Lessek's Key

THE RAID

‘Wake up,’ Brexan whispered, ‘Sallax, wake up. It’s another raid.’ She rolled to her feet. Her back ached from eight nights of sleeping on a hard wooden floor, but she ignored it and squirmed into her tunic.

From the bed, Sallax groaned and opened his eyes.

‘No peeking, you rutter!’ She turned towards the wall, then said, ‘No, never mind, just get up – hurry! I can hear them, maybe two doors down. We have to get you down the back stairs.’ Her hair a tangle and her tunic unbelted, Brexan rushed to his side and began unwrapping his injured shoulder. It was healing; Jacrys had done an admirable job of rebreaking and setting the bones, but it should have remained bound, without interruption, for the next Moon.

Sallax winced.

‘I know. I know,’ she whispered. ‘We have to, just until they’re gone.’ The Malakasian soldiers and their Seron escort (Prince Malagon’s Seron warriors were brutal and efficient, but not adept at espionage) were searching for a woman travelling with an injured man who was addled, and nearly incoherent in his speech. The raids had started two days after she and Sallax fled Carpello’s warehouse. She thought she had left Jacrys dead, but when the searches began she realised that somehow the resilient bastard spy had survived Sallax clobbering him with the wooden table leg. Now Jacrys was obviously directing the periodic raids – maybe even from his hospital bed – as the soldiers and Seron crawled into every cabinet, beneath every building and inside every cargo hold.

They had her description; of that Brexan was certain, so she sheared off her hair – and nearly burst into tears when an emaciated, cropped-haired ghost stared back at her from the mirror. But what Jacrys had planned for her would be far worse than a tragic hair-cut.

‘Come on,’ she said, ‘they’re close this time.’ From outside the window, Brexan heard the screams of those Orindale citizens unfortunate enough to be the search subjects this pre-dawn aven. The shouting was more a warning that a raid was coming than the city folk being badly injured by the searchers.

Sallax was up and dressed when she heard the front room door burst open, kicked off its hinges as the first of the Seron made their way into the inn. ‘Pissing demons,’ she said, ‘they’re here already. Come on. Down the back stairs, right away.’ She hurried Sallax out the door and along the darkened hallway, careful not to touch his shoulder, waiting to hear a barked command to halt at any moment. In her haste, she had forgotten her belt; now she scurried downstairs without any weapons.

‘Trenchers again?’ Sallax drawled.

‘Is that all right? Can you do trenchers this morning? I will get you all the trenchers in the kitchen if you promise not to say anything to anyone but me.’

‘Trenchers, yes,’ Sallax said, ‘and he won’t say anything.’

‘Good job. Outstanding, and you just wash the trenchers until I come back for you. It will be just a few moments, all right?’

‘Trenchers, yes.’

They reached the service entrance and Brexan hurriedly lit several paraffin tapers from coals still burning in the fireplace. Illuminating the small room, she positioned the big Ronan at a tub of water, pushed a cloth into his hand – and then discovered that every trencher in the scullery had been scrubbed clean and stacked neatly beside the hearth. From the front room, she heard the sound of heavily booted feet stomping up the stairs to the guest chambers. ‘Bleeding whores,’ she said, sweating, ‘every rutting dish is already clean.’ She sidled across to a large pot of leftover stew, ladled some into as many trenchers as she dared and piled the soiled dishes beside the tub. ‘Can you clean these?’

‘Trenchers,’ Sallax said, hefting one to eye level and watching as bits of stew dribbled down his wrist to the wooden tabletop.

‘Excellent,’ she said, kissing him quickly on the cheek. ‘You clean up. I’ll be back.’

She had paid the tavern owner an extra silver piece to be permitted to secrete Sallax into the kitchen whenever the Redstone was searched. This was the third time in eight days. She worried that some smart officer might wonder why a scullery worker would be cleaning trenchers during the overnight and predawn avens, but thus far, her luck had prevailed: the raiding parties stormed through the inn, searching every room, including the kitchen, and left without a second glance at the big simpleton.

Hiding herself the first night had been challenging: at a loss for any other option, Brexan had slipped into the squalid chamber where the tavern staff bedded down and, stripping off her tunic and leggings, she had dived into bed with that same waiter who had been her antidote to loneliness: too much wine and sex with a stranger. She shocked the young man near to death as she helped him out of his bed clothes and began fondling him beneath the blankets, but when the soldiers burst into the room and she had feigned shock and terror along with the others, they were in no doubt about what the kitchen maid and the waiter were up to.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Brexan had kissed the confused boy affectionately and slipped back into her clothes, then headed off to retrieve Sallax.

