As silently as she could, she crept closer and pressed her nose to the grimy glass, trying to see inside.
It took some time for her eyes to adjust to the relatively bright interior of the room beyond, but once they had, she was sure it was the same room she’d seen through Miraculum’s eyes. Thanks to the curtains, she couldn’t see where he was lying, but she could see Haake’s back and hunched shoulders as he rocked beside the fire. His head was up, and it looked almost as though he were talking to the empty air before him.
She wondered, uneasily, if whatever was wrong with him had driven him mad. A sane person could be counted upon to behave in predictable ways; a madman was much more dangerous.
She watched for another minute, trying to work out how to proceed and not endanger her son. Every fiber of her being wanted to rush inside and snatch him up into her arms, but she had to be careful. She wouldn’t do her son any good if Haake overpowered her. He wasn’t much bigger than she was, but he was extremely strong.
The seconds ticked away as she struggled with her indecision.
At last, she tore herself away from the window and made her way along the wall, searching for a way inside. She wasn’t doing Miraculum any good out here.
She’d only gone a dozen steps when she found it—a small servants’ door near the corner of the house. She fumbled for the latch in the dark, holding her breath and straining her ears for any sound. She heard only the wind.
The hinges squealed a gentle protest as she slowly pushed the door open and slipped inside. She went on holding her breath for a moment longer, before letting it out in a long, slow sigh when she heard nothing but the pounding of her own heart. As quietly as she could, she closed the door behind her.
The house smelled dry and dusty, not unlike the ruined library in Hellsgate where she’d holed up briefly with Paige and the rest of the Dragon’s Brood not long ago.
She made her way forward slowly, cautiously feeling out each step before she took it. One step…two…three…
Gradually, shadows took shape around her, and she found herself at the juncture of two narrow corridors. To her left, dim light crept into the hall around a closed door that surely led to Miraculum.
Gotcha, she thought with grim satisfaction.
She adjusted her grip on the dagger and slipped down the second hall toward the door. One step…two…three…
She hesitated facing it, listening. She could just make out the low hiss and crackle of the flames in the hearth. For a moment, she’d thought she’d heard Haake’s voice speaking quietly, but after a minute of hearing nothing else, she decided she’d imagined it.
It was now or never.
She reached out to push open the door, but before her fingers touched its polished wood, it swung inward.
Haake stood in the doorway, a dark shape against the bright light that drove needles into her eyes. She raised her dagger defensively, taking a step backward and blinking furiously, but Haake did not make any other move.
As she became accustomed to the glare, she saw that, up close, he looked worse than she’d thought. His eyes were so red that they appeared to be full of blood; his face was flushed with color, and he was trembling violently, like someone in the throes of one of the wasting diseases the healers could not treat.
“He said you’d come,” Haake said tiredly, his voice even reedier than usual.
Mona’s eyes flicked past him, wondering whom he meant. Was there someone else in there with him?
Haake’s gaze went to the dagger in her hand. “It’s okay,” he said, “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m too weak anyway.” He stepped to one side, holding on to the door for support. “Come on in before we let all the warm air out.”
Cautiously, Mona took a step forward, trying to look everywhere at once.
“Who else is here?” she hissed through clenched teeth.
“No one right now. Just your boy.”
And then her eyes fell on the bundle, wrapped in blankets, lying on a tattered armchair.
She went to him, her dagger still at the ready.
Miraculum was sleeping, but his eyes snapped open when he heard the click of the door that Haake closed behind her, and a smile crossed his beautiful face. So much more expressive—that face—than his father’s; so much more ready with a smile than Corbb’s, which it so greatly resembled.
She knelt before the chair and leaned forward to kiss the ridges that ran over the crown of his head amidst those golden curls
Mother.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I’m here.”
She turned away from him, facing Haake, who had made no move to come near her. He was leaning against the wall beside the door—almost clinging to it—and watching her with little, if any, emotion.
“Why did you do it?” she asked, fighting to keep her anger in check. “Why?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said. “But I’m done now. We have a fire and a warm place to sleep, and then you can take your son back tomorrow. I’ve done what I had to, and he promised me a family. I just needed a holder and…” His voice trailed away.
He was speaking nonsense, and she hated being alone in here with him. He was right about one thing, though. They would have to wait for dawn to go anywhere.
She scanned the room for something she could use, and her gaze lit on a pile of loosely coiled rope beside the hearth.
Haake followed her gaze. “I brought that in case the boy got to be too difficult, but I didn’t need it. As docile as a lamb, he is.”
Fresh fury began to bubble up inside her, but she fought it down.
She got back to her feet and went to the rope, never turning her back on Haake. He, however, did not move. He seemed to be staring at something only he could see.
With the rope hanging from one hand and the dagger in her other, she went to him.
“Over by the fire,” she snapped.
He didn’t protest. He walked slowly across the room, swaying as though he were three sheets to the wind.
“Lie down.”
He did so, and Mona knelt beside him, setting the dagger down within easy reach on the hearthstones.
