Seasons, page 14
Liana wasn’t waiting. Belani was safe with Danelle. Now it was time to go find her son.
“Tell them you will, please. Seeking the Herald I am,” Liana said. She turned and headed toward the front door.
“Sit. The Watchman will need to talk to you.” The woman’s words were a command, not a request.
Commands were always to be obeyed. Always. That lesson had been beaten into Liana, body and soul. Her footsteps faltered, dragging to a stop as surely as if she’d become mired in stone. She glanced over her shoulder at Danelle, sitting so calmly at her table, and gnawed on her thumbnail.
“The Watchman will find your little ’un,” Danelle said, shifting Belani to her other shoulder.
“Talk ta Herald Reneth is what I’m needing,” Liana said. The Herald and his Companion Bolan had rescued Liana from the Tedrels. They would know what to do. She frowned as the coppery taste of blood coated her tongue. She’d nibbled her thumbnail down to the quick again.
“Tell the Watchman your story.” Danelle nodded at a shadow darkening the open door.
“Not a story,” Liana grumbled as she stepped forward to greet the newcomers.
Two men wearing the uniforms of the Haven Watch strolled into the room. Liana’s steps slowed. One of the men was old enough to show gray at his temples and was smaller than the other man. The way the smaller man chewed on the ends of his mustache reminded her of a nervous weasel. The younger man’s head nearly brushed the ceiling. His square head and burly shoulders put her in mind of the monster she had fled little more than two months ago.
“This here’s Liana,” Danelle said as the two men stopped before the stone hearth opposite the table, ignoring the stools and rocking chair. “One of her little ’uns has gone missing.”
The air of authority surrounding the men brought a chill of fear to Liana’s belly. She pulled herself up straight and looked the smaller Watchman in the eye even though her insides quivered like spoiled milk. She kept her gaze from the bigger man and worked hard to assure her words were clear, though she stumbled now and then when she couldn’t recall a Valdemaran term.
Something kindled in the Watchman’s eyes as she spoke. Anger—the realization shot through Liana like an iron spear. He was angry with her.
He isn’t going to help me, she thought. But why? Because she was from Karse? Because she was young—
Danelle must have shared her concern. When Liana finished speaking, the woman slapped her hand on the table and glared at the Watchmen.
“I told her you’d find her little ’un. You get yourselves out there now and prove me right.”
A loud thud sounded from the kitchen and caught everyone’s attention.
“What now?” Danelle rose to her feet, handed Belani back to Liana, and stomped into the kitchen.
“The Watch has been alerted, and I’ve sent a runner to the Heralds,” the older Watchman said. “A Herald is on his way.”
Everything was taking too long. She should just leave. Start the search where she’d left off now that Belani was safe.
Years of struggling against authority, being beaten when she’d tried to rebel, was the only thing preventing her from dashing out the door.
Liana bit her lip, wanting to scream her frustration into those complacent faces.
Only they weren’t complacent. Not really. Both men’s faces were lined with concern.
Besides, screaming was another thing that brought on the beatings.
So she stayed quiet, restlessly shifting from one foot to the other, her insides threatening to leap out of her throat.
“You’d best feed that little ’un afore you get yourself gone. It appears our milk supply is greatly diminished.” Danelle called.
Liana ground her teeth until they hurt. The itch to be moving, to be doing something, drove her toward the bathing room just off the kitchen. Once in the bathing room, she laid Belani on a small table near the metal tub, removed the soiled diaper, and gently sponged the babe’s tiny body, no longer feeling as clumsy and inept as she had following the twins’ birth. She wrapped the babe in clean swaddling and stood, putting Belani to her breast. Eager lips went to suckling as Liana headed into the kitchen.
She found Danelle mopping up what looked like a pond of spilled milk, a boy barely out of diapers standing next to an overturned milk can, guilt plastered on his young face. The aroma of simmering stew started Liana’s stomach roiling. If she stayed here smelling that stew, she’d be sick. She didn’t need to eat; she needed to find her son.
