Chapter 20
The rain started towards the end of the afternoon.
It was a steady drizzle at first, shrouding the world in a veil of grey, sucking the last bit of colour from the jagged hills around us.
By the time we crossed the border of the Whitemoss estate, it had transformed into a relentless downpour – thick, splattering drops that soaked through my gloves and clothes within minutes.
We still had about an hour left to ride.
Good news, I tried to tell myself at first; the water would wash away our trail and make it impossible for any surviving birds to follow us.
Every step through this cloudburst was another step away from Kestrel, from the world I’d left behind, from the weapon Aranc had made of me, and I should be grateful, damn it, for each and every drop standing between those memories and me.
But in the cutting spring winds, my wet face soon turned so cold I barely felt it anymore.
My fingers were aching icicles, my feet numb lumps inside my sodden boots.
Next to me, Durlain rode with a blank, hollow expression, unflinching and unblinking as the rain pelted his face – not so much a look of stoicism but rather the numb detachment I’d seen on the faces of flogged soldiers.
He didn’t speak. If he noticed my increasingly frequent glances at him at all, he gave no sign of it.
The only sounds were the insistent drumming of the rain, the sploshing of hooves in mud, and the occasional distant rumble of thunder.
I huddled in Pain’s saddle and reminded myself I was doing this for Lark. That I was fine. That Niflheim would no doubt be colder.
Somehow, it didn’t help much.
The slate grey sky was turning a grubby black when we reached the Svala, the river surface white and frothing from the rain.
Through the deluge, I could barely make out the silhouettes of the Nettle Hill houses.
They hunched quietly on the hillside above us, like frightened animals trying to remain invisible – dark and abandoned, devoid of all sound but the banging of a shutter in the gusts of icy wind.
‘Take the left road.’ It took an effort to shape the syllables on my half-frozen lips; I sounded like a slurring drunk. ‘Houses on the south side are in a better state.’
Durlain gave no sign of having heard me.
There was something decidedly unnerving about the emptiness in his gaze – about the way he seemed to stare straight through the pouring rain, straight through the hills and the houses and the promise of warmth even as he perched in the saddle.
When I steered Pain onto the left path, Smudge followed, and I couldn’t tell whether he was guiding her or she’d just decided I knew what I was doing.
‘Durlain?’ I yelled over my shoulder.
Silence.
Fuck.
A roof, first of all. I turned back around, squinting against the veil of drops as we made our way up the slope, the paths small rivers of mud beneath us.
Most of the houses we passed were in a deplorable state – rotting roofs, gaping holes – but on the farthest side of the town, where the hill shielded the buildings from the worst of the wind, the situation was a fraction better.
I found the old bakery there, the home in which Lark and I had slept once on our travels; the roof was still mostly intact.
I’d have muttered a word of thanks at the world if my lips had been able to cooperate.
Dismounting was a pathetic affair, my legs stiff with cold and hours in the saddle, the cut in my arm more painful now that every muscle around it was clenched tight against the chill.
Untying my bag from the saddle took forever.
Durlain still hadn’t moved by the time I finally dragged the thing off Pain’s back – sitting rigid and motionless in the saddle, gaze aimed at something an eternity away, black hair leaking rivulets of water across his face.
‘Durlain?’ I said again.
No response.
With a curse, I stumbled to his side, grabbed Smudge’s reins, and began to drag both horses to the stables adjacent to the bakery. Last time, we’d found a pile of hay bales left behind. They were still there, dusty but dry, and again I felt the embarrassing urge to cry with gratitude.
‘Durlain.’ I grabbed his arm and shook unceremoniously, until a shock of awareness seemed to jolt through him and his eye jerked towards me. ‘We’ve arrived. Time to make a fire.’
His blue lips twitched.
His voice was almost inaudible – ‘Can’t.’
Fucking fireborn magic. No fire without body warmth – was this what happened if the bastards cooled down too much? Could I have rid myself of Aranc by simply pushing him into a mountain creek in spring, no need to flee the kingdom at all?
With a muffled curse, I let go of his soaked sleeve and said, ‘At least get out of the bloody saddle, then. I’ll try my best.’
