5,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Pushkin Children's Books
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
The final book in the thrilling fantasy adventure series, The Shamer ChroniclesThe Dragon Lord of Dunark will stop at nothing in his persecution of Shamers, and he is determined to crush any community that shelters them. Those struggling to resist his cruel power have realised that hiding won't work any more. It's time to fight back.But as preparations for the rebellion begin, Dina starts to have doubts – can she really be part of a plan to unleash war? There must be another way, but can she find it before her world is torn apart?An award-winning and highly acclaimed writer of fantasy, Lene Kaaberbøl was born in 1960, grew up in the Danish countryside and had her first book published at the age of 15. Since then she has written more than 30 books for children and young adults. Lene's huge international breakthrough came with The Shamer Chronicles, which is published in more than 25 countries selling over a million copies worldwide.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Ähnliche
PRAISE FOR
The Shamer Chronicles
‘An absorbing and fast-paced fantasy/mystery bursting with action and intrigue. The only question is: when will the next one come out?’
BULLETIN OF THE CENTER FOR CHILDREN’S BOOKS
‘The series as a whole is in good standing alongside Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia’
BOOKLIST, STARRED REVIEW
‘[A] fine novel … The term ‘page-turner’ is often used, but not always justified. It is deserved here, tenfold. I really, really couldn’t put the book down’
SCHOOL LIBRARIAN
‘Full of passion’
JULIA ECCLESHARE, GUARDIAN
‘I gobbled it up!’
TAMORA PIERCE, AUTHOR OFTHE SONG OF THE LIONESS
‘The most original new fiction of this kind … equally appealing to boys. Here be dragons, sorcery and battles’
THE TIMES
‘Spiced with likable characters and an intriguing new magical ability – eagerly awaiting volume two’
KIRKUS
‘This novel stands on its own and offers a satisfying conclusion even as it provides an intriguing setting and mythology for future adventures’
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
‘Classic adventure fantasy, with the right combination of personalities, power, intrigue, and dragons – it will prove to be a sure hit’
VOYA
CONTENTS
DAVIN
My Name Is Davin
My name is Davin. My name is Davin. My name is Davin.
I kept repeating it to myself, over and over again. Trying to hold on to everything it meant: Dina’s brother. Melli’s brother. My mother’s son, and Nico’s friend. A human being. Not…
… your name is murderer…
… Not what the voices were saying. Not what they were whispering to me in the darkness when I was trying to go to sleep.
… your name is murderer… your name is coward…
I sat up in bed. My palms were sweaty and cold. I wrapped my arms around my head as though I was afraid someone would hit me, but I knew I couldn’t shut out the voices. They were inside me. They had sneaked in, burrowed in, the days and nights I had been locked in the Hall of the Whisperers, surrounded by stone faces with empty eyes and yawning mouths that kept whispering and whispering, over and over, hour after hour, until one would rather die than keep on listening.
The house was dark. Darker still here in my small enclosure. I couldn’t stand the darkness anymore because I kept seeing things that weren’t there. Faces. Dead eyes. Dark blood seeping from a half-cut throat….
I leaped to my feet and yanked the curtain aside. Bluish slivers of moonlight came in through the cracks in the shutters, like pale knives. As soundlessly as possible I opened the door and went out. The trampled grass of the yard was damp and hoar-cold against the soles of my bare feet, but I had no time for shoes. I ran. Slowly at first, then more quickly, along the path to Maudi’s farm, past the old black pear trees in her orchard, up the next hill, and on up into the naked heights that seemed so close to the sky it felt as if I could pick the stars like apples just by reaching for them. I didn’t stop. I just kept running, so that my breath came in deep jerks and I could feel my heartbeat in every last inch of my body. I wasn’t cold, despite my bare feet; my blood was pumping too hard, and pure sweat was running down my back and chest inside the nightshirt.
It took perhaps an hour before I had run the voices out of my head and the horror out of my body. Then I turned, trotting back to Yew Tree Cottage at a more leisurely pace. I stopped at the pump in the yard to wash the sweat from my cooling body, and to drink my fill.
The cottage door was open. In the dark doorway, Mama was waiting. She didn’t say anything; just held out a glass of elderberry juice and a woolly blanket. She knew I would start shaking the moment I stopped sweating. For the briefest of moments she rested her hand against my cheek. Then she went back to the end room where she and Melli slept, still without speaking a word.
It wasn’t every night I ran like this, but perhaps one out of two or three. It was the only thing that helped once the voices had hold of me. Mama woke up every time—not necessarily when I got up, but by the time I came back, she was always awake. It was as if she had some instinct telling her that one of her children was no longer in the house. I hadn’t told her about the voices, but she had probably guessed that my sleeplessness had something to do with the Sagisburg and the Hall of the Whisperers. In the beginning she had asked me if there was anything wrong, but I always said no, and now she had stopped asking. She was just there, waiting, with the blanket and the sweet elderberry juice, and then the two of us went back to bed.
