Chapter 8
It was dusk by the time Elver finally caught up with the thief in Addersport.
She passed the signs that lined the water gates—announcing to every visitor that jih monsters were strictly forbidden within the city, and anyone caught trading or harbouring the creatures would be arrested on sight and taken to the temple of Trilot the Faceless—and spotted him walking no more than fifty feet away, a sack held in his arms. He seemed oddly dumbstruck by the place, wandering the edges of the waterways with a rapt expression, constantly looking this way and that, as though he’d never seen a marketplace before, or a group of musicians plying their trade outside a tavern.
He was tall and lean, with dark brown hair that tumbled to the nape of his neck, and he had expressive brown eyes that seemed to be widening in surprise at every mundane sight.
Elver watched him from the edges of buildings or the dark spaces in alleys, her hood partially covering her face.
There was the question of what to do next.
She couldn’t attack him in public, with all these stinking humans around—they had rules about that sort of thing, and guards stood on the corner of every street, ready to enforce them.
And besides which, she was jih. Her kind were not welcome.
If they knew what she was, she’d be imprisoned, or worse.
She guessed that the keltraxia cub was in the sack. Every now and then he would bow his head over it, his lips moving, as though he were talking to it. Threatening it, perhaps?
What is this fool doing?
He wandered down street after street until he came to one of the larger taverns.
On the upper balconies, men and women in advanced states of refreshment were calling and laughing to each other—a number of them appeared to be only partially dressed.
The thief stood outside this place for some time, as though trying to make his mind up about something, until finally he stepped up to the entrance and vanished inside.
He is selling the cub , she decided. This is where he will meet the buyer.
She couldn’t think why a human would want to buy a jih spirit, but then guessing the motives of humans was a pointless activity. Perhaps keeping such a ‘dangerous’ creature as a pet made them feel important. Humans were pathetic like that.
Elver also paused on the doorstep, her skin crawling.
Inside this place, humans would be pressed in close, they would be loud, and she’d be overwhelmingly aware of their stench.
Quite aside from her own discomfort, there was also the chance that one of them could brush their filthy skin against hers, and that would be it.
There would be screaming, the guards would be called, and she’d be caught. Trapped in this place.
The cub is more trapped than I am.
She sighed and stepped over the threshold.
Inside the tavern it was just as she feared.
Humans were everywhere, lounging at tables, standing at the fireplace with foaming tankards.
At the back of the room, a group of women were playing a card game Elver vaguely recognized from her days at the orphanage; they had played with scrounged pennies and the odd crust of bread.
The women laughed uproariously, one of them casually throwing their arm around the shoulders of the other as the cards failed to go in their favour.
The thief, at least, was easy enough to spot: he stood at the bar, his back very straight, and he was having a conversation with the barman that the old man apparently found quite confusing, judging by the expression on his whiskery face.
On the bar itself there was a neat stack of silver coins.
The barman is buying the cub? What use does a tavern have for an illegal monster?
Elver sidled up to the bar herself, leaning against it in what she imagined was a casual way, her head down so that the hood covered her white hair. She was close enough to hear them speak.
‘… there’s the cellar, I suppose,’ the barman was saying.
‘I can lock that from the outside, certainly, but there’s no bed in it, young man.
Are you sure you don’t want one of our actual rooms?
Like I say, we’re busy tonight but there’s still one available, and it has the biggest bed.
From the looks of you, I reckon you could find someone to share it, if you felt like some company. ’
‘Thank you, no.’ The thief’s voice was quiet, and almost earnest. It was not what she had been expecting at all, and something about it intrigued her.
She considered the barman’s comment. Now that she was this close to the thief, she could see for herself that he was strikingly handsome.
There was a tiny slash of a scar through one dark eyebrow.
She found herself wondering how he’d acquired it—through some dubious deed, no doubt.
‘I need somewhere with no windows, and one door. And I need you to lock it after me. And unlock it again in the morning.’
‘Ah well, there is a window in the cellar, a small one at ground height, you see, but I can get my son to shut it up for you if you like.’
