The Last Stitch (The Chronicles of Eirie: 2) (11 page)

‘Gertus, Gertus,’ Severine smiled mildly. ‘Gnomes to stones, dear man, gnomes to stones.’ She scooped up the pebbles and placed them in their little box and without a backward glance she strode out.

On Hy-Breasil, Phelim had wended his way back to the cave, the bag warm against his ribs. One part of him was energised at the thought of his journey and eager to be away. The other less adventurous side grieved for a way of life he had loved, viewing the lonely immensity of his task with disquiet. Foreboding weighed the boat down as the rope untied itself and the bow swung to the entrance.

Chapter Seventeen

‘Right, I’m back.’ Gallivant bounced around the room on his slim legs, a damask coat covering the excessive brightness of the silk shirt and cuff.

‘Oh, that’s good.’ Adelina responded dryly.

‘Well, you could be happier. Honestly Stitcher, sometimes I despair of you.’ The hob’s pleasant mouth drooped slightly and Adelina looked up from her worktable.

It seemed hours had passed with Gallivant gone. She had finished writing, shrunk the manuscript and sewn it into the body of the robe, and completed another silk scene on the gown. Breakfast had not appeared - a punishment she was sure - and she was as grateful to Aine as she would ever be. The thought of the over-sexed and angry Luther appearing once more in her room was too much to bear. She fingered the bruises on her arm where he had grabbed her.

‘Despair away, hob, but I am not happy and as like never to be happy again so don’t give me more grief than I am already drowning in.’ She threw down a handful of hoops and stalked to the window. ‘Hell and damnation, I want to get out of here.’

Gallivant ignored Adelina and leaned over her worktable. There were two neat piles on the table, one bigger than the other. ‘What are these?’

‘They’re the makings of the last two elements on the robe. Only two to go Gallivant, and I am done. The larger pile is the design for the middle back. It will be a an eye-catching centre-piece and I have no doubt Severine will be furious at my choice of subject but it hardly matters.’ She walked back to stand beside Gallivant and looked down at her work. ‘It’s hard to believe isn’t it, that my life ends with the last stitch I place on that robe. I am effectively embroidering my own death warrant.’ She moved away and sat in an elegant ladies’ chair by the fireplace, whilst Gallivant folded himself onto the tapestry-lidded coffer.

‘You think she will kill you?’ His face was as serious as Adelina had seen it, a furrowed young brow and a turn of the lips.

‘Of course. Killing comes as easy to her as burping to you or I. The point is that I’d have outlived my usefulness and she couldn’t let me go because she despises me. Besides, she would hardly want me to shout her perfidy from the rooftops. So you see - my life is measured by each length of thread that I cut. My life and Ajax’s.’

Gallivant jumped up in his energetic way and went back to the robe on the table. Adelina joined him and picked it up, carefully slipping a
wooden hanger through the armholes and placing it on the hook on the side of the armoire where Gallivant examined it, finger on his lips and one elbow cushioned in the other hand. ‘It’s beautiful, you really are an artist.’

Adelina scrutinized the garment with gimlet eyes. ‘I’ve grown to hate it. It’s bright, unsubtle and represents pain, hatred and humiliation.’

‘I think you’re too hard, Needlewoman. And perhaps too close to what it represented, even what it represents now. I know, I know,’ he raised his eyebrows at her as she went to speak. ‘It’s impossible to remove yourself from the emotions.’ He held up the part of the hem with Aladdin. ‘But look. Look at him! This is my favourite embroidery on the whole robe.’

‘Well, that rather proves my point. It’s bright enough to catch your attention and I didn’t do it anyway. Ana did. I merely applied it.’ Her mood darkened more.

‘It doesn’t matter. It sits perfectly. Anyway, where is his lamp?’

‘The charm is by the bed but it’s filthy dirty.’

‘And how fortuitous I returned.’ He slapped a dented tin box on the table and a soft piece of rag. ‘I pilfered some paste from the kitchens. Why don’t you clean it now? I should like to see him hold the lamp in his little hand.’ He pushed the rag into her fingers and opened the lid of the tin.

Adelina shrugged and grasped the charm, working the cleaning paste into the murky gold as Gallivant peered over her shoulder, watching as she began to burnish the tiny object that could be so easily lost in the folds of the cloth. Within seconds it was done and when held to the light by the tips of Adelina’s fingers, glistened and gleamed. She threaded a needle with some silk.

‘Are you going to attach it straight away?’ Gallivant picked the charm up and cradled it, examining every inch of the bauble.

‘Well, yes. Isn’t that what you wanted me to do?’ Adelina’s temper crackled,
the fuse smouldering and even her understanding of the importance of Gallivant to her sanity could not prevent sharpness in the voice.

