Wintercraft: Blackwatch (14 page)
Kate felt two conflicting bands of energy spilling out across the floor; one seeping from the dead man’s blood, the other being spread by Dalliah herself. The two forces joined together above the dead man, and as the gentle mist of his spirit rose up to be carried into the current of death, her energy acted as a wall, forcing his spirit down. Down into the spirit wheel. Down into the stone. The blood bled deeper into the wheel, and once the spirit was trapped, the energy within it died instantly. The wheel became dull and dead, with only the faintest vibration of energy at its core suggesting that there was anything unusual about it at all.
The room fell silent then. All eyes were on the bloodstained carvings, until the man’s killer stood up, his blade slick with blood, and spoke for them all.
‘Did it work?’
‘It worked,’ said Dalliah, sweeping her eyes around the people, a dangerous smile lighting up her face. ‘Now for the rest.’
‘The rest?’ The voice came from Kate’s throat as the woman stepped forward. ‘We were told one would be enough,’ she said. ‘We have taken one life. We are finished here.’
Dalliah met the woman’s eyes, and cold fear washed through Kate’s soul. Fear of what that woman was, and fear of what she could do.
‘We are only finished when I say,’ said Dalliah. ‘Do it.’
With those words twelve more blades flashed into action. Kate saw a handful of bonemen turn suddenly upon the others, stealing lives and binding souls into the spirit wheels with more spilled blood. The walls echoed with their victims’ screams and the wheels flickered out one by one as the bodies of the dead fell across them. It all happened too quickly for anyone to react, but the horror of what the woman was seeing choked through the memory as she stumbled back, turned, and stood face to face with one of the men she had brought to that room.
Kate saw the dagger and the silent apology in his eyes. Cold silver plunged deep into her chest. Kate felt the blade grate against bone, the explosion of heat and fire as the dagger found her heart, and the shuddering pull of eternity as the final wheel claimed its soul.
Kate opened her eyes to blackness. She thought she was screaming, but the frost of the veil still had her throat and no sound came out. Her hands flew to her chest, but there was no dagger, no blood. Her heart was racing, and she did not know where she was. She was lying on her back on a cold floor with something soft underneath her head.
She sat up and felt deep grooves sliced into the floor beneath her fingers. For one terrifying moment her confused mind thought she was still inside the bonemen’s room, sitting on top of a spirit wheel. Then logic took over. She was no longer inside the memory, but she was not in the skull room either. The walls of this place felt closer together and someone was crouching nearby, breathing nervously in the dark. ‘Edgar?’ she whispered, as soon as her voice returned.
Something shuffled beside her and she heard the scratch of a match. Light flared across Edgar’s face and he held a finger to his lips to warn her to be quiet. They sat in silence while the match burned down and Edgar lit another, shielding the flame with a cupped hand.
‘I think they’re gone,’ he whispered at last.
‘Where are we?’ asked Kate.
‘You fell,’ said Edgar. ‘Something happened.’
Kate sat with her arms clutched protectively over her chest where the dagger blow had landed, her forehead throbbing with a dull ache that was gradually getting worse. Something tickled against her left eyebrow and when she rubbed her hand across it her fingers came away dark and wet.
‘Don’t touch it,’ said Edgar. ‘You hit the table pretty hard before I caught you. Here, put this against it.’ He pressed something soft into her hand and her head stung as she tried to stop the trickle of blood.
‘Did Baltin see us?’ she asked.
‘He would have,’ said Edgar, ‘but the spirit wheel started moving again when you fell. Baltin just stood there staring at it, as if he was obsessed by the thing. I got us out through the narrow door before Artemis came in to see what was happening. You’re heavier than you look, you know.’ Edgar smiled before the match flame scorched his fingers and fell to the floor, flickering out. ‘Better save the rest of these,’ he said, not lighting another.
‘I’m sorry for what happened,’ said Kate. ‘I didn’t even know the skull was there until I touched it. I think there was a shade in there. It showed me memories. Horrible things …’
‘So long as you’re all right, that’s all that matters,’ said Edgar. ‘How does your head feel?’
‘Sore.’
‘I don’t suppose it showed you anything useful, did it?’ said Edgar. ‘I thought the wheel was pretty useless, but if it hadn’t distracted Baltin when it did he’d be marching us back to the cavern right now. At this point, I’m willing to take any help we can get.’
Kate considered telling Edgar what she had seen, but it did not feel right to talk about murders that had happened so close to the place where they were sitting, no matter how many hundreds of years ago they might have been committed. ‘Nothing important,’ she said, though with the possibility that shades might still be lingering close by she felt uncomfortable saying those words out loud.
‘Maybe we should stay here for a while,’ said Edgar. ‘Get our bearings before we head out again.’
‘How are we going to do that?’ asked Kate. ‘We’re lost, aren’t we?’
Edgar let the question hang in the darkness between them, which said more than any answer ever could.
After what Kate had seen she was glad to be able to stay still for a while, but the longer they sat there, the more the silence and gloom of being underground spread around them like thick fog, threatening to steal her senses one by one.
Baltin had found one of the missing spirit wheels and had been collecting skulls in that room for a long time. Bonemen skulls, including those whose spirits had long been sealed away inside Fume’s spirit wheels. The thought of what the bonemen had done chilled Kate, but the idea of the Skilled digging up old bones unsettled her too. Baltin had seemed almost hysterically fearful of Kate’s connection to the veil and had been willing to kill her to prevent her from using it again. Now it appeared that he was involved in something even more sinister himself.
