shook her head. ‘She’ll just be more determined to save him. If she tries anything around this witch, chances are she’ll end up transformed right alongside him — if she’s lucky. No, she’s better off not knowing.’
I didn’t like that either, but I could see there was no point in arguing. ‘And Toro?’
She gave me an exasperated look. ‘Lord and Lady, I don’t know! I guess his best bet is to find a farm somewhere and let them take him in. If you’ll forgive me, Dee, I’m more concerned with keeping our hides intact. He’s the one who made his bed on a scorpion’s nest, now he’s got to lie in it.’
I just stared at her, open-mouthed. ‘How can you be so . . . so dismissive of all this? Doesn’t it bother you? People are suffering.’
‘Bandits, you mean.’
‘They’re still people! And what about Kara? What about whatever it is this witch is brewing up in that forest? How many more people are going to suffer because of that?’
She took the mortar from me and began to tip the ground coffee into the pot. ‘There’s nothing I can do about that.’
‘But—’
‘There’s nothing we can do! And believe me, kid, I’ve spent a great deal of time learning how not to be upset over things I can’t do anything about. A great deal of time. You’ve just got to trust me on this one, Dee.’
‘I just don’t understand how you can be so cold-blooded about it all!’
‘Because I’ve been around long enough to know that cold-blooded wins over hot-headed every damn time. My mind’s made up, let’s pack all this up and hit the road.’
I stomped outside after that, leaving her to deal with the coffee. I didn’t like the stuff anyway. Instead, I went around the back of the tent and started stripping off the oilcloth cover. I shouldn’t have bothered with the effort of laying it out last night — it was bone dry, like everything else around here.
It was the good thing about being the apprentice, I decided. It didn’t matter if I was happy with what we were doing. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t see a good way forward, if I couldn’t think of any way to take an awful situation and make it better. It wasn’t my choice to make. All I had to do was shut up and do as I was told.
I hadn’t got far in the work when I heard muffled hoofbeats ringing out through the stillness. They were coming from the road. Abandoning my work, I sidled around to the edge of the tent, and saw a rider heading along the same road we’d taken out of town yesterday, moving at a smart trot. Once he rounded the corner of the field we were camped behind, however, he steered his horse off the road and started towards us.
I ground my teeth and swallowed my irritation as I peeled apart the layers of blankets over the dome-shaped frame to call inside. ‘Aleida? There’s someone coming. One man, riding a horse.’
I heard a sharp breath from inside. ‘I’ll be right out. Be sharp, Dee.’
I remembered what she’d said, about having already prodded this other witch by messing with Toro, and checked the wand at my belt. Not that it would do me much good.
The fellow was looking around with interest at our strange camp of domed tent and travellers’ wagon. I quickly glanced around to see that Toro had hidden himself behind the wagon, so that only Maggie was visible, picking at the dry grass.
When he was still a few dozen paces away the man dismounted, though he laid a hand on a sword at his side. ‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Ah, good morning, miss. Are you the ladies who called in at the Haven yesterday? Only Mother Ellendene said you might be camped out this way.’
Aleida emerged from the tent then, coffee cup in hand and a light shawl wrapped around her shoulders with the tails hanging down low enough to keep her wand and knife out of sight. ‘That would be us,’ she said. ‘Good morning to you, too. Early to be out on the roads, isn’t it?’
‘It is, miss, but I’m carrying a message for Lord Belmont, so ride I must. But Mother Ellendene did ask me to give you the news if I happened to cross your path.’
She frowned. ‘What news?’
‘Well, it’s not good, miss. Seems bandits came down from the forest last night and hit the Haven. Made off with all the coin in their coffers, but that’s not all, I’m sorry to say. It seems they’ve abducted a young girl, too.’
Aleida clenched her fists, and from inside the tent I heard the fire pop, loud enough to startle the messenger’s horse.
I drew a sharp breath. ‘Kara? The blonde lass with the sword?’
‘Yes, that’s the one.’
‘Was anyone hurt?’ Aleida said.
‘No deaths, but Sister Lodova has a broken arm after the scum threw her down. The women there said the young lass was trying to fight them off, but there were near on a dozen of them and they overwhelmed her and carried her off with them.’
I could just picture Kara, fierce and bold, drawing her sword against a dozen men. But I could just as easily see her sneaking down to open the doors late at night. She was desperate to get out of there. ‘How’d they get in? Those new doors they had looked more than strong enough.’
