The Gathering, page 7
part #1 of The Hundred Series
“We’ve been out looking, but there is no trace of her.”
“How old?”
“Nine.” His voice fractured slightly on that one word. Antonine Rangers were not known for their family commitments but it did happen. She wondered if he had left behind a sister, or even a daughter.
“I’ll saddle Lothar,” Joel said, and padded off into the depths of the house, towards the kitchen, which led to the outbuildings.
“I’ll pack some travel rations,” Mariah added, slipping past Yvonne.
Grayling watched her disappear into the depths of the house, a slightly bemused expression on his face.
“They seem very calm,” he commented.
“You’re not the first law keeper to come to me in the middle of the night with a missing child,” Yvonne told him.
“Tell me you found the others.”
“All of them.” Her throat tightened, memories threatening to surface. “Not all alive, though.”
“I’ll keep hoping.” He did not sound hopeful, though.
By the time Yvonne had her boots done up and cloak in place, Mariah was back with saddlebags, and the soft sound of hooves outside the front door told her that Joel had brought Lothar round.
She and Grayling were on their way moments later, Lothar striding out despite the poor light. He could always sense when something was wrong. Grayling’s horse danced sideways as they crossed the bridge, picking up the urgency.
They didn’t need to speak as they made their way to where the girl had last been seen, in her parents’ house.
The house was easy to find. Even without escort, Yvonne would have found it. It was the one fully lit, lamps or candles burning in every single room, and torches set outside. There were law keepers milling about as well, horses ready. Weapons ready. All of them as grim faced as Grayling. And from inside the house came hysterical sobbing. A frantic mother, doubtless feeling helpless that there was nothing she could do.
“I need to see her room. Talk to the parents.” Yvonne got off Lothar. One of Grayling’s deputies offered to take the reins. Yvonne shook her head. “He’ll stay until he’s needed.”
The law keeper took another, closer, look at the dull brown horse and nodded, eyes widening in surprise. Not many people had met a Hunar. And those that did, didn’t expect her to have a warhorse to ride.
~
Inside the house was as bad as she thought it might be. Memories of other nights, of other frantic, desperate parents. Of other grim-faced law keepers, few of them as competent as she knew Grayling was.
The girl’s room was upstairs, under the eaves. There was a small window that opened out over the river, and a large, mature tree growing up beside the house. The window was open. A quick glance at Grayling told her that the window had been open when they came to the house, and that he suspected that was how the girl had left. It was easily big enough for a nine-year-old girl, and might be big enough for a slim, determined adult.
That was the easy part.
Talking with the parents was always hard. Their friends and neighbours were there, too. Most of them in their night clothes, coats and cloaks hastily pulled on. There was a pair of women, perhaps more, making tea for everyone and, it seemed, baking bread. An unusual activity for the middle of the night, but there was nothing normal about this night and Yvonne understood the impulse to do something with their hands, something familiar and soothing.
The parents had little to tell her about the disappearance. There was a small, soft, toy missing along with the girl but she hadn’t taken any of her clothes. Only her slippers. Yvonne took a description of the girl’s nightclothes, slippers, and soft toy. At the corner of her eye, she saw Grayling listening intently. He would have taken the same descriptions already, but was making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, or if the parents remembered some further detail that would help.
And as they talked, she gathered impressions. Cheeky nine-year-old. Talking back to her mother, as many nine-year-olds did. Bossing around her little brother. Wanting ribbons in her hair every day, not just for special occasions. Popular with the other children, at the local school. Their teacher was one of the neighbours, as white-faced and shaken as everyone else.
Nobody in the house knew anyone that might have taken her. The parents were adamant that she would not go out alone. The tree was too far away for her to reach from her window. They had checked. Careful, conscientious parents. Everything building a picture of a close, loving home. The husband as distraught as his wife, holding on to each other. The son, a few years younger than his sister, was being cuddled in a corner by neighbours. No reason that Yvonne could see, or could sense, that the girl would have left on her own.
By the time she and Grayling left the house she had a hard, painful knot in her stomach. Happy, contented children did not just leave home. The parents, and the neighbours who were in earshot, had not known of any new friends or any changes in the children’s behaviour. She could see, from their faces, as she asked the question that the same, awful thought had occurred to a few of them.
“We have boats ready,” Grayling told her as they left the house. “And some local guides for the marsh, if we need them.”
That last stopped Yvonne in her tracks. She had not realised, in the journey to get here, just how close they were to the edge of the town and to the marshland. The hard knot in her stomach tightened.
Without speaking, by mutual agreement, they went around the side of the house, to the back of it where the girl’s window was still open. The parents had been right. The tree was a little bit too far away for the girl to get to. Any adult trying to climb that high would have broken the branches. But there were other ways of getting a child out of an upstairs room. Too worried to really care what others thought, Yvonne called up a quick spell, sending sparks of light ahead of her, the small candles providing enough light for her to see better without ruining her night vision.
The better light showed which she had feared. There, in the soft ground underneath the girl’s window, were clear indentations in the mud. There had been a ladder placed here and not that long ago.