I lay down on the cot in my enclosure and wrapped myself in the blankets. My feet were hurting me now, but that didn’t matter. In my head there was only silence, and I fell asleep almost at once.
DINA
The Flute
The flute rested in the grass next to me. I didn’t dare touch it. I hardly dared to look at it, and yet… and yet it was as if I couldn’t quite help myself.
My father was dead. The flute was all I had left of him.
Finally, I reached for it after all. Touched its shiny black surface. Picked it up.
There was a sound inside me that needed to get out. Wild as a bird’s cry, heavy as a thundercloud. A sound I couldn’t make myself. But the flute could.
The first note piped through the air and went chasing up the hillside, and it was as if everything around me fell silent, listening. I hesitated. Then I blew again, harder this time, with harsh, wild defiance.
My father was dead, and nobody cared. Most of them were probably relieved. But he was half of me. He had searched for me for twelve long years, and at last he had found me. And he might not be the greatest father in the world, and he might have given my mother good reason to be scared, and he might have done things in his life that were neither right nor nice nor fair, but he was still my father, and he had held me when I was most scared, and he had sung to me. And he was the one who had played open the gates of the Sagisburg so that Nico and Davin and the other prisoners could get out, and he was the one who had piped dreams of freedom and change into a hundred cowed and desperate children in the House of Teaching so that they found the courage to escape the Educators. So if I felt like mourning him, who had the right to stop me? If I wanted to play the flute he had given me, who could prevent me?
“Dina!”
I gave a start, and my fingers slipped in the middle of a note. Pfffuuuiiiiihh, it said, a thin, off-key, and startled sound.
Mama was standing behind me. Her face was hard as stone.
I didn’t say anything. I just clenched my hands around the flute so tight that it whitened my knuckles.
It was Mama who finally broke the silence.
“I think you should put it away,” she said.
I still didn’t answer.
“It’s not a toy.”
“I know that!” Better than anyone. I had seen what it could do, good and bad. I had heard it save lives. And I had heard it take a life, too. Oh, I knew. I knew it was no toy. Better than she!
And so she finally spoke the words we both knew she had been thinking for weeks now:
“I don’t want you to play that thing.”
She had never mentioned it before. She had wanted me to understand on my own that it was wrong, and that it was harmful and dangerous to me. But now she had had to say the words out loud, and it felt almost like a victory to me. As if there had been some sort of contest between us, like when Davin and I used to see who could stare at the other the longest without blinking. That was before my Shamer’s gift kicked in. Now no one played games like that with me.
No one played that game with my mother either. She looked at me, and her gaze was rock hard and yet sharp enough to cut right through me. Cold and hot at the same time. A gaze that made you feel about three inches tall.
I clutched the flute defiantly. It’s not for you to decide, I thought, but silently.
I think she heard it all the same.
“Do you hear?” she said, this time in her Shamer’s voice. And images came crowding into my head, sights I would rather not have seen.
Sezuan was sitting with his back against a quince tree. Shadow’s head rested in his lap. But Shadow’s body was limp and lifeless, without a heartbeat, without breath….
“No!” No. I didn’t want to think of it. Didn’t want to think of the worst thing I had ever seen my father do.
“Dina. Look at me.”
It was hard to refuse. It was impossible. I looked into my mother’s eyes, and the images thrust themselves into my head even though I didn’t want them there.
Sezuan slowly rose. He came toward me and might have wanted to comfort me, to hold me. But I could only see his hands, his slender, beautiful flute player’s hands that had just killed a living human being….
It was wrong. I didn’t want it. And even though I couldn’t stop the images from coming, even though I couldn’t help thinking about those terrible minutes, I still knew that it wasn’t right.
She wanted me to be ashamed of being Sezuan’s daughter.
And I wouldn’t.
It wasn’t right.
I don’t know how I did it. When my mother used her voice and her eyes, no one got away until she was finished. And yet I was no longer standing still. I backed away from her, stumbled, righted myself. And turned to run.
“Dina!”
But I wouldn’t listen. I stopped my ears with two fingers and ran, eyes half shut, so that I could barely see where I was going. I ran as hard as I could, up the hill, down the other side, across the brook.
“Dina. Dina, stop!”
I could hear Mama calling behind me. Her voice was no longer the Shamer’s, just Mama’s, and she sounded completely desperate. But I couldn’t turn back. I kept going until I couldn’t run another step.
