Sin Eater's Daughter 2 - The Sleeping Prince (16 page)

My cloak, all of my food, even my firelighter is gone. The mattress lies bare in front of the fireplace. All I have is the satchel and the maps, spare knife and a mostly empty water skin. Damn them. As I stand up I smell something so unexpected that I stop dead.

Mint, and old incense. Faint, lingering on the air like dust motes.

Silas was here.

I race into the copse and untie the horse, rushing to tighten the saddle and the stirrups. She snuffles my pocket for food and I push her away in irritation. “It’s all gone,” I say. “So it’s no good looking.” She whinnies softly and I feel bad – it’s not her fault. And it could have been worse; imagine if I’d lost her too, imagine if Silas or the others had found her. I stroke her nose and murmur a swift apology.

Silas was here. Was he with those people? But no, I heard two voices, two sets of footsteps. If he came, he came after, while I was on the roof.

If it was him. Can I be sure I smelt incense? It was a pretty big fall; I could be mistaken. I leave the horse and walk along the track towards the road, listening all the while and scanning the ground, squinting in the dim light. Four sets of footprints coming down, three heading away. One set of hoof prints. He still doesn’t have a horse, then. Unless he left it on the road. No, he wouldn’t be that foolish. I turn back to my own mount.

When I climb into the saddle I feel as though I’m made of iron; everything is too heavy. I’m about to nudge the horse away when I pause. Whoever the first two were, they knew I had two bags. They knew I was female. Which means they must have seen me earlier, followed me. Refugees, I decide. Lormerian refugees either avoiding or escaped from the camp. I bet they were holed up near Tyrwhitt and saw me pass, following me on foot. I suppose I should be grateful they weren’t soldiers. Still… It means I’m conspicuous. And obviously vulnerable.

I unpin the braid from my head and allow it to fall down my back. Then I pull out my knife and begin to saw at it, at the base of my neck. It doesn’t take more than a moment until I’m holding the braid in one hand, my head feeling impossibly light, the morning breeze ruffling my newly short locks. I look at it, dirty and matted, and then fling it into the forest.

From a distance, I might pass for a young man, which will hopefully be enough to fool anyone watching out for a likely victim, and perhaps even any soldiers I come across. As long as they don’t get too close. I look down at my breasts and grimace, pulling the shirt a little looser to try to disguise them. I wish I still had my cloak. As cold air chills my neck, and I guide the horse back towards the road, I wonder if I look like my brother did.

I keep the sun over my right shoulder until we reach the main road, still called the King’s Road after all this time, stretching between Tyrwhitt and Tremayne, forking off to Tressalyn. Once on it I try to make myself look as menacing as I can, staying alert for anyone travelling on foot, both on the road and in the woodlands and meadows to the sides. We stop infrequently, and never near villages and hamlets, and I keep the pace easy, but constant. It soon becomes evident that the horse I took is built for stamina and long distances, but the progress we’re making feels too slow.

I pass other travellers headed the same way on the road, lone, or in pairs, always hooded like Silas, which makes my breath catch until I pass them and see they’re too wide or too short to be him; they don’t walk the way he does. Most keep their heads lowered, though one or two look up, and their hollow eyes, the terror in them, draws me up straight. They always look away first, cowering from me, and I know they’re refugees from Lormere. I urge the horse to the other side of the road as we pass, to reassure them I have no intention of harming them. But I can’t get their faces out of my mind. How empty they look. What have they seen, to do that to them?

As the day lengthens it becomes obvious that I’ve seriously underestimated how fast I’ll be able to travel. By lunchtime, after five of hours riding, we’ve barely passed Newtown, and still have thirty miles to go. I dismount and walk for a few miles, letting the horse slow and stop to drink from puddles when she needs to. When I empty the last drops of water from the water skin, I consider refilling it from those same puddles, changing my mind when I see how messily she drinks. I’m not that thirsty, not yet. I think of the people I’ve passed and wonder how they’re drinking. When they last ate.

