The Blood Curse (49 page)

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND NINE

W
HEN
J
AUMÉ WOKE
, Bennick was no longer in the wagon.

Jaumé sat up hurriedly. Was Bennick lying sick on the ground?

No, Bennick was at the packsaddles, going through them. He looked like he always did: strong, well.

Jaumé squinted up at the sky. How long had he slept? The sun was high: noon.

Bennick looked up and saw him. “Hurry up, lad. We’ve got to get moving.”

Jaumé scrambled down from the wagon. “But... you’re sick.”

“Not any more.” Bennick glanced sharply at him, studying his face. “You all right? Didn’t seem to take you as bad.”

“I, uh... I only threw up once.”

“Good.” Bennick gave a curt nod. “Now get every waterskin you can find and fill it.”

Jaumé hurried to obey.

Bennick saddled his mount and the pony, and loaded three packhorses. “Come here, lad.” He made Jaumé try on some warmer clothes. Jaumé wondered whose they were. Valor’s? Luit’s?

“You seen my spyglass anywhere?”

“I think they took it,” Jaumé said cautiously. “Um... do you want to know what happened last night?”

“I can see what happened. They took off while we were sick. In a boat.” Bennick’s gaze rested on Vught for a moment. “The lapdog took Vught out, or maybe his mistress did. Lucky kill, that one. Vught wouldn’t have gone easily.”

Had Bennick seen his footprints on the jetty? “I tried to stop them,” Jaumé lied, twisting his fingers together. “But they’d already gone.”

“I know. I saw the tracks.” Bennick reached out and ruffled Jaumé’s hair. “I mightn’t be alive if you hadn’t helped me into the wagon. You’re a good lad, Jaumé. You’ll make a good Brother.”

Jaumé twisted his fingers even more tightly together. “Are we going to Fith now?”

“Fith? Not yet. Got to get the prince first.”

“But... the princess is gone. There’s no bait.”

“Don’t need her. Would have helped, I don’t deny. Surprise can give you a powerful advantage: if you can make your target stop for even one second, you’ve got him.” Bennick snapped his fingers, a sharp sound. “But I’ll get him without her, easy enough.”

Bennick crossed to Vught and stood looking down at him. “He get the curse before he died?”

“I don’t know.”

Bennick crouched, and cautiously rolled Vught over. He felt under Vught’s cloak and took the folded map. “Right, let’s be off.”

“The other horses? There’s no food for them here.”

“We’ll leave the door open. They’ll get out.” Bennick looked around at the sooty snow, the vomit, the rubble. “What a mess,” he said disgustedly, and Jaumé remembered how clean the Brothers usually were. Clean, quick, tidy.

“No way of hiding this mess from the mages, if they’re on the road behind us. Let’s hope they’re going over the hills.”

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TEN

T
HE ROOM WAS
dim when Britta woke. Night? And then she realized that the window was shuttered.

She extricated herself from the nest of furs and opened the shutters. The window looked out on the central yard. Daylight.

She checked on Karel—deeply asleep—and then went in search of clothes and food. She found both, dressed and ate, and checked on Karel again. He hadn’t moved.

Britta went out into the courtyard. She crossed to the back door, opened it, and went out onto the jetty. The rowboat had sunk. Only the tip of the prow showed above the water, held up by the rope.

Jaumé’s sword and Karel’s stave lay where she’d tossed them. She cut the rope with the sword, releasing the boat, and took both sword and stave back into the farmhouse and barred the door. Then, she checked Karel again. He still hadn’t moved.

She explored the farmhouse further. Two families had lived here, she decided. She found six bedrooms, and a room with a tall loom that had a half-made blanket of undyed goats’ wool strung up on it, and a wolf skin stretched taut on a drying rack. All the rooms had windows opening onto the central yard, but the upstairs rooms had narrow slits too, that faced outwards. For arrows, she thought. Britta found a slit that looked along the road, and pulled out the spyglass. The road was empty.

