‘No!’ cried Makepeace. Now for a gamble of all gambles. She looked appealingly at the interrogator. ‘We need him alive, so his men will surrender! And . . . I know this man! He’s not a witch, just demon-cursed, like me! He needs Lord Fellmotte to exorcise him!’
‘Don’t listen to her!’ bellowed Symond.
‘Lord Fellmotte!’ erupted the interrogator, losing patience. ‘Exorcise the prisoner!’
Symond gave Makepeace a fleeting glance of pure hatred. He put away his sword, and drew his dirk instead. He ventured closer, making sure that at all times the blade was pointed firmly at the prisoner. Slowly and carefully, he dropped to a crouch, and laid a hand on the prisoner’s shoulder.
And then, to everyone’s surprise including his, his right hand gave an odd little spasm, and tossed his dirk away across the room.
Elder James promptly grabbed Symond by the shoulders to stop him pulling away, and let his jaw drop wide. He breathed out with a sound like a broken bellows, and only Makepeace saw the smoky forms of ghosts surge from his throat towards Symond’s face.
Symond gave a short gargle of shock as spirits seethed in through his eyes, ears, nostrils and mouth. Then his face, usually so mask-like, jittered helplessly between different paroxysms of terror.
Makepeace quietly backed against a wall, her skin crawling. Given the choice between a half-blinded, captured bastard, and a well-trained heir with a blade in his hand, the ghosts had seized a golden chance to trade up. She had hoped for this, but the sight of it still made her feel sick.
James released Symond and fell backwards, looking shocked and stunned. Symond stood shakily, then staggered across the room, his arms jerking and twitching.
‘My lord?’ The interrogator’s free hand was fumbling at his pocket, and Makepeace wondered if he was looking for his bible. ‘My lord . . . are you well?’
Symond stooped to pick up his dirk, then straightened. He wobbled on his feet for a moment, so that the interrogator reached out to steady him. Then Symond drove his dirk into the interrogator’s stomach with shocking force.
He drew his sword with unnatural speed, and hacked swiftly into the side of the remaining musketeer’s neck. The last soldier had just time to scream as he was run through.
There was a ragged sound of steps outside, and the front door was flung open. White Crowe burst in, with a young soldier in Fellmotte colours by his side. Both immediately pointed their weapons at Symond.
‘Oh, put those away!’ snapped the Elder in Symond’s body. ‘Can you not see who I—’
There was a crack, and he stiffened as if listening intently. A round, dark hole was suddenly visible in his forehead. Makepeace could smell smoke, that same metallic hellfire gunsmoke.
‘Oh, I know who you are,’ said the young Royalist soldier, ‘you toad-licking traitor.’ A wreath of smoke surrounded his pistol. Symond collapsed to the ground, still wearing an expression of intense concentration.
‘You fool!’ shouted White Crowe. ‘We were supposed to capture Master Symond alive!’
‘I’ll hang before I regret it,’ said the young soldier with feeling. ‘My brother died at that battle, thanks to him.’ Other soldiers piled in behind him, took in the scene at a glance, and pointed their weapons at Makepeace.
‘Are you badly hurt, my lord?’ White Crowe stooped beside James.
James gave Makepeace a dazed, haggard glance. And yes, it was James at last, the real James. When she saw his hand start to move towards hers, she gave him a tiny, urgent shake of the head, willing him to understand. To her relief, she saw realization dawn across his face.
Groggily James glanced at White Crowe instead, and shook his head.
‘A powder burn, nothing more,’ he rasped. ‘A minor inconvenience.’ It was not a perfect impression of the voice he had used as an Elder, but close enough. ‘One of them was lucky . . . briefly.’
‘My lord, let me help you to the carriage,’ said White Crowe, wrapping one of James’s arms over his shoulder. He helped James to his feet and guided him out through the door. ‘Bring the girl,’ he said over his shoulder.
Nobody but Makepeace paid any attention to Symond’s body. White Crowe’s men were not gifted. They heard no faint, spectral screams, like fingernails against the mind. And they saw nothing when ghosts swirled out of Symond like dirty water.
But Makepeace saw them as she was manhandled towards the door. They rose and mingled, writhing, thrashing and smokily bleeding into the air. These were the ‘wolves’ for which Mother had prepared her. Soon they would sense her, and the haven at her core. Then they would come for her.
But she could not leave without Morgan.
The two closest ghosts were locked in battle, tearing vaporous strands from each other. The larger was already badly tattered, perhaps savaged by Symond’s predatory mind. The smaller one looked different from the other ghosts, and moved more quickly and sinuously.
Morgan.
Makepeace feigned a stumble, and fell from her captors’ arms to the floor. Steeling her will, she threw out one arm, with her fingers almost touching the Infiltrator’s ghost. It broke from its fight, and spiralled swiftly up her arm. She breathed deeply to draw in air and one spymistress-ghost, repressing a shudder as she did so.
As the soldiers picked Makepeace up and dragged her out of the cottage, the other ghost streaked towards her head. She had a brief glimpse of a hazy, misshapen face. Then for a fearful moment everything was twilit, as the phantom tried to pour in through her eyes.
But this ghost was panicky and already fraying. It was not ready for her defences, battle-hardened by her graveyard vigils. It was not ready for her angels of the mind. And most of all, it was not ready for Bear. When Makepeace’s vision cleared again, the shreds of her attacker were floating on the air like dark gossamer.
Are you hurt? Makepeace asked quickly, trying to get a sense of Morgan’s presence in her head, while her captors hurried her down the path after White Crowe and James.
A minor inconvenience, came the wry response in Morgan’s familiar hard-edged voice. And that is not a question I have been asked in a very long time.
Makepeace cast an anxious glance back towards the cottage, looking for more spectral pursuers.
They will seek us, but they are wounded, murmured Morgan. And they have just lost their Infiltrator.
‘If we hurry,’ White Crowe was saying, ‘we can reach Grizehayes before the enemy’s reinforcements, and slip past the siege in darkness. With luck Lord Fellmotte is still alive — we still have a chance of getting the girl to him in time!’
James and Makepeace exchanged a fleeting, panicky glance, but what could they do?
‘Lead on,’ James said huskily.
After all Makepeace’s plans, struggles and escapes, it seemed that she was going back to Grizehayes after all. For a moment she felt as though it had been biding her time and watching her efforts, before putting out one long, lazy cat paw, and pinning her like a wounded bird.
CHAPTER 37
Only when she was tucked inside the Fellmotte carriage alongside James did Makepeace dare to speak.
‘Is anyone listening to us?’ she murmured.
‘I don’t think so,’ James whispered back. ‘The driver won’t hear us, and everybody else is on horses.’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ said Makepeace, meeting his eye and raising an eyebrow.
It took a moment for her meaning to sink in. James looked rueful and shook his head.
‘Just me in here now,’ he said.
‘Let’s look at your eye, then,’ Makepeace whispered. James showed his face, and she noticed the singed spatter pattern on the skin of his cheek, and the painful redness of his eyeball.