be paid. You'll have your son safe. But if you fail, remember what Madron told you that day you came to me. Yadua has other powers, powers she can turn against those who do not pay the price for her. Fulfil my grandmother's curse and destroy Warren's son, else by the power of Yadua, her curse will fall upon your own son. And that I swear. Ka!'
Elena didn't know how long she crouched there on the floor of Ma's chamber. At times her thoughts flashed so quickly through her head, she couldn't make sense of them, then they were drifting down around her like the seeds from a dandelion, blowing away when she tried to grasp them. Athan was dead . . . no, he was still waiting for her. All these months she had been praying for him, thinking about him, so he couldn't be dead ... he was lying in the cold earth, decaying, his flesh was rotting, his cornflower-blue eyes eaten away . . . No, no they couldn't be because she'd seen them laughing at her as she ran towards him.
It was easier to imagine her own baby dead, because she'd seen that in her head, but not Athan. She'd seen the other men dead too, and now Gytha wanted her to kill Osborn. She could picture him too in her head, bored, impatient, ordering her hanging as if he was ordering a cook to wring a chicken's neck. A huge man, a powerful man, who could knock a soldier down with a sideways glance.
'You made your mind up, my darling?'
Ma was sitting on the serpent's throne, peering down at her. A dozen ruby eyes stared out unblinking from her crow- black hair.
'She speaks sense,' that friend of yours. There'll be no convincing Osborn his brother was killed by the dog-fighters. It's him or you, my darling.'
Elena stumbled to her feet. They were so numb from where she'd been kneeling that she almost tumbled into Ma's arms.
'But I can't. I can't kill a man. I couldn't kill anything'
'But you have. You can't cod me. When you're in your right mind you're as soft as rabbit fur. But if you hate something enough, you can kill as ruthlessly as any soldier. Think about how much you hated Hugh for what he did to you and Finch. You loathed him. You thought he deserved to die, and you saw to it he did. You made sure Hugh could do to no other lad what he'd done to Finch. And Finch wasn't even your flesh and blood.'
'But I don't remember doing it.' Elena collapsed on to her knees again, her head pressed against Ma's legs.
Ma gently stroked her hair. That's a good thing, my darling, the best way,' she murmured. 'Means when your blood is up, you're not yourself and you've the strength of ten. If you can kill one brother so easily, why not the other? You going to let Osborn live after what he did to your Athan? Are you going to sit back and wait for him to do the same to you? And what of your little one, if Osborn has you executed, who's going to take care of him? Do you want him to grow up like Finch to live in a place like this, where other Hughs will use your son as he did that boy? Because there's one thing I'd wager this brothel against, my darling, that friend of yours is never going to tell you where she's hidden your baby till she knows for certain Osborn's dead.'
The wall inside Elena which had held firm for so many months finally burst apart and she howled in grief and fear.
Elena woke to the sound of murmuring voices. At first she thought she was back in the girls' sleeping chamber, but then she realized that she was lying on a fur. She wasn't down in the chamber beneath the trapdoor though. A faint light was filtering in from behind a heavy drape in front of her and she knew that she must be behind the curtain in Ma's upper chamber. The last thing she remembered was Ma giving her a beaker of heavy wine that for all its sweetness still had a curious bitter aftertaste. She licked her parched lips; she could still taste it now. Her head throbbed and she knew it had been laced with poppy syrup. She must have fallen asleep at once.
She lay where Ma had placed her, unable to