2
The Collector
Outside, the market
square was in chaos and high above it, a tall, dark figure stood
alone upon a rooftop, his wide shoulders silhouetted against the
sky.
Silas Dane was the
last man any town wanted to see. He stood there in silence,
watching events unfolding exactly as he had planned. His clothes
were deliberately dark and plain, but that was where any
ordinariness ended with him. Silas had the presence of ten men.
Power and threat exuded from him as clearly as fear leaked from the
people down below, and his eyes shone with faint light, their
irises bleached grey: the washed-out empty grey of
death.
Even in their madness
the birds stayed clear of him, sensing the unnatural essence that
made him what he was: neither fully dead nor completely alive, but
unimaginably dangerous. Only one bird stayed close, one that had
been with Silas since before his second life had begun: his own
black crow, perched upon his shoulder, ignoring the mass of
feathers and death swooping down around them.
Silas rested a
scarred hand against a chimneystack and cast his eyes around the
market square. The wardens were not far away. From his viewing
point he could see three of their black robes lurking nearby,
daggers already drawn, blades shining in the rising sunlight. Those
three were only the beginning. He had over a hundred more men
stationed around the town, all waiting to make their
move.
The last of the dying
birds plunged into one of the market stalls and Silas watched the
traders step out of their hiding places, each one nervously
checking the sky for more birds. He sighed, wishing for once to
face some kind of challenge … some form of resistance. Then the
streets fell quiet, as if the entire town was holding its breath,
and an unexpected sound carried to him on the wind. A flapping
sound, like two strips of leather being clapped together. He looked
up, his eyes darting straight to the roof of the little bookshop he
had been told to watch more closely than the rest, and then he saw
it.
His muscles tensed.
There, rising from the bookshop’s chimney, was a black fluttering
shape, trailing soot behind it as it awkwardly took
flight.
Bird or bat? He had
to be sure.
Bird or
bat?
The flying creature
turned in the air, rode upon an updraught and soared across the
market square, over the heads of the traders and right past Silas,
so close that he could have snatched it out of the air if he had
tried.
‘Bird,’ he said with
a cruel smile.
The wardens were
looking to him, waiting for instructions. Silas raised a hand and
signalled the order they were all waiting for. The order to move
in.
‘The chimney!’ cried
Artemis. ‘Grab the bird. Quick!’
Edgar lunged forward
but Artemis was already ahead of him, climbing up the shelves like
a ladder. The blackbird watched them warily. Artemis made a wild
grab for it, but he was too slow. The bird took flight, headed
straight for the old cellar fire and fluttered up the chimney,
searching for the sky. Edgar ducked in after it, waving his arms
around blindly in the dark. When he re-emerged his face and hair
were thick with soot, but his hands were empty.
Artemis stared at
him. ‘If a warden sees that bird they’ll find us in a second,’ he
said.
Edgar sneezed and
wiped his nose along a filthy sleeve. ‘Best start running then,’ he
said. ‘Better that than be trapped down here. Right,
Kate?’
Kate didn’t know what
to think.
‘I’m not giving
either of you a choice,’ said Artemis, swinging the lamp as he
headed towards the back of the cellar. ‘We have to hide. The
wardens can’t take what they can’t see.’
Artemis heaved aside
two boxes of old books that were stacked in the corner furthest
from the door and he held the light up to the wall, revealing a
tiny door sunk into the stone just wide enough for a person to
crawl into. He scraped his fingers around the dusty edges and
searched his pockets for the key. Kate knew that place. She had
hidden behind that little door before and she never wanted to go
near it again.
‘I - I can’t,’ she
said.
Something clicked and
creaked above them.
Slow footsteps
crossed the shop floor.
‘Come on, Kate.’
Edgar held out his hand and Artemis blew out the lamp, unsticking
the old door as quickly as he could.
Kate knew she had no
choice. She crept forward through a cloud of dust knocked down from
the floorboards above, and crawled into the secret hiding place. An
old blanket was bunched on the floor, giving a soft place for her
knees to rest, but the little hollow behind the wall was a lot
smaller than she remembered. She shuffled forward a few knee-steps
and scrabbled around, making room for Edgar to squeeze in behind
her.
‘Move up,’ he
whispered.
‘There’s no more
room.’
‘What about
Artemis?’
But Artemis had
already tucked the dead lamp inside the door. ‘Whatever happens,
you two stay in here until they are gone,’ he said. ‘After that, I
want you both to leave Morvane and don’t look back. Do you
understand?’
‘But!’
‘It’ll be all right,
Kate. Do you remember how to get out?’
Kate nodded
nervously.
‘Good. When it is
safe, go. Don’t worry about me. Nothing is going to happen to you.
I promise.’
