Thief With No Shadow (9 page)

She stood and flinched from the raw, hot pain in her feet. With the rush of pain came something else, something much more urgent than the desire to clean her face. Before she negotiated the stairs, she needed to use the chamber pot.

Melke hobbled across the tiny bedchamber and opened the door. “Go. Outside.”

A curling lip and sharp white teeth were her answer.

Melke swallowed her fear. “Out,” she said firmly, pointing.

The hound’s growl was audible this time. Hackles rose along his spine. He didn’t move.

Melke stared at him, remembering Bastian’s words.
You will guard the wraith always. She will never be out of your sight.
And he’d gone further than that.
If she becomes unseen, bite her.

She’d not realized until now just what those words meant.

Melke held her head high as she closed the door. She limped back across the room and bent stiffly to pull the chamber pot from beneath the bed. Pride had been another of Mam’s lessons.
Stand tall. Hold your head high.

She’d bathed her feet in the pot last night before wrapping clumsy bandages around them. Bloody water slopped inside, thin and red-tinted. Bile rose in her throat as she saw it. Melke clenched her jaw and inhaled a shallow breath.

Shame was hot in her cheeks as she unfastened her trousers. She couldn’t look at the hound.

But when she did look at him, afterwards, he lay with his head on his paws and his eyes closed.

Melke stood watching him while the humiliation in her cheeks cooled. “Thank you,” she said. The hound slitted his eyes open.

She was stiffer than she’d been yesterday, but some of the heavy weight of exhaustion was gone. It was easier to negotiate the stairs. She was too slow for the hound, though. She was aware of him close behind her, almost pushing at her legs.

It was easy to guess the reason for his haste, and she limped across the kitchen and opened the door into the yard. “Your turn.’’

The hound didn’t appear to mind that he had an audience, so why did she mind if he observed her?
Because he is a hound and I am a person.

A person? A wraith, something to be kicked and beaten and spat at.

Melke rubbed her brow with hard fingers. She was more than a wraith, and she’d undo the harm she’d caused. If it was possible.

She sighed, and leaned against the doorframe and looked around the yard. The vegetable garden inside its fence, the henhouse and the washing line, everything seemed ordinary. Except...the vegetables struggled to survive. She saw it in the withered leaves and stunted growth. When she’d come to steal she’d not noticed how cracked and bare the ground was, how parched. It was as if there was a drought and no rain had fallen for months.

But it was spring and the river was in flood.

It wasn’t spring in this garden, this yard. The soil had seen no water for a long time.

Melke shook her head. The barrenness was more than poverty; something was ill here.

She shivered and rubbed her arms.

The hound came back into the kitchen. Melke closed the door. “Are you thirsty?” she asked him. “I am.” He sat on the cool flagstones and watched with pale, suspicious eyes as she opened a cupboard.

Earthenware crockery, much of it chipped, was stacked neatly on the shelves. She took down a bowl.

The only water she could find was in a pot on top of the stove, the same pot she’d taken water from last night to bathe her feet. The stove was cold, as was the water. Melke filled the bowl and placed it on the floor. “Here,” she said to the hound.

The hound rose to his feet and walked over to the bowl. He sniffed the water, his eyes on her, and began to drink.

Glasses were in the next cupboard. Melke took one out and turned it between her fingers. The glass was finely blown, thin and tinted blue, chipped. These people had once had money.

She took water back upstairs in the largest bowl she could find. She needed to see Hantje, needed to see the rise and fall of his chest and the pulse beating in his throat, needed to know that he slept and that he lived and that he was all right. But she also needed to wash. Hantje had Liana, who could heal him, whereas all she could do was stand uselessly and watch.

“I’m going to bathe,” she told the hound, shutting the door and looking at him. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t watch.”

Perhaps the hound understood her. He stretched out on the hard floor and closed his eyes. He appeared to be asleep.

Melke used the last precious sliver of soap, wrapped inside her washcloth at the bottom of her bag. The scents of salamander and sweat were finally gone, overlaid by sandalwood.

Dressing was easy; she had so few clothes left now—two blouses and a skirt, a change of undergarments—all of which lay scattered on the floor. Wrapping fresh bandages around her feet was less easy; her legs refused to bend properly. She concentrated on the strips of cloth and not on her flesh, swollen and bruised and torn, winding the fabric firmly and tying tight knots.

Combing her hair took forever. The braid was a tangled, knotted mess. Her arms ached long before she’d finished and her scalp felt as if it had been stripped raw. “Easier to cut it off,” she said to the hound. He didn’t bother to open his eyes.

There was no looking glass in the room, but she didn’t want to see herself, didn’t want to look into the eyes of the creature she’d become.

Hunger knotted painfully in her belly. Her hair could be re-plaited later. The room, her belongings...

The comb and her stones went on the shelf. The second blouse, the belt and its knife, the knapsack with its few remaining items at the bottom—the herbs she used to wash her hair, the spices in twists of paper, her nightshift—hung on the three hooks on the wall. Putting the linen on the bed took a mere minute. “Servants’ bedding,” she told the hound as she tucked a sheet over the musty mattress and shook the thin pillow into a pillowcase.

The hound opened his eyes, and closed them again.

