The Giant Singer: The Sibylline Saga: Book Two, page 13
The Giant toppled to earth as fast as any stone. Nora sprinted for the embankment, but there was simply no time. She only got in two frantic paces before the Giant slammed into the road. It landed with such shocking violence that my feet skidded across the gravel and I hit the ground as well. Darius rammed into me from behind, both of us completely winded.
Human and equine screams cut through the air as the ground shook. Horses thrashed in their traces, and at least two broke free to gallop away down the road, away from danger. Birds took flight in the trees, and cries of alarm filled the silence left after the echoing noise of the falling Giant.
“Nora!” I screamed in a cracking voice, scrambling back to my feet.
The Giant lifted both arms and pried itself up again.
There would be so much blood. She had been directly under its chest, only feet from the embankment. There would be nothing left.
I ducked under the rising Giant, heedless of the ongoing danger, and scrambled toward Nora’s body in a crabwalk. And to my utter shock, she sat up, eyes wide with fear.
No blood. No broken bones. Not even a scratch. She was barely dirty.
I halted in front of her, shaking from head to toe, and followed the line of her arm with my eyes.
Her hand disappeared under the hem of her shirt and into the false belly she wore to hide the Clarion. The little trumpet had saved her life twice already. It had kept her safe when she had fallen off a cliff and again when we had tumbled out of a Giant’s ear, landing a thousand feet below. Not a scratch.
She only had to touch it, and the Clarion would protect her from all injury. That Giant was the size of a mountain. It should have squashed her like a bug.
I launched forward and gathered her into my arms. She immediately dissolved into sobs of terror.
“It’s okay,” I muttered into her hair. “You’re okay.”
Darius skidded up to us and knelt. “I thought for sure it hit her, but she’s okay. Any broken bones?”
Nora clung to me and shook her head. “I’m okay,” she croaked.
“I told you the Giants were dangerous!” Darius said angrily. “You should not have been there!”
I glared at Darius, but he wasn’t one to be intimidated.
“What if she’d died! What if she’d lost the baby!”
“That’s enough!” I snapped, and Darius wrenched his mouth shut, mutinous.
But I didn’t care. Darius had nothing to do with any of this. I slipped my arm under Nora’s knees and lifted her off the ground. She clung to my neck and scrubbed her face on her sleeve.
“Where did it go?” she asked.
I turned so we could both see the Giant. It stood quite still in the marshland on the north side of the road, its legs sunk several feet into the muck. Almost as tall as the towering cypress trees, it gazed down at us.
“SAFE,” it bellowed, inciting several more cries of alarm from the stranded travelers.
“Safe,” Nora whispered, and tucked her forehead under my chin.
Fourteen
“It’s still following us,” one of Darius’s men mentioned to him an hour later.
Nora’s grip on my hand tightened briefly, but she said nothing. The muttered conversation of our fellow travelers continued, barely audible over the rattle of the cart wheels on the gravel road.
She hadn’t let go of my arm since the Giant fell. Even now, perched safely on the stinking, swaying fleeces, she drew my arm directly into her lap and clung to it like a lifeline, her fingers digging into my skin.
Her blank expression hollowed me out. I wanted to pick her up and carry her away. Just pick a direction and walk, never looking back, until she remembered how to smile again.
Soon. We would turn the damn Clarion over to Lachlan at the Reliquary soon. And then this would all be over.
The man continued, his voice filled with concern and drama. He was enjoying this. “What if it follows us all the way to New Haven?”
“Maybe it will try to enter the city,” someone else added.
“It won’t.”
“How do you know?”
On and on it went. Nora locked eyes with me, her concern written plainly on her face.
The Giant had taken a liking to her, it seemed. As the caravan of coaches and carts sped down the newly cleared road, we expected the Giant to lie down again. Or maybe it would wander off through the swamp to find somewhere else to settle down.
