Horded - Kingdom Gone Book 2, page 5
She chewed her lip and thought about the wedding. Molton would propose any day. She could see that much in his manner now. It was not too cold yet. No reason to wait. Maera opened her door and slipped into her room as silently as a ghost. They could still get flowers if they sent the boys high enough into the hills.
Her bed hugged the right wall, taking up the entire length and sticking out enough to block half the window. The cot was thin, but the room even thinner. She took two steps and knelt on the floorboards, leaning down and reaching one arm back until her fingers could brush the wall under the bed. They fished side to side and caught the edge of a leather bag. She hooked the strap and dragged out a stout pack.
There would still be bluebells in the woods, maybe some swamp lilies left down by the lake. They had such bright yellow trumpets. She’d need a dress.
She opened the sack and stared at it. Two and a half years on the road at least. Too many, and now the bag had nothing in it. She lifted it to the thin mattress and left it open, turning and reaching into the cupboard on the opposite wall without having to step at all.
She owned three shifts and two skirts, a shawl and a pair of nice knickers. The skirts were wool and too heavy to pack. She stuffed two shifts into the bag. The shawl went in as well, but she left the fancy underwear. She wouldn’t need it.
On the road, she could wear one skirt, the third shift and her cloak.
As Molton Fayer’s wife, she would have had a wardrobe full of fine things, a chest of knickers and a shawl for each day.
The bag bulged with just the few garments. Still, Maera sidestepped toward the door and pulled up the lid on the square box that held her personal items. She had a few cloths, a boar bristle brush and a nice bone comb she’d traded for just after leaving Westwood. It had cost her three of her mother’s silver forks and had served her far better than the stolen dinnerware could have.
She stuffed her comb and brush in and wadded up a few rags, one or two of which technically belonged to the innkeeper. She’d never regret the theft when washing off the grit and grime of travel. Besides, she’d set herself up as a thief years ago. Her chance to erase that stain had arrived today, and she had no intention of seizing it.
When it came down to it, she’d bolt as usual.
Maybe she just didn’t have the strength for penance. Her heart was rotten or her character flawed somehow. Whatever. The universe had offered her repentance, and one kiss had countered it completely. A gobelin kiss.
She shivered, then smiled and crawled back to the closet. One of the boards inside was loose. She knew because she’d pried the thing free six months ago.
His skin reminded her of sea foam. She’d seen the ocean once when her father had taken her on a run to buy iron. The gobelin had broad shoulders like her father too, though he stood much shorter than Cygnus the blacksmith.
She’d gone home after Hadja found her trapped inside the pocket, punchy from whatever dust had knocked her out and wandering in frantic, guilt-ridden circles. She’d walked straight home, but she’d seen the damage on the way. She’s seen bodies. Even at fourteen, Maera had known no punishment her parents could dole out would make up for what she’d done. She’d known they’d never even try to.
Now, she wished she’d gotten a better look at the gobelin. The moonlight made his hair silver, but she’d been dizzy, caught in the weird pulsing trance and hadn’t really examined his face. She’d probably never recognize him if their paths crossed again. Not that she expected it. She didn’t open pockets, couldn’t even see them. She hadn’t a speck of magic in her.
And she had to leave town now.
She pushed an old scrap of blanket aside, pulled the board up and reached into the space between the walls. The hem of her skirts brushed against her cheek. She grunted, pulled out a thin box and brushed the cloth away, turning to sit half inside the closet while she examined her treasure.
The lid flipped up a little stiffly. Hiding in the dust and damp had done its work on the hinges, but the mechanism still worked. The magic still held. She gave it a shake and watched the dial spin. The number shifted, rolling up to one, two, three.
Maera pushed the lid shut and leaned her head back against the wall. She couldn’t run away again. To do that to Jaymi, who had been her friend when no one else would—she had to stay. But how could she? How could she when making him happy meant becoming his mother? It meant marrying Molton Fayer.
