The Borderkind (11 page)

He started toward Smith, sword up, watching the walking stick warily. How many fencing matches had he won? Dozens, at least. But he had never fought someone with such uncanny speed, not at close quarters.

Wayland Smith removed his hat and set it on the counter. Even as the brim touched wood, he sprang. Oliver raised the sword, parried his attack, then darted the blade forward. Kitsune cried out, but Oliver could not hear her over his own howl of rage. All of his betrayal and fear went into his attack and he twisted inside Smith’s defenses, then drove the point of the sword through his shoulder, puncturing flesh and grinding against bone.

The old man grunted in pain, but grinned.

“Well, there’s proof, eh?”

Gripping the stick with one hand, he shot the other out and cuffed Oliver in the side of the head like he was an errant child. Staggered, Oliver lost his balance. Smith kicked him away, the blade slipped out of the wound, and then the old man stood there, glaring at him, one hand clasped over the piercing in his shoulder. Blood seeped through his fingers.

“Uncle,” Kitsune began.

“I heal,” Smith replied.

Oliver was disoriented from the blow, but determined. Blood dripped from the tip of Hunyadi’s sword as he raised it, ready to attack again.

Wayland Smith rushed at him with the speed of the wind. One hand gripped his wrist, keeping the sword at bay, the other grabbed his throat and he felt himself driven backward. In the span of three heartbeats he was nearly carried across the foyer of the inn. When he slammed into the door, it crashed open, and then they were at the top of the bridge that led to the inn, hanging above the Sorrowful River.

The sun splashed down upon them. Oliver twisted to escape its glare, trying to wrest himself from Smith’s grasp. The old man slammed him against the thick wooden balustrade of the bridge and Oliver was bent backward, a hundred feet above the river, nothing below him but a fall that might kill him.

“You will go,” Smith said, “because you have no choice. To stay is to die, but to go is to have a chance for yourself and your sister. You will see me again, Bascombe. Be assured of it.”

The old man glared at him with stormy gray eyes, then abruptly released him. Wayland Smith backed away, turned, and strode along the bridge, leaving Oliver to gasp to catch his breath. He pulled himself away from the balustrade and stared for a moment at the drop below, at the community of Twillig’s Gorge going about its business, none the wiser.

Kitsune stepped out of the front door of the inn. She raised her hood and looked at him from its depths, jade eyes gleaming.

“You’re fortunate to be alive,” she said. “Shall we be going now, and try to stay that way?”

The fox-woman turned and started along the bridge. Oliver took a deep, shuddering breath of frustration, slid the sword into his belt, and followed.

We’re not alone.

Julianna stood after tying her shoe, Halliwell’s words echoing in her mind. She looked at the detective, but his expression revealed nothing. Halliwell scratched at the back of his neck like a man dying of boredom and regarded her impatiently.

“You all set?” he asked.

“Yeah. Shoelaces. They come untied. It happens.”

A smile flickered across his face and was gone. By silent consent they started walking again. Julianna watched Halliwell, wondering when he would comment further. Obviously there was a purpose to his behavior. He’d said those words and now he was acting as though nothing had happened at all.

But his gaze was restless. Whenever she glanced at him, Halliwell’s eyes were moving, taking in the landscape around them, this copse of skeletal trees, that jutting rock obelisk.

Julianna saw the figure then, perched upon a rock fifty yards ahead. She had looked that way a dozen times and not seen the little man. Now, suddenly, he was simply there. Halliwell had noticed him, obviously. Or had felt that they were observed.

“Keep walking,” Halliwell said softly.

She had slowed nearly to a stop without realizing it. Now she picked up her pace, keeping stride with Halliwell. At the same time, she did not take her eyes off of the figure who sat on the rock slab like a child, knees jutting up, elbows resting atop them. In his hands, the little man held a flute and as she watched, he set it to his lips and began to play a lilting, pleasant tune, as though to greet the morning. The melody swirled and dipped, and in spite of her trepidation, she smiled.

