Toymaker, The

by Quidt, Jeremy De

  Katta made her way down the stairs. The air was thick with pipe smoke and the smell of people. One of the girls showed her to the water pump in a dark stone room at the back of the inn.

  At the top of the steps that led down to it, Katta stopped. On the far side of the little room, a door led to the outside world. It was bolted fast, but it buffeted on its hinges as the wind blew and she could see that it wasn’t locked.

  If she filled the jug and went back upstairs, Stefan would tell Koenig what she’d done. And then what?

  Or she could steal a coat and slip away through that door. No one was watching. They wouldn’t even know she’d gone. They’d never find her. There had to be a hundred places she could hide.

  She put the jug down on the floor and looked back over her shoulder to where the coats were hung to dry. It would be so easy to take one. But if she did, she’d be leaving Mathias behind and suddenly, in ways that she couldn’t even begin to explain, that seemed a much worse thing to do.

  She stood with her back against the wall, looking at the door and at the coats, but she just couldn’t do it. It was always that same thought that stopped her.

  Mathias.

  Taking a deep breath, she picked up the jug again and filled it.

  When she got back to the upstairs room, several things had changed. The man in the blue coat had gone and there were no people in the doorway and that wasn’t good. She’d counted on there being other people there. Stefan had been laid down on the bed and for one wild moment, not of guilt but relief, she thought that he was dead and that she was safe. But then she realized that, like Tashka had done to Mathias, Koenig must have given Stefan some drug to make him sleep. He’d smeared the cut with that same thick black paste, and it had stopped bleeding.

  She put the jug of water down beside the bed. She could feel Mathias watching her, but she couldn’t look at him. A confusion of thoughts was rushing through her head. If she could find the knife, she could throw it away – maybe drop it out of the window into the snow – and then Koenig would never know. But that was no good, because Stefan would still tell as soon as he woke up. She cast her eyes about the floor for the knife, but she couldn’t see it anywhere. It must have been kicked beneath the bed or under the large wooden chest that stood against the wall. Her cap lay where she’d thrown it. She picked it up.

  Koenig had wiped his hands clean on a piece of torn sheet and was setting the upturned table back on its legs. He put the chair next to it. As he did so, something caught his eye. Katta saw it too.

  On the floor where the table had lain was Stefan’s knife.

  Koenig bent down and picked it up. He knew whose knife it was. There was blood on the blade. He turned and looked at Katta. There was no going back now and she knew it.

  ‘I cut him,’ she said.

  How could she even begin to explain? She was still holding her leather cap. She held it out towards Koenig, but her hand was shaking.

  ‘He’s why I wear this,’ she said. ‘Why I wear it every stinking minute of every stinking day.’ Her eyes were filling with angry tears. ‘It was him what done it. He threw the stone. I knowed it the minute I saw him, so I took his knife and I cut him, and you can do what you like, ’cos I don’t care.’

  She stood there, her face so fierce that Mathias thought she was going to try and fight. He didn’t know what he could do if she did. But Koenig didn’t move. He didn’t take his eyes from her.

  ‘You could have said.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I didn’t.’

  His eyes never leaving her, he carefully wiped the sharp blade of the knife, then folded it shut with a click. ‘Let me give you some advice, girl,’ he said slowly in a cold, dangerous whisper. ‘Never do anything out of revenge. Once you start, it will never let you go. Believe me, I know.’

  He put the knife in his pocket, still looking at her with those hard, slate-grey eyes. ‘You’ve had your blood,’ he said. ‘Don’t even think about taking any more.’

  He pushed the hand that held the cap away. ‘Put it back on,’ he said.

  In the night, snow fell. By the morning it had buried the road through the forest in an impassable deep, white drift. There was no leaving the inn now, even had they wanted to. When Stefan woke, Koenig had spoken to him, but what he’d said Katta didn’t know and she wasn’t going to ask. Stefan watched her darkly as she moved about, and she pretended not to notice him doing it.