But when the last vehicle clattered away, it lifted one gangly leg out of the marsh with a tremendous sucking sound and followed us.
Its footsteps thundered a slow, ominous beat as we drove away down the road. And Nora clenched her jaw and stared straight ahead, clinging to my arm and refusing to let go.
The Giant did follow us all the way to New Haven, and it drew a larger crowd of lookie-loos as we went. Nora cradled her false belly and leaned her weight into me while we rode along, but no one was looking at us. Not when there was an eighty-foot giant ambling down the road.
We saw the city long before we reached it. It settled over the hills and around the great bay, shining almost white in the evening sun. The Arigua Ocean created a magnificent backdrop for it, sparkling every shade of blue and green, with the sky melting into it at the horizon.
“We’re almost there,” I said, but Nora was able to see the city as well as I could. I needed to comfort her, and I didn’t know how else to do it. “You know the way to Edith’s house?”
Nora chewed her lip and then spoke for the first time in hours. “Yes. We stayed there several times when we were younger. I know the way.”
According to Nora, Edith had owned the house since she was a child, having inherited it from her father. It had been rented out for two decades, with Edith preferring to live in Tutree with her mother and Nora. But with Tutree gone and since there had been a convenient gap in tenants for several months, Nora figured this would be the best place to find her family.
We might be back with her family within an hour. We were so close.
I glanced behind us at the Giant, which still ambled behind us. Nora followed my movement and gazed at it as well, which the Giant seemed to notice.
“SAFE,” it bellowed.
The crowds around us gasped and cried out, startled. Some people even laughed about it, as if it were a thrill. I wished I were in their positions. I’d love to find the Giants fascinating. But for us, they were a reminder of just how easy it was for us to be discovered.
Nora nearly jumped out of her skin when the Giant spoke. She turned back around, burrowing even deeper into my side.
“Why does it keep saying that, do you suppose?” Darius asked from his horse.
“Don’t know.” I tightened my arm around Nora.
Darius twisted around in his saddle to peer at the Giant making slow but steady progress behind us. “It must have some reason.”
I clenched my jaw and said nothing.
We arrived at the Western Gate soon after.
“We’ll let you off here, if that’s convenient for you,” Darius said. “We’ll go around to the south, to enter nearer the warehouses, and I doubt you will find your family there, Miss Nora.”
Nora’s eyebrows pinched, but didn’t correct him. I clenched my jaw harder.
“This is perfect. Thank you Darius,” she said. “We can walk from here.”
I climbed down first, accepted my pack when Nora passed it to me, and then lifted her down last. Darius seemed to notice her pinched expression when she found her feet.
“Don’t worry, Miss Nora. It was a terrifying ordeal this afternoon, but no harm done.”
“I’m fine,” she said shortly.
“Well.” He leaned back on his heels. “It was a pleasure knowing you both, and I hope to see you again in the future. I’ll buy you a round if I’m lucky enough.”
“Thank you for giving us a ride,” I said. “And thank you for helping us last night. You have done us a great service. We won’t forget it.”
“Don’t mention it.” Darius clapped me on the arm. “In times like these, we have to look out for each other, don’t we?”
Nora glared at him, her expression heavy. She slipped her hand around my elbow. “Let’s go, Eoghan. I want to get home before dark.”
And finally, we were off and on our own again. I breathed a deep sigh of relief when we walked away from the stinking fleeces and Darius’s warm smile. As helpful as he had been, I wasn’t sorry to leave him and his carts behind.
To the west, with the beginnings of a fabulous sunset behind it, the Giant finally came to a halt. It hovered off the side of the road and went perfectly still, its eye still following Nora while we slipped through the crowds.
Nora didn’t look back, but I certainly did. I didn’t like the way it followed us, the way it zeroed in on her.
The crowds were thick here. Dozens, or even hundreds of people gathered about the Western Gate, anxious to get into the city before dark. Soldiers milled about, checking every cart and bag. It was a slow process. But even though the war was over, cautious habits were hard to break. Security was tight as ever, and no one complained. We knew better.
