“Mind the steps,” I warned her.
She cautiously took the steps one by one.
“What is this?” she whispered.
“A laundry,” I said.
“Hmm,” she snorted. “Fancy place.”
We sneaked through the laundry, up a few steps, and through a door into a large kitchen. There was a fire still glowing in the iron stove, and a rich and yeasty smell filled the air. Someone had left a pan of bread dough to rise, ready for the morning’s baking.
In the darkness I bumped into a table, and there was a clatter of pans and pottery.
“Ssshh!” Rose hushed me.
I stood frozen for a moment, listening. The house was quiet; no steps or voices anywhere, no sounds at all except—was that someone snoring? Yes. A gentle fluttering snore, someplace near.
Rose grasped my arm and pulled me along, through the kitchen and out through a door at the end. Immediately, I could feel that this was a different kind of room, big and empty and with a ceiling so high it vanished in the darkness far above our heads. Through big bay windows, moonlight fell on a floor tiled in black and white, and a tall curving staircase wound its way upward into the darkness.
“The cook often sleeps next to the kitchen,” Rose whispered. “That was probably her. I think we need to go up. Servants usually live in the attic rooms in houses like this, and I don’t suppose they’ll have given her one of the master bedrooms.”
“How do you know all that?” I asked.
“The people Ma does laundry for live in houses like this,” she said. “Well? Do we go on? Or are there any more pots you’d like to break?”
“They didn’t break,” I muttered. That girl could be such a pain. And yet, although I was not about to admit it to her, I was glad she was with me right now.
We climbed the stairs slowly, hoping the steps wouldn’t creak. When we reached the first landing I hesitated, but Rose pointed upward.
“All the way up,” she said, “to the attic.”
We climbed two more flights of stairs, the last one cruder and narrower than the ones farther down. Up here the darkness was nearly total; there weren’t any windows with fancy glass panes in them, just shuttered slits that let in only the faintest traces of moonlight around the edges.
I halted because I couldn’t see where I was going. Rose bumped into me and had to clutch at my arm to keep from falling. But for once there were no sharp remarks, and even after she had regained her balance she kept holding on to me.
There was a drawn-out eerie squeak, like the ones bats make when they fly.
“What was that?” breathed Rose.
“Someone sleeping?” I suggested. “People make the weirdest noises when they sleep.”
“It sounded more like a bat,” she said. It seemed to frighten her more than the fact that we might be about to trip over a sleeping Dragon soldier. Girls are strange.
It was hard to decide exactly where the sound was coming from. I stuck out a cautious foot, took a step, and then another… I still couldn’t see a thing. I held one hand out in front of me and fumbled along the wall with the other. My fingers brushed some rough boards, and then something softer, like sacking. A curtain of some kind. The bat sound came from the space behind the curtain, I was pretty sure. It didn’t sound like Dina, but then there might be more than one person sleeping in there. I gently pushed the curtain aside and peered into the alcove. There was slightly more light here because one of the shutters hung ajar, and I could just make out a body, much too large and coarse to be Dina’s.
At that moment, the bat squeak stopped. I froze in the middle of a movement. Sleep on, I prayed, sleep, there’s nobody here. Just sleep.
The man stirred, making the bedboards creak. My heart skipped a beat. But he didn’t sit up. I lowered the curtain again with infinite slowness. Just as slowly, Rose and I crept back the way we had come. We stood on the stairs for a while, listening. Still nothing. He really must be sleeping still, I thought.
“I don’t think Dina is up there,” I told Rose as quietly as possible, putting my mouth right next to her ear.
“We only looked behind one curtain,” she whispered back to me. “There might be more.”
“That was no servant girl,” I said. “That was a Dragon soldier.”
“So? Maybe he’s guarding her.”
“A bit inattentive for a guard, isn’t he?”
For a moment it seemed that Rose would keep arguing. Then she heaved a discouraged sigh.
