He touched the iron and willed himself to silence. The ward stirred slightly and then subsided back into dormancy. He hoisted himself up and edged over the sharp points crowning the gate. As soon as one leg was straddled over, the gate came alive. Another ward, he thought frantically, masked by the first. The iron bars were lengthening, the points were shooting up toward the stone above at an alarming rate. With a frenzied heave, he was over and through, sprawling painfully on the ground. He froze, senses prickling and quivering out in every direction. But there was nothing. No footsteps hurrying near. No cries of alarm. Not even the whisper of other wards contracting and focusing on him. He shivered, remembering the iron moving and growing underneath him and the unyielding stone above his head. A bird trilled cheerfully in the garden and, on top of the gate, the iron points retracted to their normal height.
Wetness slid down his arm. His fingers came away sticky with blood. He hadn’t even felt the iron point slice through him. It wasn’t a bad cut, but it could have been worse. He tore a strip of cloth from his shirt and tied it tightly around his arm.
For a long time, Ronan stayed beside the gate, examining the garden and the inner walls of the house standing around it in sunwashed stone. The bird whistled and sang within the branches of a rowan tree in the center of the garden. Oddly enough, there were sprigs of red berries on the tree, even though it wasn’t yet autumn. Selia bushes bloomed around the rowan, and the ground was littered with their white petals. Crickets scraped and sawed in the grass. But beyond their droning and the careless notes of the bird, there was only the silence of an empty house.
The ward in the gate had been beyond his skill. He had been lucky. If there were one such ward, there would be more. But he could not go back. The thought of climbing over those iron points again brought sweat to his brow. He would have to get out through the house. Of one thing he was now sure. No ordinary scholar lived here. The gate ward had been meant to kill, not merely warn off, and wards that killed were expensive and rare.
The bird went silent when he ventured across the garden. The sun was almost overhead. There were no shadows to hide in. Quickly, he walked to a door in the nearest wall and tried the handle. It was unlocked and seemed to have no warding. He slipped inside and, as he closed the door, heard the bird burst into song behind him.
He found himself in a pantry. Shelves lined the walls. Bundles of dried herbs hung from the ceiling. Another door opened into a kitchen. The place smelled unpleasantly dank, as if it had been unused for days. A pile of carrots on the counter was covered with mold. Two other doors led out of the kitchen. When he eased the first one open, he saw stone stairs descending into darkness. Obviously a basement. He considered going down, for basements usually meant some sort of access to the city sewers—a mode of exit and entrance that he had used in other parts of Hearne—but at that moment he heard the soft rasp of something dragging slowly across a stone floor. He silently shut the door and backed away.
A great horror came over him, for even though the door was closed, he could hear a faint squishing sound, almost as if a handful of wet clay was being pressed repeatedly against stone.
Shhhs.
Shhhs.
Shhhs.
The noise was getting louder. It was ascending the stairs. A slow, shuffling movement.
Ronan turned and almost ran from the kitchen. Out the other door. Into a long hallway, lined with door after door and floored with a thick carpet that deadened his footfalls. No windows. No sunlight. Only shadow. Which way was he heading? Which door? His arm ached and he felt dizzy.
One day, your luck’ll run out, said a tiny voice inside his mind.
No. Never.
Soon. You’ll break.
Not even when they beat me bloody.
They were going to hang you that morning in Lura.
Yes. That was years ago. I escaped.
Heart racing, he paused in a small anteroom in the hallway. The corridor split into two directions. One to the right and one to the left. They both looked the same and he was disoriented. Shadow in both directions. Not one single window to betray the sky. If he only had the sky. Open spaces, wind, and the sky. A good horse under him.
“Never should’ve come to this city,” he muttered out loud.
The air sighed behind him, as if shifted by a door opening. Ronan dove down the left passageway without stopping to think. He ran up a stairway. At the top, a mahogany door rose up out of the gloom. His hands fluttered over it. A warning buzz tingled in his fingertips. A ward? No. It felt different. But the air whispered again, far back down the stairs and in the passageway. He slipped through the door.
