“You’ve much to learn yet.” Merek sighed and Drifted, vanishing from sight in an instant.
Aeryn tried to Drift only to find herself unable to, just as in the streets with Jins and his gang.
“Bloody hell.” She tore the blinds open, bathing the room in light. At least she could force Merek to fight blind.
Turning, she opened her ears wide, listening for any sounds that would give him away. Inching toward the door, she held the knife menacingly before her. A board creaked at her side. She whirled.
“I know you’re there, I can hear you. I also know you can’t see me either, which means I have the advantage; to my eyes the room is lit, but to yours, it is pitch black.”
“You learn fast. That’s good,” Merek said behind her.
Aeryn spun to face him, crouching as she did, readying for an attack that never materialized. He wore a long, plain gray wool robe. “I’m not trying to kill or bed you. I’m trying to teach you. Something I can’t do when you can’t Drift.”
She narrowed her eyes, refusing to lower the knife. “How did you know I’ve been having trouble Drifting?”
Merek chuckled. He shrugged as though it was as obvious as saying a rat could not kill an elephant. “Those aren’t your clothes. Knife, purse, smallclothes, my daughter’s dress, it doesn’t matter: you can’t Drift with things you are not intimately familiar with.”
“But then why did you tell me to wear fancy clothes?”
“I said presentable. That’s a far cry from fancy. I assumed any clothes you wore, no matter how fancy, would be plain enough for you to Drift in. But if you are modest. . .” Moving to one of his large wardrobes and burying his hands to their elbows, he came back with a simple brown blanket. Pulling out his smooth-handed knife, he cut a slit in the middle and handed it over. “Undress and put it on.”
“It’s a blanket.”
Infuriatingly, Merek just shrugged. “Until you find something more suitable, this will have to do. Unless of course you don’t want to learn anymore?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
Aeryn sighed and turned, following his orders while trying to maintain some shred of dignity.
Merek continued his explanation. “The smaller an object is, the easier it is to become familiar with. It is much easier to commit every inch of a coin to memory, despite its details, than the smallest wagon, however plain. The size and surface area of the wagon are simply too large. That’s why you’ll be able to Drift wearing that blanket, but not those ‘fancy clothes’ of my daughter’s. From which I noticed you cut the bells.”
“They were bells. On a shirt. I’m not a horse,” Aeryn said. She went on before he could come up with a retort. “So that’s why you wear those woolens and made such a fuss over the knife I stole.”
Fully dressed—if it could be called dressed while wearing a blanket over her shoulders—Aeryn Drifted. Everything grew darker.
“Come on,” Merek said, motioning her into the alcove.
Walking in behind Merek, she pulled the door shut. The surroundings, Merek included, who had Drifted right along with her, brightened to a low dusk in the absence of the outside sunlight.
“You’re a Lord. Why didn’t you just buy a new one?” Aeryn asked. “The knife, I mean. I know now what the letters represent. But still. You could have had a hundred made without noticing the missing coin.”
Merek chuckled. “I’m a Lord. Do you have any idea how suspicious it looks if I walk into the markets and buy the plainest robe on display? Not to mention having a master blacksmith craft the simplest steel dagger he can? The Shades, Voices, Nameless himself, would know my secret in a heartbeat. A you well know, they don’t take kindly to anyone that can Drift, Lord or otherwise.
“Now, if you’re done with your questions, let’s get started. Relaxing is necessary to begin the Drift, but focus is the key to delving deeper, as well as maintaining your Drift. At the lowest levels, next to no focus is required. At the highest, the concentration required taxes your mind. The continuum. . .”
Aeryn had more questions, but held them back as he walked her through the levels of Drifting, starting with the most common, occupied by the vast majority of people—and surprisingly, animals—at all times, to the extreme of being completely invisible. She still had trouble believing how colors inversed at the deepest state. She had only gone deep enough to turn everything to a dim shade of grey. But darkness turning complete and wholly to light, red becoming green, blue becoming yellow, and so on, was foreign to think about. It actually twisted her thoughts so much that she was forced to put it out of her mind; at least, until it became necessary to think on once more.
