by Perrin Briar
“Does old age suit anyone?”
“I think I handle it well.”
“That you do.”
Lord Wythnos kissed his wife on the forehead and climbed into bed.
“The Ascars are the backbone of the kingdom,” he said. “Their fortunes are on the up while the old dogs like ours…”
“We’re not doing so bad,” Lady Wythnos said. “It wasn’t so long ago you couldn’t mention the Ascars without your face turning purple.”
“People change.”
“Since when have you ever changed? You’ve always been a fifty-year-old man.”
Lord Wythnos shrugged.
“I saw how Arthur Ascar does business,” he said. “He reminds me that perhaps my ancestors weren’t all that dissimilar to him. He’s a little rough around the edges, I’ll grant you, and he’ll never truly be one of the gentry, no matter how much money he throws at it, but you have to admire his business acumen. I’ve never seen a family business rise so fast.”
Lady Wythnos yawned.
“My father used to say that anything that rises too fast is always prone to sink just as quickly,” she said.
She rolled over, and within seconds her breaths became slow and deep and measured. Lord Wythnos lay staring up at the ceiling.
“Whereas the old die slow agonising deaths,” he said.
“Nh?’ Lady Wythnos said, starting awake. “Did you say something?”
“Uh, no dear. Just talking to myself.”
Lady Wythnos grumbled and rolled over again, her breaths coming slow and deep once more.
Chapter Fourteen
Richard knocked on the door.
“Jera? Jera, I know you’re in there. Talk to me. Jera? All right, you don’t have to speak, just listen.”
He sat down on the floor with his back against the door.
“Your father told me you’re feeling a little uncertain about the wedding,” he said. “I’m not going to lie to you, I feel a little nervous myself. But believe it or not, Gregory and I are not bad guys. You love travelling, and there’s no reason why you can’t travel as much as you want when we’re wed. I only said you couldn’t travel to those dangerous places because I thought that’s what you wanted me to say.
“Despite all our wealth and power Gregory and I are just two guys who fell in love with you and your sister. Now, I know how that sounds. We hardly know you, but sometimes you can know a person deeper over a period of days instead of years. I really think you could be the one. We have the rest of our lives to spend together. You don’t want a few nerves to ruin the rest of your life, do you?
“Gregory and I are the sons of a self-made man. When we were young we had nothing. We worked hard for what we have. We went without. We worked hard at school as our father taught us. We took over the school. We ran everything there. We bought and sold everything we could get our hands on. If there was a need, we supplied it. If there was someone who wanted something, we sold it to them. We sold better food at a lower price than the snack shop. They went out of business, so we jacked up our prices. If there’s one thing we know, it’s business.
“And now we’re strangers in a foreign land, trying to win you and your sister’s hearts. It’s not easy, but if you’re patient I’m sure we can be very happy together.”
Richard paused for a moment, listening for a response.
“Jera? Are you there?” he said. “You really ought to say something now.”
He sighed.
“All right, listen,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’m going to let you out, but you have to promise to behave yourself. Okay?”
There was another pause.
“Jera?”
Richard got to his knees and peered through the keyhole. Through it he caught sight of the large bay windows that led out to the balcony. The curtains billowed with the wind’s gentle caress.
A rock landed in the pit of Richard’s stomach. He tried the door. The handle turned but didn’t open. He took the key out of his pocket, inserted it into the lock and turned it.
Richard ran to the wardrobes and threw the doors open. He pushed the clothes hanging from the railing aside. Then he went to the restroom and kicked the door open, causing it to bang on the back wall. He ran inside. It was dark and murky, the light catching the tiles and shiny surfaces.
Richard came out of the bathroom. The wind stroked the curtains and ran over the denuded bed, stripped bare of blankets and drapings. Tied to the balcony was the knotted end of a bed sheet. He pulled it up, the sheet-rope piling up at his feet. The end was caked in mud. Richard leaned his fists on the balcony’s railing and looked out at the backyard.
“Bitch!”
Chapter Fifteen
The streets were dark and empty. Her footsteps echoed off the cold stone walls and bounced back to her, assaulting her with their lack of stealth. She bent her knees and crouched low in an effort to make less noise, and then realised how absurd she must have looked.
A man lay unconscious in the gutter. He was mumbling something under his breath. Jera thought she heard a shuffling noise in one of the alleys. She pulled the scarf around her face tighter and kept moving.
Ahead of her the north city gate yawned open, the twinkling stars above like friends waiting to greet her. Two uniformed constables stood guard, one on either side of the gate. If she could just get out of the town she would be safe.
She heard the slow clip-clop of horseshoes behind her. A horse snorted, causing her to start. Jera shrank into her scarf and turned into an alley. The draft horse passed her, and the choking aroma of a wagonload of sprouts rattled over the lumpy dirt street as it approached the city gates. The constables at the gate called the cart to a stop.
“I’m on my way to Silver Falls,” the cart driver said.
“I’m sorry, sir,” a tall constable said. “We can’t let you through tonight.”
The old draft horse whipped its tail at invisible flies.
