Mal crouched by the entrance to the ruins, his brother at his side. On the opposite side of the broken doorway Coby crouched likewise. Mal flicked his fingers at her, urging her further back. She nodded and obeyed, until she was hidden in the shadowed undergrowth. He turned his attention back to the path and took hold of the other end of the spirit-guard so that it hung between his hands like a garrotte.
Slow, erratic footsteps approached. Mal tensed, ready to spring up. As the youth stepped out through the doorway a bleating noise came from Coby’s direction, like a lost lamb calling for its mother. The boy’s head whipped round and he halted. Took a step towards her.
Mal leapt to his feet and threw the string of steel beads around the throat of the boy, who cried out briefly before Sandy could get his hand over his mouth. Mal cursed and snapped the clasp of the spirit-guard shut.
“Not another sound,” he hissed, drawing his dagger and putting it to the boy’s throat.
Coby emerged from the bushes looking dishevelled.
“Tie his wrists,” Mal told her. “Now, lad, how many of you are there at the house?”
The boy’s eyes darted from Mal to Sandy and back.
“What? Who are you? Where am I?” He made a whimpering sound in the back of his throat. “Sweet Jesu, what have you done to my hands?”
“The iron must have dispelled whatever enchantments were put on him,” Coby said. She bent and began cleaning his scratched palms with her handkerchief.
“Or he feigns very well,” Mal said. “Sandy, can you get anything out of him?”
His brother shook his head.
“Not with this on,” he said, gesturing to the spirit-guard.
“Well we can’t very well take it off him.” Mal took hold of the boy’s jaw and turned his head to one side. “What’s this?”
He frowned at the blue crystal dangling from the boy’s left earlobe. It looked remarkably like the one he had found in Shawe’s workshop.
“Well, if we ever doubted this was the right place…”
“What’s it for, do you reckon?” Coby asked.
“Some kind of spirit-guard that doesn’t impede their own magic, perhaps?” Mal replied. “I dare say we’ll find out soon enough.”
He seized the boy’s elbow and marched him back to where Gabriel was waiting.
“Take care of this one. Gag him and bind him further if need be, but whatever you do, don’t remove his necklace.” He ushered them back towards the clearing. “Come, we have to be quick, before he’s missed. It can’t be long until suppertime.”
“What are we going to do?” Coby asked, trotting by his side.
He grinned at her. “What we do best.”
“Catlyn?”
Kit blinked and looked up. He had been left alone in the dormitory whilst the other boys had their lessons, and after much pacing and fretting about Sidney he had finally settled down for a nap, thinking to save his strength for an escape before nightfall.
“Is it time for supper?”
“Not for you.” One of the older boys – Flint, he thought his name was – was leaning over him. “We have more important business. Get up.”
Kit did so, heart fluttering in his throat.
“Is this the test?” he whispered. “I thought that wasn’t until tonight.”
For an answer, Flint threw a bundle of something at him.
“Put that on.”
It was a pale woollen robe with no fastenings, just a hole to put your head through and long sleeves that came down to Kit’s knuckles, as if it had been made for a taller boy. It dragged on the floor a little too, and he had to lift it like a girl as he followed Flint across the dormitory to the stairwell and pattered down the cold steps on bare feet. Flint opened the door at the far end of the dining hall and ushered Kit through.
Even though it was not dark outside yet, the great chamber was lit with dozens of candles, illuminating a low bench draped in dark blue velvet that stood in the centre of the room. Master Fox stood at one end, holding a brass bowl from which rose thin wisps of smoke; Master Shawe stood at the other with a knife whose blade glinted like frozen night air. Kit halted. What was all this?
“Come, acolyte, and be reborn into our brotherhood,” Master Shawe intoned. “Lie down, and waken as an immortal.”
“I… I’m not sure I want to be immortal,” Kit said, backing towards the door.
But Flint was there, blocking his way. Kit looked up into his grey eyes and swallowed. If a hulking fellow like Flint could do this, so could he. He turned back to the bench.
“What must I do?” he said, trying to sound brave.
“Lie down.” Master Shawe indicated a cushion at the end of the bench nearest to him. “And close your eyes.”
