by Perrin Briar
“No.”
“Then why were you?”
“Because of my parents. They wanted me to get married. They worried I might end up like my aunt Tessa.”
“What’s wrong with your aunt Tessa?”
“She never married, had no kids. All she ever does is travel from place to place.”
“Doesn’t sound too bad to me.”
“Me neither. But she’s from a wealthy family. She’s expected to marry well for the benefit of the family.”
“But not for herself?”
“They’re considered one and the same.”
Elian picked at a piece of sharp bark that jabbed into his arms every time he put them down. He worked it loose and tossed it over the side.
“You know,” he said, “I’ve met a lot of rich people in my life, but I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to one like this before. I never thought rich people really had any problems.”
“Well, we do. They’re not the same as poor people’s problems. But they’re still there.”
“Your aunt sounds like a great woman to me,” Elian said.
Jera smiled.
“I suppose she is,” she said.
Elian smiled back.
“So, how did you learn to do what you do?” Jera said. “To be a thief, I mean.”
“I spent a lot of time on the streets. They named me the Carriage Clipper because I used to come so close to the carriages that the wheels would clip my clothes as they went past.”
Jera’s eyes went wide.
“You’re the Carriage Clipper?” she said.
“Yes,” Elian said, taken aback. “You’ve heard of it?”
“I heard some children say to one another in Crossroads that he wasn’t the Carriage Clipper.”
Elian smiled.
“They were playing the Carriage Clipper game,” he said. “I invented it. The purpose is to get so close to the carriage when crossing a road that your clothes get clipped. It’s a stupid game, but fun. Good training.”
“Good training for thieving?” Jera said.
Elian shrugged.
“You have to learn somewhere,” he said.
Jera consulted the map.
“We should be coming up to a monument of a weeping woman soon,” Jera said. “We should get off the raft then, and make our way toward the desert.”
“The desert? I hate sand.”
“We don’t go into it, only toward it.”
A statue reared up from the ground as they approached. Elian put his hands into the water and paddled the raft toward the bank of the river.
“We’ll have to crawl off together at the same time if neither of us are to get wet,” Elian said.
“Okay.”
They got to their hands and knees and made their way onto the embankment. Only their feet were on the raft.
“On the count of three,” Elian said. “Ready? One, two, three.”
They both pushed away from the raft and helped themselves onto the embankment. They crawled up it and emerged on the top.
“There,” Elian said, “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Click.
Elian recognised the sound instantly and raised his hands up in automatic surrender. A figure stepped out from behind the statue.
“Hello there, Elian,” the figure said. “Nice to meet you again.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“At last!” Bull Bill said. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dreamed of this moment. The moment I exact my revenge!”
He was bald and mean-looking. His pistols were out, aimed at Elian’s chest.
“I’m sorry,” Elian said, “do I know you?”
Bull Bill smiled.
“Come now,” he said. “We haven’t time for these mind games.”
“What games? I’m serious. I’ve never met you before.”
Bull Bill scowled.
“You ought not offend me, boy,” he said. “I am here to kill you to get my sweet revenge!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Elian turned to Jera.
“Do you know who he is?” he said.
Jera shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I don’t. Although, I think I might have seen his face on a wanted poster once.”
“That’s right!” Bill said. “I am Bull Bill, leader of the Varmints Gang!”
“Where are they?” Elian said.
Bill jabbed his guns toward Elian.
“You were the one who took them away from me. You stripped away my reputation, and they left me.”
“How did I strip away your reputation?”
Bill’s cheeks turned red, out of embarrassment, not anger.
“You really don’t remember me, do you?” he said. “I can’t believe this. You take away my crew and leave me for dead and you don’t even remember? Is this something you do so often that you can’t even remember your own victims? Unbelievable.”
“Wait,” Jera said. “When did this event occur?”
“A couple of weeks ago,” Bill said.
Elian smiled.
“There you are, you see,” he said. “It couldn’t have been me because a couple of weeks ago I was in the Capital-”
Elian paused.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “I forgot about the time skip. You know where I was two weeks ago? I have to say, I am relieved. You see, we time-skipped a month into the future and we haven’t gone back and revisited that time yet. If you can fill us in on what happened, we would be much obliged.”
“Much obliged?” Bill said, the vein in his forehead throbbing. “Much obliged?”
His body shook with anger, jittering on the spot like a volcano about to erupt.
“Look, Bill,” Elian said.
“That’s Bull Bill to you!”
“All right, Bull Bill. If we’ve crossed paths in the past and I upset you, please know it was never intentional on my part.”
“You made me lose my posse! A man does that, he’s got to pay. Now, take off your gun and toss it over there.”
Elian did.
“Look, Bill,” Elian said, hands out in front of him, “I’ll tell you what. Come find me again in, say, two days, and we’ll sort this whole situation out then. Okay?”