Whatever was woven into the door was not a ward, for nothing happened, and he closed the door behind him. Light bloomed from a curtained window. It was a library. An uncommon thing in Hearne, for books were rare and costly. This room had more books in it than he had ever seen before, even though in more than a decade of thieving he had broken into most of the wealthier homes of Hearne. Every wall, from floor to ceiling, was lined with books. He stopped in the middle of the room, fascinated despite the fear playing icily down his neck. Leather in rich reds, white, and browns. Spines cracked with age. Copper covers mottled green. Huge tomes clasped with wood covers and brass clasps.
There.
Startled, he swung around. Who had spoken? The room was empty.
On the second shelf.
His eyes wavered up and settled on a slim book bound in brown leather.
Hurry.
The door creaked open behind him. The book almost leapt into his hand. He whirled and caught a glimpse of a shadowy form shambling forward. A damp smell of rotting things filled the air. He dove for the window. Glass shattered around him, and then he was falling, desperately trying to grab onto something, anything to slow his fall. But there was nothing to catch hold of, only the book clutched in his hand.
A thought wavered through his head. That voice. It sounded like her.
And then everything stopped.
He must have been unconscious for only a moment, because something gibbered far above him from the window when he struggled to his feet. His vision blurred and all the world ran red with pain, whirling and tilting around him. The stones under his feet were spattered with blood and he regarded it solemnly, professionally. Too much blood. Whoever lost that much was fast on the way out. Poor fool. He staggered away down the narrow street. Time to leave.
The voice had been hers.
Pain. Everywhere, he thought to himself. There must be a way to escape it. Shoulder is the worst of all. But I have the book.
Hurry.
He did not think anymore. There was only a gray fog of pain. Instinct took over, and he staggered along. At times, he was aware of people passing by. People staring and exclaiming. A hand tugged at his arm once and a voice said something. It could have been anything. An offer of help. But the pain shut all meaning out. There was only movement and, although he didn’t realize it, a compulsion that drew him like a broken marionette being walked along by a careless child. He stumbled his way up the shady streets of Highneck Rise and found himself in the Street of Willows. At the end of the street there was no longer anywhere to go, only the high walls that enclosed the manors there. He stood, staring stupidly, and swaying drunkenly. His shoulder was on fire. His head felt disconnected from his shoulders. Ronan staggered up against a wall. Sunlight glimmered in between the leaves of a willow tree. He blinked and could not focus. His knees gave out and he fell to the ground. He heard the creak of a garden gate opening. A shadow fell across his face. He could smell the sea. The girl stared down at him. Her face was expressionless.
“I’ve brought you your book,” he said. And then he knew no more.
CHAPTER NINE
FOOTPRINTS
They arrived at the village the afternoon of the second day after leaving Hearne. Owain had pushed his men and the horses hard. Every hour lost meant less of a chance of cutting their quarry’s trail. He didn’t hop
e for much—hope was a chancy thing in his profession—but even a single print would be more than what he currently knew. And currently, he knew nothing.
The Rennet valley, when heading east from Hearne, devolved into a hilly land covered with heather and small copses of trees and sudden, smaller valleys that branched off the main valley. Creeks veined the land before joining the Rennet River, which flowed west in ultimate pursuit of the sea.
They rode through the valley in the rain and sun, eating cold rations, sleeping as few hours as possible, and making rough bed with their cloaks. The troops did not complain. They were the best soldiers Owain had. Even though the Guard of Hearne was woefully understrength, that did not mean he trained his men poorly. The regent regarded the Guard as a quaint custom from long-dead times that had no real place in the modern society of Hearne. But the Gawinns were fixtures of the city. There had always been Gawinns in Hearne and they had always been the Lord Captains of the Guard. To do away with their office, from the regent’s point of view, would lessen the charm of court occasions, balls, and diplomatic functions.