Kate could not see
Artemis’s face when he closed the door, but she heard the scratchy
sound of a key turning in the lock and suddenly she was afraid. The
tiny room felt a lot smaller, its walls pressing closer around her
body as she knelt in the dark. She was touching the wall in front
of her, reassuring herself that there was still plenty of air to
breathe, when a quiet whimpering sound started beside
her.
‘Edgar? What’s
wrong?’
‘We’re locked in,’
said Edgar, sounding even more terrified than Kate felt. ‘I don’t
like this. We have to get out. We have to. Artemis!’
Edgar thumped his
fist against the door and Kate grabbed his hands, forcing her own
fear aside as she tried to calm him down. ‘It’s OK,’ she whispered.
‘Listen to me. You have to be quiet. If they hear us—’
‘I can’t breathe.
Kate … I can’t …’
‘Shh. Yes, you can.’
She held his hand and pressed it against her chest. ‘You feel that?
I’m breathing. You’re breathing. We’re going to be all
right.’
Edgar fell quiet and
small scraping noises bumped against the door as Artemis quickly
stacked boxes against it. Then Kate heard the sound of metal
rattling against stone and a cold key fell into her hands. The
eyeholes! Her fingers reached up to feel out the thin spaces in the
wall. How could she have forgotten the eyeholes?
‘Stay quiet and don’t
come out,’ said Artemis. ‘I love you, Kate. Remember
that.’
Kate walked her
fingers along the stones and found a flap of leather pinned a
little way below the ceiling. It was dry and curled with age, but
when she pushed it aside, she could see through a carefully cut
slit between the mortar of the wall and one of the old stones. She
moved Edgar’s hand up to a second leather strip and together they
looked out.
At first they
couldn’t see anything, just deep darkness. Then there were voices,
quick footsteps and a loud slam as someone forced open the cellar
door. Two black-robed men burst on to the staircase, flooding the
room with light from a lantern that cracked hard against the
wall.
One of the men had a
crossbow trained carefully down the cellar steps and the other held
the lantern up high, straining to keep hold of a long leather lead
with a vicious dog panting at the end of it. Kate’s mind threw up
visions of the great beast sniffing them out, snuffling its jaws
into their hiding place and dragging them out with its sharp yellow
teeth, but those terrors were soon buried under something far more
important.
Where was
Artemis?
‘Search it,’ said the
bowman, and the warden with the dog scuttled down the steps,
letting its nose investigate, hunting out its prey.
The dogman dragged
full boxes aside as if they were empty, scouring every cranny for
signs of life. He pulled handfuls of paper out of the storage
chests, rapped his knuckles on the walls, and dug his long fingers
into every crack, leaving nothing unchecked. Closer and closer he
came to the little door, until a sudden scrabbling noise in the
wall made the dog lower its head and snarl.
‘Here,’ the bowman
said. ‘What’s that in there?’
Kate froze, but the
wardens were not looking in her direction. They were looking
towards the fireplace, where a trickle of soot was falling into the
room. Artemis was hiding in the chimney. The wardens had found
him.
‘Come out of there!’
demanded the dogman, mashing his fist against the chimneybreast.
‘Now!’
The dog’s ears
pressed back against its skull as Artemis’s feet thumped down into
the hearth. ‘Wait!’ he said, holding his hands out. He stepped into
the room, dropping his useless dagger on the floor.
‘Please.’
The bowman raised his
weapon to Artemis’s chest. Kate wanted to shout out, to distract
them, stop them, but fear was gripping her throat so tightly it was
a struggle even to breathe.
‘Name.’
‘Winters. Artemis
Winters. I - I own the shop upstairs.’
‘Who else is in
here?’
‘No
one.’
The glinting point of
the arrow moved up to Artemis’s throat. ‘Who else?’
‘I already told you …
ooof! ’
Artemis’s lip dripped
with blood. The dogman had struck him with a meaty fist, knocking
him to the floor.
‘There’s no one
here!’ said Artemis, trying to stand up again. ‘I told you …
ahh! ’
The dogman’s boot
kicked hard into Artemis’s ankle and he dragged him up by the
shoulders.
Tears stung in Kate’s
eyes. She couldn’t bear to watch.
Edgar squeezed her
hand gently as a shadow spread from the cellar door. The dog
crouched low, head down, turning its eyes away from a man who was
standing at the top of the stairs. All Kate saw was his shadow and
she heard the flutter of feathers as a large bird shuffled upon his
shoulder.
‘What do you have
down there?’
The dog whimpered at
the sound of the man’s voice and pressed its body against its
master’s legs.
‘A bookseller,’
grinned the dogman. ‘Only one here. It must have been
him.’
