Daughter of Lies and Ruin

by Jo Spurrier

  ‘I can see that. But listen, kid. Caravan guards don’t often live to be old men. If he was killed on the road, would anyone think to send you a message?’

  ‘He’s not dead,’ Kara said, clenching her jaw.

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘I just know, all right?’

  Aleida tilted her head to one side. ‘You’re very certain, I’ll grant you that. But that doesn’t mean it’s true. So how do you know? Another feeling?’

  Kara glowered under furrowed brows. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘I’m a witch. Try me.’

  She looked away with a sigh of exasperation. ‘I always worried that he’d die out there on the road somewhere and I wouldn’t know. So he promised me, if that ever happened, he’d come to tell me. He’d send his ghost. And he hasn’t done it, so I know he’s still alive. And if you laugh at me, I’m going to knock your block off, all right?’

  ‘I’m not laughing. I believe you. Trust me, stranger things have happened. Look, if you want me to take a chance on you, you’re going to have to come clean. Tell me the truth.’

  ‘I’m not lying,’ Kara growled. ‘He’s a caravan guard. And if you get me out of here, I swear I won’t give you an ounce of trouble. You won’t even know I’m there.’

  ‘Yeah, because you’ll have made a runner before the sun’s even set, won’t you? Maybe your father was a caravan guard once upon a time, I can tell there’s a hint of truth in there, but not anymore. Listen, kid, I’m not going to stick my neck out for some little girl who hasn’t enough sense not to lie to a witch.’

  ‘Oh, screw you,’ Kara spat. She looked near to tears. ‘You’re just as bad as those toffee-nosed nuns! You think you’re so much better than me? You wouldn’t stand to be locked up in a place like this, would you? You’d tear down these godsdamned walls in a heartbeat if they tried! All I want is to help my father, and all any of you arseholes will do is pat me on the head and tell me to get on with my sewing! What would you do if it was your father missing?’

  ‘Well,’ said Aleida. ‘For one thing I’d try telling the truth to the one person who’s sincerely trying to help me.’

  Kara pressed her lips tight together and glared at her.

  ‘Aleida,’ I whispered, and then winced. My voice came out sounding more like a plea than I ever intended. I felt halfway to tears myself. I could barely remember my father, he’d died when I was just a little girl, but if it was him out there I’d do just about anything to help him.

  Kara stepped back, arms crossed, glaring at Aleida. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Go then, I don’t care. I don’t need your help.’ She turned on her heel and stalked off, cursing and muttering to herself.

  I watched her go, my stomach in knots. ‘We can’t just leave her here, surely?’

  ‘We can and we will. Look, Dee, if she had the sense to tell me the truth, I might have worked something out, but if she’s just going to lie and lie and keep lying . . . I’m not taking that on. It’s just asking for trouble. Go and get the mare ready, would you? It’s time to move on.’

  I sank into a black mood as Maggie plodded away from the village and the abbey, back towards the forest. I chewed on my lower lip while my fingertips toyed with the tip of the wand at my belt. I didn’t let myself look back at the abbey, but I couldn’t help but wonder what Kara would be doing there now, or what it would feel like to be trapped inside those walls, knowing my father was out there somewhere, needing help, and no one cared but me.

  I sighed through gritted teeth, shifting on the wooden board. ‘Why didn’t you make her tell the truth?’

  ‘What good would that do?’ Aleida said.

  ‘But what makes you so cursed sure he’s not a caravan guard?’

  ‘Because I could tell she was lying,’ Aleida said.

  ‘If you already knew, then what does it matter that she wasn’t telling the truth? Her father’s still out there, he still needs help. He’s still all the family she has in the world.’

  ‘He’s a bandit, Dee. He’s spent most of his life stealing from people, and for all we know killing them as well. Say we did go and find him, what then? He’d go back to robbing people on the roads, and sooner or later someone’s getting killed.’

  ‘But you don’t know that.’ I protested.

  She cut me off with a look. ‘Yeah. I do.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Dee. Don’t tell me what I don’t know.’

