Toymaker, The (13 page)

‘Where is it, little boy?’ he said.

‘He can’t catch us both,’ said Katta. ‘He can only get one.’

An iron poker was leaning against the fireplace – it wasn’t much, but it was something. Dropping the pistol, she grabbed at the poker and held it unsteadily in both hands. Valter smiled. This was going to be a good game. He drew his long knife from his coat and moved slowly towards her; she circled round the table, keeping it between them. It was now or not at all.

‘Run!’ she shouted, and swung at Valter’s head with the poker. She missed; he caught the end of it one-handed and jerked it away from her. But Mathias had already leaped onto the bed and down the other side. The dwarf leaped after him, slashing at him with his knife, but he only caught the curtains that hung around the bed. They ripped and fell, and in that moment’s confusion, as Valter wrestled himself free of the heavy folds of cloth, Katta and Mathias were through the door and down the
passage. But they had only a moment’s start before the dwarf was after them. They could hear him coming. They ran, but he was too quick for them. He caught hold of Mathias by the back of his neck and slammed his head into the wall. Mathias dropped like a sack. Katta turned round to face him.

Valter was standing over Mathias with his knife drawn – when Koenig shot him.

Koenig had heard the crack of Katta’s pistol shot. Everybody had. But only he had known what it meant. He was out of his chair and, not caring who got in his way, across the crowded room before anyone else had moved. He took the stairs at a run, the cocked pistol already in his hand.

The door of the room had been broken in. Stefan was lying in a heap against one wall. Koenig knelt and turned him over. The boy was unconscious. He had a deep wound across his forehead and his face was a mask of blood. Koenig took in the disorder – the table overturned, the bed hangings pulled down – but of Mathias and Katta there was no sign.

He swore.

They hadn’t passed him, so he knew they must have gone the other way. He ran back through the
door and down the empty passage. Even as he did so, he heard the thump of Mathias’s head against the wall and Katta’s gasp of breath.

Then he turned the corner.

As Valter heard the sound of Koenig behind him, he let go of Mathias’s hair and, twisting round in one liquid movement, stood grinning, knife ready in his hand—

And Koenig shot him.

The pistol ball caught the dwarf in the middle of his chest. It lifted him clean off his feet and smashed him into the window behind. In a shower of breaking glass the frame gave way and Valter went backwards into the dark, snow-filled courtyard below.

For an instant none of them moved. Koenig stood with the smoking pistol levelled at the place where Valter had been, then slowly he let his arm drop. Katta closed her eyes, her heart hammering in her chest. Mathias lay staring at the ceiling, breathing in snatched gasps. Koenig stepped over him and, leaning out of the broken window, looked down into the courtyard.

But there was no one there.

He craned his head out, looking both ways along
the length of the wall, trying to see where the dwarf had crawled to before he’d died. But there was no sign of him at all. Just a line of freshly made tracks disappearing into the darkness.

Other people were arriving now, crowding into the passage behind Koenig, wanting to know what had happened. He turned and pushed his way through them, ignoring all their questions. The boy and the girl were safe enough for the moment. He had to see to Stefan.

Katta stood there, dazed, the deafening sound of the pistol shot ringing in her head. Everything had happened so quickly.

A wind was blowing through the broken window. It was wet with snow. A man in a blue coat was asking her if she was hurt, but she barely heard him.

She was shaking.

She knelt down beside Mathias and put her hand against his face. His eyes were wide with terror.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘He’s gone.’

He looked up at her, but he didn’t really see her. He could still see the face of the dwarf and the long silver knife.

‘It’s all right,’ she said.

She put her arms around him and held him while
the people crowded about them and stared.

Someone lifted her up. They set her on her feet. It was the man in the blue coat. He bent down and picked up Mathias in his arms, then carried him back along the passage, up the small flight of steps to the room with the broken-in door.

Dumbly Katta followed him.

Koenig had already lifted Stefan onto the bed. He’d torn a sheet into lengths and was trying to stop the blood. Stefan was lolling like a rag doll. Katta had never needed to think about what she’d do after she’d blinded the boy. There had only ever been the blinding, and nothing else. But this was real and there was so much blood.

She felt sick.

Koenig turned and saw the man carrying Mathias. ‘Is he hurt?’ he said.

Katta couldn’t say anything. She was still staring at Stefan.

‘Is he hurt?’ asked Koenig again.

The words shook her awake. ‘Yes,’ she said.

Koenig took her hand, stuffed the wad of torn sheet into it and pressed it against Stefan’s head. ‘Press it hard,’ he said.

Then, taking Mathias from the man, he set him
down on the edge of the bed. Mathias moaned.

Stefan was completely senseless. She had to hold him upright. But she could see what she’d done to him now. Right across his forehead was a cut down to the bone – she could see the white of it. If Mathias hadn’t woken him when he did, the blade would have gone through both his eyes like a razor.

The thought of what that would have done stuffed the breath up inside her. How could she have thought she could do that?

She pressed the torn wad of sheet to Stefan’s head, but the blood just kept coming. She looked up, imploring someone to help.

The man in the blue coat reached down and took the sodden cloth from her hand. There was a water jug beside the bed. He flicked his head towards it. ‘Get some more,’ he said. ‘Go on.’

Still shaking, she picked up the jug and, pushing her way through the crowd of people that were gawping at the doorway, stepped out into the passage and took a deep gulp of breath and then another.

Downstairs the inn was astir. Some men had taken lanterns and gone looking outside, but the tracks they found in the snow led straight into the dark
forest. No one was going to follow them in there. There was little more that could be done. Snow was falling. By daylight the tracks would be covered over and that had to be an end of it.

