Forgotten - Kingdom Gone Book 3, page 9
“It’s a woman.” One of them whispered to the other but his voice carried. It had a dull edge, a roughness she automatically labeled as low bred. “Whasa woman doing out here by herself?”
“Shut up, Nel.” The first one moved his horse to the side, separating from his pal and more effectively covering her should she bolt in either direction. “You from town, Miss?”
“No.” The hair on her arms stood up at the tone in his voice. Too low and too slick. She kept talking, but looked out through the nearest bushes and tried to judge the dim land beyond. A cross-country flight had more risk to it, but they’d share that risk if they followed her. “I was just wondering about this sign. Is that a town’s name, Shade?”
“Nope.” She could hear him spit, though the night still made them little more than shadows. One rider still as stone in the road, the other obviously trying to circle wide, one step at a time. “Shade’s a gang name, lady. Everybody local knows that.”
“I’m not local.”
“That’s for certain.” He came another step, not sideways this time. He rode directly for her now.
“I’m cursed.”
“That so?”
“No man can touch me and live.”
The dry chuckle had a nasty undertone. Now her skin crawled and the man’s horse took another step. “I heard that one before, Miss. How ‘bout you, Nel, you heard that one too?”
“Naw.” Nel’s dull wits hadn’t caught onto his partner’s plan, but Payne had. These two meant trouble. They meant danger.
Her hands heated, reminding her that she wasn’t unarmed exactly. They couldn’t hurt her, and that thought went a long way toward slowing her heartbeat. It warmed more than her palms. She sat taller and watched the fool come closer. “I’m not lying.”
“Course yer not.”
“You will die.”
“You hear that, Nel?” He spat again. Hooves pattered against hard ground.
How much worse could it be? The father had been trying to help her in his own way. His motives might have been skewed, but they’d been kind. And his powdered remains still coated her hands, grew warmer by the second. This man meant her no good at all. Would it be a crime to let him earn his death? She couldn’t have said, but as he rode nearer, her urge to flee faded. She relaxed her grip on the reins and inhaled the scent of salt.
As his laugh echoed down toward town, Payne imagined she was not cursed. She imagined any poor woman unfortunate enough to meet these two on the road at night, defenseless. It would almost be a service, to spare them that. She tucked her hands under her thighs, hid the soft glow of death and smiled in the darkness.
Chapter Eleven
He’d hung his name on the workroom door. A placard dangled from a crooked nail, and etched into the thick wood was: Kerrigan Slate, and the word Mage in swoopy lines below. Farine’s forehead tightened as she read it, as she imagined referring to him by name. He’d never introduced himself, had never displayed enough interest to ask for her proper name.
Yet, here she was, stretching to her toes outside his workroom and wondering if, perhaps, she should slip away quickly without being noticed. Knowing his name shouldn’t have changed anything. She had a right to go wherever she pleased in the castle, but facing that etched moniker, she wondered for the first time how that might irritate, how her presence might be endured instead of welcomed.
If there had been a mirror handy then, she might have kicked it.
Reminding herself that her hesitation was, in fact, his fault, she steadied her resolve and rapped one tight fist against the panel. Something thudded beyond the door, a sharp and heavy sound, and then footsteps rang against the stones and it was too late to change her mind and flee.
The door swung away and she faced the room. Thick swirls of scented smoke haloed the User’s face as he peered at her with two-toned eyes. They widened when his brows lifted. His mouth twitched. Farine watched for any trace of annoyance, any justification to make an excuse and leave quickly.
“Your highness.” He gave her no easy out. “Please, come in.”
He didn’t wait for her either, and by the time she’d threaded through the smoky interior, half feeling her way to the workbench which was the only feature in the room she could reliably recall, he already stood behind it. He’d gone back to work, in fact, and carefully dipped a slim-pointed brush into a pot of ink. His gaze fixed on the parchment that unfurled on the table, held in place at the corners by the inkpot, a book, an amethyst cluster and a black crystal.
The scroll had been covered in scrawling sigils. Farine leaned forward without thinking and examined the lines. All the same symbol, drawn over and over and never the exact same way. While she watched, the User pressed the brush to the page and moved his hand. He had strong fingers. His grip turned his knuckles pale at the outlines. He swept the brush through the movements, but he bobbled the last line, and grunted before laying the brush down.
He materialized his little book again, and she began to suspect he had it always in some pocket or another. That or he summoned the thing from thin air. As he squinted and flipped the smaller papers, she inhaled the smoke, and felt her worries fade in the curiosity his activities provoked.
“What is it?” She leaned to one side and managed a peek at the sketch he inspected.
“It is a mess.” His shoulders rolled forward and he set the book down next to the brush. His head dropped, and the strands of his hair that had worked loose of their tie fell around his face, shadowing his features to match the dejection in his soft words. “I can’t replicate half of them.”
“You just went the wrong way.”
“What?” His head flipped up so rapidly that she flinched. Still, his eyes held a question but no accusation.
“Y-you just went around this curve the wrong way…see?” She pointed to the line he’d mis-copied. “After the down stroke you swooped up clockwise, not counter-clockwise.”
