Above the Snowline (48 page)
‘Dellin!’ I shouted. ‘Dellin, if you can hear me, the keep is burning! ’
No answer but the hiss of the breeze. I stood, paralysed by indecision, and all the time the blaze increased. Raven’s window filled with dancing flames. I spread my wings, took one last frantic look around, then launched myself off and glided down towards it.
The cool air sped past me, the treetops of the forest below. The tower came up swiftly, a starkly solid black shape in the diffuse orange glow. I drew nearer. It looked squat and foreshortened; now I could smell the smoke. I passed over its square top and felt a burst of rising heat.
I looked down into the bailey. Figures were spilling out of the tower stairs and clustering on the snow. Some in groups, others alone, they looked up at the keep and cast fans of shadows by its guttering light. I pulled my wings half-closed and dropped. I flared my wings, dangled my legs and skimmed along the surface of the snow till I slid to a halt.
Villagers and soldiers were swarming out of the narrow staircase and gasping for breath in the sudden freezing air. One after another - there must be a crush inside - they ran towards me and spread out, searching for their loved ones in the crowd. I saw a man running to the open arms of his wife, a lady in thick skirts gathering up a young boy. Soldiers were joining their comrades, shouting and pointing at the windows.
The glass in the hall windows was still sound but the curtains were aflame. I could see a fraction of the ceiling: the garlands were burning fiercely. One detached and swung out of sight, in a shower of sparks.
Over in the darkness Ouzel was yelling at some women to bring buckets and scoop up the snow. Lightning was standing by the doorway, keeping the flow of escapees as fast as possible, patting the back of each one passing, keeping them running over the snow till they were well clear.
I skirted round them and ran to join him, skidding with every stride, but as I reached him the flow of people stopped. Lightning stared up the staircase.
‘Was it the kiln?’ I cried.
He looked to me with eyes wide, but turned back at a commotion on the stair. Raven plunged down the steps. His expression was thunderous and he was dragging someone behind him. He burst out onto the snow, pulling Dellin by the wrist.
Dellin?
Dellin?
Struggling, her hair flying, she looked more beautiful than ever. She dug her heels in, flexed her arm and bit Raven’s hand. He tugged her so hard he pulled her over and strode on, towing her behind him. She regained her footing and hauled back.
Snipe, with sword drawn, then a couple of spearmen, followed him out of the turret. Snipe ran to his master’s side and the guards closed behind Dellin.
‘Let her go!’ I said.
Raven stormed on, black with fury. His hand was running with blood. As he hauled Dellin past she glanced at me in mute appeal. Then she resumed yanking, scratching, and riving his feathers out, as he towed her in the direction of the stables. He cut through the crowd, which parted in front, then drew in behind him so more and more staring people followed in his wake. I kept pace with Dellin. She was fighting with all her strength but Raven had an iron grip.
Lightning joined me. ‘Not the kiln.
Her
.’
Her
.’
‘Dellin?’
‘She set fire to the treasury
and
his room.’
and
his room.’
‘How? Has everybody got out?’
‘Yes. Smoke was pouring into the hall. It was streaming along the ceiling. Then a guard ran in yelling, “Fire!”’
‘Any casualties?’
‘None. Raven kept a clear head. We stopped the panic and got everyone out, but the treasury’s destroyed. Raven and Snipe ran up to his chamber . . .’ Lightning coughed. ‘They caught her there. It’s still burning.’
The treasury below the hall had been full of furs. No wonder the fire caught so quickly and so much smoke was billowing out. But Dellin shouldn’t be here. She was supposed to be in the forest. We were supposed to be making love. Only half an hour after we were engaged to be married, she was digging her feet into the snow, as Raven dragged her away so powerfully I thought he’d wrench her arm off. I felt there must be two Dellins, one here and the other still out in the woods, waiting mournfully for me.
Nonsense. She must have doubled back early in our chase. Could it have been when I first lost sight of her? Could I have been following a false trail all that time? A cold feeling clutched me: could she have
planned
this?
planned
this?
A tremendous explosion sounded behind us. I swung round in time to see flame bursting from the undercroft. Another explosion followed and another, throwing shards of wood out of the glare.
‘What was that?’ Lightning gasped.
‘Barrels of cheap gin. The Rhydanne porters’ wages.’
Now the faint chimes of the hall clock drifted out, striking twelve. Several people hesitated and turned to listen. Snipe glared round at them, whooped and flung his arms in the air. ‘Happy New Year! Happy bloody New Year, all! Open your presents. Hoosh! Go home. Go to your sodding homes! Do you want to catch your deaths?’
Raven cast no glance behind him. He stormed straight past the stables to the kennels and climbed the steps onto the portico. It was covered in a thin layer of impacted snow, as slippery as satin. Dellin grabbed the rail with her free hand and pulled Raven to a halt. He turned and kicked her hand brutally - she screamed and let go. The dogs in their open run were making an ear-splitting din. They jumped up at the wire mesh, clung with their forepaws, barking furiously as Raven pounded past. He stomped along the portico and into a room at the end. Snipe followed him, then Lightning and myself. The plank room was dark, its fireplace empty and shutters closed. The livid light of the burning keep was shining through fretwork holes in both shutters and pulsing orange hearts and stars on the floor.
A bear cage, about two metres square, stood in the corner. Raven ripped its door open and flung Dellin inside with such force she buckled against its far side. He slammed the door, locked it and dropped the key into his pocket.
Dellin crouched and tucked her broken hand into her armpit. She glared at Raven with utter hatred. Then she threw herself against the cage door with her full strength. ‘Let me out! Out!’ She picked herself up and cast herself against the bars again and again until they rang.
