The Wildkin’s Curse (24 page)

Zed let Liliana slide to the ground, and flung himself down beside Merry, calling his name. ‘Are you all right, Merry? Answer me!'

Merry managed to grunt something.

‘Thank heavens!' Zed cried. ‘I thought you were dead. Lie still. There's an arrow . . .'

There was a moment of intense pain, and then a sense of relief as Zed drew a grey-fletched arrow out of Merry's breast. ‘One of Lili's arrows,' he murmured and cast a sudden, sharp look at Liliana who had fallen to her knees on the other side of Merry. She did not notice, all her attention on peeling away his jerkin so she could see his wound. Zed stood up, looking around anxiously. ‘Cilla? Uncle Ziggy? Where are you?' he called in a shaking voice.

‘It's only slight,' Liliana exclaimed in surprise. ‘The arrow didn't pierce too deep. There's something . . .' Sliding her hand inside his jerkin, she drew out a roughly folded square of parchment, torn through by the passage of the arrow and stained on one side with Merry's blood. ‘Your song . . . it saved your life.'

Merry looked down at the gaping red wound just above his heart, then at the torn and crumpled piece of parchment. ‘The first death,' he croaked.

‘Stiga's vision?' Liliana spoke so quietly Merry could hardly hear the words. He nodded in response. She leant forward and laid her palms over the wound. At once the pain ebbed away. When she lifted her hands away, the wound had closed, leaving an angry-looking scar. Liliana shook her head in wonderment. Merry pointed at his head, and she sucked in her breath at the sight of the sticky redness matted in his hair. Again she laid her hands over the wound, and Merry felt the urgent throbbing in his head fade away. He closed his eyes, an intense weariness filling him.

‘I never knew . . .' she whispered.

‘What?' he croaked.

‘That I could do this. Heal. It's one of the rarest of all Gifts.'

‘It's a great Gift.'

‘Yes . . . I'm glad . . . I was so afraid . . .'

‘I've found more of your arrows, embedded in the chests of some of our men!' Zed came angrily towards them, holding three more grey-fletched arrows in his hand. ‘All of them would have survived if not for the arrows!'

Liliana and Merry both looked at him in surprise.

‘I didn't kill them!' Liliana protested. ‘My bow and arrows were taken from me, before I was dragged away. How could you think I was the one who killed them?'

‘It was someone else . . . I didn't see their face . . . I saw them stabbing someone else and then they stabbed me,' Merry managed to say.

‘My bow is over here,' Liliana said, retrieving it from by the wall. ‘But look, all my arrows are gone!' She looked round in a sudden panic, and saw her discarded satchel lying on the trampled grass. She snatched it and looked inside, and by the expression on her face, Merry knew the cloak and feathers were still safely concealed inside, and he felt his own body sag in relief. She slung it over her shoulder and began to systematically search the battlefield for her arrows, cleaning their sharp iron points of blood before stowing them away in their quiver.

‘Stab jab,' Tom-Tit-Tot whispered, creeping forward across the stones, dragging one wing. ‘Slash gash.'

‘Are you hurt?' Merry asked anxiously, and leant on one elbow while he examined the omen-imp carefully. Tom-Tit-Tot had a nasty cut above his eye, and was generally bruised and shaken up. Liliana came at once to lay her hands on him, and was relieved to see her magic worked on omen-imps as well as on people. It seemed, though, that she drew power from the wounded as well as from herself to work the healing, since Tom-Tit-Tot grew limp and weary as his cut closed over and lay weakly beside Merry, his eyes shut.

‘Did you see who stabbed Merry?' Zed demanded. When the omen-imp shook his head, whimpering, ‘Head clouted, knocked outed', Zed hurried on, exclaiming in relief when he found Priscilla, bound and gagged with her own scarf, and tossed down at the foot of the wall. He unbound her rapidly and soothed her frightened sobbing. ‘Wait here!' he ordered. ‘I need to see who else is hurt.'

Only a few steps away he found Annie, sprawled on the earth, an arrow fletched with an owl feather through her back. Frowning, he rolled the maid-servant over gently, but there was nothing he could do. She was dead.