That evening, the young man had looked at her questioningly. Not knowing whether she would be forced to take refuge beneath his covers of his bed again, she smiled at him. ‘Shame we were so rudely interrupted,’ she whispered, ‘but I guess that’s what we have to put up with these days.’ She didn’t want him to know she was the target of the raid.

This morning all the tavern staff were already awake when she arrived, stirred by the sounds of raiders stomping upstairs and through the guest chambers. Several had lit bedside tapers, and no one appeared surprised when Brexan entered the room.

‘Oh, lords, you aren’t going to make me do this with the candles lit, are you?’ She didn’t wait for a response from the bleary-eyed staff but steeled herself, pulled her tunic over her head and slipped into bed with the young waiter. As she settled beneath the covers, Brexan found him already stripped and waiting for her.

‘I thought you might be back,’ he said as seductively as the clumsy encounter permitted.

‘I would be so grateful if you help me make this look as convincing as possible,’ she said, smiling down at him.

When the door crashed open a moment later, two Seron tried to press inside, but stuck in the doorway until the larger of the two pushed the other violently out of the way, clearing a path for himself. Behind them, a Malakasian officer dragged the elderly tavern owner by one arm. The innkeeper made eye contact with Brexan briefly, and then looked away.

‘See? I told you,’ he said to the soldier, ‘just these five.’

‘But only four beds?’ The Malakasian moved through the room, tugging down blankets, moving piles of clothing, and peering behind the crates the employees used for storage. ‘Does someone always share a bed in here? What kind of place is this, eh?’

‘These two…’ The old man stammered as he pointed at Brexan and her young waiter with a quivering finger. He was too nervous; Brexan held her breath. At least her bare shoulder was exposed outside the blanket – more convincing than finding her there in a tunic and boots. ‘These two came together from Strandson,’ the tavern owner said.

The officer nodded, and Brexan exhaled slowly. He didn’t care about who she was or what she was doing in this filthy, malodorous chamber: he was upset at having been deployed on a pointless search by a spy who outranked him in the field and strutted around in a rich man’s wardrobe. The man and woman had obviously slipped through the barricade around the city – anyone could these days, with Prince Malagon gone and his generals bickering about it like elderly women.

He glanced down at Brexan, hoping to see more than just her shoulder, then turned back to the tavern owner. ‘The one in the kitchen?’

‘My overnight worker,’ the old man said. ‘He comes in late and cleans until dawn. He’s addled, kicked in the head by his father’s horse. I let him clean the trenchers and keep the fire going. That’s about all he’s good for.’

The officer whistled softly, then said, ‘Fine,’ and to the Seron, ‘You two, let’s go. Find the others and move on.’ A moment later, they were gone.

Back in their room, Brexan rewrapped Sallax’s shoulder. She was tired, and desperately wanted to sleep another half-aven, but the dishevelled hillock of abandoned blankets thrown across the floor did not look very appealing. ‘You did well this morning,’ she said. ‘I don’t think they’ll be back now – they’ve been here three times. It’s Jacrys sending them.’

Sallax growled threateningly under his breath. ‘He tried to fool. He tried to be nice. Sallax knew him from Rona.’

‘I know.’

‘Praga, too.’

‘Praga?’

‘Sallax is from Praga, not Rona. Brynne too.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ she said. ‘I thought you were from Rona.’

He grimaced as she pulled the bandages close around his shoulder.

‘Does it still hurt?’

‘Not like before.’

‘What happened?’ Brexan felt that she was making progress with Sallax, building his trust and helping him face whatever nightmares had changed him from the proud, tough freedom fighter to the crippled, filthy dock scavenger she had met south of the city. This was more than he’d said in eight days.

‘The wraiths found Sallax.’ He stared at a point in the woodwork.

‘A wraith?’

‘Many wraiths. They were hunting for the old man.’ Since the night she helped him escape from Carpello’s warehouse, Brexan had not heard Sallax use Gilmour’s name. ‘There were many, and they came across the hills and up the river valley. Sallax was in the river.’

‘In the river? Why?’

