Sin Eater's Daughter 2 - The Sleeping Prince Read Online Free PDF Page A

soldiers.”
    “How will they protect us from golems?” Old Samm says, and Unwin looks to the soldiers again to help him. But it’s too late; the mention of golems sends a tremor through the room and suddenly everyone is back on their feet. “How are they supposed to defend us against monsters that can’t be killed? They’re ten feet tall and made of stone. Boy soldiers won’t stop them.” His words begin a flood of other voices, all of them terrified.
    “I heard the Sleeping Prince can turn a man to stone by looking at him. Is it true? Is that how he makes his army? Are they people he’s bespelled? Will our amulets protect us?”
    “We don’t have any temples; surely he’ll leave us be?”
    “I heard he’s demanding a tax, paid in young women, and that he’ll eat their hearts,” a female voice calls, shrill with fear.
    “Well, you’ll be all right then, you’ve not been young for a good thirty harvests,” someone bellows back at her.
    “Does the holly work for ever?” another voice shouts. “Do the berries need to be fresh? If I wear the juices, will that help repel him?”
    “Can’t we offer him something? Do we have nothing he wants?”
    The noise level rises again as people shout their questions, pleading for answers or yelling abuse, and the soldiers step forward menacingly, hands on the hilts of their swords. But the villagers will not be cowed. Their voices get louder and louder, they stand on their chairs, and I can’t take it any more. I climb over the back of the bench, skirt down the side of the wall and out of the door.
    I pause to lean against the pillory outside the House of Justice, my heart beating so fast I feel nauseous, my skin flushing warm and then turning cold. Above me the sun is starting to dip down towards the horizon, and dread curdles inside me. It’ll be dark soon. I need to make my mother her sedative. I need to find Silas and get the money for Unwin.
    I need my father and brother to be here.
    No . I push that thought away as my heart trips over itself. Not now. I have things to do.
    But my body doesn’t obey me, and fear makes a corset around my ribs as I walk blindly back towards the cottage, ignoring the stares of two passing soldiers, marching towards the woods.
    I can’t breathe.
    When the soldiers have passed I stop, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to calm down. My brain spits out thoughts so fast I can’t cling to them; could I drug her into sleep to make the journey? Journey where? You have nowhere to go, nothing, no one. Could I keep up the pretence that she’s ill, something contagious? We’re at war; we’re really at war . How much longer could we stay here? We can’t; he’s less than fifty miles away . We have nowhere to go. We have to leave; we can’t leave. How will Lief find us? We can’t leave him behind.
    Four hundred souls were killed in Haga, added to the three hundred in Monkham. We don’t even know how many died in Lortune, or in the smaller hamlets and towns across Lormere. When Lief left for Lormere it felt as though he’d travelled half a world away, but now it’s no distance, the East Woods a flimsy barrier that an army of golems could trample with ease.
    I imagine the heads of people I know mounted on spikes along the outskirts of the West Woods. Unwin. Fussy Old Samm, sour-faced Pegwin with her mutterings and dark looks.
    Silas.
    My hands lower to cover my mouth, and then I see him, as if thinking about him summoned him into being. Loitering in the shadows at the side of my hut, out of sight of the soldiers, shrouded in his customary black cloak. Silas Kolby. As always, his face is hidden by the hood that hangs so low it leaves only his mouth visible. It’s a mark of how strange life in Almwyk is that my single friend is a boy whose face I’ve never actually seen, and that that seems completely normal to me now.
    It’s his height that allows me to recognize him; he’s a good eight inches taller than I am,