THIRTY

I WOKE GASPING like a landed fish, the golem’s voice still ringing in my ears, the memory of Dieter’s grin cracking wide that clay-wrought face chilling the blood in my veins.

‘Bad dream again?’ Roshi asked, stoking sparks from the fire.

I didn’t answer, my throat full of the taste of betrayal. Not only was Dieter not worried for me – he’d set an assassin on my trail. It wasn’t the action of a man who loved me. It wasn’t the action of a man even mildly fond of me. My stupidity and blindness tasted worse than the tea Roshi passed me.

‘Tilde?’ said Sepp, frowning. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I dreamed of Dieter,’ I said. ‘It was a true dream somehow. I was in the Turholm, in the fireplace of Grandmother’s old room. It’s now Dieter’s room.’

‘How were you in the fireplace?’ Roshi demanded, suddenly intent.

‘I don’t know. I fell asleep watching the fire here, and the next thing I knew the fire was in between me and Dieter’s room. Around me, too.’ No need to mention that this was the second time.

Roshi pursed her lips. ‘You told me you hadn’t inherited the gift.’

When I didn’t answer, she hugged her knees into her chest and said, ‘What did you see?’

My hand rose to my brow, brushing the marks Dieter had put there. The skin beneath them felt no different, neither thickened nor stiffened nor raised, yet my fingertips tingled every time they touched the ink.

Roshi noted the gesture and intuited what it meant. ‘He threatened you?’

‘He’s created a golem,’ I said.

Their expressions told me the word was unfamiliar to them.

‘A construct, a creature of clay and will. It’s coming after me.’

Sepp’s eyes widened.

‘Sepp.’ Roshi snapped her fingers, dragging his gaze to her. When she had his attention, she said, ‘This creature, it either left last night or, if we’re lucky, this morning. Unless it can fly it won’t find us right now, or today. We still have time.’

Her words gave me no comfort. ‘Do we?’ I asked. ‘We’ve spent the last two days heading more west than south. We’re probably only three full days ahead of it. Can we reach the Ayrholm before the golem catches up with us?’

Sepp buried his head in his hands. I wanted to do the same. My only reason for seeking out the army had been a foolish, irrational, heartsick desire to return to Dieter. It made no sense now – if he was so ready to punish me, I doubted I could convince Dieter of my innocence in this flight.

‘We have to seek the army,’ said Sepp, his voice strangely flat, fear stark in his eyes. I gaped at him, stunned by his sudden change of mind.

‘No!’ said Roshi. ‘If we head directly west now, we’ll only shrink our lead on the creature. We need to reach House Falkere’s stronghold. If we continue south, we still have a chance,’ she said, though her voice didn’t express any real hope.

The canyons and gorges of the Dragonstail still barred our way south, and the Ayrholm lay deep in the heart of the Naris tribelands. How fast could the golem travel? Was the army too close to risk further travel west?

‘Maybe we should turn east?’ I hazarded. ‘Or venture into the deeps of the Dragonstail as far as we can, and hide?’

‘We need to seek the army,’ Sepp insisted. ‘We need bodies between us and the creature, and a shadow-worker besides. The Ayrholm is too far away.’

‘You’re coming to your senses just as Sepp loses his. The creature doesn’t know where we are,’ said Roshi, cutting me off when I tried to interrupt. ‘Trust me, cousin. Unless you specifically told Dieter where we were, he doesn’t know, and neither does the creature. We still have time.’

‘But we don’t know how it hunts,’ Sepp argued.

I remembered Dieter holding up the vial of my blood, and feared I did know how the golem hunted.

‘What if it can smell us over distances?’ Sepp went on. ‘What if it can taste the wind, or track us the way a bird tracks true north? How do we know it doesn’t fly? Matilde doesn’t know, not for sure –’

Roshi grabbed him by his hair, jerking his head back. ‘You need to trust me,’ she said, cool as frost. ‘I’ll keep us ahead of this creature, I promise you.’

I didn’t point out that it was a promise she couldn’t keep.

She released him, and Sepp rubbed the crick from the back of his neck.

‘You work on breathing,’ Roshi said. ‘I’ll worry about everything else that needs worrying about.’

‘But –’

‘In,’ she said, ‘and out.’

When he didn’t protest further, she rose, giving him a companionable squeeze of his shoulder.

‘First,’ she said, ‘breakfast. Then we walk. Fast.’

We picked up our pace, walking quickly enough to trip and stagger over roots, slipping in the leaf-litter as we headed south and west through the forest. Midmorning, troubled by the pace Roshi was setting, I edged close to her. ‘Do you fear it will find us today after all?’ I murmured.

She shook her head but didn’t answer directly. Reaching to move a branch out of her way, then holding it so it didn’t slap the pony trailing behind us, she said, ‘It would help if you could tell me aught of its nature. How does it hunt? How fast can it move?’

I raised helpless hands. ‘It’s a magic wrought by the shadow-workers of the Amaer. I don’t know anything about the creatures or their abilities.’

Except how to kill them, I thought before the brands on my forehead silenced the notion. I, for one, didn’t want to be close enough to the golem to touch its brow.

That night I feared to fall asleep, feared slipping into dreams and hearing Clay crooning to me: Wait, little queen. But though his slab-toothed smile chased me throughout the night, it was fear and memory, not the same sort of dreaming as before.

Which disappointed Roshi, come the morning. ‘We could have done with the knowing,’ she said, irritably kicking dirt over the fire. ‘Let’s get going.’

She’d pushed us hard the day before, enough that she now feared the flank guard of the Ilthean army. Sepp strode beside the pony, clinging to her bridle and often leaning his head on the warm velvet of her neck. Although he’d suggested seeking succour among the Iltheans’ ranks, he didn’t appear to relish the prospect of meeting them.

When I edged closer to the other side of the pony, touching the corded strength of her neck, Sepp didn’t look up and his hand stayed on the other side of the pony’s neck – it was like we were touching through a pane of glass.

‘You don’t have to stay with us,’ I said, careful to keep my voice calm and soothing. It was an offer I was making.

He didn’t answer.

‘You could head east. Find yourself a village and vanish inside it. Who knows? You might be lucky and find one where none of this matters.’

He hesitated briefly, then said, ‘My place is with you.’

‘Sepp.’

He hunched his shoulders against my voice. ‘I won’t run from my place, Tilde. You are my Duethin, crowned or not. I’ll see you back on the throne in your own right, or I’ll flee with you to that village you think we can vanish into. But I won’t run from you, even if you dare the snake’s fangs.’

My heart twisted. ‘I’m sorry I got you into this.’

Finally he met my eyes over the pony’s neck. ‘I would have helped you flee even without Roshi.’

Somehow, it didn’t ease the sharp edges of guilt lodged in my chest. The words bubbled up my throat: You were right was what I needed to say.

‘Why did you want to go back to him, Tilde?’ said Sepp, his gaze evading me. ‘He killed everyone we know. He took your throne from you, took your people and your country. He means to hand them over to the Iltheans!’

‘Not everyone,’ I said, thorns in my throat making it difficult to talk. ‘He didn’t kill me. Even when I gave him reason to.’

Sepp’s sidelong glance burned with scorn.

I couldn’t find words to explain how I’d come to twist and turn so thoroughly under Dieter’s power, until the only way out was to yield up even my heart.

‘I don’t want to go back. That’s all that matters now,’ I said at last.