There was no answer, but as I swung my dripping bag over my shoulder and ducked through the doorway to the house itself, the rustle of wet cloth suggested he was moving behind me.
The old bakery was a low, two-room home, a bedroom in the back and the bakehouse at the front.
I made for the latter room, which was larger, and which still had the old oven standing in a corner – built from stone and about as indestructible as the hill beneath our feet.
There hadn’t been any wood left when Lark and I had found the place on a mercifully dry summer’s day, but we’d gathered broken boards and poles from other houses around the village, and plenty of that still lay piled up where we’d left it.
I expected a gulf of despair at the sight – the logs Lark had chopped for me with his trusty old axe – and felt nothing but a small twang of dread. Perhaps the cold had numbed my heart.
I piled up some of the smaller blocks in the old oven, then signed kaunan at them for what felt like an eternity.
By the time flames were finally licking along the edges, Durlain had staggered into the room after me – gaze still hollow but fingers clumsily pulling at the buttons of his coat.
The whole effort looked about as effective as a sleepwalker trying to unlock a door.
Hell.
‘Need help?’ I suggested.
‘I …’ He seemed to have trouble keeping his thoughts in line beyond that single word. ‘I … I don’t …’
His fingers kept slipping on that first amethyst button.
‘Never mind,’ I said impatiently, because in hindsight, perhaps asking for thoughts from an empty mind had not been the most helpful way of going about this.
My own wet clothes could wait. I desperately needed him to snap out of whatever state he was in and help me make the decisions again.
‘Come here. No, by the fire, you idiot. Let me …’
Undress you.
I decided it might be best if I just didn’t speak those words out loud.
My fingers tingled painfully as the blood returned, but I was still faster than Durlain would have been himself as I untied his coat and then the shirt beneath with cold, shaking hands.
His soaked coat was heavy as a boulder when I hauled it off his shoulders.
His shirt had to be peeled off him like a second skin, revealing the grotesque landscape of scars that covered his chest and stomach – their crystalline surface oddly bright now, standing out starkly against the harrowing paleness of his skin.
I tried to keep my gaze on those scars – only on those scars, and definitely not on the ridges of abdominal muscle around them – as I tossed the shirt aside and contemplated the next step.
Mists take me, he was built like a coiled whip.
All sleek tension and strength, the potential of power lurking beneath every inch of chiselled skin …
and perhaps it would be best if I kept my hands off his trousers entirely.
‘Think you can manage the rest?’ My voice came out hoarser than intended.
He gave a single slow blink – but looked, for the first time since our arrival, as if he might remember my name again.
‘Wonderful,’ I told him, hauled my bag off the floor, and bolted to the back room.
At least the waxed leather of the bag had kept most of the rain out, although water had seeped in around the seams and turned the clothes packed there clammy.
As one of my new tunics now stank of marshland and the other was soaked to the last fibre, I dragged out the old blue tunic Durlain had found for me in Horn’s End and put that on.
It was a little too large, reaching to just above my knees.
Which was just as well, I realised a moment later, staring at the contents of my bag, because I did not have any clean trousers left.
Balls.
At least Durlain hadn’t looked particularly in the mood to admire anyone’s legs …
but all the same he’d see, that puckered scar on my left thigh, the gouge carved into my left shin.
Kestrel’s marks. Traces of stories I really did not want to tell, and he might ask all the same, because knowledge was his dearest weapon.
But what was my alternative? Sitting around in wet clothes for the rest of the night?
Kestrel didn’t exist here, I reminded myself, sucking in a deep breath for courage. The rain was still pouring; no one in his right mind could have followed us to this ghost town. No birds to drag me back into the hell of Mount Estien. No Aranc.
Just me.
With a muffled curse, I began to strip my trousers off my legs.
Once I’d changed, I combed out my hair, patted it dry as well as I could, then swiftly braided it again.
On the other side of the wall, dull thuds suggested Durlain was moving.
I gave him two more minutes to make himself decent, then gathered my wet clothes and tiptoed back to the front of the house, finding him dressed in the purple silk dressing gown he’d worn when I’d walked in on him bathing.
It looked so utterly out of place, that shimmering, delicate garment in this rustic backwater room, that despite everything, I couldn’t help a half-stifled snort.