A Thousand Glass Flowers (The Chronicles of Eirie 3) (23 page)

‘Lalita.’ Finnian’s voice was soft. ‘I won’t hurt you, I promise.
I must ge
t you to safety, that is all.’
He reached for her hand and she let him take her, her body trembling as if she suffered a putrid fever.

As they entered the massive square that seethed with the dawn populace, she was convinced everyone could see the shadow of blood, would know that she had murdered, that she was guilty.
I am Lalita Khatoun, Arifa pr
otect me, I am Lalita Khatoun.
She tried to
push the chant into the ugly places of her mind as Finnian hustled her, keeping to the shadows, edging toward the gate in the wall, holding her close as he pushed into a rope
of folk heading to the ghats.
She was desperate to blend, to hide, to be part of the crowd who would lave their bodies in the sacred waters of the Ahmad and pray to Lady Aine to deliver them and their families from the trials and tribulations of their earthly life.

She tripped and fell to her knees, the stones digging in.
‘I can’t walk Finnian, I c…
’

‘You can.’
He took a firm hold of her arm and pulled her behind him, down the steps and along the ghats to a row of quaint boats with worn and cracked paint and upswept prows with accusin
g eyes painted on either side.
She was scooped off her feet and thrust into a craft that had large flakes of black underneath the turquoise and blue, the boat rocking fractiou
sly as he jumped in after her.
The rope looped under, over and through and the odd vessel fed into the eddying currents along the edge of the river.

Lalita collapsed onto the damp floor, her
heartbeat slowing a fraction.
She concentrated her sight on Finnian because if she let even a whisper of a thought at what she had just done in the do
or, she knew she would go mad.
So she watched him as
he scrutinized the shore.
On the edge of her vision, a swirl of smoke funneled into the sky from the ghats downstream as the deceased of Fahsi were cremated with honour and love.

The craft floated out into the middle of the river and Finnian continued his
surveillance.
One smoke stack funneled into a swirl that resembled a whirlwind and amongst the ebb and flow of wailing widows it seemed to Lalita as if it were a blatant signal with someone shouting
‘Murderer, murderer.’

***

Finnian looked down at her da
maged face.
A cut on her temple oozed glutinous blood and a graze ran from the contusion to the middle of her cheek which was mottled
and marbled with red and blue.
He wanted to gentle her, tell her all things would be well even though he knew they were
far from a modicum of safety.
This was a woman he could love and he wanted t
o halt time so that he should.
But there
was
no time and Lalita now sat dry-eyed on the floor of the boat, her legs pulled up and surrounded by the circle of her arms, shielding herself from rape by the world, the battered face a mask of misery.

‘How did you do that?’ her voice trembled.

‘Do what?’

‘The boat.
How did you untie the ropes without touching them and propel it downstream without paddle or sail?’

‘It’s a Færan boat
.
I had used it alr
eady and knew which one it was.
No one else would see it there, it appears to have
a knack of disguising itself.
It has a personality of its own.’

She barely responded to his wry comment, instead seeking the shores, her eyes wide and
frightened.
Later, sh
e spoke in a querulous manner. ‘Where are we going?
If we keep on the Ahmad we shall end at the delta and be stalled in muddy channels and they will find us.’

‘I intend for us to head to a Gate.’

‘A Gate?’

‘We must get away from here, Lalita.’

‘Curiosa?’
The skin beneath the cuts and bruises began to whiten.

‘Put your head
between your legs, that’s it.’
He bent across and rubbed the back of her neck, not
icing her flinch at his touch.
‘
Breathe, just breathe slowly.’
Aine but
she was a strong little thing.
He never imagined she could kill a man.
Defend herself yes, but kill?
He kept rubbing, relishing the softness of her skin and the way loose strands of her hair caught in his fingers so that he had to untangle them with care.

‘I despise myself.
I started as a thi
ef and finished as a murderer.
I took a life.’

‘Lalita, it was you or him.
Alright now?’

She nodded but he recognized self-loathing
and disgust in her expression.
And fear.
Ah yes, my sweet thing,
I recognize that.

‘What of Curiosa?’
She pushed his hand away.

‘Curiosa was unconscious.’
Finnian returned his hand to her neck as he remembered the way the antiquarian had looked around at the invisible shade who had deliberately rattled the glass pendants of a lam
p.
He had enjoyed the subterfuge, s
caring the man out of his wits.
‘
I knocked him out at his desk.
He was drinking copiously and his hand was shaki
ng like an old man with palsy.
He is a complication neither you nor I need.’

‘I thought you would kill him.’

‘So di
d I but I didn’t,’ he replied.
‘And he is so witles
s now, his silence is a given.
But Kurdeesh would have
been another story altogether.
If you hadn’t killed that fat whore-son, then
I
would have.’
The gentle lapping of the river was a false counterpoint to his words as the boat floated around rock
y bends with high escarpments.
Above, kites and vultures drifted on the
hot eddies of the Symmer wind.
‘Can you talk about it?’

