Sin Eater's Daughter 2 - The Sleeping Prince (3 page)

Before the soldiers came, I used to talk to the refugees hurrying through here on their way to Tyrwhitt. They told me how the king’s head, crowned with a crude wooden band, now sits at the centre of a row of them, mounted on spikes over the main gate into Lortune town. I know better than to be sentimental, but I can’t bear the idea of his handsome, hopeful face slack and staring over a kingdom he’ll never rule, surrounded by the heads of those who stayed loyal to him to the last. I don’t know if one of those heads is Lief’s.

I’ve asked every hollow-eyed refugee that I’ve managed to speak to if they’ve heard anything about a Tregellian being killed by the Sleeping Prince, or whether a head with hair and cheekbones like mine sits above the gates alongside the king’s. Whether they’ve heard of a Tregellian being captured and held. Or even hiding somewhere. I’ve spent hours walking up and down the length of the woods, waiting for him to come striding out, grinning manically, not even a little sorry for making me worry.

Because I can’t believe my brother is dead. Lief would have done anything to stay alive; he wasn’t the kind to throw himself on his sword. Had the Sleeping Prince told him to bend the knee to save his neck, he would have done. He’d have knelt, and bided his time until he could get out. He was clever – is clever. He must be trapped somewhere, perhaps ill, or wounded, or merely waiting until it’s safe to run.

Family first
, Papa used to say, whenever we fought. He’d remind us of his grandmother spiriting her sons away from the old Tregellan castle the night the people rose against the royals and killed them. Our great-grandmother had been a lady-in-waiting of the queen, and the wife of the head of the army. When she’d heard the people at the gates, she’d abandoned her post, taken her children and run. Run from her old life to begin again in safety. Other people come and go, but family is for ever.

Lief did the same. He moved us to keep us alive. He had to go to Lormere because we had nothing. We sold everything to cover our debts when we left Tremayne. This hovel, this draughty, dirty, cramped little hut, and the apathy of our neighbours are the last things protecting me and my mother while we wait for Lief to come home. Now it’s going to be taken from us too. Now we’ll have nowhere to hide.

And we need something to hide, because when the moon starts to round out and become fat and heavy, my once-gentle, steady and loving mother turns into a monster with red eyes and hooked hands who whispers through a closed door all the ways she’d like to hurt me.

But at least when she has the beast in her she can see me. She can hear me. When she’s my mother I’m a ghost to her. Like my father, and my brother, except I’m still alive. I’m still here.

Seventeen furious villagers are on their feet, shouting and shaking their fists, some clutching their amulets, some waving them, their protests unintelligible, save for the swearing. The room, which felt so large when I first entered, now feels stifling and dangerous, and I shrink in my seat, my hand going to the vial in my pocket. The soldiers shout for order, imploring people to sit down, and to listen. Unwin is slamming his fist on the podium, demanding silence, but I’ve already tuned it all out, my ears buzzing with the sound of my own rushing blood, my fingers gripping the edge of the bench.

I can’t leave Almwyk. I have no money; I have nowhere to go. I have to wait for my brother; he might not be able to find us if we leave. But mostly, I can’t leave because of my mother. Because I have no way to get her out of the house without her being seen. And she can’t be seen. Not as she is.

The soldiers finally restore order but the atmosphere is mutinous, mutterings rumbling across the room like thunder. Unwin looks down at us all with false pity in his eyes.

“I understand you’re upset to have to leave your homes,” he says smoothly. “The decree from the Council says that you’ll be welcomed as a priority at the new refugee camp outside of Tyrwhitt if you have nowhere to go. No questions asked. Just make sure to have your papers stamped by myself so they know you’re Tregellian, and not seeking asylum from Lormere.”

“Camps won’t keep us safe,” a voice pipes up from the middle of the room, Old Samm I think – an irrepressible gambler, but nice enough. “We can’t be expected to survive winter in tents, let alone a winter under attack if the Sleeping Prince comes.”

“By all means, you’re free to go elsewhere in the realm if you wish,” Unwin sneers. “The camps are merely an option for those who have nowhere to go, and no desire to be jailed for vagrancy. Or anything else.”

Again the atmosphere thickens with threatened rebellion. He knows that none of us would live here if we had anywhere else to go.

“So that’s it?” Old Samm continues. “We’re to be thrown out, unprotected?”

“This is war,” Unwin says with an air of drama, glancing around at the soldiers, trying to make eye contact with them. I like them a little better when their faces remain stony, refusing him the approval he’s looking for. “This is war,” Unwin repeats. “There are no easy roads from here on. We all must make sacrifices. Almwyk will be the base from which the whole of Tregellan is defended by our finest soldiers.”