‘Yes, please.’ The thief nodded.
Elver frowned. Why would a thief need a locked room?
‘You’re not planning anything… unnatural in there, are you?’ The barman leaned forward, a steely look in his eye. ‘Because I won’t tolerate any funny business.’
‘No, I’m just a very private person.’ The thief reached into a trouser pocket and placed two more pieces of silver on the bar. ‘Please.’
The barman eyed the coins and then shrugged. ‘No skin off my nose if you want to spend your night in a damp cellar and pay for the privilege. Come on then, let’s get you set up in there…’
Elver watched the pair of them leave the bar and disappear through a shabby door, which she presumed led to the cellar.
She left the tavern, darting around a drunken man who wanted to lean on her for support, and once outside she walked briskly towards the back of the building, looking out for the window the barman had spoken of.
She found it quickly; it was wider than it was tall, and it clearly hadn’t been cleaned in years.
Elver knelt by it and scrubbed at some of the dirt with her sleeve until there was a tiny clear patch that she could see through.
The barman and the thief were already in there, still talking away.
It was dark, the only light coming from a single oil lamp on a rickety table.
There were barrels and crates and a dirt floor.
As she watched, the barman put a plate of meat and cheese down on the table, along with a jug of water, and then he left, shutting the door firmly behind him.
The thief put the sack down and ran a hand over his chin, deep in thought.
Elver kicked the window open and slid through it, her monstrous nature helping her move eerily fast. In moments, she was in the cellar, running at the thief with her bare hands outstretched.
The thief—younger than she’d been expecting, now that she was closer to him—backed away hurriedly, his eyes very wide.
‘I’m sorry,’ he stammered. ‘Is this your… cellar?’
Elver growled and leapt at him, wrapping her hands around his neck. To her surprise, several unexpected things happened.
Firstly, he did not fall down onto the dirt floor. Instead, he caught her and stood his ground—it was like leaping onto a tree, solid and immovable, and not sure what else to do, she clung to him.
Secondly, he did not scream with agony. Instead, he looked down at her in a perplexed but vaguely polite way.
‘Um…’
She pressed her hands to his neck as hard as she could, but the familiar reddening would not come. Desperate, she slid one hand up to his jaw, then down to his breastbone. Nothing. Instead, she could feel her own face turning red.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked. This close, she could see the dark shadow of stubble on his jaw, and there was a scent too: soap, and the lingering greenness of the Jih Forest. It was not unpleasant.
‘What are you?’ she snarled. She wriggled out of his grasp and he let her drop to the floor.
‘I am just a normal person,’ he replied. ‘A normal city person staying at a tavern.’
‘No you’re not,’ she said hotly. ‘First of all, this is a cellar, and normal people don’t sleep in cellars.
Second of all, there’s a monster in that sack, stolen from my forest.’ She pointed at the sack.
The keltraxia cub was poking his nose out of the gap at the top of the bag, nostrils flaring at all the new smells. ‘You shot his mother with an arrow.’
‘Believe me, I had no choice—’
‘And my touch is poisonous to humans. You should be in hideous pain—in fact, with the amount of time my hand was on your neck you should be dead. Instead, you’re just standing there looking gormless. So. What are you? Because you’re not human.’
He looked at her for a long moment, then cleared his throat. ‘My name is Artair,’ he said eventually. ‘And I am one of the Sleepless.’
Elver snorted. ‘I don’t believe you. Those are just stories.’
‘I did not believe there were such things as people who can kill you by touching them, but according to you I am wrong about that.’
Elver took a jerky step backwards. ‘You really are one of the Sleepless? When you go to sleep, you become someone else?’
‘A dark and terrible spirit inhabits my body,’ Artair said solemnly. ‘His only thoughts are of escape and chaos. At night, I must be locked up for the safety of—’
‘I suppose this would make you jih too then.’ This was a problem.
If this boy was jih, a monster spirit, then technically, he too was one of the Queen of the Serpents’ children.
