Читать книгу Blue Fire - Janice Hardy - Страница 9

Chapter Five

They wanted the bounty. Wanted it so much they’d kidnapped me from a tracker. A good plan, actually. Insane, but good.

“What about the girl in the transport with me?” I asked as they bound my hands.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” said Uncle, rubbing his shoulder. “She might even be free by now. Those men at the docks were pretty unhappy about a pair of Takers being arrested.”

The boy nodded. “Especially that one guy, right, Fieso? Blonde hair, tall. You should have heard him going on and on about you being a hero. He had the whole berth in an uproar.”

Danello. “Oh, yeah.” Fieso chuckled and shook his head like he couldn’t imagine anyone sticking their neck out for someone else. “Resik listened for a minute and started smiling.”

“That’s when I got the idea.” The boy, Resik I guess, winked and tapped his temple. “Let them do the risky work, and if they pulled it off, we’d grab you right out from under their noses.”

These people would see soldiers burning houses and use it as an excuse to steal what was left behind. My escape options were few. I had little pain to use, and outrunning them with my hands tied was unlikely. I couldn’t count on a rescue, and I wasn’t even sure the others had gotten away. Vyand might have captured them all.

“What are you going to do to me?” I asked.

“Kill you,” said Uncle, casual as you please.

“Head works as proof, right?” Fieso added. “We got a box anywhere? Heads are messy.”

My stomach threatened to make a mess right there. “You don’t have to do this.”

“You got five thousand oppas? We’ll turn you loose.”

“Wait! The posters don’t say anything about me being dead.” They paused. “The Duke wants me alive. Kill me and you’ll get nothing.”

Fieso frowned. “Nobody ever wants criminals alive.”

“The Duke does. He needs me.” For what I wasn’t quite sure, and I hoped they wouldn’t ask. Luckily, they didn’t strike me as the smartest fish in the lake. I didn’t want to be handed over to the Duke either, but it beat having my head chopped off. Hard to think up an escape plan without a head.

“I don’t think so.” Fieso picked up an axe I hadn’t noticed on the table.

Please, Saint Saea, no.

Resik held up a hand. “Hold on, what if she’s right?”

“Easier to carry a head to Baseer,” muttered Fieso.

“Not if it don’t get us nothing.” Uncle stared at Resik as if he could divine the future from the pattern of his freckles. After a long minute he walked over and sat on the table next to Fieso. “It’ll be harder to get her there, but the boy makes sense. Posters said nothing about killing, and they usually do. The carriage is big enough to take her.”

“Not big enough to hide her.”

“Resik,” Uncle said, waving him over. “Go fetch that trunk off the carriage. She oughta fit in there.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to let me walk?” I asked. “Not if you run.”

“What if I promise not to?”

“You know,” Fieso said to Uncle, “heads don’t talk so much.”

I shut up.

Resik laughed.

“Go get the trunk so we can get out of here.”

This was so not good. I casually studied the room, hoping something would inspire a perfect escape plan. One table, two thugs, three chairs, and four bedrolls. No windows. Just the one door. Uncle had already demonstrated his vicelike grip, and Fieso was bigger and wider, with so many scars he obviously didn’t mind getting a little bloody in a fight.

Uncle wasn’t paying attention to me. He had his head down, studying charts spread out on the table. From the glimpses I caught, they were maps. Fieso watched me the entire time, his face blank.

Fieso chuckled. If crocs could laugh, they’d sound exactly like that. “She’s a sly one. Look at her – planning her escape.”

“Was not,” I said.

“Oh, sure. I saw them pretty brown eyes looking around.”

“Can always blindfold her,” Uncle said without looking up from the maps.

Fieso slid off the table and walked to the bedrolls. “And gag her. Ten oppas says she’ll scream all the way to the traveller’s house if we don’t.”

Uncle nodded. “Yeah, fine.”

Fieso pulled some cloth strips out of one of the packs and came to me. I had no idea what the strips used to be, but they didn’t look clean or soft. The closer he got, the more I could smell them. Something sour.

“Please, don’t.”

