A small hint of a smile crossed Lark’s lips and twisted into a pained frown. He guessed she was trying not to cry.
“My mom’s very nice. She makes me brush my hair. And she holds me. Her hair smells like apples. She makes really good food. Sometimes, I come and sit by her in the kitchen when she cooks, and she sneaks me hot cocoa. It’s hard to get, because Uncle Kaldar has to bring it from the Broken, and we only get it when something big happens. Like birthdays and Christmas, but I get it a lot …” Lark clamped her mouth shut and looked at him. “Do you know when your birthday is?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Did you ever get any presents?”
William sucked the air in through his nose. She asked bad questions. “I’m a monster, remember? The birth of little monsters isn’t something people celebrate.”
Lark looked away again.
Great. Now he made the kid feel bad. Nice going, asshole.
William reached over and touched one of the ropes holding a squirrel carcass. “Did you catch all these?”
“Yes. I’m good at it.”
Both rats bore bolt marks. She probably did shoot those. But the rabbit carcass was at least eight days old, and there weren’t maggots on it. William picked up the rope, pulled the rabbit up, and looked at it. His nose told him not to eat—there was some sickness in it.
Water rats were ugly, but the rabbit was cute. She wouldn’t shoot one. She probably just found the corpse somewhere. A changeling child wouldn’t have any problem killing a rabbit. It was good meat, slightly sweet.
William let go of the rope. “You’re planning to eat those?”
She stuck her chin in the air. He’d touched a nerve. “Yep!”
“All right. First of all, squirrels aren’t good to eat. The only thing you can make with them is stew, and even then, they’re bony and they stink. Rats, same. Don’t eat rats. They carry a sickness that will give you fever, cramps, and chills, and your skin and eyes will turn yellow. All these over there are too rotten to eat. That one over there has been picked on by birds, and that one’s got maggots. Your fish over there is hanging too close to the trunk and there are spots on it—that’s because the ants from that hill over there have been going up the tree and eating your kill.”
Lark’s eyes turned as big as saucers.
William pulled the rope, lifting the ermine thing. “Not sure what this is …”
“It’s a Mire weasel. He killed those squirrels over there and ate their babies.”
That explained things. The weasel raided a nest and was punished. “I wouldn’t eat him either,” William said. “Unless I was really hungry. But since he’s fresh, he’ll do.”
He cut the corpse from the rope and laid it on the tree. “The reason you hang things is to drain the blood, cool them down, and keep creatures like that dimwit under us from eating your food. If you take a creature’s life to keep you going, you have to treat it with respect and not waste it.” He split the carcass. “The first thing you do is pull the insides out. That’s called dressing. Pay attention to the stomach and the guts, you don’t want to cut them. This right here is the liver. This dark blob is full of bile. You cut that open and the whole thing is shot. It’s too bitter to eat.”
He dumped the innards on the ground and shook the weasel to fling off any of the old blood.
“Now you skin it. Like this. If you leave a bit of fat on it, the meat won’t dry out. Also, you have to keep flies off of it. Steal a can of black pepper and sprinkle that on the meat. Flies don’t care for it.” He finished skinning and held up the bare carcass. “Now, you can cook it, or you can store it. If you want to store it, you can—freeze it—but I don’t see how you could here, so your choices are curing it or smoking the meat …”
The tiny hairs on the back of his neck rose. He felt the weight of a gaze on his back sharp as a dagger.
William turned slowly.
Two eyes glared at him from the darkness between the branches of a pine.
“What the hell is that?” he whispered.
Lark’s voice trembled. “The big monster.”
The eyes took his measure. William looked deep into them and found an almost human awareness, a cruel and malevolent intelligence that shot a wave of icy alarm down his spine. He tensed like a coiled spring.
The diamond pupils shrank into slits, looking past William, at the girl in the branches behind him.
William pulled the crossbow from his back and locked the weapon’s arms.
The eyes shifted, tracking Lark. Whatever it was in the pine was about to pounce.
“Run.”