She pressed her palms into her temples and squeezed her eyes tight. The first stirring of a headache pulsed under her skull. Maera breathed deeply and willed it away. Thump. Thrum.
Her hands dropped. She looked up. Not a headache—she’d felt that pulse before. Had the gobelin put some kind of spell on her? Had the kiss held some magic in it?
The door was closed and her shutters latched across the window, and yet she knew the gobelin was near. Very near, if the rising rhythm whooshing through her mind was any indication. She heard it like waves against the shore, like the crashing of the foam that matched his skin exactly.
The pulse grew stronger. It came from her left toward the windows, but a softer sound echoed from the right as booted feet took the inn's staircase, started the long tramp down the hallway. Two rhythms echoed one another. Both closed in on Maera, hiding in her closet and feeling like that fourteen-year-old idiot again.
She closed her eyes and listened to one with her ears and the other with her insides. Beat, beat. The shutters rattled. Maera knew who knocked. He must have climbed the gutters, slid along the lower roof and found her by whatever spell possessed them. Steps neared in the hallway, and the knock at her window came again. They'd hear it. The whole inn would hear it, and then what? She couldn't think.
Maera stood on the third knock. She held her breath. The steps in the hall had slowed, and she marked them as belonging to a guest, someone with no interest in her actions. She exhaled and reached her arm out, reached for the latch that would let a gobelin in.
Her fingers barely touched it, and the wood leapt again. One flick, and the catch was loose. One breath, and the wood swung outward. A chill breeze swirled inside. The gobelin peered at her, framed by a dark sky.
“Uh,” Maera hesitated, but her back already pressed against the wall inside her closet. She had nowhere to go now, and the gobelin was crawling into her bedroom. His lips made a thin, ribbon smile. He spoke the same words again.
“Tir talus.” His voice held all the force of that crashing pulse, the song that still pounded against her skin from within.
She watched him come. Now, when he had her cornered, she could examine him. His eyes were larger than a man's and colored like sunlight through beer. They flashed like a cat's when he moved. His cheeks were high and deeply hollow, but his face, his wide jaw and strong nose, didn't look at all like a monster. She imagined this was how elves must have seemed, gaunt and alien and very beautiful.
His hand stretched toward her. He'd landed in a crouch on the floor and now he stood and regarded her with a level stare. Someone had bandaged the place where an arrow struck him. Elves would not have been quite so wide shouldered, she figured, nor did the bulky, highly defined muscles and sparse clothing match with their stories. Still, he had a different sort of grace.
“I, what?” She couldn't fashion words. The sound in her head dulled her brain.
“Come, Tir talus.” When he spoke her language, it fell from his tongue with a hard edge. The alien word, however, he nearly sang. Tir talus.
“What? Where?” She dropped her eyes to the green hand hovering inches from her waist. He wanted her to take it, to go with him. The rhythm agreed. Follow, it said. Go now. She lifted her arm and held her palm just over his, staring at the difference in the two limbs as if they belonged to strangers. His fingers were longer and heavier boned. His pale skin made her look dark, though she'd rarely seen sun since settling in town.
“Tir talus.” His fingertips brushed hers. His hand closed over her own, warm and alien and full of the pounding rhythm. He pulled so softly she moved without knowing it.
“Who are you?” Maera whispered and dared to look up into shining, gobelin eyes.
In answer he only leaned forward and pressed a second kiss against her lips. The heartbeat blinded her, cast her out of herself and into warmth and the steady crash of water. She flew or danced or swam through him and only heard the pounding on her door as a faint interruption.
“Maera!” Molton Fayer screamed her name. “MAERA!”
The door jumped against its hinges and the gobelin woke and pulled the kiss away. Another blow and she screamed without thinking. Her body felt foreign, like part of her still danced elsewhere. The things around her seemed foggy and unfamiliar.
The next strike made the wood tear and splinter. It held, but already sagged and gapped around the edges. The gobelin threw one leg out of her window, pulled her hand and dragged her a step toward freedom.
