Jimmy the Hand (26 page)

The midwife
stood there, her face at once showing joy and fear. The baby was
coming, but Elaine was in distress.

‘You have
a son, my lady!’ the midwife said a moment later. She handed
the babe to one of the maids and that one rushed the child over to
another who tended a bath.

In his dream
Bernarr stood unable to move, and then he watched himself approach
the bed, stand at its foot and stare in horror at Elaine. Bernarr saw
himself look down at his pale, lovely wife, her face drenched in
perspiration, her dark hair plastered to her head. Her night clothing
was hitched up over her stomach, and everywhere below he could see
blood.

Elaine’s
eyes sought his, and in them was a silent pleading, and suddenly
there was a presence at his side.

‘My lord,’
said a quiet voice at his elbow.

Bernarr saw
himself turn to stare at his guest. ‘What are you doing here?’
he asked Lyman.

‘There may
be something I can do.’

Then came a rush
of images. Lyman raised his hands and the room plunged into darkness.

The midwife
tried to hand him his son, but one look at the child and Bernarr
shouted, ‘Get rid of it! I never want to see it again.’

Suddenly a monk
was in the room, a healing priest from the order of Dala, and then he
was accompanied by the chirurgeon. Then he heard the monk’s
voice. ‘I am sorry, my lord. She is moments from death, there
is nothing I can do.’

Now he was
outside her room, and Lyman was chanting. Bernarr again stared at the
figure, but could see no face under the broad-brimmed hat.

At last he saw
the face of his wife, lying in agony on her bed, her face white and
her eyes filled with blood. ‘Let me go!’ she pleaded.

Bernarr woke
with a gasp, his heart pounding and tears in his eyes, his head
lifted painfully from his pillow. He fell back with a sigh and closed
his burning eyes.

He’d had
this dream before. Too often in fact. But the ending was new; he’d
only dreamed that she spoke to him once before.

‘I won’t
let you die,’ he whispered to no one.

He turned his
head toward the doorway to her room. The candles had burned down.
Even though time moved slowly in her room, it did pass. Seventeen
years had come and gone since that dreadful night. Each day Lyman had
renewed the spell and every day he tried to find a spell that would
save Elaine.

At first they
had tried only white magic: seeking healers from across the land,
even once, at great expense, sending to Great Kesh for one they’d
heard could work miracles. Then they’d tried healing spells,
none of which seemed to affect her in even the slightest way.

Each time they
lowered the spell that preserved her he feared she would slip away,
but each time she’d lived long enough for them to fail and then
renew the spell.

Of late, they
had turned to darker magic, a spell found in an ancient tome Lyman
had secured from a trader from Kesh. There was something evil about
that book, but Bernarr had exhausted all other options. He must try
this terrible and bloody thing, or he would finally go mad.

Lyman assured
him that soon they would succeed. They must succeed; or Elaine would
be lost forever.

Lorrie awoke
with a start.

There were the
usual morning sounds; cockerels crowing, birds singing, but the smell
was wrong; dusty emptiness around her, and under that too much smoke
and too much dung and nothing green. And the floor beneath her was
hard board, not the straw-stuffed tick she slept on.

Where
—?
she thought.

It crashed in on
her, dazing, like a horse’s kick in the gut:
I’m in
Land’s End. I’m here looking for Rip. Mother and Father
are dead.

It was late
morning, by the look of the yellow light that filtered in through the
shuttered window, a column full of dancing motes of dust. She was
alone, alone enough to lie still for a moment with the tears leaking
down her cheeks.

Mother!
she thought.
I need you, Mother!

But she would
never see her mother again, and their last words had been a quarrel.
Never again would she see her father coming in from the fields to
smile and rumple her hair, or sit by the hearth on winter evenings
and tell the old stories in his slow deep voice.

She felt like
crying, but tears wouldn’t come. Instead there was a dull,
aching void. She sat, scrubbing at her face.
Rip is alive,
she
scolded herself. She had to concentrate on that.
And I will find
him!

