Tamlyn (15 page)

‘Tamlyn, look at me,' I said, rather solemnly. This was a serious business and I wanted him to know it. ‘Look me in the eye and tell me, are you here to rescue Lucien or to take revenge against your father?'

‘Both,' he said instantly.

‘Which is more important to you? Tell me that.'

He wouldn't answer and turned away so that I couldn't read his face.

‘We've come here to get Lucien,' I said. ‘That's all that matters. Our pledge to Nerigold still stands, and there's nothing in that pledge about killing your father.'

Still no reply.

‘Promise me, Tamlyn, that you will put Lucien first until he is free.'

He seemed to be waiting for me to say more, but when I fell silent he spun round. ‘Until Lucien is free. Yes, Silvermay, you have that promise from me. Are you happy now?'

With his promise, yes, but as for the way I'd had to force it from him, no, I wasn't happy at all. Like Birdie, I was worried that sword at his belt was going to be trouble, no matter what power it held over Coyle Strongbow.

C
oyle didn't live in a house, he lived in a stronghold. Tamlyn had spoken of a turret, but the entire building was a turret, tall and narrow, as though it had been designed to fend off invaders long after the rest of the city had fallen. It was made of pale sandstone, which had weathered and darkened over the years to a sinister grey. As for its size — our cottage in Haywode wasn't even half as big as the stables I could see jutting out from behind the tower. The whole building gave off a brooding menace, its shadow spreading across the cobblestoned square where I stood staring in wonder.

‘How many people live there?' I asked Miston Dessar, who had led Ryall and me through the streets for our first sight of the place.

‘Now that Ezeldi is dead, just Coyle and Hallig. I hear the other son is a fugitive.'

He deliberately spoke like one who didn't care enough to know the son's name, in case prying ears were closer than we thought.

‘But surely it's too big for one family,' said Ryall, who had grown up in a hut even smaller than mine.

‘Oh, there are servants to clean and cook the meals, and he keeps a squad of his own guardians. They all live on the lower floors, but higher up, where the grand windows offer a view over the whole city, no, it's mostly one man's domain.'

I examined the gates with the eye of someone who might want to unlock them one day. The bars and decorative curls had once been coated with gold leaf, but it had worn away, leaving dark steel as forbidding as the building it guarded. The sharpened spikes across the top looked particularly vicious, especially since someone had impaled the skull of a dog on one of them. The sun-bleached bones proclaimed a wordless message:
Don't climb these gates or you will join me here.

We were careful not to stare for too long, then wandered around the square looking lost so we could pick the best vantage points for our vigil.

‘If we had a stall — for selling chestnuts, maybe — we'd blend in,' said Ryall.

There were many stalls already in place, and because a steady stream of people passed through the
square on their way to elsewhere, there was a musician or two, as well, hoping for coins to be tossed into their upturned hats.

‘Can you sing, Silvermay?' asked Ryall.

‘Like a chorus of drunken cats.'

‘Too bad, and I doubt I'd be much good at juggling,' he said with a wink at me and a smile towards his mechanical hand.

We agreed that I would take the morning watch, and after one more circuit of the square they left me to it. To hide my face, I was wearing a bonnet I'd found in Miston's house. It was the sort of thing I'd normally use to dress up a dog on carnival days, but if it served its purpose, I wouldn't complain.

I was a spy and my eyes never strayed far from my target for long. At the same time, I could not afford to stare nonstop at Coyle's house and so I strolled about as any casual observer would on a visit to the city. So much was new to me. One of the most surprising sights was a pair of lovers holding hands and laughing loudly at their whispers together. In Haywode, such open affection would be reported to the elders and the boy and girl would be scolded for their intimacy. Not in Vonne, it seemed. The couple passed me, too wrapped up in their joy to notice a girl watching them enviously. This was how I wished I could be with Tamlyn. When
the young man bent to steal a kiss, I turned away before the girl had time to show her delight.

