Thief With No Shadow (15 page)

The kitchen floor was next, every inch of the cool flagstones, the scullery, the pantry, the storeroom. Sweat trickled down her face and stuck the blouse to her skin. Her hands were dirty, her skirt streaked with dust. She rose stiffly to her feet and opened the door to the yard. The cart had stood there. Bastian had taken her knapsack, had carried it indoors and up the stairs and thrown it on the floor. The stone must be out here. There was nowhere else.

The yard was a bare expanse of hard-packed dirt. There were so many places a small stone could lie, covered in dust.
Impossible
, said a voice in her head.

Melke closed her eyes, then opened them and stepped out into the yard.

The ground was rock-hard, dry and cracked and dusty. It was easiest to crawl on hands and knees, to feel with her fingers for something small and smooth. The sun beat down on her and sweat dripped from her face.
Please, Moon, I beg you. Let me find it.

Endal sat in the shade of the doorway and watched, whining once when she caught his eye.

She could see where the cart had stood. There were marks in the dust. She searched, blurring those marks with her fingers, brushing her hands over the rough ground until the scabs cracked and her palms began to bleed.

The stone wasn’t there. It wasn’t anywhere.

Melke sat on the hard ground, her skin sticky with sweat and dust. She bowed her head into her hands.

Endal was a sudden, warm weight against her shoulder. She jerked her head up. His eyes were level with her own, wolf-pale, and she caught her breath in fear. Then he lay down, stirring the dust, and stretched out with his back pressed against her leg.

It was only a stone, the least of all things to lose, and yet she cried. It was home, and it was Mam and Da. It was the memory of happiness, of a time before soldiers and cells and fear, before she’d become a wraith.

Endal’s warmth was comforting. “We had a hound,” she whispered to him. He’d been the color of gingerbread, with gray hairs at his muzzle. The soldiers had killed him.

“His name was Tass,” she told Endal. And she cried.

M
ELKE SAT WITH
her brother while the morning ripened into a hot afternoon. The air in the sickroom became stuffy, despite the open window. Despair slowly filled the space inside her chest. She could hold Hantje’s hand and wipe his face and trickle water into his mouth, but other than that she was helpless. His lips began to crack as the day wore on. His skin grew hotter.

“Don’t you dare die,” she whispered, and the hound pricked his ears. “Do you hear me, Hantje? Don’t you dare.”

Looming over her, a dark shadow, was the knowledge of what came. Spring equinox was one day closer than it had been yesterday. She counted the days in her head. Fourteen...no, fifteen days.

So soon. Too soon.
I can’t do it.
And yet she had to, was going to. It was as inevitable as the next beat of her heart. She would enter the salamanders’ den.

Hantje’s breathing became more labored, his pulse fainter, as the shadows lengthened on the thin carpet. Melke’s sense of helplessness grew until it was almost panic. Her relief was intense when she heard Liana’s light footsteps. She turned her head and saw the girl standing in the doorway. “He grows worse,” she said, an edge of desperation in her voice.

Liana came swiftly across the faded carpet, her eyes on Hantje. She touched his flushed cheek. “Yes,” she said. “He does.” She shook her head. “This fever feels wrong.”

Melke released Hantje’s hand and stood, giving the girl her seat. “Wrong? How?”

Liana laid her fingers on the weak pulse at the base of his throat. “It feels...how can I explain?” Her brow creased as she searched for words. “It feels as if there’s something unnatural about it.”

“Unnatural?”

“I think the infection comes from the salamanders. From their...” She gestured awkwardly.

Melke understood what the girl was trying to say. “From their scat.”

Liana flushed at the bluntness of the words, and nodded. “Yes. Some part of it must have entered his blood.” She took hold of Hantje’s hand.

Melke knew there had to be punishment for stealing. To beat and burn a thief,
that
was punishment. To defecate on someone...the obsceneness of it turned her stomach. Such a degradation, so grotesque and abhorrent an act.

But salamanders didn’t abide by human conventions; none of the magical creatures did. They walked their own paths, had their own right and wrong. And salamanders were cruel. It was part of their nature, as avarice and lust were. Cruelness shone in their flame-bright eyes and the scent of it rose, sharp and hot, from their skin.

“Will it kill him?”

Liana’s hand tightened around Hantje’s limp fingers. “I won’t allow it.”

Melke believed her. If anyone could purge the infection from Hantje’s blood, the creeping filth that fuelled the fever, it would be this girl with her shining pale hair and her kindness.

“Thank you,” she said.

Liana nodded, not looking up. Her attention was focused on Hantje.

Melke looked down at her hands. New scabs were forming. There was still dust on her skirt, and she brushed at it. The second chair was empty. She could sit beside Liana and watch and be neither hindrance nor help, or... “Have you eaten?”

The girl shook her head, her eyes on Hantje’s face. “No.”

“Would you mind if I cooked?” There’d been no one to ask yesterday and she’d not dared to light the stove and make a meal. She was less than a guest in this house. Much less.

“Would you?” Liana glanced up. There was a note of relief in her voice. “Bastian won’t be home until dark and he’ll be too tired to—”

“Of course.” To have a task eased some of the tension inside her. She was not completely useless. “Come, Endal.”

The hound opened his eyes. He yawned.

How long until dusk? An hour? Two?

