The Stolen Child (7 page)

Out in the corridor, she leaned back against the wall and let out the breath she'd been holding.  She pressed the sending stone deep into her pocket and stole away back to her bedroom, cursing her own curiosity.

As she
was passing the main stairwell
, a sudden sound froze her in place.  One of the doors lining the corridor swung open and a tall figure stepped out.  In the darkness, it took her a moment to realise it was Micah.  He was mostly undressed, just a pair of
loose pyjama trousers on
.

“Mmm?  Hey kid,”
h
e mumbled, rubbing his eyes.

“Hh... Hey,”
s
he did her best to smile.

“Up early?”

“Couldn't sleep.  I, uh, went up to the kitchen to get a drink,”
she said, trying to sound as natural as she could.
 

He nodded.

“You?”
s
he added.

He gestured
at the door to the bathroom, just behind her
.

“Oh.”

He smiled.

“I'd best get back to bed,”
s
he said.

As she stepped past him, he laid a hand, gently, on her shoulder.

“Arsh... Are you
doing
OK?”

“How do you mean?”
s
he said.

“With all this, I mean.  Your dad dropping everything, all of us suddenly running off to a city past the veil.  I know it must all seem...  Rough.”

“I'm OK.”

S
he shrugged.

“You sure?”

Trying not to fiddle with her hands too much, she gave
him
a
reassuring smile.

“I'll deal with it.  I mean, Dad's gotta have a plan, right?”

“He always does,” Micah
said
.  He sounded so confident, like he always did.  It was enough to make her wish she believed him.

“Anyway.  I should get back to bed.”

She smiled, and stepped away.

“Yeah.  Nature calls.”

Micah nodded and slouched off towards the bathroom, as she ducked through the door to her cabin and pressed it closed behind herself.

Breathing hard, she threw herself down on her bed and buried her face in her pillow until her heart finally stopped beating so fast.  It would have been so easy to just fall asleep, there and then.  Instead, she had to force herself to sit up and rub the tiredness from her eyes.  She removed the
purloined
sending stone from her pocket.  For a moment i
t
lay in her open palms, gleaming in the dull light.  
There was a sick feeling in her stomach as she thought about what she was doing.  She almost wished she could just throw the stone in the bottom of a drawer and forget about it.
 

Instead she carefully
laid the stone down on her bedside table, next to her own.  Touching one hand to each, she focussed on her sending stone, and the weave that Shani had left there.  She felt the thread uncoiling, like a rising note at the beginning of a symphony.  Shani's weaves always felt like music.  As she focused, she could almost feel the weave sliding into her father's stone, wrapping around the subtle locks that prevented her from seeing what lay inside.  
T
here was a
feeling
of tension, and then release.  The contents of the stone opened up before her, choices flashing into her thoughts.  She directed her attention to the recent calls.  The past few days had been a flurry of activity.  She skimmed through the most recent, mostly outgoing calls to names she did not recognise.  Delving deeper, she came to a single sending,
received
a few days past, at
just after six thirty in the evening.
 

Strangely, the sender was unnamed.  She pulled up the memory of the sending from within the stone.  Immediately, two ghosts joined her in the room.  The first was her father, no surprise.  The second was
someone she didn't know
.  
A woman.
  Arsha was immediately struck by her beauty.  
Her
age was hard to guess, but she had a slim, perfectly shaped face framed by long
black
hair that fell straight down her shoulders,
and
large, gentle eyes.  

“Maya?”
h
er father gasped.

“Hello Rishi.  I'm sorry, I know it's been a long time.”

“No, of course.  I understand.  Maya, isn't it dangerous for you to be calling me like this?”

“It is.  But this is important.”

“Maya, please... You shouldn't be putting yourself in any danger for my sake.”

Maya covered her mouth, as she made a sound like something between a laugh and a sob.

“Fates, Rishi, do you have any idea how much I've missed seeing your face?”