The morning passed slowly, with only one lesson learned by the time Ryall came to take my place — nothing much stirred in a Wyrdborn's house. My only entertainment was a clever magician who gathered a crowd around him to show off his tricks. I'd joined the crowd once or twice, because it would have seemed strange if I hadn't. He drew regular applause from his audience and quite a collection of coins in his cap, too, I noticed. A little older than Tamlyn, he had a soft, narrow face and a high voice. He seemed very confident of his abilities, with good reason — little girls squealed when he made a coin appear from behind their ears, and later he had a woman worried that the brooch he'd borrowed for a disappearing trick had actually vanished. She was on the point of calling for the guardians when it appeared again, neatly clasped to her dress where it had been in the first place.

How had he done that, I wondered. Conjurers came to Haywode with the travelling shows each summer, but I had seen none as skilful as this one was. He stayed in the square all through the day, it seemed, because Ryall came back singing his praises, too.

 

Tamlyn was in a terrible temper by that time, after an entire day cooped up inside Miston's house and nothing but more of the same to look forward to. After a burst of questions when I first returned he became silent again and it wasn't hard to guess what he was brooding upon. It didn't surprise me, then, to be woken in the hour before dawn by the closing of a door. It was Tamlyn, returning to the house. He'd been keeping his own watch on his old home, I guessed, and I decided not to question him about it.

He was even more restless when I came back from my vigil the next day, and if I hadn't been there to keep an eye on him I'm sure he would have gone out into the streets, despite the risk of being recognised. I watched for him leaving the cellar that night after we had all gone off to bed, determined to go after him. We hadn't had a moment alone since leaving Haywode and I wanted to talk, to be with him, even if I knew it couldn't be like it was on board the ship.

The night-time noises settled around us; from above Miston's snoring became a rhythm that reminded me of home and I had to pinch my arms to stay awake. It was no use — I fell asleep. Yet my hopes weren't lost, because when I awoke, hours later, it was to the sound of footsteps in the entrance hall.

I hurried out of the house and managed to catch sight of a figure before it turned out of our lane. It was Tamlyn, all right. I followed him through streets abandoned to cats and drunkards on their way home, none of them interested in us.

After the empty market, Tamlyn turned to the right, away from his old home. Where was he going? To my surprise, it seemed that he wasn't sure himself because he stopped several times and looked up, as though examining the houses and taller landmarks to gain his bearings. Was there a particular address he had to find — for a secret meeting, perhaps? Once, he doubled back on himself and would have caught me if I hadn't ducked quickly behind a wagon. Very strange, and when it went on for many minutes, I couldn't prevent suspicion springing up in my mind. Tamlyn had opened his heart to me a little about his mother, but what else had he told me about growing up in the city? There had been no mention of friends, of the places he liked to go. There was so much I didn't know about him, and after the way he had been acting in recent weeks how sure could I be that he wasn't doing what all other Wyrdborn seemed to enjoy — lying, cheating, and working for his ends alone without a care for Lucien's rescue?

These fears were weighing heavily on me when finally Tamlyn's searching stopped. He entered a
small square surrounded by houses and shops, all of them darkened while their inhabitants slept, and went straight to a well in its middle. Surely he hadn't come all this way for a bucket of water. He stared over the circular stone wall, then startled me by climbing inside.

Five minutes passed; ten. No sign of his return.

Not another soul had ventured into the square in that time, so I took a risk and went to the well myself. The hole was dark and I could barely see much further down it than I could reach with my hands. I jumped back as something brushed my shoulder and almost immediately something else swooped close to my head. Urgh, bats. Not my favourite animal. I was waving my arms about to ward away any others that might flitter up from below when a sound came from deep in the well. It had to be Tamlyn climbing back out.

I ran to my hiding place and turned just in time to see him emerge. As best as I could tell, his clothing wasn't wet, which seemed odd. He paused to scan the shopfronts and I pulled my head back to be sure his Wyrdborn eyes didn't pick me out. When I dared peek once more, I saw him placing boards over the top of the well. Once this job was done, he stood back and checked the moonless sky again as though the stars held some message that no one else could see. Then he was
off again and in more of a hurry, and it was that sudden haste that got the better of me. I lost him.

Where had he gone? What was he up to? I had no answers, only the uncomfortable seeds of distrust. There was nothing for me to do but head back to Miston Dessar's house. I had only just returned to my bed of straw in the cellar when I heard Tamlyn arrive back in the house as well. What could have been so important that he'd spent an hour searching for it, then left only a few minutes after finding it?

