North Star Guide Me Home (30 page)

Delphine scooped the babe up again and turned her face towards her chest, trying to muffle the sound against her body as she rocked back and forth and pleaded with the strange new creature. ‘Hush, hush, hush …’

Then, there came a sound that chilled her to the bone — the sound of boots coming towards her.

The reedy wail of a newborn cut through the afternoon air, and Isidro’s head came up like a stag scenting dogs.

Somewhere off to his right came a piercing whistle, and a few moments later a figure came charging around a hedge. Anoa.

‘Follow me,’ Isidro said, turning his weary horse towards the noise and kicking it on. Ahead was a wall cobbled together out of scrap wood and brush. Isidro was already gathering his power and with a coiled lash of it he tore the wall down. His horse was throwing its head up to refuse, but Isidro pulled its head down, driving it forward with his heels. With a snort of surprise, the beast took the path of least resistance and leapt the low remains of the wall.

Beyond was another, which Isidro tore down like the first, and then a hedge that gave way like butter under a hot knife. He stole a glance behind him to see Anoa on his heels, crouched low over her mount’s withers.

Within just a few moments they’d broken through to another road, where Isidro reined in, listening. The noise of their shortcut had drowned out the wailing, but now he heard it again, moving off to the south. But there was another sound, somewhere nearby, a scuffling of bodies, and a woman’s sobbing voice, somewhere nearby to their north.

Isidro caught Anoa’s eye. ‘That’s Delphi,’ he said. ‘Go find her. I’ll go after the babe.’

‘Yessir,’ Anoa said, and wheeled her horse away.

His mount was breathing hard, but Isidro kicked it onwards again, heading towards the sound of that wail.

After only a few dozen strides, rounding a bend in the road, he saw them — a small, slight figure hurrying away from the town.

He slipped down from the saddle without bothering to rein in. Without his heels driving it forward, the horse halted and he left it behind with a few long strides. ‘Stop!’ he shouted.

The figure turned to face him, though it never stopped moving away. For a moment he thought it was Delphine — it had her height and build, the frame small under the blanket-coat and stiff black curls spilling out from around the hood. But as soon as she turned, he recognised Nikala’s face.

She carried the babe in the crook of one arm, and in the other she held a naked blade.

Something was making the hedge thrash about, as though some great beast was snared within. There were voices, a man’s deep growl and a woman sobbing with pain and weariness, but there was nothing to be seen. Anoa shook her head — were her eyes playing tricks on her? While the branches thrashed wildly, a patch of them seemed to be moving out of time with the rest, swinging
this
way when the rest moved
that
.

Her horse spooked, tossing its head up in alarm and fighting the bit, and rather than wrestle with it Anoa dismounted and let the beast retreat. Swallowing hard, she laid her hand on the hilt of her sword. She’d seen enough of mage-craft to know she was being deceived. ‘Who’s there?’ she called out in Ricalani. ‘Madame Delphine?’

There was a sudden silence, then a renewed rustle of movement and the sound of a fist striking flesh. But then something strange happened — a patch of hedge as tall as a man and equally wide rippled like the air above a fire. A section of solid hedge melted away, revealing a hollow with two people struggling on the mud within. One was Delphine, streaked with sweat, the other a man with long, unkempt hair and beard. He hauled back and landed a solid punch on Delphine’s jaw.

Anoa drew her sword, and the sound of the steel leaving the sheath made him straighten. He, too, was armed she realised as he scrambled to his feet, drawing his sword. ‘Stay out of matters that don’t concern you, girl,’ he rasped in Akharian.

‘You’re making a mistake messing with my kin,’ Anoa snapped back in the same tongue, and lunged forward in a feint. The man backed up, but only by half a step, watching her with narrowed eyes. She was out of her depth, Anoa realised. She’d trained every day for the last year, but the Akharian likely had decades of experience on her.

Behind him, Delphine heaved herself up on her hands and knees, and groped for something in the mud. She picked it up — Anoa couldn’t see what without lifting her eyes from her opponent — and crawled towards him, her eyes wild.

As she started forward Anoa feinted again, flicking her sword up high to slash at the man’s face, and as his own blade swung up to counter it she pivoted on one foot and drove the other into the side of his knee, just as Delphine lunged at him, striking at his thigh.

