Glass Swallow (15 page)

‘You hiding something here, girl?’ He shook her, dislodging her scarf. ‘I’ve seen you about: you’re that foreigner. Fey blood some think. Is it true?’

‘It might be.’ Rain fixed him with her blazing blue gaze, willing him to be just a little scared of her.

He relinquished her arm but kept hold of the lantern. ‘Well then, keep out of our way and we’ll keep out of yours.’

She nodded, not trusting his momentary wariness to last. ‘There’s not much here to take, but help yourself.’ She swept a mocking arm to the building site.

The men split up, raiding building stores and the kitchen. Rain hovered in the door of Mikel’s cabin, determined to stop them entering if they should approach. She watched as they heaped piles of loot by the gate but they must have been disappointed with their haul because they soon took to vandalism, crudely punishing the building for failing their greed. One younger man scrawled obscenities on the white walls of the palace; another took a rock and, before Rain could move to prevent it, heaved it through the stained-glass window. Shards speared to the ground, a fallen rainbow. Following an impulse she could not quell, she ran forward, hands cupped as if to catch the pieces, but it was futile.

‘Why did you do that?’ she asked the looter, aghast at the stupidity of his actions. ‘It was worth nothing to you and now you’ve ruined something beautiful!’

He threw a second stone, taking out a panel he had missed. ‘Shove off!’

Rain felt her anger rising. ‘This is my home. Stop messing it up!’

‘What!’ he scoffed. ‘A little thing like you laying claim to the summer palace!’

She curled her fists. ‘I’m not saying I own it; I’m telling you I live here. You wouldn’t want strangers coming in and wrecking your house, would you?’

He tossed a third rock indecisively in his palm. ‘Good try, darling, but I’m not buying it. This belongs to the Master and I’m damned if I won’t have some fun with it. He owes us for letting things get so bad.’ He launched the missile, destroying the last section that hung in the frame.

Outraged, Rain stomped back to the cabin.

‘What’s happening?’ Mikel asked weakly, raising his head from the pillow.

‘We have visitors,’ she replied curtly.

Mikel attempted to swing his legs out of the bed.

Rain made a move to stop him. ‘Stay there in the warm. I don’t think they’ll come in here, but if they do, I’ll make them think twice.’

He evidently didn’t find her words reassuring but pulled himself upright and donned a tunic over his undershirt.

‘I don’t want you anywhere near bad men like that, Rain,’ he said, breaking into a fit of coughing.

‘I suppose we can threaten them with your cold,’ she said wryly, steering him to the fire.

He was having none of it. He shook off her hand and pulled a staff out from behind the door.

‘Keep out of sight,’ he ordered.

‘Too late: they’ve seen me already.’ He glowered at her. ‘I had to let them in before they broke the gate down. The rumour’s spread that I’ve something called fey blood so they’re a tiny bit scared of me, enough to leave me alone.’

‘That’s good. Best protection you could hope for.’ He peeked out of the door, checking on the progress of the looters. The entry looked like a storm-racked beach, littered with debris thrown high on the strand. ‘I’ll be having that.’ He snagged an axe from among the piles of tools, testing its weight with a swing on the chopping block by his door.

‘What is a fey person?’ Rain asked. She did her own bit of reclamation, taking a kitchen knife that was sticking out of a bundle and tucking it in her belt.

‘They are the folk that legend says live in the hillsides. Whole kingdoms they have, deep in the earth. Smaller than us Magharnans,’ his eyes twinkled at her diminutive stature, ‘but they pop out and lure ordinary mortals into their traps. The stories say that if you go on one of their adventures, you are changed for ever: food tastes like ash, the finest sights are pale and uninteresting, all because your appetite has been spoiled by the indescribable riches of the Fey. All nonsense.’

‘Sounds good to me.’ Already her mind was imagining new designs for windows depicting the folktales about fey people, capturing the visions that they were said to offer. ‘I could really work with that.’ She then remembered she had no outlet for her talent and frowned. ‘Those looters broke the window.’

‘Muttonheads,’ murmured Mikel, not too bothered by the news. ‘But if it hadn’t been them, someone else would’ve done it.’

‘I suppose so.’

The looters had finished with the buildings and headed back for the gates. Rain and Mikel stood in front of the cabin, blocking the doorway.

‘What’s in there?’ the leader asked, pointing inside.

Before Mikel could answer, Rain stepped forward. ‘It’s the entrance to my kingdom, mortal. Do you care to see?’

Mikel coughed, though it could have been a laugh.

The leader peered over her shoulder, glimpsing only the bare cabin and its simple furniture, a pallet bed and a straw mattress. ‘Don’t look like no kingdom to me.’

‘That’s because we fey folk hide our riches.’ She tugged a curl over her shoulder, playing with it to emphasize its uncanny corkscrew spring compared to the dead straight locks of the Magharnans. ‘Come and find out for yourself.’

The looter shook his head and backed away. ‘Oh no, mistress, I’m not falling for any of your tricks. I’m not putting a foot in there.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she said sweetly.

Grumbling, the men gathered their spoils and headed out of the gateway. Mikel followed them and banged the doors shut.

Relieved to have got away with her ploy, Rain trailed behind him to ensure he was all right. ‘You need a sign,’ she said. ‘
Nothing left in here
or others will come calling.’

‘Humph! I can’t write,’ Mikel replied, adding another chain to the existing lock.

‘I can—I learnt a little from the cook—and I’ve charcoal and paper.’

‘What? In your kingdom?’ He smiled. ‘You can spin a good tale, lovey.’

