Wintercraft: Blackwatch (29 page)
‘My orders were to keep him alive until he became an inconvenience,’ said the leader. ‘That moment has passed.’
‘Don’t you think whoever sent you here should make that decision for themselves?’
‘You have said enough, girl. I suggest you remain silent.’
The dark-haired guard had pinned Edgar against the guardrail and was pressing a dagger blade up against his throat. Edgar tried to hold him back, but he was not strong enough to do anything to help himself. Kate tried to pull the guard away, the blade drew a thin bead of blood and one of Silas’s memories forced its way suddenly to the front of her panicked thoughts.
He was standing in front of a dark house, looking at a hooded woman. Kate knew that face. She had seen it twice before: in the memory captured in the skull and in the vision shared by the spirit wheel. That woman had been there when the bonemen died centuries ago, and now Silas was with her, greeting her by name
.
He was standing in front of a dark house, looking at a hooded woman. Kate knew that face. She had seen it twice before: in the memory captured in the skull and in the vision shared by the spirit wheel. That woman had been there when the bonemen died centuries ago, and now Silas was with her, greeting her by name
.
‘Dalliah Grey!’ she shouted, repeating Silas’s words without even thinking about it. The atmosphere on the boat changed at once. ‘You’re working with her. Aren’t you?’
All three of the Blackwatch looked surprised by the mention of the woman’s name. The dark-haired guard’s eyes flickered back to his leader and Kate saw something else within them. He was not just surprised to hear the name – he feared it. The leader’s expression, however, gave nothing away
‘What do you know about Dalliah Grey?’ he demanded.
‘I know enough,’ she lied.
The dark-haired guard looked back at the leader, still pinning Edgar against the guardrail. ‘This is witchery,’ he said quietly.
The leader glared down at Kate with suspicion. ‘Or she overheard one of you two mention the name,’ he said. ‘She knows nothing.’
Kate glanced at Edgar, making sure he was all right. ‘I know that Dalliah has met Silas Dane,’ she said quickly, piecing together what she had seen within the veil. ‘Dalliah is one of the Skilled. You don’t trust her, but you listen to her. You wouldn’t have brought both of us on board unless someone ordered you to do it. She sent you here, didn’t she?’ Kate knew she was taking a risk, but there was nothing else she could do.
The dark-haired guard spoke first. ‘No one said they knew each other,’ he said. ‘She was supposed to come quietly. No trouble. Dalliah lied to us.’
The leader raised a hand to silence him, never taking his eyes from Kate’s face. ‘Bandermain trusts Dalliah,’ he said. ‘This changes nothing.’
‘What about the boy?’
Everyone stood in silence, waiting for the leader to make his decision. ‘We will spare his life,’ he said. ‘For now.’
The dark-haired guard stepped back, and Edgar’s hand immediately went to his neck.
‘I don’t know how you know Dalliah Grey, but one more word out of your friend here and orders or not I will kill him myself,’ said the leader. ‘You have earned him a few more hours of life at most. I suggest he spends it in silence.’ He walked away and Edgar stared at Kate as if she had just achieved the impossible.
‘What was all that about?’ he whispered as loudly as he dared. ‘Dalliah Grey? Where did that come from?’
Kate leaned in to check his neck. The guard’s blade had left a tiny cut and when she touched the skin it sealed at once. ‘I think it was Silas,’ she said. ‘I saw a memory in the veil. He told me her name.’
‘Well, I think you’ve just made those guards afraid of you.’
‘It’s Dalliah they’re afraid of, not me.’
‘That’s not what I saw,’ said Edgar. ‘You stood up to them and it saved my life. Thank you.’
The crow continued circling high overhead as the boat made its way through the wide river channels towards the coast and the Blackwatch took shots at it whenever they thought it was straying too close. When they began to reach the large settlements that were scattered across the eastern wilds Kate and Edgar were sent into the covered section of the boat while the Blackwatch posed as traders, talked their way through the river gates and sailed on.
Slowly, the night lightened into dawn. Kate managed to sleep for a short while, resting her head on Edgar’s shoulder, and Edgar was leaning back against the guardrail snoring loudly when a sudden explosion jolted them both awake. Edgar grunted and blinked, bleary-eyed. ‘What’s happening?’ he said. The two of them blinked in the brightness of the rising sun and a streak of red flame burst into the sky above the boat.
‘A fireflare,’ said Kate. ‘They’re signalling someone.’
The land on either side of the river was covered in frosted green trees that glimmered in the sun light, and where the river wound between them Kate noticed something strange about the horizon. There were no hills in the distance, not even a single smoky plume from a fire marking an outlaw settlement or the beginning of another village. The horizon was dark, bleak and completely flat.
‘Edgar,’ she whispered, pointing through the trees. ‘Edgar, look. I think I can see the ocean.’ She stared out to the east, half afraid and half amazed by what she was seeing. ‘I’ve never seen the sea before.’
The morning sun glittered upon the water, illuminating the cresting tops of distant waves and making them sparkle with light. It looked as if the sea was higher than the land, its waves rearing up ready to swallow the wilds in one mighty flood, but the waters were still and calm, and in that eerie place between the land and the sky a greater danger sat like a black scar upon the water. The silhouette of a ship was anchored out to sea. It looked to Kate like a wreck that had been dragged up from the ocean floor, skeletal and sinister. Green glass lanterns hung along its side and its empty masts loomed tall and ghostly in the sunlight.