Farine had spent enough hours in cloister with the First Scribe to know her way around a quill. The sigils might be foreign to her, but the sweep of ink on paper she understood completely. Her father had insisted.
“This way?” He used his finger to demonstrate, got the beginning right but then bobbled it prematurely.
“May I?” She reached for the brush tentatively and he offered her only a curt nod. His eyes had returned to the marks, to the scroll and the line of attempts that hadn’t landed just right. She got that much too, could tell from his behavior that the sigil had to be perfect. Perhaps if it wasn’t, the magic wouldn’t take.
When her fingers latched onto the brush, however, he startled to attention. “No! Not upside down.”
Farine froze. People didn’t speak to her at that volume. They didn’t shake their hand at her dismissively, either, but the User proceeded to do just that. He shook his head and waved her away from the brush.
“Come around to this side.” He ordered it, ordered her. “Stand here and show me.”
Farine sucked in her bottom lip, but the User wasn’t looking. He’d leaned back over the scroll and his finger traced the lines of each sigil, working on her revelation, trying to sort it out—taking her completely seriously. But this man didn’t care who her father was. He didn’t even realize he’d spoken to her improperly. He tapped the curve she’d mentioned and looked up, raising both eyebrows and tilting his head quizzically.
“Can you demonstrate?”
“Yes.” She kept her hand on the edge of the workbench as she circled it. The User side-stepped and allowed her access to his tools. “You’re starting them correctly, but the last swirl should sweep in the other direction.”
His brush had a rough handle and a fine, hair tip. She dipped it into the ink and frowned. Her hand tingled. Warmth drifted up from the pot to circle her wrist.
“What is it?” The User leaned out over the paper and watched her. His words were lower now, and full of suspicion.
“Heat.” Would it impress him that she could feel it? “The ink feels odd.”
He only made a noise, a small sound in his throat without any hint of emotion attached. Farine sagged a little, but the warmth creeping through her hand goaded her on. She placed the brush tip to a bare section of his scroll and carefully made the first lines, the ones he’d done correctly, over and down. Then she swept the brush in the opposite direction out and up and back around to finish the sigil.
The User grunted. He made the noise again and pointed at her drawing, at the spot that varied. His finger followed her brush stroke and his lips moved, though no words emerged. Farine watched them, as if she could see his speech. Thin lips in a strong face. He only spoke aloud once his eyes had left the mark, once he’d broken the sigil’s hold on him.
“You did it.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.” He manifested the little book again and flipped it, focusing on the pages and giving her another moment to examine his features before he thrust a sketch of the sigil at her. “See. It’s exactly right and look.”
He held his palm over her mark and mumbled something, a non-word. The lines of ink flared the way the powdered herb had on their previous visit.
“It works now.” For a moment his excitement showed, lighting his mis-matched eyes. Then he frowned and dove on the book again, flipping to a new mark and holding that one only inches from her face. “Can you do this one?”
“I think so.” The symbol on his selected page looked simple enough to replicate, but it danced in front of her. “Can you hold it still?”
“Sorry.” He set the thing down on the scroll’s edge and they leaned over it together.
When she’d memorized the lines, Farine dipped the brush again, felt the rush of warmth and began. He kept his face low over the paper and watched her movement, watched the ink soak into the fibrous paper and made the sound again.
“You have a very steady hand.”
The warmth reached her chest, tickled something into life there. “From many hours of practice, I assure you.”
“And a keen eye.”
Farine made no answer to that. She finished the last line with less finesse than she’d begun, lifted the brush quickly so that her shaking hands didn’t spoil the drawing. The User didn’t appear to notice. He reached out again, said another odd syllable and set the new mark aglow.
“Shall I try another?”
“Hmm? Yes.” He looked away from his magic and blinked at her. “If you will.”
“I’m curious,” She swirled the bristles through the ink while he flipped pages. “about why you are helping my father.”
“He has promised to pay us.”
Farine laughed. She squinted at the sketch and went to work replicating it. When she’d finished, he flipped to another without asking this time. “I’m sure he will, but I suspect money is not much of a motivator for a man who can set ink afire with a word.”
“No, it isn’t. This one?”
She nodded at the new mark and dipped again. “Well then?”
“Workrooms like this are not easy to come by.”
“You came for the workroom?”
“Nor are libraries like Mastral Weredewell’s.”
Farine drew the lines and tried to keep her eyes there on the paper. The User stood right beside her. His shoulder touched hers when he leaned down. The brush swept and the ink sent tingles through her body. “I see.”
“Do you know how many sigils there are in all?”
“No.”
“That’s because no one does. No one.” He said it like a shared secret, soft and fast, and the heat of the ink flared, punctuating the statement. “They can’t even agree on how many there might be. But if someone could gather them, could uncover all that there were…”
“And that’s you? You want to collect them…for what?”
“Anything.” He leaned even closer. His breath huffed out, a long wind of excitement. “Someone with access to all the sigils could effectively do anything.”
“Isn’t it dangerous to collect them into one…what will you?”
