Hannah suddenly felt as lost and alone as she had felt since her arrival. The three Malakasian soldiers drinking at the bar were a stark reminder of the dangers that had found her so soon after her arrival in Southport. Turning quickly, she took the rest of the tecan and a mug and followed Alen upstairs.
THE TOPGALLANT BOARDING HOUSE
The sky had just begun to whiten in the east when Brexan woke. The Ravenian Sea and the salt marsh remained dark, insubstantial in the pre-dawn aven. Slipping into her tunic, she crept into the front room, stoked the overnight embers and put on a kettle of water; Nedra Daubert, the woman who owned the Topgallant Boarding House, was happy to wake to a ready-made fire and a pot of tecan already brewing. She had asked no questions when Sallax and Brexan arrived, dirty, shivering and without any bags, but taken the last silver coin Brexan had and invited the couple to stay on with her until their luck changed.
‘There’s enough silver here to last the next Moon, and that’s with meals,’ she told them, clucking around them in a motherly fashion. ‘If you don’t have any more, or you haven’t earned any by then, well, I suppose you’ll be able to stay on for a while after that. What difference does it make? That dog-rutting Malagon taxes most of what I take anyway.’
Sallax had grinned and they had accepted her offer to join her for a flagon of wine and a few slices of just-baked bread.
For the next twenty days, the Topgallant had seen only two other boarders, travelling merchants who stayed a night or two before moving on, but Nedra’s front room was invariably filled to bursting every night. Her seafood stew was justly renowned. Brexan and Sallax helped out in the kitchen, then, worn out from the countless trips back and forth between the front room, the bar and the kitchen, the three tired workers would eat their fill while Nedra counted the evening’s copper Mareks. Each time they helped, the innkeeper would separate out a few coins, slide them across to Brexan, and say, ‘There’s a bit of spending money, and you’ve earned another five nights’ room and meals.’
Brexan tried to argue that she was being too generous, but Nedra would not listen to the younger woman’s objections. After a while, she realised Nedra loved having company around the Topgallant, and any loss of revenue was a small price to pay. There was no danger of the Topgallant going out of business; the boarding part was just an excuse to have new faces around the house.
Brexan wondered if she might one day live like this: with Versen dead, the former Malakasian soldier worried she might find herself keeping a tidy house, caring for her pets, cooking seven-course meals for one, and suffering in silent loneliness until the end of her days. She would have liked to have stayed on at the Topgallant, keeping her new friend company, but that wasn’t possible. Sallax’s shoulder was growing stronger every day, and it would soon be time to exact their revenge on the fat merchant and the spy. Killing Carpello and Jacrys would result in another wave of citywide raids, public hangings and general unrest and neither she nor Sallax would feel comfortable placing Nedra in harm’s way after all she’d done for them.
Instead, they would move west into Praga in hopes of finding Garec and the staff-wielding foreigner.
When Brexan returned to their room, Sallax was awake and standing at the window watching dawn colour the marsh where Brynne’s body had washed ashore. They had gone looking for her together their first morning at the Topgallant, but Brynne was gone, long ago washed out to sea on a Twinmoon tide. Sallax was recovering well; he stood at the window lifting a heavy log he had pilfered from Nedra’s woodpile, to exercise his damaged arm.
‘Good morning,’ Brexan said cheerily.
‘I did it, you know.’
‘What’s that?’ She folded their blankets and draped them over the foot of the bed.
‘I killed Gilmour, me, Sallax Farro of Estrad. Just me. I did it.’
‘I know,’ she said, straightening the sheets. ‘But Versen told me about Nerak, the one controlling Prince Malagon, and you didn’t have much of a choice. He wasn’t playing fair with you.’
‘I know, but I should be stronger than that.’
‘Aren’t you strong enough? Who else could have survived the way you did, on the streets, eating what you ate?’ She shuddered. ‘And yet here you are, having just bested a Seron with a knife.’ She moved to his side, but he avoided looking at her. ‘You may be the strongest of us all, Sallax, and you’re getting more so every day.’
‘No, I’m not.’ His words fell like stones. ‘There’s something wrong with me, Brexan. Those wraiths did something, and I don’t know if time will be enough to set me free – I don’t even know if I want to be free from it.’
She turned to look out the window with him.
Sallax went on, ‘It’s as if a curtain has been drawn across my mind. For a long time I couldn’t see anything through it, just shadows.’
‘But now?’
‘Now I can see, and think, and remember – some things anyway – but I still can’t find the centre of things. It’s a place in my mind, my heart, my soul… I don’t rutting know, but it’s the place where I used to be, the centre point from which I used to look out at the world.’ He paused.
‘And?’ Brexan prompted gently.
‘Now I’m not allowed back there. For some reason I’m off to one side,’ he gestured, ‘where I can see and think and do, but it’s as if the focal point of me is over there somewhere in the corner and I can’t get back there.’
‘Is that the wraiths’ curse, or is it guilt?’
Sallax grunted in amusement. ‘Which is worse?’
Again, Brexan had no reply.
‘I think the only person who could lift this last veil – and it’s not black any more, it’s just irritatingly dark, as though someone has drawn a cloud over the sun and everything has faded slightly – well, the only way I could open it again would be to see Gilmour, to explain it to him, and to have him tell me that he understands what happened. So maybe it is just guilt. Gilmour never wanted anything except to serve the people of Eldarn – and I arranged his execution. I used to sneak out of camp after everyone had gone to sleep; Steven caught me twice. I would meet him in the forest, or in an inn, wherever he ordered. All I had to do was wander back the way we’d come and he would call to me, reach out for me, pull me in.’
‘Jacrys?’
‘Jacrys. Yes. I told him everything – except that we didn’t have Lessek’s key; somehow that seemed too important, it was bigger than Gilmour and me. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that. I hated Rona and everything about Rona, because raiders had killed my family. I truly believed they had been led by Gilmour. I wanted to go to Praga, but whenever I thought about it, something kept me in Estrad. Now I know it was Prince Malagon. The wraith, O’Reilly, showed me that.’
‘But think of the work you’ll do from here on. Isn’t that enough?’
‘I don’t know.’ Finally he looked at her. ‘I wish he were here. I would tell him everything, and then I would beg him to forgive me.’
‘He would.’
‘That’s exactly what Steven tried to tell me the morning Lahp broke my shoulder, but I didn’t want to hear it. I guess a part of me still doesn’t; I need to hear it from him. I suppose when I get to the Northern Forest I will ask him.’
‘Maybe that’s why the wraiths didn’t kill you that night in the river – maybe they realised you needed time to figure things out, and to recognise that Gilmour’s death wasn’t really your fault. Maybe they set you up: gave you a sort of vantage point from where you could see and think and be Sallax of Estrad, but from where you could also observe yourself healing. Maybe they did it on purpose.’
‘They were a marauding band of homicidal monsters, Brexan. They did this to me to amuse themselves. They soaked up my pain and spun it so it would torture me for ever; much more entertaining than simply killing me. You told me that.’