Toymaker, The

by Quidt, Jeremy De

  It was very dark and cold. Mathias lay asleep on the small bed, his coat pulled across him. Katta lay on the floor, but it was so cold. In the end she had climbed up onto the bed and, tucking her knees behind Mathias’s for warmth, pressed herself as close to him as she could without waking him. But it was a long, miserable night. At some point a Burner man came into the hut and spoke to the woman, but he didn’t stay. In the dark, Katta thought she recognized his voice as that of the man who had carried Mathias in. She wondered whether this was his bed and the woman was his wife. After he had gone, the woman had wrapped herself in a thick shawl and fallen asleep in a chair next to the embers of the fire. Katta watched her, not sure whether it was safe to fall asleep, so she stared up into the shadow shapes that flickered against the bracken roof, pinching herself awake when she felt her eyes closing.

  ‘What does it mean?’ whispered Mathias.

  Katta hadn’t realized that he had woken. ‘Go to sleep,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She was wiser now. She wasn’t going to risk the woman hearing. Slowly she lifted her head, but the woman didn’t move. She put her lips close to Mathias’s ear and spoke in whispers that only he could hear.

  ‘Someone once left something with Tahlmann – he kept the inn: he had to keep it safe and then give it to someone else, but he didn’t know who that would be. So that’s what they did. They tore a piece of paper in two – Tahlmann kept one half and the man took the other. I was sweeping up. They didn’t mind me and I heard it all. Then, weeks later – weeks and weeks – a stranger came and asked for the package. He had the other piece of paper, and Tahlmann put the two together on the table and they fitted just so. So he gave the package to him, and the stranger went away. What if it’s like that?’

  ‘But the other piece could be anywhere,’ said Mathias. ‘I don’t know where it is.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why they want it,’ whispered Katta. ‘Maybe they already know where the other piece is.’

  ‘Then why don’t they just take whatever it is?’

  Katta wasn’t sure what the answer to that was, so she said, ‘Maybe they can’t.’

  Mathias didn’t say anything for a moment. It made no sense to him. None of it made any sense. Then he turned his head so that he could see the outline of Katta’s face in the dark.

  ‘You won’t leave me, will you?’ he said quietly.

  It hadn’t occurred to her until then that he was frightened that she might.

  In answer, she pulled the coat up so that it was warm around him. ‘You can’t even stand up,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I ain’t got no choice, have I?’

  ‘But you don’t know anything,’ he said.

  ‘Know about the piece of paper, don’t I? Tahlmann would sell me as quick as quick if he knew that. And this one’ – she meant Koenig – ‘he ain’t goin’ to want anyone else to know about it, is he? So he ain’t goin’ to let me go.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Do you think he’ll hurt us?’ said Mathias.

  But she already knew the answer to that. ‘He’d have done that already if he was going to,’ she said. ‘He wants to find out what it’s all about, doesn’t he? I reckon we’re safe till he does.’

  ‘Then what?’ said Mathias.

  ‘Then we’ll find out,’ she said.

  ‘Stop whispering and sleep,’ said the woman suddenly.

  Katta froze, but she knew that the woman couldn’t have heard much, or she’d have let them carry on whispering and said nothing. She didn’t want to risk saying anything else though, so she pulled the coat so that it covered her as well and put her head down on the bed.

  As she did so, a new thought began quietly talking in her head. What if it – whatever it was – could make a person rich? What if she found it? There had to be doctors, clever men, who could make her well. Even if they cost a lot of money, if she were rich, she could pay them, and they could make her well.

  She lay in the dark and listened, and wondered what it would mean to be rich and never to have to wear a padded cap again.

  Koenig was gone all the next day. The Burner woman changed the dressing she had put on Mathias’s shoulder. He said it felt better, but it was stiff and he didn’t try to move it. What seemed to hurt him more were his ribs. When he got out of the bed, he had to walk slowly and carefully like an old man, stopping and resting, taking small, shallow breaths.

  Some of the Burner children were playing in the snow, scooping great handfuls of it up, but Katta stayed where she was and spoke to no one. She was trying to decide what to do.

