Soulvine 03 A Bright and Terrible Sword (10 page)

‘Roger,’ she finally began, ‘I know how much of a shock this must be to—’

‘You know nothing about it,’ I snapped.

Rawnie said, ‘Don’t be rude to my mother!’

I ignored her. She started to get up, probably to kick me again, but her mother repeated, ‘You know what I will do!’ and the child sank back, glaring, into her corner.

I said to Rawnie, ‘If you’d really wanted Leo to let you stay unchained, you shouldn’t have called him a “stinking evil
hisaf
”. That’s hardly the way to get people to help you.’

‘I hate you,’ she said, but something shifted behind her pale eyes. I hadn’t really meant to instruct her, only to return her insults, but it actually looked as if she was thinking about what I’d said. I didn’t care if she considered it or not. My attention returned to her mother.

I said, ‘Rawnie is how old? Twelve?’

‘Eleven.’ Her voice held reluctance; she already knew my line of thought. Not stupid, then.

‘Eleven. So she was born the year after my mother died and I was sent to my Aunt Jo. Rawley did not waste much time mourning, did he?’

Her lovely face hardened, but into pleading rather than disdain. ‘You don’t understand, Roger. He thought you were dead, too. He was so distraught at being unable to protect Katharine, out of his mind with grief, even though he had left for her own safety—’

‘Don’t bother. I’ve heard this all before “Mrs Kilbourne”. He left my mother to be taken by some other man, my sister to be born and go mad on the other side, and me to a life of beatings and starvation from that brute my Aunt Jo married.’

‘He didn’t know!’ she cried.

‘I have met him, you know. Once. He did not look like such an ignorant man to me. He did look like a faithless and cheating liar. Although of course he had you to console him for his losses. Tell me, was my mother even in the Country of the Dead before he took you?’

Her gaze radiated despair. Rawnie, wide-eyed, watched us both; evidently some of this information was new to her. Even Kelif, normally stolid as a boulder, had opened his sleepy eyelids and sat listening.

She said, ‘I had not expected to find you so bitter, Roger.’

‘I have cause to be.’

‘Yes. But not at your father. He did the best he could in difficult circumstances.’

‘Oh, I’m sure he did. His best was an abandoned wife and child, another child raised beyond the grave, a gullible mistress and a bastard second daughter.’

Rawnie leapt up and rushed at me. ‘Don’t talk about my father like that!’

Her chain would have been long enough to reach me, and her mother’s cry ineffectual to halt her, except that
Kelif reached out with his free right hand and stopped her as easily as if she had been made of paper. He pushed her away and said simply, ‘No.’ Rawnie fell heavily back into her corner. Tears came to her eyes, gone in an instant.

The wagon lurched forward. I had not even noticed the driver climb aboard, nor the camp being struck. In truth, I was appalled by my own outburst. I had not intended to spew so much venom upon this woman. My anger was with my father, not her.

But she had the last word. With quiet dignity, she said, ‘My daughter is not a bastard. I
am
Mrs Kilbourne. My first name is Charlotte.’

I said nothing. And the wagons, guarded by the Brotherhood of rogue
hisafs
, started south in the sweet summer sunshine.

8

I was not only ashamed of my outburst to Charlotte, but also shaken by the unsuspected depth of my own bitterness towards my father. In addition, I had lost my chance to obtain information. Charlotte might know where we were headed, and why. Shortly after the wagons started to move, she fell asleep. I guessed that she had slept as little the previous night as I had. Rawnie and I glared silently at each other for a while, and then she, too, nodded off, her hand protectively on her small pack. Kelif may or may not have been sleeping; it was always hard to tell.

I gazed at Charlotte as she lay at the very rear of the wagon, against the backboard. One of her plaits had come unfastened from around her head and it lay on the blanket, thick and shining coppery red. In sleep the pinched look left her face. I should not have spoken to her as I had. Her daughter may or may not have been a bastard; my son certainly would be unless I could reach Maggie and marry her. Charlotte clearly loved my father and had probably tried to comfort him for his loss, which was just what Maggie, in her acerbic way, had done for me after Cecilia’s death. How could revile Charlotte for her actions and yet treasure Maggie for hers? No, it was my father who deserved reviling, not this woman.