  ‘Fine,’ I snapped. ‘So you expect her to just, what? Give up on him? Her own father?’

  ‘I don’t expect her to do any such thing. It doesn’t change the fact that she’s better off without him.’

  That small handful of words brought a sudden flash of anger sweeping through me like a spark in dry grass. My fingers, still fiddling with the tip of my wand, flared with rushing heat, and I felt my wand spark up with a flash of searing rage.

  Beside me, Aleida jumped and pulled away with a yelp that turned into a laugh. ‘Oh, you got some real heat that time. Well done, Dee.’

  I was too angry to take the compliment, and too angry to apologise. ‘How can you say that? Don’t you have—’ I broke off, then, at the last minute thinking better of what I was about to say.

  ‘Don’t I have what?’ She tossed her head, and I realised she knew perfectly well the words I’d left unspoken. ‘Don’t I have a father?’ But of course she didn’t, I knew that. Her mother was a prostitute, her father could have been anybody.

  ‘If you did, maybe you’d have a little more sympathy,’ I shot back.

  She turned to me with a cool gaze. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Maybe not. She’s still better off cutting her losses and moving on.’

  ‘How can you be so cold?’ I demanded. ‘How can you say something like that? How did you feel when you went back to Stone Harbour to look for your kin, and found them all gone? Are you telling me that didn’t hurt at all?’

  ‘Sure it did — like pulling a rotten tooth. Better to get it over with than let it poison you slowly. Besides, it’s not like she has any choice in the matter, is it? Whatever trouble her father is in, I’m betting one young lass alone won’t be enough to solve it, sword or not.’

  ‘Not if no one will help her.’

  ‘And what if we did? Would we just turn him loose afterwards to keep attacking people on the road? Or do we deliver him to Lord Belmont’s bailiff to be hanged? There’s no future for her there. Besides, I have an idea what might have happened to him.’

  ‘You what?’ I said, my voice climbing.

  She gave me an exasperated look. ‘Dee, you need to take a step back and breathe for a minute. Stop imagining it’s your father lost out there, and think.’

  I frowned at her, equal parts puzzled and cross. ‘If you’re going to make me guess, we’re going to be here a long time.’

  She huffed an impatient sigh. ‘The horse, remember? If there’s one man turned into a beast there might well be others. Add those griffins to the equation too . . . There’s something going on here, I just don’t know what.’ She leaned back against the wall, holding the reins lazily in one hand. ‘Oh, and come to think of it, I did see him once. My father, I mean.’

  I pressed my fingertips to my temples, wincing. If she kept this up, swinging rapidly from one matter to the next without a breath in between, I was going to get a headache. ‘You did? Did you talk to him? What was he like?’

  She gave me a sidelong glance, as though dubious at my sudden enthusiasm. ‘Oh, I never met him. My sister pointed him out to me one time. Well, they all thought he was my father. He had black hair, and skin like mine, and he’d always come and see Ma when he was in Stone Harbour. He was a sailor from Borraqis, you see.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’s . . . quite sweet, actually. He must have really liked her.’

  Aleida chuckled. ‘Or maybe she was cheap. But they’d stay out all night drinking, so they must have been having some fun. Ma didn’t want him knowing about me, though. If he’d been a local
fellow it’d be different, she could have used me to wring money out of him for guilt, but a sailor can always find a different girl to take his coin.’

  ‘You weren’t ever tempted to sneak off and meet him?’

  ‘Gods, no. There were all kinds of tales about what happened to girls who did that. I heard of one girl who got taken away to live with her father’s family but since she was a whore’s get she had to be their servant and spent all her days sweeping out fireplaces and scrubbing chamber-pots. You can bet Ma made sure we all knew that story.’

  That was pretty much my life before I’d come to Aleida, so long as you added in changing babies’ napkins and washing them out, too. ‘It’s not that bad,’ I said with a sniff. ‘At least no one tried to make me be a whore.’

  ‘Well, true. But I was a wild little thing already, picking pockets all day and all night too, stealing anything not nailed down. I wasn’t taking any chances of being chained to a sink and a scrubbing brush.’ She turned to me then, with a measuring gaze. ‘You were quite taken with her, though, weren’t you? Kara, I mean.’

