roaring fire. I caught Inch at the door and when he turned I thrust the poker up between his ribs. He squealed like pigs do when the butcher is killing them. I had only one word for him. A name. ‘Justice.’
I spread the fire not to be warm, though the fever set my teeth chattering and my hands shaking too much to be of use. I set the fire to be clean again. To burn up every trace and touch of Inch and his wrong. To devour all memory of my weakness and failure.
‘I meant to stay there,’ I said, my voice a whisper. She would hear me even so. ‘I don’t remember leaving. I don’t remember how close the flames came.’
They found me in the forest. I had wanted to reach the Girl-who-waits-for-Spring, to lie on the ground where I buried my dog and to wait with her, but they caught me before I got there.
I raised my head. ‘But that’s not where I’m bound tonight, Katherine.’
There are truths you know but will not speak. Even to yourself in the darkness where we are all of us alone. There are memories you see and yet don’t see. Things set apart, made abstract and robbed of meaning. Some doors when they are opened may not be shut again. I knew that, even at nine I knew it. And here, a door that I had closed long ago, like the lid on a coffin, the contents no longer fit for inspection. Fear trembled in my hands and I tightened my grip against it. No part of me wanted this, but I would chase Katherine from my dreams and own my nights once more – and honesty remained my sharpest weapon.
I pulled on the handles to those doors of frost and corruption, I hauled on them and it felt as if I dragged a spear into my guts, inch by bloody inch. And with a squeal of protest the doors opened, not onto a throne room, not to my father’s court, but to a dull autumn day on a rutted path that wound away up the valley to where the monastery sat.
‘Damned if I will!’
Brother Liar was damned long ago but we none of us mentioned that. Instead we stood in the mud of the road and in the chill of a damp westerly breeze and watched the monastery.
‘You’ll go up there and ask them to see to your wound,’ Fat Burlow said again.
Burlow could swing a sword better than most and lay a cold eye on a man. He wasn’t jolly with all that lard, but he didn’t have the authority that Brother Price used to wield.
‘Damned if—’
Brother Rike slapped Liar around the back of the head and he pitched forward into the mud. Grumlow, Roddat, Sim and the others crowded at Rike’s elbows.
‘He wouldn’t see much,’ I said.
They turned to look at me, leaving Liar to get to all fours, the road dripping from him. I may have killed Price with three stones but that didn’t stop me being a skinny ten-year-old child and the brothers weren’t about to take direction from me. That I lived at all came down in equal measures to a quick hand with the knife and to the Nuban’s protection. It would be another two years, after Sir Makin had found me, with both him and the Nuban to watch my back, before I would openly make the brothers’ decisions for them.
‘What’s that, runt?’ Rike hadn’t forgiven me for Price’s death. I think he felt I’d stolen it from him.
‘He wouldn’t see much,’ I said. ‘They’d take him to the infirmary. It’s a separate building usually. And they’d watch him because he looks as though he’d be stealing the bandages while they wrapped him.’
‘What do you know?’ Gemt aimed a kick to miss me. He didn’t have the balls to risk connecting.
‘I know they don’t keep their gold in the infirmary,’ I said.
‘We should send the Nuban in,’ Brother Row said. He spat toward the monastery, lofting the thick wad of his phlegm a remarkable distance. ‘Let him work his heathen ways on those pious—’
‘Send me,’ I said.
The Nuban had shown no enthusiasm for the venture from the moment Fat Burlow first dreamed it up. I think Burlow only suggested hitting St Sebastian’s to shut Rike’s
I spread the fire not to be warm, though the fever set my teeth chattering and my hands shaking too much to be of use. I set the fire to be clean again. To burn up every trace and touch of Inch and his wrong. To devour all memory of my weakness and failure.
‘I meant to stay there,’ I said, my voice a whisper. She would hear me even so. ‘I don’t remember leaving. I don’t remember how close the flames came.’
They found me in the forest. I had wanted to reach the Girl-who-waits-for-Spring, to lie on the ground where I buried my dog and to wait with her, but they caught me before I got there.
I raised my head. ‘But that’s not where I’m bound tonight, Katherine.’
There are truths you know but will not speak. Even to yourself in the darkness where we are all of us alone. There are memories you see and yet don’t see. Things set apart, made abstract and robbed of meaning. Some doors when they are opened may not be shut again. I knew that, even at nine I knew it. And here, a door that I had closed long ago, like the lid on a coffin, the contents no longer fit for inspection. Fear trembled in my hands and I tightened my grip against it. No part of me wanted this, but I would chase Katherine from my dreams and own my nights once more – and honesty remained my sharpest weapon.
I pulled on the handles to those doors of frost and corruption, I hauled on them and it felt as if I dragged a spear into my guts, inch by bloody inch. And with a squeal of protest the doors opened, not onto a throne room, not to my father’s court, but to a dull autumn day on a rutted path that wound away up the valley to where the monastery sat.
‘Damned if I will!’
Brother Liar was damned long ago but we none of us mentioned that. Instead we stood in the mud of the road and in the chill of a damp westerly breeze and watched the monastery.
‘You’ll go up there and ask them to see to your wound,’ Fat Burlow said again.
Burlow could swing a sword better than most and lay a cold eye on a man. He wasn’t jolly with all that lard, but he didn’t have the authority that Brother Price used to wield.
‘Damned if—’
Brother Rike slapped Liar around the back of the head and he pitched forward into the mud. Grumlow, Roddat, Sim and the others crowded at Rike’s elbows.
‘He wouldn’t see much,’ I said.
They turned to look at me, leaving Liar to get to all fours, the road dripping from him. I may have killed Price with three stones but that didn’t stop me being a skinny ten-year-old child and the brothers weren’t about to take direction from me. That I lived at all came down in equal measures to a quick hand with the knife and to the Nuban’s protection. It would be another two years, after Sir Makin had found me, with both him and the Nuban to watch my back, before I would openly make the brothers’ decisions for them.
‘What’s that, runt?’ Rike hadn’t forgiven me for Price’s death. I think he felt I’d stolen it from him.
‘He wouldn’t see much,’ I said. ‘They’d take him to the infirmary. It’s a separate building usually. And they’d watch him because he looks as though he’d be stealing the bandages while they wrapped him.’
‘What do you know?’ Gemt aimed a kick to miss me. He didn’t have the balls to risk connecting.
‘I know they don’t keep their gold in the infirmary,’ I said.
‘We should send the Nuban in,’ Brother Row said. He spat toward the monastery, lofting the thick wad of his phlegm a remarkable distance. ‘Let him work his heathen ways on those pious—’
‘Send me,’ I said.
The Nuban had shown no enthusiasm for the venture from the moment Fat Burlow first dreamed it up. I think Burlow only suggested hitting St Sebastian’s to shut Rike’s
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