“I've missed you too, Maya.  You're keeping well?”

“The
Chamber
keeps me safe and sound, as always.  They even let me take walks in the gardens these days.  I have a bodyguard now.  I'm one of the elect.”

“That's good,”
h
er father said, his tone suggesting that he was having to bite back something else he might have said.

“
Rishi, my sweet
, you don't have to pretend to be happy for me.  I know it kills you, seeing me trapped here.”

“It's like chewing on glass, every time I think of you
being
stuck in that place.  But it's good, that they let you take walks.  You always loved the gardens.”

“
You're thinking of the estate, aren't you
?  Fates, how did you put up with me?  Always chasing at your heels.”

“You were never a bother, Maya.”

She lowered her eyes a little, smiling demurely.  Her father seemed to gather himself in the momentary silence.

“Maya, why did you risk this?  Calling me?”

“A dream I had.”

“A dream?  You mean...”

“Yes.  A vision.”

“Maya, you can't.  You know what it means,
sharing
a vision without...”

“Rishi, please don't.  I know what it means, but I have to.  You'll understand.”

“I can't let you do this, Maya.  Not for me.”

“Yes, you can.  You have to.  I can't explain it, Rishi, but I feel it.  I was meant to share this vision with you.  I think...
I think
it was only meant for you...”

“You haven't told them, have you?  Fates, Maya, faking dream records...”

“
I told you,
I can't explain it.  I just know.”

She saw her father press one hand to his forehead.  He seemed to be trying to steady his breathing.  Finally he looked up at her again.

“OK.  If you've risked this much to tell me...”

“Thank you,”
s
he said.

Her father just nodded, swallowing.

“In the dream... There was a city.  A city beyond the veil.  A clock tower with four faces, old and much loved.  A great wheel in the sky, by the edge of a river.  Towers of glass.  A bridge with two gatehouses.  A palace.”

“London,”
h
er father said, in obvious surprise.

“London?  Really?  I didn't know.”

“It has to be London.  It's one of the great cities in the Hearth.”

Maya nodded, calmly.

“There's a girl, Rishi.  Young.  She's running away from something.  She's scared and in pain.  I saw a boy with her, but I couldn't see his face.  He seemed to be made of shadows and smoke.  Fates Rishi, he frightened me.  Just looking at him made me feel sick.  They were running through the streets, and there was an animal, some kind of animal hunting them.  They were surrounded by broken glass and clouds of falling leaves, like autumn.  She's connected to you, Rishi.  I don't know how, but I could feel you hanging over her.  Like a ghost.  Like, you've been haunting her, or she's been haunting you.”

Her father looked ashen as Maya related this.

“But there's more,”
t
he woman continued, as if just speaking the words was painful.  “I saw this girl, standing in an open space in the middle of the city... And Arsha was standing with her.”

Arsha felt a coldness in her gut, a feeling like someone's hand clenching around her stomach.  In the memory of the sending, her father's eyes widened.
 

“
You're sure?  You're sure it was her?”
 

Maya nodded, with a sadness in her eyes.  It almost seemed like an apology.

“They were standing together,
Arsha and this girl
.  Their hands were bound together with red string, wound all around them,
spilling over the ground
.  The girl, her other hand was covered in a gauntlet of iron, rusted and old.  The boy was with them, watching them.  I could see his shadow, surrounding them both.  And Arsha...  I don't know Rishi.  She seemed like she was trying to make a choice.  The kind of choice that changes everything about you.  I remember she had wings, Rishi.  Wings of iron, rusted, like the gauntlet the girl wore.  I'm sorry, I don't suppose any of this makes any sense to you?”

“A little,”
h
e said, his voice hollow.

“Good.  Because there's one more thing.  There's been... Talk.  Rumours, around the
Chamber
.  You know how it is.  We're not supposed to discuss dreams, but when something big happens...  You can feel it in the air.  A
S
eed, Rishi.  A
S
eed is going to open.”