  She tried to keep her distance from him. She took herself downstairs and stood in the doorway of the small snug room behind the bar, watching the two fine ladies playing cards and backgammon in front of the fire. When they saw her, they gave her little pieces of cut apple to eat, as though she were a pet. She wondered what it must be like to be a lady and dress in silks and satins. When she went back to the room, she tried to walk as she imagined a fine lady might walk, but the serving girls saw her on the stairs and laughed. They knew their own sort when they saw it. Any other time and she’d have slapped their faces for them, but not now. She’d seen enough blood already.

  It was another day before they could leave the inn. By then the ladies were leaving as well. They said that Katta, Mathias and Stefan could ride with them for a while in their coach. They weren’t going to Felissehaven, but at least part of their journey lay the same way. Katta couldn’t believe it. Her face shone with excitement. It was as though she had forgotten everything else. She combed her hair and tidied her clothes. When the time came, she stepped into the small coach and sat like a queen, her hands folded in her lap. Mathias took the place next to her and Stefan pressed himself into the furthest corner, where he sat watching Katta in brooding silence.

  Koenig rode behind the coach with the two gentlemen. They had hired horses for themselves at the inn. Koenig’s big horse towered over them both. Mathias thought that he looked more like a highwayman now than a gentleman. Perhaps the two men thought so too because they didn’t look at all comfortable with the arrangement. Or perhaps that was just because they weren’t riding in the coach.

  As the coach rolled out into the deep snow, Koenig’s big horse suddenly pricked its ears and stopped dead. Koenig patted its huge neck and followed its gaze out into the silent, snow-covered trees, but he could see nothing.

  ‘Steady, Razor,’ he said quietly.

  The horse shook its mane and reluctantly walked on.

  But it had been right.

  From the deep cover of the trees, Valter watched them go.

  15

  The Road to Felissehaven

  Anna-Maria sat beside Lutsmann as he drove the creaking cart along the road that led through the woods.

  It had taken them a whole day to set off after Leiter. The tavern keeper had laid hold of their bone-thin horses against the cost of burying Gustav, and Lutsmann had been given no option but to pay. Anna-Maria had stood swearing at the man, white with rage, and the price had gone up with virtually every word she spat out at him. Had she hit him with her riding crop, as she almost did, they wouldn’t have got the horses back at all.

  By the time they arrived at Katta’s inn – the one Leiter had taken Mathias to – Leiter had gone. But all was not lost. If it wasn’t clear to Lutsmann, it was clear to Anna-Maria that whatever it was that Leiter wanted, he hadn’t found it, otherwise he wouldn’t have left the promise of money – a large amount of money – for whoever found Mathias. And what was it that Mathias was supposed to have stolen?

  That was just smoke.

  All this was turning over in Anna-Maria’s mind as she watched the leather of the reins along the back of the horses. Lutsmann could almost hear her thinking.

  ‘My plum?’ he said.

  ‘We should never have sold him.’

  Lutsmann knew better than to remind her it had been her idea that they should.

  ‘Maybe we could buy him back?’ he said.

  She looked at him darkly. ‘Dolt!’

  But then her expression changed. It became cunning. ‘Or maybe we could help look for
him,’ she said. ‘Without us Doctor Leiter might be sent any boy. But we know him. Know his little ways.’

  ‘We were especially fond of him, I recall,’ said Lutsmann.

  ‘Loved him as though he were our own son,’ said Anna-Maria.

  ‘And …’ Lutsmann paused. ‘If we do find him, my dear …?’ he said uncertainly.

  ‘He’s going to be worth a very great deal more than Doctor Leiter has in mind to pay.’ She looped her arm affectionately through his. ‘A very great deal more.’

  Katta and Mathias were walking slowly beside the big horse. They had left the carriage three days past, and now they had to make their own way. For the most part Mathias rode in the saddle in front of Koenig, but sometimes, like now, Koenig would set him down and have him walk a short way. Each day he’d change the dressing on Mathias’s shoulder, and cover the wounds with the black paste. The shoulder was sore and stiff, but it was clean and healing. What hurt Mathias more were his ribs. He’d fallen on them again in the fight with Valter, and though Koenig had bound up his chest as tightly as he could bear it, Mathias could still feel the ends of the bones grating as he moved. It made him feel cold and sick. It didn’t matter whether he was walking or riding, it was the same. Koenig would pour him shallow capfuls of the oily, bitter liquid from the small flask and have him drink it. Whatever it was, it numbed the pain, but it muddled Mathias’s brain, and when he’d drunk it, he seemed to be floating through the world, not part of it at all. He couldn’t feel the tips of his fingers and his tongue was fat in his mouth. He didn’t like it at all, but his chest hurt too much not to drink each capful when Koenig poured it.