“Look at that,” he said, tying a heavy knot in one of the strips. “Manners and sneakiness. Open.”

I shook my head. He grabbed my jaw, pressing his fingers into my cheeks. My mouth popped open and he shoved the knot into it, then tied the ends behind my head. I winced as he snagged some of my hair in the knot.

Fieso grinned and snapped the second cloth tight between his hands. Dirt sprang out and floated around my head. I held my breath so I wouldn’t sneeze.

“Might wanna close your eyes.” He stepped behind me. “This one’s a bit dusty.”

I squeezed my eyes shut as he tied the blindfold around my head. At least it made it easier to hold back the tears.

Heavy thuds, muffled voices. The first sounds I’d heard in close to an hour. I’d been counting the minutes, but lost my place at twenty-something when someone sneezed. I’d hoped it was Fieso, though it wasn’t much in the way of revenge.

The door opened and the thumps grew louder.

“What took you so long?” Uncle asked.

“It’s a trunk. It’s heavy,” Resik said, followed by a large bang. “And there’s lots of people out now, all yelling and throwing stuff. The streets are swamped.”

Hands seized my arm and yanked me to my feet, dragging me towards – I assumed – the trunk.

“Grab her,” Fieso said, and hands lifted my feet. I writhed but they just gripped me tighter. I reached out and found flesh, maybe an arm, and pushed my aching head into it. A man cried out and dropped me into something that smelled of fish stink and mould.

Something smacked me in the head as I tried to get up, and they all laughed.

“Stay,” Resik ordered as if I were a dog.

The lid thumped shut, and what little light came through the blindfold vanished. I could move my hands enough to reach up and pull off the blindfold, then yanked the gag out of my mouth. My mouth felt dry as a beach, but as soon as I heard crowds, I’d yell my lungs out.

One end of the trunk lifted and I knocked against the side. The other side rose a moment later and we were moving. Faint noises reached me after a few minutes, growing louder with every jostle. I rocked as the trunk rocked, banging into the sides as we went down the front steps. I’d never been one for lake sickness, but the heat and the swaying had my stomach flipping.

I listened, straining for sounds of people who might actually help if I started shouting. I prayed the others were safe and sound and heading for Barnikoff’s.

Voices yelled – commanding voices. Soldiers or guards for sure. “Settle down or you’ll be arrested,” said someone who had to be a guard.

“Help!” I kicked and pounded my fists on the sides of the trunk. “Help!”

The trunk dropped hard to the ground. I kept kicking and yelling, until a six-inch chunk of knife blade sliced through the top, cutting into my cheek. I jerked away and pressed a hand against it. After a heartbeat, the blade was yanked out.

“Next one goes through the side, where it’s heavy,” Fieso said through the hole. Most of me rested on that side, my back flat against the trunk. “I don’t want to risk the money, but heads don’t try to escape.”

I stayed quiet. And still, despite the sting in my cheek or the blood trickling down my neck. Smells from the tannery oozed through the cracks in the trunk, mixing unpleasantly with the fish and mould. The smell of fish got stronger. Horses whinnied, wood creaked, and waves swished around dock pilings.

We had to be at the traveller’s house on the docks, the only one with a stable. Unless you were military or very rich, horses and carriages weren’t allowed on the isles. That never stopped people from ferrying them over, though. Housekeeper Gilnari made a good living stabling both.

Once I was on their carriage and off the isle I was done for. I had to escape before they boarded the ferry.

Please, Saint Saea, do something. I’m out of ideas.

Voices drifted over, but nothing I could make out. Probably Uncle getting the carriage brought around and the horses ready.

“Let me help you with that,” someone called.

“No, I got it,” Fieso said, banging on the side of the trunk my back was pressed against. “You scream,” he muttered through the hole in the trunk, “and anyone who tries to help you dies.”

A minute later someone grunted and I was swaying. The trunk dipped sharply at one end and I crumpled on to my head. A sharp jerk and it righted again.

My heart and my hope sank. I had to be on the carriage now.

“Can she breathe in there?” The voice was muffled, but it sounded like Uncle.

“I gave her an airhole,” Fieso replied.