My pack was given a perfunctory search, and no one looked twice at Nora. She got through with the Clarion unnoticed.
And then, just before we reached the city gates, a hand gripped my forearm, causing me to jerk away. I spun to face the stranger: a well-built man in his early thirties, with warm skin and gently curling hair cut short. He smiled up at me, completely unfazed by my glare.
“You’ll see her again, my friend,” the man said in an unfamiliar accent.
“Who?” I asked.
But the man patted my arm in a congenial manner and slipped off into the crowd.
My gut pinched, and I whirled toward Nora. But she stood at my side, right where she should be.
“What?” she asked, eyes widening in alarm.
I scanned over the heads of the crowd, but the man had disappeared. “Did you see that man?”
“What man?” Nora asked.
I set my mouth, disconcerted. “No one. He must have mistaken me for someone else.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. That way.” I pointed ahead where the crowd thinned, and we pressed onward.
We joined the flow of people entering the city, but another thundering Boom! Boom! echoed through the narrow streets.
“It’s going around the side,” I said under my breath. The people around us cried out in alarm at the noise. “It’s not entering the city.”
“It won’t,” Nora said with a sniff. “There are too many people here. They don’t like to step on us.”
Even as she spoke, I gripped her arm and halted her dogged progress.
Maybe the larger Giants avoided entering the city, but the smaller ones fit inside much better. One such creature—one of the smallest Giants I had seen yet at roughly fifteen feet tall—sat on the edge of the cobbled street, leaning back against a bakehouse. Someone had perched a wicker basket on its head like a jaunty hat.
It turned its head slowly toward us, watching as we passed. It blinked its onyx eyes once but did not move otherwise.
Nora clamped her mouth shut, watching the small Giant warily. She walked onward, determinedly looking away.
New Haven hadn’t changed much since the last time I had been there. I usually tried to avoid it, disliking the crowds, the stink, and the noise, but occasionally, I had no choice.
There were plenty of nice things to see and do in the city. Home to more than half a million people, it sprawled around New Haven Bay, coating the surrounding hills in a crust of cobbles, with houses stacked on houses, stairways crammed into corners, and vendors spilling out into the streets.
The biggest markets crowded near the various marinas, where people sold much more than fish and crab. This was where the merchant traders did their business and where the savviest of shoppers came to get wholesale prices on imported silks, citrus, spices, and wine.
But Nora directed me toward the southern coast of the bay, then back down narrow streets and narrower alleys. We stopped before an unremarkable door set into a dingy stucco wall, with a leggy tomato plant in a pot outside.
Nora pulled her cloak tighter about herself, took one steadying glance up at me, and knocked twice on the door.
We waited in silence. I glanced around at the darkened street, but no one moved except a stray cat down the way.
Nora knocked again, and this time we heard noise from inside.
The latch rattled in its socket. The entire door shifted an inch before getting stuck. With another shove, the door finally came free from the jamb and wrenched open.
A young man, barely more than a teenager, stood in the open doorway. The room behind him was illuminated with a few candles. Simple furnishings, a basic cook stove, a bowl of beans soaking on the board near the washbasin.
The man himself cocked his head to one side, displaying the sharp angles of his face to the twilight outside. His clothes were much too nice for the state of the house, and yet he didn’t feel out of place, either.
“Uh, hello,” Nora said, drawing the young man’s eye away from my imposing height. “I’m looking for my sister. Edith. She owns this house. Do you know her?”
“Nora?” The man lowered his eyebrows in surprise.
His accent was strange. Not like any I had ever heard before. He stuck his head out of the door and peered down the empty alley.
“We’re alone,” I informed him, my gut clenching. I pinched Nora’s sleeve, but not hard enough to pull her back.
“You are Nora?” the young man asked again.