Unfortunately, learning to Drift from a Lord came with a whole host of problems she had never considered. Problems she was not even close to prepared to deal with when they reared their head. Problems that the slightest misstep would instantly turn fatal.
7
Harried
The lesson finished for the week, Aeryn began redressing. Oddly, she actually felt less silly standing in Lord Merek’s bedroom in her new smallclothes than wearing a blanket as shawl.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Merek fingering her clothes. “Don’t get any ideas,” she said.
“What?” Merek asked. “Oh no, nothing like that.” Shaking his head, he hastily handed over the now belless shirt and breeches. He then finished dressing himself after hanging up his simple woolens and replacing the smooth hilted knife on its stand. “I was just thinking that my daughter’s ‘fancy’ clothes suit you.”
“I look like a peacock,” Aeryn as she did up the final buttons with the help of a full-length mirror that must have cost a small fortune. “I feel like one too.”
“No,” Merek drawled, “but perhaps if you wore Bethany’s yellow sundress with the—“
“—frilly lace at the collar, cuffs, and hem? Yeah, Melanie and her girls tried putting that monstrous thing on me. Once. They didn’t get very far.”
Merek laughed. “At least it’s not as bad as the rainbow one. I once told Bethany she looked like a clownfish in it and she didn’t talk to me for an entire week.”
“That’s exactly what I told Melanie! I think she was trying to punish me. Could you imagine me in a dress like that?” Aeryn did a little twirl, a street urchin pretending she was a Lady at a ball. Both her and Merek snickered at the absurd image.
When they quieted, Merek rubbed his eyes. “Oh, lord, I miss that. I haven’t had much cause to laugh over the past years. If it’s not one thing, then it’s some other ‘pressing concern’ or ‘troubling news.’” He sighed. “It just hasn’t been the same without them.
Aeryn was sure Merek had not been talking to her, but one thing kept nagging at her as he spoke. If Shadows had killed Isabel and Bethany, then why was he teaching her to Drift? On the same topic, why had he killed that Shade, someone sworn to hunt Shadows like the one that had killed the women?
“What really happened?” she asked. “I mean, I know your wife and child were murdered, but that wasn’t all that happened, was it?”
Merek’s eyes roared to life. His gaze met hers and she took an involuntary step back. A heartbeat later, they cooled and he tossed over Aeryn’s belt, her purse attached.
“You forgot this. Wear something you’re more familiar with next time. I don’t want to ruin another blanket.” With that, he stormed out and disappeared down the hall, leaving Aeryn suddenly standing alone.
Walking down the street, the new summer sun blazed down every bit as fiercely as Merek’s eyes had. Aeryn had hit a nerve back there. Something had happened. Something terrible. Something that made the death of a wife and child seem insignificant in comparison.
“Lord finally bought you new clothes?” asked a soldier, the same one from earlier in the morning who stood guarding the Lord’s Gate.
“I bet he dressed her himself,” chided the other guard.
“Of course he did. You know how odd those Lords’ fancies are.”
&nb
sp; Aeryn gritted her teeth and kept walking, trying not to feel out of place in her new dress. It did not work.
The first guard chuckled. “Still, no shame in bedding a Lord, is there Rale?”
“None at all, Lars,” Rale said. “Not when the only thing you’re good for is getting poked like a target dummy.” The two broke out in howls of laughter.
It took focus not to turn and lash out or break into a run. Now that a few of the regular’s at the gate recognized her, they let her pass without a second question. That was not to say they mocked her any less, though. Something that would surely only get worse now that she had been all dolled up by Lord Merek’s serving girls. Working through the crowded streets, Aeryn moved to the side, away from a knot of approaching soldiers.
No, she realized once she was able to get the bloody gate guards’ comments out of her head, she had been wrong earlier. No circumstances, no matter how grievous, made the death of a wife and child insignificant. Then what?
Stomping past in their rattling steel armor, swords and maces clanking at their sides, the soldiers encompassed a pair of partially Drifted Shades.