The boat bounced gently as it passed through the shallow river mouth and out on to the open sea. The thin guard stood on the roof of the boat and flickered a second signal to the ship, using a circle of glass pressed against his palm to reflect the light of the sun. One of the ship’s green lights winked in reply and the boat cut swiftly out towards it.
Kate and Edgar held on tightly to the guardrail as dark water surrounded them, fathomless and deep, and the closer they got to the ship the clearer it became. There were people on board, moving around on the deck, and the skeletal shapes Kate had noticed were damaged sections that had been singed by fire arrows or cracked by catapults. Most of them were badly patched, leaving scars on the ship that made it look battleworn and barely seaworthy.
‘So … do we have a plan?’ asked Edgar.
‘We see what they want,’ said Kate.
‘And then what?’
The men on the ship slung ropes down to the boat as it bumped gently against its hull. Once it was secure, rope ladders followed.
‘Prisoners first,’ said the leader.
Edgar was first to climb the ladder and he turned to help Kate step up on to the deck behind him. They were met by unsheathed blades, letting them know exactly who was in charge on that ship.
‘Prepare to set sail,’ said the leader, stepping expertly up from the boat. ‘We have what we came for.’
Two officers bundled Kate and Edgar quickly through a trapdoor in the deck, pushed them down a flight of steps and forced them into a small room that was split in half by a wall of bars. The dark-haired guard shoved them through a gate set into the bars and stood blocking the doorway.
‘Won’t be long now,’ he said. ‘I’ll be glad to leave this rat-bitten rock of a country behind.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be glad to see the back of you too,’ said Edgar.
The guard grinned. ‘For now,’ he said. ‘Not for long.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Kate. ‘You’re going back?’
‘That depends on how good a little witch you are, doesn’t it?’ The guard stepped back, slammed the gate and locked it tight. ‘You’ll stay quiet in there,’ he said. ‘If you know what’s good for you.’
The ship raised anchor, the sails were unfurled and Kate felt the great vessel lean and pitch as it began to gather speed, heading east towards the Continent, out into the unknown. Kate and Edgar could not talk freely with a guard nearby, so they spent the journey in nervous silence, neither of them knowing what to expect on the other side.
The further the ship sailed from Albion, the more distant the veil became until Kate had difficulty sensing it at all. It was as if a deep noise that had been reverberating in her mind for weeks had suddenly stopped, making her realise how quiet the world was without its relentless hum. The air grew colder, drawing steam from her breath, and she knew they were entering cooler waters when scratches of ice began scraping along the length of the hull.
Kate curled up on a narrow bedroll and tried to sleep away the journey. Hours passed slowly. When she did sleep she dreamed of Silas and the dark creeping edges of the half-life, and when she woke it was to the sound of the door lock scraping back and a dull bell tolling somewhere in the distance, chiming out the hour. The dark-haired guard entered the room and Kate reached over to a sleeping Edgar, shaking him awake.
‘Rest’s over,’ said the guard. ‘We’ve arrived.’
19
Blood Work
Silas couldn’t see. The veil was not answering him and every one of his senses had failed. He was sealed in. Trapped in darkness. Powerless to do anything except hold on to his thoughts, let go of everything else, and drift. If he had been an ordinary man, death would have been waiting for him in that emptiness; instead there was nothing but the dark
.
.
Memories flickered over one another … erratic and out of his control. The strange pressure of the veil stripped him of his sense of time, dampening every part of his being until he was not even certain that he was still thinking. He felt lost, empty, and forgotten. Perhaps this was what Dalliah had been talking about – his form of death. An ending with no end. Nothingness. Unable to move or speak with only smothering darkness around him, separating him from the world, sealing him within his own corner of the veil, silent and alone
.
.
A flurry of light burst into his thoughts and for a moment he glimpsed the living world through his crow’s eyes. Then the link was broken, the image lost. His crow was there, the world was still there, and that moment had given him a thread of hope. He still had a connection to the living world. It might be weak, but it was his
.
.
Silas focused upon his crow, trying to regain that connection, but part of him held back, part of him did not want to fight to escape that place. The veil was already claiming what was left of his spirit, binding him tightly within its web, and already he was starting to forget. Fragments of his life were breaking away, stripping back his memory beyond his days as a warden and a soldier, spreading back into the few distant memories he had of his family: his mother, father and sister. He saw their faces and remembered the sparkle of silver as a warden counted a handful of coins into his father’s hand
.
.
That was a memory he could not forget, when, at ten years old, he had been sold to the wardens for less than the price of a carriage wheel. Twelve coins had been all his life was worth then. Twelve coins that would be spent feeding his sister; the sister he had loved enough to not complain when his parents had walked him to the meeting place and sold him into a life of order, discipline and death. He concentrated upon the last time he had seen his family, the promises they had made that they would see each other again, and the haunted look in his mother’s eyes when the warden led him out of sight
.
.
The veil could not strip that memory away and he held on to it, using it to focus his resistance. He had spent years crushing that memory into the back of his mind, seeing it as a weakness. Now it had become his strength
.
.
The veil could not draw any closer. Its hold upon him faltered and in the midst of the emptiness he heard the crow screech out a short call. Heaviness pressed down around him. Pressure sealed him in, constricting him. He saw flat stones laid out at an awkward angle in front of his eyes and felt the chill of the solid ground as he became aware of his body and his chest tried to heave in a single choking, spluttering breath. The veil fell away, his eyes opened, and he saw Bandermain standing over him, sword drawn, circled by candlelight
.
.
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