“What?” Lark whispered.
“Run. Now.”
William raised the crossbow. Hello, asshole.
The eyes fixed on him.
That’s right. Forget the kid. Pay attention to me. William gently squeezed the trigger. A poisoned bolt whistled through the air and bit below the eyes.
A snarl of pure pain ripped through the night.
Behind him Lark scrambled down the tree.
The creature didn’t go down. He hit it with a poisoned bolt, and it didn’t go down.
The eyes swung up, the bolt moving with them. He caught a glimpse of a nightmarish face, pale, hairless, with elongated jaws flashing a forest of teeth.
The beast bunched its powerful back legs and launched its enormous bulk into the space between them. William fired a second time and leaped to intercept it.
THE huge body hit William in midair. Like being hit by a truck. William slammed against the oak, the creature on top of him. The air burst from his lungs in a single sharp grunt. Pain blossomed between his ribs. Huge jaws gaped an inch from his face, releasing a cloud of fetid breath. Sonovabitch. William snarled and sliced across the beast’s throat. Blood poured.
A thick muscled paw smashed his head. The world teetered. Colored circles burst before his eyes.
He sliced again, pinned down by the creature’s weight. Two bolts, two cuts across the neck. It should’ve been dead.
The next hit knocked him into a woozy, furious haze.
Half-blind, William thrust the knife into the beast’s flesh and locked his hand on it.
A thick leg swiped him, clenching him in a steel-hard clamp. William shook his head, gripping the knife. The woods slid by him in a flurry of green stains—they were moving. The beast clutched at the trunk of the oak like a lizard and climbed up to the crown, dragging him with it.
William twisted, spreading the fingers of his left hand, jammed the sleeper against a vein bulging underneath the creature’s pale skin, and squeezed. The needle punched into the blood vessels, squirting the contents of the capsule into the bloodstream. Enough narcotic to drop a grown man where he stood.
The creature snarled and shook him like a dog shakes a rat. William snarled back, punching the needles into the beast’s neck in rapid succession: one, two, three. The sleeper clicked, out of ammo.
The beast hissed and dropped him. William plummeted in a shower of broken branches. His fingers caught a tree limb. He grabbed it, nearly dislocating his shoulders, swung himself up and over like a gymnast, and dropped down to the forest floor.
His vision cleared. He jerked his head up. Above him, the beast descended the tree, moving down the trunk upside down, headfirst.
Bolts, poison, knife, enough narcotic to drop a twelve-hundred-pound bull in mid-charge, and it still moved. William backed away.
The brute leaped to the ground. The moon tore through the clouds, flooding the beast in silvery light. Long and corded with hard muscle, it stood on four massive legs, equipped with five thick, clawed fingers. Coarse brown fur grew in patches on its powerful forequarters and along the sides, thickening to cover the pelvis but failing to completely hide the wrinkled flesh-colored skin. Flat cartilaginous ridges guarded the curve of its spine, flaring into bony plates to sheath the top of its narrow skull. The long serpentine tail lashed and flexed, coiling. Two deep bloody gashes split his neck.
In his entire life
, William had never seen anything like it.
The creature dug the ground with a clawed paw, more simian than canine. The malevolent eyes glared at William. The flesh around the wounds on its neck shivered. The edges pulled together, the red muscle knitted, the skin stretched, and suddenly the cuts were gone. Nothing save the lines of two thin scars remained.
Fuck.
The beast’s mouth opened wide, wider, like the unhinging jaws of a snake. Crooked fangs gleamed, wet with foamy drool.
“Nice.” William raised his knife and motioned with the fingers of his left hand. “Come closer. I’ll carve you up the old-fashioned way.”
A pale furry body shot from the bushes, baying like some hell dog. Cough danced around the beast, snapping and barking and foaming at the mouth. The beast shook its ugly head.
William gathered himself for a charge.
The beast recoiled, as if shocked by a live wire. A moment later William heard it, too, a low female voice singing, rising and falling, murmuring Gaulish words.