She put the spyglass back in her pocket and explored further, finding a selection of dried herbs in a room off the scullery. She examined the herbs. Which ones were for flavoring food, and which for healing? Those curls of dried bark could possibly be willowbark... or possibly not.

As well as the herbs, she found a small earthenware flask. Britta uncorked it, and sniffed. The smell jerked her head back, gave her a sharp memory: the palace, Duke Rikard.

Britta rammed the stopper back in. Poppy syrup. She’d drunk it every day of her marriage to Rikard. She thrust the flask back onto its shelf.

When she checked on Karel again, his eyes opened. After a long moment, his gaze focused on her. “Britta?”

“Yes.” She sat on the bed and felt his face. Was the warmth due to fever, or the wolf skins? “How do you feel?”

“Where are we?”

She explained the river and the rowboat and the farmhouse. Karel’s gaze drifted off several times. She saw the effort it took him to concentrate. “How do you feel?” she asked again.

“Tired.”

And in pain. She could see it in his face. “Where does it hurt?”

“Hurts to breathe. And my leg.”

She pushed aside the wolf skins, folded back the blanket, and examined his left thigh. It had bled during the night; blood crusted the blanket. His skin was hot to touch, a bruised-looking color, swollen.

“I’m going to make you some willowbark tea.”

Karel’s brow creased, as if he was trying to think. “How much water have we got?”

“Four waterskins.”

His gaze drifted off again.

Britta had never cooked anything in her life, but there was a fireplace in the kitchen, and hooks for hanging pots over the fire. She didn’t know whether to put the bark in before the water heated, or after. In the end, she decided it didn’t matter.

It took her a long time, but eventually she had a pot of tea. The tea looked strong; she’d used a handful of the bark.

Britta put it aside to cool and went to see how Karel was. His eyes were closed. She went upstairs and checked the road again—still empty—and finished exploring the farmhouse and yard. She found a small smokehouse. Most of the racks were empty, but half a dozen strings of sausages hung near the back and two haunches of meat. At the back of the barn, was a stack of casks. Britta prized out the bungs and sniffed. Cider, and ale.

Back in the kitchen, the tea was lukewarm. Britta took it to the bedroom. “Karel? Karel, wake up.”

He drank half a mug. “Does it taste all right?” Britta asked.

“Strong.”

“But does it taste like willowbark?”

A smile touched his eyes. “Don’t know what you’re giving me?”

“Not really,” she confessed. “It was the only bark.”

“Tastes like willowbark, just strong.” Karel drank another mouthful.

“Do you know what bone-knit looks like? Or comfrey?”

He shook his head.

Britta hesitated. “I found some poppy syrup.”

Their eyes met, and then Karel shook his head. “No. I need my wits about me.”

Britta nodded. Poppy syrup would dull his pain, but also his mind. Her marriage to Rikard was a blur, something she couldn’t remember clearly even if she tried.

She got two mugs of willowbark down him, and most of a smoked sausage, then ran up to check the road again. Still empty.
But what will I do if it’s not? What if Vught and Bennick come for me?
She decided to start wearing Jaumé’s sword.

Britta found a leather belt in one of the abandoned rooms, and took it and the sword to Karel. With his help she managed to attach the scabbard to the belt and fasten it so the sword sat at her left hip. Karel looked at her, and his face became grim. “Britta, take it off.”

“Why?”

“Because people who wear swords get killed.
Take it off
.”

He was so agitated that Britta unbuckled the belt. She sat alongside him on the bed and took his hand. “Karel, we’re safe here.”

“Maybe.” His grip was tight, almost painful.

“The next people who come along the road will be Harkeld and the witches, and they’ll destroy the curse, and then we can go home.”

“Maybe,” Karel said again. His voice sounded as if he wanted to believe it, but didn’t.

Britta rubbed her thumb across the back of his hand. “Tell me about Esfaban.”

“Esfaban?” His expression changed: sorrow. “It’s the most beautiful kingdom in the world.”

“Tell me.”

