Yet the body still demands to be fed and to deprive it would be foolish. I eat an early breakfast in the common dining room of the inn because I can’t quite bear to remain in my room any longer; warm buttered porridge, toast, and hot coffee flavoured with vanilla and cinnamon. The inn-mistress, Beck, organises the restocking of my provisions for a few extra silver bits. She tells me, too, as she pours more coffee, of the mysterious body in the alleyway beside the inn. I widen my eyes and ask questions she cannot know the answer to, as if I’m equally ignorant.
‘Man or woman?’ I ask, thinking Aoife would be proud of the quick-witted lie.
‘Man. Handsome too, before he had his throat cut.’ She straightens, put her free hand on a hip like she’s settling in for a good chat.
‘Who was he?’
‘No one knows. He wasn’t a guest here and thus far no one’s admitted to either meeting him or renting a room. It seems he just appeared where he died –
as if by magic.’ She laughs cynically.
‘No witches around here, surely?’ I say and we exchange a glance. Witches everywhere, she answers without words, but let’s keep them secret and unburned.
‘His throat slit!’ I say. ‘Was it robbery?’
‘No, for his gold jewellery was intact, and there remained some coin in his purse. Which is not to say,’ she confides, ‘that there aren’t criminal elements in Lelant’s Bridge, but to kill a man and not steal his valuables? Well, that seems more personal than anything.’
I raise an eyebrow. ‘And that suggests that at least one person in town knew him. Unless…’
She waits for me to speak, the excitement of such a crime is clearly a bright spot in her day; rumour and gossip can have that effect.
‘…unless there’s a madman about. Who knows what might happen?’
She puts a hand to her chest, shudders. ‘Gods forfend!’
‘How terrible to meet one’s end in such a fashion,’ I reflect, ‘unknown by those who find you, and perhaps leaving behind others who will never know your fate.’
The landlady nods and pats my shoulder. A group of guests clomp down the stairs and enter the dining room and, after confirming I’m almost done, she turns her attention to them.
I finish my breakfast in peace. No one troubles me, although the party of six men do throw me glances. I’m clearly a lady for all I’m dressed in trousers, with my hair pinned up primly. When I woke I carefully studied the map Ben brought with him and memorised the turns and twists of it, while I thought about the old silversmith insisting that no one was meant to know about Blackwater. That might explain the lack of road signs, of notations on other maps, of a place in people’s memories. Of Isolde not giving her father an address to write back to. An entire estate kept secret…
This morning I’ll cross the bridge on the kelpie-horse and head into the unfamiliar. Well, in all honesty I’ve been doing that for weeks now, but I have a certainty from hereon in, that I am advancing towards something old and new: my parents.
Unremembered, thought dead for so long. Isolde and Liam Elliott. Mother and Father. Yet all I can think of is my mother. In truth, I’ve always wondered about her, but my father was simply… an irrelevance? Does Isolde look like me? I look like Aoife, I look like all the proper O’Malleys… but what does my father look like? Is there anything of him in my face? “Pretty boy,” Maura had said, but that tells me nothing. Were his eyes blue or brown, yellow or grey? Or perhaps a light green that seemed to see inside you?
They left me behind.
I can’t help but recall that. Left me like an extra coin, something they didn’t want. Left me behind like a limb chewed off in a trap.
Will they welcome me? Will they like me? Will Isolde love me?
* * *
The bridge is wooden and its planks make a hollow sound under my mount’s hooves. I feel it echo in my chest. Looking over the rails I scan the river below; it rushes down the weir frothing and fast. I see no sign of heads or tails, neither mer, rusalky, nor morgens or nixies – only the kelpie-horse beneath me – just the liquid untroubled by anything more spiteful than fish. Perhaps I’ve gone beyond them. Perhaps the mer won’t or can’t go into water so fresh, with no salt in its makeup. Perhaps they grow sickly and weak when deprived of that chemical. Or perhaps they’ve simply given up on me.
So, northward I continue. For how many days? Who knows, the map has no scale. But there’s that tree to look for, the strange tree with a face in its trunk so neatly drawn by the silversmith.
One tree in a forest, I think.
What, though, if all this is wrong? What if it’s all a lie? What if the silversmith was simply mad and I’m following a road laid out by demented fantasies? Where to go then? Where to hide? Will Aidan send someone else after me? Will he assume his assassin could not find me? Chose to flee with me? Was killed by me? Who knows? I cannot write to Brigid and ask. I cannot know if Brigid will be handed her own letters or if Yri or Ciara or whoever will give them to Aidan first.
The sound of my passage changes as the beastie’s hooves leave the bridge, touch the packed earth of the road. The rhythm remains, but dulled, now a thudding, deadened, and the echoes in my chest cease. A calm settles over me.
Blackwater. Blackwater is my destination, at least at first. Answers await me there. My parents. Secrets. Secrets that are mine, not second-hand ones I’ve stumbled upon and stolen. I touch the silver ship’s bell at my throat; the raised scar on my hip tingles as if it’s burning. Then the