“How will they protect us from golems?” Old Samm says, and Unwin looks to the soldiers again to help him. But it’s too late; the mention of golems sends a tremor through the room and suddenly everyone is back on their feet. “How are they supposed to defend us against monsters that can’t be killed? They’re ten feet tall and made of stone. Boy soldiers won’t stop them.” His words begin a flood of other voices, all of them terrified.

“I heard the Sleeping Prince can turn a man to stone by looking at him. Is it true? Is that how he makes his army? Are they people he’s bespelled? Will our amulets protect us?”

“We don’t have any temples; surely he’ll leave us be?”

“I heard he’s demanding a tax, paid in young women, and that he’ll eat their hearts,” a female voice calls, shrill with fear.

“Well, you’ll be all right then, you’ve not been young for a good thirty harvests,” someone bellows back at her.

“Does the holly work for ever?” another voice shouts. “Do the berries need to be fresh? If I wear the juices, will that help repel him?”

“Can’t we offer him something? Do we have nothing he wants?”

The noise level rises again as people shout their questions, pleading for answers or yelling abuse, and the soldiers step forward menacingly, hands on the hilts of their swords. But the villagers will not be cowed. Their voices get louder and louder, they stand on their chairs, and I can’t take it any more. I climb over the back of the bench, skirt down the side of the wall and out of the door.

I pause to lean against the pillory outside the House of Justice, my heart beating so fast I feel nauseous, my skin flushing warm and then turning cold. Above me the sun is starting to dip down towards the horizon, and dread curdles inside me. It’ll be dark soon. I need to make my mother her sedative. I need to find Silas and get the money for Unwin.

I need my father and brother to be here.

No
. I push that thought away as my heart trips over itself. Not now. I have things to do.

But my body doesn’t obey me, and fear makes a corset around my ribs as I walk blindly back towards the cottage, ignoring the stares of two passing soldiers, marching towards the woods.

I can’t breathe.

When the soldiers have passed I stop, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to calm down. My brain spits out thoughts so fast I can’t cling to them; could I drug her into sleep to make the journey?
Journey where? You have nowhere to go, nothing, no one.
Could I keep up the pretence that she’s ill, something contagious?
We’re at war; we’re really at war
. How much longer could we stay here?
We can’t; he’s less than fifty miles away
. We have nowhere to go.
We have to leave; we can’t leave.
How will Lief find us?
We can’t leave him behind.

Four hundred souls were killed in Haga, added to the three hundred in Monkham. We don’t even know how many died in Lortune, or in the smaller hamlets and towns across Lormere. When Lief left for Lormere it felt as though he’d travelled half a world away, but now it’s no distance, the East Woods a flimsy barrier that an army of golems could trample with ease.

I imagine the heads of people I know mounted on spikes along the outskirts of the West Woods. Unwin. Fussy Old Samm, sour-faced Pegwin with her mutterings and dark looks.

Silas.

My hands lower to cover my mouth, and then I see him, as if thinking about him summoned him into being. Loitering in the shadows at the side of my hut, out of sight of the soldiers, shrouded in his customary black cloak. Silas Kolby. As always, his face is hidden by the hood that hangs so low it leaves only his mouth visible. It’s a mark of how strange life in Almwyk is that my single friend is a boy whose face I’ve never actually seen, and that that seems completely normal to me now.

It’s his height that allows me to recognize him; he’s a good eight inches taller than I am, and I’m tall enough for a girl. His feet are crossed at the ankle as he leans against the wall with an air of studied nonchalance that I can see straight through. He raises his head at the sound of my footsteps and my mouth suddenly dries.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he says in his low, ragged voice. All of him is ragged: his patched cloak; his shabby gloves, the fingertips thin and worn; his scuffed boots. His words always seem to catch on my insides, like a goose grass burr, or a torn fingernail dragged across silk. His voice sticks. “How was the meeting?”

My voice is thankfully steady when I reply, though my heart still beats like the wings of a bird against a cage. “If you’d come, then you’d know.”

“Alas, I had other plans. Skulking. Creeping. Avoiding discovery and possible arrest. The usual.”

“How did you even know there was a meeting?”

“Skulking. Creeping. I just said that, pay attention.” When I raise my eyebrows at him, my lips pursed, he smiles and continues. “I overheard a pair of soldiers moaning about having to police it. Were there many of them there?”

I try not to return his smile, and fail, as some of my anxiety recedes. “We practically had one each.”

“Was it that bad?”

“It was that bad,” I say, my smile fading, the knot inside my heart returning and tightening. “Golems marched on Haga last night and destroyed the temples there. Four hundred people were killed.”

His mouth opens, but he says nothing, waiting for me to continue.

“The Council think he’ll move for Chargate next. It’s not that far from here, fifty miles at most. We’re at war, officially.” I take a deep breath. “They’ve closed the border.”

