Returner's Wealth Read online

  Her shoulder blade was dark with a mottled bruise, stark and ugly against the whiteness of her skin. Micah reached out and touched it. The skin felt hot beneath his fingertips, and silken smooth. Slowly he traced circles across the bruise until the cooling ointment had gone from his fingertips, and only its heady intoxicating smell remained.

  Thrace gave a soft sigh, and Micah saw her fingers go white as she gripped the pot.

  ‘Am I hurting you?’ he asked, reaching for more ointment and smoothing it over her shoulder as gently as he could.

  Thrace shook her head. ‘Not hurt,’ she said, and she did not wince as she looked back at Micah. Her fierce dark-eyed stare was vulnerable yet defiant. ‘Your touch is gentle.’

  ‘You two done yet?’ called Eli from the entrance to the cavern.

  ‘Nearly,’ Micah called back, flustered and fumbling beneath Thrace’s gaze.

  He reached round and grasped his tattered cloak and took hold of its hem in his teeth. Quickly and savagely, he tore a strip of cloth from it. Then, with clumsy awkward fingers, he wrapped the strip of cloth under her arm and over her shoulder. His fingers brushed lightly against her skin as he repeated the manoeuvre three more times.

  ‘It’s not too tight, is it?’ he asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘I … I’ll just tie it off then,’ he told her.

  He brought his head down close to her shoulder, and slit the end of the cloth in two with his teeth. He could feel the warmth of her body on his face. He could smell its sweet musky scent. He stooped forward, knotted the two frayed lengths of material together, then straightened up.

  ‘That should do it,’ he said, his attempt at confidence undercut by the catch in his throat.

  Thrace eased her soulskin back over her shoulder, and Micah helped her, his touch lingering longer than was necessary for the task.

  ‘All set?’ said Eli, from the cavern entrance.

  The pair of them nodded.

  ‘They went that way,’ he said when they joined him at the cave entrance. He indicated a couple of bloody bootprints leading off along the ledge and out from behind the waterfall. His jaw clenched. ‘And so do we.’

  He set off. His walking staff was attached to the back of his rucksack, the wyrmeskin bundle cradled tenderly in his arms. Thrace followed him, with Micah close on her heels.

  ‘What’ll happen to Jura’s great whitewyrme?’ he asked her.

  ‘The smaller wyrmes will pick it clean.’ She shrugged. ‘Wyrme to wyrme. Kinwise.’

  They left the cavern behind the waterfall and stepped out onto the narrow ledge. Outside, the sky was overcast, but the full moon behind the thin blanket of cloud lightened the grey sky. It looked like soured milk.

  ‘Watch your footing,’ Eli’s voice floated back.

  It was sound advice. This track was steeper than the one on the other side of the waterfall that they’d taken before. It zigzagged up the sheer rockface, so narrow in parts that Micah was forced to rely on no more than the toes of his boots and the tips of his fingers to keep from toppling backwards. He was soon panting hard. He looked up.

  Thrace was just ahead of him. She too was using her hands for support, but despite her injured shoulder, she displayed a remarkable grace and agility in every movement she took. Aware of the danger in being distracted, Micah forced himself to look away from her slender soulskin-clad body and concentrate on his own progress.

  Glancing up a little while later, Micah saw that Eli was now some way ahead of them, sure-footed and tireless despite his precious burden.

  As they reached the top of the green haven, the cloud thinned out completely, and the fat moon sent down bright shafts of light that turned the crags silver. Before them lay a flat stretch of pitted rock, yet Eli kept climbing up the rough surface of a solitary outcrop. Micah was about to follow, but Thrace stilled him with a hand placed on his arm.

  She placed a slender finger to her lips, and looked up. Micah tipped his head back and craned his neck.

  The cragclimber had reached the top of the crag. The moonlight glowed on one side of his face, one shoulder, one arm – and on the gleaming wyrmeskin bundle that he laid reverently on the rock. He knelt down and unwrapped the wyrmeskin.

  Micah caught a glimpse of Jura’s hair. It looked like spun silver. Eli arranged the body on the draped wyrmeskin with tender care, straightening the legs and shoulders and crossing the arms over the chest, then climbed slowly to his feet.

  He looked down at Jura, up at the moon, then turned away. His pale-blue eyes gleamed wet.