“That fellow there,” the regent would murmur to some visiting dignitary. “The one in black, that’s the Lord Captain of Hearne. Protector of the city, don’t you know. Been Gawinns in Hearne almost as long as my own family. Rather nice uniform, don’t you think?”
A rider urged his horse up the path toward Owain and reined in next to him. He was a small man with a face aged by sun and wind and seamed with scars so that it seemed his skin was stitched of leather rather than flesh.
“Another hour,” he said.
“Any sign to be had?” said Owain.
“Not w’ the weather these days.”
The man shook his head. His name was Hoon and he came from the mountains of Morn. At least that’s what he’d said twenty years ago when he’d joined the Guard. There was no cause to disbelieve him, of course, but Owain never cared where his soldiers came from, only that they could fight and fight well.
Behind them, a horse blew out a breath of resignation. Harnesses clinked and there came the quiet voices of the troops as they murmured to each other and to their mounts.
“No reason for ‘em to’ve come up this way,” said Hoon. “There’s a good half-dozen ways into that village. Just see it now, past the pines.” Past a stand of pine growing further up the valley, sunlight gleamed on slate roofs.
“Blast the rain,” said Owain, but he spoke mildly. There was no reason to worry over the things that could not be shifted. Most of life could not be shifted.
“Aye. Whichever way they came and went, doubt there’s sign left with all the rain we been getting.”
“Perhaps inside the houses.”
“Aye,” said Hoon.
Corn and hay grew in plots along the banks of the stream at the bottom of the valley. The corn was unpicked, however, and rotting on the stalk. Mold furred the hay, and grasses were already reclaiming the footpaths winding about the plots. The men rode through the shadow of the pines.
“You hear that?” said Owain.
“Aye,” said Hoon. “Nothin’ t’all.”
“Not a sound here except the stream and the wind in the trees. Not a songbird or even a cricket.”
They found the first one just outside of the village, sprawled across the path. The bones were bleached white, polished as clean as a poor man’s dish.
“A child,” said someone.
“Make camp here, sergeant,” said Owain. “Sentry detail and hot food for the men. Stay out of the village lest on my word.”
“Aye, m’lord.”
Owain and Hoon entered the village on foot.
“Poor enough,” said Owain. “But they had themselves a master mason here. Sturdy walls. Good thatch. This village was built to last, but it’s not a village now without its folk.”
“Graveyard, more like.”
The bones were everywhere. Occasionally, they lay together in semblance of a skeleton, but more times than not the bones had been dragged into jumbled disarray.
“Birds and beasts been at ‘em,” said Hoon gloomily. “No way to treat the dead. Morn, where I come from, you get stuffed inna cave, covered over w’ rock. That’s the way.”
The rain and the sun had beaten the ground into a succession of mud and dust and back again, but even with little hope left by the weather, Hoon methodically quartered the village. He paced between the houses, walking slowly, his face intent on the grass and mud. Owain wandered behind him, careful not to go where the tracker had yet to examine. He stepped around the bones out of a certain sympathy, but mostly out of an unwillingness to hear them snap. A skull grimaced up at him from the foot of a stone wall.
“Someday, the story’ll be out,” he said to the skull. “Doubt that’s consolation to you, seeing how your part’s over.”
The skull said nothing.
“I wonder if you ever came to Hearne? That’s my city—I’m supposed to protect it, like my father did, and his father before him. You see, if whoever destroyed your village isn’t caught, then who’s to say they won’t come to my city one day and try the same?”
Sunlight gleamed in the curve of the skull’s eye socket. The light glimmered, as if the skull was winking at him, as if it knew something Owain did not.
“A girl from your village survived. The only one. Maybe you were her father or uncle. Or maybe an older brother. She’s safe at my house, with my wife, so don’t worry on her account. She’s a skinny little thing, not much taller than my Magret. She doesn’t talk, just as silent as you. Someday, though, she’ll tell her story.”