‘Um, yes, but...’

‘But nothing. Give it here.’

‘No!’ The negative burst into the air. ‘I mean no’, he said more equably. ‘Look, there is still paste here, see?’

And indeed, right at the join of spout to bowl, a tiny smear of white remained. Adelina grabbed the rag, found a corner and manoevred it back and forth over the gold. ‘There’, she tipped her head at the hob. ‘Happy?’

But his eyes were fixed on the charm. ‘Adelina, your little wand, quickly!’

‘What?’

‘Adelina, the wand! Enlarge the lamp! Just do it!’

Adelina had never heard such terseness in the hob. Perhaps when she had spurned his initial overtures of friendship, but not since and it was enough to make her reach for the miniscule wand embedded in its wooly ball, and to tap the charm.

‘Grow bigger and be,

For I must see.’

But there was nothing to be observed in the opaque fog that completely surrounded the table and caused the hob and the charm and everything within range to disappear before Adelina’s eyes. She coughed in the misty air and when she ceased, a voice spoke to her. A voice that was deep and resonant and full of exotic echoes.

‘Lady, a thousand, a million gratitudes. You are my saviour, light of my life, queen of my dreams.’ The figure in front of her touched his brow, his lips and his middle and bowed. ‘Your wish is my command.’

‘I knew it’, said the hob smugly, clapping his hands. ‘Sink me, I knew it.’

Dressed in a black Raji tunic detailed with fine silver embroidery and narrow trousers which ended in a pair of quant slippers, the fellow who smiled at Adelina had a powerfully carved face with the darkest eyes and equally dark hair which flopped over the forehead. His mouth widened in a friendly smile.

Memories rushed through Adelina like a scouring wind. She sat
with a thump, her legs caving.

Gallivant grabbed her hand and rubbed it. ‘Adelina, Adelina.’

The figure stepped forward and knelt by her side. ‘My pardon, Lady. I had no wish to frighten you.’ His touch filled the empty corners of her soul and the shadow of her faint receded like an ebb tide. ‘My name is Rajeeb,’ he continued. ‘I am your djinn of the lamp.’ He looked up at her and she could barely breathe. ‘Lady of my life, as you can see, you have released me from a very cramped prison and I am exceedingly grateful. But whilst I did say your wish is my command, I must qualify that.’ He stood and brushed the rug fibres off the black silk of his knee. ‘I can grant you three wishes and then my debt to you is paid and I can once again wander free in the Raj.’

Adelina found it difficult to work her lips and when her voice emerged it was cracked and burning with raw memories of another Raji. ‘There are no such things as djinns.’

‘Say you?’ He laughed. ‘And what then happened with Aladdin?’

‘That’s a legend.’

‘I fear not, dear lady. It is history and fact. Besides, are the good folk of the far reaches of Eirie entitled to Others but the Raj is not? Fair mistress, you are either woefully naïve or despicably arrogant.’

Gallivant, disturbed at the frown between the djinn’s eyebrows, rushed to the side of his charge having heard bawling and uncouth noises below. ‘She is naïve. I have always said so and she has a mouth as loose as a starving man’s belt. She doesn’t mean ill. Now tell, what are the three wishes she should have?’

‘That is for the Lady to decide.’

‘Adelina’, Gallivant grabbed her hand and shook it. ‘Quick, think. Can you hear? Luther is coming and he will take his revenge. He is full of the grape. Do you wish the lout to part your thighs or do you wish to leave? HURRY.’ Fear for his friend made the hob’s voice rise to a falsetto as he jumped from foot to foot.

She heard Luther’s obscenities from the bottom of the stair and began to tremble, realizing this was her only chance, a chance where she had to trust Others and accept their help as Maeve had said. ‘To go, I wish my horse and I to go. Now.’

‘Two wishes
shall be done. And the third?’

She tried to think clearly, her ear on Luther’s noise, her mind slowing as fear took over. ‘I don’t know.’

‘ADELINA.’ Gallivant hopped about grabbing the robe, the wand and the objects on the table, including the djinn’s miniature lamp.

‘Lhiannon,’ the words ex
ploded from her lips in a rush. ‘Help Lhiannon.’

‘It is done. Prepare yourself.’

‘Wait,’ Gallivant grabbed a leather satchel. ‘Quick, shrink everything.’

Unquestioningly Adelina did as she was asked and the hob squashed all the minikin things into the bag and flung it over her head. Outside they could hear swearing as Luther tried to fit the key in the door and dropped it.

‘Now, please.’ Gallivant begged the djinn.

As the key turned,
a puff of fog filled the room.

As
the door was pushed open, the hob vanished through the walls.

Luther stared.

The room was empty.