I don’t see anyone else on horseback until later in the afternoon, when the roads begin to widen, the ground beaten down by the passage of many. My stomach is churning from the lack of food and my mouth is dry, my head aching from thirst. As we come up behind another band of refugees I steer the horse past them, bundles on their backs, fear hovering around them like midges over a pond. Then, in the distance, I see a group travelling towards us on horseback, approaching at speed. Immediately the refugees drop their bundles and run into the scrub, and some of the riders peel off and drive their horses into the fields after them. I keep going, but my heartbeats are coming faster, my hands suddenly slippery on the reins, the knuckles on my right hand throbbing.

As the riders get closer I can see the green tunics of the Tregellian army and my fear increases. I start to sweat, despite my lack of cloak. The rest of the refugees scatter, leaving me alone on the road as the soldiers draw near.

“Get after them,” one of them bellows, his blue sash marking him as a lieutenant, as his comrades ride after the escapees in the fields. “Round them all up. You.” He looks at me. “Dismount. Nice and slow.”

Shaking, I do as he says, staying close by the horse.

The lieutenant swings out of his saddle and draws his sword, his eyes lit with anger.

“You stinking thief. Where’d you get that horse? On your knees, Lormerian scum.”

“I’m not a refugee.”

“Shut it.” He looms over me, sneering, a hand reaching for me.

I move back, knocking into the horse, and she whinnies in fright. “I’m Tregellian. I’m from Tremayne. I’m Tregellian.”

“Course you are.” He grabs my hair, forcing me to my knees, and I gasp, scrabbling for my knife.

There’s a shriek from the meadow. “Man down!” a male voice screams.

The lieutenant’s grip on my hair tightens momentarily and I whimper.

“He’s killed him!” the voice cries again. “The bastard’s killed him!”

“Stay there,” the lieutenant barks at me, forcing me down so my face is inches from the mud. “Stay,” he says again, and then my scalp tingles as he lets go, cold air rushing over it.

I don’t even pretend to obey. I’m back in the saddle in seconds, right foot not fully in the stirrup when the horse begins to run. Once I have my seat I look back over my shoulder to see no one is even looking at me; instead they’re crowding around something in the grass, something unmoving. Soldiers from all around run towards them, some dragging captives with them, terror on the faces of the refugees and, to my horror, something like elation on the soldiers’, their eyes wild, their lips pulled back in rictus grins. I look ahead to make sure the road is clear, then back again. In time to see the lieutenant drag his sword across the throat of one of the refugees.

I whip back around, my mouth open in a silent scream. We keep running.

It’s many miles before the horse and I begin to slow. My head is throbbing with pain and my neck aches from turning back and forth to make sure we’re not being followed. Every time I look back I see again the refugee murdered, the wildness in the soldiers’ faces. They were Tregellian soldiers. My people. People of logic and reason and decency. Not like Lormerians.

They treated the Lormerians as though they were animals. They’re here because they’re running for their lives. They’re people.

Pictures of the camp, the mercenaries, the roads empty of traders, the soldiers, flash through my mind… I didn’t expect this. Kirin didn’t say it was like this. Kirin is a lieutenant too.

Maybe he wasn’t really a refugee; maybe they were criminals, dangerous criminals, and the soldiers had no choice.

On your knees, Lormerian scum.

I remember the lost doll, the abandoned shoe. I remember the soldier’s wild eyes when he reached for my hair and forced me down. It’s not right.

I see no one else until we come up behind a small cart laden with sacks and children, and the little ones gaze solemnly at me as I approach. To my surprise, and if I’m truthful, relief, the two mules leading the cart are headed by a woman.

Before I can stop myself, I call out. “Do you have any water, good woman?”

She looks at me suspiciously. The children are wide-eyed, their tiny fat fingers gripping the side of the cart. Then she rummages beside her and pulls a skin out, shaking it before throwing it to me.

