Chapter 30 #2
The coach was on its side at the edge of the road, the two wheels in the air still spinning.
One of the horses had moved some distance away; there was no sign of the other one.
All around them were small cottages with smooth clay walls, and just beyond them stood one taller building with a tower and a bell.
The carriage driver was lying face down in the dirt, unmoving.
She couldn’t see anyone else, so she clambered down the side of the vehicle, dropped to the ground and ran over to him.
Behind her, she could hear the others climbing out of the coach.
‘What in the bloody Twelve happened?’ shouted Halla. Her voice was full of the anger that emerged when a tough person was frightened. ‘Did we hit something?’
The older man climbed down the side of the coach. He glanced around at the cottages.
‘I’ll go and get help,’ he said. ‘There has to be someone awake here.’
Hesitantly, Elver pressed her fingers to the man’s back, waiting for the rise and fall of his breath.
When it came and she was sure he wasn’t dead, she turned back to the coach in time to see Kantor Witt rising from behind it, where he’d been hiding out of sight.
He had a small Trilot lamp in one hand, and his formally white robes were grey with dirt and streaked here and there with wet mud.
His fine golden hair hung in his face in greasy clumps, her livid handprint still unmistakable even in the dark.
‘You ride with a monster!’ he screamed, pointing with his free hand at Elver. ‘A dirty jih spirit has tainted you all!’
Sunay, who had followed Halla and the first of the children out of the carriage door, rolled her eyes.
‘Oh good, a priest of Trilot, said no one ever.’
‘What are you talking about?’ shouted Halla, squaring up to him as she climbed down the side of the carriage. ‘Who are you?’
‘I am here to save you,’ raved Witt, his voice rising. ‘The spawn of the Queen of Serpents has slipped in amongst you, turning everything good to filth—’
‘Did you startle those horses deliberately?’ asked Halla, her tone distinctly dangerous. ‘Because if you did—’
‘I did it to save you from the monster!’
‘There are no monsters here, you wheezing little turnip.’
Kantor Witt, his face twisted with a rage that seemed to edge beyond the sane, threw the lamp overarm at Halla.
It missed her entirely and smashed into the smallest child, who was being lifted out of the open coach door by her father.
There was a tinkling sound of shattering glass and a high-pitched scream of pain and fright from the child.
The lamp had smashed on her dress and set the hem of it aflame.
Elver had time to see Sunay leap at the child, smothering the fire with her own embroidered coat, and then she found that she was running, hands held out in front of her and her teeth bared.
She sped past Halla, who gave her a surprised look.
‘You see it now!’ Witt yelled triumphantly, jabbing a finger in her direction. ‘Witness its true form, its poisonous, filthy form as it—’
Elver collided with him at full force, sending him flying into the mud with a thump. She made to press her hand to the other side of his face, the one yet to be marked, and then she paused, her fingers hovering less than an inch from his cheek.
‘Those people have done nothing to you,’ she hissed.
Kantor Witt squirmed beneath her. ‘They’ve sat and breathed the air that you’ve poisoned, monster, so they are a lost cause.
Trilot will never turn his grace upon them again.
If I put them out of their misery I’d be doing them a favour.
’ His eyes were glassy and unfocused. ‘You are death to everything you touch.’
Elver thought of Artair then, and Lucian, who had both felt her touch and lived to tell the tale. Perhaps there was another way to live, after all.
‘Not to everything,’ she told him. ‘ Not to everything. ’ She took her hand away.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You don’t know me,’ she said. ‘You don’t know me at all, or any of the creatures you choose to hate so much. Remember that I, a monster, could have killed you tonight, and chose not to.’
Halla appeared at her side, frowning deeply. She held out a hand to help her up, which Elver did not take, but once she was on her feet she carefully patted the larger woman on her sleeve in a gesture of thanks.
‘Who is he?’ asked Halla. ‘What sort of monster deliberately spooks horses and throws a lit lamp at a child?’
‘The human kind,’ said Elver.
There was a shout from behind them, and the older man came jogging over with a pair of burly men, one of whom was in some kind of guard’s uniform.
‘You need to arrest this man,’ Halla said, pointing at Kantor Witt. ‘He deliberately spooked the horses and caused us to overturn.’
‘And he threw a lit lamp at my child!’ called down the mother of the children, her voice still hoarse with panic. ‘He could have killed her!’
‘No, no, you are wrong!’ bellowed Kantor Witt, flecks of spittle flying from his mouth.
He lifted himself up onto his elbows and pointed at Elver.
‘That is a jih creature. An abomination. Have it tied up and I will escort it back to the Temple of Trilot. The monster must be burned, must be cleansed!’
Halla placed her booted foot on his chest, pushing him back into the dirt.
‘That’s enough from you,’ she said, her voice stony. She nodded to the guard. ‘He’s mad or something. Do you have a jail in this village?’
‘Well,’ said the guard in a musing tone. ‘We have a pit. Will that do?’
‘I’d say so,’ said the father of the children.
When Kantor Witt had been dragged away, still screaming about monsters and abominations, a number of people appeared from the cottages and together they righted the coach and collected the missing horse, who had made his way into someone’s garden and started eating their crop of tomato plants.
The coach driver was taken to the small village tavern and given a jot of rum, while the second burly man offered to drive them the rest of the way.
Elver watched it all happen from the edge of things.
They came together seamlessly, she thought, with no questions or suspicions.
They joked with each other and smiled frequently.
Someone brought them out cups of hot tea—Elver accepted one cautiously—and an old woman from the village gave the smallest child a new dress to replace the burned one; it had belonged to her own daughter when she was small, she told them.
And not once during all this did anyone look at her and consider Witt’s words.
They saw her, saw her scars and her yellow eyes, and instead of a monster they saw someone who had put herself in harm’s way for them.
‘We’ll be on our way again shortly,’ said Sunay, appearing at her elbow with the sack containing the cub held firmly in her arms. ‘I apologize, Elver. This coach ride was a little more eventful than I was expecting. Perhaps we would have been better off walking after all.’
‘No, it was a good idea.’ She watched one of the children gently pat the newly returned horse on the nose. ‘It was the right way to come.’