Haake remained still as she wound the rope around his arms and legs, tying knot after knot. It would take a blade to untangle the mess she was making, and that was just as she wanted it.
When she was done she retrieved her dagger and went back to the chair where Miraculum sat watching her with an unnaturally solemn look in his eyes.
“It’s okay, love,” she told him. “Everything’s going to be just fine now.”
She swept him into her arms, and despite her exhaustion, he hardly seemed to weigh anything.
She sank into the chair herself, holding him on her lap and watching Haake and the fire. She rocked him, humming a soft tune that her mother had once sang to her and Corbb.
After a while, Miraculum fell asleep, a lock of her hair wound through his tiny claw-tipped fingers.
In the morning, they’d begin the trek back to Coalhaven and Garrett, and boy would they have a chat about his drinking.
Despite her best intentions, she began to drift toward sleep, and just before she passed across the threshold of dreams, she thought she heard Haake murmuring to someone who wasn’t there, “There. It’s done.”
Caireann
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Caireann took one last look around the rooms that had been her home for the last few years. What should she be feeling? Sadness? Nostalgia? She felt a pang of something, but she wasn’t entirely sure what it was. Concern, perhaps, for the girls who would no longer be in her care. They must fend for themselves now. She’d stayed far longer than was wise—far longer than any would have imagined—far longer than any other would have dared.
There was nothing to leave behind, nothing to pack, nothing to take—and it was better that way. If she was caught, there was nothing to suggest that she was doing anything other than going into the city for the evening as she’d done a hundred times b
efore. She wore only a plain woolen dress, and if the money pouch was a little heavier than usual as it swung from her belt, what of it?
She stepped out into the dark hall, closing the door behind her. The soft thud and snick of its latch seemed very final, reverberating in the stillness of the tower. She listened, almost feeling the vibrations as they caressed every stone…every crevice…every secret…
And oh, there were so many secrets.
A candle hung suspended in the air beside the doorway, waiting for her as she’d asked. She nodded at its unseen bearer, and the flame bobbed before taking up a position beside her shoulder. The scent of burning wax, once so exotic, seemed an old and familiar comfort to her now. It would forever be linked in her mind to this time, she thought, in this place, and to the girls she’d shepherded through the trials of becoming apprentices to Marianne.
There it was—a twinge of feeling she could positively identify—regret.
The tower was silent; all her charges fast asleep—and soon to be her charges no more. Now and then, she caught the sounds of the city outside floating in through an open window, or the chink and clang of weaponry as the force Marcom had assembled went on preparing for their inevitable march on Coalhaven. Over all these years, Marianne had never changed; all those men preparing for slaughter because she allowed herself to be swept away by the petty squabbles of the people, because she lost sight of the picture as she squinted at the pieces. Such a sad, sad waste.
Slowly, she climbed the stairs to the apprentices’ chambers for the last time. How many girls had she led up these steps over the years? But really, there was only the one who mattered.
Where are yeh now, girl? she wondered. Emily—who had known things—and her friend, Celine—who had healed things. Mayhap that one had mattered too. They’d had older magics by far than the others. If they’d not made their desperate and rather foolhardy escape, Caireann herself would have had to make this final journey far sooner, and it would’ve been that pair she’d have spirited away into the night.
She reached the top of the stairs and quietly moved to the door to Dorothy’s room.
The tiny girl was sitting on the edge of her bed in the dark, clutching her copy of The Wizard of Oz to her chest. She seemed to have been waiting for Caireann, and that gave her a moment’s pause—a flash of misgiving.
“We have to go,” Dorothy said firmly, barely above a whisper.
“That we do,” Caireann said. “How did yeh know, dearheart?”
The girl did not answer—not that Caireann had expected she would. In the dim candlelight, she could see the girl’s underdeveloped antennae twitch at the back of her neck, and she heard the dry rustle of her tiny wings. She was so young; it was so unfair.
When she was sure the girl would say no more, Caireann chanced another question.
“Is that all yeh want to take with yeh?”
Dorothy nodded, hugging the ancient thing closer. Strange that it was that book so particularly that she had taken to. Strange that it had been left here, in this very room, by Emily and Celine.
“We’d best be goin’ then,” she said, and she extended her hand.
Dorothy shifted her book to the crook of one arm and placed her tiny hand in Caireann’s. It did not tremble, although Dorothy laced her delicate fingers through Caireann’s. She looked up at her, her face solemn and full of trust, and Caireann’s heart broke a little.
Together, they descended the spiral stairs.
The doors to the outside world slid easily open at Caireann’s touch, letting in a blast of frigid autumn air off the surface of the sea. The tang of salt came with it, and the gentle hiss and crash of the waves. Caireann felt their call, as she always did when she ventured near. They sang to her like a siren—part invitation, part seduction.
Soon, she thought, and a chill ran down the length of her body. Very soon.
They stepped through the doors, leaving the fortress, with its ghostly candle bearers and its secrets, behind.