The sky was darkening. My fingers were stiff with cold. Every single bit of me was stiff with cold. I was sitting with my back against one of the stone Giants of the Dance, looking down at our little cottage. Someone had lit the lamp, and the windows had been left unshuttered, so that the light made yellow squares in the yard. I knew this was so that I would be able to find my way home more easily. I knew Mama was down there, in the kitchen probably, and beside herself with worry. Melli would have asked for me. About a thousand times, I imagined. And Rose, and Davin… it would not be easy for her to explain.
Mama was terrified that I would turn into someone like my father. She knew I had the serpent gift—his gift—just as I had her Shamer’s gift. But she didn’t want me to become a Blackmaster.
I didn’t either. But… but… I didn’t know what else I could be. I didn’t know what sort of a being I was: Mama’s daughter, Papa’s daughter, or some other thing completely.
The chill was spreading through my body. There was a sheen of hoarfrost on the grass. If I stayed here all night, there might be no need to think of Shamer’s eyes or serpent gifts, or indeed a future of any kind at all. If I didn’t get up soon and try to get some life back into my numbed legs… the Highland cold could kill you, I knew. Callan had said it over and over: “Find shelter. Light a fire. And if ye cannot keep warm in any other fashion, walk. Move. Sitting still can kill ye.”
I could go down and sneak Silky out of the stables. Ride off. Go. Go to Loclain, perhaps, where they didn’t know I had the powers of a Blackmaster. Or to the Aurelius family in Sagisloc who would surely take me in, what with being so grateful because we had brought Mira back to them. They would welcome me, I knew.
Rose. Melli. Davin. Mama.
I couldn’t do it.
Slowly, I got up. My legs were so numb I had to lean against the dark dappled granite behind me. My feet were two lumps of ice. Could there be frostbite already? I began tottering around the giant stone, one hand against the rock so as not to fall. Slowly, life seeped back into my lower legs, and then my feet, though I still couldn’t feel my toes.
It was a long way down the hill to Yew Tree Cottage and the windows and their warm yellow light. When I finally pushed open the door, Rose’s dog, Belle, was the only one to welcome me in her usual manner, with eager little yaps and a furiously waving tail. Rose and Davin were staring at me as if they thought I might be ill. Melli had long since been put to bed. Mama sat by the fire, her back turned, saying nothing. She didn’t look at me at all. And I was just as careful not to look at her.
DAVIN
Planning a Murder
Ziiiiing. Hwiiisssj. Hwiissj-ziing-swok.
Damn. Another hit.
The steel blade hissed through the air, in long sweeping arcs, in short brutal stabs. Whenever it found its target, there was a wet, rather disgusting sound, and in Maudi’s empty sheep shed there was by now a penetrating smell of beet juice and sweat.
I was breathing in short, deep gasps now, and my side stung so hard I could barely stand upright. But I wasn’t about to give in, not now. Not as long as there was even the tiniest hope left.
Hwiissj-ziing… swok.
My parry failed completely, and another beet bit the dust, in two uneven halves. I had only one left now, perched on its stick like the head of a scarecrow, defenseless except for me. Some defense I had been so far. If Nico managed to hit the last beet, I was done for, and he had won.
“Come on, Davin,” he said, and yes, he was breathing hard, but not as hard as I was. I could probably run longer and faster than he could, but when it came to fencing, Nico moved more easily and spent his strength more wisely. “You can do better than that!” He egged me on with his free hand.
Easy for him to say. His dark hair was black with sweat, but there was no uncertainty in his movements. Considering that he didn’t even like swords—
I saw the attack coming at the last moment and blocked the blow with a lightning parry.
Claaang.
I felt an involuntary smile pull at the corners of my mouth. Not this time, Nico. This time I was too quick for you!
But where—
No!
Oh damn. If only he’d stay in one place.
Swockkk! The last beet tumbled to the ground. And I stood there, arms shaking and sides heaving, and had to face the fact that I had lost.
Nico wasn’t the sort to rub my nose in it. He merely wiped the beet juice off his blade with a rag and gave me a brief nod, like a kind of salute.
“Again?” he asked. “This time I’ll defend, and you can attack.”
He knew very well that I liked to attack. But my arms were hanging from my shoulders like two leaded weights and I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to lift them again.
“No thank you,” I said. “I think I’ve had enough for one day.”
He nodded once more. “Tomorrow, then.”
“Are you coming back in with me?”
“I think I’ll just run through a couple of exercises.”
“Nico, don’t you think you’ve had enough?” He might be less reckless with his strength than I was, but I could hear his breathing even through the sound of the rain drumming against the shed’s turfed roof, and glistening trails of sweat ran down his bare chest.
“Just one more time,” he said, his jaw clenched. As he raised his sword, I could see his arm tremble. Yet he still began a series of lunges and parries, now with an invisible opponent instead of me.
I shook my head, but he didn’t see.