“What do you mean you can’t let me through?” the driver shouted. “I have to get to Silver Falls by daybreak!”
“Not tonight you won’t, sir. Under orders of the high commander these gates will remain closed till morning.”
“I’ve got a living to make! If I can’t sell these sprouts, they’ll go off and my family will starve come winter!”
“They don’t like sprouts?” the tall constable said.
The driver screwed up his face and hopped off his cart and rounded on the constables to fight a battle he had no chance of winning.
Heart pounding in her chest, Jera turned and walked down the dark alleyway squeezed between two buildings. Her foot came in contact with something and a glass bottle rolled across the narrow space. She placed her feet more carefully until she got to the opposite end. She paused before exposing herself to the warm yellow glow of streetlamps.
Then she heard voices.
“Of course, everyone knows the Wythnos girl run away cos of the forced marriage she’s been bullied into,” one voice said.
“I wouldn’t speak like that about the high commander’s betrothed if I were you. Someone might overhear and get the wrong impression.”
“They might overhear, but they won’t get the wrong impression. It’s bloomin’ barbaric the way they arrange their children’s marriages like that. Bloomin’ barbaric.”
Jera backed into the alleyway and waited as the two soldiers passed. Their white uniforms glowed in the moonlight, their swords gleaming with promise. Once they were gone she poked her head out into the street and looked both ways.
Across the street was a pub. Folk music played on a violin and drum. The fast beat matched the beating of Jera’s heart. She crossed the street and peered in through the glass windows, which warped the patrons’ faces. She couldn’t identify who they were, but they all stood around chatting, laughing and joking. The soft golden glow of the lantern light spilled across the street, shadows moving to and fro like demons attempting to escape from hell.
A
man with his arm draped over the shoulders of a buxom woman, his hand dangerously close to her near-exposed bosom, stumbled out of the pub. He upended his tankard, wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and tossed it aside.
“Come here, my lovely,” the man said, pressing her against the wall.
The woman giggled with glee and wrapped her arms around the bearded man’s head as he buried himself into her cleavage. The woman gasped, and started shaking. She clawed at the man’s hair.
“Calm down!” the man said. “I haven’t barely got started yet.”
But her eyes weren’t on him, but on something across the road.
“By jove,” he said.
They were staring at four sets of red eyes gleaming in the darkness across the street. There was a horrendous screech like a soul being torn from its host. The woman screamed and burst into tears in the same instant. The bearded man backed away. The breath caught in Jera’s throat.
The red eyes reared up into the air, drawing up perhaps nine or ten feet. The animals’ hind legs seemed to reach for the sky and then slammed hard onto the dirt road, causing it to shake. Liquid dribbled from their wide nostrils and blood trickled from their open wounds.
The driver raised his whip in the air and threw it forward. It whip-cracked like thunder and the horses whinnied and cried and screamed in the night, and the hoof steps were loud as a hurricane smashing through the town.
Jera threw herself aside, into a narrow alleyway dark with shadows. She ran, and turned left down another alley, and her footsteps echoed off the narrow walls a dozen times and sounded like a mob was chasing her. She skidded to a halt at the mouth of the alley.
Jera edged around a corner and spied a white uniform heading toward her. She pressed herself against the wall and waited for the constable to pass. She looked across the street and saw the wide open space of the market square.
The market and its contents had been packed up, but the stalls remained. It felt like a lifetime since she’d last been there. The animals were still in their cages. Most of them were asleep, lying against the wire mesh of their cages.
A tall gentleman with a cloak and walking stick stood with a young dark-haired woman in a plain, but simple dress. They were looking at the rodents, who succumbed to their nocturnal urges and ran about their cages, looking for somewhere to go or to run to but lacking the opportunity to do so.
Jera had eyes only for the great old tired beast that lay in the mud. It was lit by a single paraffin lamp that hung above a dirty puddle of water. Under this meagre light Jera could see the sabre-toothed goat lying defenceless and without care.
“This way!” a man’s voice shouted in the night. “She went this way!”
Jera looked left and right, unable to place the origin of the man’s voice. She stepped forward into the sleeping sabre-toothed goat’s den and sat on a crate that was stuck fast in the mud.
Running footsteps approached and then disappeared into the distance. Jera watched the sleeping beast. It breathed, slowly, in long drawn-out breaths that rose and shook its entire body. The collar around its neck was black and thick and made of leather. There were gouge marks on it from where it had tried to bite it off. Jera closed her eyes. She felt so tired, and she was lost and alone and didn’t know where she was going or what she was going to do.
Squelch.
Jera opened her eyes to find a huge pair of golden eyes looking at her. She was wrong. The sabre-toothed goat’s hind quarters were thin and pale, and his bones poked out at his fur. He walked with a pronounced limp, and the fur on the left side of its head was tinted green, exposed to the flies that buzzed about his thin face. And yet there was a strength in his eyes. He stared at her, through her, and Jera knew that even half dead as he was he could end her right then and there. Great plumes of white billowed before his face and sprayed her with its mist. His interest waned and he turned back to his bedding and slept.