“Maera!”
She pulled back and watched the green forehead crinkle. His hair glowed like moonlight on its own. He wanted her to go with him, but the men outside her door would kill him if she did.
“Go!” She twisted her hand free and shuffled her feet. “GO!”
The door cracked under another blow. It split at the top and rattled free of the lock. The gobelin shook his head, but he perched on the windowsill, one foot out and ready to bolt. Maera nodded. Her eyes stung. Her mind cleared and she opened her mouth to scream again.
“Help! Help me!”
They banged her with the door, knocking her face down onto her bed at an angle that just allowed her to see the gobelin vanish onto the rooftop. She lay there, limp and without any desire to move, while the men stamped into her narrow living space. Only three of them fit, and they had to form a line from the window to the door. Fayer led them. He leaned far out over her sill and shouted to someone in the courtyard, “There! There he goes.”
Shouts followed both inside and out. Too many voices. Too many bodies in her room and too much banging in her skull to make any sense of it. She breathed and lay on the bed, letting things happen around her.
Finally, someone shook her. Molton leaned down and pressed on the bed to get her attention. She blinked back tears, blinked back a sob that he immediately misunderstood.
“They'll get him,” he said. “We'll make the green bastard pay.”
Maera closed her eyes, pressed the tears out and down her cheeks. She turned on her side and tried to shake her head, to make him hear her, but she couldn't even hear herself over the crashing. “Not hurt,” she said. “Don't kill him.”
“It's fine.” He took one hand and stroked her hair, a liberty he shouldn't have the right to take. “It's going to be fine.”
“No.” Maera pushed against her mattress. She sat up and put all the force she had into a look. She took hold of his shirt, matched his liberty one for one, and shook him hard. “Don't let them kill him. Don't. Not because of me.”
He nodded, but his face shifted from concern for her to confusion about her. Maera let go of him, let her hands fall to her sides and sniffled. He was so like her father, so very gentle and simple. Her lower lip trembled and she released the rest of her tension in a renewed flurry of tears.
“Please, Molton.” She'd never spoken his name before. “Please don't let the poor thing's death be on my hands.”
He took a long look at her, and she feared for a second that she'd judged him wrong. When he nodded, she let her shoulders loose and sagged into a slump.
“I'll try,” he said. “I'll see that it gets a trial.”
Maera nodded and let her head fall forward. Her bag was still open and the game sat on the floor of the closet. Would he notice? If he guessed she'd been packing, she suspected the gobelin's fate would not end in a trial. She inhaled and sniffled once more, louder, even more desperate.
“They'll kill it first. I can hear them.”
In truth, the shouts had dimmed. The night outside held only muffled clanking and soft voices. A shock of fear iced the drumming, dimmed it and made her fearful for real. Had they already murdered him?
“I'll go down,” Molton read her face, but what did he see there? “I'll go and make sure they do things lawful like.”
“Thank you.” She placed her hand over his, the first time she'd touched him. How did he take that? For her part, his skin felt cool and rough and somehow fish-like. “Thank you, Molton.”
He squeezed her hand. She'd asked for as much and, on the tail of his promise, she welcomed it as a friendly reassurance. It was still a relief when he let her go and stood, when he spun without noticing her bag and climbed over the remains of her bedroom door. The innkeeper would take that out of her pay, but then, she didn't plan on staying in town long enough to collect any more of that.
As soon as Jaymi's father had tromped his way back down the hallway, Maera jumped up and dove to her windowsill. She wedged herself against the opening and leaned way out over the lower roofline. Had he jumped straight down? Had he made it to the pocket without taking another arrow?
Twenty men huddled on the stones below. They had more than bows, carried swords and pitchforks and had drawn their knives. She held her breath and watched the huddle of villagers churn around a central point. From above she could see only lumps of backs and shoulders, felt hats in a cluster only halfway to the well. He hadn’t made it. She let her breath whisper out slowly. If he’d made it to the well, they’d be gathered there.