Another sheet went on top, darned at the hem, and then the thick blanket she’d slept under last night. Melke smoothed it carefully with a grazed palm. The coarse weave caught at the scabs.

“Come,” she said. “I must see my brother. But first, food.”

The hound’s eyes snapped open. His ears pricked. He sat up.

“Yes,” she said. “Food.”

But there was little food in the kitchen. Melke frowned as she examined the contents of the pantry. The storeroom, too, was nearly bare. The hatred that she felt for herself became stronger. These people were poor, poorer than she and Hantje.

The bread was stale. There was no butter or cheese, but there was honey. It had a strong, almost spicy flavor. Melke chewed doggedly. The hound licked the honey from his slice and then raised his eyes to her. She imagined that the expression in them was almost beseeching. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I could find nothing else. You don’t have to eat it.”

The hound sighed and sniffed the slice of bread again.

Melke examined the kitchen as she chewed. The size of the room, the decorative moldings on the cast-iron stove and the large diamond-paned windows, spoke of wealth, but the whitewash on the ceiling was peeling, several of the window panes were missing, and the pantry was almost empty.

She forced herself to eat two slices of bread, but the food sat uneasily in her stomach. Her thieving had been wrong; she’d known that before she’d set foot on Bastian’s land. But she’d reasoned that one necklace of sea stones wouldn’t be missed. That Hantje’s life was worth it. That the act of stealing would harm no one but herself.

What had she done?

Melke rinsed her plate and knife and set them to drain. “Come,” she said to the hound. He followed as she walked down the corridor.

Last night there had been no chairs in Hantje’s bedroom. Today there were two, plain and wooden. Liana sat on one, beside the bed. Melke watched from the doorway. The quiet concentration on the girl’s face, Hantje’s utter stillness, the handclasp they shared... An artist could paint the scene and call it
Devotion.

Sunlight shone on the girl’s hair. Its whiteness was almost blinding. Moon-white. At home, Liana would have been named Asta. Moon Daughter.

The girl glanced at the doorway. She smiled. “Hello.”

“Hello.” Melke’s answering smile felt awkward on her lips.

“Did you sleep well?”

You need not to be nice to me
, she wanted to say. Instead she said, “Yes, thank you,” and limped towards the bed. “He looks better,” she offered. The burns were less vivid, the bruises paler, the swelling of his eyelids much reduced.

“The injuries. Yes, I’ve made a start. But the fever...” The girl shook her head. Exhaustion smudged beneath her eyes.

“Have you slept?”

Liana shook her head again, her gaze on Hantje’s face.

“What time is it?”

“After noon.”

“What?” Melke was appalled. How many hours had she slept and Liana not? “Then you must sleep.”

Liana closed her eyes. “Will you watch him?”

“Of course,” she said, mortified that the girl felt she needed to ask.

“Thank you.” The words were a weary sigh. Liana released Hantje’s hand and laid it gently at his side. She stood, her movements slow and stiff. “He must drink.” Her voice was husky with exhaustion. “He needs as much as possible.” She gestured to a bowl on the small table beside the bed.

Melke nodded. Shame was tight in her throat.

Liana looked almost elderly as she walked to the door. “If you need me—”

“I won’t.” The words were too abrupt, too rude. Heat rose in Melke’s face. “I mean...”

Liana halted in the doorway. She smiled, a tiny lifting of her lips. “I know what you mean.”

Melke couldn’t trust herself to speak. She nodded.

She stood long after Liana had left, looking down at her brother, almost hating him. It was worse than hating herself. Hantje was all she had, all and everything.

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
HE KITCHEN WAS
empty. No fire burned in the stove. The things that ordinarily welcomed him home, that he looked forward to at the end of a long day, were absent. There was no smell of food, no Liana to greet him with a smile.

Bastian stood in the doorway. Unease prickled over his skin. If he was superstitious, he’d say that death walked here.

Liana wasn’t in the sickroom. The wraith was, Endal stretched out asleep on the floor behind her.

She didn’t see him. She used a scrap of cloth to trickle water into her brother’s mouth. Hair screened her face, falling over cheek and shoulder and down her back, as black as Endal’s coat, gleaming. Her blouse was red. The one he’d seen on the floor, with flowers embroidered at the cuffs. Not crimson, but a warmer gentler color.

She looked womanly, as soft and feminine as Liana.

For a moment, just for the merest second, it felt as if the ground shifted slightly beneath his feet. Bastian touched a hand to the doorframe to steady himself. He bared his teeth at the wraith. It was a sly magic she used, and he’d not fall for it. He knew what she was: a feral, thieving creature. He hissed at her silently.
Scum. Vermin.

Endal raised his head. His tail thumped on the floor, once. The wraith didn’t glance up. All her attention was for her brother.

Are you well?
he asked Endal.

The dog yawned.
Bored.

Where is Liana?

She sleeps.

It explained the empty kitchen, the cold stove. He’d have to cook. Bastian closed his eyes, suddenly weary, aware of the ache in his shoulders and the sting of blisters on his palms.

Perhaps the wraith would cook.

He shuddered, and opened his eyes. He’d rather eat dry grass than food that...that
thing
prepared. He turned away.

Bas.
It was a silent whine.

He looked back at Endal.