Black Unicorn by Tanith Lee (best electronic book reader TXT) 📗

bread—”“No, it’s a bone I want, with some good bits of meat still onit—roasted or raw, I don’t mind.”

“Poor girl,” said Pillow.

“There’s been nothing like that for a month,” said the cook,“not since the last dinner in hall. Is it the marrow you’re after,for soup?”

“It isn’t for me,” said Tanaquil, irritated. The pail containedpeelings and eggshells, moldy crusts and other unpleasant debris.No bones and no remnants of meat. She knew quite well the kitchen usually made itself a huge roast joint once a week, butperhaps they had been too lazy recently. “What have you got?Meat fat? Put that on some toast, thickly, for me—and a bowl ofthat green tea.”

“Green?” The cook shook her hair-knots. “There’s no greentea here. Must have been another leak from Madam’s chamber did that.”

Tanaquil stayed in the kitchen until the toast and fat wasready. She ate an orange while she waited, and watched Pillow’schild trying to break her doll on an oven, but the doll survivedand only went Mamaa!

Armed with the food, Tanaquil hurried back to the stairs toher room, and put the slimy toast out in the embrasure for the peeve. She had left her shutters ajar all night, but it had notreturned. Somewhere it must have its burrow, lined with things ithad rooted out or stolen. But she did not know where. And where had the bone come from? Somewhere in the sand, in the hot daytime—

It had occurred to Tanaquil that maybe the peeve’s bone was an ordinary bone, only transformed by the magic overspill of thefortress. And yet, it had not looked, or seemed, of that order. The changes here tended to be ridiculous or alarming. The bonewas only exquisite.

Tanaquil sat at her work table, fiddling with fossils, cleaning her repairer’s tools, one of which had coiled itself up like a snailand needed to be straightened. Then she merely sat, with her chinon her hands, staring at the open window.

The peeve did not come back. She had annoyed or upset it.Perhaps it had bitten the bone in half and devoured it—surelythat could not happen.

The sun turned hotter and bathed the room in light. The fatsmelled, and a golden fly danced on it and feasted.

It was midday. The peeve had not and would not come.

Tanaquil stood up. She had found her divided skirt, and nowtucked its hems into her boots. She swung into the window embrasureand out, and dropped the foot or so onto the sloping roof below.

Out here the sun was scaldingly hot. It was a world of roofhills and drainage gulleys, bushed with crops of weathervanes andold mysterious pipes. The copper roof slates greenly seared, andhere and there were copses of chimneys. Above rose the tallesttowers and the hedge of the battlements, where two soldiers passed each other with a bleary clack of spears. Was the burrow among the roofs, or had the peeve just decided to run up to herwindow on a whim?

Tanaquil picked her way along the copper slates, in and outof the shadow of chimney pots. The peeve might even have madea lair in one of the most disused of the chimneys. She peered intocrevices, and found red flowers growing from cracks. Further over, under the eave of the library , was a large untidy nest onceused by some ravens. They had caught speech and flown awayyelling that the fort rubbish heap was not interesting enough. Thenest lay in the shadow of a tower, and was protected by juts andslopes of the building.

Tanaquil lowered herself into a dry canal between the roofsand pushed through the flowers. At the canal’s end was a cistern full of scummy water—it caught the snow by night and fer mented by day. There were black paw marks on the cistern’s edge.

To reach the library roof Tanaquil had to jump a narrowgap, through which she saw the kitchen yard below. Pillow andanother girl, maybe Sausage, were hanging up some washing. They were small as the child’s doll. Tanaquil took a breath andjumped. She landed on the library and heard Pillow say, farbelow, “Just listen, those ravens must be back.”

One of the soldiers looked over from the battlements, too. Tanaquil had a moment’s fear he might take her for an invader and fire at her, but he only waved.

The ravens’ nest was empty, but beyond it a channel wentback under the walls of the tower and the overhanging roof.Tanaquil moved on into deep shade, and stumbled over a pile ofrugs and straw. The enclosure smelled of peeve, clean fur andmeat and secrets. And there was a hoard of silly things—a small pan from the kitchen, some sequins, probably from one of Jaive’sgowns, a spear-head . . . and, gleaming like white water in theshadow— “Seven,” said Tanaquil aloud, “seven of them.” Sevenbones like the bone she had seen the previous night: two verylittle, and one very long, broken, and curved, like a rib, perhaps,and four exactly the same as the first, of which it must be a replica. And all of them like milk-crystal and stars.

“Bad.”

Tanaquil started guiltily. She looked round, and up on theravens’ nest the peeve poised in silhouette against the bright sky.Its fur stood on end, its ears pointed, its tail was a brush. Underits forepaws was another of the amazing bones. The eighth.

“In my place,” said the peeve.

Tanaquil wondered if it would attack her.

Then its fur lay flat and its ears flopped. Its face took on aforlorn and sorry expression.

“Oh look, I’m not stealing from you,” said Tanaquil, re morseful. “I waited for you to come back and show me the bone again. And when you didn’t, I came here.”

“My place.”

“Yes, to your place. Haven’t you got a lot of these bones?Aren’t you clever.”

The peeve sat down in the nest and scratched behind its ear.

“Itch,” it explained. It seemed to have perked up at her compli ment. “Clever,” it repeated. “Of course they belong to you. But won’t you let me helpyou find them—I mean, if there are . . . more?”

“More. Lots.”

A cold shiver oozed down Tanaquil’s spine in the