Will wrenched his sword free, took the gauntlet, and went on.
He was bleeding from a cut along his ribs, and his thigh, and limping a little by the time he reached the farmhouse. The way was down a grassy slope, across the deep cut of the stream, then up the other bank. He was close now to the place where she had died. He focused with dogged determination on his goal, ignoring the fresh injuries and exhaustion.
The closer he got, the more his mind crowded with terrible echoes, the screams, the smell of blood and burnt earth, the wrenching horror of hands around his throat. Run!
The farmhouse looked so familiar, set on the side of a rise, the grey skies overhead the same shade as the stone house cottage with its slate roof tiles. There was the creek where he had hauled water, more like a rivulet cut into the slope, runoff that always trickled down after rain. There was the crumbling drystone wall that he had promised to fix when they had first come here. It was just as he remembered it, except that the windows were dark and the front door was missing.
Inside, it was dead silent. Small animals and birds nested here; dust and leaves covered the floor. But the dark rooms were eerily preserved, the table still laid as it had been, her shawl still thrown over a chair. He shivered, remembering her sweeping that shawl around her shoulders in the mornings, preparing to go into the village.
Walking forward now was like forcing himself through a barrier, towards a place that he did not want to go.
Through the back door, into the enclosed garden.
Every nerve screamed at him not to go out there, but he did, looking out at a view that almost made him dizzy. It was the place that had haunted his mind all these months, where he had run and dropped to his knees by her side, and said, ‘Mother!’
As he had dreaded, as he had hoped, the garden wasn’t empty. There was a single figure there. A man kneeling on the earth, and as Will watched, he rose and turned. And they faced each other.
Simon.
He had imagined this meeting so often. He’d thought of it even before he’d known Simon’s name, as he’d hidden in the mud and rain, vowing to find out who had done this to his mother. He’d thought of it in London, when he’d learned that Simon was a rich man, and he’d wondered how a boy might take him down. He’d thought of it when Justice had told him Simon was the Dark King’s descendant, part of an ancient world, a monster who had conjured a shadow to kill the Stewards, a godhead who inspired so much loyalty in his followers that they branded their own flesh.
But he just saw a man, and that was chilling in its own right: that an ordinary person had done this. Simon was a man of about thirty-seven years, with dark hair and fine, luminous eyes under thick lashes. He wore black, his jacket made of rich velvet, with long black leather boots, and jewelled rings on his fingers. A familiar look. His money and taste had dressed James, Will thought. And Katherine.
And maybe that was the first hint of similarity he had with that dark power from the past: the way he viewed people as objects to be taken, used, or snuffed out, as a housekeeper snuffed a candle.
‘Boy! What are you doing here? How did you get past the guards?’
One hand pressed to the cut on his ribs, Will came forward. The other hand clutched tightly to what he held, trophies of his fights. It was hard to put weight on his left leg, and his limp was pronounced.
Will said, ‘You don’t know who I am.’
And he threw the three pieces of black armour to the ground between them: gauntlet, shoulder piece, helm. As the armour pieces hit the ground, the grass beneath them withered, until they lay in a circle of black earth.
Simon looked from the armour back up at Will, eyes widening.
‘I know you do it all the time,’ said Will, ‘but I’d never killed anyone before.’
Will could see the thoughts turning in Simon’s mind. How had the Remnants been defeated? How could someone touch the armour? How was this boy still alive?
Then Simon looked – really looked – at Will for the first time, and understanding bloomed in his eyes.
‘Will Kempen,’ said Simon, with dark, rich pleasure. ‘I thought I was going to have to hunt you down.’
‘You tried,’ said Will. ‘You killed a lot of people.’
‘But instead, you’ve come right to me.’
The land around them felt very empty, as if each living thing had fled, so that they were alone under the heavy black sky, no sound from the fields or the trees, only the wind shifting the leaves.
‘I was tired of running,’ said Will.
His leg hurt, the slice on his thigh painful, and under the hand he’d pressed to his ribs he could feel slick blood. He ignored it, his eyes fixed on Simon. He was breathing shallowly, his goal in his sights.