Aeryn had an urge to throw off her fancy new clothes so she could Drift to catch a glimpse of the Shades. The true Shades. The ones stripped of their mystery and intrigue.
The urge was fleeting. A girl standing around in her small clothes, dress lying on the ground at her feet, Drifted in the middle of a busy street with soldiers and Shades filing by was a recipe for disaster if Aeryn had ever heard of one.
A thought hit her as she watched the commoners step out of the way, some bowing, others offering up fistfuls of hard-earned coins to the Shades as tithes, a few even prostrating themselves on the dirty cobbles. Whatever had happened to Merek had not made the death of his wife and child hurt less in comparison, it had made it hurt more. A lot more. It had magnified the pain of his wife and child’s murder a hundredfold.
Aeryn had an idea of a sure-fire way to twist the knife. She had experienced it herself when Rickon had turned his back on her and run to Nameless’ disciples. Betrayal. Only, try as she might, she could not come up with a betrayal that would hurt Lord Merek so. She simply did not know enough about Maerilin’s nobles to hazard a guess, much less untangle their layered webs of intrigue and doubletalk.
There was one person she might be able to ask for clarification. And it was not Lady Mareen. Lady Alys on the other hand, had helped Aeryn escape Melanie and her girls, told her about Isabel and Bethany, and—
“Long time no see,” Jins said, appearing in front of Aeryn just as she entered the bustling square. “I was beginning to think you were avoiding me.”
Aeryn almost screamed. How had he found her again? She turned to the side, tensing her legs so she could slip into the crowd and lose him.
“Now, now,” said Jins, as Brys and his greedy eyes, and even greedier fingers, cut off her escape, “we can’t have you leaving without giving us our cut. Can we?”
“I don’t have anything,” Aeryn said. But her new dress and small clothes, of course. She was not doing to strip in the middle of a crowded street and give them to Brys so he could leer at her. Did they think she had snuck into a Lord’s estate in the middle of the day and walked out with an armload of filched goods?
She swiveled to go back the way she had come. Surely the gate guards—whether or not they liked her, they did recognize her now—would help, or at the very least, bar Jins and his gang from following. She could hide out at Merek’s and return hours later once they had given up.
A stalwart Mic blocked her escape route. “That’s not what word on the streets is, eh Hal?” he said.
Hal appeared and completed the box around her. “Aye. You got that right. Word is you’ve taken to the bed of some rich Lord. And by them fancy clothes,” Hal reached out with his wooden club and poked at her dress, “I do think they be true.”
“Why don’t you hand over what you got and we’ll be on our way?” Jins asked. He swooped a low bow, and added with a mocking tone, “my Lady.”
“I told you,” Aeryn said as she scanned her surroundings for a way out. “I don’t have anything.”
“We’ll see about that,” Jins said. He nodded.
Three sets of hands grabbed her and dragged her to the mouth of an alley. Even if she had a hand free to whistle for Jynx, there was no way the draven would hear her in this crowd, nor was he likely even awake at this time of day. She was on her own.
A few seconds of probing and they came away with her knife, now nearly rusted through, and her purse. Mic opened the purse and gaped, knife suddenly forgotten to clatter to the ground. The others peered over his shoulder in awe.
“Nothing, eh?” Jins said. He held up a double handful of gold and silver coins.
“I haven’t seen those before, I swear!” Aeryn said. The most she had ever had was a few copper; perhaps a silver or two if she had just sold some filched goods or Will had recently paid her. How had so much gold ended up in her purse—
It hit her. Merek. He had been fingering her new clothes; he had handed her her purse and belt; he had told her to wear different clothes; he was so wealthy a barrel full of gold might as well be a footstool. The bloody Lord had just gotten her killed.
Jins’ face soured. “Right. And I’m a Voice and Brys here is a Shade.” Depositing the coins back into the purse, which he tied around his belt, he turned back to Aeryn. “We’ll show you what we do to people who think they can cheat us.” Winding up, the others still holding her in an iron grip, he punched her in the stomach, hard.