‘This needed cold.’ He indicated his shoulder with a tilt of his head, but his eyes never left the opposite wall. ‘It was broken that day. Lahp, a Seron, broke it. Sallax tried to fix it on the rock, but it didn’t work, and he needed to make it cold.’

‘The wraiths found you in the river? In the cold water?’

‘Very cold. He was in there a long time. Everything was blue and white, even the old man. There was nothing but the blue and the white, and the cold did it. The river. This only felt better there.’ A tilt of his head again.

‘Why did the wraiths want to find Gilmour?’

‘They thought he had the stone. He didn’t. They wanted to find him and the others. Sallax doesn’t know if they did or not. They found Sallax and hurt him.’

‘Your shoulder? They hurt your shoulder again?’

‘No, here.’ He tapped at his forehead. ‘They wanted to kill the others, but when they found Sallax, they didn’t kill him. It was more-’ He stopped.

‘Entertaining.’ Brexan completed his thought, ‘more entertaining to make you think-’

‘About the old man,’ he reciprocated.

‘Gilmour.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Dead?’

‘Sallax helped to kill him. The wraiths thought that Sallax’s pain was funny. They wanted to kill the others, but they let Sallax live.’

‘They were ghosts?’

‘Lost souls. People once. They were trapped, and it made them angry. They wanted to get free but couldn’t. They wanted to find their friends and children, their families. When they realised what Sallax had done, they went wild. It was mad, a raving spirit dance there at the river. They had been trapped a long time. Sallax was not as good as they were, but he was free. They didn’t like that.’

‘So they trapped you in here.’ She tapped two fingers on his forehead as well. ‘We have to find you in there, Sallax. You have too much strength, you’re too valuable to be wandering lost and alone like this. People need you.’

‘People needed the old man.’

That tack backfired, so Brexan decided to change the subject. ‘Tell me about Brynne.’

A hint of a smile graced the big man’s face. ‘She was just a baby when her parents died. She needed lots of nappies.’

‘Babies do.’

‘She had a lunatic’s hair. It was curly and all over. Nothing could tame it.’ He twirled one finger above his head, sketching a crop of unruly locks badly in need of a trim.

‘Did she follow you that day along the river?’

‘She was older then, but yes. She came with Mark, the one from the portal who left the stone. Sallax hid. They didn’t find him.’

‘Did the wraiths find Brynne?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘She was coming here to Orindale. Do you remember that?’

‘You knew?’

‘Versen told me.’

Sallax smiled again. ‘He could eat more shellfish than Sallax could carry.’

Now Brexan laughed. ‘I’m not at all surprised to hear it.’

‘He’s dead, too?’

‘Yes.’

‘The almor killed him at Seer’s Peak.’ Sallax seemed certain he knew what had happened.

Brexan was about to correct him and then decided against it: there was nothing to be gained by confusing his memories. She felt a chill thinking of Versen, though, and was embarrassed that she had been diving into bed with a stranger for the past several days. She knew he would have laughed, but she was still embarrassed that he might be watching her, checking in from the Northern Forest.

‘He talked about you all the time,’ Brexan said.

‘He and Sallax are good friends.’

‘He said you emptied out his house when he turned two hundred Twinmoons.’

‘We set everything up outside, exactly as it had been inside, everything but one boot. That we left in the middle of the floor. Then we hid in the woods to watch. Versen was very angry.’

‘You said we.’ She didn’t want to push him, but this was the slip she had been hoping to hear. ‘Sallax?’

‘Yes. Garec, Brynne, Mika, Jerond, Sallax, and the old man,’ he said. ‘We emptied out his house.’

‘You?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sallax.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Yes, you did,’ Brexan sighed. It wasn’t much, but it felt like progress. She didn’t know how to treat him. His physical health was returning, and when his shoulder healed, he would be nearly as fit and as strong as before the initial fracture, but his mental health was not much better than when she first saw him, when he had dragged her into the sunlit ferns.

‘He’s dead now, like the others?’

‘Versen is dead, yes.’

‘The almor killed him at Seer’s Peak.’

‘Sallax,’ Brexan decided to take another risk, ‘do you remember the fat man from the warehouse?’

At that, the big Ronan’s countenance changed. His body tensed and his mouth split into a wicked grin. ‘Yes, he almost killed Brynne, a long time ago. She was sick for many Twinmoons. Ren was the boy who led her to him.’

‘Ren?’

‘I killed him.’

