I clawed my way back to full consciousness to find myself lying on wooden floorboards, my hands bound in front of me. Loud voices filled the room with strident argument. I eased my eyes open just a crack.
“I tell you the money’s ‘ere, right in this’un.” That was a stocky man who brandished a small box at three other men and the woman from the alley. “I saw ‘im count it in with me own two eyes and I saw ‘im seal it a’fore me two eyes.”
“Then let’s see it!” screeched the woman avidly.
The man placed the box firmly in the centre of the table, pointing to the wax sealing it closed. “I tell ye, ‘e sealed it a’fore me eyes so ye’d know it were all there, and most particular ‘e was that t’lanky man’s throat was to be slit the moment we ‘ad ‘im out of sight. A’fore all else…”
“I say,” said one of the other men, “we see t’money with our own two eyes a’fore we do t’throat slitting. I ain’t ‘anging for money I never seen…”
“Aye!” shouted the others.
The leader’s fists clenched in frustration. “It’s there, I tell ye, right in there. We dun wanna cross a man like that, I tell ye. We must slit t’throat right quick, at once, then we can count out our coin to our ‘eart’s content.”
I bit my lip and wondered how long the argument would go on for. The leader would scarcely wish his cronies to get their hands on their share before the deed was done, or they’d all be off to spend it and he’d be left to do the hanging job himself.
The corner of the room in which I lay was shadowed and twisting my head cautiously, I could see Ystevan’s slumped form beside me. Strands of escaped hair fell across his face, and he was clearly still unconscious. His hands had also been bound in front of him. Our kidnappers were far too busy arguing to be paying any attention, so slowly, carefully, I rolled onto my side and began to pick awkwardly at the knots that bound the he-elf’s hands.
Raven chattered soft inquiry from my bodice.
“Stay there, Raven,” I murmured, unheard over the din of voices. I could manage the knots myself, and I didn’t want Raven to be seen.
“What ‘bout t’filly, anyways?” one of the men was demanding. “Worth a pretty penny, doncha think?”
“We’ll take ‘er to ‘im, stupid,” said the leader. “Surely ‘e’ll pay for t’infurmation an we might get ‘er back to sell, after.”
“Sell!” scoffed the woman. “Ransom, doncha mean. Seen ‘er clothes? Tha’s a fine filly, that un.”
“Ransom, sell,” said the leader impatiently, “but we take ‘er to ‘im first an collect twice, now let’s do t’lanky fellow.”
“Money first…”
The conversation was, to my relief, becoming distinctly circular. The last knot came undone and I tucked the loose ends out of sight. The he-elf would surely discover the looseness of his ropes as soon as he woke up, even if I couldn’t indicate it to him in some way.
When he woke up. I stared at him in anxious frustration. The hair fluttered slightly as he breathed, but he wasn’t so much as stirring.
“Ystevan,” I whispered, as loudly as I dared, tapping the backs of his hands with my fingers. “Ystevan, wake up!” Wake up and get us out of this! I feared I’d boasted to Sir Allen prematurely. Even if I risked Raven’s discovery by getting her to chew through my own bonds, there was no way I could fight off four men and one woman whilst carrying an unconscious he-elf.
“Let’s slit ‘is g’dame throat!” the leader was yelling.
“Money first!” roared the others.
I trembled in fear lest the leader lose patience and decide to do the deed himself. Then Ystevan’s head moved slightly and a moan crept from his lips. Hastily I raised my bound hands and clapped them over his mouth, hoping the movement would go unnoticed.
He froze, instantly silenced. His eyes opened, gleaming through his hair for a long moment as he presumably took stock. I took my hands away and opened my own mouth to whisper that his hands were free.
Before I could get the words out he raised his still rope-wrapped wrists up behind his head and brought them forward, the rope sliced through. Oh, I thought, in fleeting chagrin, and I was lying here wondering how I could free my own hands!
He reached out more discreetly, hooking a single strand of my own bindings with a finger and yanking. My wrists felt like they almost came off, but the rope snapped like cotton, and I quickly and surreptitiously shook my hands free.
Stealthily I rolled to my feet, mirroring Ystevan, who paused to snatch up his cane from nearby. He leant on it as he weaved into an upright position as though his balance was decidedly off. How badly was he hurt and how well would he be able to fight?
Over by the table the four men were still arguing vehemently, but unobserved by them, the woman was running her fingernail through the wax seal, breaking it. Ystevan’s eyes alighted on the same sight and he swung around, grabbing me and folding me to his chest—in one single, frantic leap, he bore us through the open window.
For a split second, over his shoulder, I saw the woman’s hand on the box lid, poised to open it, then we were plummeting towards the cobbles below and the scene was whipped from my sight.
Uh-oh, we’d leapt from the ATTIC window...
