She patted her enormous middle and got out of her chair with all the grace of a pregnant hippo. “Good food,” she told Radu, who managed to nod his thanks. “I sleep now,” she announced, with an almost queenly dignity. Geoffrey scurried to lead the way back up the stairs, and Olga followed him out, her behind brushing the sides of the narrow stone stairwell as she went.
I decided she had a point. If Caedmon knew anything more, I’d squeeze it out of him tomorrow when I could think better. I pulled Stinky out of the cheese plate, where he’d decided to take a nap. “I think I’ll call it a night, too,” I said, hefting him onto one hip. I didn’t bother to say good night. Radu was too stunned to notice, and it wasn’t a Fey tradition. Besides, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be.
Chapter Sixteen
Branches whipped across my face with a sting like tears. The hard-packed snow slid under my feet as I ran, but I couldn’t stop or even slow down. The sky was a pale, leaden gray overhead, but darkening rapidly. There was worse weather coming. I should turn back, return to the dismal but warm interior of the tavern, but I couldn’t. I would never go back there, to that malodorous, ill-lit, cramped little place. I couldn’t stand to see fear in the eyes of the men, to have them shrink back when I passed, to listen to them whisper about the evil that had come among them. Even though it had been the whispers that told me of what I would find.
I paused on the top of a steep, rocky slope, drawing clear, cold air into my starved lungs. The wind that keened down crags and across frost-armored trees was bitterly cold, but it was blowing the other way. I could see the smoke, but not smell it. Not yet.
The valley stretched out in front of me in wave after wave of white, broadening and finally merging with the plains below. A few snowflakes drifted down, catching on the ends of my hair. There was a haze of white in the air over the other end of the valley. Soon, it would consume the smoke, and what I sought would be lost until spring revealed the tattered remains. No. I had to get there first.
I plunged down through the trees, leaping, stumbling, and half fell into a rough clearing. Now I could smell the smoke. The air was filthy with it, its acrid taste in every breath, coating the inside of my throat, my lungs. I knelt down on the hard-packed snow in front of blackened ruins that in no way resembled the village they had once been. Already, delicate crystal flakes were trying to cover the ugly, smoking remains, as if the forest resented the mar on its beauty. Soon, they would succeed.
I cautiously picked a path through the smoking ground toward the only heap that had yet to collapse. It didn’t look much like a house—it could have been a storage shed or even a shop—but I didn’t have time to search through the entire charred landscape for clues. I tugged on the few intact boards and they fell inward, disintegrating even before they hit the floor.
They left a hole big enough for me to slip through, but there was precious little to see. A few scorched pots, a scrap of cloth that suddenly burst into flame, crumbled to ash and blew away on a breeze. Nothing else.
I crouched among the ashes, sifting through the still-warm remains with my fingertips. What had I expected? The bodies were outside, scattered charred bones and wisps of hair crisped by the heat. Indistinguishable. I could have walked over hers on the way here, unknowing. There was nothing to show that this had once been her house, no object left intact that might have been hers, no familiar scent on the breeze. No memory, however vague, from the time I must have spent here.
Nothing.
Wet flakes melted on my face, running in cold rivulets down my cheeks. A wisp of bitter smoke curled from the rubble, extinguished almost immediately by the plop and hiss of a wet clump of snow. I looked up and realized that it was falling more heavily now, piling up in soft drifts against the black lumps outside. The wind was picking up, too. I should leave—now, before I was trapped in this white hell.
I lingered a few minutes longer anyway, strangely reluctant to go, to admit defeat. But, the cold was running chilly fingers along my body, leeching my heat, making me shiver. I backed out of the tiny space, and immediately the wind and snow reached out to grab me. The village’s remains were only dark shapes now, dimly visible through a heavy snowfall. Fierce, bitter cold wrapped around me, and I stumbled over a protrusion, falling flat on my face. A quick pain pricked my palm. I looked down and saw nothing, but my hand closed over a hard, metal shape, long and sharp. My numb fingers recognized the familiar feel of a dagger.