  Then Koenig came back.

  Whatever other business he had been about, he had found out two things – the name of the town where the paper had come from – the watermark had given him that. He had only had to find someone who knew about things like that. The other was as simple. He had found out where Dr Leiter wanted word to be sent if Mathias was found.

  The moment Koenig had found out the one, he knew he could already guess the other. And he was right, because they were one and the same – Felissehaven.

  ‘It is a merchant city,’ he said. ‘And a port. All fine colleges and buildings. But then, you’ll see it.’

  They looked at him, not sure what he meant. Katta was the first to understand.

  ‘He can’t travel,’ she said.

  Koenig glanced at the woman, and she gave the smallest nod of her head. ‘He can travel,’ he said. ‘Tashka will see to him.’ Then, looking straight at Katta, he added, ‘And if you stay here much longer, she will probably see to you as well.’

  It might have been a joke, but when Katta glanced quickly at the Burner woman, she saw those cold, dark, vengeful eyes, and wasn’t so sure that it was. Besides, she had made up her mind – she wanted to be rich, and if that meant going with Koenig, then that is what she would do. At least until they had found out what the paper meant, and then they’d just have to take their chance.

  The following day he gave them thick Burner coats and leather boots. Katta didn’t understand what hold he had over the Burners, but they did what he asked willingly and without question.

  They were almost ready to leave when it happened.

  Koenig was on the big horse saying his farewells. Mathias sat in the saddle in front of him. Katta was going to have to walk. Just as they were turning to leave, a Burner boy joined them. He was taller than she was, but not much older. He already wore a pack of his own. It seemed that he was coming too, though Koenig hadn’t said anything about it. Katta watched him sling the saddlebags he carried over the back of the horse, and an empty feeling began to crawl slowly into her stomach. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. That face was fixed in her memory as clearly as if it had been scratched into steel. He was older, it was true, but there was no mistaking it.

  It was the boy who had thrown the stone.

  12

  The Tracks in the Snow

  Katta felt weak. It was as though, without her knowing it, someone had stepped inside her and drained out every spark of life. She stood numbly, staring at the boy. He was adjusting the straps on his pack. When he turned round, he looked straight through her. There was not the faintest sign that he knew who she was, but she knew him. How could she ever forget?

  Hatred of this boy had filled her life. She had never been able to let go of it. Each time she woke, soiled and filthy, on the floor, or took off the cap to wash her long, beautiful hair – being careful of the place where the stone had hit her, leaving the bone broken and eggshell-thin – she thought of him. Thought, over and over again, of what she would do to him if she ever found him. Heaven help him if she did. She wouldn’t kill him – that would be too easy for him. She would do something that he would have to live with, just like she did. It would have to be something that would ruin his life as he had ruined hers, and he wouldn’t ever know why it had been done to him. She wouldn’t tell him. He would have to live with the awful unfairness of it, j
ust as she did.

  That hatred went round and round in her head, buzzing like a malignant bee, until finally she’d decided what she would do if she ever found him – she’d blind him.

  He would have to live with his darkness, just like she did with hers. It wouldn’t be hard to do. She had done the thing in her head, imagined it so many times that it was easy. He would be asleep, and she would creep up quietly without waking him and slit a knife across both his eyes before he could even twitch. It would be as simple as that.

  That is what she would do.

  And now, here he was.

  But she didn’t feel like she imagined she would, seeing him delivered into her hands. The reality of it was all too enormous to understand. So she just stared numbly at the boy and at the thick snow and the white trees beyond. Then Koenig was walking his horse out of the clearing, calling to them to follow, and she had to go.

  Beneath the cover of the trees the snow lay banked in drifts. There was no path to follow; they had to make their own. Even walking in the steps of the big horse it was hard work. The coat Katta had been given by the Burners was thick and warm, and soon she was hot and cross and tired, but for all her complaining they didn’t stop. Koenig walked the horse on and she and the boy followed as best they could. The boy didn’t seem to mind. He walked steadily through the snow. Once or twice Katta lost her balance and fell, but she wouldn’t have him touch her. He stood with his hand out to help, but she wouldn’t take it and he’d shrugged, but still waited until she had got herself to her feet before he went on. Then she had walked behind him, staring at his back and hating him. Not sure whether she hated him more for what he had done to her, or for being oblivious to the fact that he had even done it.