  In the few days they had walked, Stefan’s mood had become even more sullen and black. He didn’t always answer Koenig when he spoke to him and he didn’t try to talk to Mathias. If Katta caught his eye, he’d stare at her until she turned away. It wasn’t so much that she couldn’t meet his look – she could outstare a cat – it was the sight of the deep, ugly wound the width of his forehead. It was going to scar him all his life. It was what people would notice about him before anything else; what they’d remember about him afterwards. But she felt no satisfaction. It wasn’t how she thought she’d feel. If she felt anything, it was shame, and she couldn’t explain why that should be. Not after what he had done to her. But when she thought of what would have happened had Mathias not woken him up when he did, all her breath stopped inside.

  But Stefan knew none of that. All he knew was what Koenig had told him, and that didn’t mean anything. He couldn’t remember her. He didn’t care if it had been him that had hurt her. He’d seen the mirror on the wall and what she’d done to his face and that was all that mattered.

  Koenig had given him his knife back. Katta wished he hadn’t done that. She wondered if she could steal it like she’d done before, but Stefan had made that mistake once and he wasn’t going to let it happen again. He kept the knife tucked inside his shirt. But each time he used it, he looked at Katta and turned the blade over in his hands, and she understood what he meant.

  It was what Koenig had told her. Revenge follows you.

  She didn’t think Stefan would try to hurt her while Koenig was there, but she didn’t trust him any more than that. Worse, she knew that it was her own fault, but there was no going back now. She would have to take very great care, and the first thing to do, she decided, was to stay as close to Koenig as she could. Besides, she wanted to know what he was going to do next.

  But for now she walked beside Mathias, keeping pace with him, letting him lean on her, which made her feel warm in ways that she didn’t really understand either.

  ‘Did he ever learn you any of it?’ she asked him. ‘Tricks and stuff?’

  She meant Gustav. She loved the idea of the magic show. But Mathias shook his head.

  ‘He should have learned it you,’ she said. ‘Then you could have done it together.’

  Koenig had been listening to them talk. He looked down at Katta from the saddle. ‘Maybe that’s just what he didn’t want,’ he said. ‘Maybe that’s all your piece of paper really is. The tricks an old man didn’t want anyone else to know.’

  Mathias looked up at him. He didn’t believe for a moment that Koenig thought that. ‘You don’t think it is,’ he said.

  Koenig stood up in his stirrups and looked back along the road. Then he sat down in the saddle again. ‘No,’ he said. ‘People don’t die just for that.’

  He looked down at Mathias as though he were about to say more, but then the expression on his face changed; it became one of concern. Mathias turned to see what it was that he was looking at. He hadn’t noticed that Katta had stopped walking, but she had. She was standing quite still, staring blankly, her face pale.

  ‘Katta?’ he said.

  But she didn’t hear him, because inside her head the world was breaking into a thousand little pinpricks of light. A thin noise was coming from between her teeth.

  Before Mathias could do anything, she pitched forward into the snow, kicking and jerking like some broken puppet. The sudden violence of it sent the big horse dancing sideways across the track. Stefan thought it was a trick. He fumbled with the buttons of his coat, pulling the knife from inside his shirt and shouting at her to get up. But then he saw the red froth around her lips where she’d bitten her tongue, and her eyes wide and staring. Koenig reined in the horse and dropped from the saddle into the snow. He caught hold of Katta’s head, cupping it in his hands as she beat it on the ground.

  There was nothing Mathias could do but stand and watch.

  It seemed to last an age. Koenig held onto her until at last she stopped kicking; then he put his hat in the snow and, brushing the hair from her face, carefully laid her head on it like a pillow. It was several moments before she opened her eyes. When she did, she stared slowly about her, blinking, as though she didn’t know where she was or what had happened.

