Bringer of Light (Hidden Empire) by Fenn Jaine

Author:Fenn, Jaine [Fenn, Jaine]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780575096974
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton
Published: 2011-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The priest and the monitor had taken the lantern with them, leaving Ifanna the candle. She picked it up carefully, shielding the flame with her hand, and went to explore the plague-house.

Save for the faint odour, and an indefinable sense of emptiness, there was nothing to indicate that the former occupants were now dead. She found honey and lentils and rice in the kitchen cupboards, and in the parlour embroidered cushions were scattered over the worn wooden seats. But in the hallway, the flowers in the household shrine had shrivelled, and the corn was covered in mould. A blue votive candle, no doubt bought when the first family member fell ill, had been burnt down to a stub. Ifanna shivered and looked away.

Upstairs, she found a small room containing storage chests and a rack stuffed with rolls of leather. Below the rack were some half-finished shoes: apparently the husband had been a cobbler. Ifanna breathed in the familiar scent of the leather. The bed in the main room was still made up, covered in a throw decorated with what Ifanna was beginning to recognise as the wife’s embroidery. Ifanna hesitated at the thought of sleeping in a bed whose last occupants had come to such an unpleasant end, before deciding that they had no further use for it and she most certainly did.

It was only after she had lain down that she saw the empty wooden crib on its stand in one corner. Tears sprang to her eyes and this time she let them fall. She was still crying into the soft pillows when she fell asleep.

For a moment she had no idea how she came to be waking up in a large, comfortable bed, not on the ground or in her cell. Then she remembered that this was a house of the dead; she found the thought reassured her, for she felt as though she too had died – though the twin aches in her head and bandaged side reminded her that she had not quite managed to escape the flesh. But she had escaped her fate; she was free.

She sat up, wary of her wound, and started to think about her circumstances. She could take what supplies she wished from this house and simply walk away. A ghost stealing from other ghosts was no sin. But Gwas Maelgyn and Captain Siarl had helped her when no others would, and they trusted her not to flee. It would be wrong to betray that trust.

She jumped as someone started knocking on the door. Was it the priest? Or guards from the Tyr, come to take her to the fate she had foolishly believed she could avoid? For a moment she wondered if she should pretend she was not here, but she swiftly realised that if it was monitors, they might just burst in and search the house, and if it was Gwas Maelgyn, he might go away again. She jumped up – and almost fell over, her head was spinning so badly.

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