My hopeful state is tainted a little as I approach my cottage, the woods behind it looking less friendly to me now, even in the daylight. I remember the golem, the thud of its footsteps behind me, the way it reached for me. I quicken my pace toward the cottage, anxious to be inside.
But as I reach for the latch, the door opens and Kirin is there in his uniform, his mouth a grim line of bad tidings.
“Errin, thank the gods—” He tries to speak but I shove past him, bursting into the cottage, stopping dead when I see the captain in his red sash and Chanse Unwin standing over Ely, now uncovered and unmistakably dead. The table is still strewn with my apothecary work, my diary, open on the page that details all of the potions I’ve made. All of the poisons I’ve made. The box that contains my remedies is revealed, the labels on show nightshade, hemlock, wolfsbane, oleander. The vial of Elixir in the middle of the table.
I look at them, at the questions on the captain’s face, at the smirk on Unwin’s. Then I look at the door of my mother’s room. Open.
“Errin,” Kirin calls again as I run to her room.
“She’s gone,” Unwin says behind me.
I whirl around.
“I evacuated her to a facility in Tressalyn.” He pauses and grins. “A specialist one. For madwomen.”
“No.” I lunge at him but Kirin appears from nowhere, catching me around the waist and saving Unwin from my attack. “Where is she?” I scream from behind Kirin.
“Madness seems to run in the family,” Unwin says with a sneer.
Kirin bundles me into the room and closes the door. Through it I hear him speak to Unwin.
“Leave.” His voice sounds cold.
“This is my house,” Unwin snarls, but whatever Kirin does stops him from saying anything else.
“The village has been requisitioned by the army,” another voice, presumably the captain’s, says calmly. “You’re here at our grace now. And it might be best if you leave.”
“No chance,” Unwin replies. “I want to know how long she’s been keeping a madwoman locked up. Look at this. A body on the floor, poison on the table. She’s a criminal and I’m the Justice here. You hand her over to my custody.”
“That will be all, Unwin,” the captain says and I hear the sounds of a scuffle. When the front door closes, I step back from the bedroom door and wait.
Kirin opens it. I walk out, slowly, expecting to face the captain, but he’s gone, and I turn to Kirin. His face is pale, sweat on his brow, and he’s leaning to the right. I’d forgotten about his wound. He must have wrenched it when he stopped me from getting to Unwin.
“Are you all right?” I ask. “You should be resting; you were shot a few days ago.”
“Never mind me. What have you gotten yourself into?” he asks quietly.
“Where’s my mother?”
“He had soldiers take her before we arrived.”
“And you let him?” I scream.
“Where were you?” Kirin shouts right back at me. “Where were you last night?”
“Please tell me where she is,” I beg.
“What’s wrong with her, anyway?” Kirin continues. “They found her locked in her room this morning. She looked close to death. She didn’t even flinch when they lifted her out of bed. Is that you? Are you drugging your own mother?”
My hand rises to my mouth and I sink to my knees. I imagine soldiers here, taking her out of bed, in her tatty nightgown, looking at her gaunt body, her vacant eyes. Oh gods.
“Why were you here?”
“Unwin reported it. Said he’d told the occupants to evacuate with the others and he thought refugees might have broken in. If I’d known it was you … I sent some of the lads here with him. By the time I came to check myself, it was too late. They’d taken your mother and found … everything.”
I bury my face in my hands. No. Oh please no.
Kirin pulls my fingers away, forcing me to look at him. “Errin, you can either talk, or I’ll have to arrest you myself. There’s enough evidence on the table to see you hanged, even without the body. Talk.”
I struggle out of his grip and walk back into my mother’s room, sitting on the end of her bed. He follows, remaining in the doorway.
