The Thirteen Hallows (17 page)

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t’s raining.”

“It’s always raining in this cursed country.”

“What a godforsaken place.”

A shadow fell across them. “No place is forsaken by God.”

Both men turned away and bent to their tasks as the raven-haired boy passed. They refused to meet his cold, empty eyes, and both surreptitiously touched amulets and talismans stitched inside their clothing. The boy looked back over his shoulder, lips curled in a wry smile, as if he knew what they were doing.

The gray-haired, white-bearded man standing in the prow placed his arm on his nephew’s shoulder and pointed toward the distant line of the white cliffs. “We’ll be there before the night falls.”

Rain hissed across the waves, thrumming against the leather sail, spattering off the wooden deck. “Are we far from home, Uncle?”

“Far indeed, Yeshu’a. We’ll make landfall on the beach below the cliffs.”

The boy rested his elbows on the rail and leaned forward, staring curiously toward the approaching land. “Uncle, the sailors think we’ve come perilously close to the edge of the world, and the Egyptian is predicting that if we were to sail a day farther west, we will fall off the edge.”

“The Egyptian, despite his learning, is a fool. If we were to sail a day west and north, we would encounter another land, a wondrous green land, peopled by savage warlike tribes. It is a land rich in gold, and its people are skilled in working the soft metal.”

“Will we travel there, Uncle?”

“Not this time.” The older man pulled his woolen hood over his head as the wind shifted, driving the sleeting rain into his face. “We will trade for tin, spend ten days replenishing our supplies, and then return home.”

The boy, Yeshu’a, turned his face to the rain, closing his eyes and opening his mouth to catch the icy water. “It tastes of cold soil and bitter herbs,” he said without opening his eyes. Then he turned his head and his dark eyes opened and fixed on his uncle. “What will you trade for the tin?”

“So many questions! Well, not the usual trade goods. These people are artisans and craftsmen; they only appreciate the interesting and the unusual.” He gestured toward the center of the squat-bellied ship, where an assortment of items lay covered beneath an oiled leather tarpaulin. “One of the reasons they will trade with me, when they refuse to do business with others, is because I always bring them something unusual. Sometimes I think they are like children, desiring only the newest toys.”

He stopped suddenly, realizing that he was alone. The boy had wandered away, moving sure-footedly down the length of the ship toward the covered goods. The Master Mariner shook his head and turned back toward the land. Yeshu’a was his grandniece’s child, a strange boy who had been an oddity from the moment of his birth. He looked and acted far beyond his young years, preferring the company of adults to children; however, for some reason his very presence made many adults nervous. He was given to wandering off by himself for days at a time, and although he had reached the age where he should have been beginning to learn a trade, he showed no interest in any of the crafts.

Josea was hoping that this trip to the edge of the world would pique the boy’s interest. If it did, then he would take him on as his apprentice, teach him the ways of the sea, and show him the wonders of the world: the lands of the Yellow Folk of the far east, the hairy demon breeds of the mountains, men with hair the color of fire, skin the color of chalk. It would be enough to capture any man’s imagination.

It had captured Josea’s imagination when he was a boy.

Josea’s father, Joshua, had first taken him to sea when he too was a child. It had been a short journey, north and west to the countless isles of the Greek Sea. Joshua had shown him the cities beneath the waves, perfect streets, paved roads, grand houses, glittering palaces, and ornate statues. He regaled him with tales of the lost civilization that had once thrived there, and he gave him a dagger, plucked by a diver from one of the houses beneath the waves. He told him there were other civilizations, other races, other mysteries and treasures to be found.

Josea still carried the knife, an extraordinary creation of banded metal and copper wire, long bladed and ornate, incised with a spiraling pattern that he had not encountered again until he had come to the Tin Lands. When this trip was complete, he would take the boy to the Greek Sea. Together they would explore the many islands, search for treasures in the golden sands…and maybe Josea would be able to convince the boy to follow him.

Josea turned to look at the white cliffs again. They were nearer now, and already fires were burning on the clifftops, warning of the approaching ship. This was a hard life, but not a bad life, and no harder than that of the craftsman, the farmer, or the shepherd. Glancing over his shoulder, he watched his nephew examining the trade goods, then turned back to the approaching cliffs. All he had to do was direct the boy’s curiosity.