  It took me a moment to bring myself to nod. Back at Burswood Farm my stepfather would have carried on all night about how I’d fallen for the girl’s lies. I had to remind myself, sometimes, that for all Aleida’s short temper and sharp tongue, she wasn’t mean like Lem was. ‘She just looked so . . . fierce. With those divided skirts and her hair braided and that red tassel on the hilt of her sword. She looked like something out of a storybook. And when she came over to talk to me she was just so nice, but bold as brass, too. So interested in Maggie and the wagon and everything . . .’ I looked down at my feet, cursing myself. Of course she was interested. She’d been hoping she’d be able to ride away with us, or stow away in the wagon. ‘She was like you. Walking around as though she owns the world. Like nothing can touch her.’ But even as I said the words, I found myself wondering at them. It wasn’t true, clearly. She was essentially a prisoner there in the abbey, but somehow that didn’t make any difference to the air of freedom and independence that followed her like perfume.

  Aleida was shaking her head. ‘It’s an act, Dee. Besides, you think she’s untouchable? You’ve got far more power in you than she does.’

  ‘But those bandits this morning—’

  ‘If I hadn’t jumped in you’d have found some way to handle them. And anyway, how do you think you looked to her?’

  I looked down at my skirts, my worn boots peeking out from underneath. ‘Umm . . .’

  ‘With your wand on one hip and your knife on the other, riding around in a traveller’s wagon as an apprentice witch? You’re not a scullery maid anymore, Dee. One day I’ll get you to understand that.’

  I was silent for a moment, thinking. ‘It’s so strange. Sometimes I feel like I hardly know myself. I feel like I’m living in a different world than the one I grew up in.’

  ‘Well, you are,’ Aleida said. ‘There’s no two ways about it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But you must be right about her. You’re the one who can tell a lie when you hear it. I’m the damn fool who believed every word she said.’

  ‘Mm,’ she said, studying me with narrowed eyes. ‘You know, you’re probably about ready to learn.’

  ‘Learn what?’ I said, startled.

  ‘How to recognise a lie. Here—’ She pressed the reins into my hands. ‘Take these. I’ll be right back.’

  She heaved herself up and staggered inside. I peered back to see her climb onto her bed and lift down her jewellery box from one of the overhead cabinets.

  Something struck me then, an odd thought — after she’d run away from Gyssha, Aleida had gone back to her home at Stone Harbour to find her family, only to find them gone, vanished sometime in the ten years she’d been away. But that didn’t seem right. They were her own flesh and blood, and she was a witch, after all. She could have found them if she’d really wanted to.

  Aleida returned before I could follow that trail of thought any further. She sat heavily back on the footboard beside me, and passed me a ring.

  Some of Aleida’s jewellery was truly lovely but this was not one of those pieces. The plain silver band bore a stone of amethyst, but it wasn’t cut or polished — it was just a chunk of raw stone, the tip of a crystal that had been broken off and held in place with a plain silver setting. I took it a little dubiously. ‘How does it work?’

  ‘Just put it on. You’ll figure the rest out.’

  I’d never worn a ring before. It felt strange and heavy on my finger. ‘I’m still not happy about leaving her there like that.’

  ‘You’ll live,’ Aleida said. ‘And anyway, we’ve got bigger fish to fry. Kara is safe and sound where she is, but that poor sod stuck being a horse isn’t, and his story has me curious.’

  CHAPTER 3

  At the edge of the forest, Aleida steered Maggie off the road and onto a swathe of grass between the fields and the woods. ‘All right,’ she said, reining in. ‘We’ve got a bit of daylight left. You see to Maggie and get our fire going. I’m going to see if I can find our four-footed friend before the sun goes down.’

  ‘Are you going borrowing?’ I quickly asked. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘Not now, Dee. If I was just taking one beast to track him by scent, you could come along, but I’m going to have to move faster than that if I want to find him before the crows turn in to roost.’

