I gripped Margrey’s arm. “How long ago?” I asked. “Where did he find his ghast?”
“Dunno. He went on business last summer to the Garhad Islands, but he was gone for a long time. Could’ve gone anywhere. When he came back that creature was with him.”
“How did you know he was ghast-ridden?”
“I seen his eyes turn once, back at the beginning. All the stories say that’s the sign.”
“Saw. Yet she stayed on, you’ll notice,” Myrra said. “You can’t expect me to believe it just sat around all this time biding its time. And if it really were a monster riding him, why didn’t you leave?”
“You know why.”
Myrra drew up to her full height and folded her arms. “No, you’ve never actually told me. Why?”
Margrey glanced in my direction. “Now ain’t the time for this,” she hissed.
“Now is a perfect time for it, begging your friend’s pardon. A little honesty is a trifle in exchange for the belief you’re asking of us. Why’d you stay?”
Margrey shrugged. “It was work, aright? Decent work.”
“Decent work with a ghast-ridden master?”
“I told you, the ghast were asleep. Until today it was just Tully. He was fair. He never asked questions, not about Dinah, or you, or anything.” She gestured to the sagging floors and crumbling walls around us. “Never even asked where I lived. He din’t beat me.”
“Neither would lots of other shopkeepers.”
“They wouldn’t take me.”
“You mean they wouldn’t take on the fool who’d gone and gotten herself with the magistrate’s bast—child.”
“Myrra. Don’t.”
“Pieter would’ve taken you on,” she said. “You know he would’ve.”
“Dinah and me aren’t some charity offering to your gods,” Margrey said in a quiet voice. “Stop trying.”
Myrra rested her hands on the table, her shoulders slumped, head bowed. Margrey stared at the fire. I studied the grain of the plank in front of me with a concentration that said I won’t remember any of this if you don’t want me to and hoped the sisters would forgive me. The bundle in the curtained-off corner stirred again, the sound of tiny breathing layered over the rustle of blankets. At last Myrra sighed. “Fine. Do as you will, Margrey; you always have. But I still need an answer. If the ghast was asleep all this time, why did it wake today?”
“I was there,” I said.
“You?” Myrra turned to me with a nearsighted scowl, as if she’d only just noticed the stranger in her sister’s kitchen, not as an accessory to Margrey’s story, but as a person. “You’re not from Hatch Ford, are you?”
“Hart’s Run.”
“Girl like you go around waking lots of ghasts? Regular country pastime, hm?”
“I’ve never seen a ghast before in my life.”
“You say this thing talked to you. What’d it want?”
I crossed my arms, feeling the hard edges of the brooch beneath my dress. “I wish I knew.”
“Myrra, it tried to attack her,” Margrey said. “It had a knife!”
Watch shouts drifted in from outside, accompanied by the tramp of boots on the paved streets above the slum quarter. Margrey stiffened. I watched understanding dawn in Myrra’s eyes as she listened, and processed her sister’s words, and put the pieces together. “Oh, dear gods. Margrey, what have you done?”
“We only . . . knocked him unconscious.”
“Margrey!”
“No. Your sister didn’t touch him,” I said quickly. “It was me. She just helped me escape.”
“Foolish, foolish girl. Both of you!”
“We had no choice,” Margrey said. “He was coming after her and—”
“You had every choice! Now you have no choice. Ghast or no ghast, you turned against your master, and you attacked a citizen of Hatch Ford, Miss Aliza. There are consequences for that.” Myrra started toward the door. “I’m sorry.”
Margrey sprang to her feet and blocked her path. “Don’t! Please. Shame me all you want. Toss me to the Watch, or back to the magistrate, or in the river for all I care, but don’t bring Aliza into this.”
“The laws are clear, Margrey.”
“Aye, and you’ve never once let me forget it, but this inn’t—this isn’t about the rules. It’s about what’s right. Please, Myrra,” she said. Their gazes locked. The room and everything in it seemed to hold its breath.
There was a booming knock at the door. “Watch business!” a man cried. “Open up.”