Chapter Eighteen

‘Where are you,
bicce
?’ Luther launched himself to the garde-robe and flung open the door but it revealed an uninhabited space. He bounced off the frame and staggered back into the room, sobriety beginning to trickle through his blood vessels as he swung round in a circle, noticing the robe had gone. ‘I’ll find you, woman,’ he roared, ‘and so help me I shall make you rue the day you decided to cross me!’

Then he remembered the horse and raced to the spot on the edge of the forest where he had left Ajax. The smashed rails and a short trail of broken timber gave him brief hope that he could follow but Huon’s storm had washed everything free of indent and any trail had become slick with mud.

He bellowed, the reality of his predicament filling every pore of his being. Adelina and the robe had gone and in his charge. By Behir, he should just slit his own throat this instant. Returning to the manor, he thought how apt, how ironic it should be that the staff should tell him Madame was back early and in the most odd mood. Luther fingered the dagger at his belt. A quick stroke and it would be over.
But for whom?

The glimmering lights had disappeared, leaving the cavern as dark as Hades. Phelim’s dory wallowed in a slight slop close to what he perceived was the entrance
. He sat, disconsolate and frustrated, wondering what he was supposed to do to depart.
Mesmer? Is that how it should be?

A loud grating filled the air and veils of soil and dust from scraped rocks fell about him as the cavern yielded a piece of daylight. Ever widening, a mouth yawned to make an exit as the two isles slid apart. The dory glided through, disquieted passenger at the helm
, and within moments had floated beyond the shadows of the islands.

Looking back at vanishing Hy-Breasil, Phelim longed for the familiarity of his pastoral life and for Ebba but the souls burned with icy coldness
against his side. He reached for the ropes and hoisted the mainsail, unsurprised to find the canvas whole again. As he had been unsurprised to see the damage on the boat itself completely mended. But whereas before he accepted such things as unconsciously right, now, under duress, he was annoyed at the slick secretiveness of it all.

A watery sun with a vestige of opalescent sea mist hung directly overhead; thus he assumed it was the middle of the day. As to where in this wide west sea he now floated, he had no idea. He allowed the breeze to feather his mainsail and push him slowly ahead. He assumed that some eldritch current bore him north and so he surrendered his boat to its ministrations.

There was food in the bottom of the boat and a bladder full of water but he touched neither, unable to stomach anything. He twisted a rope tightly around the tiller to fix his course and then he abandoned himself to the mother-like rocking of the ocean beneath him. He wanted night to fall, the better to chart the rest of his journey but at the moment his anxious mind wandered haphazardly along the paths of his past and future.

His life till now had been safe and as predictable as the seasons. He reveled in his work for the Squire - not for the Squire’s sake but for his own because Ebba had taught him t
o take joy in small things, the small things adding up to something truly remarkable. He had no higher aspirations - why should he? He was as fulfilled as someone who loved the land and its response to the seasons could be. But was fulfillment enough? According to the Faeran patently not, because they believed there was always something better, bigger, more perfect.

Finding out he was Other had destroyed his equilibrium. It opened a gaping hole in the fabric of his life as surely as if a giant had rent it. What does it feel, he agonized, when someone loses their identity? He thought of a tree in a fierce autumn gale - the bright red and yellow leaves disappearing until only the nondescript twig and branch remain, leaving nothing by which to identify it. He thought of a man without memory. A man without recall is nothing, thus how does he become something? He had no memory of Faeran, so how could he
be
Faeran? He floundered in the purgatory of No Man’s Land - neither mortal nor Other and everything he knew of the Faeran, every snippet, every tale made him want to scream to the stars,
Never!

The dory flew across the wave and it seemed to Phelim he flew toward a life he wanted least. He craved to turn and head for home but the souls rested against his side and burned into his skin each time he thought thus and he felt they punished him for his reticence.

The graceful shape of a black swan winged its way over him, to bank and turn the way it had come. Briefly as he glimpsed the bird his heart lightened as he realized land was close and he allowed the sea and the breeze to speed him on.

‘How? How did she get away?’ The high-pitched voice strangulated with suppressed emotion.

‘She could not have got out without help.’ Sweat beaded on Luther’s heavy upper lip. ‘And that help could only be Other because I have the key round my neck at all times. No trail, nothing. It reeks of Other meddling.’

Severine turned away from Luther. If only a stiletto had been handy… But a fear twitched at her fingers and behind her knees, making them tremble. For the first time ever, she felt the weight of the whole Other world pressing down.

When the Swan Maid and the servant-girl had flown away with the souls, she suspected she was pitched against Others but she had pushed the thought away, deceived into a false security in the guise of Huon, of the Ravens, of Gertus. Now, to have an intimation of Adelina being helped by Others, that they allied themselves against her, meant difficulties on a wholly different scale. For if nothing else, her years had taught her of the immense power of the Other world. She tried to speak, her mouth dry and tacky, the words cracking.