There it was again. ‘You did?’

‘Sallax did, yes. I used a dirk, slipped it right in. He died in the street in Estrad, but I never found the fat man. He will be alive when Brynne gets here. Brynne will kill him slowly.’

It sounded like the fat man had raped Brynne when she was just a child. Brexan shuddered. ‘I have my own account with the fat man as well. His name is Carpello Jax, and I know where he lives. I know which ships are his and which warehouses he uses to store his cargoes. He runs ships up and down the Ravenian Sea, from Strandson across to Pellia. I’m not sure what he’s shipping or why, but he serves Prince Malagon. He often moors here in Orindale – maybe he has some arrangement with the customs officers down on that southern wharf. I’ve watched him while you’ve been asleep. He has cut his hair, grown a beard, lost some weight, and sliced the mole off his nose, but it’s still him, the bloated whoreson.’

‘Did you kill him?’ Sallax was obviously agitated at the possibility that Brynne wouldn’t be the one to torture and kill the man.

‘No, just watching. It’s easy to move through this city unseen; you learned that.’

Sallax nodded, recalling a huge overturned wine cask outside a rowdy tavern.

‘I wasn’t very good in the beginning,’ Brexan told him. ‘I would be dead if you hadn’t been watching that first night, but I’ve learned a lot. Unless Carpello ships out again – which I doubt, he’s not much of a seaman – he’ll be here when we find Brynne. But Sallax, I need you to think about Gilmour and Brynne, and Garec and the two foreigners. Where were they going after they lost Versen? Welstar Palace?’

‘Brynne will kill Carpello.’

‘Yes, we can all do it together, but we have to find them first.’ Brexan had found no sign of them in Orindale, but she knew Jacrys hadn’t either; maybe they’d moved further north – or if they survived the wraith attack in the Blackstones, perhaps they went back down south, to Strandson or one of the port villages in western Rona. The longer she spent in Orindale, the more she thought the odds of finding them were slimming to nothing. ‘Sallax, can you remember anything about where they were going?’

‘Orindale,’ he said simply. If he did know anything else, it was lost in his damaged mind.

‘You rest now,’ Brexan said. ‘We’ll get some food after the midday aven. I’m going to check on Carpello now – I want to know what he’s doing today.’

‘Don’t kill him.’

‘I won’t. We’ll wait for Brynne.’

That night, while Sallax slept Brexan sat staring into the glass, watching her reflection through tired eyes. By the flicker of the bedside candle she strained to make out her shorn hair and drawn features. Perhaps it was better that there was little light.

It had been a productive day: Brexan was encouraged that Sallax had spoken of himself in the first person for the first time: saying I was a huge step forward. She knew nothing about mental health, but she was all he had. She wouldn’t press him to remember anything painful – rushing his recovery wouldn’t help.

She had made friends with some of the stevedores working the southern docks; though none of them had seen anyone resembling the partisans, a few copper Mareks had elicited a lot of information about Carpello’s business dealings, routines and schedules.

Once she’d followed the fat merchant to a brothel in a nice part of the city – at first she thought he had been calling on friends, or business associates, but the parade of well-dressed men going in and out at regular intervals gave the game away. As she stood watching the windows, she thought of Brynne, a child taken against her will, and nausea hit her hard. She was very much looking forward to killing Carpello. It was taking all her willpower to keep from breaking into the whorehouse, kicking down the fat man’s door and chopping him up right there on top of whatever trollop had been coerced into servicing him.

When he left, his frilly tunic askew, she followed him back to his apartments. She could have finished him quickly and quietly, right there in the stairwell of his own home, but instead, she let him live another day.

As the unbearable need for revenge washed over Brexan again, she turned from the glass and began undressing. She nearly leaped out of her skin when she saw Sallax materialise out of the darkness behind her.

‘Good rutting Pragans!’ she shrieked, grabbing her tunic to cover herself, somewhat inadequately. ‘You aren’t supposed to see me like this!’

Sallax loomed over her, a look of pensive concentration on his face.

Brexan backed away. ‘Get back to bed, Sallax – just because I’m out of my clothes you can’t-’

He reached out to grip her wrist.

‘Ow!’ She tried to twist out of his grasp. ‘Sallax, please, don’t do this.’ All of a sudden she was a little scared, but Sallax didn’t do anything more, he simply stared at her muscular, outstretched arm.

