The guard looked as if he’d just seen a spirit come to haunt him. ‘Seneira?’ He rose to his feet. ‘We thought you were—’
She gave him a quick hug. ‘I’m fine, Haight.’
He stared down at her, then at the rest of us, before his hand gripped his mace tighter. ‘Why are you wearing a blindfold, Seneira?’
‘Just a little eye trouble,’ she replied. ‘I need to see Tyne now. He’s inside, isn’t he?’
Haight hesitated, but I suppose he must have known Seneira wasn’t going to be dissuaded. Reluctantly he stepped aside, watching Rosie, Ferius and myself as we passed by, no doubt evaluating how much of a threat each of us might be if he later needed to beat us into submission with that big mace of his.
Through the doors we were met by an expansive room in near pitch black except for a small lantern hanging over a narrow cot. In one corner, shrouded in shadow, a man sat slumped in a chair.
‘Father?’ Seneira said, a catch in her voice as if she wasn’t sure whether to wake him.
The figure rose from the chair and turned to face us looking unsteady on his feet. He was between us and the light so I couldn’t make out his features. For a few seconds he stood there, almost like a man drunk, then shuddered as if he had only then woken up. A wracking sob came from his throat. ‘Seneira?’
He ran to her, and she had to hold him up as he nearly fell over trying to hug her. ‘Father, I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean—’
‘You’re back,’ he said, the words barely more than a hoarse whisper, the sound of a man who’d already cried himself voiceless with grief. ‘You’re back.’ He repeated the words over and over, his arms wrapped around his daughter and his head buried in her shoulder.
Rosie, Ferius and I remained at a polite distance, allowing father and daughter to share in their mixture of desperate relief and sorrow with as much dignity as possible. Unfortunately a scraping sound from a square iron grating overhead caught everyone’s attention. ‘Hey, somebody want to open this gods-damned thing up before I die of claustrophobia in here?’ Reichis chittered angrily.
‘What is that?’ Seneira’s father asked, looking up at the beady eyes peering through the grate.
‘That’s Reichis,’ she replied. ‘He’s Kellen’s …’
Don’t say ‘pet’. Don’t say ‘pet’. Oh, please, ancestors, don’t let her say ‘pet’.
‘Friend,’ she finished awkwardly.
Reichis gave a snort. ‘Like I’d ever be friends with a skinbag.’ Having evidently tired of waiting for us to free him, he managed to reach a paw through a gap in the iron grating and began fiddling with the latch until it popped open. He then leaped out, spreading his limbs and catching the air to drift gracefully to the ground. He went over and briefly sniffed at Seneira’s father before looking up at him and pronouncing, ‘Cry baby.’
Reichis isn’t big on expressions of grief.
‘This is my father, Beren Thrane, headmaster of the Academy,’ Seneira explained, and then began to introduce the rest of us. She’d barely opened her mouth before Beren ran over to Rosie and took her in a bear hug, practically lifting her off the ground. ‘You did it! I … I’d given up hope, but I should’ve known that if anyone could find my daughter it would be an Argosi!’
Rosie appeared particularly uncomfortable at this sudden outpouring of gratitude, not least because she caught the enraged look on Seneira’s face. ‘Found me? Father, you hired Rosie to search for me?’
Beren seemed confused as he turned to the Argosi. ‘Rosie? I thought you were called the Path of Thorns and Roses.’
‘Not the point,’ Seneira said, glaring at the woman who she’d thought had come upon her by accident in the borderlands. ‘You lied to me, Rosie. You said—’
‘I did not lie, child. You simply made assumptions and I allowed you to reach your own—’
‘Don’t try to wriggle out of this! Whatever happened to “The Way of Water” and not taking advantage of other people?’
‘I would hardly call saving your life “taking advantage”,’ Rosie replied.
Ferius jostled me with her elbow and said, ‘Now you know why an Argosi usually travels alone.’
A quiet voice from the bed caught everyone’s attention. ‘Senny?’
Seneira ran to the bed. The light from the lantern illuminated all the pain and fear in her expression as she looked at her younger brother. She leaned forward and hugged him to her, practically lifting him out of the bed. When she set him down again, the front of her shirt was damp with sweat.
The rest of us approached. Tyne looked very different from the joyful, almost mischievous little boy in the painting inside Seneira’s locket; his face was pale, almost grey, except for the winding black marks around his right eye. He shook relentlessly as he lay on top of his sheets, uncovered except for linen underpants. For a second I thought he must be cold, but then I saw the redness of his skin, the sweat pouring off him. Reichis jumped up to perch at the head of the bed. ‘This kid’s burning up, Kellen.’
The boy reached out a hand, trying to pet Reichis, but his fingers hadn’t even brushed the squirrel cat’s fur before his eyelids flickered shut and his arm fell back to lie awkwardly across his chest.
‘How did this happen?’ Seneira asked her father.
‘It was like with you, sweetheart,’ he said, reaching out to gently lift his son’s hand and set it at a more comfortable angle on the sheets. ‘He woke up with a terrible fever one morning. When I went to his room, I found the markings around his eye. I tried to keep his fever down, but it just kept getting worse, day after day, until a few nights ago when he started screaming. I tried to cool him down, but nothing worked.’ He looked at his son, his expression full of exhausted fearfulness. ‘The attacks are so bad … They just keep coming and coming.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Seneira said. ‘I got the fever too, but it passed after a day, and the … attacks didn’t start till weeks later.’
A sudden convulsion took the boy, his back arching as if someone had attached a chain to his belly and was suddenly yanking it up. His eyelids opened unnaturally wide, and oozing black tendrils filled the whites of his eyes. Seneira gave a cry and reached down to hold on to him while he shook and his arms flailed. When one of his hands caught in her hair, his fingers curled around and he began tearing at it. I ran over and grabbed his wrist, struggling to hold it in place so he wouldn’t rip the hair from her head. ‘Let him go,’ Seneira said, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘You’re hurting him.’
‘I’m not,’ I insisted, only to see the skin of his wrist looking red and cracked beneath my fingers.
Ferius grabbed part of the sheet and quickly wrapped it around her hand before taking hold of Tyne’s forearm, holding on to him without having to squeeze into his flesh. I let go and stepped back. A second later the boy collapsed, sweat pouring from his forehead, a vein on the side of his neck pulsing far too fast.
‘Senny?’ he asked after a moment. ‘Is that you?’
It was as if he’d no recollection of the past several minutes. Seneira leaned down and smiled at him through her tears. ‘It’s me, runt. When are you going to get out of that bed and clean your room?’
‘I feel bad, Senny,’ he said.
‘It’s just a cold. In a few days you’ll be right as rain and we’ll go kiting together.’
The boy’s eyes began to clear, though the irises were still black. ‘You went away.’
‘Just for a while. I’m back now, and I’m going to make sure you get healthy.’ She smoothed his damp hair from his forehead. ‘Nothing and nobody is going to stop us from making you better, you got that, runt?’
‘You went away,’ Tyne repeated, then closed his eyes as he whispered, ‘You shouldn’t have come back, Senny. That’s what they wanted.’