When Kelif began to snore, perhaps lulled by sunshine or the motion of the wagon or sheer boredom, I touched Charlotte’s outflung hand. She woke instantly, gasping,
and looked around for Rawnie. The wretched child still slept.

I choked out, ‘I am sorry for what I said.’

Her face lit up, with no trace of grudge-bearing. ‘That’s all right, Roger. I know Rawnie and I must be a shock to you. And I hope you will believe that Rawley—’

‘I don’t want to talk about him.’

‘All right.’ Some of the light went from her face, but she continued to smile at me. When she sat up, the loose braid swung across her face. She groped among the blankets in the wagon bed, looking for the wooden hairpin to put her braid back in place.

I said, ‘May I ask you some questions?’

‘Of course.’

‘Do you know where they are taking us?’

‘No. Do you?’

‘I know almost nothing. Why were you and Rawnie captured? Is either of you …’ I glanced at Kelif, but he still snored. I kept my voice low. ‘Do you or Rawnie have talent for the soul arts?’

‘No. Not at all. I don’t know why these
hisafs
took us.’

I could think of only one reason: their connection to my father. I still did not know how you keep a
hisaf
imprisoned in Galtryf, or anywhere else, when he could escape bodily to the Country of the Dead, unless my father were chained night and day to a half dozen of the Brotherhood as I was to Kelif.

Charlotte gave up the hunt for her hairpin. She took down the other braid, unwound them both, and began to comb out her hair with the painted comb from her pack. I had to look away. Just so had Cecilia combed out her shining hair by a campfire, and Maggie in the taproom of our inn. In such a moment a woman looks intensely feminine, vulnerable, and desirable.

‘Roger,’ she said very low, ‘do you know where they’re taking us, and why?’

All morning the wagons had been climbing increasingly steep hills. We were leaving, or had left, The Queendom for the higher terrain of the Unclaimed Lands. Presently, I knew, the landscape would become even wilder, dotted with ravines and cliffs, until it once more levelled off into high, peat-laden moor.

‘Roger?’

‘I think,’ I said, forcing the words past my suddenly tight throat, ‘that we are going to Soulvine Moor.’

The wagons halted at noon for a midday meal. I could not eat, nor could Charlotte. Both of us knew what happened on Soulvine Moor; I had experienced it twice before. First Cecilia had died there. Then I had almost died, stretched out and bound on a flat rock while the drum sounded its deadly rhythm and the knife was held to my throat by the old man with green eyes. Only the dogs had saved me, the dogs and Tom Jenkins. Yet although I feared death as much as the next man, it wasn’t the thought of death that churned my stomach and tightened my throat. It was the sure knowledge of what the Soulviners would then do to my body. How they would use it in their obscene ritual, symbolically ‘drawing strength’ from their victims’ flesh in the land of the living, exactly as they did from their souls in the Country of the Dead. And would some
hisaf
of the Brotherhood then cross over to sit me in a circle, to watch as I was consumed by a spinning vortex of grey fog? And my chance at eternity lost for ever …

Charlotte’s gaze met mine only once during that uneaten meal. Immediately she looked away. I knew that she could not bear to see mirrored in my eyes the knowledge I saw in hers. Instead she watched Rawnie,
and for a moment I almost transcended my own fear in the greater one she must feel for her child.

For my child was still safe. We were not headed towards Maggie at Tanwell, but in the opposite direction. The Brotherhood did not know about her, or my son. And when I was dead, they never would. Charlotte had no such consolation.

And Rawnie no such fears. She was less obnoxious than usual, but not from fright. At first her behaviour made no sense to me, and then it did.

As soon as we were unchained from the wagon for the noon halt, Leo reappeared. Evidently he was still in charge of Charlotte and her daughter, and evidently he still did not relish the task. Probably he expected more kicks, more insults, more noisy resistance. He underestimated Rawnie. So did I.

She must have remembered what I said to her at breakfast: ‘
If you’d really wanted Leo to let you stay unchained, you shouldn’t have called him a “stinking evil
hisaf”
. That’s hardly the way to get people to help you
.’ As soon as he freed her ankle from its long chain, she smiled at him.

‘Thank you, Leo.’

He started in surprise.

