Tamlyn Read Online Free Page A

know where Coyle was taking Lucien. I would find a way to free the little boy and get him back into my arms.

3
Alive and Dying
    T he journey back to Greystone Harbour turned me blue with cold, even though the storm clouds were mostly gone by the time the dinghy bumped to a halt at the jetty. Villagers were venturing tentatively from their doors, no doubt pleased to be free of their homes for the first time that day. When they saw us, though, they stared with sullen, worried faces, and mothers called their children back inside.
    â€˜They witnessed this morning’s fighting,’ said Tamlyn. ‘Hallig and his companion forced me back through the village.’
    I imagined them hacking at each other with their swords. No wonder the villagers backed away. As we passed one circle of men, their backs turned to us, I heard someone mutter, ‘Wyrdborn’.
    â€˜We’ll get no help from these people,’ said Tamlyn who had heard it as well.
    â€˜The Widow Wenn will take us in,’ and I pointed towards the house where I had slept the night before. It was further round the edge of the harbour, almost the last house before the cliffs that marked the end of the village.
    Mrs Wenn had the door open for us before we’d even started up her front path. ‘There was fighting after you left this morning,’ she said, but then she saw how utterly soaked we were and the way I shivered uncontrollably. After that, there was no more talking until she had us inside.
    â€˜Where’s your little baby? Goodness, he’s not lost at sea, is he?’
    Her hand went to her mouth at the thought of such a tragedy. She was a kind soul, Mrs Wenn.
    â€˜Yes, but not the way you fear,’ I told her. ‘He was stolen from me by that rogue who brought us to Greystone. He called himself Miston Dessar, but he was Lord Coyle, Wyrdborn to the king.’
    â€˜And my father,’ said Tamlyn with equal parts anger and shame.
    Mrs Wenn wasn’t slow to see what this might mean. ‘Are you Wyrdborn also?’ she asked.
    Tamlyn didn’t answer, but let his head droop forward so that he no longer faced her. It wasn’t theusual response of a Wyrdborn who had been challenged so openly. Mrs Wenn could have expected the back of a hand across her face from any other of his kind.
    â€˜Tamlyn’s not like the rest,’ I told her. ‘He … he cares for Lucien, and for me,’ I dared add. It had been on the tip of my tongue to say he loved me, but that was more a hope than a fact I could claim out loud.
    â€˜If that’s true, then he’s the first I’ve ever heard of who cared for anyone but himself.’ Mrs Wenn looked from him to me and I could guess what she was thinking — that he’d conjured a spell to win my heart, just as Coyle had done to Nerigold.
    She was good to Tamlyn, all the same, in the wonderful way that commonfolk have of overlooking a man’s faults when he’s in need. She led us both upstairs, me to the room where I’d slept only hours before and Tamlyn to her own room. When I saw him again, he was by the fire, wearing dry clothes that were meant for a shorter man. His ankles and a good stretch of his calves jutted out comically from the trousers and his torso looked constricted inside the shirt and jerkin. I had done a lot better, with a yellow dress Mrs Wenn had worn when she was many years younger and a great deal slimmer than she was now.
    Our own clothes were laid out in front of the fire and we pulled our chairs close to them to enjoythe same heat. It was so good to feel warm again. Mrs Wenn waved my thanks aside and went into the kitchen to make us something hot to drink. While she was gone, I told Tamlyn of my days travelling with his father, when I’d known him as Miston Dessar.
    â€˜I was such a fool,’ I kept saying, as if confessing my faults would excuse them. ‘I should have seen through him, especially when he tried