Catherine Fisher - The Margrave-crow 4

THE TWO SMALL BOYS WERE DIGGING for shar-roots in the open field. They had a dog with them, but Galen whipped a sense-line firmly around it and said, “Go on. Remember the father’s somewhere near.”

Raffi wriggled through the branches and out onto the path. He walked along it making a cheerful whistling noise between his teeth, letting the boys think they saw him first. Then he stopped. “Hello.”

The dog was a big one, half wolf. Sleepily it thumped its tail. The older lad glanced at it, but its stillness seemed to reassure him. “We’re not to speak to tramps.” He turned back to his digging.

“That’s a pity.” Raffi leaned on the gate. “Because I wanted you to help me. I’m looking for someone.”

The boy dug, stubborn. The younger one, about six, just stared, rubbing dirty hands. Then he crouched and began to pile the roots up, arranging them in patterns.

Raffi felt Galen’s impatience. “Look. You might have seen her. She’s got short brown hair and she’s about my height. Wearing dark green trousers and a brown coat. She’s in a group of Watch prisoners, and we know they came this way. Have you seen them?”

No answer. The small spade chipped relentlessly at the hard soil. Raffi glanced behind, desperate. From the bushes the Sekoi’s long hand waved him on. Then the boy said, “What are you paying?”

He shook his head, bemused. “I haven’t got anything.”

“Not much use asking, then.”

“I could help with the digging. If you tell me.”

The spade stopped. The boy looked back, then held it out. “Dig first.”

Raffi cursed under his breath, then climbed over and took the dirty wooden handle. He shoved it into the clods of soil.

“Careful,” the boy said crossly. “The beggars are up the top.”

He dug again; briefly the sliced orange tip of a root showed. Before it could wriggle away, the boy was on it, grabbing it and tugging and scrabbling till it came out, flexed once in the damp air, and then went rigid.

“Well?” Raffi snapped.

“Two more.”

The sun was overhead; it was warm. Raffi gritted his teeth and dug quickly. “All I want . . . is to know . . . if you’ve seen her.”

“I’ll tell you. When I’ve got my twenty.”

The last root was deep, and kept wriggling deeper. Finally the boy sliced it out with his knife, cut it neatly in half, and dropped it on the pile. His brother leaned the two halves together tidily.

Raffi flung down the spade. “So?”

“Haven’t seen her.”

“What!”

“Haven’t seen her.”

“You cheeky little brat.” Raffi was furious. “You said . . .”

“Didn’t say anything.” The boy turned toward a distant barn. “Dad! I’ve finished.”

Instantly, before Raffi could move or the boy take another breath, Galen was out of the hedge and had both the boy’s hands caught tight in a vicious grip. “Listen to me, you little wretch,” he snarled, his eyes black and hard. “I know you’ve seen her, so you tell me where she is. Now!”

The boy went white with fear. In a sobbing whisper he gasped, “On the road. The big road. They took them all away to the Broken Mountains.”

“How long ago?”

“Two days.” The boy was breathless. Galen let him go and said, “Come on.” In seconds he was gone, up the lane, the Sekoi racing after him.

Raffi looked at the boy. “Sorry,” he said, awkward. “But you should have told me.”

The boy glared at him with hatred. Then he turned and screeched, “Dad! DAD! They’re killing me!”

Raffi ran.

THIS WAS HARD COUNTRY. The lanes were empty, people scarce. There were few great trees, just small gnarled orchards and the tiniest green shoots of what might be barley springing through the fallow ground. Over it, rising like the spines of a nightmare, were the Broken Mountains.

Galen and the Sekoi were waiting at the foot of the next slope, all the small white sheep huddled into the far end of the field. Raffi climbed the stone wall and dropped into the grass. “I’d have found out,” he said irritably.

“We haven’t got that long.” Galen swung the pack off, pulled out the water flask, and drank.

Raffi shook his head. “The father might talk.”

“Let him.” Galen offered the water to the Sekoi, who took it and wiped the lip daintily with a square of purple silk it took from a pocket. Then it drank, the shaven patch under its ear looking sore and cold, the ragged stitches itchy. It had fidgeted too much when Galen put them in. Now it passed the flask and said, “Galen, I think the small keeper may be right in part. We shouldn’t let our anxiety for Carys cause us to be careless.”

Morose, Galen turned away. He stared up at the hills and his gaze was dark and deeply uneasy; Raffi could feel the sense-lines move in an invisible unraveling all around him, into soil and stone, always searching. The keeper was worried. More than that. Curious, Raffi grasped after the feeling; it was brief and hastily hidden, but for an instant it had been clear and it astonished him. Guilt. Galen felt guilty.

As if he sensed the mind-touch, the keeper turned and looked at Raffi. “How many in that last village?”

“Only about ten. All old.”

“And did you notice,” the Sekoi said, fingering its shaven tribemark, “how the cattle were unmilked and the dogs hungry? The fields untended? Whatever the Watch are building, they have taken many people. It must be some vast undertaking.”

Galen shouldered the pack and picked up his stick. “It must,” he said grimly. “That’s why we need to find out what.”

The road the boy had spoken of was easy to find; every inch of it had been scarred and cracked by recent cartwheels. In some places it had been hastily widened; in others the soft ruts churned through the mud on each side, with drifts of white dust that the Sekoi fingered and smelled and said was from freshly cut stone.

They climbed all afternoon. Twice they had to let Watchpatrols pass. The second group had prisoners, all male. Galen let them go by without a word, much to Raffi’s relief. But by late afternoon they both had become aware that something terrible was waiting ahead of them; a darkness in the awen-field. Ducking under the branches of pine, suddenly, they came to it.

A great swathe of woodland had been hacked and cut to a desolation of stumps, the smell of burning still lingering, the undergrowth blackened and charred right down to the scarred soil. Galen stopped, touching the beads at his neck. He might have been praying, but he said nothing aloud, and after a fraught second walked on, fast, with Raffi close behind, white-faced at the horror of the place, the snapped energies that seemed to spark and sting them as they passed, the ghostly whispers of lost voices that cried in the empty air.

At the far side of the clearing the Sekoi paused, breathless, one hand on its side. “Galen,” it pleaded. “A moment.”

The keeper kept walking, never looking back. Reluctant, Raffi stopped. “He can’t,” he said, with difficulty. “It hurts too much.”

The Sekoi took a deep breath and walked on, looking at him curiously. “You feel the pain of the dead trees?”

“No. Only their loss.” It was impossible to explain the choking, the tangle in the mind. After a moment the creature nodded, its yellow eyes sharp in the light of the risen moons. It put its hand on Raffi’s shoulder kindly.

Twilight deepened in the shadows of the hills, but the clearing was still too close for them to stop; for hours afterward Raffi could feel it, a sore spot in the world, falling farther and farther back, fainter and fainter, but always a nagging ache. He was tired now, and footsore, and empty with hunger, but he knew how to deal with that, just walk into it, keep walking, not let his mind jerk free from its rhythmic trance. So that the shriek, when it came, stopped him dead.