  I loved borrowing. Loved it. You can’t imagine what it’s like to swoop and dive like a swallow, to soar on warm, rising air like an eagle, or feel the explosive power of a horse’s muscles as it leaps over fallen trees and streams. Back home at Black Oak Cottage I think I must have borrowed every animal within five miles, but birds were my favourite.

  But I still couldn’t do what Aleida could, which was jump from one beast to the next to find and follow the horse-man’s trail, and then at the end of it find some way to communicate with the poor sod. That’s why she wanted to find him before all the crows settled in for the night — crows can mimic a human voice and talk, after a fashion.

  ‘Yes, miss,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Do you want me to set up the tent?’

  She glanced around with a frown. ‘It’s not worth it. We won’t be staying long.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘It’s nice to have the space.’

  ‘All right then, if you want. I’ll set myself up out on the grass, out of the way.’

  She meant, so I wouldn’t bother her with my fetching and carrying from the wagon. ‘I’ll fix us some dinner, too.’

  ‘Keep it light,’ she told me. ‘We’ll have some work to do once this fellow comes to find us.’

  Slipping down from the wagon, Aleida hobbled a few dozen paces towards the forest and lay herself down on the grass, and with no fanfare at all, fell into a trance.

  With a shrug and a sigh, I set about my chores.

  We only slept in the wagon if the weather was bad, as a rule. It had everything we needed, but it was very cramped. If the weather was fair, we almost always camped outside. First came a frame of springy poles bent into a dome; and over that went colourful blankets with a waterproof oilcloth over the top, and another on the ground to keep the damp away. We had a little brazier for a fire and lanterns that hung from the roof beams, and colourful cushions to sit upon. It reminded me of a fortune-teller’s tent I’d seen at the fair years and years ago. Aleida did tell fortunes, sometimes, but today the road was quiet and we were alone as the shadows grew long and the air became chill.

  I lit the brazier, fetched water from a nearby stream and then stood outside the tent, watching darkness creep over the sky. And, as I often did in these quiet moments, I thought of my family back home, my ma and my little brothers and sisters. Just not my fat-headed stepfather. My next-oldest sister, Lucette, would be doing all my old work now, cooking and cleaning and mending at Ma’s side. I wondered if she’d stopped complaining about it yet — it had only been three or four months since I’d come to Black Oak Cottage, so it was qu
ite likely that she hadn’t. I thought again of writing to them — I’d thought of it often over the last few months, ever since Aleida had started teaching me my letters. But what would I tell them? I asked myself. That I’m learning to be a witch? That I’m travelling around the countryside in an old travellers’ wagon, selling potions and charms? Tell them that I paid a ha’penny to see a stuffed griffin in a tavern?

  If I wrote any such thing, my stepfather would throw it into the fire in a fit of rage, without even reading it to the end. Mind you, he’d likely do the same if I wrote a letter full of boring, dreary lies.

  With a sigh I shook myself, trying to put the thought out of my head, and went to check on my mistress.

  She still lay in the long grass, fingers laced together and resting on her belly, and I settled down near her head. There was no way of knowing where her mind was, or if she’d had any success in hunting down the tormented creature in the forest.

  I hadn’t been sitting there for long before I began to feel cold and damp. I hunched over my knees, gnawing on a thumbnail, looking out to the forest. It was growing darker by the moment, it seemed. The trees ahead of me made a wall of darkness and shadow.

  The quiet stillness of dusk made the hair prickle on the back of my neck. I wasn’t used to being alone, even at the cottage — if I wasn’t working with my mistress she was still there, somewhere, and if she’d taken off our neighbours the Sanfords and my best friend Melly were only a mile or so away.

  To be honest I didn’t like to be alone back there, either. It hadn’t bothered me at first, but then . . . then I’d met a lad I’d really liked, with brown curls and freckles and a warm smile, but he was nothing but an illusion, and beneath the glamour of his pale, freckled skin and dancing brown eyes was a construct of green, mouldering bones and strands of glistening beads. He was built by Aleida’s teacher, the old witch Gyssha, and I’d never have known if she hadn’t let the illusion fall before using the thing to try and kill me.