Hunting (33 page)

Toning down speed in favour of care,
Ash prowled closer, and reached the corner of this new clump of
buildings in time to see her targets vanish into a particularly
decrepit two-story building. All the windows were boarded up and
the place looked a few nails short of collapse. The roof was the
kind she would avoid unless suicidal, so she found a way down to
the packed dirt of the street.

There was no front door, only a piece
of wood hanging from a twisted hinge. The entryway was musky with
old urine, and a gaping hole in the floor could be seen through
another door to her right.

Dim light and voices led her up a stair
to her right. Ash tested each step, straining her eyes in the dark
and trying to hold her weight from creaking boards. At the head of
the stairs the ceiling had fallen to the left, thick timbers
riddled with mites and worm. To the right was a door, half-open,
and she slid towards it across a sagging landing which had long
since lost its balcony railings.

The captive was Ash's horse-mad charity
case. Even skinnier than the first time Ash had seen her, if that
was possible, glowering defiance as she tried to kick the one who
held her, despite a jagged and clearly infected cut on one leg.

"...that it's worth it?" the other boy
was saying.

The first laughed. "She aint dumb
enough. Are you Tongueless?"

Ash swapped her staff to her left hand
and slid a knife out of her boot. She took two steps forward, flung
the knife into the thigh of the shorter boy and, covering the
remaining ground in a rush, drove the staff at the other's
knee.

Too slow.

Letting go of the girl and stumbling
back before the blow had quite landed, the taller boy stared at Ash
incredulously, and then grabbed her staff with both hands. Ash, at
a strength disadvantage, lost the staff and moved backwards,
hampered by the rubbish in the room. He swung at her wildly, and
then tossed the staff as she reached for her second knife.

"I'll teach you, you damn rat!"

He leapt at her, connecting as she
straightened, and they crashed to the floor in a billow of dust.
Her knife gone, Ash brought knee and elbow into play immediately,
and did her best to avoid a couple of flailing blows. But then he
got hold of her throat, and shook her like the rat he'd named
her.

As he began to squeeze in earnest, Ash
raked for his eyes while scrabbling for her dropped knife with her
other hand. She had to get him off – had to – !

The boy bellowed, jerking back and
trying to reach over his shoulder for the knife, which had been
buried in his shoulder by his former captive. Ash used the
opportunity to squirm away, scrambling for her staff.

They both made it to their feet at the
same time, but now the boy had her knife, and his friend had
stopped yelling and was struggling upright. Breath tearing her
throat, Ash struck hard at the larger boy's chest, thrusting with
all her might so that he staggered backwards, then fell onto the
sagging balcony, and through it.

The entire building shook with a second
crash, and creaked dismayingly. The floor shifted, the walls
leaned, and the entire building considered tumbling into a
graceless pile. Then it settled.

"Damn," Ash croaked, and then switched
her attention to the second boy, who took the better part of
valour, backing away.

"Get away from me, scut!"

Fright turning to annoyance, Ash rubbed
her throat, then said: "Stay there, we'll leave, then you can check
on your...friend."

His friend wasn't making any noise, but
that was fine with Ash right at that moment. Keeping a wary eye on
the remaining boy, Ash ushered the former captive toward the door,
tested and then walked with swift surety across the landing's
exposed support beam to the top of the stairs.

They protested her weight and she
frowned again, glancing back at the girl, who was watching from the
doorway. "Can you cross it?" she asked, and the girl considered for
a long moment, then set a bare, scabbed foot onto the rotting wood
and started across. Daere nodded and went ahead down the stairs.
She doubted it would hold both of them. Below, the fallen boy
started swearing, flinging words out of the dark as if he could
knock the escapees down with them.

Ash didn't waste any time, getting
outside and scanning the nearest buildings for a good route up and
then herding the girl toward it. Her new charge was slow to move,
and favoured one leg, but at least accepted Ash's help with the
climb.

"We'll rest here a while," Ash said,
once they'd reached the relative safety of the roof. She guided the
girl so she could sit against a chimney, and tried not to be too
obvious about how badly she needed to sit down herself. "My name's
Ash. What should I call you?"

