‘I don’t know how.’ Hoyt picked up the wineskin again. He wanted something to occupy his hands. ‘I don’t have any magic.’
‘I’m going to try and give you some.’
Hoyt drank deeply and coughed as the bitter tang of a cheap Pragan burned the back of his throat. His mind raced for an alternative to bringing helpless friends into a haunted forest. ‘Maybe we can take one of the western roads. Won’t there be something out that way with a light patrol, something we can handle in a straight fight?’
‘If there was, I would be the first to suggest we go in that direction.’ Alen reached over and took the skin. Corking it, he added, ‘But if even one of those sentries managed to escape, every soldier in southern Malakasia would know in an aven.’
Hoyt nodded disconsolately. ‘You’re right. At least this way, we have an honest shot.’ He sighed. ‘How much time do I have?’
‘At the rate Churn is letting us ride – five or six days before we get there.’
‘All right,’ Hoyt said, determination in his voice overcoming the trepidation, ‘what do I have to do?’
‘Ms Sorenson,’ Steven said, ‘I need your help.’
Jennifer Sorenson’s washing machine churned away downstairs as she browsed the entertainment pages of one of the dozen or more newspapers that had piled up on the steps and lawn in front of her house. She never read headlines since the one had noted, in a good bold font, that the search for her daughter had been postponed until spring due to prohibitively heavy snow in the mountains. So now Jennifer scanned for book and film reviews or even a recipe for those periodic nights when she felt like cooking for one.
When the doorbell rang, she noted her place and went to the door, expecting a mailman burdened with two weeks of letters, bills and junk mail. ‘Just a minute,’ she called and, not bothering to check through the peep hole, she slid the bolt back and opened the door – and there he was, standing face to face with her, the monster who had taken her daughter. It had taken her a moment to recognise him: he had lost weight, and his last shower wasn’t recent – but it was him, Steven Taylor.
‘Ms Sorenson,’ he looked at her expectantly, ‘I need your help.’
Rage flooded through her, warming her skin and numbing her senses, a mother’s fury: she would beat this man to death, ravage him as every mother who had ever lost a child to a kidnapper or a paedophile dreamed of doing.
Jennifer leaped at him with a growl as adrenalin-fuelled hatred flooded into her bloodstream. She kicked, bit and punched all at once, a wild woman with flailing fists, fingernails, booted feet and teeth. She had dreamed of ripping this man apart and painting her face with his blood, of chaining him in her basement and keeping him there, barely alive, for the next thirty years. She had dreamed of beating him to death with a metal pipe until his body was reduced to bone shards and jelly – but each of those scenarios had required some planning. She had never expected him to come to her; yet here he was, Steven Taylor in person, and all the rage she could summon, all the hatred and fear she had felt from the first time she had ever watched Hannah get into a car and drive off with a young man – Edward Coopersmith, in high school – was focused on him now.
‘I am going to kill you,’ she screamed and managed to get a handful of his hair and the Gore-tex collar of his coat.
‘No – wait – Ms Sorenson, please,’ Steven cried, backing away and bringing his hands up in self defence, ‘I can take-’
Jennifer held onto Steven’s hair as if it were her only link to Hannah, a greasy, wiry hank that would somehow bring her daughter home if only she pulled hard enough. ‘I knew you weren’t on that hill, you fucker. Where did you take her?’ Not waiting for an answer, Jennifer spun around; Steven fell to his right as she, her hand still entangled in his hair, stumbled to her left and brought her elbow around in a wide arc that took the young kidnapper squarely beneath the chin, snapping his head back. Stunned, Steven fell down the concrete steps. Jennifer leaped down beside him and landed several brutal kicks to his ribs and stomach, hoping to hear his last breath, his death rattle – until she suddenly realised what he had been trying to say. She’s alive…
The last kick was little more than a token, then she crouched down beside him.
‘She’s alive, she’s okay… I know where-’ Steven’s voice was a rattle, wet and hoarse, she could barely hear it above the noise of the traffic.
But Jennifer had been listening for him to beg, to cry out that he was dying. ‘Where is she? Where? Did you bury her body, you bastard?’ She forced down the glimmer of hope; rage would comfort her until Hannah was home or until Steven Taylor was dead. She bounced the back of his head off the concrete and watched as his eyes rolled back. ‘Speak up, young man – where is she?’
Jennifer realised she was panting, barely sucking in enough air to keep her vision in focus. Steven interrupted with a whisper. ‘Praga.’
‘Prague? Did you say Prague?’ She needed him conscious now, and shook him roughly. ‘Shitty guess; her passport is upstairs.’
‘Not Prague.’ Steven looked like a cadaver, his cheeks sunk in and his eyes staring at points in the distance. ‘Praga – I have been trying for two months to get to her – I need your help.’
Jennifer began to soften as the hope, locked in her mind in an iron strongbox, began clawing its way out. Her hands shaking with adrenalin, she gripped Steven’s collar and heaved the young man’s face up until it was inches from her own. Shaking all over now, she warned him, ‘If you are lying to me, I promise you months of unholy agony before you die, Steven Taylor.’
‘We have three hours,’ Steven said, his eyes finally focusing on hers with surprising clarity.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Three hours and I’ll go get her.’
Brexan stumbled, toppling a stack of wooden crates with a clatter she was certain could be heard over the Blackstones. ‘Mother of a cloven-hoofed whore-’ Her curses would have embarrassed a docker, but she cut herself short as she lost sight of Jacrys. She was tired, dehydrated, and quite unable to keep up with the indefatigable Malakasian spy. ‘Drank too rutting much last night, you fool,’ she said softly. ‘What were you thinking?’
Brexan had been chiding herself all day for the embarrassing lack of control, not just the drinking, but the casual, if unmemorable, sex. She was still dehydrated after vomiting up her breakfast, and it was making her joints ache and her head feel as though it had been cracked by a passing blacksmith. Several times she had been convinced the spy had detected her as she tracked his circuitous path through the city, but Jacrys had continued on his way, talking with locals and peering into windows. He had eaten some fruit and a piece of dried meat with another small loaf of bread during the midday aven. Brexan, still unable to eat, had taken advantage of the break to guzzle a beer and a mug of water in a tavern across the street.
An aven later, that had been a mistake. The alcohol had made her sleepy and nearly bursting with a need to relieve herself. When Jacrys had stopped to engage in an animated discussion with a stevedore, Brexan had sneaked behind a row of juniper bushes, hastily hiked her new skirt above her thighs and pissed. She ignored the puddle of acrid fluid with a sigh and an embarrassed shake of her head.
She needed rest, food and then more rest, and unless Jacrys stopped soon for the night, she would be forced to abandon her surveillance and attempt to find the traitorous murderer the following day. ‘Why don’t you go back to your inn?’ she muttered. ‘Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you want to take a break for food? It’s well past the dinner aven now. Don’t you want to sit for a while? Maybe a day or two?’