The Akharian’s leg crumpled — he was already slashing at Anoa as he started to go down, but she knocked the blade aside and ran him through. As he stiffened in shock, she whipped the blade out and slashed his throat. With a rush of blood and a gurgle of breath he fell back into the mud.

‘See,’ Anoa told the dying man, ‘big mistake.’

Behind him, Delphine was trying to rise, breathing hard and only half-dressed.

When Anoa reached for her, Delphine tried to ward her hands away. ‘They took my baby! That bitch Nikala, she took my little girl! Find her!’

‘It’s alright, Isidro’s here, he heard the babe wailing and went after them,’ Anoa said. ‘He’ll get her back, you can count on it.’

Power seethed through him, an angry, jittering pulse. ‘Stop,’ he said again, his voice a snarl.

She kept moving away, glancing behind him as though expecting reinforcements. Isidro refused to take the bait; he kept his gaze on her and fought to steady his breathing, trying to keep his power in check. When he closed on her, she jogged the babe in her arms, and gestured with her blade. ‘Keep your distance,’ she said.

He slowed a little, but didn’t stop. ‘Or what?’ he said in Akharian. ‘Your hostage dies, so do you.’

‘Who said anything about killing the mite? She’s a sweet little thing, but she doesn’t need
all
her fingers and toes.’

She. He had a daughter.

Nikala kept backing away, knife poised, while the other hand kept a steady, reassuring pat on the bundle in the crook of her arm. ‘You’re said to be a clever man, so you ought to see how this is going to work. Any moment now, my friends will be along to pick me up. You’ll be sent instructions, and if you don’t want to receive pieces of your daughter and her mother, you’ll find a way to carry them out. Understand?’

‘Put the baby down,’ Isidro said. She gave a little hiss of annoyance, and with a flick of her hand exposed one tiny, kicking foot, and caught it in her grasp. ‘You think I’m lying, you stinking barbarian? Fine, I’ll give you a demonstration.’

As she brought the knife around Isidro struck with a lash of power and wrenched it from her hand. He felt the bones of her fingers
crack
with the force of it.

Nikala gave a strangled grunt of pain, her arms tightening around the babe, who wailed afresh. At last, her stride faltered.

Power was pounding through him, roaring in his head like a storm, filling his vision with a red haze. He’d given up keeping his breathing steady — he couldn’t tell if he was breathing at all. He didn’t need to … rage and fury were feeding him all he needed. Somewhere inside his head he could feel connections stirring — Sierra had sensed his sudden rush of power. ‘Set her down,’ Isidro said again. ‘And I’ll see that you’re treated with mercy.’

Nikala shifted the little bundle to her other arm, and wrapped her free hand around the baby’s throat. ‘I’ll break her cursed neck if you don’t stop.’

He stopped, but he couldn’t stand still — his blood felt like it was boiling. His hand throbbed with a pain he hadn’t felt in months, a deep splintering ache … but no, that wasn’t right. It didn’t hurt any more. It couldn’t. What he was feeling didn’t make any sense.

Nikala smirked at him, and shifted her hand from the baby’s neck.

Isidro snatched at her with a claw of power, a net made up of a dozen thorned vines. They bit deep, and the woman screamed as they sank into her flesh and snared on bone. The baby wailed again, a brittle shriek of pain and fear. The sound seemed to cut right through him, but he couldn’t let his grip falter. He had Nikala pinned, and with a slow clench, he crushed her, feeling her ribs give way one by one.

She fell slowly, collapsing on her side in the muddy road, her broken body slumping over the tiny bundle that slipped from her arms.

At that moment, Isidro realised what he’d done — it struck him like a blade to the heart. He thought of the flames, the burning man dragging himself through the mud, and how sick he’d felt at the thought of using this power around the people he loved, the ones who stood no chance of protecting themselves — and here he’d unleashed it without a thought.

His legs felt numb, but Isidro forced himself towards the crumpled figure. He dropped down at her side to heave the misshapen body onto its back, exposing the little bundle in a grubby wrapper of white cloth.

Once the weight of the corpse was off her, the baby began to wail again, but a lost and desolate sound. ‘Hush, little one, hush,’ Isidro murmured, stroking the babe’s bare chest as he opened the wrapper to look her over. She was smeared with dirt and blood, but none of it was hers. She was untouched, perfect. Somehow, his power had spared her. It was still running high within him — with every movement he was shedding wisps of inky blackness, like drifts of smoke.

