An Inheritance of Ashes (5 page)

Tyler stuttered to a stop just before the river curved, his unearthly eyes flaring. He sagged and lowered his knife.

I dropped the rake to my knees and bent double after it. My lungs burned. The ache in my hand burned. Nat pattered to a stop ahead of me, her face blotched red with fury. “I'm
trying
to keep Mum off your back, okay?
Do you have to act so
insane
—”

Tyler wasn't listening. He paced a circle around the featureless rocks, his knife held low and mean. His chest heaved just as hard as mine—mine, which couldn't hold a breath. I coughed, and black spots swam in the corners of my eyes.
What on earth,
I thought in fragments. I'd run that fast and more. I'd run longer without breaking a sweat. The choke under my ribs hardened, grew tight. I coughed helplessly, and the tightness ripped, and tore—

And then there were hands at my elbows, pulling me back mere inches across some invisible border where my lungs became whole again: Heron's hands. The unfamiliar sourness of his sweat clogged my nostrils. “Miss Hallie, you all right?”

“Out of breath,” I said, and leaned elbows-to-knees forward, my field rake loose in both hands. The line of it swam before my eyes. “The Twisted Thing's there, isn't it?”

The crease between Heron's eyebrows deepened. “It is.”

The tearing feeling was fading. I coughed into my pant legs again and straightened. “Let me see?”

The tumble of brown wings hid beneath a cairn of what had once been rocks. The touch of the Twisted Thing had worn the rocks, in hours, to gravel. Its feathers peeked up now, unearthed again, from the dirt of a troubled grave.

I brushed the crumbled rocks aside and the body of the malformed sparrow emerged, broken-winged, web-tangled. Its good wing and breast were bloodily marked by a small, delicate, familiar mouth. My hands curled into useless fists. “
Stupid
cats.”

“Of course,” Nat said sourly, and kicked the sand.

Heron's black brows rose. “What do you mean, cats?”

“We have a family of them in the barn. Marthe's pets,” I said, and shook my head. “And
that
is one of them being too damned lazy to mouse and just picking up a Twisted Thing for its supper.” Lucky for them there was no way to know which one was responsible. I'd have flung it into the river and let it swim its way out.

Heron eased around us and crouched over the Twisted Thing. “I'll dispose of this,” he said, and tipped Tyler one of those nods that passed between grown men. “Good eye, there.”

Tyler ducked his chin and shrugged, uncomfortable, the knife loose in his hand. His color was coming back, sun-brown instead of pale, but he still looked like he'd watched his house burn down and been fed the ashes.

I glanced between him and his fuming, frightened sister. My stomach churned with adrenaline; my arms were absolutely freezing. “We'll catch up,” I said, and rocked back on my heels. All the fear and rage that had kept me going were drained dry. I had to sit. I had to
breathe.

“Miss,” Heron said, with that automatic dip of his chin, and lifted the Twisted Thing onto his rake. It settled between the tines, light and lifeless. He held it out before him, as far away as he could, and started back to the house.

The rocks where it had lain crumbled into gray-stained sand. The wind rose—
the air's moving again,
I thought; I hadn't even realized how still the shore had been—and dust curtained down the beach. I leaned away from the gray flecks, my hand outstretched to the rocks to counterbalance.

My left hand. My burned hand.

Pain shot up my palm and fingers, lingering in each knuckle. I peeked down at the redness below my sleeve. The burn had settled into a solid lump, hot under the skin, concealed in the shadow of my own shirtsleeve. I tilted the hand into better light. It wasn't a shadow. The burn had spread in long, streaky lines, and the lump at its center was a purply black.

“What's that?” Nat asked. I covered the burn with my palm, but personal space had never stopped Nat Blakely. She lifted my right hand off my left and held the wound up to the light.

I flinched a little at the pressure, but even the touch of another person's skin felt amazingly cool. “The Twisted Thing touched me,” I said, and behind her, Tyler's breath hissed out through his teeth.

“It
what?
” Nat said.

Her fingers dug into my swollen flesh, and everything went bright white.

COLD,
WAS MY FIRST THOUGHT, AND IT CAME WRAPPED IN SOFT IRRITATION
. The sand beneath my head was cold. Rocks dug into my back, through my flannel work shirt, and they were freezing.