“Where else can we look?” she asked. “There’s got to be dozens of rooms in a house this size.”
“I just thought of something,” I said. “Maybe we don’t have to open every door to every room. Maybe we just have to find the one that’s locked.”
We found a locked door on the first floor—clearly locked from outside, too, as the key was still in the lock.
“This must be it,” I said, my mouth suddenly gone dry. “Who else would they be locking up?”
“Open it,” snapped Rose, sharp with impatience. “Don’t just stand there, open it!”
I unlocked the door. Opened it.
It was nearly as dark in there as it had been in the attic. There were windows, large ones with plenty of glass panes, but they were mostly covered by heavy, dark curtains. When I took a step into the room, my bare foot all but disappeared into thick furry carpeting; it was like stepping on something live.
I stood there uncertainly, trying to get my bearings. It didn’t seem like the kind of room you would give a prisoner. On the other hand, the door had been locked. And like I said, who else would they lock up?
I could make out a very large bed hung with velvet curtains.
“Dina?” I whispered tentatively. No one answered. I drew back the curtain, but the bed was clearly empty.
And then I saw her. Curled up on the window seat, half hidden by the heavy drapes. I knew at once it was she, even though all I could see was a slight figure in a long white nightgown.
I crossed the room in three steps. And then I stopped, suddenly afraid to touch her, as if she might vanish between my fingers like a ghost.
“Dina…”
She opened her eyes and blinked sleepily.
“Davin,” she said in a totally ordinary voice, as if there were nothing strange about my being there. “Is it time to”—and then she stiffened and came fully awake—“Davin!”
She leaped to her feet and wrapped her arms around my neck, clinging so hard I could barely breathe. She was thinner than she used to be, but apart from that she seemed all right.
I can’t begin to tell how it felt. As if I had finally fought my way out of a nightmare. As if I had been broken inside, and now wasn’t. And at the same time, I was absolutely furious with her. Don’t ask me why. For a moment it was as if everything, every awful moment we had had, Mama and Melli and Rose and me, as if that was all Dina’s fault.
“Where have you been?” I whispered, hanging on to her as if I were afraid she’d run away. “Do you realize how frightened we’ve been?”
She pulled in a shuddering breath, like a sob.
“Don’t be mad,” she said, and her voice was hoarse with tears. “Davin, please don’t be mad at me.”
And of course then I felt like the world’s biggest ass and the worst big brother anyone had ever had. After everything she had been through… and then, when I finally found her, I made her cry.
“Ssshh,” I said, resting my cheek against her hair. “Shush. Stop it. I found you, didn’t I?” I offered her my sleeve. “Here. Dry your eyes.”
She put her hand on my arm. And then choked on a kind of weepy giggle.
“Davin,” she said. “It’s soaking wet. How do you expect me to dry anything with that?”
She was right, of course. The sleeve was as wet as the rest of me.
“You can have my handkerchief,” said Rose.
“Rose!” Dina let go of me and hugged Rose instead. “What are you doing here? Both of you. How
did you ever find me?”
“Oh, it was… teamwork, really,” said Rose. Even in the dark I caught her teasing smile—a quick white flash of teeth. Then she became serious again. “But Dina, we’ve got to hurry now. We’ve got to get out of here before someone sees us.”
Dina let go of Rose. Suddenly she looked utterly miserable.
“I can’t,” she said in a curiously dead voice.
“What?” Rose and I were almost a chorus.
“I can’t come with you.”
I was stunned. “What do you mean, ‘can’t’? Of course you can!”
She shook her head. “No. If I… if I don’t… if I run away, he’ll kill Tavis.”
“Tavis?” For the moment, I had completely forgotten who that was.
“Tavis Laclan. The boy who was with me.”
Of course. Helena Laclan’s grandchild. His mother had hit me on the forehead with the Black Hand. Ye came to take a life, she had said.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“In the cellar,” she said, “beneath the stable.”
“I suppose we had better go get him, then.”