Katta made her way down the stairs. The air was thick with pipe smoke and the smell of people. One of the girls showed her to the water pump in a dark stone room at the back of the inn.

At the top of the steps that led down to it, Katta stopped. On the far side of the little room, a door led to the outside world. It was bolted fast, but it buffeted on its hinges as the wind blew and she could see that it wasn’t locked.

If she filled the jug and went back upstairs, Stefan would tell Koenig what she’d done. And then what?

Or she could steal a coat and slip away through that door. No one was watching. They wouldn’t even know she’d gone. They’d never find her. There had to be a hundred places she could hide.

She put the jug down on the floor and looked back over her shoulder to where the coats were hung to dry. It would be so easy to take one. But if she did, she’d be leaving Mathias behind and suddenly, in ways that she couldn’t even begin to explain, that seemed a much worse thing to do.

She stood with her back against the wall, looking at the door and at the coats, but she just couldn’t do it. It was always that same thought that stopped her.

Mathias.

Taking a deep breath, she picked up the jug again and filled it.

When she got back to the upstairs room, several things had changed. The man in the blue coat had gone and there were no people in the doorway and that wasn’t good. She’d counted on there being other people there. Stefan had been laid down on the bed and for one wild moment, not of guilt but relief, she thought that he was dead and that she was safe. But then she realized that, like Tashka had done to Mathias, Koenig must have given Stefan some drug to make him sleep. He’d smeared the cut with that same thick black paste, and it had stopped bleeding.

She put the jug of water down beside the bed. She could feel Mathias watching her, but she couldn’t look at him. A confusion of thoughts was rushing through her head. If she could find the knife, she could throw it away – maybe drop it out of the window into the snow – and then Koenig would
never know. But that was no good, because Stefan would still tell as soon as he woke up. She cast her eyes about the floor for the knife, but she couldn’t see it anywhere. It must have been kicked beneath the bed or under the large wooden chest that stood against the wall. Her cap lay where she’d thrown it. She picked it up.

Koenig had wiped his hands clean on a piece of torn sheet and was setting the upturned table back on its legs. He put the chair next to it. As he did so, something caught his eye. Katta saw it too.

On the floor where the table had lain was Stefan’s knife.

Koenig bent down and picked it up. He knew whose knife it was. There was blood on the blade. He turned and looked at Katta. There was no going back now and she knew it.

‘I cut him,’ she said.

How could she even begin to explain? She was still holding her leather cap. She held it out towards Koenig, but her hand was shaking.

‘He’s why I wear this,’ she said. ‘Why I wear it every stinking minute of every stinking day.’ Her eyes were filling with angry tears. ‘It was him what done it. He threw the stone. I knowed it the minute
I saw him, so I took his knife and I cut him, and you can do what you like, ’cos I don’t care.’

She stood there, her face so fierce that Mathias thought she was going to try and fight. He didn’t know what he could do if she did. But Koenig didn’t move. He didn’t take his eyes from her.

‘You could have said.’

‘Yeah, well, I didn’t.’

His eyes never leaving her, he carefully wiped the sharp blade of the knife, then folded it shut with a click. ‘Let me give you some advice, girl,’ he said slowly in a cold, dangerous whisper. ‘Never do anything out of revenge. Once you start, it will never let you go. Believe me, I know.’

He put the knife in his pocket, still looking at her with those hard, slate-grey eyes. ‘You’ve had your blood,’ he said. ‘Don’t even think about taking any more.’

He pushed the hand that held the cap away. ‘Put it back on,’ he said.

In the night, snow fell. By the morning it had buried the road through the forest in an impassable deep, white drift. There was no leaving the inn now, even had they wanted to. When Stefan woke, Koenig had
spoken to him, but what he’d said Katta didn’t know and she wasn’t going to ask. Stefan watched her darkly as she moved about, and she pretended not to notice him doing it.

She tried to keep her distance from him. She took herself downstairs and stood in the doorway of the small snug room behind the bar, watching the two fine ladies playing cards and backgammon in front of the fire. When they saw her, they gave her little pieces of cut apple to eat, as though she were a pet. She wondered what it must be like to be a lady and dress in silks and satins. When she went back to the room, she tried to walk as she imagined a fine lady might walk, but the serving girls saw her on the stairs and laughed. They knew their own sort when they saw it. Any other time and she’d have slapped their faces for them, but not now. She’d seen enough blood already.

It was another day before they could leave the inn. By then the ladies were leaving as well. They said that Katta, Mathias and Stefan could ride with them for a while in their coach. They weren’t going to Felissehaven, but at least part of their journey lay the same way. Katta couldn’t believe it. Her face shone with excitement. It was as though she had forgotten
everything else. She combed her hair and tidied her clothes. When the time came, she stepped into the small coach and sat like a queen, her hands folded in her lap. Mathias took the place next to her and Stefan pressed himself into the furthest corner, where he sat watching Katta in brooding silence.

Koenig rode behind the coach with the two gentlemen. They had hired horses for themselves at the inn. Koenig’s big horse towered over them both. Mathias thought that he looked more like a highwayman now than a gentleman. Perhaps the two men thought so too because they didn’t look at all comfortable with the arrangement. Or perhaps that was just because they weren’t riding in the coach.

As the coach rolled out into the deep snow, Koenig’s big horse suddenly pricked its ears and stopped dead. Koenig patted its huge neck and followed its gaze out into the silent, snow-covered trees, but he could see nothing.

‘Steady, Razor,’ he said quietly.

The horse shook its mane and reluctantly walked on.

But it had been right.

From the deep cover of the trees, Valter watched them go.