  Then, very quietly, she began to cry.

  Stefan stood staring down at her. There was blood and spit all over her face. She’d wet herself too. Mathias knelt down in the snow and looked up at Stefan. It was an accusation and Stefan knew it.

  ‘She sick!’ he shouted. He held his hair back to show the thick ugly cut. ‘She do this!’

  Katta slowly looked up at him, her face wet with tears, her eyes barely focusing. But she knew who it was. ‘I hate you,’ she said.

  He swore at her in Burner, but Koenig put out his hand and pushed him away. Stefan spat angrily in the snow and, kicking at it, walked off towards where the horse stood with its reins loose about its neck.

  Koenig knelt down beside her. ‘Can you sit on a horse?’ he said quietly.

  She nodded her head almost imperceptibly, but even that hurt.

  He helped her to stand up, then put his arm around her and lifted her into the saddle. With Mathias beside him, he made the horse walk on, holding onto her stirrup so that she wouldn’t fall. Stefan stood for a moment watching, then followed them in black silence.

  As the day closed in, they found a small farmhouse close to the road. There were large, growling dogs in the yard. The man who opened the door looked warily at Koenig, but when he saw the children, he called for his wife and she let them in.

  They put Katta down to sleep in the cold, dark loft beneath the rafters of the wooden roof. Smoke from the fire seeped through the dry boards of the floor.

  Mathias lay next to her, listening to the sounds of the voices from below and the dogs prowling in the yard outside. He was trying to think what would happen now, but he was almost too tired to care.

  He closed his eyes.

  Just as sleep took him, he imagined that he heard the creaking wheels of one cart, then another, passing along the road to Felissehaven.

  PART TWO

  Felissehaven

  16

  Meiserlann

  The harbour was choked with ice. It spread in one solid sheet as far as the small islands where the monastery of St Becca the Old stood. Where the r
un of the tide had broken it into small rafts, clear water the colour of gun-blued steel showed between the floes. Slack-sailed barges made their way down these channels to the harbour quays, while the big ships that off-loaded onto them rode at anchor as best they could in the cold, heavy swell on the furthest fringes of the ice.

  Felissehaven – the city of the smiling angel.

  Story had it that an angel had guided St Becca to the offshore islands and, standing in the prow of a small boat, pointed with its feathered wings to the place where the saint should kneel down and pray.

  And Becca did. He waded ashore and, while the angel watched, got down on his bare knees amongst the hard, sharp stones, put his hands together and prayed.

  That was a long time ago. They built a monastery there. But now it was nothing but an empty ruin and St Becca just dry bones in a golden reliquary, but the angel lived on – smiling down on the people of Felissehaven from a hundred ornate carvings and the stained glass in their churches. Some people said that the angel had never existed; some that it had never gone away. The only proof of it now were those carvings on the buildings, and the glass in the windows – them, and the image of its face on the city’s golden coins and on the Great Seal of the Duke.

  Felissehaven.

  Buildings with gilded gables and narrow cobbled lanes between. Ornate golden spires that blazed in the cold winter sun. Wide streets and tumbled houses. And on the hill, high above it all, stood the fine palace from which the Duke and his Council looked down on the rich affairs of the buildings squeezed into the city walls beneath them. Looked down on it all and ruled it with a rod of iron.

  The day after Katta had the fit, she was slow-witted and confused. Mathias worried for her. He’d never seen anyone like this, not even Gustav when he’d been ill. When she spoke, her words came awkwardly, as though she had to think about each one before she said it. It was painful to watch, so he sat beside her and held her hand in his. It wasn’t until the afternoon that she even really understood where she was, and by then it was too late to start. So it was a full day before they set out again. They walked the last dozen miles down into the city, Mathias on the horse and Katta going slowly on foot beside it. Her head hurt her so much. Stefan kept his distance. He walked on the other side of the horse. It was as though each of them were pretending that the other wasn’t there. For the moment there was an uneasy quiet between them. At the farmhouse he’d put a bowl of food in front of her and she’d eaten it, which is more than she would have done once. But that didn’t mean a thing, Mathias knew. He sat watching them both. It was like a powder keg just waiting for the spark.