“I’ll get us some water,” I said, pulling on my shirt.
“Nico?”
He had finally put down the sword and was standing in the doorway, gazing at the autumn rain. His shoulders slumped, and I was pretty sure his legs must be shaking. Mine certainly were.
“Yes?”
I passed him the bucket and the ladle, and he drank greedily of the cold water.
“Why… why the rush?” I had never seen anyone train as doggedly as Nico did. Day in, day out. With the sword or the knife in the mornings, with the bow in the afternoon. Sometimes he saddled his brown mare and trained mounted combat with a long wooden lance he had carved for himself, but it was clearly the knife and the sword that held his main interest.
Something moved in his eyes, something bitter and dark.
“I suppose you think we have plenty of time?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
He looked away. “Nothing.”
“Nico—”
“Wasn’t it your idea anyway? That we should train, I mean?”
He had a point. It had been me, a long time ago, before Valdracu, before the Educators and the Hall of the Whisperers.
“Yes, but there’s no need to half kill yourself. What’s your hurry?”
“Weren’t you listening? That letter. Your mother read it out to us. Surely you haven’t forgotten.”
“The one from the Widow?”
“Yes, that.” He said it in a what-else tone of voice, and it wasn’t as if we had letters coming in every week, I had to admit. And of course I remembered what the letter said. Arkmeira had fallen, by treason it was said. It had been the only city in the coastlands not under Drakan’s fist, and now he had Arkmeira too. But there had been resistance, and Drakan did not let resistance go unpunished. He had had every fifth man in the city executed, wrote the Widow. Not necessarily those who had resisted the most, just every fifth. One, two, three, four, you die. There was a sickening lurch inside me every time I thought of it, as if it was somehow worse for being so calculated.
“People die,” Nico said in a strange voice I couldn’t remember having heard him use before. “People die every day.”
I didn’t like the new voice. I didn’t like the look on Nico’s face—his eyes so unnaturally dark they hardly looked blue anymore, and his skin so pale under the sweat.
“And what exactly are you planning to do about it?” I asked.
“There is one obvious and sensible solution, isn’t there? Logically speaking.”
“Which is?”
But he was suddenly done talking.
“Forget it,” he said. “Just the rain getting to me, I suppose. You can’t really go out, and yet sitting indoors drives you crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Nico—”
“No, forget it. I’ll be along in a minute. You go on ahead.”
I went. But I didn’t forget. He had some plan, I thought, some plan he didn’t want me to know about. But I knew Nico very well by now. You can’t spend several days and nights together in the Hall of the Whisperers without learning a thing or two about each other. And when someone who hated swords suddenly began to practice fencing with such dogged persistence, it had to be because he figured he would need a weapon soon. And all that talk of an obvious solution… I suddenly halted. Killing Drakan. That was the obvious solution, simple and logical if one didn’t consider the fact that Drakan was surrounded by thousands of Dragon soldiers and anyway was no slouch with a blade himself.
It would have been easy for Nico to gather a rebel army around himself. The Weapons Master and the Widow had often talked to him about it, and Master Maunus, who had once been Nico’s tutor, missed no opportunity to point out to Nico that it was his duty as the rightful heir to Dunark. But Nico kept refusing. Just the other day, the day the letter came, they had had a row about it. It offended Master Maunus’s sense of proprieties horribly, but Nico said only that he was no warlord, and that he had no intention of asking hundreds of people to die in his name.
I knew what he didn’t want. But what was it he wanted?
I had to keep an eye on him. Because if Nico had some plan to get close to Drakan, I wasn’t about to let him do it without me.
The rain had almost stopped, but my trousers were soaked to the knee from walking through the wet heather. Dina and Rose were picking juniper berries on the hillside between our cottage and Maudi’s farm, and both of them had kilted up their skirts to avoid the mud. Rose had very nice legs, I noticed. A pity they were rarely on show. And then I suddenly felt embarrassed. Rose was… Rose was a sort of foster sister, wasn’t she, and it wasn’t right to look at your foster sister’s legs in that way. Was it?
“Where have you been?” asked Dina.
“Training with Nico.”
“You do that all the time now.”
I was beginning to think so too, but I didn’t say so.
“Dina, you sometimes talk to Nico, don’t you?”
“Sometimes. So do you.”
“Couldn’t you keep an eye on him?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just keep an eye on what he’s doing. And then tell me.”
Dina gave me a look that was close to being the old Shamer’s look, very straight and with the punch of a mule kick. “Spy on him, you mean?”
“Not spy, exactly. I just… if he behaves any differently from the way he usually does, I’d like to know.”
“Why?”
I squirmed. I hadn’t intended to say even as much as I had, but I had forgotten Dina’s gift for prying the truth from people. “Only so that he doesn’t do something stupid.”