Her struggles had no effect on Raven, who was calmly winding a handkerchief around his bitten hand.
She lunged from one side of the cage to the other, jumped and thrust her palms against the roof, dashed herself to her knees and tore at the bars of the floor. Finding no weak points, she turned her whirlwind energy to rattling the door.
I knelt by the cage. ‘Dellin!’ I said. ‘Listen.
Listen to me
! Calm down and wait. You won’t be in there long.’ I looked up to Raven. ‘This will kill her. You have to release her.’
Listen to me
! Calm down and wait. You won’t be in there long.’ I looked up to Raven. ‘This will kill her. You have to release her.’
‘From the cage? I have no other room that will hold her.’
‘She can’t stand being enclosed. For god’s sake, have a heart!’
He tucked in the end of his bandage and said nothing.
I turned to Lightning. ‘Remember she couldn’t stand being in the coach? She doesn’t even like houses, let alone a cage!’
‘The girl is used to open spaces,’ Lightning told Raven. ‘She can’t abide to be trapped.’
‘You’ll drive her mad!’ I said.
‘Better than she should drive me mad. All my money, all my books, gone!’
‘You can keep her in custody, but not like this. It’s inhuman.’
‘She isn’t human.’ Raven’s lips twisted in triumph. Behind him, Snipe opened the door and we saw the settlers and soldiers had formed bucket chains into the keep. Their shadows jumped and flickered across the trampled snow. They seemed to be gaining control of the blaze, but the hall windows had lost their glass and smoke like dark grey fur was pouring out of them.
‘For god’s sake,’ I said. ‘She’s a thinking woman, not an animal!’
‘Then she should have thought harder before committing arson. The cage stays locked. Comet, Lightning, if you release her I will charge you with jail breaking. Tomorrow we will, as civilised people, try her. Then there will be a hanging. Snipe, come, let us see the damage.’ He put his injured hand in his pocket and walked out.
Dellin was ferociously poking her fingernail into the keyhole. I tried to touch her hand through the bars but she jerked it back. I said, ‘I can pick locks. I learnt in the city. Trust me.’
I drew my knife, slipped it between the mortise and the frame, and tried to push the catch back. When it became clear that this was a high-quality lock, I slid the knife into the keyhole and began trying to turn the tumblers.
Dellin stopped watching me and slumped in the far corner, her expression vacant. Lightning paced back and forth, clutching his coat tight and making no move to stop me, but after I had been at the lock for ten minutes he asked, ‘Is it too difficult?’
‘I can’t do it. Damn it, all my tools are at the Castle.’ I threw the knife down. ‘I’ll stay with her. Send someone for blankets and food and drink.’
‘Of course. But please come away. Leave her alone.’
‘I can’t.’
He nodded, sadly, and left, passing on the way out a pikeman arriving under orders to guard the cage. The man began setting logs in the hearth and I sat beside Dellin, on the other side of the iron grille, but she did not acknowledge me at all nor seem to draw solace from my presence.
I had a pain in my chest, in the depth of my heart. My years in the city had taught me that violent emotion brings on real and physical pain. Now I felt my heart cracked and bleeding. Whatever the Castle’s Doctor says, the heart is truly the place where love originates and Dellin had broken mine for good. My only other sensation was one of disbelief. How could she do this to me? The thought was too excruciating, so I gently pried at how she could have found it in herself to lead me into the forest, then double back and climb into the keep. She had let me chase her and duped me. We were supposed to be hunting partners - not an hour later she was Raven’s captive and I was numbed by her duplicity. How could it all have gone so badly wrong?
Dellin stirred and, from staring at nothing, her pine-green eyes rolled to focus on me. ‘Help,’ she whispered desperately.
‘I will, Dellin.’
‘Free me, to run in the forest again.’
‘Yes,’ I said, though I was sick to the core.
‘If you don’t free me, I will tell Raven . . .’
‘What? What will you tell him?’
‘That you ate a man like him . . . You ate the meat of an Awian.’
‘God!’ I recoiled. Anger swept through me, numbing my aching heart and hollow stomach. ‘Everything’s a barter for you, isn’t it? I’ll free you because I love you - don’t you believe that? Or loved you - I don’t know any more! Why do you think you have to bargain? Don’t I mean anything to you?’
I felt she was certainly capable of telling Raven. I would never be able to trust her again. Raven knew she was a man-eater and he’d think she had no reason to lie. He would believe her and I would be firmly in his power.
If a Rhydanne eats an Awian she isn’t, strictly speaking, a cannibal, but I had consumed the flesh of my own kind. I had been the only true cannibal that night! If Dellin opened her mouth the news would snowball through the Fourlands and everyone would hear it, no matter how much I protested. All the Eszai, all the governors, the Emperor himself!
She held the bars and leant her cheek against the cold metal. I drew away and rested by the wall. I had thought I’d found a woman wild and untainted, but her love was a lie and she was mercenary scum like all the others. Emotions swirled within me, as if I’d heard news of the death of my closest friend. Thoroughly lost, thoroughly shaken, I abandoned myself to sitting in that grey room, on the hard floorboards, with the freezing draught stealing in. I would never feel the same for her again, that much was clear, but I couldn’t know, could not determine, which way my cards would fall.
LIGHTNING
At dawn the trodden snow was frozen solid, with all the dirt of last night pressed into it. Fragments of ash, shards of charred wood, pieces of foil tinsel would stand witness to the blaze until the spring. Under the ugly, blackened archway the snow had partially melted and re-frozen with the iron hoops from the gin barrels embedded in it. I trod over the medley of footprints to the kennels.
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