Little Tavis Laclan was not exactly happy to see us. You would have thought we had come to cut his throat, not rescue him.
At first we could neither see him nor hear him in the dark cellar. There was a lantern hanging on a nail by the trapdoor, but we were afraid to light it. If anyone saw the glow of it and came to investigate, we would be caught like rats in a trap. There was only one way out of this place; all anybody had to do was bolt the hatch, and we would be finished. “Tavis,” Dina called quietly, “are you awake?”
There was a rustle from somewhere, like an animal stirring up its bedding.
“What do ye want?” came a voice from the darkness, sulky and scared. “Stay away from me, ye filthy traitor. Ye’ll not get any secrets out of me!”
Filthy traitor? Who did he think he was, talking to my sister like that? I waited for Dina to say something, but she just stood there, and I could hear from her breathing that she was about to cry again. That made me really angry.
“Listen, you little brat,” I snapped, “don’t you ever talk—”
But Dina put her hand on my arm and brought me up short. “Be quiet, Davin,” she whispered. “There are… things you don’t know.”
What did she mean? Something had happened to her, I could feel it. She didn’t seem… she didn’t seem like herself, somehow. What had those bastards done to her?
“We’ve come to get you out, Tavis,” she said. There was a scraping of wood on wood as Dina unbolted the front end of the crate they kept him in. “Come on,” she said, “we’re going home.”
Right then somebody started singing. I nearly leaped a foot; and I did manage to crack my head on a roof beam.
“Long is the road and narrow the path / Heavy the heart that is forced to roam / Always we yearn for the warming hearth / To know we are safe, to know we are home.”
A grating, snuffling voice. Certainly not Tavis. The voice of a madman, I thought. Normal people didn’t sound like that.
“Oh,” Dina sighed, “I forgot about him.”
“Who? Who, Dina? Who is he?”
“A tramp. That is… not really. It’s a long story. But, Davin, we have to take him with us.”
“Dina… we can’t—I mean, anybody can hear that he’s not right in the head. We’ll never get him past the guards at the gate. Or through the camp, for that matter. He’ll give us away.” It would be hard enough with Dina and Tavis.
“If we leave him here, Valdracu will kill him.” There was a stubborn note in Dina’s voice that I knew only too well. “Besides, I don’t think he is… completely mad. I think he knows enough to be quiet when he has to be.”
“Gentle Lady,” whispered the eerie, snuffling voice. “In this life, choices are few / A beggar does what a beggar must do.”
I fumbled in the dark for the beggar’s crate, and my fingers brushed against cold metal. A heavy chain secured the front of the crate.
“Dina, we can’t even open the crate! This chain is as thick as my wrist.”
Dina came to my side to investigate.
“Forget the chain,” she said. “The slats are only wooden. Can’t you smash a few of those?”
Who did she think I was? Sir Iron-Fist who could knock a dragon to the ground with his bare hands? Although, on the other hand, she said it as if she thought a big brother ought to be able to do that kind of thing. And the slats were only wooden.
“I’ll need some light,” I said. “I know it’s dangerous, but if I can’t see what I’m doing I haven’t a hope.”
“There’s a lantern by the hatch,” said Dina. “But I don’t have a tinderbox.”
Neither did I, and if I had, the thing would be soaked.
“I’ve got one,” said Rose.
“Of course you do,” I muttered.
We fetched the lamp, and Rose struck a fire and lit the wick. A gentle yellow glow spread through the cellar.
“Rose, will you be lookout? If anyone shows, we have to put out that lantern at once.”
Rose nodded. “I’ll whistle if anybody comes,” she said. “Like this.” She pursed her lips, and suddenly it sounded exactly as if there was a blackbird in the cellar. A blackbird who had just caught sight of a cat.
“Where did you learn that?” I said. “It sounds completely… it sounds like a real bird.”
Rose looked uncomfortable. “Oh, I just… practiced.” She turned and climbed rapidly up the ladder.