“A book. A comprehensive volume of magic. The most powerful book ever conceived of.”
“Oh.” She felt like adding the intended wow at the end would make her look foolish. The correct response would sound older, more casual. “That’s very ambitious.”
“Agreed.” His eyes sparked with his emotion. The effect was different in each eye, mesmerizing. But he frowned suddenly and turned away from the scroll to fix her in a more somber gaze. “But I have difficulty replicating the lines exactly. My eyesight, you see. Not as good as it might be.”
“Because of your eyes?”
He snorted and looked away. She might have embarrassed him, or he could simply have gone back to his brooding. Either way, he stared at the scroll until the lines on his forehead deepened. “You have a very steady hand.”
“Oh yes.” Farine imagined where his reasoning was headed. She liked the idea, but held her tongue against the urge to offer her services. Helping him write his sigils would be far more interesting than lingering in the garden with Hadja and her new friends. She wanted to do it, but she wanted him to ask her to do it even more.
When he spoke at last, she had to drop her head forward, to pretend to examine the scroll and let her hair block out the delight she couldn’t keep a secret.
“Princess,” he used her title, as if suddenly reminded of it. “I have a very unorthodox idea.”
Chapter Twelve
Nel kicked his fat gelding in the barrel and was galloping for safety long before his buddy’s scream had faded. The second horse followed, though its rider wafted behind it like smoke and his clothing fell away to lie in the dark road. The hoof beats echoed off toward the sea. The clouds drifted to the side and let the stars shine down on the shadows fleeing from her evil.
Payne waited for the sounds to die completely. She held Malcolm’s horse in check, though it tossed and danced in an attempt to follow the other mounts. When the only sound she could discern was the beast’s snorting, she dismounted and held it by the bit. There was powdered jackass in the road, and she could make good use of him. Her arms still tingled where he’d grabbed her, where he’d thought to pull her from her horse for no good reason.
This one, she didn’t regret for a second. She did want his ashes, though, and she fumbled through Malcolm’s saddlebags for something to store the powder in. He had a handful of small pouches, most full. She left the soap alone, the fire starter and the tinder intact, and dumped his eating utensils into a larger bag. She pried the small pouch all the way open and, squatting down in the road, began to scoop Nel’s companion’s remains into the soft leather.
He’d drifted away for the most part, but a decent pile stayed in the spot where he’d attacked her. Payne felt the warmth of magic in the ashes. She put her mind to that, to the power it held, and tried not to think of anything else.
When she’d stuffed the pouch with as much as she could, she pulled the strings tight and stood. The road curled away toward the sea, lighter now, hinting of the oncoming dawn. Whatever lay in that direction would have to remain a mystery. Poor Nel had taken her story ahead, and her reception would have to echo the tragedy here.
She swung back into the saddle and stared for a moment anyway, out to the sea that glowed now, a swath of paler black beneath the stars. A rebellious voice whispered to her thoughts. What could they do to her, really, except get out of her way? If she wanted to see the sea, what man could keep her from it?
But there would be women in town…and children. The horse stamped when she turned it back the way they’d come, but it followed her direction and trotted at her command. Retracing their steps, and with the cloud cover rapidly whisking away. There were still hours until dawn and yet, the world already lightened, paling at the edges and reminding her that she was probably riding directly toward Malcolm and his irritable partner.
She urged the horse into a lope and tried to remember how far she’d come from the last branch in the roadway. Sariah had the blowgun, but she knew about it now, and they couldn’t keep her long even if they tried. Payne almost wished they’d ride around the next bend, just so she could trot openly past them.
Of course, they might tie her up next time. That thought cooled her rebellious fire. She tapped her heels against the horse’s belly and leaned forward, low over the neck, letting the wiry mane whip at her face. The fork wasn’t far back, if she recalled, but would they have reached it yet? Should she take it and hope they hadn’t or should she head toward the chapel in hopes they’d already passed her by?
The near-light helped her decide. Beyond the scrub trees to her right Payne could make out the dark, jagged shape of the Shadow Mountains. Here then, the southern tip of the range met the sea, and that way would lead her back to the temple.
The road widened and branched. She pressed her inside leg against the warm barrel of the horse. They leaned right and followed the road back toward the mountains, the temple and the man. She chewed her lip as she rode. It didn’t mean she had to stay, did it? She could return long enough to say her piece, to gather her things, or maybe to invite him to come with her. They’d been alone up there so long, isolated.
This road wriggled like a snake, curving toward the sea after only a short way. The trees thinned until she raced through the open with a few scrub bushes on her left and the flat table that led to the sea on her right. She couldn’t make out if that was grass, sand or stone yet, but the water sparkled in the distance and the mountains loomed like a black wall ahead. The beat of hooves rattled in her ears. She felt the whisper of a nearby pocket as they flew past it.
It would be quicker to go that way. She sat up tall and fingered the reins. The horse slowed, tossing its stout head with a jingle of metal. She could hop pockets and have them in the temple almost at once. Her stomach squeezed at the idea. She hated it, hated the very thought of Old Space. Yet it would save her time and eliminate the need to worry about pursuit or consequences.