As they came abreast of the rock, Julianna slowed again. Halliwell stopped entirely, so she did the same. The detective stood with his hands at his sides, fingers splayed, as though he expected an attack.

They stood together and listened to the jaunty, winding music, watched the little man play his flute. He was dressed in a gray cloth tunic with a thin black rope around his waist, almost like some kind of monk. His bald pate gleamed in the sun and against the early morning blue of the sky, his nut-brown skin seemed a shadow unto itself. Her first impression, that he was old, was borne out by the many wrinkles upon his face, though his skin was taut against his skull.

But his eyes were young, and alight with mischief. As he played, he watched them, returning their curiosity. When he reached the end of the tune, he took the flute away from his lips and smiled, bowing his head.

“Very pretty,” Julianna said.

“You have my thanks. A very good morning to you, travelers.”

Julianna nodded. “And you.”

Halliwell regarded the little man carefully. “Seems a long way from anywhere, if you don’t mind my saying, sir. A long way to travel to play your flute.”

The old man frowned, brown skin wrinkling even more deeply. “But of course this is not my destination, friend. It is only a place on the road, a spot to rest. But where are you headed, travelers? Forgive me for saying that you seem unlikely mountaineers. You are Lost, yes?”

“Very,” Julianna admitted. It earned her a wary look from Halliwell, but she forged on. “We are attempting to catch up to some friends who are also traveling this way. They followed the river, but we weren’t certain what dangers might be under the mountain—”

“And so you went over,” the old man said, tapping his flute upon his knee. “It
is
dark down there.”

Halliwell let out an audible breath and at last his hands seemed to relax. His whole body deflated a bit.

“We hoped to cross to the other side, to find wherever it is that the river comes out again.”

The old man looked at Halliwell. He brought the flute up to his lips and blew, a little trill of music drifting off into the air. Then he lowered the instrument and grinned again, his teeth crooked and yellow.

“Ah, but those you seek will not have reached the other side of the mountain.”

Julianna shivered. “What do you mean by that? Is there something in the river? In the tunnel?”

“There are many things in the dark water, lady. But you shouldn’t worry. The river would carry them through Twillig’s Gorge, where travelers are nearly always well met. The odds that the sentries would have killed them are very slim.”

Halliwell had frozen at the implication that Oliver might be dead. Julianna understood. Her own heart had trembled because she loved him, but Halliwell was afraid because if anything happened to Oliver, they had no hope of getting home.

“This gorge,” Halliwell said. “Can we reach it from here?”

“Certainly. Your present course will bring you there in time.”

Julianna shivered again, this time with happiness. A town of some kind, along the river. And if she understood the wrinkled old monk properly, Oliver would have almost had to stop there.

“Thank you,” she said. “So very much.”

“Not at all,” he replied, fingering the holes upon his flute. “The truth is freely given. But surely you must be hungry, yes?”

Something about the glint in his eyes when he said this gave Julianna pause. But Halliwell’s face lit up.

“Starved,” the detective said. “I don’t suppose you have—”

“Certainly,” the monk said.

With his flute in one hand, he leaped easily down from the rock, faster and more agile than seemed possible for one so ancient. When he stood before them, Julianna was startled by his size. He had looked small there upon his perch, but now she saw he truly was no larger than a child, perhaps four feet tall at most.

Halliwell seemed at ease, a grateful expression on his face. She wondered if the wrinkled little man’s age and size had caught the detective off guard. Certainly, he did not seem to pose any threat. His music had been beautiful, his face beatific, his voice calming. He had been nothing but kind and helpful.

But what had that meant:
The truth is freely given
?

The sprightly little man slipped behind the rock and emerged with a knapsack of the same gray cloth as his tunic. He set it on the ground, unlaced the ties, and reached inside, withdrawing first a small loaf of bread and then a single banana. Crumbs fell from the bread as he held it out, offering it to Halliwell.