“Taken.” Grayling’s voice was heavy. There were no good reasons to take a child from her parents’ house in the dead of night.
“Anyone spring to mind?” Yvonne asked, not looking at him. He had been in the town far longer than she had and, she suspected, with the stories that they had both heard, would have made it his business to know and identify those who might be a danger.
“Only one or two. It’s a peaceful town. And the one or two know we’re looking at them. I don’t think they’d risk it.”
“Well, let’s see where she went.”
~
Yvonne’s method of tracking wasn’t something she could explain to anyone else, not even her children. But then, she had asked them to explain to her how they tracked using their nose, and they had run into similar difficulties. There were no precise, exact, words to describe the set of impressions she had gathered from looking at the girl’s room and from talking to her parents. But she had gathered enough impressions to form a trace in her mind, the vaguest shape of a small, lively girl. Enough bits and pieces, fragments gathered together, to let her find a trace of the girl in the air.
“Not in the river. Not yet,” she told Grayling, almost absently, finding the girl’s trail in the air. She started following the trail, trusting him to follow.
Whoever it was who had taken the girl, they had also left an impression on the world. The girl was bright and carefree. The other was darker, leaving traces of anxiety and a desperate kind of longing in the air as they moved. The girl had been willing, excited to be out on an adventure.
“We’ll need horses, I think,” Yvonne said, staring ahead. She could see the faintest wisp of the two trails, twined together, heading off out into the marshes. “They were on foot, but they are hours ahead of us.”
“They?”
“The girl was with someone. An adult. I can’t tell more at the moment.”
It was a matter of moments to get the horses, Lothar coming to her low-voiced call, and ride out into the marsh. One of the guides went ahead of them, to make sure that they were on solid ground, with Yvonne directing him to adjust his path and direction.
She could sense the tension from the guide the further they rode.
“What is it? What’s ahead of us?”
“There’s a nasty bit,” he told her. “Most of the marshland is flat and calm. But there’s a bit, just ahead, where it sucks under. We’ve dragged plenty of bodies out of it over the years.”
“Straight ahead?”
“Yes.”
That hard knot in her stomach tightened still further until she could barely breathe from it, the trails of the girl and her adult companion wandering ahead.
“We need to leave the horses here. There’s not enough ground for them ahead.” The guide’s voice was grim. He sounded as defeated as Grayling had.
They left the horses in the dark, with one of Grayling’s deputies to look after them, and went forward. Yvonne, slightly ahead, pulled forward by the trace, spotted it first. A splash of white.
The group moved forward with quick, careful strides. The splash of white grew larger, rippling with the water. Something, or someone, in the black water beneath them.
The guide stood at the edge of the path, looking down, shoulders slumped. Yvonne could not see his expression fully in the uncertain light, but the slumped shoulders told their own tale. She went to stand beside him and felt that hard knot jam up into her throat. It was a child’s nightgown. Floating in the water, rippling with the surface as it responded to some deep current underneath. Worse, far worse, it was not just the nightgown. There was a long plait of dark hair, tied off with a red ribbon, and the pale outline of a hand against the water.
“Let me,” she said, stepping forward. She crouched, cautiously, at the edge of the path. The ground here was soft under her feet and she could feel it sliding away from her toes even as she reached forward, gently taking hold of that pale hand and tugging, carefully and slowly, until she had the girl, in her perfect white nightgown, at her feet.
The face that turned up to her in the uncertain light was peaceful. Sleeping. Or so it seemed.
“Gone.” Grayling’s voice was harsh.
A clean wash of fury had Yvonne putting her hand on the girl’s chest. Cold, but there was the faintest trace of warmth. Nine years old. Taken from safety into this dark night, into the cold water.
She murmured a healing spell, her hand shimmering with magic for a moment before the spell coursed into the girl’s body. It didn’t always work.
The body shuddered and she moved, quickly turning the girl on her side, patting the small back.
A spew of dark water came out of the girl’s mouth.
“Blankets,” Yvonne said, relief making her voice shake. “Lots of blankets.”
Shouts went up all around them, blankets handed to her one after the other. She used the first two to rub the girl down, drying her off as the small body continued to spasm, coughing up more water than seemed possible. Then she used the next several blankets to wrap the girl up into a tight cocoon, layering carefully to preserve warmth.
“Anything to drink? Not hot, it will burn her.”
Several flasks appeared in her vision.
“This one. Lukewarm tea,” Grayling said, taking one of the flasks and waving the others away. He knelt by her, tipping the flask to the girl’s mouth as Yvonne held her up. “I thought she was gone.”
“So did I,” Yvonne said, shivering now that the worst was over. The girl coughed up the first mouthful of tea, spilling onto the blanket. Yvonne did not think the owner would mind. The girl swallowed the next, and a few after that. “She needs to go back to her parents. And a healer. There are no marks on her,” she added, seeing his face grim again. “I don’t think whoever took her had her long enough to hurt her. But she was nearly gone, and she’s still cold. She should live, but she needs care. At once.”
