Chapter 33

C HAPTER 33

Sheets rustled as Cordelia slipped out of bed. She'd waited until the house fell quiet, and then she waited for what felt like hours until she'd gathered her courage to get up.

I have to do this. Falada killed someone. He's got to be stopped, and I'm the only one he won't hurt.

I think.

She shoved her feet into her boots. Surely the same rules that applied when you were alive applied when you were dead. Dead-ish. Dead-like.

Regardless, I have to try. I didn't try to stop Mother, and Penelope died. Falada's already killed the gamekeeper. I have to stop him, before he kills anyone else.

The floorboards creaked as she moved. She winced, trying to avoid the squeakiest bits, but every time she stepped aside, it seemed to wake an even louder squeak. Was it this bad during the day? It must be. It's not as if someone comes in and tunes the floor at night. I just don't notice it when I'm not trying to be stealthy.

She eased the door open and was just congratulating herself on shutting it with an almost noiseless click when Alice said "Miss?" and frightened her out of her skin.

"Don't try to stop me!" Cordelia said, which was exactly the wrong thing to say if she had any hope of brazening her way through the encounter.

Alice's eyebrows climbed toward the ceiling. "Stop you doing what, miss?"

"Um…"

Alice surveyed her charge's hastily donned clothes and put her hands on her hips. "Are you running away?"

"What? No!"

"If you're going to meet a man, if you'll forgive me saying so, you should probably look a lot happier about it."

Cordelia's mouth fell open. That thought hadn't even occurred to her. She didn't know what to do with it. "I'm… I wouldn't… I… I don't even know any…"

Alice leaned against the doorframe. "You could order me out of the way," she said gently.

"I could? Um." Cordelia swallowed. The pressure in her chest had built so high that she wanted to scream a little, but that would not be stealthy. She rubbed her sternum. "Could you… err… pretend you didn't see me? Please? It's important."

"All right," said Alice.

"Thank you."

"If you tell me where you're going."

Cordelia groaned. Alice put a kind hand on her arm. "Miss, sneaking out at night won't help your reputation one bit. If you're being blackmailed or if some fellow's asked you for a meeting, you just tell me and I'll help you sort it."

"It's nothing like that," said Cordelia. "It's… oh hell." She rubbed her forehead. "It's the horse," she said. "The one that's out there. I'm hoping to get it away from here. It knows me. It won't hurt me." She looked up into Alice's frankly skeptical expression. "It's my mother's horse."

"Ohhh…" Understanding dawned on Alice's face. "Oh, I see." She gnawed her lower lip, clearly torn, then nodded to herself. "All right. Pull up your hood. We'll take the servants' stair."

Cordelia's mouth fell open again.

"No one will notice you," said Alice. "If you go out the front door, everybody will notice. Come on."

She led Cordelia down the hall, to a narrow door set unobtrusively in the wall. It led down an equally narrow set of steps, and though the walls had clearly been whitewashed recently, they were covered in scratches and dark smudges from heavy use.

Halfway down, they passed one of the footmen, who was yawning. "You're up late," he said to Alice.

"So're you," she replied, while Cordelia huddled in her shadow.

"Ah, well. We're all at sixes and sevens, trying to chase down this monster horse in the woods." He scowled. "Tell the truth, I didn't half believe in it until I saw what happened to Gamekeeper Ross. Don't you be going outside alone. That thing's a killer."

"Hadn't planned to," said Alice. Cordelia tried not to look horribly guilty. She flattened against the wall to let him pass and he winked at her, which only made things worse.

Alice led them through the darkened kitchen. The fire was banked down to coals and cast an orange glow across the floor. "Be glad it's not a baking day," she murmured over her shoulder. "Someone'd be in to start the bread rising before long."

The kitchen led onto the kitchen garden, with its high stone walls to shelter the plants. At the gate, Alice stopped. "You sure it's safe to go alone?" she asked.

"Safer for me than it would be for anyone else," Cordelia said, which was true.

"Mmm." The older girl gnawed on a fingernail. "Thinking maybe I should go with you, for all that."

"No!" Cordelia bit back panic. The space in her chest was so full that any moment she would start shrieking like a steam kettle just to relieve the pressure. "You'll be in terrible danger. He won't hurt me, but he doesn't know you at all."

Alice sighed. "All right." Cordelia nearly wilted with relief when she added, "If you're not back by first light, though, I'm telling Lady Hester. So don't be gone long."

"I won't," promised Cordelia fervently, even though she had no idea how long it would take to get Falada away. For all she knew, she'd have to ride him clear to Little Haw, or worse, to the north where her mother was. Still, none of that mattered as long as she got the familiar away from anyone he could hurt. "At least, I'll try not to. And Alice…" She darted forward and hugged the other girl. "Thank you."

Before Alice could react, Cordelia opened the gate and slipped through it, into the night.

She'd worried that it would be hard to find Falada. It seemed like it was easy for him to vanish when people went looking. But either she was lucky or he was looking for her, because she was barely halfway to the tree line when she saw the glowing shape coming toward her.