  He clambered purposefully back down the side of the crag and rejoined them on the pitted rock. Micah continued to stare at him, but the cragclimber made no response to his questioning gaze. Instead, he crouched down. He peered closely at a squirl of mud; he touched a small pebble, knocked loose in its own depression like a tooth about to come out. His arm rose and he pointed off across the rock slope.

  ‘That was the way they went.’

  Thrace’s dark eyes narrowed as she looked ahead. ‘They’ll follow this shelf, then drop down through the crevices beyond those peaks,’ she said.

  Eli nodded. ‘Reckon you’re right on that score,’ he said, setting off across the rock. ‘You take the wyrme’s-eye view, Thrace, and I’ll keep my kith eyes on the ground at our feet. They’ll not escape us.’

  Not for the first time, Micah saw the girl hesitate and look up expectantly at the skies for a moment, before following in Eli’s footsteps. She didn’t look back and, with a shrug, Micah brought up the rear, his tattered cloak flapping forlornly behind him.

  They walked through the night. It was a relentless tramp. The only breaks Eli and Thrace allowed themselves were those foisted upon them by the thickening cloud. Whenever it grew too dark to see by, Eli would hold up and wait for the moon to reappear, to confirm they were still following the tracks, before continuing. He would not strike a match. Behind him, Thrace kept her eyes resolutely on the horizon – when she wasn’t scanning the skies overhead.

  As for Micah, even when the sky was swept cloudclear and the moonlight illuminated every single grain of sand, he was unable to spot the signs that the cragclimber saw so effortlessly. A bruised leaf. A tousled tuft of grass. Displaced dust …

  They continued, with Eli stooping and squinting at nothing that Micah could see, then striding on; and Thrace always close behind. The sky ahead was flushed with dawn when Micah’s gaze fell upon a telltale sign there was no mistaking. Blood. There were spots of the stuff lying on the trail in a red constellation, and a larger puddle that had gathered on a squat rock and tippled down one side.

  Eli caught Micah’s eye and nodded thoughtfully. ‘That’s right, lad,’ he said. ‘One of them’s hurt. And hurt bad.’

  He straightened up and pulled the length of gulchroot he’d been chewing from the corner of his mouth. Beside him, Thrace surveyed the landscape; up ahead, and back the way they’d come.

  ‘Stopped here recent,’ Eli noted. ‘The fourth place they’ve stopped since the head of the ravine.’

  ‘And the trail ahead gets no easier,’ Thrace added.

  Eli pushed the root back between his teeth and nodded. ‘They’re slowing up.’

  He tipped his leather hat back and scratched thoughtfully at his scalp. He squinted up at the sky. The clouds were melting away, snatched off by a rising wind that had a chill about it and nipped at the skin.

  ‘Happen we could rest up ourselves a while,’ Eli announced.

  The words made Micah realize just how weary he had become, and he moved on past the bloodstained rock, swung his backpack to the ground and sat himself down heavily beside it. His legs were aching. His belly growled. The others sat down on either side of him.

  They ate in silence. They did not set a fire, despite the cold.

  Thrace seemed unaware of the drop in temperature
. She sat still, one hand wrapped round her raised legs, the other plucking now and then at the dried meat in her hand. She looked up at the sky, her eyes wide with expectation as she scanned the darkness overhead.

  ‘What’s your wyrme called, Thrace?’ said Eli, his brow creased and voice gentle. He was still chewing on the same wad of sechemeat that Micah had seen him put in his mouth five minutes earlier. It was like he’d forgotten how to swallow.

  ‘Aseel,’ Thrace replied, and her voice was filled with pride and longing.

  ‘Aseel,’ Eli repeated. He shifted the sechemeat from one side of his mouth to the other.

  Thrace bit into her lower lip, and Micah saw her eyes moist over. Eli turned towards her.

  ‘Been called?’

  Thrace nodded.

  ‘It’s hard to resist the call of your own kind. Leastways, that’s what Jura always maintained of Asra.’ He frowned. ‘How long’s Aseel been gone?’

  ‘This is the fourth day.’