I forget to thank her, too intent on ripping the cork out and drinking. I drink until it’s empty, and it’s still not enough. I realize too late it may have been all she had.

I look over at her and she’s watching me, her expression guarded. “Thank you,” I say sheepishly, tossing it back to her, noting the way she holds it delicately between her thumb and forefinger before she drops it to the floor of the cart. “Where do you go?”

“Tressalyn.”

I’m disappointed, had half-hoped she was travelling to Tremayne so I might ride with her for a while.

“You?” she asks.

“Tremayne.”

“There’s a checkpoint, you know,” she says.

“Where?”

“At the end of the King’s Road, before the city gates. A checkpoint to be allowed admittance to Tremayne. Same at Tressalyn. Same at all the towns. Otherwise the refugees would overrun them.”

Overrun them? How many refugees are there? “Since when?” I ask.

“Since the Sleeping Prince stopped sleeping and started setting things on fire in Lormere, making them all want to come here. You’ll need papers to get past it. No refugees allowed. Without, you’ll have to go on to one of the camps, back east.”

“I was born in Tremayne,” I say. “I’m Tregellian.”

She looks me up and down, her eyes resting first on my loose trousers, then my shorn hair. “As long as you can prove it, you’ll be fine.”

There is a heavy moment where we both regard each other. Then she clicks the reins and the mules turn left for Tressalyn, as I steer my horse right towards Tremayne, and the checkpoint.

I don’t have any papers. I don’t have anything to say who I am.

And I really don’t want to run into any more soldiers.

So I can’t go into Tremayne. That’s probably for the best, I decide. My priority is finding water and I know there’s a river that runs outside it.

I glance at the sky, the sun halfway through its descent, the air rapidly turning chilly, my breath misting before me. It’s taken the entire day to get this far, time I don’t have. I’ll have to make for Scarron in the dark.

Around two miles away from the city walls of Tremayne I pull the horse to a stop, checking the maps, planning a route that will take us off the main road, away from the checkpoints and towards the river. Making sure there’s no one near us, I slide from the saddle, moaning as my cramped limbs are forced to stretch. My stomach rumbles loudly. A whole day in the saddle has exhausted me, used up whatever energy I had. I need some food, or I’m going to collapse. And I need a new cloak. I won’t last overnight without one.

I’m going to have to go into Tremayne after all.

The thought of being so close to my old life, to my apothecary, makes me feel faint, my chest tight.

The thought of soldiers on the gates makes my stomach drop.

I’d imagined my return to Tremayne would be triumphant. I’d have everything under control, the shame of our flight forgotten. I wouldn’t be wearing stolen clothes, my knuckles bruised from fighting, my scalp tingling from a soldier’s assault.

I don’t have a choice, I remind myself; I have to find the girl, I have to get Mama back. I can worry about the apothecary, and the war, and everything else after that.

The slashing of a sword across a throat replays behind my eyes.

I take a deep breath and climb back into the saddle.

Then I see it: a thin, barely noticeable track gently sloping uphill on my right. I click the reins and urge the horse along the path, my heart thumping in my chest. As we crest the small mound, recognition punches me in the stomach and I see it.

Our farm.

I make a strangled sound. It hasn’t changed. It hasn’t been so long since we left, so I shouldn’t be as surprised that it still looks the same, as though any moment Lief and Papa could come striding out of the door, or Mama appear in the window. I should be in there now, with my family. Instead half of them are dead, or missing, I’m on the run, and my mother is locked away Gods know where. And it’s all my fault.

I have to get her back. This is my mess.

If I can get food and a cloak, we can keep going. I could be in Scarron by sunrise. I still remember how to get from our farm into Tremayne through the clock tower gate. By the river. And I doubt there’s a checkpoint there.

It’s not the first time I’ve been wrong. When I arrive at the clock tower gate, I’m greeted by two soldiers armed with swords, their expressions closed and unfriendly. A third perches on top of the tower, arrow nocked and pointed at me. It’s too late to run, and the sight of them sends my stomach plunging, my fingers trembling on the reins.