"Oh god," she said, involuntarily, and bit the side of her hand to keep from yelling.

She almost didn't recognize him. She had known him her entire life, and would have sworn that she could identify him from a single hoof glimpsed under a stall door. But he moved wrong now, all his grace lost, his stride gone scrabbling and uneven. She didn't know if it was because his balance had changed, without the mass of his head, or if the severed neck muscles no longer flexed with each stride, but he was no longer a thing she understood.

Of course it's him, she thought, high and hysterical. It's not like there could be two headless white horses walking the grounds.

He galloped toward her and she flinched back and closed her eyes. She could hear his hooves on the ground and the crackle of twigs and her own breath going in and out like a bellows.

The geese were still watching him, she realized, hearing a low noise in the distance. Apparently they had learned not to get too close. Falada was no longer pretending to be polite. Now he meant to kill.

The noises stopped. She cracked her eyes open, and there he was, standing in front of her. She could see directly into the wound that gaped bloodlessly open at eye level. A single vertebra sprouted from the stump, splintered and broken from the axe wound.

He could not look at her any longer, but she still felt the weight of his regard bearing down on her, full of duty and mockery and rage.

"You have to stop," Cordelia said. Her voice sounded very small and thin in her own ears. "It's me you want. You have to stop hurting people."

Falada danced in place for a moment, side to side, then slowly extended one front leg. The other curled up and he bowed to her, a mockingly theatrical gesture, the meaning clear.

"Oh no," breathed Cordelia. "Oh no, no."

He stayed bowed before her, waiting. She swallowed around the lump in her throat. "Is that the deal, then? I get on your back and you take me away?"

He could no longer nod, but his whole body shuddered up and down.

You have to do it. It's the only way.

She bit the side of her hand again and muffled a scream with it. It relieved the pressure a little, like lancing a wound, but no more.

"All right," she whispered. "All right." She wiped her hands on her skirt. "We'll go, then."

She hated the ease with which she mounted. Years of muscle memory could not be so easily forgotten. She hiked up her skirts and flung herself up onto the familiar's back and for an instant, it was all exactly as it used to be.

Falada rose to his feet and turned deeper into the woods, taking off at a lurching gallop. Her balance started to slip and she grabbed instinctively for his mane. One hand caught hair. The other gripped a rucked flap of skin and then her fingers were plunging into something cold and sticky and she looked down and she had grabbed the edge of his wound and this time there was no muffling her scream.

Ohgodohgodohgod

She started to slide sideways, but Falada had always been preternaturally sensitive and he moved with her, keeping her upright. Then he was off again, his muscles heaving but his ribs unnaturally still. Of course, he isn't breathing, she thought, and then wondered if he had only ever been pretending to breathe.

Leaves slapped her face as he wound through the trees. A normal horse running through the woods could have injured its rider any number of ways—scraped her off on a tree trunk or run her into a low-hanging branch, say. Falada could not hurt her, but he clearly had no orders about making her uncomfortable. A twig landed like a lash across her cheek and she could not even see in the darkness to duck.

Her first instinct was to flatten herself along the horse's neck, but that did not bear thinking about. She gripped what was left of his mane with one hand and kept the other in front of her face. All her bravado about leading Falada away from Evermore House was exposed as foolishness. She was not leading him anywhere. I have no reins. And where would I put a bit and bridle, even if I did?

Did he ever really need to obey me, or was he just pretending all along?

No. She took a deep breath and fixed her gaze straight ahead. No, I can't think like that. The important thing is that we're going away, so he won't hurt any more people.

It lasted hours. It lasted years. On some level, Cordelia knew that it could not have been that long, for it was still full dark. Falada broke from the trees, into countryside she did not know, and when she looked up, the moon was still high overhead, a thin crescent smile sharp enough to draw blood.

On another, more fundamental level, it was eternity. She could not feel her feet. Her back throbbed from sitting upright without benefit of saddle or stirrups. Her fingers were numb with cold and at least once she looked down and saw that she was gripping the edge of Falada's open wound again and all she could feel was vague disgust.

This is nothing, she thought dully. This will go on for days, maybe weeks. However long it takes us to reach my mother in the north. I wonder if he'll let me off to sleep, or wait until I collapse?

They met no other people. Presumably Falada was avoiding them. She saw houses in the distance sometimes, clustered in little villages, but no people. And what would I do if I saw one? Call for help?

A dog came out of some unseen farmstead and began barking at them, high and panicky. Falada swerved toward it and it tucked tail and ran. Cordelia envied it bitterly for having a hole somewhere to hide.

The moon was most of the way down the sky when Falada swerved into another little copse of trees. Cordelia bowed her head against the onslaught of leaves, and then it stopped.

The familiar stood still under her. The world seemed to rock and sway in her head, but it too stopped moving.

Is he letting me rest? Cordelia thought, feeling a gratitude so piteous and nauseating that she moaned in protest.

A moment later, the flaccid stump of neck in front of her shuddered, as if he sought to turn his head.

"Cordelia," her mother said, from the shadows. "I might have known."