Kit obeyed, nearly tripping on the over-long robe as he climbed onto the bench. It was hard underneath the crunchy layer of velvet, harder even than the beds upstairs. He hoped this wouldn’t take long.
Mal adjusted the hang of his rapier under the black scholar’s gown so that it wouldn’t be too visible from the front. His beard and hair were stiff again with the white greasepaint; not a perfect disguise, but it would have to do. Shawe had not seen him in years, and none of the pupils except Kit and his friend knew any of them, or so he hoped.
“Ned, Gabriel, I need you to stay here and keep watch over my brother. He’s going to distract any dreamwalkers looking for us whilst Coby and I talk our way into the house and find Kit. Be ready with the horses for when we return.”
“And if you don’t?” Ned asked, hugging his metal hand to his chest.
“Then you leave without us. Flee the country, as you did before. No–” Mal held up his hand “–no arguments. There’s no use us all dying.”
He embraced his brother. “If I find Kit and can open a passage back to you, I shall.”
“We may not need to. He may be strong enough now–”
“We can’t count on that. Nor do we know what forces Shawe can muster. Devourers may be only the half of it.”
He released Sandy and bade farewell to his other friends, then beckoned to his wife. Her woollen cap was pulled down low over her eyes to shadow her features, though not enough to conceal the fake bruise that Gabriel had painted around one eye and down across her cheekbone. She turned her back to him and he fastened her wrists together with loosely tied cord.
“Ready?” he murmured in her ear.
“As I’ll ever be.”
He led the way towards the schoolhouse, stomach churning. So close now, he could almost sense Kit inside the building ahead, but surely that was just his imagination. He hadn’t taken off his spirit-guard yet, and in any case Kiiren’s soul still slept, so how could he?
The house loomed ahead of them, outlined against the hazy blue sky of a summer evening. Lights burned in the main wing at ground level, a whole row of windows glowing against the shadowed stone. The near wing was unlit, giving no clue as to the whereabouts of its occupants.
No one accosted them as they approached the side door. Mal knocked quietly and waited, one hand beneath his gown ready to draw his dagger, the other on Coby’s shoulder. After a few minutes the door opened and a boy of about twelve peered out at them. A pair of horn-rimmed spectacles were perched on his snub nose and he wore the same blue earring as their captive, but otherwise he looked much like any schoolboy or apprentice.
“May I help you, sir?” he asked.
“I wish to see your headmaster about this saucy knave–” Mal shook Coby “–he sent me for a pupil.”
“Master Shawe is at work. Please come back in the morning.”
“I shall do no such thing,” Mal replied, elbowing the door aside. “I will see him this very minute.”
The boy opened his mouth to shriek a warning but stopped when Coby produced a pistol and aimed it at his head. The unloaded one, Mal assumed. Still, it had the desired effect. The boy turned pale and stepped backwards.
“Good lad. And don’t think of alerting your master any other way. Now, may we come in?”
Something rattled overhead, and Kit opened his eyes again. Master Fox was swinging the brass bowl on a chain, like the things the Papists used in their church services. The smoke swirled down around Kit’s head and made him cough.
“Close your eyes,” Master Shawe said again.
This time Kit had no choice but to obey; the smoke was making him feel sleepy and it was so much easier to just close his eyes. After a moment he realised someone was speaking, close to his ear. It sounded a bit like Latin, or perhaps Greek, but he did not know the words. He really should have paid more attention in lessons…
He blinked, and there he was, back in the classroom at Greenwich Palace with the other boys. Neville gave him an icy look as he walked to the front of the class, and Kit wondered why the other boy had been called up instead of him. When he looked closer, though, he realised that the figure kneeling before Master Weston wasn’t Neville at all. It was his own father, stripped to the waist, with bloody welts covering his back. Kit reached out a hand to touch him and he turned round, but it was Uncle Sandy, not his father.
“Amayi,” his uncle whispered. “Go to sleep, it’s too soon…”
The room went dark, and Kit found himself standing somewhere cold and silent.
The boy let them into a long hall that appeared to be the school’s refectory. It was empty at this hour, though bowls and plates were stacked on a trestle table ready for supper.
“Where are your new pupils?” Mal asked. “Catlyn and Sidney?”
