TWENTY-SEVEN

WHEN I CAME to, the throbbing in my head was an instant reminder of what had happened.

I lay still, focusing on the sounds around me as I tried to work out where I was. The smell of leaf-mould and forest litter filled the air. Fern fronds, gathered beneath a length of canvas, served for my bed. Everything was damp, including the bracken of my bedding.

A blanket covered me, at least, a thin but sturdy arrangement of layers of wool and goose-down sandwiched between an outer shell of canvas. Pity my skin wasn’t as weatherproof as the blanket.

Branches formed a false sky, alive with shivers and the darting movement of birds. The time was hard to gauge beneath the dense canopy, but night appeared to have passed.

I rolled onto my side, careful to retain the ruse of sleep, surveying the makeshift camp through slitted eyes.

A cast iron cauldron balanced on a rickety spit above a small fire nearby. Steam dragons twined above the cauldron, but the slight breeze was against me and brought no scent of what was brewing.

The pony stood tethered on the fire’s far side, its eyes half closed and its tail twitching at occasional midges and mosquitos. Sepp lay nearby, head down, eyes closed, mouth open and faintly snoring. Roshi sat cross-legged by the fire.

‘A bear could be savaging me, and you’d never know,’ I said.

She glanced over with an amused expression. ‘Oh, I think I’d notice that. All the snuffling, you understand, and bears do have an unmistakable odour.’

I elbowed myself to a sitting position as Roshi watched whatever she was brewing.

‘You could untie me,’ I snapped, when I’d finally managed to sit up.

‘Not until you’ve learnt to behave,’ she replied, giving the pot a stir.

I examined the forest, trying to guess our location. We couldn’t have been more than a night’s walk from the Turholm. I had dim memories of waking, slung over the pony’s back like a sack of meal, with Roshi walking in front. Had she walked all night? A pale and papery look to her skin suggested she might have. In which case we should have been clear of the forest by now. Unless …

‘So,’ I said, ‘we’re not heading for the Skythe grasslands.’

‘No,’ she said, her voice flat. ‘We’re not.’

‘Interesting. I wouldn’t have thought you had any better place to seek sanctuary. Or any other place at all, for that matter,’ I goaded.

She poked again at the pot, leant forward and inhaled. A faint whiff reached me, stinging and sharp like nettles and citrus gone rancid. Removing the pot from its perch with a forked stick, she poured a wooden mugful of the tea and brought it to me. ‘I don’t need sanctuary.’

‘Those who’ve kidnapped queens normally need a place of safety.’

She nodded at the mug. ‘For your headache.’

‘I don’t have a headache.’

Her smile called me a liar. ‘You will. And I’ve not kidnapped you.’

‘This isn’t what I’d consider a pleasure jaunt,’ I said, holding my hands out in front of me to display my trussed wrists. On either side of the rope the flesh stood out in ridges, red and chafed.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said, her voice totally without chagrin. ‘We’re still too close to the Turholm to risk otherwise. Drink your tea,’ she added. ‘The headache you don’t have is making you white around the eyes.’

The sharp burn of ginger overwhelmed any other taste hidden in the brew. Once I’d gagged down a sip Roshi, apparently satisfied, turned and shook Sepp awake. He stared at her blankly for a few moments, then rubbed his eyes and finally nodded. After he’d got his bearings his glance slid to me. Finding me awake made him jerk upright.

As Roshi bedded down for her rest, Sepp watched me. I drank my tea, watching him in return.

The forest ticked by around us, insects creaking in the hidden depths, bird calls echoing through the open wooded corridors, a breeze curling as if by whimsy this way and that. After a while Sepp sat back against an elm tree, occasionally glancing my way.

I sat until the tea went cold in its mug.

‘She says you’re sick,’ he said at last.

I didn’t respond and, with a nervous glance at Roshi, sleeping on her side curled into a ball, he stood and stepped quietly across to me, flinching at the sight of my wounded wrists.

‘I’m not comfortable about it,’ he said, ‘but she says you’re not well, Tilde.’