Grayling had turned away and was issuing orders that had a quartet of his men stripping off their cloaks, leaving them on the ground, and taking vials of something out of their belt pouches. Antonine Rangers. Famed for their ability to move through any terrain, and find their way in near-dark. There had been rumours that they used magic, but no one had ever been able to confirm it until now.
She watched as the chosen men swallowed the contents of the vials and their eyes shimmered with an eerie light, similar to a wulf near the change. Wulfkin could see in the dark as well as daylight.
“They’ll take her as fast as they can.”
The first of the four came forward and knelt nearby, holding his arms out for the girl.
“She’s sleepy, and wrapped tight, but she might be frightened if she wakes,” Yvonne told the Ranger, handing over the bundle.
“We’ll be quick,” he promised, voice rough, whether from magic or feeling she could not tell. He was away as quickly as he had approached, rising to his feet and turning back into the night with no further word.
The quartet set off at a flat run, heedless of the territory, one in front, and two behind the one carrying the girl. Four of them. They would be able to swap the girl between them as they ran.
“No need for horses,” Yvonne commented, mostly to herself.
“Faster to run in the marshes,” Grayling confirmed. Another one of his men was gathering up the discarded cloaks and empty vials. “And we’ve a kidnapper to find.”
Yvonne looked ahead into the marshland, the inky dark water and tufts of reeds that she could see, and the trail that went on ahead. There was nothing more of the girl’s trail. Naturally. The bright, young life was on her way back to her family. But there was something else. The other trail, the companion. Anxiety and grief and longing all twisted up.
It wasn’t the trace she would expect from a kidnapper. From someone who would coolly place a ladder under a child’s window and take her out of her home. Something else had happened. Something that her instincts told her was almost as important as rescuing the girl had been. They needed to go on.
“What’s up ahead?” she asked.
“Barely a path. Almost no one comes here.”
Yvonne could understand why. Without the guide finding the firm ground for them, they could all have drowned in the cold black water around them. The guide made a small sound, as though he was holding something in, and then continued.
“There’s a herbalist’s hut. A bit further on, towards the edge of the marsh.” The guide looked ahead, shoulder squaring. “Nice woman. Viola. Had a daughter a few years older than the one we found.”
“What happened to the daughter?” Yvonne asked, her feet moving her forward before her mind could catch up with her.
“Don’t know,” the guide said, voice heavy. That was what he had been holding in, Yvonne thought, trusting her instinct. “Haven’t seen her for a while.”
“We need to go there,” she said.
The guide didn’t say anything, just started walking, back stiff. Something about the herbalist upset him. Or maybe it was that her daughter had gone missing and he didn’t know when.
Yvonne followed him, Grayling with her, his men spreading out behind them.
Something caught her eye as they walked and she stopped, crouched by the side of the path again. A slipper. A child’s slipper. Just under the surface of the water, and just out of reach of her fingers.
“Be careful, Hunar,” the guide said. “It doesn’t look like much, but that is deadly.”
“It looks like she went in there,” Yvonne said, pointing to the slipper. “Would the current take her back?”
“Yes. It could. It’s chancy underneath.”
The guide moved, using the long staff he held, and fetching the slipper out of the water. There was no obvious damage, no blood, no sign of a struggle. Just a child’s slipper, mired now with water and mud. Yvonne felt her chest tighten, thinking of what might have been, if they had been a little later.
Grayling handed the slipper to one of his men, who tucked it away to give back to the family.
They kept walking and, into the eerie silence of the marshland, another sound emerged. A high pitched wailing. A woman in distress. Yvonne had heard that sound before. Too many times.
“You may want to stay here,” she told the others.
~
Past the dangerous part of the marsh, the path had widened a little so that they could all walk side-by-side comfortably, if they needed to. Ahead of them, a dark blot in the night, was a small, low building. A cottage. The scent of herbs carried on the slight breeze. Marshlands were not obvious places for herbalists to gather and work. But then, there was little free land around the town, and most herbalists that Yvonne had met preferred solitude and quiet.
There was a lighter patch outside the building. A figure, huddled against the wall, sobbing quietly, not moving as Yvonne approached. A woman, dressed in plain, serviceable clothing, dark hair framing a pale face that was mottled with tears and grief, clutching something to her chest. A child’s toy. The one that had been described, with much care and attention, by the girl’s parents.
The trail of anxiety and grief and longing led to this woman, who barely reacted as the Rangers, guide, and Hunar came into view.
Yvonne crouched down near the woman. Close enough to get a better look at her, even with the poor light, but far enough away to give the woman the illusion of privacy and space.
“Viola. What happened to your girl?” Yvonne asked.
“Gone.” The woman’s voice was harsh, hoarse with grief. Not grief that was mere hours old. This grief had been building for a while.
“What happened?”
“Men on horses. Grabbed her up. I ran after them. Screamed at them. No one cared. No one listened to me. Law keepers didn’t care. Nobody. Nobody cared. And she’s gone.”
“When was this?”
“First day of spring. Beautiful spring day. She had flowers in her hair.”