“No. I’m here now. I’ve followed you across the kingdom, and I’ve come here to bring you a message, a message that will be given to you in the shining steel form of a bullet…”
His voice trailed off. Jera cleared her throat, looked at Elian, and then gestured at the contents of her bag with her eyes. Elian spied the hilt of a small gun. Bill’s hands were not rigid, but relaxed, and was in full speech mode.
“…as my old pop used to say, a posse is a family,” he said.
“I can’t quite place your accent, Bill,” Elian said. “Where are you from?”
Bill gestured with his guns.
“Why,” he said, “I’m from the east coast up near a town called-”
With lightning speed, Elian reached into Jera’s bag, aimed it at Bill and fired. Bill doubled over, clutching his leg. Recovering from his initial stock, Bill raised his guns, but Elian was already on him, and knocked his hands aside. He grabbed Bill’s pistols and tossed them in the direction of his own tossed gun. Bill’s face was scrunched up with pain, tears stinging his eyes, but his anger cancelled out any pain he felt.
“I had you,” he said between clenched teeth, a thick wad of saliva dribbling down his chin. “I had you! I’ve been chasing you all over the world! The least you could do is listen to my spiel!”
“Sorry,” Elian said, “what were you saying?”
“I was saying, I’ve got a message for you from my revolver… No… I’m gonna shoot you and you’re gonna die like a dog… No… Damn it! I practiced it all the way here! Give me one more chance. Let me get my gun, you can help stand me up, I’ll say it and then shoot you.”
“No.”
“Aw, come on!”
“Sorry, I haven�
��t got the time. Literally.”
“I’m gonna get you, Elian Stump, if it’s the last thing I do! The last thing you’re gonna see is my bullet in your face!”
“Next time, don’t take so long to shoot,” Elian said.
Elian joined Jera and they headed up the hill.
“Is there anyone in this world you haven’t made want to kill you?” Jera said.
“I think there was a guy in a bar once…” Elian said. “No. He hates me too.”
“Are you sure you should leave him like that? What if he finds you again?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“The last thing you’ll see is my bullet in your face, blowing your head off!” Bill shouted. “Say, that’s pretty good.”
He reached into his back pocket and came out with a notepad and pen. He began to scribble the line down.
“The last thing you’ll see is… is… my gun in your face? Damn it!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Richard leaned down from his saddle and put a hand to the smooth underside of a tree that had had its bark stripped off. Then he followed the footprints in the mud leading to the river. The footprints disappeared, and they did not alight on the opposite bank.
“They must have used the tree bark as a raft,” Captain Philmore said.
“Thank you for stating the obvious,” Richard said. “How long ago?”
“An hour. Maybe less.”
Richard’s features bent into a sneering smile.
“We’re catching up,” he said. “Ya!”
Richard drove his horse onward, his men and hounds on his heels.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The mud grabbed at their boots as they crossed the thin strip of marshland toward a hill topped with a single gnarled weeping willow. It was massive, and leaned to one side under its own weight, the branches curled up, as if it were in great agony. It was only early autumn and yet there wasn’t a single leaf on its black branches. A dozen crows sat on the upper limbs and cawed down at Elian and Jera as they approached. The birds cocked their heads to one side in contemplation, and then beat the tips of their beaks on the tree branch they stood on. Tonk. Tonk-Tonk-Tonk-Tonk. Tonk-Tonk.
“This is it,” Jera said. “Land’s End.”
“At least there’s no mistaking which tree it is,” Elian said.
“It certainly is a cheery looking place.”
“Odd that it’s called ‘Land’s End’ though, isn’t it?” Elian said, looking out at the rolling sand dunes stretching out before him, and the rolling hills behind. “There’s loads more land.”
“There is now. But thousands of years ago this could have been covered with water or ice, even.”
“Are you sure this is the right place?” he said.
Jera checked the map.
“At the big deathly-looking tree on a hill,” she said. “I don’t see any others like this around here, do you?”
“Maybe there’s a sign on the tree somewhere, telling us where to go next.”
“The branches look like gnarled old fingers. Maybe they’re supposed to be pointing the way to go.”
“But there’s about a dozen of them. How are we supposed to know which one to follow?”
“Check the bark, maybe someone carved something into it.”
They walked around the tree, inspecting it. Elian knocked it with his knuckle.
“I don’t see anything,” Elian said.
“You haven’t looked properly.”
Jera looked up at the undersides of the branches, but saw nothing unusual. She felt at the roots jutting up out of the ground, but felt no engravings. Then she kneeled down and ducked her head into a hollow near the base of the trunk.
“I’ve found it!” she said. “There are some letters here.”
“What does it say?” Elian said.
Jera kneeled down and peered at the words.
“‘Sing the song of the wood peck peckerer,” she read. “The sound of the world has never been more direr.’”
“‘Direr’?” Elian said. “That’s not even a real word!”
“Hundreds of years ago it might have been real.”
“How do we know someone didn’t just carve this themselves?”
“Because it’s not carved. Look.”
