Thief With No Shadow (41 page)

Bastian recoiled from her, stumbling, almost falling. “No!” He hadn’t sold his body. It had been an exchange, clean, untainted by payment. He wasn’t a whore.

The salamander threw back her head and laughed. Rich flames billowed from her mouth. “Humansss,” she said. “Ssso amusssing.”

M
ELKE WAS LIMP
and heavy in his arms, awkward. Bastian held her close to his chest and blinked as sunlight streamed in through the open door. His eyes watered at the brightness.

He stepped outside and turned to face the salamander kits. They no longer terrified him. Compared to their mother they were mild and unformed. Harmless.

They stared back at him, clustered in the doorway.

Bastian blinked again. No, not harmless. Swift and fiery and cruel. He cleared his throat. “How did you know about the necklace? How did you know where to find it?”

Eyelids closed lazily, then raised to show fire-bright eyes. “The lizardsss told usss.”

Lizards. Bastian shut his eyes briefly.

“They’re not sea stones,” he said, as the door began to close. “Did you know?”

A careless shrug was his answer. “The colorsss were pretty.”

The heavy iron door swung shut.

He made it to the horses before he vomited. The taste of bile was better than the taste of the salamander. Time passed, the sun moved in the sky. He had no memory of wrapping Melke in her cloak, no memory of lifting her onto the horse she’d hired in Thierry. He’d always held her, had always sat on this horse, and the colt had always walked behind them.

He couldn’t smell Melke, couldn’t smell anything except the female salamander. Her musk smothered the scents of blood and burnt flesh and scat. It had sunk into his skin and was ingrained there.

His mind was blank. Utterly blank. What had happened in the den...best to let his thoughts veer away from it, best not to remember. Best to be...blank.

Afternoon, dusk, night. Stars and the moon. Melke heavy and limp in his arms. Endal barking. Liana in the candlelit kitchen doorway.

“I brought her back,” Bastian said, sliding from the saddle. Endal frisked around his legs. “She’s alive.” And then he vomited again.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

T
HE BLISTERING ON
his fingertips and palms, on his lips and tongue, at his groin, was mild. He used the salves, not Liana’s gift. He didn’t want her to see his shame, to understand the details of what he’d done. He hid it.

Bastian found it difficult to be in the farmhouse. It wasn’t that it smelled of death, but there was something, a heaviness in the air, a tense silence.

Melke’s life hung in the balance. The salamanders’ fury was burned into her skin, cut into her flesh, broken into her bones. Her infection was more serious than her brother’s had been.

Bastian cooked. That, he could do. Healing Melke, sitting at her bedside and holding her hand...Liana and Hantje did that.

He carried the necklace with him always, but hours melted into days and the psaaron didn’t return. Next spring equinox, or the one after. And until then the curse would continue.

He’d made too many mistakes. Melke’s injuries and her brother’s ordeal need not have happened.

He had lacked for courage, and Bastian tasted the bitterness of shame every day. He seasoned the meals that he cooked with peppercorns and salt, with spices, but the food was always bitter when he ate it.

On the third day, the last ewe died giving birth. Bastian cut the lamb from her body. It was dead.

He squeezed his eyes shut. It was too much. Too much.

But the blood on his hands was better than the salamander’s musk. He felt almost clean.

The well became dry on the fourth day.

Empty
? asked Endal, when the bucket came up with no water in it..

Yes.

He felt the dog’s anxiety.

It’s all right.
He rubbed Endal’s ears.
We’ll go to the river.

He took the colt and the horse that Melke had hired, loading them with every waterskin and bucket he could find. Absurdly, his spirits lightened as he trudged the two miles to the bridge. The ground was dusty, the grass dead, the glare of the sun merciless, but the air was fresh and dry in his throat and he didn’t inhale Hantje’s anguish with every breath he took.

The river still ran high. It had eaten most of the bridge. A dozen planks remained on this side, dipping into the water.

Bastian stood on the bank. The scent that rose from the river reminded him of the psaaron. Hairs rose on his skin. He shivered. Seven sal Veres had died in this river since the curse was laid. He didn’t want to be the eighth.

The task would have been simple if he’d dared to clamber down the steep slope and dip his buckets in the water, but if he did that the river would rise up and swallow him. Instead, he stood on the bank and used the bucket from the well. The river tugged and pulled at it, trying to jerk the rope from his hands and drag him from his footing. Sweat stuck the shirt to his skin long before he’d finished. His hands were raw and bloody.

Worry weighed on Bastian as he walked back to the farmhouse. Even with every bucket and waterskin filled, he hadn’t enough for three horses and a dog and four people. “I’ll take you back this afternoon,” he told the colt. Maybe Arnaul would look after the hired horse. Just until...

