went to watch him and Haijon on the gather-ground when they was training. I seen what Mardew did and sometimes I heard things he said to Haijon when he thought I wasn’t listening, or when I pretended to be asleep. That’s the only coaching I got, Catrin. From your sisterson.”
She leaned in closer still. She cupped one hand round the back of my neck to hold me there while she looked at me, the way you’d look at a piece of part-steeped wood to see if any buds had sprouted in it. She was searching the grain of my face for the lie that was there.
And I just looked back at her, like the lie wasn’t nowhere to be found, when all the while it was inside me, wanting, wanting, wanting to burst out. And it almost did, for her watching me so close was pulling the words up out of my throat, but just when I felt like I couldn’t keep silent no longer, she spoke up again.
“Was it just you, or was there others? Some friends of yours that you shared the risk and the plunder with? Say their names, if there were, and I’ll go light on them. I promise.”
“There was just me.”
“And who’d you talk to after? Who’d you show off your fine new treasure to? For we both know you couldn’t of kept a secret like that all to yourself.”
“Yeah, I did!” I said it like she had give me an insult, letting her see some anger that was really just fear turned around to another purpose. “I was saving it up for today. That way you’d have to make me a Rampart, because everybody in the village would be looking on. I wasn’t going to risk someone else spilling the secret first.”
She stood up at last. She reached out to take the candle from the shelf, but I spoke up quickly. “Leave me a light, Dam Catrin,” I says. “Please.”
She thought about that for a moment or two, then she went out of the room, leaving the candle set where it was. I heard the bolt hit the end of its groove again, and I went down off the stool onto my knees, shaking all over like a sickness had fell on me.
I was alone for a fair while after that, but I didn’t sleep again. I was thinking the whole time. Why was Catrin so keen to know who I’d talked to, or who had talked to me? I thought at first it was just because she hated Ursala so much, but then she had dropped that questioning and asked me about my friends instead.
It come to me at last what must be in her mind. If I had made the DreamSleeve work, even by accident, then I had got to know it wasn’t nothing special in me that had done it – that it was just how the tech was made. And if I knowed that, I knowed that Ramparts was no different from anyone else, but only made it seem like they was by tricks and lies.
That was why Fer jumped in so fast to stop Mardew’s mouth when he asked me how to make the DreamSleeve switch on. He was giving away the big secret, that nobody was ever meant to speak of.
And that was why Catrin had gone about to bring me inside the Underhold right away, not giving me the chance to say a word to anyone about the DreamSleeve or what I could make it do. Every word I spoke was a choker seed that could root between the stones of Rampart Hold and tear them down.
So now here I was, under the ground and in Catrin’s hand, that wasn’t like to open up and let me go again. A sick fear growed in me then. I only seen one way that this could end. They was going to have to kill me, for if they let me go they was letting go of everything. All their power, their riches, the things that set them up higher than the rest of us in Mythen Rood.
I wished mightily that I had been worse in keeping secrets than I was.
It felt like a long time again before I heard the bolt move, but I think my crowded thoughts made it seem so. Mardew come in with a wooden platter in his hand. The smell of roasted pig-meat filled the little room, and I sit up at once. It’s a