Tyrant’s Blood. Fiona McIntosh

      ‘Who are we running from?’

      ‘No one,’ Greven replied firmly and too quickly, Piven thought. Then his long-time companion seemed to reconsider his suggestion. ‘There’s no reason to move permanently. How about some travel? I think it’s high time I gave you an education about this fair land. It’s safe now to roam through the realms and we can do so easily enough—thanks to you that Bonny’s well. We can even use some savings to buy a mule…or even a horse and cart.’ He sounded excited but Piven heard panic driving Greven’s enthusiasm. ‘What do you say, eh? Are you ready for an adventure, boy?’

      ‘When?’

      ‘No time like the present. Come on, let’s pack up a few things. We won’t need very much. We can close up the hut and go.’

      ‘What about Belle?’

      ‘We can leave a message for Jenna. She can take Belle down to her parents’ place when she picks up the next crate of herbals for her father’s apothecary.’

      ‘Who will tend the fungi?’

      Greven looked up to the sky momentarily as if to calm his patience, then back at Piven. ‘Come on, don’t put up barriers. Let’s just pack a few essentials and be gone this night.’ ‘You’ve always said never to travel at night unless you’re on the run.’

      He watched Greven wrestle his exasperation back under control. This man he loved smiled gently. ‘I did, didn’t I? All right, why don’t we leave in the morning? How does that sound?’

      Piven didn’t think it sounded good at all but he had little choice, for Greven seemed filled with a fierce drive to be gone. Already he was beginning to tidy the few items that had been left outside around the front patch of garden. Switching topics, even though he knew that lack of protest would be taken as his agreement to leave, Piven asked, ‘What happened in town today?’

      ‘Oh, nothing much at all,’ Greven said. He was packing planting pots into a crate.

      ‘Who did you talk to?’

      ‘I met Evelyn on the way, I spoke to Innkeeper Junes…no one in particular. All quite boring, really.’

      Piven knew, without any doubt now, Greven was lying. And the lie prompted him to make his final decision.

      That night Piven dreamed.

      In his dream he saw a woman. He recognised her instantly; he had been dreaming about her for the last few moons. She was slim, dark-haired, and exceptionally pretty with fine features that were so angular and precise they looked as if they could have been drawn. In the dream he was hidden but he didn’t know where or why. As was usual, she seemed to sense that she was being observed; kept looking around to find the voyeur. She looked strange. No, that wasn’t right. Where she was looked strange. The setting was foreign to him and one he couldn’t comprehend. She was busy at something but he could make no sense of it. She was in a room that was predominantly white and she was tending to someone who was lying down. There were lots of other people crowded around her, all watching what she was doing. She appeared to be talking constantly.

      He called to her, surprised that he knew her name, holding his breath in the hope that the other people wouldn’t hear him. The woman paused, as if a thought had struck her, and then she looked up, slightly startled, and stared straight at him.

      Piven felt himself falling backwards, as if from a clifftop into a great void. He yelled his fear as winds began to buffet him, shake his bones as though he were a rag doll.

      ‘Piven!’

      He opened his eyes, shocked and alarmed. Greven was shaking him by the shoulders.

      ‘What’s happening?’ Greven asked, looking suddenly old and dishevelled in his nightshirt. ‘A nightmare, I think,’ he said, answering his own question. ‘Rest easy now, boy. No more yelling. You’ve probably already forgotten it.’

      Piven swallowed, alarm still clanging like windchimes in his mind. He had not forgotten any of it…or her.

      ‘It’s nearing dawn. We might as well call it morning and make a start,’ Greven said, scratching his chest absently. ‘I’ll get some dinch on.’

      He left Piven to surface fully, rub the sleep from his eyes and drag himself upright. Lethargy pulled at him like a heavy blanket and his mood felt bleak. Greven’s bright whistling at the hearth irritated him and an uncharacteristic scowl darkened his expression.

      ‘You yelled someone’s name. Who were you dreaming about?’ Greven called.

      ‘I don’t know,’ Piven replied. ‘What was the name?’

      Greven returned. He was stirring something in a small pot. Eggs, Piven thought, he’s readying them for scrambling. He was not hungry. ‘Do you know, I heard you scream it but I can’t remember now. Can you?’

      Piven shook his head. Not only could he not recall the woman’s name but her features were disappearing from his mind. Suddenly he could no longer see her pretty face.

      Greven chuckled. ‘Ah well, fret not, my boy. Soon you won’t be having nightmares about women. You’ll be dreaming happily about them morning, noon and night!’

      Piven’s sour mood deepened.

      ‘Oh, would you look at that!’ he heard Greven mutter in disgust. ‘I think the wretched eggs are off.’ Piven watched Greven lift the heavy earthen jug and sniff. ‘Bah! Gone! They’re yesterday’s, aren’t they?’

      Piven nodded.

      ‘How can that happen?’ Greven asked, and although Piven decided his question did not require a response, he had a sickening feeling that he knew the answer.

      Reuth sighed. ‘Perhaps we sent word too fast,’ she said, wiping their son’s face with a wet flannel.

      Clovis grimaced. ‘Too fast? It’s been a decade!’

      She gave him a look of soft rebuke. ‘You know what I mean.’

      He finished tying the laces on their daughter’s dress. ‘There you go. Now you look pretty enough to eat.’ He pretended to chew her neck and his little girl squealed with frightened delight. He loved to hear her voice. And far from being embittered by it, he felt blessed by Lo that his second daughter reminded him so starkly of Corin, his first beautiful—now dead—child. Whether it was fact or his imagination, they seemed to share the same tone and pitch in voice; Corin used to squeal in an identical manner when he teased her. He could not risk his precious children—or Reuth, come to that. ‘We are not wrong. We can’t both feel so strongly about this child and be wrong.’

      Reuth looked over at him sorrowfully. ‘I worry that we’ve been searching for so long that we just want this to be him so badly that we’ve convinced ourselves it is so. Eat your oats, you two, they should be cool enough now,’ she said, pointing to the faintly steaming bowls in which porridge had begun to set. ‘Your father will pour the milk in, the jug’s too heavy for you.’

      They’d had food for the children sent up. They would eat downstairs in the dining room. Clovis trickled the creamy milk into two small bowls and the children greedily tucked into their first meal of the day.

      ‘Slowly,’ Reuth cautioned their son. ‘Or you’ll spill it.’ He’d obviously heard the same cautions so many times before that he neither looked up nor slowed down; the words had become a meaningless mantra, Clovis could see.

      ‘Listen to me, Reuth,’ he said, once the children were ignoring anything but their bellies. ‘I could feel his fear. The boy is Piven.’

      ‘Well, unless we’ve been dancing to a different tune all these anni, Clovis, I could swear that the child we seek is mute, lost in his mind, even mad, some say. You yourself have told me he couldn’t speak, communicate, showed no emotion…acted like a moving statue, you once told me.’

      Clovis nodded, trying not to interrupt her but