Because I'm on my back,
I realized, and a worse chill shuddered through me. I was on the shore, flat on my back, my ears roaring louder than the river. I opened my eyes and the world unfolded above me, an empty stretch of blinding sky blue. My left hand felt twice its normal size. My left hand felt like fire.

I twitched, and the blue was split by Nat Blakely, her mouth a little open, braid swinging like a well rope. “Hallie?” she said in a high, tight voice that wasn't my unflappable Nat. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“Mm,” I mumbled, and wet my lips. They tasted like I'd licked a shovel. I'd passed out. I'd never passed out before in my life.

I lifted my head off the stiff, damp sand, and the roar in my ears became a waterfall. “No, wait,” Nat said. Delicate hands lifted my arm below the elbow, and I shuddered.

“When did it touch you?” Tyler's voice floated somewhere outside the cloudless edges of the world.

“This morning,” I said, and Nat's eyebrows flinched together. The fingers paused a long second on my arm. “It hit me with its wing when I slammed—” I swallowed. That crunch of wings breaking; that was Papa's way, too. The Twisted Thing hit me, and I'd hit back
hard.

“I didn't mean to,” I finished weakly, and rested my cheek on the sand.

Tyler's fingers braced my wrist, tracing the edges of the burn. “It's fevered,” he said, and set the arm down atop my belly. A sickly-sweet odor rose up from the wound: rot, and old violets. “We have to get back to the house.”

His face was strained and ancient, all sharp-shadowed hollows.
You came back old,
I thought, and lost the thought's sleek tail. I
was
feverish. Every idea I dredged up scattered like a flock of birds.

“How?” Nat shot back. “I can't get her back to the house
and
find Marthe—”

“No Marthe,” I mumbled from the world of birds and blue. She'd put her hand on her belly and pace, and I'd have upset her one more time.

“We don't need Marthe,” Tyler said urgently. “I did this in the field, twice. Just get me bandages and hot water.”

Nat's head came up. “There are bandages in the smokehouse.”

“Why in
there?
”

Because it's dangerous on the road south,
I thought, and looked away. Nat's mouth crimped above me. Nat was the only living soul who knew about that packed bag, and she'd sworn in blood not to say a word.

“There's strong alcohol, too,” she said blithely, and stood. “That's better than water. Help me get her on her feet.”

“I still need to boil the knife.”

“What do you mean,
knife?
” I said, and struggled upright. The ground tilted like a sinking boat, and Nat's arms caught me. Her touch traveled all the way down my bicep, down into the misery that was my wrist. Pain shot straight to my sour stomach.

“I'm going to throw up,” I said distinctly.

“Okay,” Ty replied, as calm as houses, and gathered my hair off my face.

My breakfast tasted worse coming back up. I retched, aching, onto the riverside stones, and Nat paced a circle in the sand while I coughed, my shoulders hunched, spitting bile and tea.
This is bad,
surfaced in the whirl where my head used to be.
I'm making her scared.

“Ready?” Tyler asked, and I nodded tinily. He cleared every strand of my hair from his fingers and stood.

Nat stared at me helplessly for a second, fists clenched. And then her jaw set, and she crouched down beside me. “I'm lifting you up now,” she said, and slid both arms under my own. She hauled me onto her shoulder silently, her wool carder's muscles holding me straight.

“I'm sorry,” I said. It sounded too young: scared and small.

“Don't be. You're lighter than my brother,” she said grimly, and her arm tightened about my waist as we dragged up the path to the smokehouse.

The smokehouse door had no latch. There'd never been a reason to bother. Before Heron and his privacy, there'd been nothing of value there for anyone but me, and I'd secreted those things away. Tyler pushed the door open with a
pop,
and Nat hauled me inside.

“Sit,” she said roughly, and sped off into the maze of chairs and boxes, coughing: my stumbles had kicked the dust into gnatlike clouds. I sat. Everything was predawn dark inside, the gloom of rubbed-smooth memories and too many blurred nights.

Tyler turned a circle in Heron's scrubbed flagstones. “What is all this stuff?”

I ran my gaze over Oma's ancient spinning wheel, the legless kitchen chair beside it, full heaps and boxes of wax meltings never recast into candles. Uncle Matthias's ghost moved among them always, lifting each shard of our family tree and weighing it for the pack in his left hand. “Just stuff,” I said. “Stuff that's broken.”

