The Blood Curse (4 page)

A figure stalked across the camp and stood above her, slanted at an impossible angle.

Pale gray eyes, flat face.

It took long seconds to recognize him. Leader.

He crouched. His hand reached for her face.

Britta reared back, scrabbling to free herself from the blankets, but he caught her easily. Fingers pinched her chin.

Britta bit Leader as hard as she could. Her teeth sank deep. The taste of blood blossomed on her tongue.

A cloth crammed against her nose. The smell of vanilla.

All-Mother’s Breath.

Oblivion.

CHAPTER SIX

K
AREL AND HIS
troop of armsmen reached the north-east gate not long after dawn. Karel spoke with the guard, and heard the same story Lief had told.

“Took this road, did they?”

“Yes, sir.” The guard eyed the coin he held.

“Say where they were headed?”

“No, sir. I didn’t ask.”

“Anything stand out about them? One of the horses, one of the men, anything?”

“They had a cart,” the guard said hopefully.

“What kind of cart?”

The guard shrugged with his face. “A covered one.”

“What color was the canopy?”

“Brown. Dark brown.”

“Were they carrying weapons?”

“Yes, sir. Looked like they knew how to use them, too.”

“Young? Old?”

The guard’s gaze flicked over the armsmen’s faces. “’Bout the same as you lot.”

Karel nodded. He flicked the coin in the air. It spun twice before the guard caught it.

They rode through the gate with a clatter of hooves. Karel fought the compulsion to spur his horse. He set their pace at a canter. There was no need to gallop. They’d catch up with the Fithians.

CHAPTER SEVEN

M
RELK HADN’T CHANGED
. The mud-brick houses baking in the afternoon heat, the insects, the wrinkled, gray-skinned men sleeping with the dogs on the riverbank. Loomath hadn’t changed either. He was as stooped and bald and bad-tempered as he’d been before. “Well?”

“The prince lives,” Bennick said.

Loomath’s mouth became even sourer. “Nolt?”

“Dead. They’re all dead.”

The old man grunted. “Here and gone.”

“I need to send a message.”

Loomath turned towards his house. His left arm hung bent and scarred at his side. “The boy waits outside.”

Jaumé watched Bennick cross the dirt yard, his curly red-blond hair bright in the sunlight. When both men had disappeared into the house, he led the horses to the water trough. What should he do now they were back in Mrelk? Go with Bennick and become a Brother? Leave him?

Jaumé watched the horses drink. Being alone was frightening. People stole from you, hurt you. He remembered the youths who’d robbed him of his money. He remembered the hollow-eyed man who’d demanded his bread.

He didn’t want to leave Bennick.

Jaumé stood in the dusty, humid yard. His feet were bare, and he almost thought he could feel the curse creeping through the soil towards him. Memories crowded into his head—Da’s mad face, Rosa’s scream, the scent of Mam’s blood, the village burning.

Jaumé made a fist and pressed his knuckles hard to his forehead, forcing the memories out of his skull. He didn’t want to remember those things. There was no curse in Mrelk. Not yet. Not ever, if Prince Harkeld lived long enough.

He glanced at the door Bennick had vanished through. Bennick had rescued him, fed him, given him his own knife and taught him how to use it. Bennick looked after him, and he looked after Bennick. That was how it worked. They were friends. They were almost-Brothers.

But he didn’t want Bennick to kill the prince.

J
AUMÉ HUNKERED DOWN
in the shade, his back to the trough, and waited. It wasn’t long before Bennick came out of the house. He was grinning.

“On your feet, lad. We’re leaving immediately.” He turned to Loomath. “You have a sword small enough for him?”

Loomath’s mouth twisted. “He has a mark against him.”

“Nolt erased it. He saved our lives.”

“Nolt’s dead.”

“The boy saved us from the breathstealers.” Bennick’s grin was gone. There was a hard edge to his voice that Jaumé didn’t recognize. “Get a sword.”

Jaumé shivered. He didn’t ever want Bennick to speak to him like that.

Loomath didn’t shiver. His mouth twisted even more sourly. He turned away without a word and went into his house.

Bennick sniffed. “Old bastard.” He examined the horses. “We’ll take the pony and... none of these.” He strode across to the stables. Jaumé trotted at his heels.

The stables were dark and smelled of hay. The horses they’d left behind were standing in the stalls. “Those two packhorses, and that bay mare for me,” Bennick said, pointing. He swung around and crossed to the packsaddles piled by one wall. “We’ll need our warm clothes, too.”

Where are we going?
But Jaumé didn’t utter the words aloud. Bennick didn’t like it when he asked too many questions.