The streets were sparsely populated this late, but there were enough souls out that none spared a glance of a woman and child making their way south and east among them. Some were still clearing away signs of the destruction that had been visited upon them in the last few days. Others, she was surprised to note, were doggedly continuing their preparations for Samhain. Strings of paper lanterns hung from the eves of fine houses; jointed wooden skeletons swung from the tops of high fences, their teeth chattering and heels clicking against one another; all manner of large vegetables sat on stoops of rich and poor alike, carved with faces full of malice and jagged teeth. They were ready, but no candles would be lit within their hollowed-out centers until the first night of Samhain.
It was hard to imagine that the festival would proceed with Seven Skies in the state that it was, but humans were resilient creatures, as were their closest cousins—the flyers, the satyrians, and others. Those who straddled the line between the light and the dark—the magic and the mundane. Those like Dorothy. Caireann was not one of them and never had been.
She sighed, suddenly feeling very old and weary. It would be good to be going home at last, even if the journey would be long.
But first things first—she had Dorothy to take care of.
The coach station was nearly deserted. Their footfalls on its cobbled floor reverberated around them, mingling with the hiss of the gas lamps high on the walls. A few tired travelers waited on benches for drivers to prepare their horses. The air was chill and redolent with the smells of oats and manure.
Caireann led Dorothy along the rows of large coach stalls, looking for one that was both manned and available. Most of the stalls were empty. She supposed plenty had fled Seven Skies already after recent events, whisking nobles and wealthier merchants to more peaceful, and less dangerous, climes.
She finally found what she wanted—a small coach, little more than a buggy, with a middle-aged man reclining comfortably in the driver’s seat.
He looked up hopefully when she paused on the threshold of the stall, blinking owlishly down at them both.
“Ma’am?”
“I take it yeh’re free?”
“Aye, that’s right.” The man leapt down with surprising grace from his perch and came toward them. “Where are yeh wantin’ to go?” He eyed her appraisingly, looking for bruises or other telltales that would mark a woman fleeing from her man. He found none, of course, and then his eyes moved to Dorothy. Caireann could see the frown forming on his lips as he began to wonder about the human woman and the flyer girl, an unlikely pair, travelling alone so late at night.
“We’re only going as far as Ravenshold, I’m afraid,” she said, drawing his gaze back to her. “But yeh’ll be paid well, and more if we set out sooner than later.”
She reached into the pouch at her belt, produced four gold holders, and held them out to him. “There’ll be five times that when we get there.” She shook the pouch so he could hear the jangle of coins inside.
His unease forgotten in the light of those shiny coins, he took them from her, dropped them in his own pouch, and set about hitching up his only horse.
Caireann kept Dorothy close, watching the coachman at his work. She could feel time, usually so meaningless to her, slipping away at an alarming pace. That old and powerful part of her knew they were safe for now—knew that in just a short time they’d be on the road out of the city—and yet it did not do well to underestimate Marianne’s cunning or power. She found herself scanning the other inhabitants of the station, searching for faces she knew, but there were none.
At last, the coachman was ready, and he helped them up into his buggy and onto the narrow back seat. He went to close the curtain between them and the high driver’s seat, but Caireann reached out and touched his arm, forestalling him.
“Let it be,” she said. “I want to see where we’re goin’.”
“It’ll be mighty dark out there, ma’am,” he said doubtfully. “And the air’ll be cold coming in that way.�
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“All the same, yeh’ll leave it.”
The man’s gaze flicked to Dorothy for a moment, and he seemed to debate with himself for a few seconds. Finally, he shrugged and turned to climb up into his seat.
Dorothy nestled into Caireann’s side as the coach wended its way through the city streets and toward the old coast road. Caireann put an arm around the girl, holding her close and offering what warmth she could against the chill night.
Buildings thinned, giving way to wooded hills on one side and rocky shoreline on the other. The harsh clip clop of the horse’s hooves on stone changed to a dull thud, thud, thud as they left the paved streets of the city and picked up speed on the hardpan. The dark beyond the driver’s lantern seemed a thing of weight, despite the fact that Caireann could make out the landmarks they passed very well. She, after all, did not have the same limitations as the humans around her.
Hours slipped away, and the moon rose in the sky, dusting everything a pale silver and deepening the shadows. No other coaches or horses passed them, and the only sounds, apart from the roar of the waves, were the scratching of the autumn leaves in the wind.
At last, she saw the place she’d been looking for—a spire of stone that jutted skyward from a pile of sharp and broken rocks near the edge of the tide, and she called out to the driver.
“Stop here.”
“Here?” he asked, twisting around to look at her.
“That’s what I said. Are yeh deaf, man?”
He turned and pulled back on the reins. His mare slowed, and the coachman guided her off to one side of the road.
“It’s still another four or five miles to Ravenshold,” he complained as they came to a stop. “What are you wantin’ to stop here for? T’ain’t safe to be standing still out here in the dark.”
“We’ll be getting off here,” Caireann said, rousing the dozing Dorothy and half carrying her down the steps to the ground.
“Are you mad?”
“I’m paying yeh well for the transportation, not the commentary, so keep yerself to yerself, thank yeh.” She pulled her money pouch from her belt and tossed it to him. “Yeh can have what’s left in there.”
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