The Phoenix Thief

Chapter 26

Joakim woke to a headache that made the word 'clanging' viciously appropriate. Groaning in pain, he opened his eyes, then quickly squeezed them shut again. Even the pre-dawn glow was too much for him. He curled up into a ball and prayed the world would find someone else to bother.

Tabitha's face popped into his mind. She would be coming to get him. He groaned again as he opened his eyes, then groaned a third time at the sight that greeted him. Dirt covered his sheets. His feet, caked in dried mud, ached like he'd been walking across rough ground.

What had happened last night? He remembered thinking something similar over the last few weeks, but his head pounded like a drum, making the recollection slippery. Reeling from the unpleasantness, all he could think to do was wash before Tabitha arrived. Lurching to the basin, he splashed his feet and face, but while the water was cold enough to drive the breath from him, it did nothing to clear the cobwebs from his mind.

Tabitha knocked just as he rubbed the last of the dirt from his hands. Her smile warmed him like a sunrise, almost enough to make him forget his aching head.

"You're up," she said. "I thought I'd be shaking you awake again." Hoi-Yan stood behind her. She didn't say anything, but grinned shyly at Joakim, as though the two of them shared some secret she couldn't wait to spill.

"I didn't sleep well," Joakim replied. "I had a headache. I still do."

"I wouldn't tell Sister Devine," she said. "She thinks that hard work solves everything. I was sick once and she kept telling my mother to give me chores. She said it would chase the fever away."

How delightful, Joakim thought, but this was the first hint he'd had into Tabitha's past.

"You grew up here, then?" he asked, with a winsome smile. By Tabitha's shoulder Hoi-Yan frowned at him.

"In the village," she replied, as they walked down the stairs. "A good enough place, I suppose, I've never known any different. Ban Thaeri might not seem like much for a boy from the city, but it's certainly big enough for me. The mountains, the plateau, the sky–these are my home, not those stone cages made by men."

What is it with these monks and their obsession with the profound? Joakim struggled for an answer. He was still wondering as they reached the corridor outside the kitchen door, and both Hoi-Yan and Tabitha abandoned him. Apparently they were to spend another morning caring for the horses.

The kitchen held the usual bustle–thirty people, a mountain of food and enough busyness to make Joakim's head spin. Mindful of Tabitha's warning, he dodged Devine's gaze and sought out the huge cauldron already half-full of oats. Senna was nowhere to be seen, but the familiar sounds and smells comforted him, even if rumours still floated like straw on a pond, slowly sinking into the deeper waters beneath.

"No attacks last night," one tall monk whispered, kneading bread. "Perhaps whatever it was has moved on."

"Or perhaps it lingers," a dark-haired nun replied, her voice taut with worry. "Waiting for other prey."

"Without facts, there's no point in speculating," said another monk, chopping carrots. "What amazes me is that there's been no sign of it. What could possibly have escaped our brothers' noses?"

"A shadeling, perhaps? Or a nemec?" the nun suggested. "Although neither of them eat flesh."

"Neither does this creature," the first monk said. "The beasts were not eaten. It killed for fun. Only humans do that."

"But no human could escape you, surely?" the nun insisted.

"Not without help." The first monk's eyes found Joakim's.