Ystevan landed on his feet, knees bending to take our weight. And somehow, we were safely down.
Then the screaming began. It was the most terrible screaming I had ever heard. It curdled the blood in my veins to ice and drove shards of terror into my heart. Raven shrieked and scrabbled to bury herself yet more deeply in my clothing. I pressed my ear to Ystevan’s chest, clinging tightly and covering my other ear with my hand. It didn’t do any good. The screaming was ten times worse than the screams of the man I’d once seen burned at the stake, and it seemed to hammer through me. There was no escaping it.
Finally, there was silence. Slowly, trembling, I eased my grip on the he-elf, relinquishing the rapid but reassuring pounding of his heart under my ear and looking up at him. His face was dead white in the gathering twilight.
“What was that?” I whispered.
“A…curse, for want of a better human word,” he replied, his voice almost inaudible. “A curse I would not wish to try and counter whilst awake, let alone unconscious.”
In other words, if that box had been opened whilst we were in the room, we would have shared the screamers’ fate. I shuddered involuntarily. “Are you...going back in?”
He made to shake his head and staggered slightly. “No,” he said firmly. “I have no need to see. Let’s get out of here.”
One arm still around me, he set off, leaning heavily on his stick for once and weaving slightly; I suspected the arm was not there entirely for my own comfort and support. I didn’t query his desire to be gone without delay, though, and I let him lean on me as much as necessary, but for all his lofty height he seemed not at all heavy by human standards.
“That was a trap, wasn’t it?” I said under my breath as we walked. Or staggered, in his case.
“Yes,” he answered, trying not to nod. “Perhaps if I hadn’t been distracted I wouldn’t have... I don’t know. It was only because I do not expect that from human women, you understand.”
I shot him a look. Most men would have been suffused with embarrassment at having been struck down by a member of the weaker sex; the he-elf seemed worried that carelessly allowing himself to be struck down by a woman might imply that he did consider them the weaker sex. Well, they did seem to have a queen by default, rather than by mere...lack of male heirs. Very intriguing.
He didn’t pause until we were out of the Quays and up as far as Lombard Street. Though beginning to tremble with gathering shock and the day’s cold, I handed my now conspicuous ragged cloak to a delighted urchin.
Ystevan stopped beside a public trough and leant against it. “We’d best get you a hot drink,” he said. “But before we do, perhaps we’d better…” He produced a handkerchief and dipped it, then reached out to wipe my face.
The handkerchief came away stained and I touched my swollen nose and lip. “Ah. Make me look a little less as though I’ve just been punched in the face.”
“Quite,” said the he-elf. He gave my face another wipe, then put the handkerchief down beside the trough and traced his fingers slowly over the damage. The ache of the bruises and sting of the cuts rapidly eased. “All better,” he said after a moment.
“Good,” I said, with relief. “If I went home looking like that my father would probably never let me out again.”
Ystevan groaned and leant on the trough. “What did I just heal it for? It was hardly serious!” He sighed and sat down properly on the trough instead, fingers going to his own injury. “Obviously high time I dealt with this.”
He ran his hands over the back of his head for rather longer than he’d spent on my face, but his pained expression gradually eased. When he’d finished, his hands came away glistening in the evening darkness.
“My brains were still on the inside, leastways,” he remarked, rising easily to his feet. Taking the clip from his hair, he plunged his head into the trough, rinsing the blood away. He straightened, flicking his hair back and then shaking it so vigorously it was clear his head was entirely better.
I peered at his hair throughout this exercise, stroking Raven absent-mindedly through my dress. It seemed to almost glimmer, the gold visible again. But it was too dark for the color to be very noticeable and quickly enough he fastened it back again with the clip, and then it just looked as plain black as usual.
Wringing out his damp handkerchief, he tucked it away, led me to the nearest inn—The Pope’s Head—secured us a private room and ordered hot wine. I sat in front of the fire and steamed damply for a few minutes in silence. Finally, I looked up to where he sat opposite, rather quiet, his hair steaming as well. “Thank you, Lord Ystevan,” I said quietly.
He made a movement as though to brush my thanks aside, and said rather cautiously, “You can call me Ystevan, you know.”
“Are you not a Lord?” I inquired lightly, struggling with such conflicting feelings. The pain of his cruel words still lingered, along with my anger and the frustration that he wouldn’t heal my father, but...the more I remembered, the more he felt like Ystevan, my friend...and he had just saved both our lives.
He shrugged. “For all intents and purposes, yes. It is the closest human equivalent for the elfin title of fort guardian. But even large Torr forts like Torr Elkyn are small, and we are all largely interrelated to some degree or other, so we are most of the time much less formal with one another.”
“Yes. Well, I suppose you can call me Serapia. Lady is...rather formal between friends. And I suppose we are friends, are we not?” Surely there simply were some things two people just could not go through together without becoming friends—no matter what had passed between them previously?