“Finding the Herald I am when done this one is.” Liana’s broken Valdemaran was made worse by the panic threatening to sweep her into despair.
She turned away before Danelle could protest.
Bolan and his Herald had promised help if she should ever need it.
All she had to do was find them.
* * *
• • •
Liana didn’t know whether or not to feel relieved when a Herald showed up at the door just as Belani finished nursing. She studied him from her perch in the doorway between the main room and the kitchen.
The Herald wasn’t Reneth, but all Heralds were supposed to help, weren’t they?
The Watchmen waved him in, and the three began conversing in low tones. She straightened her shoulders and stepped into the room, fighting the urge to run.
Conversation stopped, filling the room with awkward silence. Liana swallowed, trying to moisten her suddenly dry mouth. Then she raised her chin and took a deep breath. Beating or not, she had to find her boy.
“My son you are finding?” she demanded.
The Herald gave her a nod, his short blond hair glistening in the firelight. “You are the mother of the missing boy?” he asked in almost flawless Karsite.
He must have noted her bewilderment. “Our Weaponsmaster is from Karse. He taught me your language, all the while threatening to beat me to a pulp if I didn’t learn it perfectly.” The Herald’s blue eyes twinkled, then grew serious. “I am Herald Nikko.”
“We have ta go find him,” Liana said to Nikko. “Now.”
A vacant look crossed Herald Nikko’s face, then he nodded. “Rufina, my Companion, agrees.”
“A’course she agrees!” Liana said with a scowl. “Companions be smart where babes is concerned.”
Danelle stalked into the room and held out bundle of dry diapers. “Just in case.”
Liana handed Belani to the woman, nodded her thanks, and awkwardly tucked the diapers into her waistband. “An eye on the little one, will ye keep?”
“Of course.” Danelle glared at the Herald, then the Watchmen. “Take care of her. Take care of them all.”
Liana pressed a hand against the reassuring presence of the knife at her waist and headed out the door.
Once outside, she led the way back toward the meadow. There had to be something there, a clue of some sort she had missed. She would not miss it this time.
A shadow moved into the street behind them. Liana’s heart leaped into her throat, then settled back where it belonged when she recognized Jedren.
“I’m comin’,” Jedren, the oldest of six Tedrel orphans who’d been placed with Danelle, said. The boy looked like he’d been stuck on the rack and stretched until the top of his head almost reached Liana’s shoulder. Skinny as a stork, he moved like a smaller bird, darting here and dashing there. His carrot-red hair was as stubborn as Liana’s, refusing to be tamed, and the number of freckles on his face matched his curiosity—that boy was curious about everything.
The smaller Watchman shook his head. “We don’t need—”
Jedren held up his hand. “Heard from Luka, who heard from Cliffer, who heard from someone so high up the ranks no one down here knows ’is name, that more’n one babe’s gone missin’.”
More’n one?
Looks like Haven ain’t as grand as folks claim. Liana felt a wave of guilt at the thought.
Herald Nikko’s face grew dark. He drew the Watchmen to one side and spoke to them in a low voice.
Why weren’t they moving? Why were they staying so calm? Wasn’t anyone worried about the babes? This news should make them move faster, not stop and chat.
Liana bit her thumbnail for a moment, then turned and walked away. She kept her steps quiet so she didn’t attract the men’s attention, not because she didn’t want their help but because she was afraid they might try to stop her.
And no one was going to stop her.
Panic had turned to determination, a feeling she could handle. In the Tedrel camp she had been determined to survive.
Now she was just as determined to find her son.
Jedren stalked beside her, his freckled face wrinkled in a dark scowl.
“Why?” she asked him, keeping her voice low and their conversation in Karse.
“Why what?”
“Why are you coming with me? He is not your child.”