  ‘And you feel like you have been cleft in twain,’ said Eli softly. ‘That was how Jura described it when she and Asra got parted.’ He shrugged. ‘But they found one another again. It’s a mighty powerful thing, kinship …’

  Micah frowned. He was staring down at the ground, tracing circles and crosses with a fingertip.

  ‘You and Aseel been kinned for long?’ Eli went on.

  Thrace nodded, her lips pressed hard together. The pair of them fell still. Micah raised his head and looked at Thrace.

  ‘How do you get to become kin with a greatwyrme?’ he asked, his question breaking into the silence.

  He saw Eli and Thrace exchange looks. Thrace’s eyebrows flicked up. He’d said something foolish, he knew it, and he swallowed uneasily.

  Eli turned to him. ‘Kinship’s a deep matter,’ he told him gravely. ‘Not easily spoken of …’

  He fell still again and stared off to the left, as though he was turning something over in his mind. Then he swallowed the sechemeat and cleared his throat.

  ‘Jura once told me of her kinship with Asra,’ he began. ‘She spoke of it unbidden by me, but I was honoured by the hearing of it.’

  Micah drew his legs up to his chest and rested his chin upon his knees. He glanced at Eli, who was tugging thoughtfully at an earlobe.

  ‘Jura told me she found kinship when she was but a slip of a thing, no more than seven years old …’

  Micah frowned. Beside him, he heard Thrace’s soft intake of breath.

  ‘She was wealdborn, a child of the high country … Her mother died at the moment of giving her life, or as soon after as makes little difference. She was raised by a gutsman who may or may not have been her father. Jura had no way of knowing. She was set to work by him as soon as she was able.’ He shook his head gravely. ‘Like I told you, Micah, the weald’s a harsh enough place for those of us that are fully grown and can choose our trail, let alone for the young ones who have no say in the matter.’

  He fell still and looked down at the ground. Micah watched him for a moment, then turned to Thrace. Her lips were tight, and she was smoothing a hand slowly across her bandaged shoulder, over and over.

  ‘Way Jura told it to me,’ Eli continued, ‘the gutsman left her in a craghut and didn’t return. Four days and four nights she waited, through a duststorm in the middle of the dry season, as she remembered it.’ He turned to Micah. ‘You ain’t yet experienced true dry season in the weald, have you, lad?’

  Micah shook his head.

  ‘It can be a ferocious time, ’specially when them winds get up. They can drive in duststorms from the east so bad you can’t see your hands before your face. Gets into your mouth, your eyes, your nose, and it stings like the forkprod of the devil hisself.’ He nodded. ‘Jura reckoned it was the worst duststorm she had ever seen. Maintained it went on for the four days and nights, and on into a fifth, though I’ll allow it was a long time after the events that she did the maintaining. And she was but a child …

  ‘Anyway, she told me how, on that fifth day, she gathered what little courage she possessed and went out into the storm in search of her maybe father. How she searched for him, staggering blindly, her hands grasping at the dark swirl, finding no one; her voice screaming out for him as loud as the choking dust would allow …’

  He shook his head. When he spoke again, his voice was calmer, more measured. His eyes were wider than Micah had ever seen them.

  ‘Said she lay herself down when she could go no further, and then slept.’ He sighed. ‘Apparently the duststorm had passed when she awakened.’ A smile tugged at one side of his mouth. ‘She said the whole world looked like it had been dusted with oatmeal flour.’ He frowned. ‘She was lying at the top of a white crag, and …’

  Micah stared at the cragclimber. The fine hairs at the back of his neck stood on end in the chill wind. He did not raise his collar.

  ‘And?’ he breathed.

  ‘And there was a whitewyrme coiled up about her,’ Eli said. ‘It was protecting her. Keeping her safe and warming her with its embered breath.’

  ‘Asra,’ said Micah.

  ‘Asra,’ said Eli. ‘He found her. For that is the way with kinship. Wyrmes find their kin, and sacrifice everything for the communion they undertake.’

  Micah frowned. ‘Sacrifice?’ he said.

  ‘There ain’t no other word to describe it, Micah, for by helping a lost kith child in that way, a great wyrme is tainted, and that taint won’t never leave. They’re shunned by others of their kind, for ever; excluded from the fellowship of the wyrmeclan that they lived among since their hatching.’ He shrugged. ‘I’d call that a sacrifice, wouldn’t you?’