Aeryn doubled over and wretched. Another blow fell just as she was able to draw a ragged breath. Two more in rapid succession slammed into her side and made her heave until she was dry.
“Can I have a turn?” Brys asked. He licked his lips in such a fashion that would have had Aeryn sicking up all over again if her stomach had not been empty. He obviously did not mean to punch her as Jins had done.
Inspecting his knuckles and wiping them clean, Jins waved as casually as Lady Mareen had only hours before. “Sure. Knock yourself out.”
Brys grinned and snuck his left hand down Aeryn’s dress. His right crawled inside her waistband. The other boys snickered, loosening their hold so Brys could root around.
Between her burning insides, pounding head and the acid that coated her throat and mouth, Aeryn’s mind sent out a searing shout that broke through the pain.
Move! Move now or you’ll never get another chance!
She did not have to wait for Brys to replace his hands with something else, nor wait for another blow from Jins to know it was the truth. If she did not move this very instant, she would never be able to again. And even if by some miracle she did, she doubted she would even want too.
Aeryn seized the opportunity and snatched up her knife from the ground. Still doubled over, she swept it in a tight arc, taking both Jins and Brys across their shins. Both thugs screamed and dropped to the ground in the fetal position, their arm wrapped around their legs.
Aeryn did not bother fighting any further. Four to one odds, even with two of them injured, meant death any way she looked at it. Twisting, she rolled away and sprinted out of the alley. The agony in her stomach and sides turned it into a shambling hobble before the third step landed.
“Get her!” Jins half shouted, half screeched.
Aeryn could already hear footfalls closing. She pressed into the outer edge of the crowd. A hand grasped her shoulder from behind. Spinning, she brought up the rusted knife.
Mic jumped back. He barely avoided the blade.
Aeryn adjusted her grip on the fly, projecting the tip out as far as it would go. It raked through the side of the boy’s throat.
Even as the first spurt of blood pumped into the air, Hal, a pace behind, screamed in molten fury. He brought his crude wooden cudgel arcing toward Aeryn’s chest. With all his weight behind it, the swing was a sure deathblow should it land. Even if broken ribs did not puncture her lungs, there woul
d be no way she could breathe, much less walk or fight back. She brought her knife in a desperate attempt to block or at least slow it down.
The two weapons connected solidly. The force of the blow sent the hilt driving into Aeryn’s chest. She felt her ribs creak from the impact. Stumbling backwards, she lost hold of the blade. The knife remained stuck fast in the wooden cudgel.
Hal ripped the blade free and tossed it into the crowd without looking. A woman screamed.
Move! Aeryn screamed at herself. You’re dead if you don’t! Uninjured and leagues stronger, Hal would easily and brutally end the fight if she did not keep moving.
She lurched, diving behind an overweight man leading a horse drawn wagon laden with barrels of wine. She rolled away from the hooves to slow, earning a kick to her side that expelled the air from her lungs. Struggling to rise to her feet, she limped on before any wheels could run her over and crushed her back.
“Get back here, girl!” Hal shouted.
Weaponless and gasping for breath, she had to keep moving. Hand pressed to her side, Aeryn used her small size to her advantage, squeezing into the tightest press of bodies, trying to make it as hard as possible for the larger thug to follow.
“You’re dead!” Hal said. “Do you hear me? Dead!” Between his bellowing and the screeching and seething crowd, now aware of the fight within their midst, Aeryn managed to open a slight lead.
It would not be enough. She did not have to hear Jins and Brys screaming at the top of their lungs to know she was still outnumbered three to one. That, and with every moment that passed, another star swam into her vision, threatening to send her to the cobbles. A quick glance over her shoulder showed Hal swinging away with ever-increasing force, dropping bystanders like bowling pins in his rage to get to her.
Threading her way forward, Aeryn could only see one way to escape. A way that had been ludicrous only a minute ago. She began to rip off her dress.
The very instant she was down to her smallclothes, she Drifted. The broad daylight turned to midnight in a heartbeat. From the sky to the cobbles, the taverns and inns on the left to the shops on the right, darkness enveloped her.
Shadowborn Page 10