Molton stepped from the inn’s back door. He hollered and the men stood up. A few of them turned. Maera recognized Mayor Ramsten before he shouted back, “We have him!”
“Alive?” Did Molton sound like he’d prefer the other alternative? She couldn’t say, but he pushed his way through the men and, when they parted to allow him passage, Maera saw the gobelin again.
“Yeah. ‘Spose he’s still breathing.” Ramsten laughed and kicked out. One shiny Gentry-made boot landed in the side of an already trussed up gobelin.
His face was bloody. His pale hair was stained with it, and though his eyes already swelled and puffed shut, his lips rippled and snarled, exposing the tips of pointed teeth.
They’d bound his hands together behind his back. His ankles were tied with a leather thong that someone had wrapped almost to the tops of his boots. The mayor’s kick landed in his belly, and the gobelin curled around it for a moment, and then began to twist and strain against his bonds with renewed fury.
“Should we gut him or hang him, jailor?” Ramsten’s tone said he preferred whichever one involved the most pain.
“One minute, Mayor.” Molton eyed the men assembled each in turn. He turned in a slow circle, and more than one face dropped away. A few shuffled back. Most looked up, out, anywhere but directly at the law.
They’d taken some abuse as well. The gobelin hadn’t gone down easily, though she suspected they’d continued the assault after he’d been tied and neutralized. Ramsten himself limped as he circled toward Molton. The town blacksmith had a bloody arm and some of the faces looking away from Fayer turned enough into the light that she could see scratches across them. More than gobelin blood stained the courtyard stones.
But he was badly wounded. She could see it now, as the men shuffled position and cleared her view. The gobelin’s shoulder had been torn open again and his struggles lost their vigor rapidly. His bandages flared crimson.
Fayer and Ramsten argued. Maera heard her own name more than once. The mayor cussed and waved a dismissive arm toward her window. She flinched despite herself. The town would not take her wishes into account, not hers. Molton shouted back, stomped once, and then turned his back on Ramsten completely. He shouted an order to the men while the mayor fumed behind him.
You didn’t turn your back on a Ramsten. Maera might have learned to like Molton Fayer. He’d already surprised her in more ways than one. Too late to think about it now but, had things gone otherwise, she might have made Jaymi happy and not lived to regret it. The guilty chill returned. She couldn’t do it. Not now. No more than she could let them kill the gobelin. The time for making choices had passed.
Molton had four men carry the gobelin. They obeyed him, but not without more than one nervous glance toward the mayor. It wouldn’t last, Fayer’s law, his idea of a trial. There’d be a mob long before that happened.
Maera watched from the window. The gobelin no longer struggled, but she guessed this was not because he’d weakened. His eyes darted from man to man, flashing yellow fires and never holding still until, once, they flickered in her direction. Then his gaze lingered for a second before they carried him out through the widest alley and toward the middle of town.
She didn’t have long. If Fayer kept sway long enough to even make the jail, it would be miraculous. Still, she stared out the window without moving. Her mind spun. The rest of the men dispersed slowly, but she caught site of Miller scampering toward his father, of the two Ramstens speaking with heads close together. No, no time at all. She needed to act if she meant to, and she needed to do it fast.
If the gobelin died, if anyone did on her account…Maera turned her head up and glared at the moon. One more soul to her debt. One more tragedy on the list of things that she’d caused one way or another. She bit her lip hard, tasted blood and the last traces of a gobelin’s kiss.
The time had definitely come to do something. Unfortunately, she hadn’t a clue what.
Chapter Eight
Maera stuffed her bag back under the bed, but this time it held everything she meant to take—the clothes, tools and toy that constituted her traveling gear. In the waist of her skirt she’d tucked the curvy dagger she’d stolen from her father’s shed five years ago. She didn’t know how to use the weapon, but had learned to bluff along the way.