He smiled faintly, as though he knew what I meant. “Yes, we are friends,” he sighed, but his eyes were bright. They quickly became more wary. “Don’t think that it changes a thing with regard to that parent of yours, mind.”
That would be too much to hope, wouldn’t it?
The wine arrived then. I cupped the warm flagon in my hands, sipped gratefully, and looked up before the pot boy could leave. “Soup, bread and cheese for me, please,” I said, too hungry to wait and see if Ystevan thought to ask if I wanted anything.
Ystevan looked faintly startled, but added quickly, “The same for me.”
When the pot boy had departed, Ystevan sat and regarded me with a rather singular look. “You really are a very strange girl,” he remarked. “I’m sure I am supposed to be attempting to bring you around from a swoon about now, but you are sitting there ordering a meal. That is to say, I know perfectly well how plucky you are, coming all that way on your own, and...everything. But still, you seem to have taken what just happened without turning a hair. Comparatively, anyway.”
I looked down at my hands, which were still shaking as they held the flagon, though I began to feel much better. “Well, I haven’t eaten all day,” I said defensively.
“You know that’s not what I mean,” he retorted, taking one of my hands meaningfully in his. “And…I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean it.”
I looked down into my wine for another moment, my rough, lined, weather-beaten hand still in his. So. He’d never really thought me spoiled. He’d just been hurt and lashing out. “Alright,” I said at last. “I’ll tell you the story of my…singularness, if you’ll tell me the story about the dragons and the Elfin’s creation.”
He laughed and shook his head slightly in amusement. “Very well,” he said, returning my hand to me. But another flicker of wariness went through his eyes.
The pot boy returned with our food so we moved from the hearth to the table. When the pot boy was gone, I began my tale. I told him about my mother’s death, my uncle, my long years on the streets, and how I had finally found my father.
“So you see,” I added pointedly as I finished, “I do not say he is a good man from any childish bias!”
He held up a quelling hand. “Not now, Serapia, least, not if you want to hear about the Elfin’s creation. If I...uh...need to tell you?”
I couldn’t help scowling, at that. “Yes, you do,” I said grimly. So he had told me before...but I couldn’t remember.
For a moment it looked as though he would begin, but then he shot a look at the dark windows. “One moment,” he said, then added, as though it explained everything, “the sun is gone.”
He reached under his coat to the back of his belt, and I realized he had another pouch there, a long thin one that ran along it. From this he took seven fist-sized rocks and, moving around the table, he placed them down in a circle right around it. Then he settled back into his chair. “Now I can give you my full attention.”
I raised my eyebrow, for the performance with the rocks was most intriguing. “What are they?” I asked, nodding to them.
Ystevan looked surprised—then wary again. “Oh. Travelling ward stones.”
So I’d seen those before too, had I?
“Well, um, here goes,” Ystevan said quickly, with a slightly forced smile. “The reason why demons can hurt the Elfin, and no other living thing on this earth, is to be found in our creation. It has been pointed out, I believe, that the British humans are a—how shall I put it?—mongrel race, of Picts, Celts, Romans, Saxons, Normans and so forth. I mean no offence by pointing this out,” he added, and I nodded to reassure him. The mixed ancestry of my native land was something well known to me. But...mongrel race... I had heard that phrase before.
“Wait a minute...” Suddenly it was unfolding in my mind.
Ystevan had joined me by the fire after dinner, and I’d asked him why demons could hurt the Elfin, and he’d begun his reply in almost the same words...
“Well, if the British are a mongrel race, the Elfin are a mongrel species in many ways. God almost seems to have simply allowed us to come into being through various other of his creations—we’re not sure how deliberate we were on His part. Of course, you can say that about any number of other things, so he probably did intend us all along.
“But, let’s see,” he went on. “You know about the fall of Lucifer and the angels, I suppose?” I nodded, so he continued, “There’s a lot of confusion about dragons among humans, because most humans rarely encounter them for good reasons, but by and large they are on God’s side. Certainly to begin with, when he set them to guard hell, a job they still do. Demons are free to trickle to and fro from the gates, but the dragons prevent a mass exodus. However, the demons fell through free will, and some dragons have done the same; it’s only natural, I suppose.
“Anyway, the dragons were set to guard hell, but eventually their numbers multiplied, and some went to live in heaven instead. But while there were too many to live comfortably in hell, there were not quite enough to be comfortably split between the two realms, and they grew lonely. Some of those still in hell sought solace with the fallen angels, and some of those in heaven...did likewise. There were children born of the unions.
“Anyway, God did not much care for this fraternizing, and he banished the dragons from heaven to the earth, with their half-breed offspring. The devil did not care for the situation either, probably because the dragons were, after all, God’s servants, and he also drove away the offending dragons and their children. All these arrived on earth, where the dragons, still not a species large enough in number to easily find mates among their own kind, fell for the occasional human, until their numbers rose sufficiently for the temptation to be removed. But again, half-breed children were born.