“Gonna need more than one.”

The carriage rocked, then the blade punched through the lid – two, three, four times – then again in the front. I flattened myself against the side.

“That enough?”

“Better make ’em wider.”

The blade returned, twisting in each hole until grape-size shafts of light shone through. “Happy now?”

“Yeah, she won’t bake to death. Won’t it get messy in there?”

“Not if we don’t feed her.”

I shivered, despite the growing heat in the trunk. It was four days, maybe five to Baseer by road. I’d gone three days without food before, but never longer. I’d known folks who had, so I could probably manage, but how long could I survive without water?

“Ferry’s boarding.”

“About time,” said Uncle. “Saints, my head is killing me. Wake me when we hit the mainland. I’m gonna nap.”

A door squeaked and shut, and the carriage lurched forward.

The shifted pain. How long before it thickened Uncle’s blood and wore out his body? It had taken only a day for Danello and his brothers to get pain sick after I’d shifted their father’s pain into them, but there had been a lot more of it. How soon until Uncle got sick?

How soon until he died?

Hope and guilt merged in a very uncomfortable knot in my guts. I’d killed him sure as if I’d stabbed him, only he didn’t know it. I didn’t see any of them going to a Healer. Maybe a pain merchant, but I doubted there’d be any of those along the way.

I shouldn’t feel guilty. He’d have killed me in a heartbeat. Cut off my head, just for money. Still, Healers didn’t take lives.

The crowd’s shouts echoed in my ears. Abomination! Murderer!

I wasn’t a Healer and I never would be. I had other paths: hero or murderer.

Saints forgive me, but I felt more like one than the other.

My stomach rolled with every sway, queasy again from the heat and closeness of the trunk. I focused on breathing – in, out, in, out – trying not to be sick. I didn’t think Fieso would open the trunk for any reason, no matter what noises I made or smells I emitted.

Reins cracked and the rocking got worse as the horses picked up speed. Getting to Baseer faster might help keep me alive, but it was a whole lot more uncomfortable. I banged off the sides, bruising my bruises and opening up the cut on my cheek again. Already every inch of me hurt. My arms and legs burned from being crumpled like dirty laundry, and I doubted my spine would ever straighten up again. At least I’d have some pain to shift when they did let me out.

And kill more people?

I swallowed the thought. They weren’t people, they were criminals – real murderers. It should have made a difference, but the knot in my guts didn’t go away. Maybe I could escape without shifting. I always had before, though I’d never been in this much trouble.

Hours later the light vanished from the holes in the trunk. The carriage slowed and stopped. Not long enough to be Baseer, so they must be stopping to camp.

Footsteps.

Someone fumbled with the latch and the lid lifted. Fresh air poured in and I gulped it like water. Night had fallen and stars speckled the sky over Resik’s shoulder.

“You move even a little bit,” he said, hovering over me with a knife, “and I’ll slam this lid down hard as I can.”

“I won’t.”

He dropped a water flask on to my lap.

“Thank you.” Sweat dripped into my eyes, but I didn’t wipe it away or go for the flask yet.

He shrugged. “Be a waste of money if you died on us.”

“Are you really this heartless?”

He seemed taken aback at that, his expression shocked, then guilty, then angry. “It’s business. Nothing personal.”

“Trade places with me and see if you still think so.”

“You’d do the same thing.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, you say that now, but try turning it down when it’s offered. Not so easy.”

I smiled, which seemed to unsettle him. “I’ve turned down more wealth than you’ll see in your entire life.”

“Then you’re an idiot.” He slammed the lid shut and relocked it.

I sighed, sucking down the water and treasuring the last of the fresh air before it grew stale again. Maybe I had been an idiot. Where would I be now if I’d really accepted Zertanik’s offer, emptied the League’s pynvium Slab, and helped him and the Luminary sell it? Would I be standing in Verlatta, showing them empty healing bricks of ill-gotten pynvium and demanding a fortune for them? Or living without worry in my own villa with Tali and Aylin?

Most likely I’d be dead or sharing a prison cell with both men. I had a feeling either was better than what the Duke had planned for me.