“Come, Endal,” Melke said again, more briskly, and turned towards the door. She wanted to be out of the kitchen before Bastian returned. His hatred and the depth of his rage frightened her almost as much as the salamanders did.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

T
HE SUN WAS
close to setting when Bastian reached the bridge. He paused and wiped sweat from his face. His legs were weary with walking. Gaudon nudged his shoulder and he put up a hand and rubbed the horse’s smooth, warm cheek. “Almost home.”

Home, where the grass was dead and the ground was cracked and it never rained. He sighed, and led Gaudon onto the bridge. The horse’s saddle was laden with provisions.

Water rushed beneath the wooden planks, high and brown and dangerous. The wraith had swum in it and survived. He dared not; too many sal Veres had died in this river.

He heard the hiss of swift water and, beneath that, a creak of timber. Fear lifted the hair at the nape of his neck. Had the bridge just swayed?

He tightened his grip on Gaudon’s reins and walked faster, pulling the horse, almost running. At the other side, with his feet on solid ground, he turned and looked back. The bridge was old, older than the curse. It had no straight lines. Sun and wind and the force of the river had roughened it, softened it.

He’d have to check. If the bridge fell...

It didn’t bear thinking about. Bastian turned his back on the river. Tomorrow.

There was no Endal running to meet him, no Liana. The farmhouse might as well have been empty. Unease curled inside him, a shiver of fear. An empty house was somehow more terrible to come home to than a pile of rubble with Liana and Endal standing beside it.
I can cope with losing a house. I can’t cope with losing...

He couldn’t say the words, couldn’t even think them.

The sun sank behind the hills and the grays and purples of dusk thickened. Bastian unstrapped the purchases, removed the saddle, and rubbed Gaudon down, working fast. He drew water from the well. The sheep clustered around the trough, thirsty.

“Here,” he said, slitting open the sack of grain he’d bought and cupping his hands full.

The sheep liked the grain. It was more than they would have eaten all day in their grazing. Bastian frowned. One, two...four sheep with round, awkward bellies. There was one missing.

He squeezed his eyes shut.
Not another one.

Bastian opened his eyes and turned towards the meadows, but darkness was descending. Already he couldn’t see the line of dead trees that marked the dry stream’s course. It was too late to search. That was another task for tomorrow, and he knew what he’d find. He exhaled in frustration. Breath hissed between his teeth and the sheep shied away from him.

His mood was grim as he entered the kitchen, but wood burned in the stove and the smell of food made his stomach growl. The house wasn’t empty; he was home.

It took only a few minutes to unpack the provisions he’d bought. The storeroom and pantry, if not full, were at least no longer empty. He hefted the bundle of medicines in his hand and caught the herb scent of them faintly.

Liana was in the sickroom. So were the wraith and Endal. The dog opened his eyes. Bastian made a staying gesture with his hand.
No
, he whispered in his mind.
Don’t move.

Endal whined silently, inside his skull.

Bastian’s mouth tightened. If not for the wraith he’d walk into the bedchamber and hug Liana, would let Endal jump in enthusiastic greeting. She had watched once and he hadn’t cared, but tonight he didn’t want her to see him bare so much of himself.

He stood in the shadows of the doorway, quiet. Candles were lit in the room. Liana’s hair shone white, and the wraith’s was black and gleaming. For a fraction of a second, the flicker of an eyelid, he saw her as a woman, with rounded breasts beneath her blouse and soft hair and smooth, pale skin.

He shook his head angrily. Liana was a woman, Silvia was a woman, the serving girl at Ronsard’s was. The wraith was a...a
creature.

They looked like friends, Liana and the wraith, sitting so closely together. He didn’t like it at all. It was intensely wrong, as if the wraith’s evil could somehow infect Liana. His fingers clenched around the parcel in his hand.
Get out of my house, wraith
, he wanted to shout.
Get out!

Bastian turned on his heel. He stalked back to the kitchen and the mouth-watering smell of food.

The meal consisted of potato and onion only; it was all that had been in the storeroom. But the potatoes were golden and crisp, the onion spicy. He filled his plate a second time, and a third.

He’d taught Liana how to boil potatoes and chop and fry onions, how to grind spices with a mortar and pestle. She had stood alongside him on a stool and watched with serious eyes, and when she was tall enough to reach the stove without standing on the stool, he’d let her cook.

Now she cooked better than he did.

The world was less bleak with food in his belly. The tension in his muscles, the knots of anger and frustration and fear, loosened and relaxed. Memory of Silvia coiled warmly inside him and softened the sharp edges of the day: the creaking bridge, the missing sheep, the wraith.

“Bastian.”

He looked up from his plate. “Liana.” Wood scraped on stone as he pushed the chair back.

“I was worried. It’s dark and I thought you weren’t back.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to disturb you.” A small lie only, but it was unsettling how easily it came to his tongue. The wraith’s fault.

He hugged Liana. It was always like this when he held her: the awareness of how delicate she was, of how much he loved her and to what lengths he’d go to protect her. He’d rocked her to sleep as a baby, had held her hand while she learned to walk, had picked her up when she’d fallen and wiped away the tears, had watched her grow.

His need to protect her was a primitive thing, instinctive. It went beyond thought and reason. In this he was like Endal, an animal, not a man.
I
won’t let the psaaron harm you.

He released her. “How fares your patient?”