CHAPTER EIGHT

B
RITTA FLOATED BACK
to consciousness. She was a bubble rising through dark water. Slowly, grudgingly, clarity arrived. Woodsmoke. Silence. Tingling fingers. Aching head. Churning stomach.

Tonight, the watchman took longer to notice she was awake. Finally, she heard the crunch of soil beneath boots, the faint creak of leather as he crouched alongside her.

The assassin caught her head, anchoring her in place. Fingers pulled her mouth open. Water trickled down her throat.

Britta convulsed, retching. To her shame, when the paroxysms had finished, she was crying.

Whoever held her head let go. She was floating again.

Footsteps. The sound of men’s voices. Snatches of sentences.

“—it’s the All-Mother’s Breath—”

“—no use to us if she dies—”

“Enough.” That voice she recognized: Leader’s.

She drifted away from them. The voices receded into silence.

CHAPTER NINE

O
UDHEES, THE MOST
easterly of Roubos’s northern ports. The harbor was chaotic beneath a sullen dawn sky. Ships jostled for space. The mages’ ship inched its way forward, finally claiming a berth. Prince Harkeld stood at the railing and gazed down. Despite the early hour, the wharf teemed with people. The sound they made came to his ears, a babble that rose and fell. Ordinary noises—people shouting, children calling out, babies wailing—but with an edge of desperation to them, strident and off-pitch. The people milling on the wharf were refugees. Fleeing the curse that crept westward across the continent.

One of the mages came to stand beside him. Rand. “You see the curse shadows?”

Harkeld stared down at the refugees. “Yes.” The curse shadows looked like black cobwebs, clinging to hair and skin. He’d worn those shadows himself, for years, and not seen them until today. It seemed impossible that he could have been so blind.

“When we set foot on land, the shadows will start to settle on us again.”

Harkeld nodded. The shadows lay on everyone in the Seven Kingdoms, promise of the fate that advanced towards them: madness, death.

The curse shadows covered eyes, noses, mouths. How could the people down there breathe? Why were they not smothering to death?

“The shadows will rest lightly on us until we drink the water. Then, they’ll darken. We’ll look like them.”

Harkeld’s skin tightened in a shiver.
I won’t drink the water
. But he had to. Water was life.

Except here, where water would very soon bring death.

“When we reach the curse itself, we expect the shadows to become even thicker and darker.” Rand paused, glanced at him. “You have any questions?”

“No.”

“Malle, Gretel, and I are going ashore. There are things that need to be done before we head east. You stay on board. Oren and Serril don’t think there are any Fithians in the crowd, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t.”

Fithian assassins. Harkeld touched his chest, felt the thin ridge of scar tissue over his heart. Fithians had tried to kill him, and Innis had saved him.

Innis.

Harkeld rubbed the scar. Deceitful, lying witch. Taking the shape of a man, pretending to be his armsman, Justen. Pretending to be his friend. He couldn’t think of a name bad enough for her.

And yet he owed Innis his life. But for her, he’d have died, an arrow through his heart.

“I have your word you won’t go ashore?”

“Yes.”

He followed Rand with his eyes as the healer walked away. Rand was lean, middle-aged, as brown and weather-beaten as one of last year’s oak leaves, with deep laughter lines creasing his skin. It was difficult to dislike Rand, but even so...
You deceived me. You knew Justen wasn’t real
.

Most of the mages were on deck. Harkeld’s gaze skipped from person to person. How fresh and pale their skin seemed without the curse shadows, even the male shapeshifters who were deeply tanned, Petrus and Hedín and black-bearded Serril.

Petrus. Harkeld scowled. Petrus had pretended to be Justen, too.

How could you trust people who lied to you? Who pretended to be people they weren’t?

At least he could tell when the mages were shapeshifted now, could see the glimmer of magic surrounding them, glinting on feather or fur. They couldn’t play that trick on him again.

Harkeld scanned the sky, looking for shapeshifters. There was one, a swallow, flying over the crowd in swift darts. Oren, perhaps, or the real Justen.

His scowl deepened.
Liars, all of them
.

He looked out across Oudhees. Wooden buildings. Forested hills. Dark thunderheads piling in the early morning sky. The weight of the clouds seemed to press heavily on town and wharf. The air was humid, heavy, thick. There was a sense of impending doom, as if soil and water and air knew the curse was coming.

None of the refugees could see the curse shadows covering them. They were what he’d once been: oblivious to magic. But they knew the continent was cursed, knew that death advanced westwards towards them.

Harkeld gazed down at the wharf. Were there any assassins in the crowd, looking up at him, eager to claim the bounty on his head?