‘It’s strong all right, but they got it open somehow. The way I heard it, they were already inside when someone spotted them prowling around and raised the alarm. Lord Belmont has me taking a message to Lord Haversleigh, asking him to keep watch on his end of the forest. But Mother Ellendene said you’d taken an interest in the lass, and she asked me to give you word of what happened, if our paths should cross. By the Lord and Lady, miss, this forest is no place for two women travelling alone, not if these wretches have stooped to carrying off young girls. You should head back into town, Mother Ellendene will be happy to put you and your servant up for a few days. Once these bandit scum are all swinging from the gallows it’ll be safe to travel.’
‘Mm,’ Aleida said, narrowing her eyes. ‘Gods, yes, the last thing I want is to be caught in the middle of this mess. Thanks for the news,’ she said. ‘Don’t let us keep you.’
She watched him as he mounted up and rode away, standing perfectly still, perfectly calm and composed — until he reached the road. Then, her brow furrowed, and her hands bunched to fists at her side. ‘That little idiot! That hare-brained, dim-witted, foolhardy little scrap! What in all the hells is she thinking?’
I didn’t bother to answer that. We both knew what she was thinking — she’d told us herself. She’d do whatever she had to do to find her father. ‘Aleida?’ I said. ‘Yesterday, she seemed awfully sure she could get out with or without us. Do you think she opened the gate herself?’
‘Oh, I think there’s every chance she did,’ Aleida said. ‘If you could mine stupidity that girl’d be worth a fortune! And here I thought those feckless nuns could be trusted to keep her out of trouble. Then again, I guess there’s no ingenuity like a fool hells-bent on self-destruction.’ She gave a hiss of pure frustration, and then unbunched her hands. ‘All right, Dee. We need to get this camp broken down fast. I was going to send a note to those nuns, but I think it’d be better to take a pair of crows there and find out what they know.’
I cocked my head at her, puzzled. ‘But . . . I thought we were getting out of here.’
‘Oh, we are,’ she growled. ‘We’re just going to make a little stop along the way. That flea-brained little scrap may have stolen my money, but I’ll be three-times cursed if I’m going to let her keep it!’
Before long, we were both flying towards the abbey on gleaming black wings while our bodies lay on the bed inside the wagon, safe behind the wards. It’s glorious to fly — it doesn’t matter if you’re soaring on an eagle’s wi
ngs, swooping and diving as a swallow or taking off in a goose’s heavy body with laborious beats of powerful wings, it’s always marvellous.
But that morning Aleida wouldn’t let me enjoy the lofty heights and the morning’s crisp breezes. She kept us both low as we winged our way across fields and lanes and hedges. After what she’d said about the possibility of this strange witch taking offence at our intrusion I didn’t argue.
When we reached the Haven we first circled the walls. The gates stood open, but there was a small cluster of armed men outside — Lord Belmont’s men, I guessed, looking at the colourful tabards they wore over mail shirts.
Following Aleida, I winged over the walls and glided down into the courtyard. The doors of the solar we’d visited yesterday stood open, even though the hour was still early, and Aleida glided right through them, swooping to perch on the back of the same battered couch she’d sat upon the day before.
Inside, Mother Ellendene sat at her writing desk, while Sister Lodova sat in an armchair nearby. The sister had her right arm splinted and resting in a sling, while Mother Ellendene sported a swollen eye and cheek and livid bruising across her face. She dropped her pen in surprise at the sight of two crows fluttering into her office as though they owned the place.
‘I’d say good morning,’ Aleida’s crow croaked, black talons scratching over the carved wood of the couch’s back. ‘But clearly it isn’t. I hear you had some excitement overnight.’
Sister Lodova stayed frozen and speechless, but Mother Ellendene just pursed her lips, and then heaved herself up. ‘Mistress Blackbone, I presume?’
‘However did you guess?,’ Aleida said with a rustle of her black feathers. ‘What happened last night?’
The mother superior shuffled over to the couch, moving stiffly when yesterday she’d seemed quite spry and hale. ‘Well there’s not much to tell. The gates were closed and locked last night as usual, but in the early hours of the morning a child going to the outhouse heard a disturbance and raised the alarm. At that point they were already inside and had a hold of young Kara. Sister Lodova and I tried to take her back . . .’ Mother Ellendene shrugged. ‘But you can see for yourself how well that turned out. There was more than enough of them to keep our girls at sword-point while they pried up the flagstones and relieved us of all our coin. Then they left, taking the young lass with them.’