  Micah nodded.

  ‘It was a sacrifice that Asra saw fit to make. And that’s how their kinship began. Leastways, that was what Jura told me years later – when I’d gained her trust and friendship,’ he added. He glanced across at Thrace. ‘But I guess each kin has their own tale to tell.’

  Thrace was half turned away and looking back into the distance from where they’d come. Micah followed her gaze.

  There was no sign of Aseel, yet the sky was not empty. Far behind them, black specks, like scraps of charred paper, were fluttering down towards the top of a glistening white crag.

  Carrionwyrmes, Micah realized. They had found Jura’s body.

  He turned back to Eli, but the cragclimber’s eyes were shut. Something else in the sky caught Micah’s attention.

  ‘Eli,’ he said.

  The cragclimber made no reply.

  ‘Eli,’ he said, more urgently.

  ‘I seen ’em, Micah,’ Eli told him quietly. ‘That’s the way kin are honoured up here in the weald …’

  ‘No, not Jura,’ said Micah softly. ‘Look.’

  Eli opened his eyes.

  Micah was up on his knees, his arm pointing at the trail ahead of them. Thrace was now looking the same way. Slowly, Eli turned, and all three of them stared at the thin twist of grey-yellow smoke that rose up into the sky and flexed in the chilled breeze. Eli’s lips curled to reveal the stained teeth behind them.

  ‘Well spotted, Micah, lad.’ He looked back at Thrace, his pale eyes ice-hard. ‘Seems like we’re closer than any of us anticipated.’

  Thirty-Eight

  ‘And you’re sure he’ll hold to his promise?’ Bethesda persisted.

  Esau rubbed a hand over his cropped hair. ‘He’ll do right by us, Bethesda,’ he said, his deep voice sounding almost plaintive. ‘Solomon ain’t never let me down.’

  Bethesda nodded, but the scepticism remained in her beady eyes. The pain at her hip wasn’t helping her temper. She was loath to call it intolerable, because that would have meant admitting defeat. But in truth, that was what it was. Intolerable. She skitched round awkwardly on the rock, trying to ease the searing darts of pain that ran up and down her leg. She grimaced.
/>   Esau grimaced with her. ‘If I could take your pain upon myself, you know I surely would, Bethesda.’

  She nodded. She knew he would too. ‘You can’t,’ she said bluntly.

  She was angry. Angry they’d got left behind, and angrier still that she’d been careless enough to fall victim to that kin creature in the cavern. It was an old one, but stronger than it looked, and as slippery and hard to pin down as all of its kind. And vicious deadly. She hadn’t seen the spike of the lance until it was embedded in the top of her leg and being twisted, in that way kin do when they skewer their victims.

  Her howls of pain had brought Esau and Jesse skittering over, and they had dealt with the creature. Jesse had taken pains and time over its torment, as was his habit, while Esau had turned away and tried, with caring intent and clumsy fingers, to tend to Bethesda’s wound.

  It was bad. All kin wounds were bad. Deep-lingering and painful slow to heal. Bethesda had done her best to keep up, but on the third day had been forced to concede defeat. Solomon had gathered them round the fire, and they’d all said their piece. The matter was decided. Leah and Solomon would take care of the wyrmeling deal. Jesse would travel separate, and find the highest bidder for the spoils of the whitewyrme. She and Esau were to go to the winter den, where they would wait for the others to join them.

  That was the plan. But her doubts kept on niggling. ‘I mean, what’s to stop them splitting the riches between the three of them and heading back to the plains without us?’

  ‘Solomon wouldn’t do that,’ said Esau stubbornly. He crouched down in front of the shivering kith woman and took a hold of her small cold hands. ‘He just wouldn’t, Bethesda, believe me.’ He frowned, and his eyes narrowed from thin slits to two dark lines. ‘I ever tell you ’bout the time back in the northern scrim, couple of years gone, when he confronted three gutsmen in my defence? Or how he rescued me from that swallow hole down snake falls? He took me on when I was a greenhorn departer, with no seasons in the high country under my belt, and he taught me everything I know. Trapping, skinning, bartering, scamming. I tell you, Bethesda, we go back some, Solomon and me. I would entrust my life to him.’ He squeezed her hands warmly. ‘He will see us right.’