Blood and Bone Read Online Free PDF Page B

a shape and Saeng recognized it as one of their old hand-language signs, part of a system they had invented for silent communication.
    ‘
Promise
.’
    ‘Promise? Whatever do you mean, promise? Your promise to protect me?
That?
’
    ‘
Coming
,’ he signed.
    ‘Coming? So – they
are
coming.’ She stood, brushed the damp rotting humus from herself. ‘Well … what’s that to me?’
    ‘
Danger
.’
    ‘Danger? Why? Who am I—’ And she understood. The Thaumaturgs’ long hatred of their neighbour extended to denouncing and drowning any considered under
her
influence. No doubt she would be killed out of hand as a suspected witch and servant of the Demon-Queen. ‘So you—’ She cut herself off again, staring anew. ‘All the lost gods … you’ve run off … You deserted to warn me!’
    ‘
Quiet
.’
    ‘You great fool!’ she yelled. ‘How does this help? Now it’s
your
head they’ll want!’
    He winced, signing again, ‘
Quiet
.’
    ‘Well this is just wonderful. Now we’re
both
fugitives.’
    ‘
Yes
.’
    ‘Perfect.’ She set her fists on her hips, eyeing him. She watched while he began refitting his helm. ‘Fine … we’ll need food. I’ll go find what I can.’
    ‘
Hurry
.’
    ‘Yes, yes.’ She padded back to the hut. Here she set to filling a sack with rice and collected all the preserved fish and vegetables she could find. Through it all her mother lay breathing wetly in her cot. For a moment Saeng considered waking her to say goodbye, but only for a moment. She’d make too much of a fuss.
    Well … I yearned for this moment for so long and now that it’s here I don’t want it. I’m finally getting out of here but this is surely not the way I dreamed of it
.
    She threw together a bag of the sturdiest clothes she could find, plus sandals and bedding. From outside the hiss of a light rain brushed against the grass walls.
Wonderful. And in the rainy season, too
.
    She collected an umbrella of thin wood and set off into the mist.
    Hanu joined her in the dark. He pointed then signed a question, indicating obviously enough, ‘
Which way?
’
    Under the umbrella, Saeng clutched her bag to herself and bit her lip.
Yes, which way?
Steeling herself, she extended her awareness outwards farther than she ever had dared before. It expanded to encompass the village, its surrounding garden plots, and the outlying fields and further fallow wildlands that constituted their outlying holdings. It swept onward over neighbouring villages’ wilds and fields, then the modest hamlets themselves. Like thinning ripples its furthest leading edge now brushed up against something far to the west – a sizzling unfamiliar power that repelled her mild questing like a thick wall of dressed stone.
    The army of the Thaumaturgs. And not just passing by in their litters or carts on their mysterious errands. Marching with defences raised and powers unfurled
.
    ‘North, I think. We can let them pass by, then return.’
    Hanu simply peered down at her, signing nothing. She felt his mute scepticism. Irritated, she scanned the dense fronds and hanging vines while the light rain pattered down around them as the faintest hint of the downpours to come. She waved him to follow. ‘This way.’
    * * *
    Murken Warrow, known in Untan black-market circles as ‘Murk’, narrowed his already unusually thin eyes on the coast of desert dunes and the forest of strange pillar-like stone markers, then shifted that dubious gaze to his partner Hint, known as ‘Sour’. Together, the duo had achieved a level of notoriety unhealthy in their line of work. They had even come to be pointed out in the streets of Unta as … well, as Murk and Sour. By then it was long past a prudent time to leave the city – as their arrest proved.
    ‘I don’t like it,’ Sour said.
    Hands stuffed into the pockets of his vest, Murk rolled his eyes to the overcast sky and let out a great sigh of long-suffering and annoyance. ‘Why am I not surprised?’
    ‘Got