“Dismount and state your business,” one of the soldiers says.

Shaking, I do, keeping one hand on the pommel of the saddle, my legs braced to throw myself up and into it if they try to attack me.

“You’re a girl,” one of the swordsmen says in surprise. “Well, well. Nice breeches. Let’s see your papers, then.” I peer at him, trying to think of a reason – any reason – why I don’t have them. “You deaf? I said papers. Show us your papers.”

“I … don’t have any. I was robbed on the way here. They were in my bag – my other bag. I lost my cloak too.” I try to keep my tone pleasant and reasonable, but I’m struggling, my chest beginning to tighten. I should run.

“Where are you from?” the man asks.

“Here, originally. I was born in Tremayne. But I don’t live here any more. Some of my family do, and it’s them I’ve come to see.”

He sheathes his sword and tucks his thumbs in his belt loops, and I let out a soft sigh, some of my tension releasing. “Where have you come from, then?”

“Tressalyn,” I lie. “I’m here to pass on some news to my family. Urgent news.”

“Alone? Just you, riding across the country on a very nice horse?” He’s enjoying this, this tiny bit of power that he has. I can hear it in his voice, and see it on his face. He looks over my baggy breeches, my rough-cut hair, my bandaged hand. “Where did you say you’d come from again?”

“Let her in, Tuck. She ain’t the Sleeping Prince, and she don’t sound Lormerian. It’s almost time to knock off,” the other guard on the gate says. The man above is now picking his nails with the tip of his arrow, his bow slung over his shoulder, ignoring us.

“What did you say your name was?” the bully, Tuck, asks.

“Er … ika. Erika Dunn.” There are plenty of Dunns in Tremayne, plenty everywhere; it’s a common enough name.

“Never heard of an Erika Dunn.” Tuck grins.

“I have,” the arrow man says from above us suddenly. “I thought I recognized you. Ain’t you Tarvey Dunn’s niece?”

“Yes,” I say, trying to hide my surprise. Tarvey is one of the butchers my father used to sell our cattle to, famed for both his excellent meat and for having one leg. And luckily for me, his family is notoriously prolific. “One of many,” I add, throwing a smile at the archer.

Tuck scowls. “Be that as it may, rules are rules. No one gets in or out without papers. And no one gets in or out after sundown. Oops.” He glances up at the darkening sky and grins. “Maybe I’ll be feeling more generous tomorrow.”

“Tarvey’ll be furious if he knows you turned her away. He’s probably expecting her.” The archer scratches his leg with the arrow before putting it away.

“He is, yes,” I pipe up.

Tuck glares at him, then at me. “Be that as it may…”

“Isn’t it Tarvey who supplies our meat?” the archer says with perfect innocence.

Tuck throws the archer another filthy look, but he’s examining his nails again. With a long sigh and a nod of the head, he finally stands aside, and I walk the horse through the clock tower gate, smiling meekly, my heart still beating violently. I glance up at the archer, who gives me a sly wink, and in that moment I could kiss him.

We’ve only walked a few yards when behind me I hear the rattling of chains. I turn in time to see the iron gate slam into place.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I told you. No one in or out after sundown.”

“But I have to leave tonight! I’m here to get some things and pass on my news; I’ll be an hour at most. I can’t stay.”

Tuck’s grin is smug. “I’m afraid you’ll have to. You wanted in, and you got it. I’m sure your uncle can put you up. Want me to come with you to make sure?”

I shake my head and quickly lead the horse away, resisting the urge to turn around and make sure he’s not following me as we head towards the town square.

