The Blood Curse (27 page)

Her curiosity was laced with an emotion that she had to look at from several angles before she understood what it was: protectiveness.
I want to protect this boy. I want to keep him safe.

D
ARKNESS FELL.
T
HE
assassins sat around the fire. Gap-Tooth brought her two tough, spicy, smoked sausages and a waterskin.

It was difficult to drink with bound wrists, but Britta knew better than to ask for her hands to be untied. She ate, savoring the spices on her tongue, drank. The wind picked up. A speck of rain struck her cheek.

If it rained, would they move her under the overhanging rock?

Was it a risk she could take?

Britta glanced to her left. She couldn’t see the arrowhead in the dark, but she knew precisely where it was, knew how far she needed to move if she was to get it.

She took a deep breath and dropped her waterskin, spilling a great spurt of water on the muddy ground. “Oh!”

She looked up. The Fithians were all watching her.

Britta made a show of shuffling sideways, away from the spilled water. The arrowhead was less than a foot away now, buried in the old ashes. She glanced at the Fithians. Only the boy was still watching her. He looked hastily away when he saw that she’d noticed.

Wind gusted into the cleft. Rain began to patter on the ground.

Britta reached sideways. Her fingers closed around the arrowhead. Quickly, she shoved it into the pocket of her cloak.

Leader stood, scowled into the wind and the rain, spoke curtly. Men moved to obey. Plain and Pox strode to her, grabbed her by the arms, hoisted her to her feet, pulled her towards the overhang.

Britta made no protest. She let them tie her ankles, then burrowed as far back under the rock as she could, snuggling into her cloak and blankets. After several minutes, she felt in her pocket for the arrowhead and examined it with her fingers. The haft was broken, but the edges... Almost razor-sharp.

With this, I can escape.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

H
ARKELD WOKE AT
dawn, stiff and cold and tired. The second bedroll in the tent was empty; Petrus was already awake. Harkeld crawled outside and wrapped his cloak tightly around him. There’d been a frost overnight. The camp was stirring. Petrus and Rand sat hunched by the fire and the water mages were at the creek. As he watched, Adel uncorked the ink flask and began making notes. Malle knelt, leaned over the creek, poked the water with a finger.

“She’s not touching it, is she?” Harkeld said, alarmed.

“I checked her hands,” Rand said. “No cuts, no grazes.” His voice was as rusty as it had been last night. He sighed and rubbed his face, a harsh scratching of bristles, then climbed to his feet. “Dawn exercises. Come on, Petrus. We’ll feel better afterwards.”

Petrus grimaced, but he stood, shrugging off his cloak, unbuckling his sword belt.

“May I do them, too?” Harkeld asked.

“Of course.”

He dropped his cloak and sword belt alongside Petrus’s. “You’ll need to talk me through them. Ebril only showed me once.”

They started slowly, a flow of lunges and stretches. After five minutes, Harkeld’s body woke up. The advances and retreats, the twists, the blocks, came more easily. He was no longer cold. Sweat began to bead his face.

“Rand!” Malle called excitedly. “Look at this!”

Rand straightened from a lunge. He wiped his face and headed for the creek.

Harkeld paused for a moment. What had Malle discovered? A way of un-cursing the water?

Petrus didn’t stop. He turned and lunged in the opposite direction.

Harkeld followed, a beat behind him, his attention half on Rand and Malle, half on the exercises. He almost overbalanced, almost fell flat on his face. He caught himself with one hand.
If you’re going to do this, concentrate
. A smooth lunge, a gliding turn, another lunge—

A commotion at the creek snapped his head around. Malle and Adel were wrestling on the ground. “What the—?”

Malle began to shriek, a high, keening sound.

Harkeld pushed out of his lunge, ran for the fire, snatched up his sword. Malle and Adel were flailing on the ground by the creek, bucking and rolling, Rand trying to pull them apart. Malle’s shriek rose in pitch, sharp enough to splinter glass.

Harkeld ran faster, gripping his sword. She had the curse. No sane person could scream like that.

A huge black hawk swooped down, but before it could land Malle’s shriek died.

Harkeld slowed, halted. Petrus halted alongside him, also gripping a sword, also panting.

For a long moment, no one moved—the two water mages on the ground, Rand leaning over them—and then Rand straightened. Adel shrugged Malle off him and scrambled backwards. Malle didn’t move. Harkeld looked at her body—limbs awkwardly sprawled, eyes half-open—and knew she was dead.

The hawk landed and changed into Serril. “What happened?” he demanded.

Rand shook his head. “Don’t know. Adel, are you all right?”

Adel huddled on the ground, shaking convulsively, his face as white as parchment.

Rand crossed to him, took his elbow. “Petrus, help me get him to the fire. He’s going into shock.”

Petrus silently handed Harkeld his sword and took Adel’s other elbow. Harkeld looked around for Innis. She stood just behind him, her face almost as pale as Adel’s. “What happened?”

“Malle got the curse.”

They were a silent procession back to the fire. Malle’s shriek still seemed to hang in the air.

Rand sat Adel close to the fire and busied himself putting herbs in hot water. “Wake Gretel and Justen,” he said.

Innis hurried across to the tents. “Gretel?” he heard her call. “Justen? Wake up!”

Harkeld slowly sheathed his sword, and Petrus’s. Shock reverberated inside him. Two dead at this camp.
I was a fool to think we were safe here
.

Rand poured the tea into mugs and passed them around. “Drink it, Adel,” he said, when the water mage stared at his mug blankly. “It’ll make you feel better.”