Myrra came alive. She shoved Margrey and me toward the curtained corner, hissing for us to keep quiet. Behind the curtain was a cramped room with a sloping ceiling, and we crouched shoulder to shoulder behind a rough-hewn cradle, its occupant still cooing peacefully beneath its blanket. Myrra opened the door. Through holes in the curtain I could make out a young man’s silhouette on the threshold dressed in the uniform of the City Watch, complete with helm and crossbow. The helm looked several sizes too big.
“What’s this, then?” Myrra said.
“Sorry to bother you, miss, it’s—”
“It’s Madam Fitzwarren to you, young man.”
“Er, madam. Sorry. I’m, ah, searching for a lady.”
“I suggest you investigate establishments on the other side of the city.”
He cleared his throat. “A particular lady, Madam Fitzwarren. Last seen at Master Tully’s lithosmith shop.”
“And is there any particular reason you’re looking for this particular lady?”
“A misunderstanding, ma’am. Master Tully, um, wishes to see it resolved. The lady rushed out before their, er, business was concluded.”
“Taking valuable heartstones with her, I presume.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“The lady stole something, didn’t she?” she said, her voice at once triumphant and disappointed. “Why else would the entire Watch be looking for her?”
“No, ma’am. Nothing was taken.”
“Oh.” Myrra’s voice sounded far away. “Well. Best of luck.”
The watchman would not give up. “You haven’t seen the lady?”
“I see many people in this city, young man. It might help if you provided more description than ‘a lady.’”
“Oh. Right. Dark hair, gray dress.”
“That’s it?”
“Shortish dark hair. Light gray dress. That’s all I was told.”
“Half the women in the north quarter could fit that description. Now, if you would be so good as to remove your foot from my threshold, young man, I will be most exceedingly obliged,” Myrra said in a voice that could have curdled new milk.
“Please, Madam Fitzwarren! Her husband’s looking for her too, and he’s not a man we can disappoint. It’s—it’s Lord Alastair Daired.”
Hinges squealed as Myrra flung the door open again. “I beg your pardon?”
“He and Lady Daired and his dragon are guests at Hatch House. Lord Daired went to visit the magistrate and his wife went to the market, but now no one can find her and the magistrate thinks Lord Daired will blame us and . . . and . . .”
“Good gods, boy, pull yourself together,” Myrra said. “He’s not going to have his dragon raze the city because his wife is flighty and our Watch is incompetent. I’ve told you all I know, so you’d best keep looking.”
“Oh. All right. Um, thank you for your time, Madam Fitzwarren.”
Myrra stood in the doorway for a long minute. “Just out of curiosity, young man, what’s this lady’s name?” she called suddenly.
“Lady Aliza, I think,” came the faint answer. “Aliza Daired.”
The door shut. The room grew dim and smoky again as Margrey pushed aside the curtain. The motion drew out a happy gurgle from the bundle in the cradle, who’d at last decided to throw in her lot with the waking world. Margrey picked up her daughter and held her close to her chest. Myrra looked up at me with an unfathomable expression. “So. You’re one of them.”
/> “I’m not a Rider, if that’s what you mean,” I said. “But yes, I am a Daired.”
“She’s married to one,” Margrey added quickly. “Sister, she din’t have anything to do with what happened here.”
The gaze Myrra leveled at me might’ve kindled green wood. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. I suppose you’ll be wanting to get back to your husband.”
I shook my head, shifting uncomfortably beneath the accusation in those eyes. “I need to get to Hatch House first. If Tully’s people are searching the city, I’ll be safer there.”
“The Vesh will be on the lookout too,” Margrey said.
“I don’t want to run into either of them before we meet Alastair.”
“Of course not. Which is why you’ll both stay here while I go find Lord Daired,” Myrra said. “Lady Daired, you wouldn’t make it three streets before someone spotted you, and Margrey, the Vesh will recognize you as Tully’s help, so unless you both want to wait and strike out for Hatch House in the morning you’ll let me find Lord Daired and bring him back here. Besides,” she said, standing, “someone needs to look after the baby. I won’t be long.”
