Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf #1)(52)

I cried out in shock, knocking over the water bowl and breaking the vision.

The bowl had shown me the figure of a man, suspended in light, eyes closed, with wide green leaves dressing the wound on his naked torso where Toris had embedded his knife.

Trembling, I unfolded the bloodcloth.

After Kellan died, the circular drop of his blood had faded to almost nothing, but it had never totally disappeared. It was now almost as dark as the day he let it fall to tie his life to mine.

There were three bright drops of blood on the cloth. Three. Was it proof that somehow he’d toed the edge of death and come back from the brink?

Stars save me, I thought, astounded. Kellan is alive.



* * *



I had to get a message back home to Renalt. Not to my mother, trapped as she was in the Tribunal’s custody, but to the Greythorne estate. Kellan’s family. They’d been kind to me when I was a child, and they were loyal to my mother and the crown.

And what was more, they’d have the resources and the reasons to find Kellan, if he was truly still alive and not a conjuring of my wild imagination, and ensure his safe return home.

Bringing anybody else into the knowledge of my identity could endanger them. It would have to be a stranger. Someone who didn’t know me, someone who wouldn’t question what I needed them to do or why I was asking them to do it. Someone who wouldn’t think twice about going on a dangerous journey with nothing to go on besides my word.

In short, I needed to find someone who had nothing to lose.

I put on my blue cloak and swept the items on the table into my satchel before depositing a chunk of bread and a stoppered cruse of water alongside them. It was completely dark outside, but I found Zan’s hidden stairs with ease, climbed them all the way to the top of the wall, and made my way down the walk. Not north this time but south, toward the gibbets. I passed Forest Gate first, skirting the narrow walkway at the base of the statue of the three women. This was the nearest I’d been to them, and they were even more stunning up close. The first was youthful and lithe, the second bore the soft curves and swelling stomach of a mother-to-be, and the last was knobby and bent with age, like a weathered tree.

The air was cool and clear now that the rain had finally stopped. Rainwater had collected in several places on the roads below, reflecting the waxing moon like scattered shards of a broken mirror. I was grateful for the damp smell left behind by the moisture; it covered up some of the stench of death that began to pervade the air as I came upon the gibbets.

The gibbets were spaced between High Gate and Forest Gate, hanging from hooked chains and spread every fifty feet. The first two housed men who were recently dead, men who’d probably been injured in the struggle to stick them in the gibbets. They’d bled out in their cages. The third gibbet held only bones and a hollow-eyed spirit that was slumped despondently among its remains. When it saw me, it threw itself against the bars, snarling and snapping its teeth, straining toward me with bony fingers. I shivered and passed it by.

At the fourth gibbet I slowed to a stop and leaned out over the notched battlement. I was greeted by the gaze of a living man. His mouth was still stuffed with the gag, but his eyes were bright. I tried to count how many days had gone by since Petitioner’s Day. Two? Three?

“Ray? Raymond Thackery?” I said into the dark, and he slowly nodded.

“I have food and water. Without it, you’ll die. You’ll have another few days if you’re lucky. Do you understand?”

A nod.

“I need a message delivered. To Renalt. It is of the utmost importance, and it requires absolute secrecy. There will be a great reward in it for you. A monetary reward as well as safety and asylum in Renalt. Do you understand the risks?”

A nod.

“Is this something you would be willing to do?”

Another nod.

“Good.” I went to the pulley and turned the crank wheel. It creaked stubbornly as I reeled the gibbet in inch by inch, straining every muscle and dragging on the wheel with all of my weight. The heart and lung complaints I’d absorbed from Zan had long since subsided, but by the time the gibbet finally came swinging over the top of the battlement, I was sweating and panting anyway. Two more cranks, and it was to where I could reach it.

There was a lock on the gate, and Thackery watched as I jammed my little knife into it and worked the latch until it gave and the door swung free. He was trembling as I helped hoist him down. He sank against the battlement

I untied his gag. “Here,” I said, unstopping the bottle of water to hand it to him. “Drink this. Careful, now. Careful.”

“They will . . . will kill you . . . if they know you helped me.” Thackery wheezed as he wiped the water from his mouth. “And it will be unpleasant. There’s a reason folks don’t just bust out every family member what gets hung up in a cage.”

“I’m not afraid of the king.”

Between gulps, he said, “The king is stupid, but he has a certain creativity when it comes to makin’ folk suffer. And there are plenty o’ people who exploit his stupidity and capitalize on his particular brand of creativity. Oughtta be afraid of them, too.”

“Consider me warned.” I gave him the bread next. “Eat slowly or you’ll be sick.”

Between large bites, he asked, “What message am I to carry, and to where?”