Zed laid her down and moved on. The next three figures were their own soldiers, all dead, their corpses strewn about the unmoving form of Count Zygmunt, lying crumpled in his new red brocade coat. Zed cried out and knelt beside his uncle, lifting him up. He had received several stabs and cuts, but the killing wound seemed to be another owl-fletched arrow, driven through the count's heart. Zed turned and stared at Liliana.

‘But I didn't . . . I swear . . .' Liliana stammered. Zed said nothing, just gently laid his uncle down and continued his melancholy search.

All of their guards were slain, or badly injured. Aubin the Fair was alive, but bleeding from a dozen shallow wounds. His sword was slick with blood to the hilt. Even his moustache was stained red. Zakary was found slumped against the wall, unconscious. Zed examined him gently at first, but when he found no sign of any wounds, shook him awake roughly.

The young lord moaned and lolled back, his hand laid across his brow. ‘Wh . . . what happened? There was screaming . . . fighting . . . I must have fainted . . . Oh, I feel sick. I need smelling salts! Brandywine!'

‘You need to get up and help me,' Zed said angrily. ‘My uncle . . . my uncle is dead. All our soldiers dead . . .'

Zakary staggered to his feet. ‘Oh, my heavens! Count Zygmunt! Murder! Ambush! Was it the rebels?'

He saw the owl-fletched arrow driven through the count's chest and reeled back. His eyes flickered to Liliana who stood, silent, trembling with shock and cold. He raised one finger and pointed it at her. ‘You!'

‘No,' she protested. ‘No, of course not.'

Merry tucked the raven feather out of sight inside his coat and said in a strange, faint voice, ‘Li . . . Laurie's arrows were seized from him before he was dragged away. It was not Laurie who did it.'

Even as he spoke, he marvelled that he remembered not to call her Lili.

‘I killed the men who dragged him away,' Zed said in a cold, emotionless voice. ‘Laurie did not have his bow or arrows then.'

‘Lucky for him,' Zakary said, sounding strangely disgruntled.

‘Let us see who did this dreadful thing,' Zed said, and bent to tear the mask off the closest attacker. He was a stranger, a rough, bearded man with a branding scar on one cheek and half an ear missing. The other attackers were as rough and disreputable-looking, their faces and bodies showing the scars of former battles. One face, however, was familiar to them all. It was Wilhelm, the soldier who had shot the albatross.

‘How very dreadful,' Zakary said. ‘Did he have a grudge against you all?'

‘Only because of the albatross,' Zed said blackly. ‘He was docked his pay for a week, and made to scrub the boards. Surely that is not enough to cause him to betray us so?'

‘He would've been flogged if it wasn't for you!' Priscilla cried indignantly. ‘Oh, Zed, this is all so awful! Dear Uncle Ziggy! And Annie! What does it mean?' She began to sob.

Merry managed to sit up. Everything was hazy and mazy and wrong. ‘Look in his pockets,' he croaked.

‘I beg your pardon?' Zed turned towards him. Merry repeated his words. Zed rummaged through Wilhelm's pockets and withdrew a large and heavy pouch that jingled. When Zed opened the pouch, it was filled with gold coins.

‘Someone paid him,' Merry said. ‘But who? Who?'

This question was haunting him. He knew he could answer it if only he could think. But his head hurt and everything was dazzled, as if he looked at the world through water. He searched Liliana's face. There was a nasty bruise on her temple.

‘Are you badly hurt?' he asked.

‘I'd be much more badly hurt if it was not for Zed,' she answered.

‘That's good,' Merry said inadequately.

‘Yes. In truth, he can fight! He must've slain half-a-dozen of them single-handedly.'

‘He always was a good fighter.' Merry felt very miserable indeed. He shut his eyes.

‘Are you all right?' she asked anxiously. When he did not reply, she called, ‘Zed, Merry's fainted again! We have to get him inside. Quick!'

Merry turned his face away, wishing that he was a true hero to win the heart of his true love. But that, he knew, he would never be.

Z
ED SAT AND STARED AT THE PARCHMENT THAT LAY ON THE
polished desk before him, its edges weighted down with an inkwell, a pumice stone, his penknife, and the heel of his left hand. He had tried several times to write and tell his parents about his uncle's death, but each time had scraped the parchment clean and begun again.

Failure weighed on him like a suit of armour. He felt its burden in every limb and muscle. Uncle Ziggy assassinated, his sister's maidservant murdered, so many of his men killed. Was this some kind of dark flowering of the prophecy that had haunted him since birth?