The four of us, stiff from sitting in the jolting wagon, climbed down and were led to the woods to relieve our bladders. Since there were no women to attend Charlotte, Leo must do it. The scowl stayed on his face; probably he didn’t like turning his back on Rawnie, but Straik had ordered that she and Charlotte be treated with all possible respect. However, before they entered a thick grove of trees, Rawnie laid a hand on Leo’s arm. They were close enough that I heard what she said.

‘I’m sorry I was so difficult last night and today, Leo. It’s just that I was scared. I’ve never been away from home before, not like you, and I don’t know how to be
brave.’ A pathetic smile. ‘You’ve been all over, I know, so it’s different with you, because you’re an actor. When Mama told me, I couldn’t hardly believe it. An actor! You must have done such wonderful things!’

Charlotte stared at her daughter with disbelief, Leo with suspicion. Rawnie disappeared modestly behind the trees.

She returned before her mother did, walked up to Leo, and clasped her hands before her beseechingly. ‘Can I make a bargain with you? If I am really, really good all the rest of the day, would you do some acting for me when we stop tonight? Not a lot – I know somebody like me can’t expect somebody like you to give a free play – but just a tiny bit of one scene?’

‘No,’ Leo said.

She lowered her head and whispered, ‘I understand. Great actors don’t do acting for free.’ Her whole small body reflected penance and disappointment.

‘No, they don’t,’ Leo said. But he stood a little taller and a smile lurked at the corners of his mouth.

Suddenly Rawnie brightened. ‘But I can pay you! I have two pennies all my own!’

He smiled. ‘Two whole pennies? Really? Such a fortune!’

‘I know you probably get hundreds of silvers for acting, even gold pieces!’

‘Well … yes.’ He was, not unexpectedly, a convincing liar. ‘But do you really promise to cause no trouble at all? None?’

‘None!’ She was transfigured; light shone from her face; she rose on her toes with excitement; she almost levitated. ‘Oh, Leo,
would you
?’

‘I make no promises,’ Leo said loftily. Charlotte returned and we were once more loaded into the wagon.
Rawnie held out her foot for the chain. She looked at Leo as if he were a prince, a hero, a god.

Once he had gone and the wagons and men had resumed their march south, Rawnie glared at me. ‘What are you staring at, Roger?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. In truth, I was comparing her to my other half-sister, Katharine, whom I had murdered. Katharine had been mad, and she had been used by the Brotherhood for their own ends. She had killed people. Rawnie had been loved and sheltered all her life, and she was clearly not mad. She was in complete control of her devious self. But she seemed just as unpredictable. I didn’t like her, I felt no kinship with her, but neither could I stand the thought of what awaited her on Soulvine Moor.

Late in the afternoon we halted on a rise above a poor, hardscrabble farm in the Unclaimed Lands. Usually in such wild terrain the farms were far apart, but this one had several ramshackle dwellings and a larger-than-usual goat shed. Peering over the high side of the wagon, a movement which strained the short chain between Kelif’s wrist and mine, I saw figures far below. A woman raised her face to us, then scurried into one of the huts. Two more women carried a bucket of water from a mountain stream. Children dashed around, chasing each other.

Straik and two of his men went down the hill, returning later with their arms full of bundles and leading two goats. Food, I guessed, bought from whatever meagre supply the farm had, in return for coins rarely seen here. Straik strode to the wagon, followed by Leo. Straik said to Kelif, ‘Watch him well.’

Kelif’s sleepy eyes opened wide. ‘Be ye—’

‘Yes.’

‘
Here?
’

‘The men are all gone on a long hunt. And this circle is ready. Leo—’

Leo said, ‘I want to go with you.’

‘No. Your job is the wife and daughter.’

‘It is my right. I would be in command here but for your—’

‘No,’ Straik said. He started down the hill towards the farm, followed by every man except Leo and Kelif. Leo scowled fiercely. Rawnie made a movement towards him, studied his face, and subsided into her corner. No flattery would work just now. My stomach tightened until it felt a hard stone.

‘
This circle is ready
.’ I knew of only one kind of circle Straik could have been referring to, and it did not exist in the land of the living.

The Brotherhood reached the farm. I rose to my knees to watch over the wagon side. Kelif rose with me, which somehow frightened me even more.

One of the men grabbed the first woman he reached. She screamed, which brought Rawnie upright. I said sharply to Charlotte, ‘Don’t let her watch!’ Charlotte grabbed for her daughter, but it was Leo who shoved her back into the corner and kept her there.