Julianna frowned, staring at the banana. It was perfectly yellow, ripe, with only a hint of green at the stem. There was not a trace of a bruise on it, not a brown blemish on the peel.

The old man was traveling as well. This was just a stop along the way for him. If he was carrying food supplies, unless he had taken the banana off a nearby tree, it seemed incredible to her that it would be so perfect.

Incredible.

Small, wrinkled brown hands held out the bread and the banana. Halliwell wore a neighborly smile as he reached out to take them.

The truth is freely given.

Which meant some things were not given so freely.

“Ted, wait.”

Halliwell was about to pluck the food from the old monk’s hands. He glanced sidelong at Julianna, one eyebrow rising in a question.

“Don’t take them,” she said.

The old man’s eyes narrowed and he reached to put the banana in one of Halliwell’s outstretched hands. Julianna lunged forward, slapping at the old man’s wrist and knocking the banana from his grip. It struck the ground, where it instantly changed, transforming first into a flute, and then into a pale yellow serpent with a line of green diamond scales running down its back.

“What the hell?” Halliwell snapped, as the snake hissed and coiled, drawing its head back as though to strike. But it only swayed and watched them.

Halliwell and Julianna both backed away from the monk, staring at him. The detective’s hands bunched into fists.

“It’s in every fairy tale, Ted. Every legend,” she said, heart hammering in her chest. Julianna licked her dry lips and stared at the old man, who only regarded them coolly, still with that benevolent expression that had lulled them. “Meet a stranger on the road, you
never
take anything from them. Nothing. Especially not food. It costs something in those stories, and the cost is always something terrible.”

As they stared at him, the monk blinked once, and then he laughed softly. His grin widened.

And widened.

The sides of his face split, mouth spreading so far that the entire top of his head tilted back like it was on a hinge. His mouth stretched from ear to ear, and within were rows of yellow, crooked teeth. The front ones seemed ordinary enough, but the others were jagged fangs, long and thin, some of them broken and pitted.

When he spoke, his voice was like the hiss of the snake.

“How fortunate for you that the woman is with you,” the monk said. “And unfortunate for me. I would have had your right hand in trade, friend. And her body for my pleasure, had she partaken.”

Horror shook Julianna, yet the danger seemed to have passed. The man made no move to attack, nor did the hissing snake upon the ground.

“We’ll be going now,” Halliwell said, and he took a step backward.

The snake hissed.

The monk laughed and bent down to scoop the serpent into his hand, where it became a harmless flute once again.

“If you insist,” he said, the words stretched out by the vastness of his jaws. In his left hand, he still held the small loaf of bread. “But the bread is real. Have it, if you would. Your prize for surviving. Freely given.”

Julianna’s breath caught in her throat. “Freely given,” she said, looking at Halliwell. “I don’t think he can break his word on that. There are rules.”

“To hell with rules,” Halliwell said, still staring at the monster. “No thanks. We’ll pass.”

Julianna agreed. As hungry as she was, she could not have eaten anything this creature touched. They backed away slowly, watching the little man and his sack and his grisly smile. Only when they were fifty yards away and he had made no move to follow did they turn and walk normally again. They went quickly, glancing back every few seconds.

When they had gone so far that they could no longer see the rock, or the old man and his flute, Halliwell let out a breath.

“I owe you,” he said.

“Not a problem. You do the same for me, okay? We’ve got to keep each other alive.”

“Damn straight.”

Julianna put a hand on his back. The detective glanced at her, surprised by the gentle contact.

“We’re going to get home, Ted. We are.”

Halliwell nodded, but his eyes were haunted by the fear that Julianna was wrong.