“Why was she suddenly in such a rush?” I asked.
Dina smiled, a very pale, faint smile. “This might not be the first time Rose has been the lookout,” she said.
And then I remembered where Rose used to live. Swill Town. The foulest, poorest part of Dunark. Probably half the people there had to pilfer and smuggle to survive, and I bet Rose’s bastard of an older brother had not belonged to the honest half. Forcing his sister to act as lookout while he did his illegal “business” would be all in a day’s work for him.
“Raise the lantern,” I told Dina.
She did. I considered the crate. The slats were about two hands apart, and the beggar was a skinny creature. I didn’t think we would need to break more than one. I drew back, balancing on one leg, and kicked as hard as I could. I didn’t get much for my pains, apart from a sore heel and a couple of splinters. My boots were still where I had left them in the woodpile at the end of the stable, and right now I missed them.
“Damn!” I clenched my teeth and tried again. Same result.
“This is no good,” I said, rubbing my heel. “The only thing that is getting broken here is me.”
“Give me your knife,” said Dina. “If we can weaken it a bit…”
“Get Rose’s,” I said. “It’s sharper.”
Dina disappeared up the ladder. I got out my own knife and worked at the slat, shaving curls of wood off it. I wasn’t making much headway. The tramp squatted on the floor inside the crate, eyeing my lack of progress with a jaundiced eye. I wished he would find something else to do. Sweat was running into my eyes, even though it was quite chilly in the damp cellar. We had Rose to warn us, but still, if someone saw the light and got to the hatch before we did…
Dina came back.
“Here.” She handed me Rose’s knife—small, rusty, but extremely sharp. She got mine in return, and we both carved away at the slat. Shavings fluttered to the floor.
“Hurry,” said Tavis. Apparently we weren’t filthy traitors anymore. “Hurry up!”
“I’m going as fast as I can,” I said through clenched teeth. My wrist was sore already from the carving, and the back of my neck had become one big anxious knot, almost as if I was expecting someone to seize me by the scruff of it any moment.
“Try again,” said Dina. “It’s much thinner now.”
I tried again. And at my second kick, the wood splintered and cracked. We still had to twist and pull at the slat, but finally
we had an opening big enough for the skinny tramp to slip through. And still there were no warning blackbird calls from Rose.
I helped the tramp to his feet. Even in the faint glow of the lamp he kept blinking.
“Humble thanks,” he muttered. “Humble thanks to the noble sir.”
He looked pitiful. He was absolutely filthy, and even through the stench of decaying beets one could smell his body. There were streaks of crusted blood on his face, and his nose and chin were so swollen that it was little wonder he slurred and snuffled. Clearly he had been beaten—badly beaten. He stood clutching the wall, looking like he would fall over if he let go.
I eyed my little flock of freed prisoners. Small pale Tavis. Dina, hanging her head as if she never wanted to look anyone in the eye again. And the battered scarecrow figure of the tramp. I’d never get that lot through the gate.
“It’s no good,” I told Dina. “You and I might get through the gate somehow. But three! It’s hopeless.”
Dina shook her head. “No,” she said. “I know a place. A secret door.”
She hung her head even more. I didn’t understand—why should she feel so ashamed?
“Great,” I said. “Where?”
“We’ll have to go back to the house,” she said.
Not exactly the escape route of my choice. A house full of sleeping Dragon soldiers. Or perhaps a house full of Dragon soldiers who were not sleeping quite so heavily anymore.
“Can’t we just go around it?”
“No,” she said. “We need to get into the Rose Court.”
The Rose Court? It made no particular sense to me.
“Are you sure?”
“I found it yesterday,” she said in a tired voice. “The door, I mean. When you go through it, you get to a meadow, and on the other side of the meadow lies the wood. No walls, no guards. You can walk right into the forest.”
Why didn’t you? I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud. I suppose the thing with Tavis had stopped her.
The Shamer's Signet Page 18