  Mathias sat in front of Koenig, the movement of the horse rocking him to sleep. Tashka had given him something to drink before they left. It had made him feel warm and deadened the pain. He watched the quiet, white woods pass by as though he were being drawn slowly through them on a ribbon of thick velvet.

  Koenig hardly spoke at all. Sometimes he asked Mathias a question to do with Gustav or Leiter or the circus, and then he was quiet again. It was as though he were turning the answers over in his head, slowly making sense of it all.

  They stopped to rest. Koenig had food, which he shared out between them.

  ‘Who’s he?’ said Katta. The boy was sitting with Mathias. ‘He to spy on us, like the other one?’

  ‘Do you want any food?’ said Koenig. He held onto the bread he had been going to give her. ‘Because if you do, you need to have better manners than that.’

  ‘Then I don’t think I want any,’ she said.

  She had walked all morning and was as hungry as could be, but she wasn’t going to say. She watched as Koenig put the bread back into his bag.

  ‘His name is Stefan,’ he said.

  ‘Why’s he here?’

  Koenig turned away without bothering to answer her and walked over to where the two boys sat. With his knife, Stefan was cutting a piece of cold meat for Mathias.

  ‘How is arm?’ Stefan said.

  He spoke the words with so thick an accent that Mathias was not sure what he had said, and Stefan frowned as though he wasn’t certain that he had said the right words anyway, so he touched his own shoulder and then Mathias knew what he had meant.

  He nodded. ‘It’s all right,’ he said.

  ‘Gut,’ said Stefan, smiled and gave Mathias the meat.

  He folded his knife shut and put it back into his pack. Katta watched him do it. She was angry with Mathias in a way that she couldn’t have described, because he was speaking to the boy. Angry with herself because she was hungry and could have had food. Frightened about what she was going to do next.

  They did not rest for long. Koenig put Mathias back into the saddle, then climbed up. Stefan smiled at Katta, but she walked past him.

  They had gone on for an hour or so when the horse suddenly stopped, its ears pricked. It turned its head and looked back over its shoulder, the way they had come. It snorted and walked on, but then stopped again.

  ‘Steady, Razor,’ said Koenig, and the horse tossed its head.

  They walked on once more, but a change had come over Koenig and the horse – Mathias could feel it. They were taut and alert. Koenig had let Stefan and Katta trail behind, but now he slowed so that they could catch up.

  ‘What is it?’ said Mathias.

  ‘Nothing to be bothered about,’ said Koenig. ‘Probably just wolves.’

  ‘Wolves!’

  Koenig grinned at him. ‘Let’s see how many there are before we get worried.’

  There were still a couple of hours of daylight left. They rode on for what seemed quite a while. Then Koenig stopped again. He looped the reins over the horse’s neck and climbed down.

  There were tracks in the snow. Mathias looked down at them, and suddenly they made sense.

  ‘They’re our tracks,’ he said. ‘We’ve gone round in a circle.’

  Koenig was casting about, looking carefully at the ground. Stefan took off his pack, dropped it in the snow, and came and stood by him.

  ‘Wolfen?’ Stefan said.

  Koenig shook his head. ‘Ney,’ he said, but he sounded puzzled. ‘Voye.’ He pointed to the ground in one place, and then again in another, showing Stefan what he had seen in the snow.

  ‘What is it?’ said Mathias.

  Koenig straightened up and looked along the line of their old tracks that led away into the wood. ‘We’re being followed,’ he said.

  Then Mathias understood what Koenig had done. He had taken them round in a great circle, to cross their own tracks and the tracks of whatever was behind them. But it wasn’t wolves, and he suddenly realized that Koenig must have known that all along.