Still, the skull said nothing.
“Then the story’ll be out. You’ll see.”
Hoon straightened up and tossed a clump of mud away.
“Ain’t nothing worth a cuss.”
“Let’s try the houses, then,” said Owain.
Their luck improved with the third house.
“Dirt floor,” said Hoon. He didn’t smile, but he came near it. “Keep on the sill here. It’ll be trick enough sussing out the sign w’out you clumpin’ around.”
They both kept to the sill at first, Hoon squatting down on his haunches and examining the ground in front of him. It was one of the smaller houses in the village, having just a single room dominated by a hearth in one wall and a narrow cot beside it in the corner.
“Only one person,” said Owain.
“Aye, scattered a bit by what come after. Not enough bones here to go around ‘cept once. Woman, by the stretch of that.”
Hoon, satisfied by the ground just within the door, took a step forward and continued his perusal.
“Odd,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Been crows in here, which don’t surprise me none. Nasty birds they are. Like a bit of rotten flesh w’ the best of ‘em. But this here print’s a fox. They ain’t carrion eaters, best I know. An’ I know.”
“Maybe the fox came in afterward. After the crows had come and gone. A curious fox.”
“Nope. This fox came in afore the crows. See here? That’s crow sign an’ it’s overlapping this paw print. Old man crow come in after the fox was done w’ his meal. Hopping along on fox’s tracks. Odd, that. Never seen a fox go for carrion. Lest he gone crazy or somethin’. Mebbe he been bit by one of them skunks and gone foamy at the mouth. Turrible creatures, them skunks.”
Hoon crept forward a few more inches. He said nothing for a while. A faded gray apron lay crumpled on top of the bed and Owain wondered if the owner—the skeleton on the floor—had been an old widow living alone. The room was small.
“Ahum,” grunted Hoon. “Here ‘tis.”
“What?”
“Step up an’ look over my shoulder. See here? That’s a print you’ve never seen afore. Like a dog, but bigger an’ heavier than any dog I know. Been huge cats in the mountains that’ve prints this big, but this ain’t a cat. That’s dog.”
“A hunting hound, perhaps,” said Owain.
“Mebbe s
o. Mebbe so. Here’s t’other bit of the riddle. Look here.”
“That’s a boot print.”
“Ain’t no ordinary boot print. First off, the dog an’ whoever was wearing this boot, both of ‘em were in here at the same time. You gotta boot print over here what the dog stepped on, an’ clear over here next t’ the skull—that’s the dog an’ the boot stepped on the same spot later. An’ see how the edges are all broke down? Shows the crows an’ fox came in long after.”
“Hound and master.”
“Yep,” said Hoon. He sat back on his heels and looked up at Owain. “See anything else strange ‘bout that boot?”
“Not specifically. Well, I suppose it just doesn’t look right.”
Hoon nodded with gloomy satisfaction.
“Aye. It don’t look right an’ I’ll tell you why. Ain’t no human wearing that boot. That’s a long foot, long as your’n. But here across the ball of the foot, that’s too narrow for humans. Ain’t no way that was human.”
“And it can’t be an ogre.”
“Ogres don’t wear boots much, an’ if they did, they’ve got great big, clumpy feet almost wide as they’re long. Asides, ogres are heavy. When they step, they make a print—let me tell you! This fellow here’s got a foot long as your’n but he made hardly a print at all. Almost like he weighs close to nothing.”
The remaining houses yielded no other clues besides confirmation of the strange prints, and it was only in the poorer dwellings—those with dirt floors—that this was so. After Owain had satisfied himself that there was nothing left to find, he ordered his men to collect the bones and bury them in a large grave they dug at the edge of the village.
“It’s the best we can do for them,” he said to his sergeant.
“Very good, m’lord.” And the man strode away to see to the digging. It was a slow job at best, done with their spears, but they had enough hands and enough hours yet before sundown.
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