Chapter Eighteen #5
I thought I would struggle to sleep, as my mind was reeling, but I slumbered deeply until morning.
After a rudimentary breakfast, we walked on.
I trailed behind the men a little, as my feet had started to blister.
Patrick and Dwale were engaged in an intense conversation up ahead that involved a lot of furious gesturing, but I could not hear it.
Baldbeak was still tense and silent on my shoulder.
After a few hours, we reached a place where the river was calmer—more like a river and less like an immense temper tantrum. It was even calm enough for Dwale to bait a string and catch a brace of eels, thick and muscled as his own powerful forearms.
“Eels.” I made a face. “Really?”
“There’s gratitude for you,” said Dwale, letting them fall with a wet splat. “They’re good eating. Know how to gut an eel?”
“I … could try?”
He gave an exaggerated sigh, then sat down and proceeded to do it himself as Baldbeak watched with interest.
“Give him the eyeballs,” I said wearily. Dwale tossed them to Baldbeak, and he gulped them down. Patrick glanced over and turned a little green.
Dwale slit the eels neatly just behind their gills, then grasped their open skin and pulled it back.
Their blood was watery and thin; their guts pale.
The slender vertebrae of their backs were almost beautiful, I thought, like the barbs of a white feather.
I put out a finger to touch one of the delicate eel spines, gently, and felt it shiver in response, writhing very slightly as if it were coming back to life—then saw Dwale watching and snatched my hand back. He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
“How long have you known Patrick?” I asked, to divert him.
“Oh, I’ve known him for years,” said Dwale, still working on the eels. “Since he was a boy in the great house, and I was the son of the game warden. We hunted pigeons together, with slingshots and pebbles.”
“The great house?”
“Ban Edevane’s mansion. Great big sprawl of a place.”
“That’s my family’s house,” I said. “I am an Edevane.”
He clicked his tongue. “Well, I did always think all the women in that family were a little strange.”
“Did you know my mother? Margotte?”
“That was your mother?” He shook his head. “I had little to do with the girls. They wouldn’t hang around with the likes of me. I remember the scandal when she left, though. Pregnant, they said.”
“With me.”
“Is that so?” He had spitted the eels on his dagger and was turning them over the fire Patrick had built. Their black skin shriveled to expose pink-ribboned white flesh, and they spat and bubbled unpleasantly in the heat. Patrick came over to check on their progress and made a face.
“Turning up your nose at them, eh?” said Dwale.
“No, Dwale, I quite accept that we must eat them, but I do object to having them brandished in my face.”
“Delicate stomach.” Dwale addressed this remark to me.
The meat was surprisingly edible, if firm—verging on tough. Even Patrick allowed his hunger to override his distaste and ate a decent amount. It was the first proper meal we had eaten in a while, and when we had finished, we sat in companionable silence, enjoying the feeling of a full belly again.
After our meal, we walked with more energy and purpose.
The river flowed more sedately, and the darkness of the tunnel started to turn gray with light.
Finally, we turned a corner and were almost blinded by the glare of an overcast early-morning sky—an uneven hole of brightness hovering in the black.
The exit. The passage by the Mirth now led away from the river and up.
Shallow stone steps led up to the opening, slimed with algae.
Outside, it was damp with the kind of rain that seems to hang in the air rather than fall.
“Mirthwater. We’ve arrived,” said Dwale.
“That means we’re safe. For now,” said Patrick.
“‘Safe’ is relative,” grunted the other man. He turned to me with a smirk. “Welcome to Patrick’s little empire.”
“What?”
He chuckled. “Didn’t you know? He owns half this city. Half of most cities.”
“Dwale,” said Patrick, his voice a warning.
Dwale shrugged. “She’ll find out soon enough.”
“I knew he owned half of Quell and that he is wealthy,” I said. “I didn’t know about … the rest.”
“Wealthy doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
Patrick shot him a look. “Thank you, Dwale, that’s quite enough.”
The tunnel had spat us out under a stone bridge.
“That’s the Spine,” said Dwale. “It joins two parts of the bay outside the city. If we climb up to it, we can follow the road from there.”
We were so close to the sea that I could taste salt on my tongue. The bridge was dark against the blinding gray of the overcast sky, dripping dark water to the stones below. Below it rushed the Mirth, brown and creamy, whipped to white at the edges.
“Filthy,” said Dwale, wrinkling his nose.
It did smell strongly of fish and something sharp and vegetable, but I took a deep breath. It was bracing: the cold, the damp, the scent of the water.
“We’re here,” I whispered. “We can go to the catacombs.” And we can find Mother.
A jingle of tack, and the sound of hooves on the bridge overhead. I looked up. A dozen very fancily caparisoned horses and equally resplendent riders came to a halt above us, carrying some very shiny, very decorative, but unmistakably very sharp swords.
“The king’s guard,” said Dwale.