The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [99]
Taking his blue velvet jacket from his shoulders, Tremaine wrapped it around mine.
“Thank you,” I murmured. The jacket smelled like grass and roses, at once fresh and sick-sweet with decay.
“Don’t,” he said shortly. “I’m doing you no favors, child. I need your full attention.” He regarded me, hunched inside his jacket. It was miles too large for me, and I swam inside the sleeves that flopped over my hands. “You are a frail little thing, aren’t you?” he said, looking up at the ridge of mountains to our west. “Nothing like the others.”
“I’m not frail,” I snapped, chafing at the comparison, no doubt, to men like my father. Tremaine showed his teeth.
“We’ll see.” He beckoned to me and started up the same trail that we’d encountered the mist upon. This time we crested the moor and came down into a hollow, filled with a stone circle like a mouth of broken teeth. As we cleared the outer ring of stones I saw that they lay in a distinct pattern, a starburst like the ink stain the witch’s alphabet had left on my palm.
“To stave off the no doubt interminable flood of talk,” Tremaine said as we passed through the circle and started to climb again. “Those were corpse-drinkers in the mist. Before.” He flourished his hand as if that explained everything. I was getting sick of his patronizing me, as if I were a very silly child who couldn’t possibly understand.
“Can you at least tell me what those are?” I grumbled. “Or am I to guess?”
“Corpse-drinkers,” Tremaine sighed, as if I were a hopelessly backward student. “Incorporeal beings searching for a vessel, a body. They possess corpses and drink of the living. They come from the other place. The Land of Mists.”
Tremaine’s explanation hadn’t done anything to lessen my terror of the creeping mist, but I set my feelings aside. I was only interested in one thing the Kindly Folk had, and lore wasn’t it. “My brother …,” I started. “Before, you said the boy—”
“If you spend any time in Thorn, with my people, you will come to understand the value and the beauty of bargain,” said Tremaine. “You must do something for me, Aoife, before I’ll grant favors for you, and—”
“I don’t want a favor,” I cut him off as he’d interrupted me, perhaps more viciously than was prudent. The Kindly Folk were not terribly kindly, and they were rude, too. “If something happened to Conrad, just tell me. Please.”
Tremaine stepped onto a set of steps carved into the downward slope of the moor, his green vest and trousers making him a living piece of the land. I followed, with far less grace.
“I said bargaining, not begging. Perhaps if you were a more sedate girl, who held her tongue before her betters, you’d have heard me.”
I hated Tremaine, I realized all at once. I wanted to hit him in those shark teeth, swing for the fences like Cal’s baseball players. “If you’ve just brought me here to riddle me, you might as well send me home,” I gritted. “I didn’t even know my father properly. I can’t tell you where he’s gone.”
“But he has gone,” Tremaine said. “He has not visited for three full moons. No inane tasks for our aid. No arcane knowledge sought. I declare, I almost miss the old man. He was at least diverting. You are not.” He walked, and I had the choice of following or being left alone on the moor. “So since you don’t have a quick wit or a pleasant face, what do you have for me, Aoife?”
“Well, I haven’t got anything except fifty dollars,” I said primly. “And that’s earmarked for someone else.”
Tremaine threw back his head and cackled at the rapidly graying sky. “I don’t want your money, child. I don’t want any sort of tribute. You are not the Gateminder. Not like your father, and never will you be.”
“All right.” I dug my feet in. “You’d better tell me what you do want, or I’m not going another step.” We had reached the edge of a pine forest, the sharp scent of the trees scraping the inside of my nose. Gravel paths wound away like ribbons, well groomed but eerily empty.
Tremaine stroked his tail of hair like it was a pet. “Do you see anyone else in this place, child, anyone to aid you?