Next shall be the king-breaker, the king-maker,
though broken himself he shall be.

Zed shook his head, which felt heavy and thick, and tried to chase away the thought.
It wasn't my fault,
he reminded himself.
I did everything I could. How could I suspect we'd be ambushed at the very door of the king's palace? It has nothing to do with the prophecy. My uncle was not king and I did not break him . . .

His uncle had, however, been the new crown prince. With his death, that position had been inherited, along with the County of Estelliana, by Zed himself. Was he truly now only one step away from the throne? The thought filled him with horror. Zed had no desire to be king. He hated the pageantry and artifice of court life, hated politics, and hated the city. He would have been perfectly happy to live out the rest of his life at Estelliana Castle, looking after his people, hunting in the winter and fishing in the summer, and enjoying the occasional feast day with his friends and family.

It was not my fault
, he thought again and wrote, the quill held awkwardly in his large hand,
I did my best to save him, Mama. There were too many. I could not fight them all off.

He shuddered, and ink splattered from his quill. Zed had never killed anyone before. He hoped he would never need to again. The ambush haunted him night and day, coming back to him in sudden, vivid, blood-soaked shards of memory that kicked his heart into a gallop and cramped his lungs so that he could hardly gasp a breath.

Three days had passed since the death of his uncle and, as starkin custom prescribed, Zed had sat vigil all that time in the crypt, staring at his uncle laid out on his bier, wrapped in a shroud cloth, and surrounded by twelve tall white candles. Behind him, the professional wailers had sobbed and beat their breasts and wept, for a small bag of copper coins. For a single coin, the sin-eater had eaten a crust of bread taken from the dead man's breast, drunk a cup of apple-ale passed to him across the dead man's body, and then shuffled back to his hole in the wall outside, leaving Zed alone with the wailers. It had been the longest and most awful three days of Zed's life.

His uncle had been cremated the previous evening, at sunset, with the sound of the death-bells ringing out over the city. His ashes were now in a red lacquer jar on the mantelpiece, ready for Zed to take home, and preparations were being made for the memorial feast, while Zed struggled to write and tell his mother that her brother was dead.

At last the letter was done, though rather splattered with ink blots. Zed rolled it and sealed it shut with a blob of sealing wax into which he pressed his uncle's signet ring. His ring now. The ring of the Count of Estelliana. He said his new title to himself again, silently, in his mind, trying to get used to the idea.

There was a discreet knock on the door, and then Merry opened it and looked into Zed's chamber. ‘It's time,' he said.

For once, Merry was looking clean and neat, his black hair tied back, his boots polished to a shine. He wore the blue and silver livery of the Estelliana family, a scarlet sash crossing his chest and tied at his waist, and as always carried his lute in its leather bag. The bruise at his hairline was the only sign of his recent injuries.

Zed hesitated, glancing at himself in the mirror. He had taken especial care with his own toilet. He was wearing the red velvet coat, reluctantly, but had baulked at pairing it with a red translucent shirt, red brocade waistcoat and puffy silk breeches as Zakary had decreed. Instead he wore his best black velvet breeches, and he had removed the indigo feather from his hat and replaced it with a red cockade.

He took a deep breath and went out to the corridor, where his attendants and guards waited. Like Merry, Liliana was dressed in her squire's clothing, her bow over her shoulder, the quiver of arrows at the small of her back. Aubin the Fair was also dressed in livery, his sword prominently displayed at his side. Behind him stood a line of starkin soldiers, with hard faces, short-cropped hair and clean-shaven jaws. They were Zed's new bodyguard, appointed by the king, and apparently under his orders, since they ignored all Zed's suggestions to give him a little space. They had stood outside the door to the crypt for three days, searching anyone who brought him food, and they had rather embarrassingly escorted him to and from the garderobe, all without the slightest twitch of expression. Zed hated them, and wondered with a sense of rising panic how he was ever going to be free to search for the three remaining feathers with a phalanx of soldiers clanking after him every step of the way.

Zed nodded to them, then let the young pageboy lead him down the corridors. The fact that the pageboy was dressed entirely in scarlet unnerved him, and he nervously tucked the lace cuffs of his crisp white shirt out of sight beneath the red velvet.