The beast shuddered. Its maw gaped open. It howled, a low lingering wail full of regret and pain, whirled, and took off into the night.
“Come back here!” William snarled.
The voice came closer. The tiny glow of a lantern swayed between dark pines.
William dived into the thicket, leaving Cough alone in the mangled weeds.
The bushes parted, and Grandmother Az emerged. She raised her lantern, the shaky light carving the age lines deeper into her face. Lark peered from behind her, dark eyes huge in her pale face.
The dog trotted over and pushed against the old woman’s legs, nearly knocking her off her feet.
“There you are, Cough.” Grandmother Az reached over to pet Cough’s foam-drenched head. “It’s all right.”
“Is it gone?” Lark asked.
“Yes, he’s gone now, child. He won’t come back tonight. You have to stay out of the forest for a while. I wish you would’ve told me he had come around. Come. Let’s go home.”
Grandmother Az took Lark’s hand with a soothing smile and walked back into the woods. The dog followed them, growling quietly and talking shit under his breath.
William sat up. His chest hurt, and his shoulder felt like it was a single continuous bruise. The thing had regenerated before his eyes. Not even the Hand’s freaks healed that fast. What in the bloody hell was that?
Slowly the reality of the situation sank in. He got his ass kicked, learned nothing, and got saved by a dumb dog and an old lady.
If he lived long enough to make a report to Nancy back in Adrianglia, he would have to gloss over this part.
NINETEEN
THE morning came way too fast, William decided as he finished shaving. He’d slipped back into the house and caught a few hours in bed, but most of him still felt like he had been run through one of the Broken’s dryers with some rocks added for the extra tumble.
At least his room had a bathroom attached to it, so he could clean up in relative privacy. His shoulder had gone from blue to sickly yellow-green. The yellow would be gone by the evening—changelings did heal fast. But then, healing fast often just invited more punishment, he reflected.
Something had happened early in the morning. He remembered waking up to some sort of commotion, but his door had stayed locked, so he went back to sleep.
William dressed and tried the door handle again. Open. Good. It had taken all of his will not to bust it last night. Being locked up had never been his favorite.
He slipped into the hallway. The house was quiet and sunlit; the air smelled of cooked bacon. He decided he liked the Rathole. With its clean wooden floors and tall windows, it was an open, uncluttered place, welcoming, comfortable, but not overwhelming. He caught a faint hint of Cerise’s scent and followed it down the stairs and into a huge kitchen. A massive table, old and scarred, dominated the room. Behind it an enormous wood-burning oven sat next to an old electric one. Erian sat at the table doing his best to empty his very full plate. Kaldar leaned against the wall. No Cerise. Great.
“Here you are.” Kaldar saluted him with a wave of his hand. “You missed breakfast, friend.”
“I thought you were supposed to watch me,” William said. “What the hell?”
Kaldar grimaced. “Things happened. Anyway, I figured you’d find your way here sooner or later. Besides, we all watch you. Can’t have a stranger in the house unsupervised. No offense.”
“None taken. Urow’s wife explained to me where I stand.”
Kaldar’s eyes narrowed. He glanced away.
Something had happened to Clara or Urow. Something that made Kaldar wince.
“That’s Clara for you,” Kaldar said. “Anyway, you’ve met my younger brother before, yes, no?”
“Yes. Erian.”
Erian waved at him with his fork. He ate slowly, cutting his food into small pieces. His face was smart but slightly melancholy—the man worried a lot.
“Usually we have to introduce everyone three or four times before guests start remembering names.” Kaldar picked up a metal platter covered by a hood and took the lid off. William took in a pile of fried sausage, chunks of battered fried fish, scrambled eggs, and two stacks of golden pancakes glowing with butter, and tried not to drool.
“Leftovers,” Kaldar said. “Sorry about the fish. We don’t get much meat here. The plates are in the cabinet behind you.”
William retrieved two plates and traded one of them with Kaldar for a fork and a knife. They sat down on opposite sides of Erian. William attacked the pancakes. They were sweet and fluffy and perfect.