There are more soldiers loitering outside the tavern, one leaning against the main well talking to a woman I don’t recognize. There are sandbags piled in one corner of the square, and large barrels on a cart being pulled by a grumpy-looking mule. But that’s the only sign of the war; the chaos across other parts of the country is almost completely absent inside the town walls. Two young boys chase each other in circles outside the bakery, and I can see their mother in conversation with the baker himself; others are gossiping and laughing, shop bells ringing, doors closing. The air smells of good, hearty food, meat and vegetables and bread and pastry. It smells of home; Lief and I used to run around in front of the bakery like those boys; Lirys and I used to wait by the well for Kirin. Everything here is coated in memories of what I’ve lost: my friends, my parents, my brother. My old life.

Across the square, lights flicker in the upstairs window of the apothecary I used to work at, and I stop and stare. It hasn’t changed. I feel I could walk up the steps, open the door, pull my apron from the hook and start working.

The boys run past me, screaming joyfully and shaking me from my reverie, and I walk on, keeping my head down. I move through the village square like a ghost, passing the butcher’s where Tarvey is likely working, the cobblers my mother used. I stop at the grocer’s and peer inside, but when I see there are still customers – people I used to know, in passing – I can’t bring myself to go in. I’ll get a cloak first and come back. Then I’ll find a way out.

I leave the main square and walk down the merchant’s lane towards the tailor’s. Each window that I pass has candles glowing inside, and families moving, and I’m filled with longing for home – my home. My old life is everywhere. I walk past the deserted blacksmith’s where Kirin used to work, and past the salt merchant’s house. I used to know his daughter a little, and I look up, halting when I see a circle with a line through it carved into the door. It’s familiar, and I frown.

“Errin?”

I whirl around, pulling at my belt for my knife, my hand stilling when I see who said my name.

Carys Dapplewood, Lirys’s mother and a second mother to me, stands half in shadow, a basket clutched in her hands. “Is it really you?”

My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

“I saw you in the square,” she says, stepping forward. “I thought I was going mad. But I had to know… What are you doing, child?”

“I … I … I need a cloak and some food. Then I have to go.”

“What do you mean, you have to go? Where’s Lief? Where’s Trina? How long have you been back? Where are you staying?”

My heart starts to speed up, my throat closes in, and that familiar clammy feeling starts to crawl across my shoulders. I want to reply. I want to run. I’m not ready for this. I stare at her and shake my head.

Where’s Lief?

Without saying another word Carys drops her basket to the ground and takes my arm in one hand, the reins in the other. She leads us away quickly, saying nothing, and all the while the weight in my chest grows and grows. We cross the bridge and then I can see it, the Dapplewoods’ dairy, butter-yellow bricks and as familiar to me as my farm. Carys lets go of the reins and leads me to the front door, and I panic, trying to pull my arm away. Her grip is surprisingly strong for a woman her age, and I’m too busy trying to breathe to really struggle.

She opens the front door and calls for Lirys. I’m bathed in light and warmth, the smell of roasting meat, and it makes me want to weep. “I’ll take the horse to the barn,” she says, patting my arm and leaving me.

The sound of footsteps makes my stomach lurch and I brace myself for the blow of seeing my best friend for the first time since my father’s funeral.

She stands before me, blonde ringlets escaping from under a cap, her creamy skin flushed from the heat. She tilts her head to the side and the gesture reminds me of Silas. We stare at each other and I realize I’m poised to run.

“Errin?” she says finally, looking me over. I swallow, my eyes beginning to prickle under her scrutiny. “Is it really you? You look—” She pauses. “Well, I like your breeches,” she says. “Are they Lief’s? You look like him, with your hair like that. I thought you were him.” She peers over my shoulder expectantly, then back to me. “Is he with you? Are you back? Errin? Errin, are you well?”

Where’s Lief?

I stare at her, blood pounding in my ears, my too-fast heart drumming a tattoo.

Lief.

At no point during my plans – not when I was blackmailing Silas, not when I hoped to evacuate me and Mama to the Conclave, and not since I’ve been on the road have I included Lief in our future.

At no point when I’ve thought realistically about what will happen next has he been part of it. I haven’t included him in a long time. I kept telling myself he’d come home one day.