Elver couldn’t kill him. Or at least she’d have to get permission.
She went to the sack and pulled it open, allowing the keltraxia cub to tumble out.
He made a keening noise and rolled over onto her feet, his eyes flashing in the gloom.
‘Being jih doesn’t give you the right to just take creatures from the forest. What were you going to do, sell him on?
You should be ashamed, betraying your own kind, slinking around a human city like you belong here.
’ She reached down and picked up the cub, who licked her face with a dry tongue.
‘I’ll be taking him back to the forest now. ’
‘No!’ For the first time, the young man looked truly alarmed. ‘You can’t. I need him.’
‘Why?’ Elver held the cub to her chest, the feathers tickling her nose.
He told her. It took him a while, and he kept stopping as he remembered a particular detail that disturbed him—the silence of the monastery, the face of his friend as she was ripped back through the portal. For Elver, it was the colour of the robes the mage wore. The name of their god.
‘So you see,’ he was saying, ‘I have to take the cub to this mage or she’ll kill the other novices.’
‘That magpie,’ Elver spat. ‘Don’t you see? She’ll kill the cub. He’ll be fuel for one of her spells. The Bloody Claw only grants magic when a blood price is paid. You can’t take him to be sacrificed on some altar somewhere. You should never have taken him from the forest at all—that’s his home.’
‘I should have guessed…’ Artair looked down at the floor for a moment. ‘She killed Sister Rosea and the rest of the Brothers and Sisters. But all this means is that the novices are in even more danger than I thought. I have to try and save them. I have to.’
Elver carried the cub to the single chair and sat in it. She picked up a slice of meat off of the plate and fed it to the animal, who snapped it up greedily.
‘Twelve curse us,’ she muttered.
He must have seen something of her thoughts on her face because he asked her, ‘Will you help me?’
The idea filled her with equal parts fear and rage. All she wanted was to go back to the forest and spend her days with her own kind, never seeing another human face.
‘Why would I help a thief like you?’
‘Because you know it isn’t right.’
‘Ha.’ Elver gave a short little snort of laughter. ‘Outside of my forest, I don’t give a fig for right or wrong. It means nothing to me.’
‘What’s to stop this mage from taking another monster from your forest? She must need a jih spirit for this particular spell.’
Elver glanced up at the young man. He was sharper than he looked.
‘Shit,’ she said bitterly. She put a piece of meat in her own mouth, chewed and swallowed. ‘The Bloody Claw is powerful. You’d need the help of another god. Someone on your side.’
‘Are you a mage?’ he asked. His eyes flickered to her white hair, the scars on her face and arms. She turned her face away a little, so the oil lamp’s light did not reach her.
‘No, I’m just a simple jih. But I know how the gods work.’
‘So, you will help me?’
Elver looked at the cub and sighed. She couldn’t kill this idiot boy—not easily, anyway—and she couldn’t create a situation where she or the cub was exposed.
Neither of them were supposed to be in Addersport, and she doubted he would let her take the cub without a fight; he was more reasonable than she had been expecting, that was true, but there was something steely underneath the surface too.
Perhaps that was the dark spirit she was sensing.
No, she’d have to wait until they were all somewhere quieter, and take the cub then.
Maybe the Sleepless would survive that, maybe he wouldn’t.
‘I’ll help you,’ she said. He was practically human, she told herself, and lying to humans didn’t matter at all. ‘As much as I can, anyway.’
‘Thank you.’ To her surprise, Artair came and knelt in front of her and took her hand.
He looked her in the eyes, and there was an expression there that made her uneasy.
He was trying to decide whether to trust her or not, she realized.
‘Thank you for helping me with this, poison girl. Can I ask your name?’
She glared at his hand, but he didn’t seem to get the message.
‘My name is Elver.’
‘Elver, can I ask you one more boon?’
‘Sure, why not? You’ve already ruined my day. How much worse can it get?’
He nodded as though this were a reasonable comment.
‘Elver, would you please use these ropes to tie me up?’