 

When the dawn light made its tentative way down to the cellar soon after my return, I had to rise quickly and take over from Miston, who had watched Coyle's home through the early hours. He'd had no more luck than Ryall or me, and I wondered if Coyle would ever appear. At the same time, I was sure we were right that his Wyrdborn nature wouldn't let him stay away from Lucien for more than a day or two. He must come out through that gate soon.

There weren't many people in the square, which made me stand out more, especially in my yellow dress. Birdie had said it would make me feel less like a peasant girl, and it did do that, I suppose. I was soon to learn what else it would do for me that morning.

The magician appeared and immediately began to
attract passers-by into a small crowd. I joined them, as much out of fascination as for refuge. What a trickster he was. Pigeons appeared from empty boxes; a rope stood on end, rigid enough for him to climb, and once he was on the ground again the same rope let itself be tied into a dozen knots. Amazing!

There were other things I began to notice, too. The magician always faced towards Coyle's mansion, as though performing for those inside. Yet surely the servants would be too busy to look down from the windows for more than a moment at a time? Even when he rested between shows, he never strayed far from the gate.
He's hoping the residents send down a generous reward for the entertainment
, I decided. Obviously, he didn't know who lived there, since the Wyrdborn were takers, not givers.

To my surprise, when the magician began his next performance, he bounded across the circle around him to where I stood. ‘Shall I make this pretty girl disappear?' he called to the crowd.

People began to laugh and heckle him. ‘Go on then, bet you can't.'

He bowed, leaned close to me and under the noise of the crowd whispered, ‘You've been spotted from the house.'

As quickly as he had bent forward, he backed away into the centre of the ring and produced a pigeon
between his hands, which he tossed up above his head so that it could take wing. His act seemed to be going on as before, as though he hadn't said a word to me. Had I misheard?

With the trick done, he looked towards me and frowned. Then he was in front of me again, almost before I'd seen him move. He threw a handful of coloured dust into the air above our heads and, before my eyes, they became butterflies, a dozen of them, as brightly coloured as the dust they had sprung from.

‘Follow them. Go now, while you still have time,' he said to me, not a whisper but an urgent demand.

It was all too bewildering — the pigeon that had appeared from nowhere, the whispers for me alone, the butterflies that, even as I tried to make sense of what was happening, were fluttering away. Then the crowd around me parted and a tall, dark-bearded man lunged for my arm. I pulled away, backing into the ring alongside the magician.

‘Come here, girl,' said the bearded man. ‘Lord Coyle will want to know why you are watching his house.'

He came at me again, and would have grabbed me if the magician's rope hadn't become tangled around his ankles. The crowd opened for me and I was through, heading for the nearest street that led out of the square.

When I reached it, I turned and saw that a second man had charged through the spiked gates. I took off down the street, cursing my yellow dress that stood out among the dull browns and greys. Yet there were other colours, I noticed — above my head. The butterflies! They'd somehow reached this street ahead of me and now fluttered up, down, left, right, yet all in the same direction.
Follow them
, the magician had told me.

A glance over my shoulder showed one of the men gaining on me, so when the butterflies veered sharply to the right I went after them into a narrow lane. Bad plan! When I was halfway along the lane, the bearded man still behind me, I saw his companion racing towards me from the other end. What use were the butterflies now, especially as they kept flying ahead as though there was no man waiting to grab them? Then I realised there wasn't; it was me he was after.

The butterflies vanished, as though they didn't want to take the risk in any case. Then I saw where they had escaped to — through a door that opened directly off the lane. I raced after them and found myself running through a kitchen where a cook stood open-mouthed, ladle in hand. A scullery maid screamed as I shot past her into a pantry lined with brass saucepans and shelves groaning with vegetables, then out the other side into a different lane.

A second scream told me the men were close behind. I was off again, after the butterflies and into another house, which brought me back to the lane where I'd started, but this time it was empty. Clearly, the men were still trying to guess where I'd gone.

Not the butterflies, though — orange, turquoise, blue — I chased the rainbow of colours to the end of the lane and then left into a wider, more crowded street. On we went, through lane after lane, left and right, with no pattern to their flight. It was no surprise that before long I was utterly lost, and happy to be so because the men had lost me, as well.