She listened while he told her of blue-green seas and waves lapping on sandy beaches, groves of tall palm trees, warm breezes and heavy rains, tree frogs singing, and houses thatched with palm fronds. His grip on her hand relaxed, and so did his face, and then he told her about the people, and the muscles in his face tightened again. “Sending your eldest child to be a bondservant. Twenty years of slavery. How do you find the strength to do that? How do you send a child away, knowing what they’ll have to endure?”

Britta shook her head.

“The families keep living, and sometimes they sing, and sometimes they laugh, but underneath that is guilt. You can see it in their faces. My uncle said it’s like a rat eating away inside you. It sits in your chest, and it hurts, and it never goes away. Not even when the bondservants come home, because they’re always broken. Always.” Karel fell silent. He shook his head. “Osgaard has destroyed us.”

Britta looked away. By Osgaard, he meant the Rutersvards.
My family.

“If Yasma goes home, her family will never be able to look at her without feeling guilt. And she... I don’t know. Maybe she can love them again. Maybe she can be happy. Maybe not.” He released her hand and sighed, rubbed his face.

Britta tried to imagine it: the grief and despair of families sending a child into bondservice, the consuming guilt. How would it feel to welcome home a son or daughter who’d endured twenty years of slavery? How would it feel to
be
that son or daughter, coming home?

“What about you?” she asked. “Can you go back and be happy?”

“Me?” Karel glanced at her. “It’s different for me. I wasn’t a bondservant.” He frowned, thinking. “If I went back after twenty years’ service, my family would be joyful, because we’d all finally be free. But they think I’m dead, so... They’ll feel guilt.”

Britta took his hand again, squeezed it. “But if Jaegar dies, and Magnas becomes regent, and Esfaban is freed...
then
you can go back. Everyone can go back.”

“Yes.”

And I can go with you, and Yasma.

“Tell me about your family, please, Karel. If you don’t mind talking about them?”

“My family?” He looked past her, at the wall. “I have two sisters, Elifira and Tamasin, and two aunts and three uncles and nearly a dozen cousins. My parents... My mother doesn’t speak. She stopped speaking when she was a bondservant.”

Was she raped?
But Britta knew the answer: yes. All female bondservants were raped.

“My father served in the tanneries. His hands are broken, all scarred and misshapen, and he was whipped so badly he was practically flayed, but he’s only damaged on the outside, not the inside. He smiles and he laughs. He was a good father. He loved us.”

Did that mean his mother didn’t?

Karel glanced at her, and maybe he saw the question on her face. “It’s hard for the women when they come back. They need to bear a son, but they’ve been raped, and... it’s hard.”

Britta looked down at her hand holding his.

“My mother had two daughters before me. Father brought us up, and my aunts and uncles helped. Mother... she’s not truly present. She’s somewhere else, inside her head. It helps her to cope. But, she does like babies. It’s the only time she smiles—when she’s rocking a baby—and she makes a humming sound, like she’s singing. When we were babies, I think we made her happy, for a time.”

Karel fell silent. Whatever he was thinking about wasn’t cheerful. Then, he seemed to give himself a shake, to turn his thoughts in another direction. “Father said the whole island celebrated when I was born. Everyone sang and danced. I saw it happen many times before I left. When a bondservant has a son, it’s... It gives everyone hope that one day they’ll be free.”

A bondservant’s son to bear arms for Osgaard, to give twenty years’ good service, after which his family would be wholly free. Karel was the only Esfaban islander she’d seen as an armsman in the palace. “Were you the first one born? Son of a bondservant?”

“One of them. There are lots of boys behind me. The last few years I was home, it seemed like a bondservant’s son was born every few months. In another fifty years, most of Esfaban’s families will be free. If things stay as they are.”

“They won’t,” Britta said. “Magnas will take control of Osgaard.”

Karel shook his head. “We
hope
he will. We hope he
can
. All-Mother only knows what Jaegar’s doing now, what changes he’s making, what plans. And if Harkeld fails...”

“He won’t,” Britta said stoutly.