The veil plucked at the edges of Kate’s consciousness as the wheel’s warning weighed heavily on her mind. And even there, sitting in the stony shadows of their tiny hiding place, she did not feel safe.
9
The Messenger
Silas woke not long after midnight to the earsplitting sound of lightning striking close by. His chest burned. His heart, usually steady and unnaturally slow, raced up to a speeding irregular beat and his skin blazed with heat. Pain spread like veins across the left side of his chest, stabbing into his heart like a core of flame. The intensity of it took him by surprise and he clutched a hand to his body, waiting for the feeling to pass. He had felt the stab of metal many times before. When he opened his shirt to inspect the skin he half expected it to be stained with blood, but his palm came away clean.
Rain streamed down in rivulets through the ruined roof and he stood up, shaking his wet hair and feeling the strength returning to his body again. He tested his arms by clenching his fists and feeling the healing muscles stretch beneath his skin. He had to move. Pure luck was all that had prevented the Blackwatch from finding him in there, and a thunderstorm was not going to stop them from continuing their search.
He climbed the stairs to the crypt door and opened it to a bitter blast of icy wind. Outside, the sun had not yet begun to rise, the rain was already freezing where it had collected on the ground, the paths were slick with fresh ice and scatterings of hailstones had blown up against the crypt walls. The ground crunched beneath his boots as he stepped out into the cemetery and heavy clouds crossed the sky like purple bruises streaked with sulphurous yellow and crackles of blue. He smelled the air. It was too late in the year for storms. The land was too cold, and yet the clouds still hung steadily within the arms of the mountains, hurling rain down on to the cold houses below.
He turned up his coat collar and his crow flew out of the crypt, huddling on to a bare tree branch and fluffing itself up for warmth. A bolt of lightning shook the ground, striking somewhere in the forest to the south. Silas walked back through the cemetery towards the iron gates, ignoring the spearing rain that needled down around him. The Blackwatch had taken his sword during his capture. They had emptied his pockets and left him with nothing. The last of his silver was gone, his hidden blades, everything that could have been of some use to him, but the short time he had spent in their custody had given him something more useful than any of those things. It had given him an idea.
With the early hour and the rain pelting down hard, Silas had the streets to himself. There was no sign of the Blackwatch anywhere on the southern side of the river and many of the lantern strings over the streets had snapped or been blown out by the wind. A few early risers were standing at their windows watching the unseasonal weather, but those who saw him backed away from the glass as he walked by.
Silas’s mood matched the ferocity of the sky. He made his way towards a small row of shops, found one that specialised in trade goods and broke his way in while barely breaking stride. There was a rumble from the upper floor and a short man ran down the stairs still in his nightshirt, wielding a dagger, determined to defend his shop. He stood still the moment he saw Silas standing in the doorway. His face fell and he lowered the dagger slowly.
‘There are some items I require here,’ said Silas. ‘You are going to get them for me, and then I will leave you in peace.’
‘A-all right,’ said the shop owner, backing up a few steps. ‘Anything you want. Take it. It’s yours.’
‘I require paper, a pen, ink and string, and a container, no longer or wider than a woman’s finger, with a stoppered top.’
The shop was small and well stocked. The man collected most of the things he needed from behind the counter, placed them in front of Silas and headed off in search of the container. Silas leaned on the counter to write a short letter and bit off a long length of string with his teeth while the man rummaged in a small drawer at the back of the shop.
‘Will this do?’ He hurried back, holding out a small glass vial between his finger and thumb. It had a small crack running down the side of it, but it would serve.
‘Good enough,’ said Silas. ‘And I’ll take that as well.’ He pointed to the dagger in the shop owner’s hand, and was handed it at once.
‘Of course. Anything you need.’
Silas slid the dagger into his belt, picked up letter, string and vial, and walked back out into the street.
The wind tried to snatch the paper from his fingers as he pushed it into the vial, stoppered it and tied the string tightly around it in four strong loops. ‘Crow,’ he said. The bird flew down from the shelter of a high window on the opposite side of the street and landed on his wrist. Silas looped the string over the bird’s head and tied an extra knot around its middle and across the centre of the vial to keep it tucked into place against its chest. The crow snapped its beak in complaint and shook its wings the moment he was finished, ruffling the glass amongst its chest feathers. Silas had never used his crow as a messenger before, but if the Blackwatch’s tattered pigeons could make it across the sea he was certain his bird would.
‘This must reach Kate,’ he said. ‘Do you remember her?’ The crow squawked once. ‘Look for her in the streets beneath Fume and stay with her until I find you again. I will come for you. Go!’
The crow took flight, cutting through the driving rain and heading out towards the sea. Another streak of lightning lit up the sky and Silas saw something standing on the other side of the street. A woman, watching him through the rain.
‘You have arrived,’ she said.
Silas started to cross the street towards her, but when he looked up again she was gone. He stood on the cobbles where she had been and could feel the bristle of the veil within the air. He looked along the houses but there was no sign of her anywhere.
‘I told Bandermain he would not be able to keep you against your will.’ The woman’s voice came from a doorway behind him. Silas turned and she held out a piece of paper for him to take. ‘If you want answers, meet me there,’ she said. ‘I will wait for you. There are things you need to know before we begin.’
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