Adel didn’t respond. He was shivering, white-faced.

Rand guided the mug to Adel’s mouth. “Drink.” He rested his hand on the nape of Adel’s neck, an expression of concentration on his face. Calming him?

Harkeld sipped his own drink. It tasted of herbs. Not the dried peppermint leaves the mages often used, but something milder, soothing.

Adel’s violent trembling seemed to be easing.

Rand kept his hand on Adel’s neck. “Tell us what happened, son.”

Adel gulped a mouthful of tea. “I don’t know.”

“Malle had discovered something, hadn’t she?”

“I don’t know!” Adel’s voice slid upwards in pitch. “She didn’t tell me what she was doing. She just... she just...” He gulped for air, seeming on the verge of tears.

“It’s all right if you don’t know.” Serril’s rumble was surprisingly gentle. “Just tell us what you saw.”

Adel wiped his eyes with his knuckles. “She was trying to figure out how Ivek bound the curse to the water, and she said... she said, ‘I wonder if that would work?’ and she put her hand in the creek and... and I don’t know what she did because I was busy writing!”

“Why did she call me?” Rand asked.

Adel gulped a breath. “Because... because whatever she did worked. She said, ‘Look, Adel! Look!’ and I did and there was her handprint in the water, a perfect handprint, where the curse shadow was gone. And then the curse sort of flowed back into it and it went oily again. But it was
there
. I saw it.”

No one spoke for a few seconds.

“Did she say anything about what she’d done?” Rand asked. “Anything at all?”

Adel shook his head. “She said, ‘So
that’s
how he did it,’ and called you, and then... and then she said my name, and her voice was funny, like something was wrong, and... and she was looking at her hand, and it was all black with the curse, and she said ‘Run, Adel!’ and then... and then her curse shadow changed all over her and she attacked me.”

Rand frowned. “So... Malle discovered a way to uncurse the water, but whatever she did transferred the curse to her?” He glanced across the fire at Serril.

The big shapeshifter nodded. “Sounds like it.” He rose from his crouch, naked, and jerked a thumb skyward. “I’d best get back up there. Justen, relieve me when you’ve eaten.”

There was silence around the campfire after Serril had gone. Harkeld finished his drink and caught Petrus’s eye. “Help me dig her grave?”

I
NNIS TOOK DOWN
the tents and loaded them on the packhorses. “Rand?”

The healer glanced up from the horse he was saddling.

“Did you use your magic to kill Malle?”

Rand grimaced.

“How did you do it, sir? Did you stop her heart?”

He buckled the girth strap. “It’s not the sort of magic I want you learning.”

“I may need it.”

Rand sighed. He looked away, scrubbed a hand over his face, looked back. “I ruptured her major arteries. Carotid. Jugular. Aorta. It’s a quick death. Almost instantaneous.”

Innis met his eyes. “Thank you.”

Rand nodded. He checked the girth strap and tightened it another notch. Innis watched him, seeing the lines of exhaustion and strain on his face. “Are you all right?”

“As all right as any of us are, right now. Don’t worry about me, Innis. Worry about keeping him alive.” Rand nodded in the prince’s direction. “If we all worry about that, we may make it.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

T
HE ARROWHEAD STAYED
in Britta’s pocket all morning. The road traversed a barren hillside scattered with rocks and thorn trees and bisected by the occasional steep gully. There was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. Cutting the ropes now would achieve only one thing: alert the Fithians to the arrowhead.

Two of the assassins—Curly and Pox—dropped back. By mid-morning, they were so far behind that Britta couldn’t see them when she turned in the saddle. She pondered their disappearance, turning it over in her head, gnawing at it as a squirrel gnaws at a nut. Why had they fallen behind? Did Leader expect trouble of some kind? None of the assassins seemed anxious. Red was even whistling cheerfully under his breath.

They crested the hill. A cold, damp wind blustered in her face, snatching at her cloak, making her eyes water. Britta blinked and squinted, examining the terrain ahead. Rocks, and stunted thorn trees, and nowhere to hide.

The road descended into a valley. Her ears caught a muffled roar that wasn’t the wind. It took her several minutes to locate its source: a creek rushing down a steep gully in a series of foaming waterfalls. A hundred yards ahead the creek turned abruptly east, running alongside the road.

Britta peered into the gully as they passed. Nowhere to run to. Nowhere to hide.

The creek stayed with them all morning and into the afternoon. Other creeks joined it, swelling its waters. By mid-afternoon, it was wide and deep and swift enough to sweep a person away. But jumping in would serve no purpose. The road ran alongside the river. The Fithians would just ride ahead, splash into the water and haul her out. And even if she clambered out on the other side, the hillside was barren, with little cover.

The road wound its way down the valley. The hillside to the north grew higher, the hillside to the south dwindled. When Britta twisted in her saddle, she still couldn’t see Curly and Pox. They were out of sight beyond the endless, thorny flank of the hill.

Refugees passed from time to time, heading west. Some called greetings, but most were silent, weary. They came in oxcarts, in farm wagons, on horseback, on foot.

Britta watched a family pass, in a dray drawn by two huge draft horses. The woman was nursing a baby.
How far to the curse?
she wanted to call out.

She wondered, yet again, how the Fithians were planning to use her.

Something that would separate Harkeld from the witches?

If she was an assassin, that’s what she’d use bait for: to detach him from his guardians, and kill him when he was unprotected, like a pack of wolves taking out a lone sheep.