‘Are you certain of
that?’ The man stepped down the stairs into the lantern’s glow and
Kate saw him clearly for the first time. He didn’t dress like a
warden, he didn’t even speak like a warden. Instead of robes he
wore a long coat that hissed across the floor as he walked and his
voice was dark and well-spoken, demanding the attention of anyone
who could hear it. His black hair was long enough to touch his
shoulders. He was younger than Artemis and walked with the strides
of a man used to being in control, but the strangest thing about
him was his eyes. Dead eyes, Kate thought. Eyes without a soul. She
watched him closely, waiting for those eyes to look in her
direction, and when they did, pausing for only the smallest moment
before moving on, her body felt cold with fear.
‘His
name?’
‘Winters,’ said the
bowman.
The man towered over
Artemis, at least a head and shoulders taller than him. ‘He is not
the one we have come for,’ he said, taking one last look around.
‘There is someone else here.’
‘No,’ insisted
Artemis, his voice unusually strong. ‘There’s no one. Only
me.’
‘The girl. Where is
she?’
‘W-what
girl?’
Kate shrank back in
the darkness. He knew about the blackbird. He knew that it was
her.
‘Lies will not keep
me from her for long.’ The man turned to his wardens. ‘You, take
him outside and put him with the others. And you, check the upper
floor. If the girl is not found here, I will burn this place
down.’
‘Yes,
sir.’
‘No!’ cried Artemis,
looking back at the hiding place, his face pale with desperation.
‘My shop! M-my work!’
‘None of that matters
to you now,’ said the man. ‘If you are one of the Skilled, as these
men think you are, then your life as you know it is over. If not …
the same applies, only in a much more final way. Take
him.’
Artemis struggled all
the way up the cellar steps, limping whenever his bruised ankle was
put to use. He barely made it halfway before his leg gave way
altogether and the dogman had to leave his lantern on the floor and
drag him up into the shop, with his dog and the bowman close
behind.
Soon only the
grey-eyed man was left in the cellar and he stood there,
motionless, staring at the wall as if he could see Kate and Edgar
cowering behind it. The bird on his shoulder cocked its head to one
side and Kate pressed her nose right up to the stone beneath the
eyehole, watching. She wanted to move back, but any movement might
give her away. Edgar’s chest was wheezing with each nervous breath
and she squeezed his hand, desperate for him to be
quiet.
‘We’re ready, sir,’
came the bowman’s voice from the floor above. ‘There is a girl’s
room on the top floor, but the rest of the house is
clear.’
‘Very well,’ said the
man. ‘Return to the square.’
With the wardens
gone, the grey-eyed man opened the lantern and slid a small book
from a storage shelf beside him. He cracked the book open with one
hand, touching its pages to the lantern’s exposed flame. They
caught at once. The book smouldered and burned with growing fire,
and he carried it up the cellar steps to begin his
work.
‘He’s going to burn
the shop,’ whispered Kate, as heavy footsteps crossed
overhead.
‘Maybe he’s just
trying to scare Artemis,’ said Edgar. ‘To make him tell him where
you are.’
The hot smell of
burning paper crept in around them and Kate pressed the key into
Edgar’s hand.
‘He’s doing it!’ she
whispered. ‘Open the door. We have to get out.’
Edgar fumbled with
the key, dropping it in his panic. ‘Kate, that man …’
‘I know,’ said Kate.
‘Just get us out.’
‘No, you don’t
understand …’
Something thumped
nearby. A door, slamming open.
‘What was that?’ Kate
twisted back to the eyehole. The man had returned, his face glowing
in the light of a flaming torch that blazed in front of him as he
walked down the cellar steps. He stopped for a moment at the
bottom, looked along the shelves one last time and then rammed the
head of the lit torch into the box nearest to him, letting the
flames catch, crackle and spread.
‘Oh no,’ said Edgar,
desperately searching for the fallen key.
The man moved to the
next shelf, then another and another, until one side of the cellar
was spreading quickly into a rising wall of flame. Edgar found the
key and felt around for the keyhole, but Kate held him back,
pulling on his arm with all her strength. The man did not hear the
scuffle above the crackling noise of the flames. He threw the torch
into the centre of the room, watched it splutter against the stone
and then climbed back up to the doomed shop floor, leaving his
deadly fire to spread and grow.
Edgar struggled and
scratched the little key into place, fighting to make it
turn.
‘Stop! It’s too
late,’ said Kate. ‘Listen to me!’
Firelight seeped in
through the open eyeholes, reflecting in Edgar’s frightened eyes as
he turned to her. ‘The shop is on fire!’ he said. ‘We have to get
out!’
‘No, we don’t. Give
me the key.’
‘What? No! You said
…’
‘Edgar,
please.’
‘We’re going to die
in here, Kate!’
‘No, we’re not.’ Kate
tugged up a corner of the floor blanket and rapped her knuckles on
what sounded like hollow wood where stone should have been. Edgar
looked at her, confused.
‘I think Artemis knew
what he was doing, putting us in here,’ she said. ‘There’s another
way out. Please, Edgar. Trust me.’