I knew it all along. I just didn’t want to.

And now that I’m here, in Tremayne – in our home – I can’t ignore it.

He’s not a prisoner somewhere in Lormere; he’s not wounded. He’s not fighting his way back to us.

Pain, iron-clad and locked away, nestled in my heart like a dead thing, radiates out without warning. He’s dead. My brother is dead. He’s not coming home. It’s sharp and it’s a spike that drives me to my knees, pinning me to the cold wooden floor, and I can’t breathe in, it’s too big, it’s blocking my lungs.

Then Lirys’s arms are around me and she smells like flour and butter and goodness and I howl, my head thrown back against her shoulder like an animal. Through my raging I hear other footsteps, approaching then retreating, but I cling to my friend and she clings back. Each time my fingers tighten hers do too, until we’re gripping each other hard enough to make bruises.

Eventually the tears stop and I sag in her arms, spent.

For the first time in four moons I can breathe.

“You need a bath and some food,” she says in her lovely lilting voice. “And then bed.”

“I can’t,” I say, harsh as a crow. “I have to go.”

“Errin Vastel, you can’t leave. We have a curfew and the gates are locked. And even if they weren’t, I wouldn’t let you. You’re home.”

And with that the tears come again, but these tears are fat and warm and I can breathe through them.

She sits on a stool beside the bath, watching me with slightly narrowed eyes. In the room next door I can hear the faint murmur of her mother and father eating their supper. Lirys has kept them away from me since my collapse, guiding me through to the warmth of her kitchen, where she dragged the tin bath before the fire and filled it with jug after jug of steaming water. She helped me undress and get into it, tutting softly at the bruises covering me, at my too-thin frame, and then she washed my hair. Finally, she unwrapped my bandaged hand, re-dressing it with real gauze, rubbing an ointment into it that soothed it instantly.

Though it must be killing her, she waits until I’m ready to speak. She doesn’t ask where we’ve been, or why I’ve not written. She accepts it all, patiently and kindly, prattling lightly, deliberately, about Kirin, and the slow, steady dance they’d been performing all autumn, until he finally kissed her and asked her to be his wife. She talks about him being a soldier, and what a shock it was, but how she thinks it will be OK.

She doesn’t think war will come.

I think of the assault in the woods, of the arrow in Kirin’s shoulder. Of the golems in Almwyk, and the camp at Tyrwhitt. Of the mercenaries who hunted me in the night and the soldier who forced me to the ground, then slit another man’s throat open. I think of Lief, never returning from Lormere. War has come. It doesn’t matter whether the Sleeping Prince invades Tregellan or not; it’s already here. The worst part is knowing that if I were in her shoes, here in Tremayne, in the place I’d always lived, I’d doubt it too. I would have continued to think Tregellan was a fair, just and safe paradise.

The innocence of her words, the normalcy of them – no curses, no beasts, no alchemy, no mystery – tighten something inside me and I decide I don’t want her to know anything about my life in Almwyk either, don’t want her to know the worst of what I’ve done – making poisons, punching people and lighting fires. Stealing. Assaulting her fiancé. I don’t want her to see me that way. And I don’t want to scare her; I want her to stay innocent.

But I have to say something, can feel her waiting for me to unburden myself.

I don’t mention the Elixir or Silas at all. I leave out Unwin’s advances, and the men in the woods. I don’t tell her about the golems, or what happened to me on the way here. I keep it simple, telling her about Mama’s breakdown – leaving out the parts about the beast – and how I was trying to treat her. I’m doing well, until I realize I have to tell her that Mama was taken away, and that I wasn’t there to protect her. And that now I’m scrambling to get her back.

“It’s not your fault,” she says immediately, passing me a new block of soap, and I smell it greedily.

“Of course it is. I shouldn’t have left her alone. Gods, Lir, imagine how horrible it must have been. To have soldiers burst in and take her away. She wouldn’t have known what was going on. I did that to her, because I…”