Yeshu’a’s long fingers moved over the leather-wrapped bundles. Closing his mind to the countless thoughts and emotions buffeting him, concentrating on the endless hiss of the sea to clear his head, he picked up a package and undid the leather cord that bound it. Color blazed against the gray morning air. Yeshu’a smiled his rare and wondrous smile. It was a cloak, a cloak woven of deep crimson feathers, the pattern and patina of the feathers marvelously placed and shaped to give the faintest impression of an ornate design on the back of the cloak.

On impulse, the boy pulled it onto his shoulders, enveloping himself in its deliciously delicate feathers. And then his smile faded and his lips twisted in a bitter grimace. A wave of terror rose up to engulf him. He was trapped in a net, struggling helplessly, bones snapping in a desperate effort to pull free…and was surrounded by countless thousands of birds. Red-feathered birds, squawking, screeching in terror. And creeping through the bushes were dark-skinned men with painted faces and spears in their hands.

The boy pulled off the cloak and tossed it onto the deck.

“Yeshu’a!”

The boy turned, eyes blank and expressionless. His uncle was glaring at him. “Pick that up, and wrap it before the seawater destroys it. It cost me a fortune.”

Yeshu’a reluctantly touched the cloak again and wrapped the leather sheet around it. He had the briefest glimpse of the struggling birds, but he savagely blanked the thoughts from his mind. As he searched through the items, his slender fingers touched cold metal.

When he unwrapped the leather covering, he discovered the sword. He touched it, and heat flowed along the length of his arm….

Sarah Miller awoke with a start, convinced that she had just stood on the boat with the boy and his uncle. She had been holding a three-foot shining broad-bladed sword, the hilt wrapped in rich red leather, the blade etched and incised with spirals and intricate knotwork. But when she looked at her hands, she was almost disappointed to find she was holding only a rusted chunk of metal. Lifting her hands, she discovered that some of the rust had come off and coated her sweating flesh in red dye, the color of fresh blood.

Sarah looked up to find Owen standing in front of her, wreathed in steam. His damp hair was already curling up, and his broad naked chest was glistening with water beads. His muscular torso was wrapped in a thick peach towel. “I thought I heard you cry out.”

“I dozed off. There was a dream,” she began, and stopped, realizing Owen was staring at her bloody hands.

“You should go and wash them,” he said gently. “People might get the wrong impression.”

She looked at her stained hands and smiled grimly. “I’m pretty sure they already have.”

Robert Elliot had been preparing for a day like this for a very long time.

There was money salted away in a dozen accounts in as many names in banks all across the world. He held legitimate passports in four nationalities. He was prepared for what he needed to do.

He was prepared to disappear.

The small man pulled the leather suitcase out of the closet and tossed it onto the bed. It was kept permanently packed.

He had no illusions that his employer would come looking for him. Nor had he any illusions about the man’s capabilities. Although Elliot and his employees had accounted for five of the deaths of the elderly men and women, he suspected there were others that the voice on the phone had taken care of personally. Only last week he’d read something in the paper about a rich codger found dead in his pool. “Died in agony,” the report read. Elliot knew that was his employer’s signature: Right from the beginning he had been very particular that the old people had to suffer.

The first call had come in two months earlier at three o’clock in the morning. Elliot was just getting in from one of the West End clubs when the phone had rung. The answering machine had clicked on, and the voice had spoken. “Pick up the phone, Mr. Elliot, I know you’re there. You’re wearing your charcoal gray Armani suit, a blue silk shirt, midnight blue tie, and matching handkerchief, Dubarry loafers, black silk socks…”

He’d picked up the phone, knowing that it was trouble, knowing that he was in trouble: He was being watched. “There is an envelope in the top drawer of your desk. Open it and then we will talk.” The caller hung up.

Robert Elliot had felt the first touch of fear.

His apartment should have been impregnable: The caller was demonstrating his power, his access to Elliot’s life. The envelope had contained a single sheet of paper bearing the name and address of a man living in Brixton. Thomas Sexton. Elliot had never heard of him.

The phone rang again, and the caller explained that Sexton had an artifact, an antique whetstone: a flat, circular stone with a round hole in the middle. The caller wanted that stone. And Elliot was to kill Thomas Sexton in a particularly bloody manner. The caller was very specific—the man’s chest had to be opened, heart and lungs removed, and then the stone was to be placed into the bloody cavity and left there until it was completely coated in blood. Elliot had hung up without saying a word and unplugged the phone from the wall.