“After we realized Lief must be trapped in Lormere she … she shut down. She wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t clean herself, wouldn’t go to the privy. I had to do everything for her. We had no money, Kirin. I had to get it somehow. I started making potions to sell, to pay the rent and buy food. It was the only way. And I … sedate her, sometimes. Something happened to her, in the woods. It changed her.” Once I start speaking I find I can’t stop. “I tried to cure it, then I tried to treat it. Nothing worked, and it made her angry and dangerous. She attacked me.” I open my mouth and show him my tooth. “That was her. And there was more. Kirin, you have to tell me where she is. If they don’t take proper care of her, she’ll attack them, too.”
He shakes his head.
“She’s like the Scarlet Varulv,” I blurt. “She’ll hurt people. She’ll pass it on if I’m not there to treat her.”
“Errin, this isn’t funny.”
“It’s the truth.”
He looks at the table, at the mess still there where I tried to deconstruct the Elixir, then back to me, shaking his head, his eyes full of sorrow. “Errin. I had no idea it was this bad.”
“I know, but I can control it. We have somewhere to go, with people who can help her. So tell me where she is and—”
“Stop,” he says. “It’s over. She’s safe now. And you’ll be safe, too.”
“What?” I become still. “What do you mean?”
“You’ll be taken care of. You shouldn’t have been left alone. But we’ll take care of you now. I’ll make sure of it.”
I stare at him. “I don’t need taking care of. I’ve found us a new home. And we’ll be safer there than anywhere, trust me.”
“Errin, you need help. Both of you.”
“I’m not mad. Kirin, look at her arms. There are scars there. It happened. It’s real. You have to believe me.”
But he doesn’t. It’s written all over him, the way his eyebrows are furrowed, the sad twist to his mouth.
“Errin, I need you to listen to me. I’m going to take care of you. There will be questions—serious questions—because of some of the things you have here. And the fact there was a body. But anyone can see you didn’t hurt him, couldn’t have hurt him like that. I’ll speak for you, and I’ll write to Master Pendie to ask him to attest to your character. We’ll explain about your father, and about Lief. And that you’ve been here, alone, with your mother, these last four moons with no money. It’d be enough to send anyone a little mad. But you mustn’t say things like that, especially now, given the Sleeping Prince. You’ll be in real trouble. Let me handle it, all right? I’ll sort it out. It will be fine.”
It breaks my heart, his words, the kindness, the worry in them and his tone; to have him act like the brother I’m missing. But he doesn’t understand. I need to get to Silas. He’ll know what to do; his people will have ways to help. They’re powerful. They’ll be able to help me get my mother back. And once we’re in the Conclave it won’t matter about the logbook or poor Ely. We’ll be hidden from everyone.
I look at Kirin and nod my head, making myself look small and sorry. He smiles at me gently, and walks across the room to sit beside me on the thin pallet. He puts a brotherly arm around me and I lean into him briefly.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry I’ve let you down.”
“Don’t—” he begins. Then I elbow him in the stomach and run. I slam the door behind me and turn the key in the lock. I’m at the front door before he starts banging, across the threshold, and racing through the village. I hear the shouts of soldiers behind me as I dash toward Silas’s hut, but I don’t stop, speeding past every hut and cottage until I get to his.
“Silas!” I call, throwing the door wide. “Si—”
No more than half an hour can
have passed since I left him. He said he’d come to me in an hour. There had been a nest of blankets on the floor. But now there is nothing. Not even an old candle stub. The hut is completely empty; it’s as if he was never here. It’s all right, I remind myself as fear makes my stomach clench, he must have packed and taken his things with him, to send the message. He’s probably on his way to meet me—
“Oh, Errin,” a voice says slowly, dripping with triumph. I spin and find myself face-to-face with Chanse Unwin.
“I knew you’d come back here, if that wet-behind-the-ears boy soldier gave you half a chance,” he says, standing in the doorway, blocking the exit. “He’s gone, your lover. I saw him after I left you. Heading out toward the Long Road. Did he not say good-bye?”
No. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do that. He said we were friends. He said we were more.
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” he’d said.
Yes I do. I let him trick me. Because he pretended to like me. I never knew him at all; gods, he spent moons lying to me, hiding himself from me. Using me.
I am a fool.