“They’re not just taking your babe. Whoever is doing this is taking others. Why wouldn’t I want to help put a stop to something like that?” He looked away, seeming uncomfortable. “’Sides, I like baby Reneth. He deserves to be safe. All the babes deserve to be safe.”
He didn’t need to add, “Just as the rest of us are now safe.”
Safe.
Jedren had been rescued by the Heralds just as she had been. Did he actually feel safe?
Liana picked up her pace. She thought she’d felt safe, but today showed her just how shallow that feeling had been. Constant beatings while enslaved by the Tedrel mercenaries and other . . . abuses . . . had drained her of the ability to believe in anything, leaving behind only the husk of a girl who had once dared to dream.
Then a raven had led her to a Companion and his Herald. They had saved her life and those of her twins.
But what did she really know of these people?
A thought seized her mind in vicious jaws, refusing to let go. She stared at Jedren in horror. “What if this Midsummer Eve festivaling is jes’ like our Feast ’o the Children?” she whispered. “What if they took little Reneth ’cause ’e got some kind ’o magic?”
Do they burn the magic ones here?
Liana squeezed her eyes tight against the vision of babes lying alone in a shed, waiting for someone to light them up.
“Cain’t be the magic,” Jedren whispered back. “They’d’ve taken Celia that were so. She been healing since we got ’ere. Danelle said they’d send Celia to Healers’ Collegium once she’s old ’nuf. ’Sides, Luka said the babes was taken from folks down here. ‘Spawn ’o the rabble,’ he called ’em, even though he lives right next door.”
Liana’s panic gave way to growing anger and she picked up the pace again. Spawn ’o the rabble, indeed! “Babes’re babes, no matter the loins they spring from.” Her voice sounded more like a low growl than a whisper, but she kept her voice down. “That’s what Bolan says, and Herald Reneth agrees.”
She hadn’t agreed with them, not at first.
Her twins had been sired by a man so violent, so monstrous, she had been certain the babe growing in her womb would be born a two-headed monster.
But Bolan had shown her otherwise, allowing her to feel the babe’s innocent spark.
And the other spark—just as innocent—growing alongside the first.
Jedren’s scowl deepened, wrinkling his nose so the freckles sat side by side, forming a solid mask beneath his eyes. “I been wondering—why’d only the boy get taken?”
He studied her curiously as another nightmare vision plunged her into darkness—the Tedrel mercenaries had forced young boys into “Boy’s Bands” to train them up “proper.” She’d witnessed firsthand the misery those boys were put through—near starvation, beatings, forced to steal, and punished if they were caught.
Some died from wounds suffered during training with real blades; others died from broken spirits.
Those who made it through training became monsters.
Just like Grunt.
“Do ye know if the folks what lives in Haven take boys fer . . .” She had to force the next words out. “Fer trainin’?”
Jedren’s face went so pale she was afraid he’d keel over. “Never thought on that one,” he said with a gulp. “Some of us orphans got took fer trainin’ soon as we got ’ere—”
“The training here in Haven is nothing like the so-called training in the Tedrel camps.”
Liana’s heart jumped back into her throat. She spun on her heel, hand going to the knife in her waistband. Jedren spun with her, his face as startled as hers.
Herald Nikko stopped, hands in the air as if trying to convince them he was harmless. “My apologies. I did not intend to startle you.”
At least the Herald remembered to speak in Karsite. Liana dropped her hands and resumed walking, picking up the pace. “Took you long enough.”
The Herald nodded. “I needed to confirm the boy’s statement. There are, indeed, other babes that have gone missing. Some last evening, some—like your babe—only this morning. The two Watchmen say the entire Watch is befuddled. The Heralds have been notified and—”
The sound of feathers slicing through the air halted Liana midstep. She held up a hand to quiet the Herald and scanned the skyline as a raven croaked close by.
Afternoon sun glinted off tiles as she scanned the nearby rooftops and doorways, finally spotting the feathered culprit perched atop a stone lintel.