CHAPTER
6

A
t the eastern rim, Naga sentries awaited them. Oliver and Kitsune hurried away from the inn across that rickety bridge over the river. At the cliff wall, they climbed rope ladders that hung down from the edge. Kitsune reached the top first, but neither she nor the Naga sentries made any effort to help Oliver up out of the gorge. At the last moment, he was gripped with an urge to simply push off, to spread his arms and let himself freefall back down into the gorge, hundreds of feet, to hit the river, or worse, to crash into the roof of the inn or the balustrade of some better constructed bridge, breaking his fall and his back.

A helpless target. Better to be dead.

The Nagas held bows, just like the ones in the river tunnel, and he could hear the strings sing like harp chords as they were drawn back. The tips of arrows glinted in the sun as they followed the progress of their unwelcome visitors, ready to put an arrow in either of them. Borderkind or human, it did not matter to them. They were just doing their jobs.

The nearest Naga fluttered its wings and slithered closer to Oliver on its thick serpentine trunk. When he glanced worriedly at it, the Naga bowed its head once in farewell. A kind of deference was in its eyes, making Oliver more confused than ever.

Oliver paused to look back down into Twillig’s Gorge, far below. Someday, he hoped to return to this strange place, when there were fewer secrets and fewer people trying to kill him. It had sadly not lived up to its own legend. Twillig’s Gorge was supposed to be a place where fugitives fled, where anyone was safe, so long as they behaved themselves. He had read stories about Butch Cassidy’s Hole-in-the-Wall, and had imagined Twillig’s Gorge to be something like that.

But the world of the legendary had disappointed him. There were just as many lies, just as much betrayal and bullshit, on this side of the Veil as the other.

“Oliver. We must go,” Kitsune whispered.

He looked at the Nagas. Their wings fluttered and their jaws were tight, fingers twitching as though ready to unleash their arrows. Yes, it was most certainly time to get away from here.

Kitsune touched his elbow and he turned slowly. Her face remained partially hidden by her hood, as though she had retreated back into the solitary legend she was. No trace of a smile touched her lips, and that was a good thing. Had she smiled then, Oliver might have shouted at her, angry that she had not helped him fight Wayland Smith. And he did not want that tension between them. Obviously there were relationships here that he did not understand, perhaps a hierarchy of legends, or of Borderkind. Kitsune had treated Smith as though he was some kind of king, and how was Oliver supposed to argue with that?

They left Twillig’s Gorge behind.

Every time Oliver looked back, the sentries were still there, watching. He wondered if their bowstrings were still taut. Eventually he and Kitsune started down a craggy slope. When they could no longer see the Nagas, he finally felt the weight of their scrutiny lifted from him.

For nearly an hour they walked, first down that long craggy slope and then up a smaller, more gradual hill. When they reached its crest, Oliver saw that there was another—steeper, but even shorter—still ahead. Beyond that, however, he could make out the ribbon of a road unfurling across the plains ahead.

On that peak, they paused. Thanks to the mode of their departure, they had no food, no water. No supplies at all. But he was not going to complain. They had escaped with their lives—and in this case, that was enough.

He had been hungry and thirsty in the past few days. There had been worse moments. At least now they were doing something. They were in motion.

Coming to get you, Collette,
he thought.
Get you away from that thing. Hang on, sis
.

As they started down, making their way carefully amongst loose rocks and scrub brush, he glanced at Kitsune. “You know where it is? The Sandcastle that Smith was talking about?”

The fox-woman nodded. “Across the hills and down to the plains, perhaps another hour’s walk from here, we’ll find the Orient Road. From there, I can find the Winding Way. But…”

“But what?”

“I thought only the legendary could travel the Winding Way. One version of the story says only tricksters can use it.”

Oliver stepped down from an outcropping of rock, loose stones and dirt tumbling down the slope. He paused and looked back up at Kitsune.

“Yeah. So you said. But Smith didn’t think that was as hard and fast a rule as you seem to. Why else would he tell us to go that way?”

Kitsune’s focus was upon the treacherous footing below, and she did not look at him. “I don’t know. But either way, our destination is east.”