Still no response. The boys had called
the girl 'Tongueless', so perhaps she couldn't speak at all. But
why hadn't the girl at least tried to scare that pair off with the
gale she was able to summon? And why was she here? Ash hadn't
thought her a Shambles dweller, despite obviously living rough.

With her throat so sore, Ash wasn't
inclined to try to coax answers, and concentrated on gripping her
hands together to quell a growing tremor. What had happened in
there? She'd been so slow, had had all the weapons and still she'd
nearly – nearly killed Thornaster, had hesitated because the stakes
were higher than she could accept. Marriage to Thornaster was
something she could embrace, but this soul bond...

"Telat."

Ash blinked, and then studied the girl
in the rising light of Cuinefaer. A single word, but it made Ash
realise she'd overlooked an obvious possibility for why this girl
wouldn't talk to her.

But with Lauren and Heran waiting, now
was not the time to experiment. "Nice to meet you, Telat," Ash
said. She pointed at the infected gash on the girl's leg. "Come
with me, and I'll give you medicine for that."

Thankfully, there were no problems
getting back – a fortunate circumstance since Ash was far from at
her best, and Telat seemed to be staying upright out of sheer grit
and determination. Ash had never been gladder to see the Huntsmen's
headquarters, gently lit and inviting.

Also more crowded than it had been when
she'd left it, with Lauren and Heran at the far end of the long
attic, facing three of her Huntsmen. Lauren had his hand on the
hilt of his rapier, but the atmosphere was of wary discussion, not
confrontation.

"Lark, Melar, Bitty – how handy."

Her friends turned, and then paused to
take in her appearance.

"You sound like you have a severe case
of someone tried to strangle you," Melar said appreciatively.

"I have a severe case of need to sit
down, anyway. This is Telat, and it looks like you've already
introduced yourself to Lauren and Heran. Melar, can you clean out
that cut on Telat's leg? And if any of you speak Firuven, that
would be handy, because I think I overlooked an obvious–"

Her voice had faded to a scratchy
whisper, so Ash gave up, made a general 'get on with it' gesture,
then dipped herself a drink out of the rain barrel.

"Something tells me that even before
you ran off this was more than an exciting excursion to show the
Veirhoi the seamier side of the city," Melar said, turning to hunt
out their collection of medicking supplies.

"Making it harder to assassinate him,"
Ash said, plopping herself down on one of the piles of mats they
used for seats, and trying to coax Telat to join her instead of
backing toward the entry bridge. "Matters are coming to a
head."

"Ash!" Larkin exploded. "You're running
from assassins and you just left them here? Fine! You abandoned the
Veirhoi in the Shambles and then nearly got yourself killed, but
who cares? We all know you're completely indestructible, so let's
have an explanation instead of an argument."

"Hiding, not running." Ash sipped her
water and sighed.

"
Do you speak Firuven?
" asked
Lauren.

Telat froze, then seemed to become
visibly taller, the whole of her attention fixing on Lauren. Then
she crossed the attic in one concerted rush to stand, almost
vibrating, before him.

"
Say that again
," she demanded,
in almost the same language Lauren had used. Formal Firuven rather
than Trade Firuven.

Lauren, after only a momentary
hesitation, switched to Formal Firuven: "
Forgive my mistakes: I
am conversant but not expert in your language. This one wishes to
tend the injury on your leg.
" He nodded toward Melar.

Telat didn't so much as glance in
Melar's direction, the whole of her focus still on Lauren.
"
Again
," she breathed, as if she thought her ears were
playing her false.

Eyebrows drawing together, Lauren
tried: "
How did you come to be in Montmoth, Sera?
"

And the storm broke.

The whole of the attic stilled in
respectful awe, the girl's tirade no less powerful for being
incomprehensible to most of her audience. Eyes fixed on Lauren's
face, Telat worked her way from indignation through fury to a kind
of exulting glee, and finally stopped not because she had run out
of things she wanted to say, but because she was sick and starved
and exhausted.

