The Hawk And His Boy (2 page)

The handle turned under his fingers, and he was inside. Moonlight shone through windows. The city sprawled around him in every direction. Like stars in the night, lamplight gleamed through chinks in the shuttered windows of houses. Overhead, the stars gleamed like lamplight. But Jute had no eye for any of this.

On a table in the middle of the room sat a box.

Somewhere in that room. It isn’t a large place, so it shouldn’t be difficult to find the thing.

Of course not. There’s nothing else here. Only a table, a chair, and a box.

It was the box that called soundlessly to him, so clearly that he turned in fright, thinking someone had spoken his name. Several thoughts floated through his head, reminding him of the Knife, of instructions, of the Juggler, but he quashed them down. His nose twitched like a dog’s. The pull was strong. It certainly wasn’t a ward. Ward spells never pulled at people—at least, not any ward he’d felt before. Wards pushed people. Pushed them hard in deadly ways. This was like someone tugging at his hand.

It’ll be the length of your forearm. Made of black oak and fastened with a catch and hinges of silver. If that isn’t enough for you, there’s a carving on the top of it. A hawk’s head staring at you, with the moon and the sun rising and setting behind him.

The hawk’s head gazed at him from the box, the eyes frozen in an unblinking stare. The carving was so lifelike that it seemed the bird was only resting, ready to spread its wings and fly free.

If you open the thing, it’ll be my knife in your gullet. Just stow it in your bag, and back up the chimney with you. Don’t stop to think, boy. Best not to think.

That was the trouble.

He didn’t stop to think. His hand reached out, and the catch flipped up. The lid sprang open. Lying on a cushion of threadbare velvet was a dagger. It was an ugly thing, black and battered. Set within the handle was a gemstone. The stone was cracked and blackened, as if it had been subjected to great heat. It was hard to tell, but Jute suspected it might once have been red.

He shivered. It was the dagger that was aware. A questioning, delicate touch feathered around the edges of his mind. Curiosity, and then something else. Satisfaction.

Jute sat back on his heels in astonishment. How could this thing—this dagger—have anything to do with him, know him?

If you open the thing, it’ll be my knife in your gullet.

He touched the blade and snatched his hand away. A smear of blood stained the iron. Surely the edge looked as dull as a spoon! Scarlet welled from his finger. He sucked the salt of it into his mouth. The awareness brushing his thoughts vanished. There was nothing. Only an old, cheap-looking dagger. The stone in the handle was probably just glass. And yet he could have sworn, right when he had felt the sting of the cut, someone had whispered in his ear.

If you open the thing, it’ll be my knife in your gullet.

Sweat sprang from Jute’s forehead, and he shivered. He shut the box. His hands shook. The hawk no longer looked lifelike. It was a crude carving at best. He stuffed the box into his knapsack. His teeth chattered.

What have I done?

Jute fled from the room. He ran through the doorway and down the dark stairs. Behind him, he felt a soundless wave of menace explode and roll down the steps after him as the ward triggered. He lunged forward. His heart thumped within his chest. Heat surged against his back. He ran so fast that his feet barely touched the stairs. Down and down, curving around and around, until he grew dizzier with each step he took. He risked a glance behind him, but there was only shadow and silence.

Jute crept back into the room with the fireplace. He took one despairing look around the room, but there was nothing to do except climb back up the chimney. The knapsack swung from his back, and the box inside seemed to grow heavier the higher he went. He had to rest for a moment, wedged between the chimney walls, for the dread inside him had welled up until his hands were too weak to hold his weight on the rope. But then his scalp prickled, for a whisper drifted down from above him.

“Jute. Come up, boy. Come up.”

Trembling, Jute continued. The opening of the chimney came into view, first as a smudge of night, then widening into a square of sky speckled with stars. The shape of the man’s head peered down. Jute could make out the black spots of the man’s eyes.

“Do you have it?” said the man.

“Yes,” said Jute, trying not to let his teeth chatter. His hands ached on the rope.

“Did you open it?” said the man.

“No!” said Jute, feeling the sweat bead cold on his skin.

“Hand it here.”

“Let me come up first,” said the boy.

“Hand it up.”

The man leaned down into the well of the chimney, one arm extended. He snatched the box up and examined it in the moonlight.

“Well done,” he said, turning back. “Come up, boy.”

Jute pulled himself up to the edge and a blessed view of stars and the city sleeping around them. He could smell the selia blossom on the breeze. And then, almost carelessly, the man’s hand touched his shoulder and Jute felt a sting that dulled into nothing.

Time slowed.

Numb.

A needle gleamed in the man’s hand.

“Nothing personal, boy,” said the man. “We all have our jobs to do.”

And he pushed Jute.

Gently.

He fell.

Down and down.

Down into darkness. Which blossomed with bursts of light as his head struck the chimney walls. Stars in the night sky. His silent sky. And then nothing.

Nothing personal, boy.

The eastern horizon blushed into purple, even though sunrise was another hour away. The moon retreated over the sea to the west, gazing down on the city of Hearne with her silver eye. Another eye gazed down on Hearne. High in the sky soared a hawk. Nothing escaped his attention. The bird circled wider. The wind bore him up. A scream of defiance and exultation burst forth from his beak. He soared higher into the emptiness of the sky.

CHAPTER TWO

LEVORETH CALLAS

Far to the north, Levoreth woke up frowning, tangled in her bedsheets and the thoughts in her mind. She padded to the window. A breeze cooled her brow. Over the mountains in the east, the sky was streaked with rose paling to blue. Murmurs drifted up from the barn below—the stable hands pitching hay for the horses. A boy yawned his way across the courtyard, water slopping from the buckets he was carrying.