Finally he said, ‘Where did you get this?’

‘What? Get what?’ Brexan’s heart was still pounding nineteen to the dozen. ‘This.’ He turned her wrist back, exposing the strange bit of jewellery she had taken from the corpse on the salt flats. It had cleaned up nicely and she’d worn it buckled about her wrist ever since. Sallax must have seen it hundreds of times over the past few days; she didn’t understand why it caught his attention now.

‘I found it.’ She hesitated, not really wanting to admit that she had purloined it from a dead body.

‘Where?’

‘On the marsh, north of the harbour. I was out there looking for you one day last Twinmoon when I found it – it was so beautiful, and so unusual. I thought I’d find a jeweller in the city to tell me what it was, but I never had the chance to show it to anyone.’ Brexan was embarrassed: she had been caught, a thief flaunting her stolen goods. She had not imagined for a moment that Sallax would recognise the small circular bracelet.

He let her go and sat dejectedly on the side of the bed, his face buried in his hands while she pulled on her tunic properly. ‘It’s called a watch,’ he said at last.

‘A watch? Am I supposed to watch it?’

‘It tells the time of day and night.’

‘Really?’ Fascinated now, she picked up the candle to study the trinket more closely. ‘I don’t understand. How does it work?’

‘It doesn’t tell the time here.’

‘Well, what good-?’ She stopped. ‘Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods, Sallax, how do you know of this watch?’

The big man started to cry, the sobs shaking his body. Brexan sat beside him, rubbing his shoulders and crooning comfortingly to the distraught man for an aven or more, until he drifted off into uneasy slumber. She washed the tears from her own face, and unclasped the watch from her wrist and left it beside the candle. She lay awake and listened for sounds of raiding parties outside.

Later, still awake, Brexan watched the sun come up over the city.

Captain Thadrake eyed the pastries; one had been bitten nearly in half, but the other two were untouched. Beside the plate was a flagon of wine, Falkan red, he guessed, the best wine in Eldarn, and a half-empty goblet. He didn’t understand how anyone could get so blase as to ignore such delicacies, but he forced his attention from the bedside table.

The captain was standing in a lavishly appointed apartment in the one-time imperial palace in Orindale, formerly occupied by one of Prince Malagon’s generals. The general and several members of his staff had been killed in an unexplained explosion during the last Twinmoon and several days ago the apartment had become an impromptu hospital, with one bed in the centre of the room for the patient. The bedding was the finest Orindale could offer: down-filled pillows, thick, soft blankets and a firm mattress softened with several layers of goose-down. A fire crackled day and night in the fireplace.

He noticed a leather-bound book, tucked beneath the pillow as if in a hasty effort to hide it from visitors. He shuffled his feet nervously.

‘Who is he?’ Not much of the patient was visible – his head was bandaged and only one eye, part of his nose and a corner of his mouth showed outside the gauze wrap – but it was obvious he was irritated.

‘My assistant, sir, Hendrick.’

‘Well, get him out of here, you rutting fool! Why don’t you just parade me in front of the entire army? Let’s make certain everyone can see me: oh, yes, there goes the prince’s spymaster; everyone knows him. Great whoring monks…

‘What is your name, Captain?’

‘Thadrake, sir.’ He tried not to cringe.

‘Captain Thadrake, do you want to be responsible for everyone knowing what I look like?’

It was obvious a crunching blow to the back of the head had left the spy near death, but Thadrake had no idea why Jacrys Marseth had come here, to a public Malakasian facility, to recuperate. Most spies found ways to deal with their injuries without jeopardising their cover. Maybe it was because no one had seen Prince Malagon in the past Moon, or perhaps the spy was to be assigned to another Eldarni territory under a new identity. Whatever the reason, Jacrys was obviously in no mood to discuss his decision to come in from the field, and Thadrake wasn’t about to ask why. He loathed Jacrys, and everything the man represented. They were an occupation army, the most powerful military force in Eldarn; they didn’t need spies scurrying about, eating pastries and drinking good Falkan wines.

Thadrake would have been quite happy to face the combined Resistance forces in the Eastlands in a final, conclusive battle – that would be far preferable to the cowardly terror strikes along the Merchants’ Highway and all the throat-slitting that went on in the streets of Orindale after dark. His corps had lost several officers to a terrorist, a merciless cowled man who stalked the back alleys. Thadrake himself had been part of the response team, rounding up any suspected Resistance members – and a good few who had never before been under suspicion – each time an officer had been murdered.