But when she
concentrated, she sensed something else: that Rip was no longer in
Land’s End. She flung aside the cloth she’d been using
for a blanket, jammed her shoes on her feet, then rose and went to
the window.

She couldn’t
see anyone below and though there were windows in the surrounding
warehouses she couldn’t see anyone moving behind them. She’d
just have to take the chance that they wouldn’t see her either.
She gave one glance at the rumpled cloth she’d meant to rewind
onto the bolt and shook her head regretfully. There wasn’t time
to do that. Rip came first. She put one leg on the window-sill,
turned and felt for the roof behind her with her free leg. The window
was offset the shed roof below. She remembered Jimmy cautioning her
to reach up with her left hand while using her right to steady
herself on the wall, the swing to the left a little, and pull up. She
determined to reverse the procedure and get to the shed roof. From
there it was a short leap to the alley below.

‘What the
hell do you think you’re doing!’

The man’s
shout seemed to come from directly behind her. Lorrie gasped and
almost lost her grip. She slipped down and grabbed hard on the
window-sill. For a long moment, she held motionless, her chin barely
above the still, clutching the window, for her life in fact, because
there was nothing below her but hard cobbles, twenty feet down.
Glancing fearfully over her shoulder she saw no one. No one was
looking out of one of the windows opposite either.

‘What do
ye mean?’

The voices came
from the main street, just beyond where the alley below joined it.
Right about where the main doors of the warehouse were.

‘I mean
those crates are due on the dock in less than an hour if the
Crab
isn’t to lose the tide. Why aren’t they on the wagons?
What have you been doing all morning, standing there with a thumb up
your arse?’

‘I just
got the order a few minutes ago! ‘S not my fault!’

Her relief that
the shout hadn’t been directed at her caused Lorrie to drop a
few inches. She was going to try to swing a few feet to her right and
reach the tile roof. As she tried to swing a little to the left, she
felt the pain; a sudden, violent burn that was colder than winter ice
at the same time, and beneath it all the ugly slicing feeling of
being cut.

She’d had
accidents with tools and sharp branches before. Not like this.
Something very sharp was digging deep into her leg. The hot trickle
of her own blood down her leg made her shiver and she gasped at the
increased pain even that small movement caused.

That made her
want to scream and twist around to grab her leg at the same time; but
either of those would mean that she would die.

And Rip will
have nobody.

Her head swam a
moment, but she fought down dizziness and panted through her mouth.
Don’t let go!
she commanded herself. She glanced down
and saw a seemingly innocuous shard of glass wedged in between the
stones. Some glazier had been sloppy in his work and the long piece
had fallen from a broken window to wedge hard between stones. Like a
crystal dagger it had cut up into Lorrie’s leg. She forced
herself to take a deep breath and knew she would have to use every
ounce of will and strength to regain the window.

Her hands firmed
on the ledge, driving her fingers painfully into the splintery wood.
But she couldn’t stay like this: the fall from this height
would be a lot more painful than what she was feeling now. Lorrie
took a deep breath and hoisted herself up on the window frame. The
shrill of agony as her wound was savaged further almost made her lose
her grip, rendering her too shocked to even cry out. Once the
surprise was over she kept herself from crying out by gritting her
teeth and remembering Rip.

If she was
caught she might be gaoled, and if she was gaoled she couldn’t
help him.
I can’t let them catch me,
she thought.
I
have to be strong.

The argument in
the street below continued unabated, growing louder, if anything. It
was to be hoped it was loud enough to cover the sound of her panting
and of her movements as she struggled back into the hidden room. But
she needed to move fast, before the yelling attracted people to the
windows around her. Lorrie pulled her wounded leg back as far as it
would go, but when she hoisted herself up again found it wasn’t
quite far enough. She gave one sob of pain and frustration, then
continued her progress, even as it tore her leg.

Now she was
halfway into the room, hanging from the window at her waist. She
breathed in and out through her teeth, fast and desperate, then gave
one jerk that almost made her scream and she was free of the
protruding glass. As quietly as she could Lorrie scrambled back into
the room, sliding down onto the dusty floor, biting the base of her
right thumb to keep the screams that forced their way up her throat
muffled.

