Pupp remained hidden, but his eyes shone from the gloom under her bed. He must have sensed her sudden tension.
Dart moved slowly to one of the four iron braziers that dotted each corner of the room. Each was identical, shaped like a repostilary jar, covered by a tiny grate. She checked the two closest to the window first. Both were cold to the touch.
She moved to the one by the privy. Also cold.
Already the scent faded beyond her senses. Perhaps she had imagined it. Maybe it had been a miasma from her morning illness.
She crossed to the last brazier, by the door. Her fingers brushed its surface.
The iron warmed her cold fingertips. She placed her palm on its side. It was not hot to the touch, but it was not cold either. Whatever small fire had heated the metal had only recently been extinguished.
Bending down, she creaked open the grate and peered inside. The strange scent wafted stronger again, but the brazier was empty, cleaned, and wiped. Yet coals had been burned here. Recently.
Cold dread crept up her spine, drawing her upright.
Pupp slunk from his hiding place and belly crawled to her side.
Someone had been in her rooms last night.
Someone had lit her brazier.
Who… and why?
Perhaps it had only been Matron Shashyl. But she always knocked before entering, announcing herself, awaiting invitation. Though the elderly matron might have a sharp tongue for the newest of Chrism’s Hands, she had always respected their private spaces.
No, someone else had been in here.
Dart knew this with horrified certainty. She glanced around the room, fearful of discovering an extra shadow, a hand clutching a fold of drapery. She took a few shuddering breaths to calm herself. Whoever had been here had cleaned the brazier, covering their steps. They were surely gone again.
Still, Dart found her chest constricting. Whatever security and solace there had been behind the locked doors of her rooms was shattered. She had no safe place to call her own.
She trembled. Tears rose.
Someone had been in here, perhaps standing beside her bed, looking down on her. Why?
She remembered her disturbed slumber, the restless dreams, the morning queasiness. She could only imagine what dark alchemies had been burned on the brazier.
To what end? By whose hand? Or rather which Hand?
Dart pictured the dark eyes of the Hand of black bile, studying her over dinner, watching her. There could be no doubt.
Yaellin de Mar had been in her room.
15
Tylar stared into the small campfire. the tiny hearth smoked more than it flamed, fed with wet wood, but that was all that could be found in the moldering swamps and bogs. The party gathered as best they could around the meager source of heat.
Rogger spit roasted a marsh hare over the pit. Upon the thief’s recommendation, they had built the fire in a shallow pit to shield its sallow flame in the night. He had even caked the rabbit’s skinned flesh with clay to cut down the scent of its sizzling flesh.
Next to him, Delia huddled in a cloak lined with otter fur. She was bone tired, as were they all.
No one spoke. Their small party, led by Krevan and his band of cloaked knights, had ridden all day, then fled all night through the marshes: punting a pair of skiffs, trekking salt flats, crawling through a forest of vines and creepers. They dared not risk the main road through the swamps, a rutted overgrown path that wound around stagnant stretches of water and forded bubbling rivers with bridges of stout oak.
And it was good they had taken Krevan’s advice to abandon the road and seek out old trapper paths and animal trails. Lord Balger had not waited long before sending out his hunters, a mix of his own sworn Shadowknights and swamp trackers. Their pursuit proved dogged.
A full day and night stretched into one endless chase. Krevan set up traps and looped their course to confound pursuit. But the hunters had the advantage: the blessing of the god of the land. They followed with scent hounds Graced in alchemies of air, they bore weapons anointed in fire, and followed in swamp crawlers fueled as much by Balger’s fury as the god’s blood.
With such pursuit, the party had little chance to rest. But with dawn nearing, they were forced to ground, too exhausted to tackle the rolling mounds that marked the borderlands of the accursed Dell.
“What do you suppose is waiting beyond those hills?” Tylar asked.
Krevan shrugged.
“Will Balger have sent word ahead?” Tylar glanced to the east, where the skies were just beginning to lighten. “Will he have alerted Tashijan?”
Rogger snorted and pulled the spitted hare from the fire. He sniffed at its baked clay surface. “To raise the alarm, Balger would have to admit that he had you and let you escape. The bastard has too much pride for that. He’d lose face among the brigands and sly folk that make up his countrymen. Word won’t travel beyond his borders until you’re either dead or captured.”
Krevan lifted a hand, standing quickly with a rustle of cloak and shadow. “Someone comes.”
Tylar’s palm dropped to the hilt of his sword, a borrowed short sword with a bone grip.
Krevan stepped back, half-dissolving into shadow. A whistle of skit-swift sounded from his lips. It was answered by another… and another. He stepped back into the circle of firelight. “One of the scouts.”
As if drawn out by his words, shadows stretched and birthed the figure of a cloaked man. It was one of Krevan’s knights. The man stepped into the glow, shedding darkness from his form. Tylar recognized him as an older knight named Corram. While it took a keen eye to discern one masked and cloaked Shadowknight from another, years of living among such men and women had sharpened Tylar’s attention: to the cut and color of hair, to the shape and hue of eye, to the subtle scars and wrinkles. Even the manner of movement, rhythm of gait, and a knight’s carriage revealed clues.
Despite his advanced years, Corram moved with a stealth few could match. His eyes were ice, his hair a matching silver.
He nodded to Krevan. “The hunters have found our scent again. They move even now to close us off from the border mounds.”
“How quickly?”
Corram shook his head. “We have a quarter bell at best.”
Rogger swore and began kicking dirt atop the wood coals, dousing the flames. “Then let us not tarry.” He lifted the roasted hare and cracked the caked clay. The scent of sizzling fat and flesh wafted strongly. He handed the spitted hare to one of Krevan’s men. “Stake this little bait on the raft by the stream. The current will carry her off, drawing the scent hounds away from our path. I never knew a hound that wouldn’t follow a bit of roasted hare.”
With a nod, the knight stepped away.
The others quickly broke camp and set off.
Krevan again led the way. His ten knights flanked forward and behind, alert for attack. Rogger strode behind the leader of the Shadowknights. Tylar followed next with his short sword and kept Delia close to his side. She met his gaze for a breath. Her face was smeared with mud, a cheek scratched deeply, and her eyes were rimmed with fear.
“Stay with me,” he whispered. It was the only consolation he could offer.
It seemed enough. Taking a shuddering breath, she nodded.
The party stumbled through the tangle of bog brier that had been their bower and splashed across a sluicing riverbed, smelling of stagnant mud and root rot. As they climbed the far banks, the mounds rose before them, limned in the thin light of approaching dawn.
These borderlands, named the Kistlery Downs, were chalk-and-flint hills rising from the swamplands, a hard boundary separating the lowland swamps and bogs of Foulsham Dell from the central plains of the First Land. While the mounds were not high, they were steep sided, creating a maze of vales, hollows, and dells. Confounding the matter, the lowest portions remained shrouded in foul mist. It was as easy to get lost among them as it was to be trapped.