Free The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge Page A

him. The moment was lost.
    Faith joined Howard for supper, then helped him say his prayers and put him to bed, wondering how she had become governess and nursemaid in one. Howard was sleepy but
tenacious, wrapping his arms around her every time she tried to leave.
    As she stroked his head and lulled him to sleep a faint sound jerked Faith from her thoughts. It was a short, sharp cry, not unlike a vixen but very like a child, and it came from the darkness
outside. Doors below opened and closed. There were hushed conversations, exclamations of alarm and hurried steps.
    Faith slipped from her brother’s room and hastened downstairs, in time to find her mother, her uncle and Mrs Vellet in the drawing room, in tense, hushed debate.
    ‘Madam, we must send for a doctor . . .’ Mrs Vellet was insisting.
    ‘I cannot consent to that without my husband’s permission . . .’ Myrtle cast a nervous glance in the direction of the library.
    ‘Has he forbidden it?’ asked Uncle Miles. ‘Does Erasmus even know that there is a maimed child on his doorstep?’
    ‘He gave instructions – strict instructions – that he was not to be disturbed,’ Myrtle’s tone was meaningful, and her expression seemed to take the wind from her
brother’s sails. Even warmed by port, Uncle Miles was not one to risk the Reverend’s temper. ‘Miles – is there a chance that
you—
’
    ‘Myrtle, if I had money for the doctor I would send for him straight away, but right now I simply do not have the funds.’
    ‘Mrs Vellet –’ Myrtle turned to the housekeeper – ‘if the boy is brought into the kitchen, can he not be bandaged there?’
    ‘Yes, madam.’ Mrs Vellet seemed to be having some difficulty maintaining her usual composure. ‘But there is only so much we can do.’
    All three were too caught in their conversation to notice Faith slipping away to the library.
    Father would want to know. Of course he would want to know.
    She knocked. There was a silence, and then a faint sound that might have been a cleared throat, but which sounded just enough like a muffled word.
    Faith turned the handle and opened the door.
    The gas lamps were turned down to a mere glow, but the brass reading lamp on the desk bathed the scene in a quivering halo of light. Behind the desk sat her father, reclining back in his chair.
As Faith entered he turned his head very slightly in her direction, and frowned.
    Faith opened her mouth to apologize, but the words died in her mouth. Her father’s posture, always ramrod-straight, was now oddly slumped. She had never seen his face so pale, so slack.
Her skin tingled.
    There was a clammy smell in the room, she realized, the cold scent she had noticed in the folly. Now it ran little ice-fingers down her throat, through the nerves of her teeth and across the
backs of her eyes. The air was alive with it.
    ‘Father?’
    Her own voice sounded odd, as if a faint down of sighs clung to it. As she gingerly advanced, her footsteps were muffled in the same strange, feathery way. On every side the air seemed to be
stirring itself in little mouthless breaths.
    A pen trembled between her father’s loose fingers, ink pooling on the paper beneath the nib. A few sentences had been scrawled in clumsy, lopsided letters, unlike the Reverend’s
usual handwriting.
    His pupils were tiny and impenetrably black. In the lamplight it seemed that the grey of his eyes had jaded to a murky, troubled yellow. As she watched, the flecks and blotches of his irises
seemed to shift and stir like waterweed . . .
    ‘Father!’
    The discoloured eyes fixed on her, their gaze sharpening. Then his jaw set and his brow slowly creased.
    ‘Get out.’ It was a whisper, but with more venom than Faith had ever heard in her father’s voice. ‘Get out!’
    Faith turned and ran from the room, heart pounding.
    ‘Faith!’ Myrtle appeared in the hallway, just in time to see Faith closing the door behind her. ‘Oh – has your father finished his work for