Kaldar passed him a small jar of green jam. “Try this.”
William slathered a small bit on his pancake and put it in his mouth. The jam was sweet and slightly sour, but mild. It tasted like strawberry and kiwi and some odd fruit he once tried … persimmon, that was it.
“Good, yes?” Kaldar winked at him. “Cerise makes it. She’s a great cook.”
Erian stopped chewing. “Did you just try to broker Cerise to him?”
Kaldar waved at him. “Shut up, I’m working here.”
“No,” Erian said. “For one, we barely know the man.”
William loaded his plate with sausage. Rabbit. Mmm. If Kaldar thought Cerise would let him sell her, he was deeply mistaken. That much he knew.
“And I’m practically her brother, and I’m sitting right here,” Erian said.
Kaldar regarded him. “And that concerns me how?”
“You don’t try to sell a man’s sister right in front of him, Kaldar.”
“Why not?”
“That’s just not right.” Erian looked at William. “Tell him.”
“You’ve got to be careful about that,” William said. He’d learned very early on that there is a fine line between joking among men and pissing a soldier off by saying something bad about his sister. He never could tell the difference, so he stayed away from the subject altogether. “People take offense. You might get your throat slit.”
“Well, I don’t see a problem with it,” Kaldar said.
“That’s because you’re a scoundrel,” Erian said dryly.
Kaldar put his hand to his chest. “Oh, Erian. From you, that hurts.”
Erian shook his head. “I don’t know about a slit throat, but Ceri will cut your balls off if you keep meddling.”
Now that was something William could believe. “Where is she?”
Both men took a bit too long to chew their food before Erian answered. “She’s in the small yard. Cutting things.”
“So,” Kaldar leaned back. “You’re a blueblood, and you said you aren’t rich.”
“He isn’t?” Erian glanced at him.
“No,” William said.
“So how do you earn your cash?” Kaldar asked.
I lay floors in the Broken. “I hunt.”
“Men or beasts?” Kaldar asked.
“Men.”
Erian nodded. “Any money in that?”
William was
hed his pancake down with a gulp of water. “Some. If you’re good.”
Erian’s eyes fixed him. “Are you?”
Keep pushing and you’ll find out. William stretched his lips, showing his teeth to Erian. “How badly do you want to know?”
“Oh, now that’s not nice …” Kaldar clicked his tongue.
Footsteps approached the stairs. William turned to the door. “Company.”
“I don’t hear anything,” Kaldar said.
“Perhaps if you shut up?” Erian wondered.
The stairs creaked. The door swung open and a massive form dwarfed the doorway. Urow pushed his way into the room. Haggard, his gray skin pale, he staggered to the table, his right arm in a sling. Kaldar got up and pulled a chair from the table. Urow sat.
All the strength seemed to have gone out of him, as if he’d grown too heavy for his muscle.
“Blueblood,” he said, offering William his left hand across the table.
They clamped hands. Urow’s handshake was still hard, but William sensed weakness in his grip.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Been better.” Urow’s eyes were bloodshot and dull.
“How’s your wife?”
“Hurt.”
He thought as much. Clara was hurt and Urow’s world had been split open. He could’ve taken on a lot of punishment, but failing to protect his wife broke him. “Sorry to hear that.”
“I have a favor to ask,” Urow spoke slowly, as if straining to push the words out. “You already helped me once, so I’d owe you two.”
“You owe me nothing. What’s the favor?”
“I’m leaving my youngest son here. He needs to stay busy, so if you need something done, tell him to do it for you. The harder the job, the better.”
Strange. “Fine,” William said. “I’ll do that.”
Urow reached into his pocket, pulled something out, and pushed it across the table. It was a round thing, about two inches wide, made with braided twine and human hair. A black claw stained with dried blood protruded from the circle. It smelled of human blood and looked like one of Urow’s claws, except he had all of his.
“Keep this for me, so my son minds your orders.”
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