Free Wasp by Ian Garbutt Page B

or she might not survive the night.’
    ‘The girl cannot feed the child?’
    ‘I doubt she can feed herself.’
    The darkie dropped another handful of sticks into the flames. ‘Warriors, in my land, sometimes eat a root before fighting. It unchains their minds. They go wild, see things others cannot see, but they forget to eat. To clean themselves. This one is in such a place. Her blood is singing. You cannot go there too. Keep your potion in your pouch. Use your pain to keep alert.’
    He threw the last of the wood on the fire. It spat like a sick dog and billowed smoke into the freezing air. The Fixer mused over the idea of being needed. The darkie could snap both their necks, abandon the baby and slip into the trees. The journey over the ocean had eaten at his muscles, but enough strength remained, as had been demonstrated in the Fixer’s cabin.
    No, my friend, you also have demons to answer to. I suspected as much on the quayside and I’m more sure of it now. I’m banking on those to get us through this.
    They still had time. The port watchman would be well in his cups and the potboy seldom budged before cockcrow. The girl’s supposed brothers posed the biggest threat but the Fixer knew their sort. They’d whip up some men, likely from their own estate, to do their chasing for them.
    ‘How is the girl?’ the darkie asked. ‘She was speaking through much of the journey, saying things I did not understand.’
    ‘Sleeping, or as close as she can come to it. The straw is keeping them warm enough. I daren’t wake either. Noisy mouths will serve us ill.’
    ‘If not for them I would still be in that cage?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Then I must be grateful to them if not to you. I know what you were thinking, that I could kill you all and take my chances in the forest. You are right to do so, because I am a murderer. I have killed or enslaved my entire people, and what would be three more among these dark trees? But that is not how my heart works. I am a stranger in this country and will take your offer of life, if only to remember what I have done.’
    ‘D’you have a name, darkie?’
    ‘You could not say it. Your tongue is too stiff. Your race has forgotten how to speak. You do not name your children after living creatures. You are given nonsense titles that cannot be found in the skies, the land or the forest. I cannot speak to you of names.’
    ‘Fine. No names. Not for now. But I’d like to know why my language is so familiar to you. You speak better than many English born.’
    ‘My village once traded with your kind, until you found a better use for us. So, do you have a plan, healer, or shall we wander like this and let fate decide what becomes of us?’
    ‘I’ve fooled myself for months that working those docks was the only choice open to me. But no, there’s another.’
    ‘Another?’
    The Fixer said nothing more and the darkie didn’t press it. Half an hour later they were back on the road, the fire kicked into ashes behind them. An orange smudge lined the horizon to the east. They had to pull onto the verge to let a post coach gallop past, but so far that remained the only traffic.
    The darkie had a haggard look. The Fixer sent him into the back of the cart and took over the driving. When the baby woke and started crying she was soothed with gentle songs never heard in this patch of the world. The miles rumbled by. Every sound caused the Fixer to flinch. The nag snorting. A crow flapping out of a hedge. Soon the land opened out into pasture and the grey-green fuzz of trees lay well behind them. Not much of a forest. Any pursuers could likely comb it within an hour.
    Another crossroads. The handpost marked eleven miles from the city. The right-hand road disappeared into the fields. Ahead, the lane rotted into a track. The brown husks of last summer’s weeds still poked out of the middle. Dead brambles encroached from either side.
    The Fixer snapped the reins across the Shire’s rump. All around them