I lean against the wall, using it to hold me up as my insides shred themselves. I have to bend, the ache behind my ribs blossoming, filling me, crushing my lungs and making it impossible to breathe. What am I going to do? They’ve taken Mama, and I … I need him. How could he do this?
In the doorway, Unwin laughs. “You must think I was born yesterday,” he says, resting against the door frame. “I know every inch of this village. My village. Do you think I didn’t know he was squatting in here, like a beast? Do you think it went unnoticed? I knew. I was biding my time.”
My eyes narrow. I don’t believe him, and my left eyebrow creeps up to let him know it.
“You wouldn’t understand my reasons,” he roars, his face turning purple. “You don’t understand anything, you stupid girl. I was kind to you. I looked out for you. I would have taken care of you. But no. I’m not good enough for you. Little Miss High-and-Mighty from Tremayne.” His head tilts as he examines me and my jaw tightens in anger. “Look at you,” he continues. “You’re not even that pretty.”
“If you lay a hand on me—”
“Ha!” He cuts me off with a bark of laughter. “I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire. Not now. Not now I know you’re soiled goods. I told you, I saw it. Last night. You and him, cavorting around the village. Him with no shirt on, chasing you into the bushes. Then you outside my house, helping him cover himself up. I’m not surprised he left. Why keep the cow once you’ve drank your fill of the milk?”
The candle in the window of the House of Justice. He was awake, and watching. But he didn’t see the golems, I realize. Then he steps toward me, and I instinctively move back. “I don’t care what you saw,” I say.
He smirks. “I thought about offering to be your guardian, you know. Make you my ward. Thought how fitting it would be to have you scrubbing my floors.”
“I’d die before I let that happen.”
“And so you shall,” he says. “As I said earlier, Errin, a dead body, a box of poisons. A nice, neat diary telling the world what you made and who you made it for. I’ll see you swing, and your precious Silas, too, once we catch up to him.”
I didn’t think it was possible, but my panic rises.
“I just hope they let me kick the stool out from under you.”
I turn around and punch him, clean in the face, my thumb tucked over my fingers, like Papa taught me. I feel the crunch of his nose shattering under my fist and instantly pain radiates through my hand, along my lower arm, as the skin on my knuckles splits. Cradling the damaged hand in my other, I bite down on my tongue to stop myself from crying out. Unwin is trying to stanch the flow of blood from his nose, and I watch, waiting for him to look at me. When he does I step toward him and he flinches.
“What goes around comes around, Chanse Unwin. Remember that. I’d be careful what you eat and drink from now on. You’ve seen what I can make.” I hold his gaze until he looks down, like a dog submitting to its master. Only then do I turn and leave.
I manage to make it halfway across the village before my legs give out and I have to lean against one of the cottages. I take deep breaths, still cradling my bruised hand. It hurts so much. Yet I’d do it all over again if I had to.
I lean back against the wall, feeling the wet wood against my tunic, and panic rises, the ever-present rock in my chest pressing me into the earth. I don’t have any money. I don’t have anywhere to go. I don’t even have my knife.
What the hell do I do now?
I leave the village using the same path my family and I arrived on four moons ago, making the journey in reverse; this time veering right along the dirt track, cantering through small copses and lowland until I reach the Long Road. The land on either side of the road is scrub, gorse and bracken and thistle, wild land, unclaimed and unused by man.
When we came here the land was green and rich at the height of summer, at odds with the emptiness inside us, the gaping hole where my father had been. Now it’s barren and wintry, and there’s another hole where my brother, and mother, should be.
Where Silas should be, I think, and immediately humiliation and anger curdle in my stomach.
I look over my shoulder but can see no sign that I’m being followed. Despite it, I urge my stolen horse into a gallop, eager to put a few more miles between me and Almywk before sunset. When I turn back again, smoke is still rising in the distance on the left and I allow myself a grin.