‘Her only evidence seems to be that I love my husband.’

‘Tilde …’ He picked at detritus on the forest floor, digging his fingers into the earth, not daring to meet my gaze. ‘You don’t mean that. He’s done something to you, something to warp the way you think.’

My laugh had no humour in it. ‘Do you know, when I first met Roshi, she thought me ill in the head for not liking him?’

Emotion heated his cheeks and I wanted to bite my tongue for being sharp with him. Angering him now wouldn’t be my smartest tactic.

‘Sepp, I’ll be the first to admit it’s strange. I’ve hardly let up lately, complaining how much I dislike Diet. But you have to understand – we didn’t exactly meet under the best of circumstances.’ Now that was a diplomatic way of phrasing it. ‘I had a lot to overcome before I could see the good in him.’

Sepp avoided my gaze. ‘And you have overcome it? The massacre of our people, people we loved, friends?’

I dropped my hands to my lap, stinging under the reproach. How dare he! He hadn’t had to live through the Aestival slaughter, nor the days and weeks since. But I fought back the rising anger to keep my voice clear. ‘Other bindings have started on harsher foundations. He’s gentle, Sepp, and considerate.’

‘Which is sufficient?’ he said, his voice loud enough to make Roshi stir in her sleep. ‘Sufficient to make up for killing your family? Sufficient to make you love him?’

‘It’s more than could be said of a lot of men!’

‘Would you mind keeping your voices down?’ snapped Roshi, glaring at us, then rolling onto her other side and burrowing her head under her arm.

I shoved the mug away, spilling cold tea onto the soil, and raised my wrists, forcing Sepp to look at what they’d done to me. ‘He never once bound me!’

Sepp’s gaze flicked to my brow. ‘Then how do you account for the branding?’

I shoved my wrists up to hide my forehead. Where was my veil?

‘Is it part of the love?’ Sepp demanded, anger making his cheeks feverish.

‘He says I wouldn’t have survived the poison without it,’ I replied, seizing on the first words that came to mind, though Dieter’s lie tasted strange and false in my mouth.

‘Ha,’ came Roshi’s voice, bouncing off the trees and back at us. ‘You survived the poison because I acted quickly enough to stop you eating it all. Those marks did you no favours.’

I glared at her back. ‘I suppose you want me to thank you!’

‘No.’

The quiet dignity of her response robbed me of any retort.

Sepp swung his gaze between us, trying to piece together the story. I didn’t enlighten him. When it was clear Roshi had no more to add either, he said, ‘Tilde, please, you have to trust me.’

‘Like I trusted you last night?’

He winced, and I used his moment of hesitation to drive home the blade of guilt.

‘What reason do I have to trust you? You believe her over me, though we’ve been friends for a lifetime,’ I said. ‘How can I trust you? As far as I can see, I’m the only sane one here.’

His eyes turned hard and flat as slate. ‘You’re right. I have known you longer. Which is how I know the Tilde sitting in front of me isn’t the same person I left a month ago.’

Then Sepp, my closest friend and cousin, turned away.

The hurt made me desperate – and bitter. ‘I suppose you think I should’ve lain down and let them hack out my throat, too, do you?’

He flinched and turned back in a rush, pain alive in his eyes. I could still reach him.

‘Tilde …’ he said, extending his hand, his fingers brushing the rope. ‘I’d never wish you dead. Don’t say such things.’

Roshi grunted. ‘I wish the both of you were dead. Or at least gagged. And if you don’t shut up and let me sleep, you will be.’

Sepp ventured a smile.

‘Don’t misjudge her words for a joke,’ I warned. ‘She tried to kill Dieter and frame me for it. It would’ve worked if I hadn’t made the mistake of eating the tainted meal.’

Instead of displaying the fear I’d hoped, however, Sepp took a moment to consider my words. ‘Good,’ he said at last.

‘Good?’

‘We need someone who won’t baulk at what needs doing. You should have tried killing him long before last week. If you were in your right mind, you would have.’