She swept out of the house without a backward glance.
Margrey shut the door after her and sagged onto a stool. “I’m so sorry, Aliza.”
“Whatever for?”
“My sister don’t much hold with Rider-folk anymore. Her husband tried to protect their street when the Worm came through and the Riders—well, they weren’t there. Got himself hurt pretty bad. She still don’t know if he’ll ever walk again.” The baby began crying. “Would you mind?”
“What?”
She pushed the blankets into my arms. “Hold her. I need to eat before I feed her.”
I stared at the bundle on my lap. Tiny hands grasped the air, searching for milk, warmth, and comfort from the hugeness of the world. She was so small. I dared not move, hardly dared breathe, struck with the sudden and irrational fear that I might somehow drop her, or break her, or do something else unforgivably stupid. I sat stiffer than a gargoyle and just as reassuring as she wailed on my knees, her round little face screwing up into something at once too simple and too complex to be called an expression. It was nothing but raw need, primal and piteous.
Her cry pierced me like a needle, drawing memories after it like thread: memories of holding another bundle like this one in twelve-year-old arms, Mama sitting in the bed, smiling but exhausted, Papa grasping her hand and trying not to cry, Anjey and Mari and Leyda all jostling for a turn to introduce themselves to our new baby sister. “Katarina Bentaine,” Mama had said. “Mouthful, isn’t it? We’ll call her Rina.”
I blinked and looked away.
Margrey had dug out a chunk of stale bread from a basket near the washtub and was chewing thoughtfully, glancing every few seconds out the crack around the door. I heard the sound of commotion at the end of the street.
“Why are you doing all this?” I asked.
“Hm?”
“Why are you helping me? I dragged you into this, not the other way around. You never had to leave that back room.”
“And let that ghast hurt you? Not likely.”
“He was your master.”
“Erik Tully was my master. That thing he became today, that weren’t.” Crumbs scattered from the front of her dress as she unbuttoned the first few buttons and rolled up her homespun tucker. I handed her the baby and the crying ceased as she began to nurse.
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“What, for taking the baby?” She smiled. “Look, I seen Lady Hatch talking to you at the high table last night. Guessing she told you what happened to us. It’s a long way from here to Hatch House, and it ain’t easy to run when you’re dodging horses and stampeding townsfolk and holding a baby. A pair of valkyries near got us at the front gates. Your husband and his dragon swooped in just in time.” The commotion in the street grew louder and Margrey squeezed my hand. “I don’t got any money, but I pay my debts best I can.”
“Right through here,” Myrra said and pushed the door open.
The captain of the Watch strode into the room.
Margrey went rigid. More guards thronged around the doorway, including the young man in an overlarge helm who looked very confused. I sprang to my feet. Myrra, no!
“You’re a difficult woman to find, Lady Daired,” the captain said. “I’m glad we—”
“Aliza? Is she here?” Eth curses peppered the air. “For gods’ sakes, let me through!”
Relief nearly brought me down into the nearest chair as Alastair shoved aside the guards and burst into the room. On seeing me alive, uninjured, and otherwise no worse for an afternoon’s wanderings, he gasped something in Eth and hugged me tight enough to pick me up off the ground.
“Thell, you had me worried,” he whispered. “They said you were missing, that you’d fallen in the river and . . . what happened?”
Over his shoulder the captain of the Watch gave me a tight-lipped smile. “I’ll tell you later,” I said in Alastair’s ear. “Not here.”
“You gave us all quite a fright there, Lady Daired,” the captain said as Alastair set me down. “Hope you’re not hurt?”
“I’m fine. Margrey was just showing me the city.”
Margrey leaned out behind me and gave a little wave.
The captain’s smile froze in place. “That was very kind of her.”
“Yes. Thank you, both of you,” Alastair said, first to Margrey, then to Myrra. He took my hand. “We should get back to Hatch House before Akarra sets something on fire for fretting.”
