Read Online Wintercraft by Jenna Burtenshaw - Free Book Online

dark except for a single candle glowing at the end. A shadow moved in front of the light and a small man hurried up to meet them. He was old and plainly dressed, but Kate could not miss the gleam of a gold and ruby ring on his right hand. A ring like that could only belong to a man with powerful friends, so it did not surprise her when he greeted Silas by name.
     
    ‘Mr Dane,’ he said, casting half a glance at the ruined door behind him.
     
    ‘Has she arrived?’ asked Silas.
     
    ‘No, sir.’
     
    ‘Then I will come down the moment she does. As far as you are concerned, this girl is not here. She does not exist. Do you understand?’
     
    ‘Yes, sir.’
     
    The boarding-house owner smiled creepily at Kate as Silas took her up the worn stairs to the upper floors. They climbed two dog-legged flights and then a third that led right up to the attic floor. A doorway, to which Silas already had the key, stood upon a landing at the very top and the room beyond was small and neat, with a narrow bed, an unlit fire and a wooden desk inside. Silas locked the door behind them and went at once to the circular window, swinging it open so he could lean out over the street.
     
    ‘What’s going on?’ asked Kate. ‘Who are you meeting here?’
     
    ‘Someone who has been looking for your family for a long time,’ said Silas, crossing the room and locking one end of Kate’s silver chain to the desk. ‘As far as she knows there is only one Winters rumoured to live in this town. I will tell her that your uncle is useless, just like the rest. If you stay quiet, there is a chance this day may not end badly for you.’
     
    ‘What does that mean?’ asked Kate.
     
    ‘Your parents never mentioned they had a child when the wardens took them,’ said Silas. ‘They were wise enough to know when to keep quiet and when to speak. A lesson you would do well to learn.’
     
    ‘What do you know about them?’ demanded Kate, but a look from Silas was enough to silence her.
     
    ‘What I know is irrelevant,’ he said. ‘All that matters now is what you know, and what you can do.’
     
    A long silence followed.
     
    Silas stood beside the open window, not caring that Kate was left shivering in the dark. She sat down at the desk, trying to prise her wrist cuff open on the corner of the wood, and was just about to ask Silas for the woman’s name, when a sudden pain burst between her eyes, like needles piercing the skin. A bright light flashed in front of her: pure white light, there and gone again in an instant. She blinked it away and had gone back to the wrist cuff when it happened again. The light shone more intensely this time, lasting for a few seconds and never weakening, even when she closed her eyes.
     
    Silas glared at her with suspicion. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
     
    ‘Nothing. It’s nothing. I—’
     
    ‘The Skilled have far greater senses than ordinary people,’ he said. ‘Those senses can create visions of things the eyes cannot normally see. Tell me what you saw.’
     
    The pain stabbed again and the light flashed once more, sharpening into a vision of something that Kate knew should have been impossible.
     
     
    She was looking out of a carriage window towards the arch that divided the Western Quarter from the south. It was the same route that Silas’s carriage had taken, but she was not looking at a memory of her own journey. The window was arched not square, and the curtains were pulled wide open.
     
     
    ‘What do you see?’ Silas demanded.
     
    Kate did not know what was happening. Icy cold surrounded her hands, chilling them until they were so cold that it felt as if her bones might snap. She tried to stand up, but she could not move. She tried to speak, but her throat made no sound. She could only sit staring at the same point on the black wall, eyes fixed in silent terror as her body refused to obey her.
     
    Her first thought was that she had been poisoned, but Silas had not given her anything