Silas nods, chewing his lips thoughtfully before he speaks. “It was bound to happen, sooner or later.”

“Sooner, it seems.”

His mouth becomes a line and he speaks hesitantly. “What about Lief?”

I shake my head, glancing at the forest involuntarily. I don’t believe Lief is dead. I
know
he isn’t. But it’s not something I want to talk to Silas about. He knows Lief was in Lormere, and that he hasn’t come back. The way he speaks about him, gently, distantly, tells me he’s less optimistic than I am. I don’t think we need to talk about it.

I look around before I reach into my cloak and pull out the vial of hemlock draught hidden there. “Here. I brought it to your hut on my way to the meeting. You weren’t there,” I tell him.

“It’s not my hut any more. I had to move again,” he says. “I’m in the one by the old pigsty now. Gods know for how long though.”

He holds out a gloved hand for his potion and I drop it into the palm, watching his fingers curl over it, making it disappear. Then it vanishes into the folds of his cloak, to be replaced with gold coins. I open my hand as he does, so he can drop them in; we don’t touch, Silas and I, not even like this, not even during the simple taking of a coin or a vial.

“Thanks.” He nods, peering around.

When he pulls his hood down further, preparing to leave, I blurt, “Do you need anything else?”

He shakes his head, his lips pursed. “No, thanks. With the border closing I expect the situation will change.”

Silas has placed a fair few orders with me over the last few moons, wildly varying his requests from the most innocent remedies to the deadliest poisons. I’ve recorded each and every order in my apothecary log: what it was, how much of it, and the cost. He pays three gold florins for the illegal ones, and four silver centas for anything else. I have no idea what he does with them; he won’t tell me, nor will he tell me how he gets the coin to pay for them. If I’m honest, he never tells me anything. I’ve tried asking outright, and I’ve tried tricking him into it. He always shakes his head ruefully, giving me a close-lipped, inscrutable smile, and tells me if I ask no questions, I’ll be told no lies.

I shrug, as though I don’t care either way. “You should probably get going,” I remind him. “The meeting was practically over when I left. It was risky to come here.”

“I didn’t have a choice, Errin. I told you, I had to move; you wouldn’t have known where I was if I hadn’t come to you.” He smiles. “I was careful, don’t worry, I always am. Besides, I needed to know what the meeting was about.”

“And if I hadn’t left it early?”

A slight twitch in his jaw as his smile falls away. “I suppose I’d have some explaining to do.”

His tone strives for nonchalance, but his body gives him away. He’s tightly held, coiled like a snake, ready to flee, or strike if he has to. He’s nervous about being here, being exposed, despite his words, and I feel a perverse thrill in my stomach that I can read him like this. For three moons I’ve been feeding him parts of my life: about my father dying; about Lief’s determination to support us and then his disappearance; about my apothecary work; in fact everything except for my mother’s condition, in the hope it would prompt him to reply in kind. That’s how it’s supposed to work, a secret for a secret, and a story for a story. Instead he takes my tales with a nod, as though we’re at some kind of confessional, the corners of his mouth turned up or down depending on what the story is about. He never comments or judges, instead listening and absorbing and never telling me anything personal in return.

But I’ve discovered that you can learn a lot without words. And what I’ve learned is hard won, because – though he’s the closest thing I have to a friend here, and as far as I know, I’m his – I have no idea what he looks like beneath his hood. It sounds impossible. It ought to be; how can you call someone a friend, know them for so long and not know what they look like? Yet I don’t. I don’t know what colour his eyes are, or his hair. I know his mouth, and the point of his chin, and his neat teeth. Once I even saw the end of his nose when he tipped his head back to laugh. But that’s all. From our first meeting, to today, he has always, always been hooded, gloved and cloaked, and he’s never removed them, never even pushed them aside, whether we’re indoors or out. When I asked him why, he told me it was safer like that. For us both. And to not ask again.

Mysterious boys are not as enjoyable in reality as they are in stories.

The obvious reason would be that he’s hideously disfigured in some way, but something about the way he carries himself makes me think that can’t be it. In my mind’s eye he’s dark haired and dark eyed, his hair brushing his shoulders, but in truth I don’t have a clue. The few times I have managed to peer up into the ever-present hood I’ve seen the glint of an eye, before he’s pulled the hood lower, the rest of his face shadowed and hidden.

Despite that, I can tell when he’s worried, or anxious, or angry, or pleased. I’ve learned to read his lips and his shoulders and his hands, the way he holds himself. He leans forward when he’s relaxed, his head tilting to the left. He taps his fingers on whatever surface he can find when he’s agitated: tree stumps, his own legs, his arms if they’re crossed. When he’s amused, two dimples form on the left of his mouth, none on the right. He rubs his tongue along his front teeth when he’s thinking. I can see the things he doesn’t say, because they’re written all over him.