Dishonour Among Thieves. Paul Durham

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      A staircase rose from the waves, ending at a landing high above their heads. Scowling, barnacle-pocked faces loomed over them as they carefully climbed the hand-carved steps, the mansion’s walls sculpted into the shapes of hungry sea monsters, wailing hags and nautical gargoyles lifelike enough to put a scare into even the hardiest seafarer.

      This was where her father had brought Rye after rescuing her from the woods. The place he kept secret – even from the Luck Uglies.

      Harmless called it Grabstone.

      They ate at the large table by the main fireplace, surrounded on all sides by salt-sprayed windows and sweeping views of the sea. One window was cracked open and a rather frosty-looking rook peered in from the ledge, sleet accumulating on its inky black wings.

      “Have the rooks brought any word from Mama?” Rye asked.

      “Nothing yet,” Harmless said. He broke off a crust of bread from their loaf and dangled his hand out over the ledge. The bird eagerly took it from his fingers with its long, grey beak. “Don’t be too troubled by it, though. I wouldn’t be eager to fly in these winds either.”

      Harmless had sent word of their whereabouts to her mother by way of a rook, much the way Rye and Folly used pigeons to convey messages back home. But even after several days and two more birds, there had been no reply.

      “And what about him?” Rye asked.

      In addition to carrying handwritten notes, Rye had seen the clever rooks communicate with Harmless in other ways. Occasionally they brought him what looked to be random nesting items; a scrap of leather, or piece of fishing line. But from them Harmless could glean distant comings and goings.

      “Slinister masks his movements well,” Harmless said, and Rye tried not to cringe at the mention of his name. “But I suspect that, like everyone else, he and his allies hunkered down somewhere to ride out this storm.”

      Harmless had explained to Rye that while Slinister was in fact a Luck Ugly, he was a man who harboured radically different notions from her father. They had once been fast friends, but a rift had grown between them over some matter Harmless didn’t elaborate upon. Slinister became the leader of a small but ruthless faction of Luck Uglies called the Fork-Tongued Charmers. They masked themselves in ghoulish white ash and blackened their eyes and lips with soot. Their name came from their gruesome custom of splitting their own tongues as a display of commitment. The disfigurement symbolised a pledge that could not be easily undone.

      Harmless must have noticed the lingering look of concern on Rye’s face as she fidgeted with her spoon.

      “I won’t lie to you, Riley. Slinister is a dangerous man, one haunted by wounds of the past. Even his name is an old jeer that he’s embraced and now wears defiantly. I am sorry that you ever had the misfortune of meeting him, and I’m afraid that I’m to blame for that. I’d heard the Fork-Tongued Charmers planned mischief for Silvermas – under cover of a Black Moon. I had been tracking them for weeks, but obviously I underestimated Slinister. And it turns out, I was an hour too late.”

      Harmless shook his head, as if still puzzled by his own misstep.

      “But why me?” Rye asked. “Why send a false message only to rob Good Harper and leave me freezing in the woods?”

      “He lured you on to the Mud Sleigh so that I would find you there,” Harmless said. “Slinister wanted to show that he was one step ahead of me. It was wrong of him to use you that way, and I promise he will be held accountable.” There was a fleeting hint of darkness in Harmless’s tone. “But the message was a forewarning meant for me, and you are in no jeopardy.”

      “How can you be sure?” she asked. She remembered Slinister’s parting words. Perhaps they would have a chance to meet again.

      “We have rules – unwritten but understood – not unlike the House Rules your mother raised you with,” Harmless explained. “Answer the Call. My Brother’s Promise Is My Own. Say Little, Reveal Less. Lay No Hand on Children of Friend or Foe. Those are just a few. Sadly, ours don’t rhyme as cleverly as your mother’s,” he added with a smirk. “But the consequences of ignoring them are, shall we say, severe. No Luck Ugly would break them.”

      “You realise it wasn’t so long ago that I broke every one of Mama’s House Rules?” Rye muttered. And besides, she thought, if Harmless was so confident, why did he feel the need to bring her here to Grabstone?

      “You mustn’t worry, Riley,” he said reassuringly. “I knew that calling the Luck Uglies back to Drowning after all these years would bring with it certain … complications. Ten years is a long time for men of independent spirit to be apart. But the Fork-Tongued Charmers are still Luck Uglies. Once a Luck Ugly, Always a Luck Ugly, Until the Day You Take Your Last Breath. That is perhaps the most important rule of all. And as brothers, we will settle our differences in our own way.”

      “And what way is that?” she asked.

      Harmless pushed himself up from the table and bowed his head.

      “More often than not,” he said solemnly, “by way of a dance challenge.”

      “Harmless …” Rye said, pursing her lips and crossing her arms.

      “It’s true,” he said, and did a few steps of jig so poorly it made Rye blush. “And if that doesn’t resolve it, we have a baking contest. The man who serves the best dumplings wins.”

      “Then you’re doomed,” Rye said with a laugh, swirling her spoon in his homemade stew – a medley of sea urchins and other slimy things that crawled out of tide pools.

      Harmless smiled and turned to look out the windows.

      “There’s another blow coming in,” he commented, and Rye sensed he was happy to change the subject.

      Rye reached out and snatched the rest of the bread while Harmless studied the approaching storm. She hid it in the folds of her shirt.

      “Can we watch it from the Bellwether?” she asked. The Bellwether was the room nestled in Grabstone’s tallest turret – a chamber sealed shut at all times behind a door so bare it didn’t even have a latch or keyhole. Harmless had told her it was off-limits.

      “You’re nothing if not persistent, Riley, but no.” He looked back at her. “When I bartered for Grabstone, the Bellwether wasn’t part of the arrangement. And you know I never break a deal.”

      Harmless was always negotiating bargains of one sort or another. He didn’t seem eager to explain who Grabstone belonged to before, or what he had to trade to get a whole house, either. Well, the whole house except the Bellwether. Harmless seemed to do a lot of things other people might describe as dishonest – but breaking deals wasn’t one of them.

      Rye shrugged and belched loudly after finishing the pungent stew.

      “You’re welcome,” Harmless said. He burped too, and they both laughed.

      Harmless had once told Rye that, in some cultures, a loud belch was how you thanked your host for a good meal. She and Lottie had eagerly adopted the custom. Their mother had not been pleased.

      Rye climbed the stairs to her room. Grabstone was built tall and narrow. Instead of halls there were stairways – a great number of СКАЧАТЬ