“Stupid? Nico is one of the most sensible people I know.”
I thought of the things Nico had said about “an obvious and sensible solution.” I was pretty sure that that wasn’t what my sister meant by sensible.
“If you see him packing stuff. Or something,” I finally said. “Tell me. Please.”
Now I had her worried too, I could tell.
“Davin. Tell me what it is you think he’ll do.”
I didn’t mean to. But I suddenly found myself telling her the whole thing, about the too-hard training, about Drakan and the sensible solution, about the plans I was almost certain Nico had. Plans for murder.
Both of them were staring at me now.
“Alone?” said Rose finally. “You think he’ll go alone?”
“I’m afraid he might.”
“But we won’t let him!” Rose’s eyes were glittering with a very familiar stubbornness, and I remembered how hard it could be to get rid of her when she had her mind set on something. It might not be such a bad idea to sic the girls on Nico. Let’s see you get away from them, I thought with some satisfaction.
Mama called from the cottage door. Dinner was ready, and the same could certainly be said for my growling belly.
I took two of the baskets from the girls, and we walked down the hill together.
“Should we tell Mama?” asked Dina.
I shook my head. “Not yet,” I said. “She has enough to worry about.”
DAVIN
A Knife in the Dark
It wasn’t long before Nico made his first move. It probably began with Katlin the Peddler’s visit. She came by with her handcart, complaining to anyone who would listen that trade was bad these days, people had nothing to sell or buy. And it was certainly true that her store had shrunk to a bit of woolen yarn and some badly crafted pots. We had no need for any of that—it was no better than what we could make ourselves. But she must have had something for Nico, after all, because I saw him give her a coin before she traveled on.
“Keep an eye on him,” I told Dina. “He’s up to something.”
And lo and behold. The very next day, Nico suddenly wanted to go on a shopping trip, or so he said. To Farness.
“Farness?” said Mama. “Why Farness?”
“It’s about the only place left where you can get proper goods,” said Nico. “And we’re short of about a hundred things.”
True. Iron nails were hard to come by now, and there seemed to be a shortage of rope as well. And the salted herring that Maudi usually bought by the barrel for winter stores had been impossible to get. Worst of all, though, was the lack of decent flour. It had been months since we had seen a proper trader’s cart, and the Highlanders were beginning to realize that this was no coincidence.
“It can’t go on like this,” said Mama. “Drakan can’t decide who is allowed to trade with us on both sides of the mountains!”
Nico grimaced. “Apparently, he has succeeded in scaring Sagisloc and Loclain into cutting off our trade.”
Drakan had tightened his fist so hard that barely a jar of preserves got through, let alone a herring barrel. It hadn’t been a huge problem as long as we could still get goods from Loclain, but if Nico was right, it could mean a very hungry winter in the Highlands.
It made good sense to go to Farness to get herring and nails and suchlike while it was still possible. Farness was a seaport, one of the few the Highlanders had, and some of the ships that put in there came from afar, from Belsognia or Colmonte or places even farther away. Towns that had not yet felt the pinch of Drakan’s long fingers and did not know that they were supposed to be afraid of him. It made sense, yes, but I didn’t think it was a coincidence that Nico was so keen to go himself.
I caught Dina’s eye across the table. She nodded almost imperceptibly—she was on to Nico too.
“Maybe we should all go,” she said. “We need the cart anyway, for the herring barrels and the rest, and if we brought some herbs and things to trade, it might not be so expensive.”
Mama’s eyes went to Dina briefly, and then to me. She had a sense that something was going on, I think, but she wasn’t certain what it was. And she was being extremely careful not to look at Dina for too long, I had noticed. Something was wrong between my mother and my sister, I needed no magic to see that. And I was almost certain it had something to do with Sezuan Puff-Adder. Dina hadn’t been the same since she found out about her father and what he could do.
“It would be nice to get away for a bit,” I said. “Have something to do.”
Mama’s glance softened. She was probably thinking of all the nights I went running because I couldn’t stand lying still, listening to the Whisperers.
“Go, then,” she said. “I’ll stay here with Melli. That’s best, I think.”
Melli still wasn’t quite her old self after our headlong flight from Sezuan that summer. She clung to Mama more, and often seemed younger than her six years.
“But Callan will go with you!” Mama added.
I frowned. “Who would look after you, then?” I asked, because Callan Kensie had been my mother’s bodyguard during all the time we had been with the Kensie clan.
“Killian or one of the others. You can choose, Davin. You can go with Callan, or you can all stay home.”
I sighed, but I knew that was the end of it.
“We’ll go with Callan,” I said.
