Thief With No Shadow (31 page)

“I’m sorry.”

Melke opened her eyes. Liana stood in the doorway, twisting her hands. The candlelight cast anxious shadows over her face. “Bastian’s not usually so...so—”

“It’s all right.” Melke rose to her feet.

Liana shook her head. Distress creased her brow. “Bastian would never
hurt
—”

“I know.” Melke smiled at the girl.

“He was angry because—”

“Because he’s trying to protect me.” Something inside her clenched as she spoke the words. “Don’t worry, Liana. He didn’t frighten me.”

The girl bit her lip. She spoke hesitantly, “Are you...certain?”

Melke nodded. If Bastian had worn his mercenary’s face, she’d have been afraid, but he hadn’t. This anger had been different from his rage at the salamanders’ den. Worse. “Go pack,” she said gently.

Liana looked at her for a long moment, through the shadows and the candlelight, then she nodded and turned away.

Melke sighed. She laid her hand on Endal’s head. “Your master is a good man,” she whispered.

She understood Bastian’s anger tonight. He was the oldest child. He tried to protect, to make things right. She saw it in him, recognized it. But he overreached himself. Liana was his responsibility. And Endal. And the sheep in the pen. The old horse. Vere.

She wasn’t. She was just a wraith.

“Come, Endal.”

Melke climbed the stairs slowly, a candle in her hand. She closed the door of her bedchamber and lit the candles in the tarnished holder. Light flared in the room.

“Everything’s all right,” she told the hound. She took her knapsack down from its hook and felt for her purse. The coins clinked as she counted them. Coins for the oils, for the horse she’d hire in Thierry. Because she was going. This was something she had to do.

A crime couldn’t undo another crime, but it could go part way towards doing so. She had to get the necklace.Had to. Terror was unimportant. She had to do it for Liana and Bastian, for Vere. For Hantje. And she had to do it for herself. She could never go back to the person she had been before she’d stolen, but perhaps she might reclaim a little of her honor.

Melke laid the coins on the chairs beside the neatly folded clothes. Cloak, trousers, blouse. Belt and knife. The shoes she wore. And Endal.

“I hadn’t planned for you to come.” She sat on the bed and gently rubbed the hound’s ears. “I thought your master would be more reasonable. I thought...he wouldn’t care.”

Don’t let her out of your sight
, Bastian had ordered. She dared not ask him to release Endal from that task, not now. He’d likely command the hound to bite her if she left her room.

“He makes a mistake, Endal. He should hate me.”

Endal liked the movement of her fingers. He leaned against her leg, heavy, warm, and closed his eyes.

“He’s a fool.” It was a low whisper. “He forgets I am a wraith. His compassion is misplaced.”

Endal didn’t understand her words. His tail thumped on the floor.

She must leave tonight. Bastian’s unexpected rage, his forbidding her to go, made travel at dawn impossible. Food, and a little rest, and when the moon was high... Melke shivered. Darkness. Night.

She’d done it once before, for Hantje. She could do it again. She wouldn’t be alone. “I confess, Endal, I shall be glad of your company.’’

CHAPTER FORTY

H
E KNEW IT
was a dream, but he couldn’t wake up. He hung over the sea. The water was deep and green, terrifying.
Wake up
, he told himself, trying to drag his body higher, away from the hungry waves.

But his dream-self didn’t obey him. One moment he was hovering, hanging in the air, the next he was falling. Bastian screamed in pure terror as the sea rushed up at him. He tried to claw at the air with his hands.
Wake up!
he yelled at himself.
Wake up!

He squeezed his eyes shut just before the moment of impact. For long seconds there was darkness and the frantic pounding of his heart, a sense of speed, and then he opened his eyes again.

He flinched back from what he saw, a wail of terror building in his throat. He was flying, skimming above the waves, fast. Spray flicked up into his face. He tasted salt on his tongue.

It was then, while his heart galloped with fear in his chest, that he realized he was a bird. A seagull.

Tall limestone cliffs stood to the east. Ahead was a curving strip of white sand.

Bastian recognized the beach, even as his wings took him in an upward swoop, high, higher, so high that his stomach threatened to rebel. And then he was hanging in the air again, hovering, looking down on Vere.

But this was a green Vere. The fields were lush with grass and the trees thickly-leaved. Clear water ran in the streams. Fat sheep grazed alongside sleek cattle.

He wanted to see more, but he had no control over where he was going.
Wait!
he cried, as he swooped eastward.
No! I want to see!
But all that came from his mouth was a seagull’s shrill cry.

The long stretch of beach was below him. A horse and rider cantered on the white sand. He didn’t recognize the young man, or the horse he rode. The cliffs came closer, and Bastian began to feel uneasy.
Wake up
, he told himself, trying to twist out of the dream. He didn’t want to see where his mother and father had died.

His dream-self halted before reaching the high cliffs. Bastian hung in the air, relieved, not understanding. He saw movement in the water, a dark shape swimming beneath the surface.

Scales. A bristling crest of spines.

A whimper of fear rose in his throat. He began to pant, to struggle more fiercely to wake.

A psaaron stepped from the sea. Bastian watched with a sense of rising panic as the creature strode up the beach. He knew it would look up and see him.

The psaaron unwound a necklace from around its neck and laid it carefully, reverently, on the warm sand.