He wrapped her up again as best he could, but it was a clumsy job. The baby, kicking her feet and waving her tiny fists, soon cast it off again. He murmured nonsense words, like calming a frightened horse, but it did no good as the babe’s cries grew more frantic.

The power pulsing beneath his skin worried him, but Isidro gritted his teeth and pushed it from his mind. All this time he’d been terrified of harming her … but she was untouched, and he had to trust that it would stay that way. He tried to gather her up, but the limp little form seemed as soft and yielding as a water-skin. In the end, he had to use the dead woman’s body and the metal hand both to steady her as he slipped his arm under her until her back lay along his forearm and her head — so very small — rested in the palm of his hand.

The wrapper had come loose, but Isidro ignored it and just cradled the tiny form to his chest, her head against his shoulder, and pulled his coat around her for warmth. After a few moments, the wail subsided to a grizzle of discontent. ‘Come on, now,’ Isidro said to her. ‘Let’s go find your mama.’

He started back towards the town, leaving the dead woman where she lay. Before long, he heard the rumble of a wagon heading towards him. After a few moments it came into sight, a small two-wheeled cart with an oilcloth canopy, drawn by a single horse. Two figures sat on the driver’s bench, and a pair of horses were tethered to the tailgate.

At the sight of it Isidro went tense, feeling his power quickening again, but then the driver urged the horse on faster, and he saw the two faces peering eagerly towards him, one as dark as the babe on his chest, the other in the much lighter northern hue.

He moved to the side of the road as Anoa reined in, and Delphine struggled down from the seat. ‘Where is she?’ she demanded, stumbling towards him.

He opened his coat, and with a low cry she snatched the baby from him, fresh tears on her cheeks. ‘Gods be thanked! Is she alright?’

‘She’s fine, I think,’ Isidro said. ‘What of you?’

There was a bruise darkening on her jaw but Delphine didn’t seem to notice. ‘I’m fine, truly, now that I have her back.’ For long moments, it seemed she couldn’t look away from her daughter’s face, until at last she turned her head to meet Isidro’s gaze. ‘Thank the Gods you came!’

On the wagon, Anoa stood up, shading her eyes against the sun. ‘Up there in the road,’ she said. ‘Is that …’

‘Nikala,’ he said with a nod. ‘Be on your guard, she had accomplices —’

Anoa nodded. ‘We met one. He won’t give us any more trouble.’

‘Good, but there may be more. We ought to get out of here. Delphi, can you climb back up?’

It took Isidro and Anoa both to help her into the wagon seat, and then Isidro reclaimed his horse, which Anoa had caught along with her own, and swung into the saddle. He remembered, then, the other men he’d sent off to search, but when he went to give the signal he realised he couldn’t — he’d learnt to whistle with the fingers of his right hand, and he’d never learnt to use his left. Frustration made his power pulse again, but Isidro paid it no mind. ‘Anoa,’ he said, ‘signal the others. As loud as you can, please.’

She nodded once, and with her fingers to her lips blew a piercing blast.

Almost at once there came a reply, and then the call was carried on again, further still as the guards passed on the signal.

Isidro nodded, gathering up his reins. ‘They’ll catch up soon enough. Let’s get back to quarters.’

It was hours later, well after dark, when Cam and the others returned. Isidro had been dozing by the fire when someone came to wake him, and he was still rubbing sleep from his eyes when he stumbled outside to meet them.

Moments later, he was striding up the stairs with Sierra at his heels. A pair of guards stood spear-straight at Delphine’s door, and greeted them with salutes.

The floorboards creaked as he came inside, and Delphine woke with a start. When she saw who it was, she settled back with a sigh. ‘You’re back,’ she murmured.

Following him in, Sierra skirted around him to go to the bedside, where she crouched on her heels and offered Delphine her hands.

‘We are. I thought we might all come up to see you, but if you’re too weary.’

‘I truly am, though it could have been so much worse.’ Delphine placed her hand in Sierra’s, and gasped as her touch drained away the ache of overtaxed and weary flesh. On her return, the other midwives had rallied around to check her over. She was clean now, her hair neatly combed, but the bruise on her cheek had darkened to a deep and angry shade.

‘The others would like to meet the little one,’ Isidro said. ‘Do you mind if I take her down to them?’