‘Leave me, Luther. Leave me before I heave a knife through your breast. Pack for Veniche because we shall leave in the morning and I need to make haste on the road.’

Luther slunk away but she called to him as he reached for the doorhandle. ‘Luther, you will redeem yourself in Veniche.’ Severine gathered herself, fear transposing to anger. ‘You will seek and search and when you find Adelina - for have no doubt that is where she has gone - you shall retrieve the robe and bring the
bicce
to me. She was the bane of my life when we were young and is twice that now and I want to be rid of her.’ She twisted her hands together until the bones glistened white. ‘She will beg me for her life and then you shall cut her throat very slowly.’

She heard the latch click as Luther left and subsided with a rustle of violet silk onto the stool near the fire. Why had she let him go unscathed? The goblin had been despatched for less. Did she need him because she was afraid?

Fraught, she tried to clear her head and begin to plan.
The souls are again on the high seas. I will set the Ravens on the trail between Veniche and the last point at which the boat was seen. By Behir, I wish I’d known the maidservant had been Faeran. I would have used the ring on her, sucked her deceitful soul right then and there and at least had something...

And Adelina? Other help or no, she also headed for Veniche. Had Luther not heard her chattering to that miscreant maidservant that the Museo waited for a masterpiece from the embroiderer? There was absolutely no doubt in Severine’s mind that while the Traveller was in Veniche, she would deliver the robe to the famous gallery. Her ego, so full of itself, demanded it.

But wait. Might there not be other eldritch champions with Adelina?

She sighed.
So what?
I have the ring, the ultimate weapon. Perhaps I can mesmer?
Her heart skipped a beat.
Could I mesmer?
For a moment, a moment only, she chastised herself for removing the goblin from her life. He would have been able to explain the cantrips to her in more detail - those valuable strips, folded away in their casket.

But then, she thought, am I not Severine the changeling? I who studied the Others and their lore all my life? What could the goblin tell me that I don’t already know?

Nothing.

She stood and brushed her hands together as if removing dust and dirt. Composed again, doubt and fear pushed into the darkest corners of her mind.

The djinn deposited Adelina on the edge of a forest. She stood unsteadily for a moment, waiting for her head to catch up with her body.

There had been a puff of mist smelling of sandalwood and then she had felt as if she fainted. Sounds converged and then echoed away into a roaring distance. She shut her eyes at the vicious vertigo and allowed herself to fall. After that she could remember nothing except a broad chest in a Raji tunic supporting her head and strong arms around her as she struggled to
find her feet. ‘Is the Lady well now?’

Rajeeb’s deep tones soothed her ruffled spirits. She was unsure if it had been the journey or the presence of heart-breaking memories that disturbed her equilibrium the most. She pushed at her support. ‘I am,’ she responded crisply, ‘thank you.’

‘It is my pleasure, Madame.’ Rajeeb led her gently to a log, encouraging her to sit as he continued to hold her hand. ‘I was in your debt as I had been in that little lamp for more years than there are stars in the sky. I was placed there as a punishment because I ran away with a mortal maid. My family are djinns of the highest rank who saw me as their shame, and my father gave me a choice, once he had turned my beloved into a pillar of salt. I could be a djinn his family could be proud of, causing death and destruction, or I could be imprisoned in the lamp. I chose the lamp because I didn’t care about life after I lost my love and because I knew confinement would be better than living by that dark paternal side for infinity.’ He grimaced. ‘So you see, you and I share a similar pain, that of love and loss and confinement. But I hadn’t realised my esteemed father had shrunk the lamp to a piece of jewelry.’ He smoothed his fingers over Adelina’s hands and then shrugged with profound equanimity. ‘Ah well, such is life. So! You are my saviour as I have said, and no doubt you wonder where we are.’ He waved his arm. ‘We are on the edge of the Luned Forest. And you will no doubt wonder why I have brought you here. You asked for your horse, Adelina. He is here.’

The Traveller opened her mouth.

‘Stop,’ the djinn lifted a peremptory hand in the air. ‘You asked for your horse to be with you but he had already gone when I went to mesmer him. Nevertheless, in the way of a djinn I found him here. Remember Adelina, you asked for you and the horse to be away from your prison, simply that. They were two of your wishes. Your third was for Lhiannon’s safety. I have carried out your first wish, you are away from the soul-thief. Your second wish is to be with your horse. I leave now to enact your third wish.’ Rajeeb touched his brow, his lips and bowed over the hand that touched his middle. ‘Follow the path.’

With a waft of sandalwood, he was gone.