Shadow Queen - By Deborah Kalin Page 0,70

sufficient?’ he said, his voice loud enough to make Roshi stir in her sleep. ‘Sufficient to make up for killing your family? Sufficient to make you love him?’

‘It’s more than could be said of a lot of men!’

‘Would you mind keeping your voices down?’ snapped Roshi, glaring at us, then rolling onto her other side and burrowing her head under her arm.

I shoved the mug away, spilling cold tea onto the soil, and raised my wrists, forcing Sepp to look at what they’d done to me. ‘He never once bound me!’

Sepp’s gaze flicked to my brow. ‘Then how do you account for the branding?’

I shoved my wrists up to hide my forehead. Where was my veil?

‘Is it part of the love?’ Sepp demanded, anger making his cheeks feverish.

‘He says I wouldn’t have survived the poison without it,’ I replied, seizing on the first words that came to mind, though Dieter’s lie tasted strange and false in my mouth.

‘Ha,’ came Roshi’s voice, bouncing off the trees and back at us. ‘You survived the poison because I acted quickly enough to stop you eating it all. Those marks did you no favours.’

I glared at her back. ‘I suppose you want me to thank you!’

‘No.’

The quiet dignity of her response robbed me of any retort.

Sepp swung his gaze between us, trying to piece together the story. I didn’t enlighten him. When it was clear Roshi had no more to add either, he said, ‘Tilde, please, you have to trust me.’

‘Like I trusted you last night?’

He winced, and I used his moment of hesitation to drive home the blade of guilt.

‘What reason do I have to trust you? You believe her over me, though we’ve been friends for a lifetime,’ I said. ‘How can I trust you? As far as I can see, I’m the only sane one here.’

His eyes turned hard and flat as slate. ‘You’re right. I have known you longer. Which is how I know the Tilde sitting in front of me isn’t the same person I left a month ago.’

Then Sepp, my closest friend and cousin, turned away.

The hurt made me desperate – and bitter. ‘I suppose you think I should’ve lain down and let them hack out my throat, too, do you?’

He flinched and turned back in a rush, pain alive in his eyes. I could still reach him.

‘Tilde …’ he said, extending his hand, his fingers brushing the rope. ‘I’d never wish you dead. Don’t say such things.’

Roshi grunted. ‘I wish the both of you were dead. Or at least gagged. And if you don’t shut up and let me sleep, you will be.’

Sepp ventured a smile.

‘Don’t misjudge her words for a joke,’ I warned. ‘She tried to kill Dieter and frame me for it. It would’ve worked if I hadn’t made the mistake of eating the tainted meal.’

Instead of displaying the fear I’d hoped, however, Sepp took a moment to consider my words. ‘Good,’ he said at last.

‘Good?’

‘We need someone who won’t baulk at what needs doing. You should have tried killing him long before last week. If you were in your right mind, you would have.’

TWENTY-EIGHT

BY THE TIME Roshi woke again, I’d had hours of silence in which to think.

She looked from me to Sepp, then said, ‘Breakfast for the squabbling children?’

My stomach grumbled and my mouth watered in anticipation as Roshi dug through the baggage, emerging with a heel of bread and a winter apple. Such was my hunger that stale bread and a withered apple looked appetising.

‘You’ll have to eat on the march, because there isn’t time for fineries,’ said Roshi, hooking her hand through my elbow and hauling me upright. ‘On your feet. The pony is carrying the bags today,’ she added firmly.

Sepp rolled up the groundsheets and loaded the pony’s panniers. Meanwhile, I’d gobbled down the bread before he’d tightened the last strap.

‘Where are we heading, then, if not to your people?’ I asked Roshi as we set off.

Marching ahead of me, neither Roshi nor Sepp answered. The forest canopy still filtered the light in such a way that I couldn’t judge the sun’s position.

‘Seems to me we have nowhere to go,’ I said, a hard edge in my voice. ‘The Iltheans block the south and the west. None in the north will shelter us, for they’re loyal to the Somners, or to Dieter directly. You’ve already said not east, to your people. Where else can we flee?’

‘It’s always politics and lectures with you,’ said Roshi, not bothering to glance back. But