“For some time it is believed the dragon children, as we call them, lived in two separate groups: the dark children, those of the demons, and the fair children, those of the angels. The children of the humans were split between the two groups. But their common blood was such that intermarriage soon came about, especially since they were so few in number themselves. The two groups mingled and merged inextricably and formed the Elfin. So when I say we are mongrel, I mean it,” he concluded.
I stared at him. “Dragon, human, angel, demon?”
Ystevan nodded. “Hence demons can hurt us. Angels probably could too, but they don’t. Humans and the rest of God’s creation are on the physical plane with regard to their bodies. But the Elfin have bodies that exist on the physical and spiritual plane at once. Which is in some ways a fearful nuisance, since it makes us vulnerable to the demons and they don’t like us at all.”
“Why don’t they?” I asked curiously.
Ystevan shrugged. “I think they’re just plain jealous. We have their blood in us, yet we live on the earth, very civilized and nice to one another, and they are trapped in hell, in eternal suffering. So they’ll kill any adult elfin they can lay their claws on. Hence why none other than fort guardians ever go beyond the wards after nightfall.”
“They don’t come out in the day?”
Ystevan shook his head. “Not in the daylight, anyway. We’re not completely sure why not. It’s probably because the day is full of angels, and whenever you have a demon and an angel within a mile or two of one another, feathers and scales soon fly. It’s a good thing they can’t, though, or the majority of elfin would never be able to go out at all.”
A shiver ran up my spine at this narration. “A demon couldn’t hurt me, could it?”
“No, of course not. You’re human. It can whisper at your soul subconsciously to lead you astray, but it can’t lay one claw on you physically.”
I thought about all this for a moment. “So are there still dragons living in the world? Or have knights killed them all?”
Ystevan smiled. “The knights only get the few that go astray and acquire a taste for human flesh and livestock, so yes, most definitely there are still dragons. There’s a pair living at the top of the mountain, and another pair nearby. They also like wild places.”
...Dragons! Had I seen one? Would I ever know, or had Ystevan stolen that from me, forever?
I stared across at him. He was doing that searching gaze thing again. Ticking off his list? I knew I should forgive wrongs done to me, but every time I wondered just how much I’d lost the anger surged back...
“Did I see a dragon?” I demanded.
His gaze dropped from mine, but he shook his head slightly. “We...didn’t run into one when out and about.”
I lowered my eyes as well, and stared at my already almost empty plate. The warmth I’d felt towards him so recently had chilled.
“Serapia.”
I looked at him again.
He leant forward and placed his elbows on the table, looking me intently in the eye. “Serapia, I am more sorry than I can say about what I had to do. But it was my duty. Can you understand that?”
“Did you even tell me beforehand?”
As far as I could remember, I’d had no idea what was coming. How had he done it? And when?
He let out a little breath, almost a snort. “Of course not! What if you had bolted to try and avoid it? Aside from the fact you could have got hurt, we’d have had to chase you, and in the—admittedly very unlikely—event that you actually got away, well, I’d have betrayed my kin, wouldn’t I?”
I looked down at my plate again. The problem was, from everything he had told me so far, I could see why he hadn’t hesitated to put duty first. Why he had considered it necessary. His choice just seemed to hurt a lot more than it rationally should.
I ate the last few bites of my meal, trying to settle my surging thoughts—until the first of London’s clocks began to strike the hour. I looked up, appalled at myself, sitting there eating and drinking and listening to—or at least remembering listening to—interesting things. “I must get back. My father will be so worried!”
“I will take you home,” said Ystevan, as I hoped he would.
“Oh, but…can you?” I said, suddenly looking at those seven ward stones.
“It’s all right,” he reassured me. “I would not sleep or be inattentive whilst outside of a ward at night, but so long as I am alert the danger is not great. Generally, a guardian is a match for practically any demon they have the misfortune to meet. That’s really the power requirement to be a guardian, and it is high. But one doesn’t meet demons very often. They don’t usually bother attacking a guardian.
“Don’t think me complacent,” he added, rising from his chair. “I have met, which is to say, fought, four demons. At night, that is. I have hunted many in daylight, the foolish ones trapped by the break of dawn, hiding away in some crack until nightfall. But of those night-time four I sent three howling for hell.” He reached for the first stone.
I raised my eyebrows. “And the fourth?”
Ystevan smiled rather a twisted smile. “Oh, the fourth sent me howling for home. Without laying a claw on me. So trust me, Serapia, when I say that I am not complacent about demons.”
With this less than entirely reassuring revelation, he put the rest of the stones away and offered me his arm.
~+~