Lauren, too startled to maintain his
first seruilis mask, caught Telat's arm as she swayed, panting, and
he and Melar helped the girl to one of the piles of mats.

Larkin gaped at the scene. "What was
all that?"

When Ash didn't respond, Heran said:
"She is – I think she said that she belongs to a Firuvari crafter
house. That when her grandfather died, those appointed her
guardians announced they were taking her to be trained. And brought
her to Montmoth and just...left. Most of what she said is what she
wants to do to them."

"She is House Docenti," Lauren said,
glancing up from an examination of the swollen, seeping gash on
Telat's leg.

This produced another respectful
silence. Firuvar was too far away to be more than stories to most
of Montmoth, but among those stories House Docenti featured not
infrequently as the source of fabulous extravagance. And should you
have no use for staircases of frozen flame, or fountains that sang,
they offered more practical items, such as goblets that nullified
poisons. In Montmoth, where even the glowing stone used in the
Gods' Hall was an expensive rarity, House Docenti was almost
literally a name to conjure with.

Even Bitty blinked a few times, but
then pragmatically unpacked a bag of stale bread she'd brought
along from the bakery and offered it around while Melar and Lauren
worked to clean, salve and bind Telat's leg. Ash tore a bun to tiny
fragments and washed it down, and when Sim arrived with Carl and
Dest in the middle of this she drew a rough map and sent them off
to check on a house where a piece of trash might still be in the
cellar, one of her knives in his back. If he was, they'd deliver
him to the Watch.

"But she must understand Old Tongue,"
Larkin said, after this interruption had been dealt with. "When you
told her to come each day to the bakery, she did!"

"I understand Firuven much better than
I speak it," Ash said, struggling to make herself audible. "I
wonder how well I'd do if I'd tried to learn just by
listening?"

Melar looked over at her. "Ash, do you
want to have a voice tomorrow?"

"Bah."

"Why didn't they just kill her?" Heran
asked, and then haltingly repeated the question in Firuven.

"
You speak as if your tongue is
stuck to the roof of your mouth
," Telat observed, obliging Ash
to gulp rather. "
They are all cowards. They think I am – they
think that if they kill me, they will be cursed. So they put me
here, in this frozen place
."

It was not a full explanation – Lauren
certainly wasn't the only person in Montmoth able to make himself
understood in Firuven – but Ash could readily picture this
extremely proud girl caught between need and distrust, struggling
to find answers in a completely strange place.

Telat had had no Genevieve. Would Ash,
who had thought Genevieve's intervention a great blessing, but not
critical, have really done so well without her? Tonight she was
finding doubt in every corner, and the more she second-guessed
herself, the less able she felt.

"Why did you stop coming to the
bakery?" Bitty asked.

"
Because of the Cold Man
," Telat
said, after Lauren had translated, and then frowned mightily
because Lauren, Heran and Ash all reacted as if stuck with a
pin.

"Coincidence?" Lauren wondered, then
asked Telat: "
What do you mean by 'Cold Man'?
"

Made suspicious by their reactions,
Telat searched his expression, then gestured at Larkin and Bitty:
"
I go to a place of theirs for food, but the last time a man,
all ice, came to me after I left and looked at me and...spelled me
in some way. There was no understanding it. He looked at me and I
followed him, though I did not want to, and he put me in the room
of a house even colder than him. There were bars on the window. But
I came back to myself and opened a way out, and slipped free. That
is where I did this
." She gestured at her leg. "
After that,
twice I came to their place for food, but I could feel the cold man
near, waiting. And later I could feel him where I usually sleep, so
I came away
."

Astonished, Ash took a quick sip of
water, then said: "Lark, have you noticed anyone watching the
bakery lately?"

"Why?"

Lauren answered. "We believe – it's
possible the man who attacked our coach this afternoon has been
lying in wait for Sera Telat there. She must be a particularly
desirable target.
Sera, what did he look like?
"

A moment's quiet consideration.
"
Shorter than him.
" She indicated Larkin with a faint motion
of her chin. "
Pale. White hair. White eyes.
"