I followed him out, mouthing one final thank you to Margrey.
Myrra gave Alastair a stiff, icy curtsy, favored me with a nod, and shut the door after us.
I waited until we were safe in Lord Hatch’s study and out of earshot of the captain to tell Alastair and Lord and Lady Hatch what had happened. Lord Hatch groped for a decanter on the sideboard when I spoke of Tully’s transformation. Alastair sat by the fire, his face fixed and impassive, his sword in its scabbard resting on his knees. Of the three of them, Lady Hatch was the only one who didn’t seem to be taken by surprise.
“Lady Viola, you warned me about the Vesh last night,” I said. “Did you know Master Tully was a ghastradi?”
Lord Hatch winced at the word.
“I had no idea,” she said.
“Have you ever seen a haunting in Hatch Ford before?” Alastair asked.
“Certainly not! We’ve had our fair share of Tekari, of course, but never those creatures. I thought they died out in Arle a long time ago.”
“Why warn us then?” I asked her.
“I thought . . . well, to be perfectly frank, your heartstones are well known, and as much as I hate to admit it, there are some bad sorts among the Vesh,” she said. “No matter how we try to control it, it’s been chaos in our streets since the Worm passed, and I couldn’t bear to think that one of them might try to . . . to . . . oh dear . . .”
Her husband patted her hand. “Be assured, Lord Alastair, we plan to do everything in our power to make this right. First thing in the morning I’ll have a word with the magistrate and the captain of the Watch. I want to speak to every Vesh Master Tully had dealings with to see if they knew about this.”
“You won’t get very far,” I said. “Tully owns the Watch.”
“I’m sorry?”
“He pays off the magistrate too, I think.”
“Are you certain?”
“I heard the captain talking with her guards. There’s some kind of arrangement.”
Lord Hatch shuffled to his desk and sat. His fingers tapped out a nervous rhythm on the wood. “Yes. Well. That is, er, unfortunate. I’m most terribly sorry. It will be addressed at once.”
“Yes, it will be.” Alastair rose. “Lord Hatch, do you have door wardens here?”
“One or two.”
“Are they armed?”
“Of course.”
“Have them meet us in
the front of the house in five minutes.”
“Sir?”
Alastair buckled his scabbard onto his sword belt and offered me his hand. “We’re going to have a word with Master Tully.”
Vendors were closing their stalls by the time we arrived at the market. Those remaining glanced up in alarm at our procession, led by a glowering dragonrider and a pair of Lord Hatch’s door wardens clutching crossbows and looking perplexed as we halted in front of the lithosmith shop. The guard from this morning had vanished. Alastair hammered on the doorpost. “Tully!” No one answered. He motioned for me to stand back and drew his sword.
The door wasn’t locked. It wasn’t even latched. He kicked it open. The shop was in shambles. Glass caskets lay shattered on the floor, their velvet linings torn and shredded, the heartstones missing. There was no sign of the lithosmith.
“What happened here?” one of the wardens asked. His face had gone the color of old dough.
“He ran,” Alastair said grimly.
“There’s a back room,” I said, and the wardens went to investigate the curtained-off corner, their crossbows at the ready.
Alastair touched my shoulder. “I’m sorry, khera.”
“I’d have been surprised if he’d stayed.” I kicked aside the mangled lid of a heartstone case. “So what now?”
“Lord Hatch will sort it out with the magistrate and the Watch.”
“I mean what do we do now?”
“We head north tomorrow morning like we planned.”
“And leave all this?” My mind raced. “What if the magistrate doesn’t want to cooperate? Or Tully comes back? Or—?”
“We have a contract with Lord Selwyn, Aliza. This city is Lord Hatch’s concern, not ours.” He sheathed his sword. “There are some things that can’t be fixed with steel and dragonfire.”
“Whatever happened to tey iskaros?”
“We do serve, but we serve where we’re most needed. Right now, it’s not here.”
The wardens stepped out of the back room. “Nothing, milord. Emptied, all of it.”
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