Tyler cast his eyes through the dim-lit peaks and valleys. “That's not broken,” he said, crouching beside a leather pack slumped against the stonework.

My breath caught. I knew its contents by heart: a bar of homemade soap, a bedroll, a striker for campfires, a bottle for water, and a pan to heat it up. Space left, on top, for four changes of clothes that would be good in all weather, and strong winter boots. And bandages, because the road south was dangerous and long.

“That's Heron's,” I lied quickly, and Tyler pulled back his hand. I leaned my aching head against the red velvet stool and sighed.

Nat swore under her breath and twisted out through the narrow debris trails. “Found it,” she said, slammed the bandages down, and swept Heron's cookpot aside. It clattered into the wall, and I made a small noise of protest.

“I'll clean it up later,” she sighed, and unwrapped cotton strips from around the alcohol flask.

Tyler slopped alcohol on the edge of his shearing knife. The fumes scorched my parched throat and I coughed, my gaze hooked on his short, sharp blade. There was no light in the smokehouse past the edge of sun creeping around the doorstep, but that knife shimmered like fresh water.

“I hope you know what you're doing,” Nat said.

Tyler stiffened. His good shirt was soaked down the back with nervous sweat. “Cross my heart, Hal,” he said quietly, and looked down at me through mussed, sweaty hair. “Let me see your hand?”

I untangled it from my shirtsleeve and held it out, trembling. Nat caught my left wrist much more carefully than before and pinned it precisely, fingers spread apart, on the cool flagstones. Her free hand laced through the loose fingers of my right hand. “Squeeze if it hurts,” she said shortly. Papa's voice rose, a furious echo, behind it. That knife hovered over my tendons, close as his sour breath in my face, bleeding violence onto my skin. My throat went dry as fireplace sparks.

“They're your friends,” I told myself, breath hitched, arms shaking.

“Yeah, we are,” Tyler said, and pressed the tip of the blade to my skin. I shut my eyes.

The knife, coldly burning, dug into my swollen hand.

It wasn't a knife; it was a live coal. It seared through my hand and exploded in my head, shaking all the little birds of my thoughts into nothingness. Pain kindled orange behind my eyes. I gasped, and my squeeze around Nat's fingers tightened into a death grip.

Be brave,
I thought raggedly.
Be brave. Don't make a sound
. Tyler turned the knife, and all my courage drowned in the flood.

I yanked my hand away, but Tyler's palm held it firm; Nat clamped down on my wrist. Tears leaked into my mouth. Thicker, rotten liquid seeped through my fingers—infection and curdled blood—and I let out a long, begging moan. “Just another second,” Tyler said tightly. His knife caught everything that ever hurt in the universe and
pulled.

The world narrowed to a dark tunnel: my hand, the wet stone floor, the pain. My gasp hit the walls, echoed against the mortared rock. Nat flinched and dropped my free hand, and I slammed it instinctively toward the wound. “No—” she said, and caught my wrist inches from a mess of bloody pus and swollen, black-edged flesh. I stared at it, speechless.

“Do
not
infect that again,” she said fiercely, and pulled my wrist back against her palm. “We're almost finished. I swear.”

“We
are
finished,” Tyler said. The dirty knife drew out, from the spattered wound, a tiny wisp of brown feather. It smeared against Tyler's shearing knife, bathed in thin, streaked blood that was already darkening from bright red to a reeking, rotten black. A bubble boiled up, rusted before our eyes, and burst.

I gagged. I had nothing left to throw up.

“That's all?” Nat said, faint.

“That's all it needs,” Tyler replied shakily, and dropped the knife into an empty wicker basket. The smell of death and violets rose out of it like a stain. “You did great.”

Nat passed my free hand to him. His touch was lighter, all fingertips and hesitation. “You ready for the next bit?”

I shook my head, breathing hard.

“It'll only last a second,” Nat said conversationally, and poured the alcohol over my hand.

I had no more noise left in me. The world blacked out for a long, long moment, and then the pain faded, muttered its way down. There was air in my lungs again, drawing in, flowing out, all the automatic gestures of a body that was well.