1850 words (7 minute read)

Chapter 4

Leaf awoke laying face down on hard wood. Her stomach knotted and her heart leapt as memory returned, but she willed herself not to stir a sinew. There was a smell of stone and dust—the air was cool and close. Her left eye ached down in the bone and pulsed pain with her heartbeat.

Her eyelids fluttered as she opened them. It was almost as black as it had been with her eyes closed, but there was a faint line of light from under a door on the far side of the room. Leaf opened her eyes as widely as she could, stifling the gasp that rose in her throat; she kept them open until the stinging, burning itch died away from her left eye, though the pain lingered like a halo along her brow and cheekbone.

A leather cord bound her hands behind her, but her legs were free.

From the hollowness of the air she knew it was a small room, little bigger than the one in the wayhouse, but it felt heavy. Her every muscle tensed, but she tried to lay still and breathe evenly again. The pressure from her dagger, still in its loop and prodding her stomach, provided a scrap of hope, but it was not much.

She did not know how long she lay so, but her voices began to creep in again, whispering comfort to her. When she was as certain as she might be that she was alone, Leaf gathered herself and sat up, though she almost fell back again from the sharp pain that burst into her skull. With bleary eyes she leaned forward until the throbbing pounded out of her head. She moved her hands, finding that the cord had a little give. There was no sound besides her own breathing.

In a few moments she had twisted and rotated her wrists until she could slip a hand free of her bindings. Leaf rubbed her wrists, then ran her hands down her sides. Nothing seemed to be broken, though her ribs and hip on her left side ached and touching them brought shouting pain. Her clothes were pulled about but still in place, including the pouch tucked into her sash. Her hair was still held with the leather thong; she tucked loose strands back into it. She breathed a little more deeply, despite her ribs’ protests, and was grateful.

In the dimness, Leaf rose. Her voices were urging flight but did not tell her what to do or how to go about it. She felt around the room and discovered that she had lain on a bare bench shoved against the wall. There were two stools and above them a stone shelf with a candle dish holding a burned-down stub. Leaf had no way to light it, but the voices gave word, and she dragged her fingernail down the tallow and slowly rubbed the greasy wax onto her eyelids, wincing at the pain in her left, murmuring. When she opened them again, the room seemed lighter. There was a low table and in the corner a chest without lock or latch. She opened it and felt within, finding a pile of folded cloth. She couldn’t tell what it was.

Leaf slipped to the door and leaned against it, feeling the ridged grain press into her forehead. It was banded with iron and the latch was large. It did not give under her hand.

She smiled. They had locked her in.

She knelt down and pressed her fingers to the keyhole, which was smaller than she might have expected but presented no difficulty. She blew into it, then sniffed at it, half-lidding her eyes and letting the knowledge of it come to her. She had thought the dagger might do, but with this lock a pin would be better.

The carpenter’s pin, then. Leaf felt along the leather thong until she found it, then pulled it out. It was a simple length of iron, pounded into a square head, and the point was dull. She had not known why she had slipped it into her sash at the time. The handsome carpenter had even given her some greasy pie and a kind smile, but the little shard of iron had spoken to her, and she had taken it from the box on his wagon. Leaf spit on it now, smearing the wet along its length, then pressed it into the keyhole. Slowly she turned it, letting the metal find its way past the wards, tilting it slowly. She had seen men do this by listening to the door, but she listened only to the words whispered to her heart.

A click told her she had struck home. She pressed the latch and opened the door a crack. Outside was a narrow corridor with a lamp hanging just a bit further along. The hall was empty. This pin did not want to be removed, so she left it and slipped out.

The corridor was lined with three other doors, all like hers: banded oak set in the stone walls, each ajar. They were not prison cells. Hers was the last door. The end was hung with a thin tapestry; peering, Leaf saw that it was embroidered with the broken haft sigil of Chakron. The scent in the air and the weight of the stone told her she was back in the keep.

Leaf crept up the passageway which turned to the left past the first door. She stole to the corner and peered around. Beyond was a long, low-ceilinged room with vaulted arches. To her left were two braziers, though they were burning low in the coals and threw long shadows picked out in ochre. They flanked what looked like a forge: a square stone pillar whose grated top also glowed, surmounted by a hollow triangular stone hood whose chimney ran up into the vaulting. The flames within hissed and hushed. It was warmer here than in the corridor and smelled of hot metal, which made her head ache behind her eye. Benches ran along the walls, deep in shadow, and a square trough was carved into the floor for its whole length. More of the green tapestries hung on the walls. It looked to Leaf like a catory, the small chancella that the rich were said to keep for their private worship, though she had never seen one so large or only given over to one uzman. Her own family’s had been a tiny mud hut next to their home, hardly large enough to stand in, and had served for all the gods’ messengers.

“Oh, I see I was right about you.”

The voice came from the shadows at the far right, strange and harsh, with a guttural burble flowing beneath it. It was also slightly muffled, as if the speaker was not opening his lips fully, yet his speech was precise and his accent was formal.

Leaf took a step back, her heart racing and ringing filling her ears. Her voices hissed and scattered.

A man sat in the darkness. In the red glow, Leaf could just make out dark boots splayed out on the floor before the last bench. “You have awakened, my night-bird, all caught in your cage.“

Leaf stepped back again, but the voice followed her: “It is as well you should not run.” And as he spoke, noises in the passage behind told her that the doors she had passed were opening wider, and there was the shivering sound of mail rasping. “I should not like to bring you to Prathiori more battered than you already are.”

There were guards in the corridor behind. Leaf glanced at them, then ran back into the catory.

The figure was standing now, and Leaf stared. He was wearing a cloak indoors with the hood pulled up. For a moment Leaf saw within the recess of the cowl a flash of reflected light, but it was lost again before she could fix on it. She swallowed, winced, and said shakily, “I am nothing and no one, cavatane. Surely there has been some mistake. I am a poor girl, traveling with my father, and your men took me…”

The grating chuckle from within the hood had an odd, echoing quality, and ended with a thick cough. “I know you, nightjar. I make no mistake in you. I would have known you at a thousand journeys’ distance. And to have you before me is a gift I could not have asked. Oh, your appearance has been long in coming and breathtaking in its suddenness.”

The soldiers were in the doorway behind her now, and the cloaked man stepped forward. Beneath his hood was a mask. It looked to be made of stained brass or copper; it shone dully in the firelight. It was hammered into the smooth semblance of a face with only blackness behind the eyes and mouth.

“My windblown leaf, lost poorwill fluttering before the storms of the world, snatching what you can. I know you,” he said, and he began to advance on her with slow, even steps. Leaf backed away, unable to stop herself, until she struck the men standing behind. They gripped her arms in mailed hands.

“Cavatane, please, please,” she said, babbling, and she was not feigning her rising panic. “I did nothing, I am nothing, it is not me, you don’t want me.”

He was so close that she could see the metal mask had a noble nose and round cheeks, with a carved mouth that was a thin crescent upturned in an eternal grin. The eye holes were cat-like and too big for the face—all about them was filigree work and strange, molten brows. She could see only a faint glint behind them. This close to, he smelled overwhelmingly of incense, like olibanum and attar, but underneath was something bitter and acrid that made her stomach turn.

“I do want you.” His voice came rasping from the grin. “And I know you are something. Something precious. A morsel of darkness, brought to me as a balm, a blessing.” He wore leather gloves, and he ran the back of a finger down her left cheek; Leaf flinched at the pain. “But we must see my master, first, before I… before anything. He waits for you.” He looked up at the men behind her, and his voice became far harsher if no less grating. “Bring her.”