It took Jera a moment to gather herself before she got up and walked across the street, careful of where her feet touched the craggy dimples in the muddy street.
Chapter Sixteen
High above her, yellow and dark as aged parchment, the clocktower’s face glowed, facing the moon like it were its reflection. The building was black, but yet somehow still visible in the night, as if it were darker even than the shadows.
Jera crossed the street in the direction of the tower. A single shop was housed on the ground floor, candlelight glow from within. A sign said, ‘Clock Maker’ in unpretentious writing. She knocked on the door.
“Hello?” she said. “If there’s anyone in there, please let me in.”
There was no answer, but she knocked again.
“I can see the light. I know you’re there. Please open the door.”
Again, there was no reply.
She banged on the door with the fleshy part of her fist.
“If anyone’s there, please let me in!” she said.
“Who is it?” a voice muffled by the door said.
“Let me in!”
“Who are you?”
“Just let me in! Please!”
The door opened a crack and a man looked her up and down.
“What’s the matter?” he said. “You in trouble or something?”
“Please, just let me in.”
“Now’s not a good time.”
“I have money,” Jera said, reaching into her pocket and extracting coins that fell between her fingers and spilled onto the ground.
The man’s eyes dropped to Jera’s hands.
“How about those rings?” he said.
Jera pulled them off and handed them to him.
“And the necklace,” he said.
Jera removed it, but didn’t hand it to him.
“Let me in first,” she said.
The man said nothing.
There was the sound of a horse galloping from somewhere down the street. Jera handed the necklace over. The man closed the door. It didn’t open. Jera banged on the door.
“Let me in!” she said. “You said you’d let me in!”
The man opened the door.
“I was going to!” he said. “Sheesh.”
Jera darted past him into the shop. The small amount of light emanated from a single candle on a worktable in the centre of the room.
“Thank you for letting me in,” Jera said.
The man shrugged.
“You paid the toll,” he said.
He tucked the rings and necklace into his pocket. The man was in his late twenties, with a long open face, blue eyes and a scraggy mop of hair on his head. He had a few days’ worth of stubble on his chin.
Jera looked around the room. Clocks hung from the walls but half of them had been taken down and put on the large worktables. Various pieces had been removed. From what she could tell, not a scrap of gold or silver remained.
“I’m sorry,” Jera said. “Did I interrupt you?”
“No,” he said. “I’m just about finished.”
He picked up a piece of silver from the table and tossed it into a bag that was heavy with swag.
“What’s your name?” Jera said.
“Bryan,” the man said. “Bryan Hill.”
“Pleased to meet you, Bryan,” Jera said, shaking his hand. “I’m Sara Withenhoe.”
“Withenhoe? I’m sure you weren’t bullied much at school.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, nothing. Wait. You’re not one of the super-famous incredibly rich Withenhoes, are you?”
Jera blinked.
“I didn’t know there were any,” she said.
“Man! I wish you were. I suppose you wish you were too, right?”
Bryan moved to the heavy bag, bent his knees and gripped it with both hands.
“Can you give me a hand with this?” he said.
Jera hesitated, then bent down and helped him drag it over to the door.
“That’s really heavy,” she said. “What’s in there?”
&n
bsp; “Just a few odds and ends.”
Jera’s eyes drifted over the ransacked clocks.
“Listen,” Jera said. “I need to get out of here, out of Time, tonight. But with all the city gates closed-”
“The city gates are closed?”
“Yes. I heard they’re looking for someone.”
Bryan ran a hand through his hair.
“Did they say who?” he said.
“No.”
“Did they mention when they’ll be allowing people out?”
“Not until they find the person they’re looking for, they said.”
Bryan kicked the bulging bag, letting out a little scream in the process. He limped over to a chair, uncorked a bottle of whiskey, poured a small glass and pushed it toward Jera. He took a long pull direct from the bottle.
“Well, that’s just great,” he said. “I suppose the town is crawling with uniforms?”
Jera took a seat on one of the stools.
“Crawling,” she said.
“Then I’ve got bad news for you, Missy. We ain’t goin’ nowhere. Not till the morning, anyway. We’ll have to see where their defences are weak and make a break for it.”
“What’ll we do till then?”
“Wait for the sun to come up.”
Bryan took another swig of the whiskey. He looked Jera over.
“Why are you running away?” he said.
“That’s my business. Why do you want to escape tonight?”
Bryan pressed his lips together.
“I’d wager until recently that dress you’re wearing was brand new,” he said, “or near enough to make no difference, and now it’s torn and muddy and you want to escape the town.”
“Maybe I stole it.”
“With that accent? Please. Well, whoever you are, whatever you’ve done, at least there’s one piece of good news: no one knows we’re here.”
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG!
The front door rocked against its hinges under strong blows. Bryan and Jera jumped to their feet.
“Open up!” a gruff voice said. “Now!”
Bryan crept toward the door. Jera whimpered and took a step back. Bryan made a ‘Be quiet’ gesture with his hands. The thudding continued on the door. Bryan tiptoed over to the window and peered around it to see the shoulder of a white uniform. Bryan ducked back down.