“Yes, I—”
The man ducked back inside the house, shouting, “Edith!”
He left the door open as if to invite us inside. We stepped over the threshold, my boots thumping heavily on the uneven wood floor. Heat washed over us from the cook stove in the corner. The mismatched furnishings were unremarkable, mostly wood softened with faded cushions. A large, cobbled-together shelf dominated the back wall, filled with everything from cooking supplies to clothing, tools, and junk.
“Who is it?” asked a familiar woman’s voice from an interior door. The speaker appeared, wiping her hands on an apron.
I had only met Edith once, and only for a few hours. But I would have known her anywhere, just because she looked a great deal like Nora. Her skin was lighter, and her dark curls were a little less wild than Nora’s, but not by much.
“Edith!” Nora exclaimed.
“Nora! We thought you were dead!” Edith stumbled forward, arms out, but Nora faltered at the last minute.
Clearly she had forgotten—again—that she was supposed to be pregnant. She arched her body sharply away, trying to embrace her sister without letting her touch the false belly.
Edith noticed. Everyone in the room noticed.
Edith clasped Nora by the arms. “Nora, what is this?” she asked, looking down. “Are you pregnant?”
“Uh,” Nora mumbled, then retreated toward me with her arms protectively over her stomach. “Yes. Of course, yes. Edith, you remember Eoghan. We’re having a baby.”
Edith’s eyes hit mine. An echo of Nora’s spitfire shone through her haggard expression. “I remember you.” She knitted her brows together, looking me up and down. “You’re that ranger who came to Tutree right before the fire.” Edith glared at Nora. “Three months ago.”
I held her gaze, feeling like a stone Giant myself. Nora wrapped herself around my arm.
“It’s Eoghan’s baby, Edith,” Nora repeated.
Hell, she was the worst liar I had ever known. It took every ounce of will I had to stop my eyes from turning skyward.
“You weren’t pregnant three months ago, Nora,” Edith said, her tone a mirror of Nora’s. Clearly, bullheadedness ran in the family. “But you look like you’re nearly nine months along.
“It’s Eoghan’s baby,” Nora said again.
The young man’s eyes darted back and forth between the women, his mouth twisted into a frown.
“Nora—” Edith began, but I cut her off.
“It’s my baby, Edith.” I said, leaning forward on the balls of my feet.
The entire room went silent in the wake of my words. Edith and the stranger both turned their full attention on me and shrank slightly. The man fisted his hands at his sides, but he did not move to challenge me.
It was a stupid lie, and everyone in the room knew it. But it didn’t matter. We just needed to get through the next few days without anyone asking any questions. Then we’d be gone. And all this would be over.
Nora anchored me by my arm. I forced my focus onto her desperate grip, the way she held on for dear life. Both to hold herself up and to hold me back. She needed rest. Nora needed to recover properly after nearly dying that morning.
“Edith,” Nora said, her voice steady. “We’re looking for Mother and Nikita…and anyone else who might have escaped Tutree.” She swallowed hard.
“Where have you been, Nora?” Edith asked.
The young man hovered behind her.
“We had a job, remember? Me and Eoghan. Where’s Mother?”
“She went on south to Ferndale, to live with your Aunt Maeve. She was well when she left. I expect to hear from her any time, saying she made it safe.”
Nora grinned up at me, tears in her eyes.
“I told you,” I said.
“Shut up.” She slapped my arm and turned back to her sister. “What about Nikita?”
Edith’s expression tightened. “I don’t know. We didn’t see her again after we ran.”
Nora’s grip tightened on my arm. “Oh.”
Edith’s eyes flicked down to Nora’s false stomach. Did she realize it wasn’t real? Or did she think we were simply lying about the identity of the father? What explanations were rifling through her sharp mind?
“Who is your friend, Edith?” Nora asked.
“This is Garet.” Edith placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “He’s been staying with me the last few weeks.”
“Good to meet you, Garet,” Nora said.
