The Merchant of Dreams (Night's Masque, #2)(7)

"Holla! Kiiren! Sandy!"

After a moment a short, slight figure emerged from the tent and shaded his eyes to look up at where Mal was standing.

"Catlyn-tuur!"

Mal scrambled down the last few yards and Kiiren met him halfway across the dell, teeth bared in a very human smile. For a moment Mal saw again the unknown outspeaker lying dead with his shipmates in the Corsican tower. Kiiren hesitated, his concerned expression betraying the change in Mal's own demeanour. Mal forced a smile.

"Well met, old friend," he said, and stepped forward to embrace the former ambassador.

"There is not bad news about your young friend?" Kiiren asked, pulling back and peering around Mal, as if expecting the girl to be hiding behind him.

"Hendricks is well. I came on ahead, to see my brother." It was Mal's turn to look around. "Where is he? How… how is he?"

"He is much better since last time I wrote to you. Healing almost done."

Healing. Well, that was one way of looking at it.

"He went down to shore," Kiiren went on, "to gather food. Perhaps you would like to go to him?"

"Sandy can wait. There's something we should talk about, first."

Kiiren frowned. "It is so important?"

"Yes."

Kiiren led the way to his tent. It was the same one the ambassador had occupied back in Southwark, a small domed affair with bright blue silk panels adorning the interior. It even smelt much the same, a mixture of smoke, skrayling musk and shakholaat. Bedding enough for two was piled on top of a richly carved sea chest of dark wood, but there was no other sign that his brother had been here. Mal was not sure what he expected to see; when Kiiren had taken charge of him, Sandy had owned nothing but the clothes he stood up in and a few books.

Whilst Kiiren brewed fresh shakholaat over a charcoal brazier, Mal considered how to broach the subject of the Mediterranean expedition. He had rehearsed this conversation so many times on the journey from Provence, but now it came to it he hardly knew where to start. Before he could frame a strategy, however, the tent flap opened and Sandy ducked inside.

Mal scrambled to his feet and stood eye to eye with his twin. Sandy gazed back levelly for a moment before breaking into a smile and hugging him. Mal patted Sandy's back, swallowing tears of relief. For a moment he had been afraid Sandy wouldn't even recognise him; odd as that would be, since apart from Sandy's clean-shaven chin they were as alike as two peas in a peascod. At that thought he released his twin and looked at him afresh. Sandy was looking better than Mal had seen him in years, suntanned and flushed with the exertion of climbing up from the beach. He was dressed in a loose tunic and breeches like a skrayling, and his hair hung in braids past his shoulders. He hefted a net full of mussels, grinned at Kiiren and said something in the ancient tongue of the skraylings. The words tugged on the sleeve of Mal's memory, but without the skrayling drug to help him, he could make out only fragments.

"Speak English, amayi," Kiiren said.

"Sorry, brother." Sandy ducked his head, sheepish. "I… I have not spoken our father's tongue in such a long time, I forget."

Kiiren gestured for them to sit on the cushions scattered around the tent. "You had something important to say, Catlyn-tuur?"

"It can wait until later," Mal replied. He wasn't about to distress Sandy with talk of mass suicides. "Nothing is more important than my brother."

Sandy poured three cups of shakholaat and passed them round.

"Why are you here?" he asked Mal without preamble.

"I'm returning to London on Walsingham's business." It wasn't exactly a lie; if the skraylings were up to something in the Mediterranean, the spymaster would want to know. "And since I would be passing the island anyway–"

"You must have been this way before." Sandy's tone was even, but Mal's guilt supplied the unspoken accusation.

"I didn't want to interfere with your healing. Kiiren indicated it would take a long time."

"But you came anyway."

Mal put down his cup. "I came to see you as often as I could, when… when we were both in London. Do I need a reason to visit here?"

Kiiren reached out and put a hand on Mal's arm. "Do not be offended, Catlyn-tuur. We live apart here and are not accustomed to company. We are both made disagreeable by it, I think."

Ever the ambassador. Mal lowered his eyes and let his hands fall into his lap.

Kiiren turned the conversation to less prickly matters, like the best way to cook mussels, and after a few minutes Sandy excused himself and went outside to start building a fire for supper.

Keeping half an eye on the tent-flap in case Sandy returned, Mal told Kiiren about their discovery on Corsica.

"Why would they do such a thing?" he asked Kiiren when he was done. "To live as a slave is terrible, I know, but–"

"It is not this life they feared, but next."

"I thought you skraylings didn't believe in Hell – or Heaven."

"Next life in this world. As humans."

"As guisers."

"Yes. It is not just against our law, but against our beliefs. Skraylings are skraylings, humans are humans; that is how it should be."

"Could they not choose to just… die and not be reborn?"