“What be ye after?” she asked the raven, unable to keep the frustration from her voice. Not frustration at the raven—at the delay.
For as long as she could remember, animals had been Liana’s true friends. She held a memory of her younger self, laughing and playing with only the forest animals as her friends. She never got lost. Never was scared.
A raven had led her to Bolan and helped her escape the Tedrels—
She almost choked at the sight of something dangling from the raven’s beak. Afraid to breathe lest the object turn out to be something other than what she suspected, Liana held out her arm.
The raven dropped from the lintel, swooping onto her arm.
Then it dropped a blue bootie into her other hand.
Liana turned the bootie—Reneth’s bootie—over in her hand.
“What is that?” Herald Nikko asked.
“Is that—” Jedren started.
The raven launched into the air with a cry that sounded more like someone dragging a sword over rough stone than something uttered by a bird. Liana hurried after the bird, forsaking all thoughts except one.
The raven had found her son.
Black wings took to the sky, and Liana took off at a run, not looking back to see if either Jedren or the Herald followed. The raven led her past houses and down twisting roads, around corners and through streets that stank of piss and rotting food, the streets shrinking in on themselves until she found herself in a dark alley.
Liana tried to calm her racing heart and catch her breath. The Herald stopped close behind her, Jedren not far behind.
“What is it?” Herald Nikko asked. Liana took absurd pleasure in hearing the Herald was slightly out of breath.
She held up the blue bootie. “Reneth’s.”
“You believe the raven’s found the babe, then?”
The answer died on her lips. Had Reneth been found? Or was the bootie simply a clue?
A shush of wings and the raven landed on her right arm. Liana’s belly clenched as a sense of danger flooded through her. She froze at the sound of boots on stone.
Not the steps of a drunkard stumbling home or—
Herald Nikko’s hand fell on her shoulder and gently guided her back several steps into a shadowed doorway.
She didn’t want to hide in a doorway. She wanted—no, needed—to follow that clue. Find where the bootie had come from.
Get her son back.
“We need to see who comes and where they go,” the Herald whispered. “Then we can form a plan.”
He was right. She knew he was right. But little Reneth was out there somewhere . . . The yearning to hold her son grew so strong, Liana’s legs threatened to dump her on the ground. She sank to her heels, raven shifting restlessly on her arm, and blinked hard against the tears threatening to spill from her eyes.
The sound of footsteps resolved into two distinct sounds—one much heavier than the other.
Liana almost leaped out of her skin as two men entered the alley. One of the men wore an ugly, scarred face all too familiar to her.
Grunt.
Talons tightened on her arm as Liana willed herself not to move. She bit her lip, choking back the scream demanding to be released. The coppery taste of blood added to the roiling mess of fear, loathing, and despair churning in her belly. She drew in a shaky breath.
It’s only a nightmare. Not real. Can’t be real—
Liana didn’t recognize the man following the Tedrel mercenary. The man put a hand on Grunt’s arm and mumbled something she couldn’t hear.
Grunt seized the other man by the tunic and slammed him against the wall.
“What d’ya mean ya only got one?”
“I were feared she’d see me, see. And the babes were fussing somethin’ fierce.”
Grunt spat in disgust and stomped to the end of the alley, stopping in front of a battered door. She leaned forward in time to see light spread across the alley as a door opened—
And the sharp cries of babies echoed off the walls.
The color drained from Liana’s face as the door closed, leaving the alley empty. She sprang to her feet, overcome by the need to rush in and snatch her son from Grunt’s monstrous grip, a grip she knew all too well.
The raven launched itself awkwardly from her arm, scolding her softly as it rose to the rooftop across the alley. Before she could take a step, Herald Nikko took hold of her arm.
“It’s the ogre—the monster what kept me a slave,” she hissed, baring her teeth as if to bite the hand that kept her from going to her son.