  Koenig stood in the snow beside the big horse. He put his boot by one of the marks and frowned. It was the print of a boot, too small for a man, too large and deep for a child. It followed the line of their tracks exactly – there was no mistaking that.

  He shook his head again. ‘Whoever it is, there’s only one of them,’ he said.

  ‘They might just be following in our tracks because it’s easier,’ said Mathias. ‘Stefan and Katta are.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Koenig, but he didn’t sound as though he believed it.

  He gathered the reins one handed, and swung himself back up into the saddle. Stefan trod through the snow to where he had dropped his pack and picked it up. Mathias felt suddenly cold inside. He looked at Katta, but she had her back to him and was fastening her coat. There was only one person Mathias had ever met who was smaller than a man but larger than a child. But it couldn’t be. He shivered.

  It was an uneasy thought and it persisted, growing on Mathias as the light began to fade and the shadows beneath the trees began to darken. They had left the thick wood and come out onto a dirt road. The snow was marked with cart tracks, as though several things had already passed that way, but it was empty now, and it had begun to snow again – small icy spicules that wandered aimlessly in the air.

  They were going to find an inn – Koenig had said that, but little else. Only once had he stopped and, standing up in his stirrups, looked back the way they had come, but the track was empty for as far as he could see, and he had ridden on again. Only Mathias kept looking. Finally Koenig said, ‘You won’t see him, whoever he is.’

  ‘I might.’

  ‘No,’ said Koenig. ‘Not if he was following us, you won’t. His tracks will have crossed ours again, where we stopped. Now he understands that we know he is there. So he has to be careful or he will get a pistol ball through his skull. You won’t see him if he is clever, and if he is not clever, he is dead.’

  Mathias looked behind again, the feeling of unease becoming the first cold fingers of fear.

  Koenig chuckled. ‘Don’t worry yourself,’ he said lightly. ‘I said you might not see him – but I will.’

  If someone else had said that, Mathias would have thought it ju
st an empty brag. But not Koenig. He wondered how many men Koenig had killed. How many had tried to kill him and not lived to see another day.

  ‘Besides,’ said Koenig, ‘there’s the inn.’

  In the distance in front of them Mathias could see the pinprick light of a lamp. Behind them the road was empty; small flakes of snow wandered and disappeared into the falling dark. Whoever was following them was out there. Mathias shivered again and pulled up the collar of his coat.

  The inn smelled of all the things Katta knew so well, as though they were grimed into her skin: pipe smoke and beer, wood smoke and stale cooking. The smell of travelling men and damp clothes. The big downstairs room was already full. There was a murmur of talk, a fire roaring against one wall. Katta watched the girls carrying laden trays of drink. She might have been looking at herself. People hardly spared them a glance as they came in. Koenig found the innkeeper and paid for a room, then they were taken upstairs. Katta looked at the girl who showed them the way and felt again that same queer sense of watching herself.

  ‘What’s it like here?’ she said to the girl, but the girl didn’t answer.

  There was a fire lit in their room and Koenig had food brought up. Stefan couldn’t find his knife to cut his meat with – it must have dropped out of his pack in the forest – so Koenig cut it for him and scolded him for losing something he might need. The two of them talked in Burner. Mathias ate his food and then lay down on the big curtained bed. There was only one, but it was large enough for them all if they slept two at each end. His shoulder and ribs ached. Koenig took a small flask from his coat, poured the liquid into its cap and had Mathias drink. It was the same thing that Tashka had given him that morning. It numbed the pain and made him feel warm and drowsy. He put his head onto the dirty pillow and felt sleep begin to creep over him.

  Katta sat in the firelight and watched Koenig and Stefan talking.

  In the pocket of her apron was Stefan’s knife.

  13

  The Fight at the Inn

  No one had seen her take it. It had been easy. They were all looking at the marks in the snow. She slipped her hand into Stefan’s pack and put the knife in her own pocket. When she was quite sure they hadn’t seen, she undid her coat and quickly dropped the knife into her apron, then fastened her coat again, and that was all Mathias had seen her doing. But now she had the boy, and a knife.