The first post brought a parcel. When he’d cut through the packaging and the plastic bag within, Elliot recoiled from the noxious stench that filled the room: It was the left arm, complete with the black scorpion tattoo, of a young man he’d been forced to dispose of three months earlier. Eight-by-ten high-resolution glossy photographs accompanied the parcel, showing Elliot digging the grave in the New Forest, tossing the naked body in, and covering it up again, then returning to his car.

The photos were all time-stamped.

Two hours later, a courier had brought Elliot an envelope containing a single sheet of paper. It listed all of his accounts with their current balances.

A million pounds had just been deposited in his savings account.

When the phone rang in the early hours of the morning, he knew he had little choice but to obey the caller. He’d taken out his frustration on Thomas Sexton. The man had died hard.

Elliot realized that he’d always known a day like this would come—a day when he would fail and his employer would turn on him. He still didn’t know how Miller and the boy had eluded him. What mattered was that he had lost them both.

He had lost the sword.

Opening the wall safe, Robert Elliot pulled out his passports and sorted through them quickly. He shoved the two English and American passports into his briefcase and pushed the wine-colored Irish passport into his pocket. Today he was Rónán Eagan, computer salesman. He would not need a passport to fly to the Irish Republic, and once there he could fly anywhere in the world. Elliot glanced at his watch: an hour to Heathrow, then another hour to Dublin. He could be in Ireland before noon, in the States before nightfall.

And then he’d be safe.

Skinner finished the last of the can, crumpled it in his fist, and tossed it into the corner. Squeezing his eyes shut, he willed himself to weep, but he had no tears to cry. Yet he could feel the emotion bubbling inside him, acrid and bitter. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, he curled up on the filthy mattress in the fetal position, turning his face to the flaking wall, and thought of Karl. He could still see Miller bursting into the room, Karl landing one or two good ones on her, then the briefest glimpse of the rusty metal in the woman’s hands. And then the sound, that awful sickening, crunching sound of the sword sinking into flesh. For an instant—the briefest of instants—he’d imagined he’d seen a gleaming metal sword in Miller’s hands. And as Karl had tumbled and fallen, she’d hit him again, and then Skinner truly had seen the sword blaze whole and complete in the moment it took Karl’s head from his shoulders.

The skinhead swallowed bile.

Karl…dear, dead Karl; he’d loved that boy, truly loved him. They’d had some great times together. But Skinner couldn’t remember the times. All he could see now was his lover falling to the ground, his head spinning slowly away in the opposite direction. He would not even be able to claim the body.

Wrapping his arms tightly around himself, Skinner ground his teeth together. This was all Elliot’s fault, and Miller’s, especially that bitch Sarah Miller. And by Christ, they were both going to pay.

On the ground beside the filthy mattress, his cell phone started buzzing, vibrating against the bare boards.

Skinner ignored it, and it stopped.

Then started again.

He snatched it up and looked at the screen—unlisted number. It was probably Elliot. For a moment he thought about not answering, but that might bring the psychopath around to his flat, and he didn’t want that. His fingers stabbed the buttons hard enough to break them. “What!”

“You are Nick Jacobs, but you are commonly called Skinner, so that is how I will address you.” The voice was deep and commanding.

“Who the fuck is this?”

“I am Robert Elliot’s employer. His former employer.”

Skinner straightened. “You’re the guy he keeps phoning?”

“I am.” There was a long silence broken only by the line clicking and snapping. “Tell me, Skinner, what happened tonight?”

“Miller and the bloke got away. Karl was killed,” he added bitterly.

“And you were close to Karl?”

“I was. It was Elliot’s fault. We should never have gone in there in the first place. We should have snatched the bitch on the streets.”

“I would agree. It is Elliot’s fault Karl is dead. You should exact your revenge.”

Skinner sat up straight. “I will.”

“Did you know that Mr. Elliot is planning to flee the country?”

“When?”

“Within the hour. If you’re going to catch him, you will have to be quick.”

“I don’t have his address. He never told me.”

“Mr. Elliot was a very cautious man.” There was a pause, then the voice asked, “Would you like his address?”

“Yes sir, I would.”

“Good. Very good, Skinner. I believe we’re going to get on quite well. Need I remind you that you’re now working for me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“After I’ve given you the address, and your instructions, I’ll give you a phone number. You may reach me there at any time.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Skinner…”

“Yes, sir?”

“Tell him that running was a mistake. Make him suffer.”

“Oh, you can count on that,” Skinner said grimly.