LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER TEN

      Tobin was made to stay in bed for two days. At first he slept much of the time, lulled by the sound of the rain pelting steadily against the shutters and the groan and grumble of the river ice breaking up.

      Sometimes, half awake, he thought his mama was in the room with him, standing at the foot of his bed with her hands clasped tight the way she had when she saw the King riding up the hill. He’d be so certain she was there that he could even hear her breathing, but when he opened his eyes to look she wasn’t.

      The demon was, though. Tobin could feel it hovering around him all the time now. At night he pressed closer to Nari, trying to pretend he didn’t feel it staring at him. Yet powerful as it was, it didn’t touch him or break anything.

      By afternoon on the second day he was awake and restless. Nari and Tharin sat with him during the day, telling stories and bringing him little toys as if he were a baby. The other servants came too, to pat his hand and kiss his brow.

      Everyone came except Father. When Tharin explained at last that he’d had to go back to Ero with the King for a little while Tobin’s throat ached, but he couldn’t find the tears to cry.

      No one spoke of his mother. He wondered what had happened to her after she’d gone to the tower, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. In fact, he didn’t feel like speaking at all, and so he didn’t, not even when the others coaxed him. Instead, he played with his wax or burrowed under the blankets, waiting for everyone to go away. The few times that he was left to himself, he took the rag doll from its new hiding place behind the wardrobe and just held it, looking down at the blank circle of cloth where its face should be.

       Of course he has a face. The prettiest …

      But it wasn’t pretty at all. It was ugly. Its stuffing was lumpy and clumped inside and he could feel little sharp bits like splinters in the uneven legs and arms. Its thick muslin skin was dingy and much patched. He did discover something new, though; a thin, shiny black cord tied tightly around its neck, so tight that it didn’t show unless he bent the head sharply back.

      Ugly as it was, Tobin thought he could smell the flower scent his mother had worn during those last happy weeks on it, and that was enough. He guarded the doll jealously and, when he was finally allowed up on the third day, he moved it to the bottom of the old chest in the toy room.

      The weather had turned cold again and sleet was hissing down outside. The toy room was dim and dreary in this light. There was dust on the floor and on the flat roofs of the city’s wooden block houses; the little wooden people lay scattered about the Palatine like the plague victims his father had written of. In the corner, the Plenimaran chair warrior seemed to mock him and he took it apart, throwing the cloak into the empty wardrobe and putting the helmet away in the chest.

      Wandering over to the writing table by the window, Tobin gingerly touched the things he and his mother had shared – the parchments, sand shaker, scraping blades, and quills. They’d laboured through almost half the alphabet. Sheets of new letters in her bold, square hand lay waiting for his practice. He picked one up and sniffed it, hoping to catch her scent here, too, but it only smelled of ink.

      The sleet had given way to early spring rain when his father came back a few days later. He looked strange and sad and no one seemed to know what to say to him, not even Tharin. After supper that night Rhius sent everyone out of the hall, then took Tobin onto his lap by the fire. He was quiet for a long time.

      After a while he raised Tobin’s bruised chin and looked into his face. ‘Can’t you speak, child?’

      Tobin was shocked to see tears trickling down into his father’s black and silver beard. Don’t cry! Warriors don’t cry, he thought, frightened to see his brave father weeping. Tobin could hear the words in his head, but he still couldn’t make any sounds come out.

      ‘Never mind, then.’ His father pulled him close and Tobin rested his head against that broad chest, listening to the comforting thump of his father’s heart and grateful not to have to watch those tears fall. Perhaps that’s why his father had sent everyone away; so they wouldn’t see.

      ‘Your mother … she wasn’t well. Sooner or later, you’ll hear people say she was mad, and she was.’ He paused and Tobin felt him sigh. ‘What she did in the tower … it was the madness. Her mother had it, too.’

      What had happened in the tower? Tobin closed his eyes, feeling strange all over. The bees had started buzzing in his head again. Did making dolls drive you mad? He remembered the toy maker he’d seen in town. He hadn’t noticed anything wrong with her. Had his grandmama made dolls? No, she’d poisoned her husband …

      Rhius sighed again. ‘I don’t think your mama meant to hurt you. When she was in her bad spells, she didn’t know what she was doing. Do you understand what I’m telling you?’

      Tobin didn’t understand at all, but he nodded anyway, hoping that would satisfy his father. He didn’t like thinking about his mother now. When he did, he seemed to see two different people and that made him feel afraid. The mean, distant woman who had the ‘bad, spells’ had always been frightening. The other – the one who had shown him how to trace letters, who rode astride with her hair flying in the wind and smelled like flowers – she was a stranger who’d come to visit for a little while, then abandoned him. In Tobin’s mind, she had disappeared from the tower like one of her birds.

      ‘Someday you’ll understand,’ his father said again. He pulled Tobin up and looked at him again. ‘You are very special, my child.’

      The demon, who’d been so quiet, snatched a tapestry from the wall across the room and ripped it violently up the middle, snapping the wooden rod that held it. The whole thing fell to the floor with a clatter, but his father paid it no mind. ‘You’re too young yet to think about it, but I promise you that you will be a great warrior when you’re grown. You’ll live in Ero and everyone will bow to you. Everything I’ve done, Tobin, I’ve done for you, and for Skala.’

      Tobin burst into tears and pressed his face against his father’s chest again. He didn’t care if he ever lived in Ero or any of the rest of it. He just didn’t want to see this strange new look on his father’s face. It reminded him too much of his mother.

      The one with bad spells.

      The next day Tobin gathered up the parchments and quills and inkpots and put them away in an unused chest in his bedroom, then placed the doll under them, hidden in an old flour sack he found in the kitchen yard. It was risky, he knew, but it made him feel a little better to have the doll close by.

      After that he could look into his own shadowed eyes in the mirror by his washstand and mouth my mama is dead without feeling anything at all.

      Whenever his mind strayed to why she was dead or what had happened that day in the tower, however, his thoughts would scatter like a handful of spilled beans and a hot red ache would start under his breastbone, burning so bad that he could hardly breathe. Better not to think of it at all.

      The doll was a different matter. He didn’t dare let anyone know about it, but he couldn’t leave it alone. The need to touch it woke him in the middle of the night and drew him to the chest. Once he fell asleep on the floor and woke just in time to hide it from Nari as she awakened the next morning.

      After that he sought out a new hiding

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