Elian ducked down to see the letters were formed out of the very bark in the tree, as if the letters had grown that way. A slight discolouration made them visible.
“What does that mean?” Elian said.
“I have no idea, but unless we solve it we’ll never know where to go next. ‘The sound of the wood peck peckerer’. What sound does a wood pecker make?”
Elian rapped his knuckles on the tree trunk.
“Something like this,” he said.
Nothing happened. Jera frowned.
“‘The sound of the world’?” she said. “What sound does the world make?”
“Depends where you are, I guess. If you’re at sea it’s a whooshing sound. If you’re in the desert it’s the wind’s sound.”
“So what about here?”
The ravens kept tapping at the tree. Elian looked up at them.
“Will you shut up?” he said. “We’re trying to think here!”
There was the sound of barking dogs, coming from behind the blind corner of a thicket.
“Maybe it’s wolves,” Jera said.
Elian shook his head, his face turning pale.
“It’s not wolves,” he said. “That’s the bark of hunting dogs.”
“How do you know?”
“Trust me, when you’re a thief in the Capital, you get a sense for these things.”
The barking got louder, and then there was the driving voice of a man.
“Kali told me Richard’s been chasing us for the past few days,” Jera said. “She said he caught us near the Capital. Are we close?”
Elian checked the map.
“Fairly close,” he said.
“She might have heard the news from someone who didn’t have the right information. Or maybe today’s the day we get caught.”
The dogs’ barking got louder, and then there was the heavy beat of horse hooves on the earth.
“Look,” Elian said, “it’s probably best if they don’t think you’re with me willingly. Let’s make it look like I’m keeping you captive.”
“Why?”
“He’ll be less suspicious later, and if we get caught you can come rescue me.”
“All right. What do I have to do?”
The dogs burst around the thicket, two dozen horses on their tails. Elian gripped Jera tight, putting a knife to her throat.
“Not so tight,” Jera said under her breath.
“Sorry,’ Elian said, lips barely moving. “I’m a little nervous. If you want to solve that riddle, now might be a good time.”
“Why is it only my responsibility?” Jera said.
“Because I don’t have a head for these things.”
The horses’ hooves kicked up mud onto the men following behind, but they never stopped. Only the leader’s uniform didn’t have splatters on it.
Richard’s face was curled up in rage, a triumphant smile. He waved his hand and a man to his left put a whistle in his mouth and blew hard. The dogs stopped barking and slowed to a stop, pacing up and down in front of the hill.
The ravens paused in their tapping, watching the constables, before resuming their monotonous tapping. The dog master put leads on each of the dogs and divided them into groups of three. Richard took one group, the dog master took another, and a man on either side of Richard took the others.
Richard let the barking, snapping dogs pull him up the incline. At the top, the dog master blew his whistle again. Richard patted Stripper’s head.
“That’s the good thing with dogs,” he said, “they’re obedient. They’re frightfully excited to see you, Stump. Frothing at the mouth, even. Maybe it’s your wonderful natural aroma they’re so attracted to.”
“You’ve given us quite the run around,” Richard said. “But now we have you.”
“There you are, counting your chickens. You don’t have me yet.”
“There’s ten feet separating us. Come now, what could possibly happen now?”
“Griffins might swoop down and save us.”
Richard looked up at the sky with a mocking smile.
“They might indeed,” he said. “But unlikely. The savage creatures that dot our land will not be here for long. They’re weak.”
“They’re not as weak as you think. They’re preparing for war.”
“That goes to show how little you know about them. They’re disorganised, as mistrustful of each other as they are of us. They’ll never unite and attack. And even if they did, they would never stand against us for long.”
Jera leaned back against Elian, her hand moving to the tree trunk. She tapped a tune. Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap. Tap. Nothing happened.
“What have you been up to, Stump?” Richard said. “Doing a little light tomb raider work? We visited the jungle. The Goleuni savages there are not very pleased with you stealing their ‘sacred artefact’. And then the mysterious tree with the strange sunburst-shaped hole in it. I dread to think what you stole there, and from whom.”
Jera tried another rhythm. Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap. Again, nothing happened. Richard turned to Jera.
“I hope he’s been treating you well,” he said. “Don’t worry, my dear. We’ll soon have you back home for our marriage.”
Jera forced a relieved smile onto her face.
“No doubt Stump has been poisoning you against me,” Richard said. “But let me assure you that everything he has told you is lies.”
“I believe you,” Jera said. “I’m sorry for running away. I just got cold feet about the wedding, that’s all.”
“That’s okay, my dear. You’re safe now. That’s all that matters.”
Richard turned to Elian, his expression cold.
“Let her go, Stump,” he said. “Let her go and I’ll be lenient on you.”
“Lenient how?” Elian said. “You’ll let the dogs rip me to pieces?”
“No, I thought I would give you a taste of my sword.”
“You’d do that for me? I’m touched. Thanks, but I decided to reduce the iron in my diet.”