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“How are you feeling?”
I heard the voice well enough but I couldn’t place it. It wasn’t Smidgen’s and the room was dark so no clues there. Where was Smidgen?
I replied, “My eyes ache.” They felt like I imagined they would after a week without sleep. Little doubt they would be bloodshot but I rubbed at them anyway. I pulled a yawn, saying, “I feel tired.”
“You’ve slept solidly for three days.”
“Three days!” I sat bolt upright, ruffled the cover up with my knees and kicked it off the cot. “Three days,” I repeated and made to stand. A pang of giddiness exploded in my head and I swooned and sat back down immediately.
“Another day and you’ll be fit enough to leave.”
“Thank you,” I said disbelieving how weak I was feeling. “Thank you for helping me.”
“I did nothing. It was him who healed you.”
The room was so dark it was hard to make another figure out but now that it was mentioned I could see someone else in the room. Or at least sense them. “Is it night?” I asked.
“No. It’s day.”
“Would you open the shutters, please?”
A stab of yellow light shot through the opened window and I forced my painful eyes shut fast in retaliation. Through gritted teeth I teased one lid open and then the other. “You healed me?” I asked, still gritting.
“No,” said the stranger, lifting an arm in the direction of the window and my attention followed. Stood in front of the opening was Bent, all black and leaning and malevolent looking.
“You healed me, Bent?” This was impossible. He was at Black Pots, wasn’t he? Facing an army of Turned. Besides, he wasn’t a carer, a nurturer; he was a killer, as damned as they come. No, Bent couldn’t have cured me. There was a game being played here or else I was the victim of some tactless jest. “What, what was wrong with me?”
“The Turned you fought had Black Bloodwort; they passed it on to you. They were carriers of this terrible and consuming canker. You nearly died.”
“Canker?” I repeated.
“Nothing makes sense in the world of the Turned. Plant diseases affect living flesh. They corrupt and destroy everything they touch.”
“I felt sick the moment I spied them. Violently sick.” I shut my eyes and recalled with clarity how biliously my guts had reacted when the Turned had broken from the tree line and come after me.
“Everything they’d have touched or been close to would’ve suffered their corruption just as you did. Trees would’ve died, flowers rotted and the very ground they stood upon turned to lifeless dust.”
“Smidgen,” I gasped. “What about Smidgen. He fought them too. Is he well?”
“Smidgen is fine. He shouldn’t have eaten their cadavers though. We had to bury his faeces down deep in the earth but their remains seem to have worked through his system already. He’s outside. He would’ve visited you but he’s too big to fit in the house and Savige likes his walls where they are.”
“I do,” said the mystery man next to Bent.
Good old Smidgen. He had a constitution of iron. “I’m glad he’s well,” I said tailing off. I’d never felt so tired before and pulled a yawn as wide as any face Smidgen could. “I’ll see him in a bit. Where’s my clothes?” I made to stand but Bent was having none of it and forced me back into the cot.
“You, you seem different,” I said because I thought he was. He sounded different. More affable, more friendly.
“I am as I was.”
“But you were at Black Pots,” I said, still finding it inconceivable that he could be here, in this house, with me now. I’d seriously doubted if Smidgen or I would ever see him again and yet here he was, large as life, and on top of that he had healed me of some vile Turned canker. “There were a lot of Turned in Black Pots,” I said as way of reinforcing the miracle that he had survived, of emphasising my disbelief.
“We’d best not go to Black Pots. Not for a few years. I left it in a mess.”
“Claw, Black Pots, we’re fast running out of bolt holes.”
“And you can’t stay here,” said the stranger, Savige. He had shocking blonde hair, short around the ears, and was of a stocky frame. “I’m the miller whose pool you were bathing in. When you’re strong enough you owe me a favour and then I want you gone. I want my life back to normal.”
“Favour?”
“I’ve a Turned locked in the mill.”
I looked at Bent, saying, “Well you can kill it, right?”
“He hasn’t left your side since me and me boys brought you here and the fat one hasn’t budged from the doorway save to take a dump. Which seems about four times a day.”
“I’ll do it now,” I said, swinging my naked legs out of the cot.
Bent put a cold hand on my shoulder to stay me. “Tomorrow. We’ll look into it tomorrow. You should rest for the remains of the day. I’ll go and let Smidgen know you’re awake. Savige, feed Flendin the rest of that soup.”
With Bent gone, Savige brought a bowl of warm soup across to me. Whether he was helping me out of the goodness of his heart or because Bent scared the hell out of him I didn’t care to know. Us helping free his mill of Turned was clearly an offshoot, a favour for a favour.
“What Turned is it in your mill?” I asked, thinking it could be one of the old ones.
Savige shrugged. “Big and ugly like they tend to be,” he said unhelpfully. “The ones you caught Bloodwort from came through here weeks ago. My friend, Scortch, keeps a few animals. They all keeled over dead bar four and those that didn’t die caught a fever. Not one of the Turned touched his animals; just their proximity was enough to fell them. Powerful stuff, Bloodwort, deadly too. The one you call Bent, he saved the four beasts just as he did you.”
“I never knew he had it in him.” I was ravenous and drank the soup down quickly. It wasn’t hot but it had onions in it and I liked onions.
“Don’t look the kind, do he?” Savige took the empty bowl from me and poured a glass of water from a stone pitcher. Brusquely he handed it to me.
“Thank you.”
“Looks like you’ve been on the road for an age. Where you off to, when you’ve sorted me problem out? From what I can gather you’re from Claw.”
“We’re going to Never,” I said, clutching the glass with both hands.
“City lover eh. Can’t abide them meself. We had a herald pass through here on his way to Claw and he came from Never. That’s where all this Turned trouble started, in Never. Someone killed the King. Murdered him and nicked his shield. He was known as the sun god, the King was. Some god when anyone could sneak up on him in the middle of the night in his own bed and kill him. The herald told us all about it. Said the army is back from Whacken after conquering all the northern tribes. Nearly all the rigs, captains that is, have gone south to Manor Watch where the capitol is, leaving almost all of Never unguarded and unsafe. City life you can keep.”
“So the King was killed for his shield?”
“Yeah, the King’s shield. Everyone’s talking about it. Now I’d hate to be the poor sod that did it when they finally do catch him. Chop him up I reckon.” Savige swung conspiratorially close to me and his voice dropped to a whisper. “No doubt you know your own business and if you do get rid of that Turned I’d be mighty grateful and all that but your friends, the two you travel with, they could be trouble. You shouldn’t go to Never with them. I know Turned when I see them.”
“Turned,” I spat water over myself. “Thank you for your advice but one of them just saved my life and the other would have if he could have. That makes them pretty good friends in my book.”
“As you will,” Savige bounced back up like we’d never had secret words. “Keep your own company. Just thought I should let you know things as I see them.”
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“He’s awake,” said Bent, and Smidgen bounded up to the house. He pressed an eye to the door and flapped around like an excited child.
“Get up, Flendin. Move to the door. Let me see you.”
Bent left them to it and continued round the back of the house and down an incline to where, surrounded by trees, the mill and its stagnant water were. He looked at the mill for some time, like he was stripping through the wattle and daub to see the Turned lurking inside.
A shrunken head hovered from out of the bushes and drew level with Bent’s covered face.
“Do you know who’s in the mill?”
“Speritan,” said the head.
“Then we must be careful. Where’s the Golem?”
“Between you and Never.”
Three more heads came in from the north and they were buzzing with news.