“But how do I know that after I give it back to you, you won’t still send Gravell after me?”
“All you need to know is that if you don’t give it back to me, I’ll call Gravell and he’ll be much less patient than me.”
Edyon smiled. “Why isn’t he with you now? I’m guessing you saw me come out of my tent and followed me here, and he doesn’t know you followed me or he’d be here by now.”
“I can run and get him easily.”
“Go on then. I’ll wait.”
Tash wanted to stamp her foot. If Gravell was here, Edyon would be cowering and whimpering, but instead he was all cocky smiles and clever talk.
“Look. You said you want to give it to me. And yet you haven’t. Gravell blames me for the loss of our stuff. He’ll beat me if I don’t get it back.”
Edyon looked doubtful. “Somehow I can imagine him taking pleasure in knocking my teeth out but not in doing it to you.”
“Shall I show you my back where he whips me?”
As soon as she said it she knew she’d made a mistake.
Edyon put his hands on his hips and grinned. “I think the answer to that has got to be yes.”
Tash felt like screaming. This was so unfair! Why did her conversations always go wrong?
“Just give me the smoke and we can forget it.”
“He’s not here at all, is he?”
Tash hesitated but decided to plead to his good nature. If he had one.
“Fine, fine. I admit he’s not here. Satisfied? He’s back at the inn, if you must know. But he really will hunt you down if you don’t give the smoke back. And he’ll do more than knock your teeth out.”
Edyon spread his arms. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
He slipped down the riverbank. Tash ran forward to see what he was doing. There was a faint purple glow as Edyon pulled a bottle out of a hidden niche. The demon smoke!
Tash hurried down the bank and held out her hand for the bottle.
“Please tell Gravell I’m sorry for the—”
Edyon stopped. The sound of heavy footsteps was unmistakable. Edyon looked up, his eyes wide and panicked. Tash raised her head to peer over the top of the bank. For a moment she thought that maybe Gravell had woken from his drunken stupor after all and followed her.
But it was much worse than that.
The man was big, almost as big as Gravell, but this man had scarlet hair. He was carrying a spear and a small lantern. And he was marching quickly toward them. Tash ducked down again while Edyon stuffed the bottle under his jacket to hide the glow, but the violet light seemed even brighter than ever—and it was far too late anyway.
“Come out from there. I’ve seen you and I know what you’ve got.”
Tash cringed but slowly looked up. The sheriff’s man was standing on the lip of the bank only a few paces away, his spear pointing at Edyon.
“And don’t even think about running.”
But Tash was definitely thinking of running. Being caught, being arrested, being convicted of having demon smoke meant prison for a long time. Running meant the possibility of a spear in the back, but the man only had one spear and Edyon had the smoke, not her. She hesitated, though, hoping for a better chance.
“You’re both under arrest for possessing demon smoke.”
“I don’t have any demon smoke,” Tash said, thinking that if Edyon had just given it to her when she’d asked and not argued so much they’d both have been away from there. In all her years of demon hunting she’d never had any difficulties with the sheriff’s men. This Edyon was just constant trouble.
“Put the bottle by my feet and step back.”
The sheriff’s man flicked his spear at Edyon to show he was talking to him.
Edyon said, “There’s been a terrible misunderstanding here.”
“Shut up and do as you’re told.”
Moving as slowly as possible, Edyon laid the bottle on the bank, close to Tash. It was so tempting to snatch it up and run. So tempting, but so very, very risky.
“Now step back, both of you, and get on your knees.”
“I can explain all this,” pleaded Edyon.
“Explain it on your knees.”
Edyon moved back.
“That goes for you too, girl,” the sheriff’s man said, and he jabbed his spear at her face so that she stepped quickly back to stand next to Edyon, and they both dropped to their knees.
“Please, sir,” Edyon said. “My friend and I were taking a walk in the woods when I noticed a faint glow coming from the river. A purple glow that was most unusual and certainly like nothing I’d seen before. We had just come down to investigate. It never occurred to me that it might be demon smoke. I’ve heard tell of demon smoke of course, in bars and suchlike, but I thought it was red. So when I saw purple, well . . .”
Edyon carried on spinning his story with such conviction he almost made Tash believe it. He certainly sounded like he believed it. But she doubted the sheriff’s man would. She would have to run for it. She could cope with the loss of the smoke if it meant escaping prison. She could cover the ground to the first bend in the river in twenty paces. She could do twenty paces before the sheriff’s man could throw the spear. Probably. Almost definitely. The ground was cold and damp. Tash dug her toes in and got ready to push off.
“Hello, there. Is there any trouble?”
The voice was deep and the accent foreign. Tash strained her neck to see who it was, but the riverbank blocked her view.
“No trouble that concerns you, sir.”
There was the sound of a horse walking forward. The rider came into view, middle-aged, with graying hair and a bandage round his neck, and close behind him another much younger rider, about the same age as Edyon.
“Hey, what’s that light?”
The older man jumped down from his horse and came toward them.
“Demon smoke, sir. Please step back.”
“Demon smoke! But surely that’s forbidden?”
Tash had a bad feeling about this man. He seemed relaxed and friendly, but he carried himself like a fighter. She’d seen people like him dealing in smoke and wouldn’t trust any of them as far as she could throw them.
The sheriff’s man said, “They’ll get twenty lashes and a year’s hard labor—and you’ll get a spear in your guts if you come any closer.” He turned to face the stranger.
Tash took her chance. She pushed off and ran as hard and fast as she ever had done, splashing through the shallow water. She was half expecting a spear to pierce her back, but all she heard was a shout of “Come back here!”
As if that was going to happen.
She made it round the bend in the river, slid to a stop, scrambled halfway up the bank, and pressed herself against it to see what was happening.
The newcomer had his hands raised, but he was arguing with the sheriff’s man. Edyon was climbing up the bank. The younger man had dismounted and was holding three horses, so it looked like they had brought a horse for Edyon. These must have been the people he was waiting to meet.
The sheriff’s man shook his spear at the older man but seemed to lose his grip on his lantern, which fell to the ground and went out. The only light was the purple glow from the smoke, and it was hard to see what was going on. The younger man stepped forward, but the sheriff’s man jabbed his spear at him, and the young man cried out in pain. With an angry shout, Edyon charged into the sheriff’s man with so much force that the huge man spun round, and then all the figures seemed to come together in a big tussle.
When they separated, there was one man—Edyon—holding the spear, another holding the horses’ reins and clutching his shoulder, and a third with a knife in each hand. The fourth man was on the ground.
No one was moving. Even the horses were still.
Tash muttered, “Shitting shits! Shitting shits!” And she slipped a little lower and pressed more into the bank so that she could only just see.
The older man bent down and wiped his knives on the body on the ground and slid them back out of sight in his jacket. Then he picked up the bottle of smoke, saying, “We need to leave here. Now.”
Edyon said, “But . . . the sheriff’s man . . . he’s . . .”
“Dead. Yes. Thanks to you.”