A cold and stubborn rain poured steadily onto our heads and was slowly but surely soaking through my thick woolen cloak. It had been a wet autumn altogether, wet and dreary and anxious because we didn’t quite know how we would manage through the winter. This trip to Farness might be mostly an excuse to Nico, but we really did need the things we hoped to buy there. And if no ships had come in that were willing to trade with us… if things got bad enough, we might end up having to raid Drakan’s caravans and coastland fortresses in order not to starve.
“How far is it now?” asked Rose, blowing a raindrop off the tip of her nose. “This is no fun at all!”
I nearly told her that she could have stayed at home, but actually I was pleased that there were three of us keeping an eye on Nico. Besides, she was right—it really wasn’t much fun to ride here with every bit of clothing you wore sticking to you like some second clammy layer of numb skin.
“Fair bit yet to go,” said Callan.
Falk snorted, shaking his head so that the wet reins slid through my fingers. He didn’t like the rain any more than I did.
“Come on, horse,” I muttered at him. “We’re all wet, and it’s not that far.”
Finally we struggled up the last steep rise. It was a good thing we had two horses pulling the cart—a gray and a black gelding, both of them on loan from Maudi. She wanted her herring barrels home safe.
We could see the sea, now—gray-black like the heavy sky above us. And there, at the end of a long narrow firth, lay Farness. Two hundred houses, perhaps, give or take a couple. I don’t know why they made me think of mussels—perhaps because the tarred walls had the same bluish-black color, or perhaps because the houses clung to the rocks much like mussels did. In the harbor were plenty of ships, more ships than houses, almost, or so it seemed at first glance.
We didn’t stop to admire the view. Now that we no longer had the mountain between us and the sea, a stiff, briny wind whipped into us, making the rain feel even colder. Rose clucked her tongue encouragingly at the two carthorses, and they began the climb down the long, steep stone slope.
“Remember the brake,” I said.
“Oh, yes, thank you soooo much, I nearly forgot,” said Rose acidly, and it was probably stupid of me to remind her of something that was more or less the first lesson when one learned to drive a cart in the Highlands. But if she had forgotten, the heavy cart might plow right into the horses that were supposed to be pulling it, and that could be lethally dangerous. I was really just trying to watch out for her. But… I didn’t know how it happened, but we always ended up snarling at each other like a couple of grumpy old watchdogs. In spite of the fact that I actually liked Rose a lot.
Considering that she hadn’t been much used to horses at home—she had grown up in Swill Town, the lowest and meanest part of Dunark, where such conveniences were rarely affordable—it was quite an achievement that she had driven a team of horses all the way from Baur Kensie to Farness without missing a turn. The horses were a fairly placid pair, but still, not much of a city brat anymore, was our Rose.
“Take the North Road,” said Callan. “To the Harbormaster’s yard. I know the Harbormaster, and if he has no room for us, he’ll know who has.”
The Harbormaster’s place proved to be one of the biggest in the town, four whole wings with a cobbled yard in the middle, with a proper pump and a stone trough for the horses to drink from. Three of the wings were tarred wood, but the fourth was a fine stone house in two stories. The Harbormaster himself came to greet us. He had a broad weather-beaten face and long gray hair held together in a tidy queue at the back of his neck.
“Welcome, Kensie,” he said, holding out a hand that was nearly as big as Callan’s wide fist. “What takes ye to Farness?”
“Herring,” said Callan, shaking his hand warmly. “And nails. And flour. And a couple of other odds and ends. How is trade?”
The Harbormaster made a sound in his throat. “Aye, well, those with goods to sell are happy. Those who need to buy, less so. But herring I can get ye for sure, we catch those ourselves. Come in out of the wet, and we’ll sit us down and talk.”
The big room the Harbormaster led us into was an odd mixture of office, store, and ale room. There was a constant flow of people, who came to learn news of ships or goods, or to pay their harbor fees—anyone who anchored at Farness had to pay a sort of tax to the Harbormaster, ranging from a few pennies for a small boat up to ten or twelve copper marks for the big trading vessels.
The Harbormaster’s wife served something she called toddy, hot and sweet and strong all at once. I’d never had it before, but it was really nice and warmed my chilled body. I wasn’t the only one with a taste for it either—most of the Harbormaster’s customers stuck around for a drink or two before heading back into the rain.
Callan chatted with the Harbormaster about the goods we needed—what were our chances of getting them, what would we have to pay, would anyone be willing to take Mama’s herbs and salves in exchange? Considering that the whole thing was Nico’s idea, he didn’t participate all that much in the conversation. His gaze wandered around the big room, and every time the door opened, he looked to see who had entered. And while Nico was watching the door, I was watching him. I had no doubts at all—Nico had a plan, and it required him to meet somebody here in Farness.
