When her outthrust hand told Kiska she’d reached a depression in the veined granite, she threw herself into the opening she knew awaited ahead. She gasped for air, and not just from the strain of the climb. Her clothes clung to her, heavy and damp. The air retained the rich fetor of rotting humus and bird droppings. Kiska leant against one inward-canted wall to steady her breath. The crevice she stood in couldn’t really be called a cavern: it was more like a ragged cleft in the living rock of the island, a jagged fissure that shot straight into the cliff. Her heel dislodged chips of stone that shifted and crunched. She’d found places within where there was no floor to speak of at all, just a thinning skim of darkness descending straight down to a finger’s breadth.
She had played here as a child. It was her secret hideaway, though she had the feeling Agayla was aware of its existence. She’d explored every inch of the radiating cracks and the galleries of narrow, vertical faults. And though island legends told of secret caves and hidden troves of gems and gold, she’d found no trace of them. Broken decayed slats and bits of salt-dissolved iron scattered here and there were all she’d kicked up as reward for her efforts.
Overhead passed a portion of Rampart Way; it would be a difficult final climb. She rubbed warmth back into her hands and felt the burn of cuts as circulation flowed into salt-encrusted wounds. Perhaps she should wrap them in lengths of cloth. But what if it should slip or come loose?
Noise clattered from without. Kiska pressed herself against the cliff wall and listened: fabric brushing over stone, falling pebbles. Someone climbing outside. She edged farther into the cavern. As she did so, a shape from within loomed in the narrow stone confines like one of the revenants she’d heard tell of.
An instant of soul-clutching dread slowed her enough for the figure — a flesh and blood man — to grasp her hand. She almost smiled at such a mistaken move and used his resistance to snap a kick to the opposite side of his head.
The man grunted but held on. Kiska lost her grin.
A foot lashed out and cracked against her wounded knee. She bit down a shriek of stabbing pain as the leg gave way. He released her hand as she fell.
‘Don’t struggle,’ he told her.
She stared up at him; here in the dark he was mostly shadow, but there was something familiar about him.
He shook out a slim length of cord and stepped over her. Her every instinct wailed against being bound again, and she lashed out with her good leg, catching him high in the inner thigh.
A loud hiss escaped his lips, yet he bent over her again.
Kiska covered her face, cried, ‘No, please!’ She slipped the knife from the back of her collar. Before she could use it his booted foot came down on her wrist and something hard like a knout of iron smashed against her temple. The cavern’s darkness exploded into a dazzle of red and yellow pinpoints that shimmered and faded slowly.
‘You’ve a few moves,’ he allowed, grudging, ‘but you’re out of your depth here, child. Don’t make me kill you.’
Kiska blinked against the lights befuddling her vision. ‘Who in the Lady’s Pull are you?’
The man ignored her. ‘Turn your back,’ he told her.
She obeyed and he tied her wrists together. Another figure climbed up into the opening and the man moved to his side. They spoke and against the light of the moon Kiska recognized him. The flat, scarred face, cat’s whiskers moustache: the bodyguard of the very man she sought.
She laughed. The men ignored her, continued speaking in low tones she couldn’t catch. The newcomer was sent out again. The Seti tribesman returned to her. He pulled a black cloth from within his cloak. Kiska recognized the cloth and where it would be thrown.
‘I have a message for your master,’ she said as he readied the cloth for her head. The hands hesitated a fraction of a heart beat, continued down.
Darkness enveloped Kiska. ‘The man he met in the garden is dead,’ she said, too quickly and loud for her liking. Her heart hammered.
Silence. The sullen lurch and suck of the surf beneath. Kiska listened: not even the clatter or shift of stone chips underfoot. Nothing. Was he still there? Was anyone? Would they leave her here? Perhaps it was a sort of twisted kindness. After all, she’d be safer tied up here than roaming the streets tonight.
A hand took hold of the hood at its uppermost fold. It gently lifted up and away from her head. Her hair caught at its coarse weave.
A man crouched before her: a long, narrow mahogany-tanned face that appeared oddly seamless, bland even. Sunken, dark, black-ringed eyes. Brown pate shaven but for a long braided queue at his shoulder. A straight slash of mouth. Lips Kiska imagined shattering should they be forced to smile. Her quarry.
‘I’m told you have a message for me.’
He spoke aristocratic Talian with a hint of an accent she couldn’t place. As out of place on this island as gold in a fish’s mouth.
He waited, expressionless. Kiska found her voice. ‘In my shirt.’ She tried to raise her arm but only wrenched her wrist.
He raised one hand. ‘May I?’
‘Yeah — yes.’
He wore black leather gloves, his fingers long and thin.
‘No!’ barked the bodyguard. He yanked her away by the back of her collar then rummaged at her shirt. His hand brushed her small breast. She smiled to unnerve him but his eyes remained empty of emotion.
‘Hattar…’ her target murmured reprovingly.
She peered up at him. ‘Yes.
He found the scroll then shoved her over and pressed one knee down on her shoulder. His weight drove all breath from her. The scroll crackled as he tore at it.
‘Hattar,’ the man sighed, ‘you cannot read.’
Hattar grunted something.
‘Let her up.’
Unwillingly, he eased his weight. She gasped a deep breath, choked on dust and dirt she sucked in. Her side ached, pressed firmly into the uneven stones.
‘I will speak with her.’
‘Hunh?’
‘Raise her up.’
‘My Lord…’
Silence. Kiska waited. A look from
’You and my master will speak,’ he whispered. ‘But this dagger,’ and he wagged it before her eyes, ‘if you twitch, it will reach your heart through your back before you are even aware of it tickling your pretty soft skin. Do you understand me?’
She nodded, wide-eyed.
Hattar returned her nod. He raised her up and shifted her round. His master held the scroll in one hand and was tapping it against the other. The lips were curved downward ever so slightly. ‘My apologies for Hattar. He takes his duties very seriously.’
Kiska almost nodded, stopped herself. ‘Yes. He does.’
The man sighed, rubbed his fingers over his eyes. ‘What is your aunt’s name?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Agayla.’
‘What does she do at Winter’s Turn — Rider’s Retreat, I understand you sometimes call it here.’
Kiska stared. Had she heard that right? Winter’s Turn? She almost shrugged but felt a prick to one side of her spine and held herself rigid. ‘Ah, she… she consults the Dragons deck for the coming year.’
‘Yes. Many do. And?’
A test. He was challenging her obviously. Why Winter’s Turn? What was so… she remembered then. One eve sneaking down the stairs and watching from the cover of the landing while Agayla sat up all night, from midnight’s bell till dawn’s light. The side to side woosh of the shuttle. The click and rattle of the loom. Weaving. All night. Kiska licked her dry lips. ‘She weaves.’
