House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(65)

*



Eline’s answer is waiting in the silver letter tray at House Guyin by the time I return. I tap the wax seal with one finger, and wonder why Harun hasn’t bothered to open it.

“Do you want me to?” I ask.

“Stop that.” He whisks it from my hand. “I’m not afraid of it, Pelim.”

“Oh?” We are both afraid. We need Eline out of his home if Jannik is to have any chance of searching the house for Isidro.

Harun scowls back at me and snaps the wax. Red shards fall with a soft clatter, only noticeable because we are so quiet. The paper crackles.

“And?”

A grim smile pulls at the corners of Harun’s mouth. “Get ready,” he tells me. “We have Eline.”



*



“Stop pacing,” Harun says.

I pause and look out at the gardens. Master Gillcrook has found Harun a team of gardeners who have somehow managed to rake and clip the vast mess of the Guyin House wilderness into presentable shape. The moonlight falls cold and blue over the neat lawns. Stars glitter faintly. The nights are warming now and that fat oppressive heat is coming in from the deserts. Owls call to each other.

It’s not them I want to hear. I strain my inner ear for some small thing that will link me to Jannik, but he has shut himself off completely. He said our connection would be weak at best, but I didn’t expect him to be using all of his defences to keep me out, on top of the distance between us. “I hate waiting,” I say to my reflection in the tall dark glass of the doors.

“And you think I like it any better?” Harun says from behind me, where he has seemingly grafted himself into his chair. “And not even a teaspoon of wine left that isn’t earmarked for my bloody guests.”

“What would you do with that anyway?”

“Medicinal purposes.” He sighs and shifts, the material creaking. “I’m not as bad as Jannik paints me.”

“Really.”

“I threw away everything I had to be with him.”

“Everything?” I look over my shoulder at the newly cleaned room. It is filled with heirloom furniture, priceless glass and art. Fewer pieces than when we first met, to be sure. But still a fortune. “How you must have suffered.”

“Not this.” He waves at the room. “I will not be recognized as the heir.”

“They have no other sons,” I say. “They will recognize you, and you know it.” I swing my skirts round and face him. “Is that why you’ve made no official commitment? Because you hope to still gather some maiden from an eligible House and spawn little Guyins to fulfil your obligations?”

“And if I don’t – what then?” He bares his teeth. “My lineage ends. Two brothers, and not one of them made it past puberty. Is it my fault then that the yoke falls on my neck?”

“And is it Isidro’s?”

Harun’s mouth thins. “Don’t bring your Pelimburg morality in here. I know the worth of it.”

I stiffen, my palms gone damp and itchy. I have not forgotten what Harun said to me, after the fever of his scriv Vision.

“At least my brothers died of natural causes,” he says.

“As did mine.” My laughter is hollow in the darkened room. “A more natural death than you could ever imagine.”

“You sacrificed him.”

“To the sea,” I reply.

“A sea witch.”

“And what would you say the difference is?” I walk toward him, my silk skirts sighing and hushing as if they know what is to come. “There are things out there we do not understand - although we like to pretend to. Do you think our ancestors had the Hobs and beasts with wild magic killed merely because they were an inconvenience?”

“Explain.”

I sigh. “What are we but a false set of laws laid over a wild land? We hope to tame it, but what we can’t tame we destroy. The Lammers are not as important and powerful as we like to believe. There are other magics waiting to take our place.” I think of my recent conversation with Yew – it’s true, the Lammers fear. And what they fear, they destroy. It is our way.

“You sound like a tea shop revolutionary,” he says with a sneer.

“And maybe I am, or maybe I used to be, or maybe I was almost one.”

“You talk in riddles.”

“Better than talking in rhymes.” A sharp pain kicks across my breast, and I gasp.

“What is it?” Harun is on his feet, our sniping forgotten.

“I – I do not know.” Desperately, I reach out to the connection I’ve forged, and come up against nothing but swirling darkness. Bloody Jannik, he was supposed to let me know what was going on. The hurt intensifies, a jackal under my skin, scrabbling for freedom. “Gris damn him!”

Jannik’s hold on his house must slip because I am thrust from Harun’s now-immaculate rooms into a place that is dark and cold and deep. An underground room, the walls dank. I can smell the mustiness of mould and old urine and sweat. I can feel the flickering heat of iron. Something cries in the blackness, a sound like a feral cat screaming at a rival. Eline, says Jannik’s voice in my head, as clear as if he were right beside me. Underground, there’s a – cellar, Isidro - Then the scene is gone.