She closed her eyes and they flickered as she drew on the memories
.
‘He wanted the paperweights’, she said, taking slow breaths, ‘and I wouldn’t tell him what I had done with them.  He wanted to hurt me, to scare
me into revealing what I knew.
I thought his threat of rape was j
ust that, a threat, but then…’
Her breathing began to quicken and Finnian touched her arm with a mesmer that would warm her and diminish the horror so s
he could look from a distance.
‘He has tried to touch m
e indelicately all of my life.
Even when I was little
, before I could take measures.
I always wished I had the courage to tell Aunt and Uncle but I worried. He said they would never believe me, that I would be considered a
typical child prone to drama. This however was his… He…
’ her voice dwindled to a halt.

Finnian didn’t push her to continue and as he stroke
d her arm he voiced a thought.
‘It’s my hope that Curiosa will dispose of Kurdeesh’s body somehow so that no attention is drawn to the emporium but the man is so visi
bly awry we can’t count on it.
Which is why it was imperative we left.’

‘What…
’ they spoke together, the same word.

‘You first, what were you going to say?’ Lalita’s voice grated with exhaustion.

He sat down opposite, his back against the starboard side of the boat, his legs stretched across but bent because of their length and the fact the bo
at was such an intimate space.
He noticed her hand reach into her pocket a
nd stay there and he knew why.
‘I
have to ask, I have to know.’
He schoo
led his voice to studied care.
‘You have placed yourself in such jeopard
y, Lalita, and for what?
Why do you want the paperweights so badly?’

She sat very still.
That she struggled with a secret was obvious and he cursed the devil spawn who ha
d forced her to distrust life.
Above them, high on an escarpment, a whirlwind of dust and sand danced along the ridge and he glanced at it, almost missing
the rushed words she blew out.
‘What I
told you before was the truth.
I do it because I have to.’

But he had no time to
pursue her revelation further. ‘Wait, look.’
He grabbed at her
hand, pointing at the cliffs.
The sheer terrain of the Raj folded and blended before their eyes, becoming greener, harsh rock
merging into mounded hillside.
Even Finnian, fey as he was, attuned to enchantment and glamour, was awed at the transformati
on through which they floated.
Between Veniche and Fahsi he had been distracted, sunk in self-indulgent introversion, not caring greatly about this strange occurrence as he passed through a Ga
te into another part of Eirie.
Now trees appeared, bending their graceful branches over the river – willow, river-ash, aspen and birch and the chirp and chirrup of bird and frog, with damsel and dr
agonflies dipping and darting.
The yellow waters became silvered and narrowed until a rivulet of graceful proportions wound its way through forest and leaf, a vale of closely pruned trees spreading before them.

The boat had metamorphosed into a punt of grey timber that edged along the riverbank to the foot of pleached peach and apricot trees, all unaccountably in blossom
and fruit at once.
The odour of ripeness and the hum of bees filled the atmosphere between them as Lalita leaned over the boat and trailed her fingers in the crystalline water.

‘Don’t!’
He grabbed her hand and pulled it back and as he did there was a splash, a trail of sparkling drops flying up over the side of the boat to drop onto their laps, a wicked laugh echoing from the undergrowth that frilled the edge of the river, the sound sending sprinklings o
f ice down even his own spine.
‘There is much that is malevolent and wretched in th
e waters of Trevallyn, Lalita.
Wights that can shape-change and charm and have you down in the green depths before you draw breath.’

‘But it’s so beautiful.’
Lalita peered skeptically into the water as it rippled past.

‘That is its danger.’
He jumped onto the ri
verbank and held out his hand.
‘We’re in enchanted country here, full of the unexpected, and you must assume that everything is not as it seems or else you’ll place yourself in peril.’

She gave him her hand as
she spoke with feeling.
‘Then perhaps you’re not what you seem and I p
lace myself in peril with you.
Perhaps you are really the Ganconer or some dread shape-changer who seduces a
nd then leaves one to perish.’
As she confronted him, he realised that she had dropped into a black abyss at Curiosa’s and nothing would ever be the sam
e again, least of all herself.
She would either fold and crack or she would become even tou
gher and more self-sufficient. ‘Yes, you see,’ she continued.
‘I know the stories of Others from outside the Raj.
Your
stories.’

‘So it seems.’ he answered, looking away, exa
mining the surrounding forest. ‘But you are safe with me. I have no intent.
None beyond continuing what we began to discuss earlier.’  He wanted to banish the Ganconer from the ugly morass that seethed in hidden corners of her mind along with Kurdeesh’s hands and his touch.

‘Finnian, I
will
tell you. But please can we rest?
I am sore and tired and,’ she shrugged her shoul
ders, her eyes becoming moist.
‘Just sore and tired.’

‘Of course.’
The image of the illustrated scribe on his tiny piece of parchment sprang to mind but the thought of Isolde diminished the brief moment of comfort. ‘I was caught up in the need to escape, it’s paramount.’

‘But sur
ely we’re safe now we’re here?
I suspect we passed through your Gate,
didn’t we?  No one can follow?’

‘Not Curiosa and the Raji Law, no.’

‘But?’

‘Maybe someone else entirely.’
He walked further up the
bank to a fallen log and sat. ‘Here.
Come sit.’

She moved toward him, hauling the folds of the sari out of the way as they caught on
twigs at the side of the log.
‘Damn,’ she tugged ha
rd.
‘What do you mean, someone else entirely?’