Until Melke lived or died.

The horses’ pace was slow. Dust rose in sluggish spurts from beneath their hooves and precious water splashed from the buckets, slopping to the parched ground. Endal walked beside him, closer than he usually did, his shoulder brushing Bastian’s leg. His tail hung low.

Bastian rubbed the dog’s head lightly with his knuckles.
It will be all right.

She smells of death.

He stopped rubbing.
You like her, don’t you?

Yes.

Bastian sighed. It had been easier when Melke was a wraith and he could simply hate her.

He walked in silence, his fingers resting on Endal’s head. His world had shrunk to heat and dust and sweat, to dryness in his throat and water splashing down to fall on dead grass, to waiting and hoping, wishing. If he could only go back to that day, if he could just change what he’d done.

Impossible.

I’m going to Arnaul’s this afternoon
, he told the dog.
You may stay behind if you prefer.

Endal didn’t speak for several minutes. Dust settled on Bastian’s skin. Sunlight glared in his eyes and sweat stuck his shirt to his back. The farmhouse came into view before he heard the dog’s voice in his head:
I’ll stay.

Very well.

You don’t mind?
Endal glanced up at him, his eyes icy pale in contrast to the blackness of his coat.

Of course not.
He scratched behind the dog’s ears.
You stay here. With Melke.

I
T WAS DUSK
when Bastian returned, weary. He washed his face in a handful of water and walked upstairs to his bedchamber.

Melke lay in the wide bed, as still as death. “How is she?” he asked.

Hantje looked up. He shook his head. “The same.”

Bastian stepped closer to the bed. Endal lifted his chin from Hantje’s feet and wagged his tail.

The injuries were still visible on her face: the shadows of bruises, the pinkness of healing burns, the thick red lines of slashing cuts. Fever flared in her cheeks. She didn’t appear to be breathing. He saw no pulse at her throat.

Bastian’s lips compressed. He bent to pat Endal. The dog’s warmth and aliveness, the familiar soft roughness of his coat, steadied him. He cleared his throat. “She will recover.”

Hantje made no answer. His despair was silent.

“I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything.”

The young man nodded, gripping Melke’s hand, his eyes on her face.

You wish to come?
he asked Endal.

He prefers it if I stay.

Bastian nodded.

He walked slowly down the stairs. His whole life he’d slept in that room, in that bed. Twenty-seven years. If Melke died, he would close the door and never use the bedchamber again.

The kitchen stove had gone out. Bastian kindled a new fire and climbed the staircase to the little room that was now his.

Melke had slept in this chamber for more than two weeks. All her belongings were here. He looked around, trying to gain a sense of who she was, but there was little of her in the room. It looked as it always had, except for the blanket lying on the floor where Endal slept and the bowl filled with water.

Bastian looked at the items, blanket and bowl, and realized that Melke was fond of Endal. She’d provided those comforts, unprompted.

The dog liked her. Liana liked her.

Bastian rubbed the back of his neck. Why had it taken him so long to see that she was more than a wraith?

Other than the blanket and bowl, only the spare candles beside the candleholder hinted that Melke had slept here. The candles told him nothing new. He knew she was afraid of the dark, and he knew why.

Alongside the candles was something he’d not noticed before. Bastian frowned and stepped closer. Stones?

He reached out to pick them up, puzzled, and memory flashed behind his eyes. Throwing the knapsacks on the floor, the contents spilling out, stones rolling. He’d held one of these pebbles before, small and smooth. He’d put it in his pocket. And later he’d thrown it away.

Endal said she’d cried when she had searched for it.

Bastian clenched the stones in his hand. They ground into his raw palm, painful.

He took the stairs two at a time, down the dark and narrow servants’ staircase and then up the wider one to the family bedrooms. “Hantje,” he said, from the doorway. “Do you know what these are?”

The young man turned his head. “They’re Melke’s stones.”

“What do they mean?” Bastian stepped into the room.

“They’re... I guess you could say they’re home. Those stones are—” Hantje’s brow creased. “Your hand is bleeding.”

“It’s nothing.” Bastian brushed the words aside. “These stones are what?”

Hantje glanced up at him. His eyes were dark in the candlelight. “Melke keeps them because they’re from home. She says”—his laugh was choked— “she says they help her remember what it was like before everything happened.”

Bastian closed his hand around the stones, aghast. He’d thrown away a piece of Melke’s home. More than that, he’d thrown away her memories, some of the happiness of her childhood. No wonder she’d cried.

“There should be four,” Hantje said. “There’s a red one, too.”

“I know,” said Bastian. “I know where it is.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO