Francesca Haig - The Map of Bones

‘Let her go, or you die here,’ said Piper.

‘Have your people stand down,’ the man said to me. He spoke calmly, as if Zoe and Piper, bristling with knives, were barely a concern to him.

Zoe rolled her eyes. ‘We’re not her people .’

‘I know exactly who you are,’ he told her.

The knife at my throat sat precisely where The Confessor’s knife had left its scar. Would that thickened strip of skin slow the blade, if he cut me? I craned my head to the side to try to see his face. I could make out only his dark hair, not tightly curled like Piper’s or Zoe’s, but massed in loose whorls. It reached his jaw, tickling the side of my cheek. He ignored me, except for his attentive knife. Slowly I turned my head further. Each movement pressed my neck more firmly into the knife blade, but at last I could see his eyes, fixed on Piper and Zoe. He was older than us, though still probably under thirty. I’d seen his face somewhere before, though the memory felt insubstantial.

Piper worked it out before I did.

‘You think we don’t know who you are?’ he said. ‘You’re The Ringmaster.’

I knew, now, where I’d seen him: in a sketch on the island. Those few marks on a page had become flesh. The full lips, and the smile lines outside each eye. From up close, as he clasped me tightly, each one was a ridge of moonlight on his darkened face.

‘Stand down,’ The Ringmaster said again, ‘or I’ll kill her.’

Three figures stepped from the darkness behind Zoe and Piper. Two of them held swords; the third a bow. I could hear the creak of the bowstring, pulled taut, the arrow pointed at Piper’s back. He didn’t turn, though Zoe pivoted to face the soldiers.

‘And if we do stand down, what’s to stop you killing her then?’ Piper asked evenly. ‘Or all of us?’

‘I won’t kill her unless I have to. I came to talk. Why do you think I came without a big squadron? I’ve taken a risk to find you, talk to you.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Again, Piper’s bored, impatient tone, as he might sound when chatting in a tavern with a tiresome companion. But I could see the tendons in his hand drawn wire-tight, and the careful angle of his wrist, as he held the knife poised above his shoulder. The blade itself was a tiny dart of silver in the moonlight. If I hadn’t seen those knives in action, I might have thought it looked beautiful.

‘I need to talk to the seer about her twin,’ The Ringmaster said.

‘And do you always start a conversation with a knife to the throat?’ asked Piper.

‘We both know this is no ordinary conversation.’ The Ringmaster, behind me, was perfectly still, but I saw the tiny movements of his soldiers. The light moving on the blade of one man’s sword, as he inched closer to Piper; the tremor of the archer’s bow as the arrow was pulled back further.

‘I won’t talk to you while you’re threatening us,’ I said. With each word I felt his knife, rigid against my neck.

‘And you need to understand that I’m not a man who makes idle threats.’ He raised the blade, so that my chin was forced upwards. I could feel the pulse of my neck against the steel. The blade had been cold at first, but was warming now. Zoe was moving, very gradually, so that she stood back-to-back with Piper, facing the soldiers behind him. The soldier with the bow was only a few feet from her, one eye narrowed as he squinted down the line of the arrow at her chest.

When Piper moved, everything seemed to unfold very slowly. I saw how he released the blade, his arm extending, one finger pointing at The Ringmaster like a denunciation. Zoe launched at the same time, her two knives hurled at the archer as she dived to the side. For an instant the three blades were in flight, and the arrow too, slicing through the air where Zoe had stood a moment before.

The Ringmaster swiped Piper’s knife from the sky with his own blade. The noises came in quick succession: the clash of his blade against Piper’s; a shout from the archer as Zoe’s knife hit him, and the clang as her second blade struck one of the poles. The arrow had passed my left shoulder and been lost to the darkness.

‘Hold,’ The Ringmaster shouted at his men. I clutched at my neck, where his knife had sat, and waited for the pain and the gush of loosened blood, its hot spurt through my fingers. It never came. There was just the old scar, and my pulse thrashing underneath my own grip.

For several seconds we were all motionless. The Ringmaster crouched in front of me, his knife pointed at Piper, who held his own dagger only an inch or two from The Ringmaster’s. Zoe, with two more throwing knives drawn, stood with her back to Piper. Beyond her, the archer was grimacing, clutching the knife lodged by his collarbone. The other two soldiers had moved in, swords outstretched, just beyond the reach of Zoe’s vigilant blades.

I groped for the knife at my belt, but steel scraped on steel as The Ringmaster sheathed his blade. ‘Stand down,’ he said, with a toss of his head at his soldiers. They dropped back, the injured man swearing. I couldn’t see his blood but I could smell it: the unmistakable raw-liver stench that reminded me of skinned rabbits, and of the bodies on the island.

‘I think we understand one another,’ The Ringmaster said. ‘I came to talk, but you know now that if it comes to blades, I’ll stand my own.’

‘Touch her again and I’ll cut out your tongue,’ said Piper. ‘You won’t be talking then.’

He moved past The Ringmaster and grabbed me, drawing me back to where Zoe stood. Her knives were lowered but not sheathed.

‘Leave us,’ The Ringmaster shouted to his soldiers, with an impatient wave. They withdrew until the darkness and distance hooded their faces, and I could no longer hear the wounded archer’s laboured breathing.

‘You’re OK?’ Piper said to me.

My hand was still at my neck.

‘He could’ve slit my throat,’ I whispered, ‘when you threw the knife.’

‘He was never going to kill you,’ Piper replied. ‘Not if it was so important to him to talk to you. It was a ploy.’ He spoke up now, so that The Ringmaster could hear him. ‘Just posturing, to impress upon us what a big man he is.’

I looked up at Piper and wondered what it must be like to be so certain of everything.

Zoe was surveying the valley. ‘Where are the rest of your soldiers?’ she said to The Ringmaster.

‘I told you – I brought only my scouts. Do you have any idea what would happen if word got out that I’d met with you?’

I turned. His men were watching us warily from twenty yards away. The swordsmen still had their blades drawn. The injured man had dropped his bow and leaned against one of the bent metal poles, but then jerked upright again as though the touch of the taboo remnant was more painful than the dagger in his flesh.

‘How did you find us?’ I swung back around to face The Ringmaster. ‘The Council’s been searching for months. Why you, and why now?’

‘Your brother, him and The General, think their machines allow them to keep track of everything. Maybe it worked well enough when they had The Confessor and her visions to help out. They never had time for old-fashioned methods. They could’ve learned a lot from the older Councillors, or some of the senior soldiers, if they’d taken the time to listen, like I did. I’ve been paying urchins in half the settlements from Wyndham to the coast, for years. When you need updates from the ground, a greedy local kid with the promise of a silver coin is worth more than any machine. Sometimes it’s a waste of money – often enough they bring me nothing but rumours, false alarms. But every now and again you get lucky. There was an unconfirmed sighting of you at Drury. Then someone came to me, said three strangers had been seen in Windrush. The interesting bit was that there was an Alpha girl with two Omegas. I’ve had my scouts tracking you for four days.’