“I-I don’t know about Sidney, b-b-but Catlyn is in there with Master Shawe.” He indicated a door at the top of a short flight of steps.
Mal drew his rapier and went up to the door to press his ear against the timbers. After a few moments he turned back to Coby.
“I can smell qoheetsakhan,” he said in a low voice. “What in God’s name are they doing in there?”
The boy smiled slyly. “Making him one of us.”
Mal unfastened his spirit-guard and crossed the refectory to spread his free hand along the boy’s temple and jaw and stare into his eyes. Focusing all his thoughts he tried to slip into the boy’s mind but it parted under his mental fingers like fog, sucking him into darkness–
He withdrew, gasping. “What are you?”
The boy just smiled again.
“We don’t have time for this,” Coby muttered. “Hold him at sword’s point whilst I tie him up.”
Mal obeyed, unable to tear his gaze away. Despite the spectacles the boy’s eyes seemed unfocused, the pupils huge as a cat’s at night. Coby swiftly bound the boy’s wrists with the bit of rope that had been around her own, tightening the loops that had been so loose before.
“Come on, we have to get to Kit,” she said, shaking Mal out of his stupor.
Rubbing his forehead, Mal stumbled after her. Whatever Shawe was doing here, he had a feeling it wasn’t going to have the same effect on Kit as the other boys.
“Where am I?” Kit shouted. The word his uncle had used came to his lips: “Amayi!”
Things stirred in the darkness, black shapes he was afraid to look at. Something burned in his chest and spread upwards, along his arms and into his head, blinding him as it poured out of his eyes and mouth and fingernails, a white light brighter than anything he’d ever seen. The dark shapes ran.
“I am Kiiren,” he yelled after them, “Outspeaker of the Shajiilrekhurrnasheth, and I am not afraid of you.”
He didn’t know where the words came from, but they felt right. He opened his eyes, shaking off the lethargy of the qoheetsakhan, and saw the two humans staring at him, wide-eyed and angry. The older one held a night-blade, its obsidian edge sharper than any steel.
“Who are you?” Kiiren said. He felt small, smaller than he remembered. “The hrrith…”
He clutched at his belly, expecting his guts to leak out between his fingers. No. Stupid. He had died that night; this was a new body, a… oh amayi no, a human body.
“What have I done?” he whispered.
“Tjirzadhen,” the man with the qoheetsakhan spat. It was the name for Kiiren’s own kind in Vinlandic, meaning one who had been reborn more than once. He made it sound like an insult. “We should kill him.”
“No,” the other replied. “No, he is more valuable to us alive. But we need him subdued–”
Kiiren didn’t wait to hear any more. He dodged around the man with the knife, his new body lithe and swift, and ran for the nearest door.
Something thudded against the inside of the far door, and the latch rattled. Coby drew her other pistol. A voice, masculine and somewhat nasal. Though she could not make out the words, the tone sent shivers down her back. She lifted the latch with the barrel of her unloaded pistol and kicked the door open. A man stared back at her, his hands around Kit’s throat. Shawe, presumably.
“Take your filthy paws off my son, demon!” She waved the unloaded pistol at Shawe for emphasis. “Steel bullets, if you’re wondering, so don’t try any enchantments either.”
Shawe raised his hands, and the chain he had been holding slithered to the floor. Kit dashed past her, into the refectory. Coby backed away, still pointing the gun at the alchemist. Another man appeared behind Shawe, younger and with a more contemptuous expression on his face than on Shawe’s, if that were possible.
“Run,” he said. “I enjoy a game of hide and seek.”
Coby raised her other pistol and squeezed the trigger, tipping the barrel upwards at the last moment so that the shot went over both their heads. Both men ducked reflexively.
“Get Kit out of here,” Mal said, stepping between her and the guisers. “I’ll deal with these two.”
Coby shoved the unloaded pistol into her belt, grabbed Kit’s hand and dragged him, protesting, out of the house.
“I want my amayi!” he wailed.
“That’s where we’re going, lambkin,” she replied, “but we have to run very fast, back to the horses.”
Kit halted in the middle of the path and stared up at her. “I’m not your lambkin, I’m Kiiren.”
She looked into his dark eyes and the truth hit her like a blow to the stomach. This was not her son any more. They were too late.