Suddenly Nico froze. He was no longer looking at the door. Instead, he was staring rigidly at his toddy as if he was afraid that somebody might steal it. I glanced around quickly. Had he finally come, the man Nico was waiting for? Who had been the last person to enter? That had to be the one over there, in the long black cloak and the broad-brimmed felt hat, which he hadn’t taken off even though he was now indoors.
I nudged Dina and pointed behind my toddy glass at the man so that no one else would see the gesture. She nodded faintly. She had also noticed how Nico was suddenly so intensely interested in his own toddy.
After a while, Nico got up, accidental-like.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Just wanted to stretch my legs.”
Oh sure, I thought, but I didn’t say anything. I pretended to be interested in what the Harbormaster and Callan were saying to each other instead.
Nico didn’t just march over to the table where the man in the felt hat was sitting. He wandered around for a bit, following a card game for a little while, then moving on to listen, apparently, to two men bargaining over the price of some bales of wool. If I hadn’t known that he was up to something, I might not have noticed what happened when he passed the man with the hat and the black cloak.
But I did see.
As Nico walked by, something passed from one hand to the other. I wasn’t even sure if Nico had passed the man a note, or if it was the other way around. I only knew that something had been given, and something received.
I wondered what.
The man in the cloak and hat got to his feet and went out into the rain. I got up as well.
“Where are you going?” asked Nico sharply.
“Just stretching my legs,” I said in much the same voice he had used earlier. And before he had time to do or say anything else, I had made my way through the crowd to the door. It was raining so strongly now that the raindrops spattered off the pavement, spraying you from below as well as from above. The man in the black cloak seemed to be in a hurry. I barely got a glimpse of him before he darted through the gate and into the streets of Farness.
I followed. At least the evening dark and the heavy rain would make it harder for him to see me, and if I could discover who he was and where he came from, we would know that much more about Nico’s plans.
At first it looked as if the man was headed for the harbor. But then he suddenly changed direction and began to make his way uphill, through one of the narrowest and steepest of Farness’s alleys. Rainwater ran in small muddy streams between the houses, and a chorus of barks followed us. I hoped he wouldn’t notice that the barking continued for quite a while after he himself had passed by.
Wait. Where did he go? One moment he was there, a dimly seen figure a little ahead of me, and the next… nothing. Just the rain, the darkness, and the alley.
Was there some door I hadn’t seen? A corner he could have disappeared behind? I walked faster, even though the alley was so steep that it made my calves ache. Where had he gone?
Something hard and heavy hit me from behind, and I tumbled onto my hands and knees in the middle of one of the muddy rainwater gullies. A second later, something even heavier landed on my back, knocking me flat on my belly, so that I ended up swallowing a mouthful of gritty gutter silt. Euuuch.
“Do you think I’m blind? Or deaf? Or stupid?”
The voice was no more than a whisper, a chill whisper in the dark. I had no trouble hearing it, though. A knife against one’s neck sharpens one’s concentration wonderfully. I shoved against the pavement and tried to roll to one side, away from the knife, but a warning prick made me stop.
“Lie still, boy. Or you might get hurt.”
“Who are you?” I hissed. “What is it you want?”
“None of your business. Didn’t your mama teach you not to pry?” Another small jab of the knife stressed his point. “Can you count to a hundred?”
What did he mean?
“What—”
“I asked if you could count to a hundred?” Another prod with the knife, not a deep one, but enough so that I could feel a warm trail of blood running down my neck to mix with the cold rain.
“Yes.” Was he some kind of a maniac?
“Then do it. Stay down and count to a hundred before you get up. If you try to follow me again, I’ll kill you.”
The voice was still only a whisper, but I had a very clear sense that he would do exactly what he said he would do, if necessary.
“Is that clear, boy?”
I tried to raise my head, but the man with the knife shoved my cheek into the stony ground.
“Is that clear?”
“Yes,” I muttered, spitting out another mouthful of gutter water. “Let go of me.”
“Let me hear you count.”
“What?”
“Count. Loudly and clearly, please, so that I know I won’t have to put a bolt into your back.”
A bolt? Did he have a crossbow? Or was he just bluffing?
“Start counting!”
He had a knife at least; I had felt that clearly enough. Reluctantly, I began to count.
“One, two, three…”
“Go on.”
“Four, five…”
The weight was gone from my back.
“Six, seven, eight…”
Steps disappearing into the darkness. I sat up.
Thhhhwappp. Something long and black skittered across the stones of the alley only a few inches from my knee. He did have a crossbow, it seemed, or a partner armed with one. How many of them were there?
“Last warning. Keep counting!”
How far had I got?
“Eight, nine, ten…”
There was a low purr of laughter from the darkness, and a different voice, teasing and soft, quite different from the cold harsh whisper. “Good boy.”