Once she got her
breath back she sat up to check the damage.

The sight almost
made her faint as the pain had not. A long, deep and jagged cut
started just above her knee and ended at her upper thigh. Blood
poured from the ripped flesh, already pooling on the floor; the only
good thing about it was that it didn’t jet and spurt. The leg
moved when she jerked it in horror, so the tendon wasn’t cut.
The shard had dug straight into the centre of the muscle. But
bleeding that bad could kill her in an hour. A country girl knew
about cuts—and how much blood a pig had, which was about the
same as a man’s.

Do something!
she shouted at herself.

With trembling
hands she loosed her water bottle from her belt and poured some onto
her leg. It burned like fire and she greyed out for a moment,
dropping the bottle. She caught it up quickly, listening to see if
someone had noticed the sound. Nothing happened and she looked down
at her leg again.

When the blood
had been washed away Lorrie was able to see that it needed stitching.
She’d once watched her mother sew up Emmet, their man of all
work, when his axe had slipped and had listened carefully to her
instructions. But this looked a lot worse and she had nothing to use
for a needle. And she didn’t have her mother. Lorrie pressed
her hand against her mouth, hard. She didn’t have time to cry,
she was bleeding, and badly.

Dragging herself
over to the bolt of cloth she cut a clean length of it; then she
pulled down her trousers and bandaged the leg as tightly as she
could, strips around the leg holding a thick pad on the wound. If she
couldn’t stitch it up, then she could at least press it
together. Maybe that would be enough. Then she pulled up the trousers
and lay back down on her makeshift bed.

What am I
going to do?
she thought. She could feel Rip getting further and
further away. But she couldn’t even climb down from this place
with the wound in her leg, even if no one was down there, let alone
follow two men on horseback.
I shouldn’t have sold Horace.

But she’d
been so certain that Land’s End was their final destination.
Why else would they steal her brother but to sell him to slavers? Yet
he was being moved inland; the feeling was like an inner weathervane,
shifting slowly and pointing the way.
Why?
she repeated to
herself, over and over again.

She’d
begun the internal shout in despair and ended it in anger. Why Rip,
why her parents, why her, why now? Who were these people, what were
they doing? And beyond all and above everything, and forever, why?

Lorrie closed
her eyes. Blackness fell like a crashing wave.

It was just past
dawn when Flora slipped into Jimmy’s room; a quiet dawn, by
Krondor standards.

‘Where
were you last night?’ she demanded in a very loud whisper.

Jimmy, caught by
surprise, yanked his pants up so hard he hurt himself. He glared at
her over his shoulder, fighting an urge to clutch the painful parts.

‘You . .
.’ His voice came out so high he coughed and started again.
‘You’re supposed to knock first, remember?’

‘Tsk! You
haven’t got anything I haven’t seen before,’ she
said scornfully.

Jimmy arched his
brows. ‘Does your aunt know that?’ he said sweetly.

Flora’s
lips twitched down at the corners as she looked away and brushed her
hair back, blushing. ‘No. And maybe you were right. Maybe I
should just keep it to myself.’

‘I
honestly think that would be for the best,’ he said, not
without sympathy. ‘Best all round, I mean.’

She gave an
unladylike snort. ‘Yeah, I mustn’t forget you’re in
there, too.’ Then she looked at him through narrowed eyes. ‘So,
where were you last night?’

‘I went
out for a walk,’ he said, frowning. ‘Just taking in the
town and I felt I needed the exercise.’

Flora pressed
her lips together anxiously and moved over to him, putting a hand on
his arm. ‘You mustn’t do anything wrong while you’re
staying here,’ she whispered. ‘Please, Jimmy. It’s
important.’

‘I didn’t
do anything wrong,’ he protested.

‘Well,’
she waved her hands in exasperation. ‘Don’t!’

‘What, as
in, never again? I can’t promise that, Flora. I’m a
Mocker, not a priest.’