“It’s why I’m here. This is my link in the chain. I’m helping her get the artefacts and documents over the border while we still can.”
“Are you out of your mind?” I say. “Are all of you insane? What if you were caught skulking around? What if someone saw you without the cloak? They would think exactly what I did. No artefacts are worth this – the risk is too great – can’t you see that?”
“It’s less risky for me to be here than it would have been to stay there. Trust me.” He bites his lip as soon as the words have left his mouth, and looks away again.
And I realize that all of my doubt in him has gone. That he has my trust again. Even if he and his mother are lunatics.
“What will you do once the evacuation happens?” I ask.
“Nothing. I have to stay.” I get the strangest feeling that there’s more to come, so I keep still and quiet, silently urging him to speak. “I’m here to wait for something else that is likely to end up here, sooner or later. Something not from the temple.”
“Like what?”
Silas shrugs elaborately. “Nothing that would mean anything to you. It’s a religious thing. There’s no point trying to explain.”
There’s a pinch in my stomach, alien and unwelcome, and I don’t understand it. “But surely it’s unlikely this thing will get here now: the borders are closed, and the woods are full of soldiers and Lormerian raiders.”
He nods again. “I know. But that doesn’t change the fact I have to stay here, for now. Until we’re sure.”
We’re both quiet, thinking. “When you came here, to wait for this something, did you know the Sleeping Prince was coming?”
He looks at me. “Yes,” he says.
I open my mouth to ask another question but he holds up a hand to hush me.
“My turn. When you thought I was him, you stopped fighting. You were going hell for leather and then you stopped. I thought you’d fainted. Did you want me – him – to?”
My skin colours. “I was trying to trick you.”
His golden eyes flash. “I haven’t lied to you, Errin. Don’t lie to me.”
I can’t look at him as I speak. “She sat there, Silas. I ran into the room to defend her. I would have died trying to save her but she didn’t do anything. She stared at the wall while her daughter, her only living child, was struggling before her. I didn’t want to die. But I couldn’t fight. Not after that.”
Silas’s face is deadpan; he blinks at me and then gives a short nod. Suddenly he gets to his feet, unfolding his tall frame and standing over me.
“Here,” he says as he rummages in his pocket and holds out a small brown glass bottle with a dropper in the cap. The kind of bottle an apothecary would prescribe medicine in.
I stand up and take it, opening the top and squeezing to draw a tiny amount of liquid into the dropper. It’s milky looking, delicate, and I take a cautious sniff. It smells of roses. There are maybe seven drops in the bottle, and I replace the lid.
“What is it?”
“It’s for your mother.” He looks into my eyes, holding my gaze. “It’ll help her with her problem, I think.”
My blood runs ice cold. “What do you mean?” I whisper. Does he know what she is? Does he recognize it?
His face, still so new to me, is carefully blank. “Put it in her tea tonight, instead of the poppy. One drop only. Do you understand? One dose, of one drop, per day. No more.”
“What is it? What does it do? What is it for?” I want to grip him by the front of his cloak and shake him, my fists tightening with the desire to do it.
“I have to go. I’ll come back when I can. And I’ll knock.” He smiles.
“Silas—”
“Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies.” Then he’s gone, the door clicking neatly closed behind him.
I look down at the vial in my hand.
The rest of the day is mercifully uneventful, though that doesn’t stop the low-level panic that rises in me when I think of everything Kirin told me. But when I manage to push images of arrows and blood and hearts from my mind, it turns to Silas. White haired, golden eyed. More mysterious now than when he was hooded.
When dusk falls I make my mother some tea, and add one drop of