Bastian’s heart stopped beating. He understood what he was seeing. Fear fled, replaced by an urgent desperation.
No!
he cried.
Don’t leave it! Not here!
But the psaaron paid no attention to his seagull’s voice. He wheeled and swooped, trying to attract the creature’s attention, screaming, but the psaaron turned. It waded into the sea and slid beneath waves.

Bastian circled the necklace frantically.
No!
he shrieked.
No! No! No!
But the horse and rider didn’t see him any more than the psaaron had done. He yelled until his throat was raw and all he could utter were harsh croaks, until he tasted blood in his mouth. It made no difference.

He watched helplessly as the rider dismounted and knelt to examine the necklace, as he touched it with fingertips that were first cautious, then greedy.
No
, he croaked as the youth stuffed the psaaron tears in his pocket and leapt onto the horse’s back.

His dream-self made him stay, circling wretchedly, until the psaaron came again, stepping out of the water. The creature stood for endless seconds, staring down at the bare sand, the booted footprints, the hoof marks. Then it raised its head and howled at the sky.

It was a sound that made Bastian sweat in terror.

His dream-self was inexorable. It dragged him limply back to the farmhouse. Glass sparkled in the windows, the brightness almost blinding him. The fruit trees were in blossom. Their petals trembled in the breeze.

He watched miserably as the psaaron strode into the stable yard, making horses rear with terror in their stalls. A man came to stand in front of the creature, tall and proud. His great-great-grandfather, but the face he wore...
Father
, Bastian croaked. A woman clutched the man’s arm, her face pale with fear. Tears of recognition filled his eyes as he saw her white-blonde hair.
Mother.

Time moved dizzily and the sun swung around in the sky, morning, noon, afternoon. A young man rode into the stable yard.

Bastian looked for his mother, but she was gone. His father was there, his mouth grim, his arms folded across his chest.

The rider dismounted and handed the reins to a stableman.

Bastian didn’t hear the argument. He saw his father’s mouth move, saw the young man answer, but heard nothing. It was as if the psaaron’s roar had deafened him. The horses in stalls heard. They moved restlessly, their ears back. The sparrows heard. They stopped pecking for grain and flew up to the safety of the roof. Lizards scuttled for cover. Stablemen listened, sweeping busily, their eyes averted.

Fury suffused his father’s face. He yelled, jabbing the air with his finger, incensed. The young man tossed his head, defiant. He turned and walked away across the stable yard.

His father yelled more loudly. Bastian heard the words faintly, thin squawks at the edge of his hearing.
Come back here, Alain! Don’t you dare walk away from me!

Bastian knew the sequence of events.
No!
he croaked, trying to flap his wings, to fly, to stop what was about to happen, but his dream-self held him anchored above the stable yard.

He watched, panting and sweating, straining to move, as Alain swung his leg over a fence, as he stalked across a schooling paddock to where a groom stood with a young stallion, as he snatched the leading rope from the man’s hands. Whatever he said made the groom’s face tighten with dislike.

No!
cried his father.
Don’t you dare!

Alain flung himself up on the stallion. He sat, triumphant, scornful, while the horse stood motionless, quivering in shock at the weight of a rider.

No
, Bastian croaked again, and watched with a sick sense of inevitability as the stallion’s nostrils flared. Muscles tensed beneath the gleaming black coat.

He saw it slowly, as if his seagull’s eyes stretched each brief instant into long seconds. The horse erupted into motion, his frenzied rear tossing Alain high. The young man’s mouth opened in a cry. His hands clutched at the air. Bastian saw the solidness with which his head struck the ground, the way his body jerked and then lay still.

His dream-self took him in a long swoop to where Alain lay. The young man’s head lolled at an unnatural angle on his neck. Slow blood trickled from his mouth.

His father was suddenly there, below him, kneeling, reaching out with shaking hands to touch Alain’s face.

My son
, he heard his father say, in a voice choked with grief.
No, not my son.

The dream swung Bastian away then, so swiftly and dizzily that he began to retch. It became dark, while his stomach heaved and bile rose in his throat. The moon was full and the tide high. And then he saw the psaaron, and nausea clenched into fear.

The creature knelt on the sand, weeping. Tears gathered in its cupped hands.
A curse
. The words swelled in his ears, as fierce and relentless as the ocean tides.
A curse on the family of sal Vere. On their children and their children’s children. On their land. On their livestock and their crops, their rivers and their wells.

The psaaron opened its hands. Shining tears spilled out and soaked into the sand.

For a moment everything was still
—
the breeze in the tussock, the moonlight, the lapping waves
—
and then time started again.
No!
Bastian screamed, but he was plummeting, hurtling downward. The sea surged up at him, hungry. The psaaron threw back its head and
howled—

He jerked awake, gasping for breath, a yell in his throat. Beneath him, the sheets were twisted and damp with sweat. His heart beat loudly in his chest and the psaaron’s howl echoed in his ears.

Bastian sat up, dragging air into his lungs. The muscles in his jaw ached and his throat felt raw, as if he’d been screaming. He tasted bile on his tongue. His hands trembled as he wiped the sweat from his face.

A dream. Just a dream.

He fumbled for the tinderbox. The candlelight pushed away the dream. It became tattered in his mind, wispy and insubstantial.