Rain returned to the cabin and quickly scrawled a notice. ‘Wasn’t a tale, Mikel. I did hide our riches in here.’

The old bondsman looked doubtful. ‘You mean, we’ve got something left?’

‘Quite a lot really. Have a look under the floorboards.’

He took a peek, spying the rows of cooking pots. ‘My wonderful girl! Perhaps you do have fey blood; you’ve worked a miracle here! I was worried that we would have to move out to find food.’

‘No. We can stay put and hope for better times. Now this is infamous as the entrance to a magical kingdom, I don’t think we’ll be bothered.’

P
eri had spent the days after the collapse of law and order fretting about the fate of his friends within the walls. Against the advice of his father, he had even ventured in on the first night of rioting to search for Rain and found the House of the Indigent abandoned. He was at a loss where to start looking for her, and hoped that perhaps she would come to find him if she had nowhere to go. Returning to the barracks, he worried when she did not turn up that night, his mind imagining all sorts of horrible fates for a stranger alone in a city in chaos. But before he could resume his search, other, much less welcome, people did come looking for the scavengers’ supplies and soon the barracks were under siege. It took a convincing show of force and one nasty scuffle involving rioters and the pack of hunting hounds to dissuade the city dwellers from further attacks.

Once the immediate threat to his home had passed, Peri begged his father and mother for permission to return into the city.

‘Why must you find this girl?’ his mother asked irritably as she stirred their morning porridge. His father leaned over her shoulder and sprinkled in a little cinnamon and dried apple as he carefully measured out the family ration. ‘The city is too dangerous for anyone to go on a foolhardy errand of mercy.’

‘I just have to,’ Peri said, sharpening the sword he’d been allocated as part of the barrack guard. ‘I feel responsible.’

‘She isn’t our business.’

‘Come on, Ma, how would you feel if Bel or Rosie were in her shoes, a foreigner alone in a city gone mad?’

Katia pursed her lips. ‘I wouldn’t have let them go there on their own in the first place.’

‘She wasn’t supposed to be alone, remember? She’s not to blame that everyone she knew was killed by the bandits within hours of landing. It’s Magharna’s fault she’s in the fix she is; we’re Magharnans, so why should we not be the ones to help her?’

‘The boy has a point,’ conceded Hern.

‘Anyway, I have another friend, the old bondsman I told you about.’ He kept his voice calm, knowing that his mother was more likely to concede if he did not sound too desperate. He had to convince her he had thought this course of action through and anticipated all the pitfalls. ‘No one’s looking out for him either.’

‘What have we got to do with bondsmen? They never give us the time of day under normal circumstances.’

‘But Mikel’s different. He always talks to Helgis and me, gives us breakfast.’

Katia clanged the spoon against the rim in irritation. ‘Oh, get the bowls, will you! I suppose I’ll have to cook for two extra tonight.’

Peri smiled and rose to do her bidding.

His mother was right about one thing: it was dangerous to venture inside the walls and certainly not to be done alone. So Peri rode into the city with two young men from the barrack guard as added protection. The eldest, Conal, a shaggy-haired huntsman with an easy smile, held his beagle on a leash; Peri carried Rogue; the third, a lanky-limbed butcher called Sly, had enough knives in his belt to skin and bone a bull. Fortunately no one challenged them: this early in the day, the mobs were still sleeping off their drinking from the previous night and no one else on the streets was looking for trouble.

The change to Rolvint came as a shock to Peri: he saw two unclaimed bodies lying in the gutter, many burnt-out houses, broken windows, shattered doors, fouled drinking troughs. Very few people dared put a foot outside their homes, and if they did it was pure desperation that made them do so. The three riders passed a pinch-faced woman with a child in tow rooting through a pile of refuse. She froze when she saw them. The toddler began to cry. The woman quickly bundled the little girl into her arms and ran back into the roofless shell of the very same bakery Peri had passed a few months before.

‘It looks like the end of the world,’ muttered Sly, disgusted that they could terrify a woman just by their presence.

‘I hope your friends have fared better than them,’ muttered Conal, jerking his thumb at the bodies dumped by the roadside. ‘Where do you want to start looking?’

Sickened by what he saw, Peri swallowed the bile that had risen in his throat. He had to remain focused if he was to be any use in the search. ‘I don’t know where my foreigner has got to, but I expect Mikel will still be in his cabin if no one has booted him out yet. Let’s try there first.’

They reached the building site to find the gate shut against them and a note written in elegant script claiming that there was nothing left in there to steal.

‘Looks like someone’s home,’ commented Conal.

‘But not Mikel. I doubt his penmanship would be this fine, even if he could write,’ replied Peri. His anxiety increasing, he banged on the gate. ‘Open up!’

A gruff voice called back from the other side:

‘Can’t you idiots read the sign? You’re wasting your time coming in here for stuff. It’s all gone, the whole bleeding lot.’

Peri broke into a grin. ‘Mikel! Open up, you stubborn old badger: there’s a falcon man who wants to make sure you’re still in one piece.’

The gate eased open a fraction, and was then thrown wide.

‘If it isn’t the peregrine himself!’ crowed Mikel. ‘Come in, come in, lads. Not safe to be out on the streets.’

The three scavengers urged their horses into the building site, dismounted and tethered them under the archway. The beagle trotted obediently at Conal’s heels as they made their way over to the cabin.

Peri broke with years of training that had taught him his touch was unclean and put his arm around Mikel’s shoulder. ‘How’ve you been?’ he asked, studying his friend for signs of suffering.