A woman, that much I was certain of. That made at least two of them, and one of them had a crossbow. So I sat there in the rain, counting—“twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty”—feeling like a complete idiot, and yet too uncertain to get up. Until I had reached sixty-three, and I suddenly heard Nico’s voice behind me.
“Davin, anything wrong?”
Oh yes, quite a few things. I was cold, wet, and furious, and I felt like grabbing Nico by the throat to shake the truth out of him. What kind of murderous maniacs had he got himself mixed up with?
“What could possibly be wrong?” I said sourly, getting to my feet. “I’m just sitting here in the rain practicing my counting.”
“Davin…”
But I didn’t feel like discussing it. “Shouldn’t we be going home? Or at least out of the rain?”
Nico looked at me. He was wearing neither hat nor cloak, so he must have followed me as quickly as he was able. His hair was sticking to his forehead in dark, wet spikes.
“That sounds like a good idea,” he said. And so we walked back to the Harbormaster’s house together, pretending that everything was normal, pretending that there had been no man in a black cloak, no knife, and no crossbow.
I had discovered absolutely nothing. I still didn’t know who the man in the cloak was, or what he had given or received from Nico. Of the two of us, only one was the wiser: Nico now knew that we were watching him.
When we got back to the Harbormaster’s, there were some people Callan wanted Nico to meet. I got out of it by saying I needed to change into some dry clothes, and the Harbormaster’s daughter showed me upstairs, to the room where we were to sleep. Dina and Rose went with us, and the moment the Harbormaster’s girl—Maeri, her name was—was out of the door, they pounced on me. Who was the man in the cloak? What had I found out? Unfortunately, the answer to that question was nothing much.
“Did he cut you?” Dina eyed me anxiously when she heard about the ambush. “Let me see.”
“It’s nothing.” I wanted to forget the whole episode. I wasn’t proud of my belly-dive into the gutter, or of the helplessness I had felt with that knife at my throat. In any case, the cut was small and had already stopped bleeding.
“But I still have no idea where he went. We’ve nothing to go on.”
“Not quite nothing,” said Rose.
“What do you mean?”
With a strange, shy-looking shrug, Rose produced a small crumpled up piece of paper.
“What’s that?” asked Dina.
“The note Nico got from the stranger.”
“But how did you get hold of it?”
Rose blushed and looked at her feet. “It wasn’t so hard.”
I gave her a sharp glance. “Where did you learn to be such an expert pickpocket?”
“Don’t start again!” she said angrily. “I’m no thief!”
“No, but…” I vividly remembered the last time I had suggested that Rose might have a somewhat relaxed attitude to yours and mine. The slap had set my ears ringing, and I had probably deserved it, because Rose hadn’t stolen anything. All the same, it was strange how she had managed to get the little note away from Nico without him noticing it.
“It’s just not everybody who—”
“Do you want to know what it says or not?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then stop asking stupid questions!”
Dina smoothed the crumpled note. “The Sea Wolf, tomorrow before dawn,” she read. “I wonder what that means?”
“Has to be a meeting place,” I suggested. “An inn, perhaps.”
“Or a ship,” said Dina. “Are any of the ships in the harbor called Sea Wolf?”
“We’ll find out,” I said. “All we have to—”
Rose flapped her hands in warning.
“Sshh,” she hissed. “Give me that. Someone’s coming.”
She tucked the note into her apron, and not a moment too soon, because just then Nico and Callan pushed through the door.
“Aye, but it is a rude price to ask,” Callan growled. He and Nico appeared to be in mid-discussion.
“That’s the way of it when goods are scarce,” said Nico. “I say we close the deal and count ourselves lucky that we can get flour at all.”
Callan scratched his neck. “Might be,” he said. “But rude all the same!”
DAVIN
A Clip on the Ear
Next morning, the sky was clear, though there was still a great deal of wind. That seemed to be the rule here rather than the exception. In many ways, it was a strange place to put a town—barren and storm-swept, with nothing much to recommend it to anyone who did not love rocks and waves and seagulls. By far the best thing about Farness was the harbor. It was full of life, people and animals and ships, from the huge broad-bottomed trading vessels to the tiny dinghies that splashed their way from ship to pier and back again, or from one vessel to another. There were bleating goats in wooden crates, there were sacks and barrels and chicken cages, coils of rope and cloth for sails, and a briny smell of tar and wood and seawater.
We were searching for the Sea Wolf, Dina and I. Rose’s task was to keep an eye on Nico, who had gone out with Callan to try to trade for the goods we needed.
“There,” said Dina, pulling at my sleeve. “The one with the red sails!”
I ran my eyes over the row of ships along the pier and found one with red sails. Dina was right. The name was painted on a plank up near the bow, along with the black outline of a wolf’s head.
