Chapter 7
The cub was not easy to carry.
At first, Artair slung the sack over his shoulder and concentrated on keeping his eye on the road—carts and coaches were moving up and down it frequently, often at quite a pace, but the baby monster wriggled so much that it was constantly dislodging the sack.
When he held it in his arms, the creature almost seemed to become a heavy liquid, rolling out of his grip and almost tumbling onto the ground.
Eventually, Artair took the sack to the edge of the road and opened the neck to peer in.
A pair of big green eyes stared back up at him, blinking owlishly.
For a second they appeared to flicker with light.
Was that the cub’s magic making itself known?
‘Listen.’ Artair lowered his voice as a coachload of travellers passed behind him.
He strongly suspected that talking to sacks would be remarked upon as strange.
‘ Listen. I’m sorry about all this, I really am, but I need you to be still.
Maybe just… go to sleep? Can you do that?
’ He sighed. ‘I have no idea if you can even understand me.’
The cub yawned enormously, then playfully closed his jaws around Artair’s hand, little teeth digging into his skin.
Artair smiled. Back in his life before the Golden Tower, his people had raised shepherding dogs—tough, clever animals with lean bodies and wiry fur.
This creature reminded him of the puppies that were often scampering around the tents, yipping and chasing each other. The thought gave him an idea.
He took off his pack and transferred some of the food he had taken from the kitchens into the sack with the cub.
He didn’t know what the cub would eat, so he put a little of everything in there, and as he had hoped, the monster stopped wriggling, and set to trying to eat everything at once.
Taking advantage of the creature’s distraction, Artair closed the sack and put it carefully over his shoulder again.
He’d have to buy more food soon, but that seemed a small price to pay for an easier journey.
Around him, the day had moved on. Addersport itself was steadily growing on the horizon, a slow reveal of the place he’d thought about almost every day at the Golden Tower.
It was much bigger than he’d imagined, with all manner of buildings crammed in together, intertwined with twinkling lines that had the quality of light on water.
There was a constant stream of humanity coming and going from the city, and as he grew closer, there was a distinct rumble of noise too.
He initially took it to be the sea, but eventually he realized it was simply the sound of a great many people in one place, living their lives.
The thought was unnerving. Even in his previous life, he’d never been in a place so busy, and now he carried the evil spirit within him, a threat to every single human living in that city.
What would the Other do when it realized it was free of the Golden Tower?
And who would pay the price? And there was also the issue of the cub.
Jih creatures, with their link to the Queen of Serpents and their own unpredictable forms of magic, were considered dangerous enough on their own.
Bringing one into the city was a crime that could get him locked away, with no chance of saving the novices.
‘Here and now, I am safe,’ he murmured aloud. ‘The Other is contained, and I hold the power to keep it from escaping.’
As if in response, the cub gave a single, fluting snore. Artair smiled a little, and headed on down towards the city.
Elver pulled her hood up and hunched her shoulders as another cart full of humans rattled past. She felt their eyes on her like tiny knives, and a wave of hatred rose up inside her in response.
She half wanted one of them to call out, to pass comment on the strange pale girl that walked on the road alone, or for one of them to throw something.
It would give her an excuse, a reason to attack.
But nothing happened. They wouldn’t be so inattentive if they knew what I was , she told herself.
One of the coaches that rolled by on her right was brightly coloured, and her eyes were drawn to it: someone with a fair amount of skill had painted a series of red lions leaping along the wooden boards, their manes burning orange and yellow like flames.
She remembered dimly from her days growing up in Addersport that people would often decorate carts, houses, clothes, streets, even their faces, with images of the twelve gods.
They believed it kept them in their good graces, as though the Hooded Crow would look down on their elaborately painted roof and decide not to visit them with plague.
The owner of this coach owed something to the Bloody Claw perhaps, or hoped for something from the god.
All you can hope for from that one is death, you fool , she thought.
Mother Maura and her acolytes had worn lions on their clothes.
For a brief second she wanted to run after the coach and drag the driver from his seat, letting her hands seep their poison into him.
Did you know that your god has children thrown into the sea in his name?
she would ask him. Did you know that he feeds on human blood?
Once the coach dedicated to the Bloody Claw had disappeared around a corner in the road, she found she was briefly alone.
She took a deep breath, savouring the absence of humans and their stink.
It was hard to fathom that she was heading to a place where there would be hundreds and hundreds of humans everywhere she looked.
They would press in on all sides, and if she touched any of them, they would scream, or faint, or possibly even die. The idea was already exhausting.
Ahead of her, a small patch of the road seemed to shift, the white of the stones catching the sun at a different angle. Curious, she headed towards it, only to see one of the stones rise up slightly and a shape peek out, tiny black eyes like beads of ink.
‘Hey,’ she called out. ‘Are you lost?’
These monsters were called froudians, and mostly they kept to themselves.
They were tiny creatures, no taller than an apple, with a certain rodentness about their features and clever, flexible hands and feet.
Elver had spotted them most often in the undergrowth of the Jih Forest, and occasionally in the boles of old trees.
She had the impression that they lived dramatic lives in vast communities just underfoot.
The froudian that had peeked out scampered fully into view, while more of them held the stone up. She could hear their tiny voices piping at each other, but only the one who had crawled out spoke to her directly.
Certainly not , said the creature. Are you, long shanks?
Elver sighed. She certainly felt lost, but she suspected that wasn’t what the froudian meant.
‘This is a human road. You’re liable to get squashed by a hoof or a wheel. And that’s if one of them doesn’t spot you and decide you’re dangerous.’
Dangerous? Us? The froudian seemed to find this amusing. Humans barely look where they’re going, let alone under their feet.
Elver crouched. It was good to speak to something she understood. She already missed the cover of the forest, that soft green roof overhead. The other froudians had lifted the stone out of the way and were climbing out.
‘What are you doing here?’
Hunting. The froudian gestured to where the other creatures were scurrying. Humans drop interesting things on their travels. Food, sometimes.
The group were scurrying back to the hole in the road, a bread roll carried between them.
It had started to turn mouldy on one corner, but Elver doubted that concerned the froudians.
Together they wrestled it down the hole and out of sight.
There was a rumbling sound growing louder as another cart approached, and the creature that had spoken to her returned to his hunting party as they began to manoeuvre the stone back into place. Elver found she didn’t want them to go.
‘You should be more careful,’ she told them, although she had to admit they seemed quite at ease on the human road. ‘If they catch you, they’ll kill you.’
Pft, humans are just big dumb animals , said the froudian. And if they give us trouble, we’ll bite their knees off.
The stone settled back into place, and it was as if they had never been there at all.
Elver stood up as the cart trundled past. A blunt-faced young man sitting in the back caught her eye and he grinned and pointed her out to the person sitting next to him.
There was a smattering of laughter, and he threw something, which hit her on the foot and skidded off to the edge of the road. It was a half-eaten apple.
‘Cheer up, love,’ he shouted. ‘It might never happen!’
Elver watched the cart go, imagining what it would be like to poison every human in the world. Was it possible? Perhaps the Queen of Serpents would be able to do it. An entertaining thought.
She picked up the apple and placed it close to the loose stone, then continued on down the road.