“Maya, are you... Are you sure?”

The woman shrugged.

“Is anything sure?  From what I've heard, just about every one of the elect has had the same dream.”

“Except you?”

“It was the last part of the dream.  The girl... She looked at me.  Right at me, with eyes full of so much anger and sadness.  And then she held out her hand, the hand covered by the iron gauntlet.  
I
t was there,
in her palm
.  The
S
eed.  Oh Fates, Rishi, I could feel it.  I could feel its power.”

“Maya, I...”

Her father seemed unsure of what to say.

“Thank you.  For telling me,”
he managed, at last.
 

“What are you going to do?”

“I don't know.  I have to...”
h
e floundered.  
Arsha saw that his hands were shaking.  He seemed to be resting his weight against a wall.
  “
Your father and I, we have a lot of debts to pay, Maya.  I think... I think this might be the worst of them.
”

For a moment, Maya was silent.  She seemed to be studying his face, with an expression of sad longing.
 

“
Rachael,” the woman said, softly.  “Her name is Rachael
.  
She whispered it to me, just as the dream ended.
  Do what you can for her,
Rishi
.  Do what's right.  I know you will.”

“Thank you,”
h
er father said.  It was almost a whisper.  Then the sending ended.

Arsha sat on her bed, the stone cupped in her hands, staring into the distance as she wondered what to make of it all.

“This looks good,” Justin said.

A fence had been erected around the construction site, metal bars slotted into concrete feet, but there was space enough between a pair of un-braced sections for the both of them to squeeze through.  Past the fence they dashed across a short stretch of open ground and into the cover of the scaffolds, draped with heavy tarpaulins.  The wind ran through the tarps, making them snap and ripple incessantly, a constant and uneven percussion in the cold air.  
Rain
splashed her face, driven through the gaps in the sheeting by the
sudden
gusts
of wind
.

At first she
thought they might climb
one of the scaffolds to find a spot to sleep,
but she
was nervous of the way the
platforms
swayed, and it didn't seem as though there would very much protection from the rain.  They kept looking, moving quickl
y
, careful to stay away from any light
as they explored the skeletal structure
.  Eventually Justin found a ladder that lead up to the second floor.  The flooring itself was still only partially laid, but there were enough plank walkways thrown down for them to move around on.  
T
hey found a stack of spare planks with a tarp tied over them.  She undid a corner, cold fingers fumbling with the knot, and secured it to a nearby pillar
to create
a small covered space.  The shape reminded her of
the
tents she used to make in her
grandmother's
garden, with bedsheets and string tied to an apple tree that never grew any fruit.
 

It was late and she was tired.  Her hands felt clumsy, and her legs ached from running.  They crawled into the space beneath the tarp
and wrapped
Justin's coat about themselves.  He put an arm around her, and she slid easily into the crook of his shoulder.

Her thoughts drifted back over the last few days.  After the attack behind the supermarket she had been mostly incoherent, too scared to really think.  She'd followed him without thinking, not sure of what else she could do.  That night she had slept in a church doorway whilst Justin kept watch.  When dawn broke, she'd found him tucked against the edge of the church steps, dozing with his coat pulled up over his knees.  The night after that, they'd sheltered beneath a disused railway bridge that did nothing to keep out the sharp autumn winds.  When Justin had offered to bundle up together under his coat, she couldn't find any reason to refuse.  Curled up together, comforted by the warmth of his body, she'd slept more soundly than she could remember in a long time.
 

The days had also passed more easily.  Though Justin was a stranger to London, his keen eyes could easily follow her lines as they danced across the rooftops, and his light fingers were always ready to snatch up food, money, or anything else he could steal away with.  At times she had actually begun to enjoy herself.  It was only in the quiet moments that she found herself thinking of the men from the alleyway, or the way the blood had glistened as it ran down the blade of Justin's knife.