The Malakasian response had been swift, brutal and public and whilst the people of Orindale were not happy about hangings in the imperial gardens, Captain Thadrake didn’t care. If they wanted the capricious justice to stop, they had to hand over this homicidal rutter themselves. He was quite sure they all knew who he was; they probably toasted his very good health every night in those filthy waterfront taverns.

‘What progress have you made in your search?’ The spy’s voice was muffled by bandages.

‘Which search, sir?’ Thadrake wanted to hear the spy say out loud that he was more interested in their search for his assailants than for the caped lunatic killing Malakasian soldiers – his men. Given the number of people lost to terrorists in the past Twinmoon, all their attention needed to be on nightly sweeps of the waterfront area; if the Ronan partisans turned up, good, but if not, at least they were making a concerted effort to avenge those Malakasians who had given their lives. The increased patrols did appear to be having an effect, for the murders had stopped – at least for the time being – but the extra raids were taking their toll on the army.

How he hated working with Seron… Thadrake couldn’t stand the sight or the smell of them, and racing through Orindale during the middlenight aven, pursuing some so-called Resistance leader and a traitor soldier who were obviously well into Rona by now seemed a pointless, self-indulgent directive.

When Jacrys didn’t answer right away, Thadrake asked again, ‘I’m sorry, but which search do you mean? Sir?’

‘The search for my attackers, you whore-spawned rutter!’ It looked as if he was about to choke on his bandages.

Thadrake fought back a smile. ‘Sorry, sir, but we have not yet found anyone fitting those descriptions.’

‘Have you been thorough?’

‘I have a map of the city, sir. Each night we have searched random, unpredictable quadrants, but thus far, we have turned up nothing.’

‘Then you are an idiot, Captain Thadrake.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the officer said, thinking, I am an idiot for not leaving with Hendrick.

‘I understand that the woman might be able to secrete herself somewhere, but Sallax? He is as big as a blazing mountain. He has long black hair, pale skin, and he is a gods-rutting dolt who can barely speak. He doesn’t make eye contact, and he looks as though he has been kicked squarely in the head by a horse, Captain. So I don’t know what you have been doing each night, but you had better find a way to tighten the noose about this city and to find those two for me, or I will have your-’

‘Sorry, sir,’ Thadrake interrupted, ‘but would you repeat that?’

Jacrys grunted. ‘What?’

‘What you just said, sir.’

‘Sallax Farro is a piece of limp-brained grettan shit.’

‘Who looks as though he has been kicked in the head by a horse, sir?’

‘Exactly, yes. Captain, let me remind you that when I am speaking-’

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘You did it again, you son of a bleeding whore!’

‘I know where he is, sir.’ Thadrake snapped a salute, turned on his heel and started out. Several steps away, he froze, realised his mistake and turned back smartly. ‘Sorry, sir, but am I excused? I expect I can have Sallax here by the midday aven, sir.’

Jacrys was almost speechless. ‘Yes, by all means, go. Get him now, and bring him here with the girl. But Captain, if she should resist, feel free to kill her.’

‘She’s a traitor, sir?’

‘Yes’

‘She should be hanged, sir.’

‘Captain, if she resists, cut her down, but I want Sallax Farro alive. Understand?’

When Jacrys paused, the captain snapped to attention once again, saluted, and said, ‘I’m sorry for the breach of protocol, sir.’

‘Just bring Sallax Farro to me, Captain.’

‘Should I clear these plates, sir?’

‘Yes, and the bottle, too. That rutting vintage makes my head hurt.’

Captain Thadrake was already on his way out of the door with the pastries in one hand and the wine in the other.

*

As Hannah sat bolt upright pain ripped through her shoulder, and with a shriek she fell into her blankets, dizzy with the agony. A moment later, Hoyt was by her side. ‘I see you’re up. It’s about time,’ he said cheerily.

‘You wait until I’m back in one piece, Hoyt. I am kicking the shit out of you,’ Hannah said through shallow breaths.

‘Out of me?’ Hoyt feigned incredulity. ‘I put you back together, Hannah, and trust me, it was not an easy task.’

Mimicking his accent, Hannah repeated, ‘We shouldn’t organise any dances up there, but if we hold fast to that lip, it’s a good two or three paces wide, and it’s actually fairly level.’