Oliver frowned. Too many questions, too many rules—and too many of them seemed to be different for him than they were for others. The conversation Kitsune had overheard between Frost and Smith continued to perplex him. The insinuations contained within their words burrowed into his brain like insects—voracious and maddening.

“All right. The Orient Road, then. First stop. But before we take any shortcuts that we can’t turn back from, we need to talk about finding the Dustman.”

The sun had begun its climb into the sky in earnest. Oliver squinted against the glare as he descended. The Orient Road was not terribly far away, but in this heat, without water, it was going to be an unpleasant trek.

“The diversion will cause a delay.”

Oliver glanced at her. “Do you think we have a chance against the Sandman without help?”

Kitsune grimaced. Her jade eyes peered out from beneath the hood. The orange-red fur of her cloak gleamed in the sun, swaying around her, clinging to her as she walked. He thought about how much easier this descent would be for her in the body of the fox and wondered if she maintained a human form for his benefit.

“No.”

“Then we have to find him.”

“Agreed,” Kitsune replied, though reluctantly. “But the Dustman is ever in motion, as though with the wind. The only way to encounter him is by chance, or by intruding upon his legend.”

A small stone rolled under Oliver’s weight and he slipped, nearly fell sprawling on his face down the slope. It was pure luck that he was able to arrest his tumble before that happened. His breath came ragged in his throat and he paused a moment to rest, hands on his knees.

“Intruding. Apparently I’m good at that. Of course, I don’t have a clue what you mean.”

At last, Kitsune smiled. It was as though some of the distance between them was dispelled. She threw her hood back and let the sun touch her face, shaking her hair out behind her.

“We must return to England. Once upon the Winding Way, it is a simple diversion. If we cannot travel that way, it will be more difficult. But one way or another, we have to pierce the Veil again.

“As Wayland said, the only way to find the Dustman is to wait for him in the nursery of an English child. His legend was born there, and the old stories keep him in their hearts.”

Oliver stopped and stared at her. “Wait. Of all of the nurseries in England, all of the babies in the whole damn U.K., how are we supposed to find the right one?”

Kitsune moved with a fluid grace, stepping from stone to stone as though weightless. She passed Oliver and continued down the slope, glancing back at him over her shoulder as though taunting him to keep up.

“Not a problem at all,” the fox-woman said, and the wild mischief returned to her eyes. “When the Dustman senses the presence of another Borderkind—even worse, a trickster—in his domain, he will come swiftly.

“The trick will be trying to explain it to him before he kills us both.”

She laughed and spun, dancing from one rock to the next as Oliver struggled to follow.

“Wonderful,” he said. “Can’t anything in this world be simple?”

Kitsune paused and gave him a dark, warning look. “Legends are never simple, my friend. They appear to be, on the surface, but there are too many facets, too many fears, too many demands that human beings have placed upon every ‘Once Upon a Time’ for them to be simple.”

And with that, she was off again.

Oliver followed as best he could, wondering how long this side trip to find the Dustman would take, and if they would survive it. He wondered where Collette was, even now, and whether she understood what was happening any better than he did. He wondered what the Sandman had done to her, there in his dreadful place.

And how long she could stand it without losing her mind.

During the night, Collette could hear a child cry. A little boy, she thought. He sobbed and whimpered and whispered “no” over and over. It had begun perhaps two hours before dawn, rousing her from sleep. In her prison chamber in the Sandman’s castle, she had sat at first and tried to figure out the source of the crying. It came and went, as though at times she was nearer to the anguished boy and at others further away. She had stood and walked the circumference of her prison, had gazed up at the arched windows of the sand pit, and at the stars that showed through, even as they were bleached out of the sky by imminent morning.

She wondered if it was the Vittora, taunting her with more lunacy, but there was no sign of the thing, not a spark of light within the walls of her prison.

“Who are you?” she called into the emptiness of the castle and the vastness of the night. “Where are you?”