* * *
After the encounter with Unwin I knew I had to get out of Almwyk as fast as possible, knew that the soldiers would come for me. Between the body, the poisons, and assaulting Unwin, I’d be thrown in jail at the very least and this time Kirin wouldn’t be able to step in and save me. I’d felt a small pang of guilt at the trouble he’d be in for letting me slip away but shaken it off. He’d be fine. After all, I’d attacked him, too; he’d have the bruises to prove it.
So I went to the last place anyone would have thought to find me: Unwin’s House of Justice. I broke in through a small window at the back of the building, wrapping my cloak around my undamaged hand and smashing the thin window, before clearing the glass and heaving myself inside. I found myself in the pantry; the house was silent and still, and I moved quickly. I took a clean towel and bound my split knuckles, then I dragged a sack of flour from the pantry into the kitchen, emptying it over the floor, coughing when it billowed up and into my face, laughing as it settled on every surface. Not that it would matter.
I filled the sack with as much of Unwin’s food as I could easily lift: bread, cheese, apples, the remains of a ham, a liter of fresh milk, some potted shrimp wrapped in muslin, my mouth watering at the sight of it, despite everything.
Leaving the sack by the back door, I dashed upstairs. The idea of wearing anything that belonged to Unwin made me feel sick, but I knew I had little choice—a lone woman on the road would draw some attention; a lone woman covered in a bloody dress, wrapped in a thin cloak, would draw a lot. So I threw open his wardrobe, rooting through his clothes, throwing things to the floor, recoiling from the smell of him. There was nothing that would fit me, so I moved on to old chests, digging through years of his life, the trousers and shirts getting smaller, the quality better, before finally striking it lucky with breeches that, though a good thirty years out-of-date and still too long, would do for now. I rolled up the legs and added a fine leather belt stolen from a hook by the door to keep them in place. A woolen shirt smelling of mothballs over a thin vest swamped my upper body, but at least I’d be warm. Finally I took a fur-lined cloak, and pulled my hair into a braid over my head, using my old tunic to wipe the flour residue from my face.
I left everything else where it fell, my clothes included, and raced back downstairs.
In the small library I stole a handful of coins left scattered on the desk, before pulling all of his papers, all of his books, from the shelves and hauling them into the kitchen
, where I dumped them on the table, sending the flour spiraling into the air like a specter. When the pile of his belongings reached my chest, I fetched the most expensive-looking bottles of whiskey I could find in the pantry, using them to soak the pyre I’d made. Finally I chose the nastiest, sharpest-looking knife from the block by the stove and tucked it into my belt. The whole thing had taken less than twenty minutes.
Then I took the firelighter from beside the stove and touched it to the pyre. I allowed myself a moment to watch the rush of blue flame as the alcohol burned, then I pocketed the firelighter, grabbed my sack, and fled straight into the forest.
I watched from the edge of the woods as the house had gone up, slowly at first, so slowly I thought it would burn out before it caught. I almost went back to give it a helping hand. But then a gust of wind carried burning embers to the thatch and that was all it took; I heard the whoosh as the flames took hold. I watched as dozens of soldiers ran to try to put the fire out, watched them dash to the well to get water, and curse the missing bucket, all of them standing helpless as the blaze consumed Unwin’s home. I’d almost, almost, forgiven Silas then.
I’d relied on Unwin going straight to the soldiers to report me, instead of returning home, when I’d decided on my plan, and I’d guessed well. He arrived when the house was beyond saving. I gave myself a few more precious seconds to enjoy the rage and confusion on his still-bloody face, then I took my chance and darted down along the edge of the forest, creeping my way to the soldiers’ encampment, staying out of sight of the soldiers running toward the village. I suppose they thought the smoke was the start of an attack.
When I was sure it was empty, I moved swiftly, checking the largest tents for my mother, in case they were still holding her there, my stomach twisting every time I pulled back a flap to find the tent empty. From the largest one I stole a leather satchel, a water skin, a map of the realm, and a second, opal-handled, knife.
I’d used that knife to liberate one of the few horses in the makeshift stables, a sleek-looking bay with watchful eyes. She hadn’t balked when I approached her, or saddled her, or even climbed onto her back.
The Sleeping Prince Page 14