Hoyt laughed. ‘I’m not the one who tied myself to the millstone.’ He motioned to where Churn lay sleeping, a nondescript lump under two heavy blankets.

‘How is he?’

‘Fine,’ Hoyt said, ‘it would take more than falling off a mountain to hurt him. He was a bit cold when we finally got you back up on the porch, but Alen worked an interesting spell, warmed the two of you right there in the mud, dried your clothes, too. I was impressed.’

With Hoyt supporting her, Hannah sat up a bit straighter. ‘Where are we?’ she asked.

‘We’re back in that grove of pines we crossed through before climbing up onto the cavern ledge. That big meadow is just through there. We’ve kept a fire going with anything we’ve been able to find that won’t smoke up too much. The branches in here are such a rutting tangle, no one would know we were here unless they actually walked into us, but none of the Malakasians have passed anywhere near us. You were right. They must have another path somewhere south of here.’

‘So we’re safe enough – but how long has it been?’

Hoyt hesitated. ‘Two days.’

Hannah almost choked. ‘Two days?’

‘Well, three, this morning.’

‘Oh, Hoyt, I’m sorry. If I hadn’t slipped, we could have hauled Churn up, dried him off and been on our way.’ She looked around. ‘Did it snow?’

‘Some, a couple days ago, but it’s been quiet since then.’ He reached over to open one of their packs. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘Yes, please,’ she said, gratefully accepting two handfuls of crumbly bread, a small block of cheese and some cold sausage. Between mouthfuls, she continued asking questions. ‘Why did I sleep so long? What did I do to myself?’

‘Not much,’ Hoyt assured her. ‘You broke your collarbone and split the skin across your forehead. The head wound was messy – head wounds bleed like a rutting sieve – but setting the bone was the nastier of the two. Apart from those, it was nothing, really: assorted bumps and bruises, not a lot to brag about at a chainball tournament.’

‘A broken bone shouldn’t have knocked me senseless for so long.’ She shifted in her seat, trying to move her shoulder beneath its heavy wrapping.

‘Normally it wouldn’t, but it was a bad break and I had to treat it with querlis.’ Hannah looked at him questioningly, and he went on, ‘that’s a plant we use to treat all manner of injuries. It speeds up the natural healing process at a remarkable rate, but it takes its toll. Most people sleep for some time after a querlis application. You ought to be feeling better soon.’

‘Well enough to ride?’

‘Gods, yes. You don’t plan to walk over these hills, do you? You can ride with me. We lost Churn’s horse. The wretch is probably on some Pragan farm right now, eating winter hay and sleeping in a stable full of mares.’

‘Churn saved me.’

Hoyt nodded, ‘Yes he did, but he also hauled you down there to begin with, and for that, I think we ought to tease him for the next two hundred Twinmoons.’

She was serious. ‘And you put me back together.’

‘I did.’ This time, Hoyt didn’t make a joke.

‘How did you do it? I don’t remember any of it. You would think setting a bone would have been a horrible thing, especially one that had nearly broken through my skin.’ She ran two fingers over the bulging swath of bandages and torn tunics the Pragan healer had used to immobilise the injury.

‘Well,’ Hoyt began tentatively, ‘when you were down there on the rock, Churn found a body, one of the Malakasian engineers.’

‘So at least one of them did come this way.’

‘He did, and our guess is that he was trying to get away on his own.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he was carrying a pouch filled with ghost tree bark.’ Hoyt reached into a pack and withdrew a small leather sack bulging at the seams with bark from the enchanted forest.

Hannah nodded. ‘And he wanted some for himself, so he came through there thinking he would work his way north with a bag full of great magic.’

‘Or medicine, or drugs, whatever,’ Hoyt said. ‘Either way, he fell and died, right about where Churn found you.’

‘So what does this have to do with me?’

‘I didn’t have any way of knocking you out, or getting you to sleep long enough to set the bone; so I-’ He paused.

‘So you used the bark,’ Hannah finished his thought. ‘You sent me back to my childhood, to my parent’s house, that night I fell asleep on the couch.’

‘I don’t know what you were reliving, but it wasn’t as bad as the day we came through the forest. You kept going on and on about never having a dog.’

Hannah’s brow furrowed. ‘There was a dog, a big black one, or dark brown, maybe. It looked like rather like a wolf. He was there the night my mother decided… well, the night I relived in the forest of ghosts.’