There came no answer. Only sobbing. But in spite of the lack of response she kept calling, speaking words of comfort, just in case he could hear her.

Her heart broke for the boy. She wanted to get to him, tried to push her fingers into the hard-packed sand of the walls, to climb, if she could, but there was no purchase. She knew that, of course. Once, and only once, just before the Sandman had appeared within the walls of her prison for the first time, she had felt the sand give way and been able to scoop away at the wall, digging into it. But since then she had begun to believe it had been a hallucination, for she had attempted it a hundred times, trying to make handholds for herself so that she could climb to the windows.

She knew the walls were solid. But the terrified whimpering sobs of the boy got under her skin and forced her to try again.

In time, all she could do was pace and try to cover her ears. The torment of hearing the child’s terrified voice, and being unable to help him, was more than she could bear. She had no children of her own, but Collette wanted them, wished to find a man someday who would be a better husband than the asshole she’d married and divorced…wished for a little boy. And here was this child, no different than the son she might have one day, sobbing in fear and despair, and she could do nothing to soothe him.

At daybreak, the child began to scream.

Collette froze, breath coming in tiny gasps. She stared at the smooth wall, the dawn’s light beginning to make a warm glow of the carved sand all around her. Once, twice, three times she spun, searching for the origin of that scream.

She could not just let it happen. Could not just do nothing. Shaking, skin prickling with gooseflesh, she raced to the wall and put her palms against it. Collette closed her eyes, listening more closely than she had ever listened to anything in her life. The screaming—a chilling shriek of agony that went on and on—echoed around the chamber, but its origin was nearby.

Close, but not here. Not right here
.

To the left
. Her eyes still closed, she slid her palms frantically along the wall, sand scraping her skin. Again she froze, focused, listening.

Here
.
Just here
.

The screaming stopped. She opened her eyes. The Vittora hung in the air just a few feet from her, its light flickering.

“I met her in the mall,” it said, words drifting on the air, so close, as if it were whispering right in her ear. “I should have known our relationship was doomed.”

During her imprisonment, Collette had retreated again and again into her favorite movies, played them on the screen inside her head. There were a handful of movies she loved with a passion, and this was her favorite line from one of them. The Vittora spoke in the voice of John Cusack from
Say Anything,
as if it could comfort her now. As if the words were anything but gibberish in the panic of this moment.

“I don’t want to buy, sell, or process anything—” it began.

Collette drowned its voice out with her screams. She could not ignore its presence, the dreadful light, the knowledge that it existed there on the periphery of her imprisonment, waiting for her to die so that it could be released from the tether that held it to her. But she would not let it get in her way.

“Where are you? What is it?” she shouted, palms against the wall.

The silence shattered. The boy began screaming again, but this time he cried as well, not only terror and pain but anguish. Absolute despair and surrender.

“No,” she whispered, gritting her teeth. “No.”

Collette tore at the wall, grit getting up under her fingernails. The pads of her fingers scraped on the sandlike concrete. Her heart hammered. Fresh tears traced lines in the dirt on her face. She shouted back to him, pictured the little boy, wondering what he looked like, where he was, what was happening to him.

Anguish clutched her heart, and so it was a moment before she realized her fingers were digging in sand. Then her eyes widened as it came away in her hands, scoops of dry sand. It began to spill down from the wall as though she had broken through some outer shell and now it sifted to the ground, pooling at her feet.

“I’m coming!” she shouted to the boy.

Then his screaming stopped again. Collette kept digging, but fell silent. Perhaps shouting her intentions was not wise. Should the Sandman hear her, what would he do?

“Come on, come on,” she muttered under her breath. Her fingers hurt. They were bleeding. But she kept digging, trying to figure out what she was digging toward.

Another prisoner. That had to be it. The boy must be a prisoner in the castle, just as she was, and now someone, the Sandman or one of those freaky hunters, was hurting him. Torturing the little boy.