She sat down on the window settle and gazed out. She could see all the way down to the ford beyond the cornfields. The road crossed the river there and made its way southwest through the forests of Dolan, and further still, across the plains and, ultimately, to the city of Hearne.

Why was she thinking so much of Hearne these days?

It had been a long time since she had been south. It had been a long time since she had been anywhere. She frowned again. A thought tickled at the back of her mind and then was gone before she could reach for it.

She shrugged into a frock and went downstairs. The scent of bread met her as she walked across the hall and opened the kitchen door. An old woman was bent over the oven, poking with a paddle at several loaves of bread inside. She straightened up, her face red from the oven’s heat.

“M’lady Levoreth—it’s early for you to be up,” said the old woman.

“Nonsense, Yora. The sun’s nearly up and the hands are up, and I just saw Mirek ambling across the yard.”

“The lazy good-for-nothing. It’s a wonder he’s awake. He’s near as bad as his father who died of sleep, snoring away his life in the sun—M’lady! You’ll burn yourself!” The girl had stooped down and pulled a loaf of bread from the oven with her hands. She grinned at Yora and ripped a hunk of bread free. It steamed in her grasp.

“It’s quite done. And smells wonderful, too.”

“M’lady! You shouldn’t be doing such things!”

Levoreth went outside, chewing on her piece of bread. The sun edged up over the mountains. She squinted up into the light and then frowned down at her toes in the dirt.

The stable hands ducked their heads when she walked into the barn. Even the villagers were not as reverent as that with her uncle, Hennen Callas, the duke of Dolan. But the stable hands held her in awe and would never let her forget it. It had been her own fault.

She had been careless one day, two years ago. It had been getting harder to remember, to be careful. But she had forgotten. Perhaps it had been the intoxication of a spring after a long, cold winter. She had hiked out to the upper pasture in search of the first lupines. The previous week to that day, the Farrows in their gaily painted caravans had rolled through Dolan, and Hennen Callas had bought three wild colts off of them. He had happily parted with a purse stuffed with gold, for the Farrows had an eye for horseflesh that was unsurpassed in all the duchies of Tormay. The colts had been turned out into the upper pasture to wait until Hennen had time to break them to bridle.

Not thinking, she had set the colts dancing around her—wheeling away and thundering back at a gallop to stop, quivering, in front of her, pushing their silken noses into her palms. Their minds thrilled against hers, jarring her with impressions of childish delight. She caught images of time blurring into light and back again, shot through with joy and gold and pounding hearts, and the vast spaces of the northern plains racing away beneath their flying hooves. Their thoughts trembled with the solemnity of her name.

Rejoice! Sun and speed and wind. Rejoice!

Something had made her turn. Three stable hands sat on the fence at the end of the pasture, their mouths gaping. They tumbled off the fence and ran off. The colts wheeled and danced around her. Sunlight shimmered in the air, and everywhere there was the perfume of sage and lupine and the freshness of the earth wakening to spring. Wakening for her.

That had been two years ago.

Levoreth swallowed the last bite of bread and whistled. All the horses in the barn stuck their heads out of their stalls and nickered at her. Whispers of horse-thought brushed against her mind: oats, sunlight, and canters through the grasses of the high fields. She smiled.

“You’re all just as lazy as Mirek,” she said. A roan stretched its neck out and breathed alfalfa on her.

She rode the roan down to the ford and reined him to a halt in the shallows of the river. Sunlight shone on the water sliding over stones. The road curved from the ford and stretched away into the forest. Deep within the forest it split into two roads: one road to the south, toward Harth and Hearne; the other west to Andolan, the ducal seat of Dolan. Hearne. It had been many years since she had been to that city. The thought tickled again at the back of her mind and she caught it this time.

Soon.

“Soon?” she said aloud.

Thou hast slept long enough, Levoreth Callas. Thou hast slept too long. Thy time draweth near. Not today. Not tomorrow. But perhaps the next. Or mayhap after that.

And she frowned up at the sky and then down at the light sparkling on the water rippling by. The voice was her own.

When she brought the roan to a clattering halt in the yard, Hennen Callas was striding down the manor steps. He was a tall man, with gray hair and kind brown eyes.

“Levoreth.”

“Uncle,” she said, dismounting and flipping the reins to a hovering groom.

“It has been quite a while, hmm.” He stopped and blinked several times.

“Yes?” she said.

“I have it in mind,” he said. “I have it in mind to . . .” He trailed off again and gazed across the yard. “Blast those boys. They haven’t mucked the mares out yet.”

“You were saying?” she said.

“What? Oh. As I was saying, I think it time we paid a visit to Botrell in Hearne.”

“Hearne?”

“Been a few years since we’ve been down to the city,” her uncle said, “and every trader coming north says Botrell has a mare, Riverrun’s dam, been foaling the best hunters since Min the Morn first set hoof in Tormay.”

“Which is an exaggeration,” Levoreth said, “as Min the Morn supposedly lived over seven hundred years ago, and the tradition of formal hunting began less than two hundred years ago when your great-great-grandfather broke his neck riding out after wolves. So the story goes.”

Hennen blinked. “But there’s also the Autumn Fair. Everyone goes who’s anybody. Even the royal court of Harth. Your aunt has her heart set on going this fall, and besides, you haven’t been since you were a little girl.” A puzzled expression crept over his weathered face. She waited and said nothing.

“What’s more,” he said, “I received a raven last week, with word from Botrell that the duke of Mizra will be attending the Fair this year.”

“Yes?” she said, smiling at him. And then words failed her uncle, for he turned and beat a hasty retreat toward the safety of the barn.

CHAPTER THREE

EXPECTATIONS