‘All right, why is that an issue?’

‘I never had a dog, Hoyt.’

He tossed the pouch back inside the pack. ‘Who knows what this stuff does? Maybe it’s just a hallucinogen that sends you flying over the hills and valleys of your past. You get a whiff of this, whether it’s magic or not, and you go back in time, peek in a few windows, see your parents cooking eggs, beating each other up, whatever, and then you come back. Maybe people get caught by the forest because they can’t get out before they wither away.’

Hannah shook her head. ‘It’s more than that, Hoyt. I was there. I was actually there in the room, and the dog was part of it, as real as I was.’ She tried to stand, swooned again, and sat back down.

‘Keep resting. Those two are still sleeping, and my watch ends with breakfast, so close your eyes for a while. If you’re feeling rested enough later, you can ride with me and we’ll make our way back to find that trail.’

‘Three days lost,’ Hannah murmured.

‘Not a total loss,’ Hoyt said. ‘If Alen can work out what a sorcerer might be able to do with a handful of bark from the forest of ghosts, we may have stumbled… literally… onto something important. I doubt it was the engineer’s lust for adventure in high places that made him try to cross alone.’

Hannah lay back, closing her eyes and hoping for a couple hours’ sleep. Three days lost, and she had not been heartened by anything she heard after waking. She was glad that Churn was safe. As for their pocketful of enchanted forest, if it helped Alen figure out a way to send her home, then she would be happy they had found it, but for now, she was wary of it: it was mystical and dangerous, and it had trapped her in her past with her parents and that big dog until Hoyt had dragged her out. Hannah didn’t trust it. She remembered the dead body on the southern edge of the Great Range – Sunday Morning by Michael Adams – some poor soul who had wandered into the forest of ghosts, become enslaved by a memory and sat down beside a stand of white birch to while away the days for ever.

She accidentally rolled onto her shoulder, and was painfully reminded that she had fallen two hundred feet onto a rock. Eventually, she slept again.

This time when she awakened, the sun was fully out and brightening the snow at the edge of the meadow. Hoyt was still awake, cooking sausages in the small pan he carried. The food smelled good; despite the fact that she had eaten only a short while earlier, she was famished. On the opposite side of the campfire, Alen was sleeping. She guessed that anyone who had lived as long as Alen would need a great deal of sleep – and the former Larion Senator was world class at it: there were few places Alen did not manage to sleep like a cadaver from dark to dawn. Hannah frequently worried that the older man had died in his sleep, and she often forced Churn or Hoyt to go back to their rooms and make certain Alen was still breathing.

She would have been surprised to know that, unlike Gilmour, Alen chose to sleep. He revelled in it, enjoying the feeling of being completely fatigued, especially in the moments right before drifting off. Gilmour slept only when he felt the need to rejuvenate his physical self.

With one arm, Hannah pushed herself into a sitting position, a definite improvement. ‘What’s for breakfast?’ she called.

‘You ate already,’ Hoyt tried to sound indignant. ‘What kind of place do you think I’m operating here?’

‘A place where I get to eat when I’m hungry, and right now, I’m good and hungry. So keep your comments to yourself, my intrepid thiefbut you had better share the bounty from that frying pan.’

‘Or else?’

‘Or else, I will beat your sorry ass one-handed – and think about it, every time your so-called friends have one too many beers, there it will be all over again: the hilarious account of the time Hoyt got thoroughly whipped by a one-armed woman.’

‘Fine, fine, just keep your one-armed whipping to yourself, all right?’ Hoyt tore another lump from the loaf he had shared with her earlier that morning.

‘Where’s Churn?’

‘Scouting the meadow,’ Hoyt said. ‘If you’re feeling better, I think it’s time to try to find a trail.’

Hannah nodded vigorously as she had chewed. ‘Yes, by all means, let’s get going. I’ve held us up here too long.’

As if overhearing them, the Pragan giant returned to camp, ducking brambly needles as he shouldered his way through the grove.

‘What news?’ Hoyt signed.

Churn shrugged, ‘Nothing new, a few tracks.’

‘Wagon tracks?’ Hoyt passed his friend a chunk of bread with hot sausages and melted cheese tucked inside.

‘No.’ Churn took a bite, fanned at his open mouth with a palm, then put down the bread and finished, ‘Dog tracks. One dog, a big one.’