The river carried our skiff southeast, and we crossed paths with spring.
This did little to cheer me––I’d left my Marione seeds behind. The earth had pledged to nourish and protect the seeds, but I forgot this and lolled about the boat with angst screwed into my face until one day Wille said that I was apt to bite off my bottom lip. Padlimaird eyed me from where he dangled a bit of sausage over the side to tempt the small green trout.
“I never seen you cry, Aloren. Why don’t you never cry?”
“You’re dumb,” I said.
“Let’s hook her and sink her.” Padlimaird beat the water with his tent hook. “See if the fishes like sourpuss more than sausage.”
I stood up to jump on him, but Nefer let the handle of his oar swing into the small of my back. I tumbled over. My elbows drummed on the bottom of the boat, and Redstart whickered. “In’t fair!” I said.
Padlimaird laughed. Nefer took the other oar from Calragen and placed it into Padlimaird’s hand.
“Mr. Calragen’s a-gettin fatigued, bless his heart, and it’s been a fair time since I rowed two oars wid one arm.” His bad arm was set with an ash stick, supported in a sling made from a piece of his shirt.
“The current’s pushing us,” said Padlimaird. “Why d’we have to row?”
“Cause it’ll give us some peace. Now hop to it, young Paddy.” And Nefer launched into a Rielde river shanty to drown out Padlimaird’s voice:
“Taut as a sail when the west wind rends his skyways,
Spreads the oldest path through the golden breath of sunrays.
How merrily she winds,
And with the clip of sailors’ lines
Shunts me forward, chained and flying by my arms.
Tide has crept in from the sands,
Cooled my feet and shackled my hands,
Wrapped the ocean’s salve around the inland’s harms.
O! My heart, she longs for open skies
O’er the pitching and the list,
And my oars drive me on, ever forward drawn
By a force I can’t resist.
If resist I can, due east I’ll sail,
For to curb their longsome stride
I must mend the rip in the ocean’s lip
Or be taken by the tide.
Caught like a leaf in the noldra’s wild fountain,
Rolls my ragged soul, unbeset by soaring mountain,
High hillock, wall or stone.
Hear her wearily bemoan
The river’s chattel with his ankle in the wet
By his will and nothing more.
Lash the tiller t’ward the shore
Or my heart will burst her bent and bony net.
For my heart, she longs for countless stars
O’er the squalling and the mist,
And my pole spurs me on, ever forward drawn
By a call I can’t resist.
If resist I can, due north I’ll sail
For to quell its crippled run
I must beg the snow to strike still the flow
Ere I’m lost behind the sun.”
***
“Dwindling, you say?” said Wille, after Nefer and Calragen gave us the news they’d heard in a village pub.
Wille, Paddy and I had been left behind to scrounge up what food we could, and we hurried to get underway before the townsfolk found their larders lacking.
“Aye,” said Nefer, “dwindlin.”
“How, I ask you”––Wille pointed a parsnip at Nefer––“in this stallion’s jack of a hope-forsaken world is the Cheldony’s depth supposed to dwindle?” He crunched off the end and chewed angrily.
“I told ye somethin was wrong,” I called between my knees to Floy.
“It’s just a river,” said Padlimaird. “Rivers tend to dwindle once in a while.”
“In’t just a river. The Cheldony’s the reason our trees grow taller than a mountain. The reason our saebels don’t eat us, and we all got sparkle in our eyes and wings on our heels. The Cheldony’s the reason our eyes color and our faces freckle, the reason we’re joyful like humans ain’t––”
“Wille,” said Nefer between his long strokes, “explain how me unfortunate Virnrayan eyes color just as much as your’n.”
“I’m joyful,” said Calragen. “What makes you think I can’t be joyful?”
“Raggy has a grin like a watermelon compared to Aloren,” said Paddy. “No offense meant.” He slid away from me and ripped his breeches on a nail.
We caught sight of the Benara Sea before the city appeared. All at once the hills peeled away and the horizon became frighteningly flat, and the clouds grew smaller and smaller until they rolled off the edge of the earth.
My eyes smarted with the salt air. I remembered yellow roses and dark-haired Mother, streets white with lime and Temmaic before he became Tem. The river widened, and slowly, rolling by in little bits at first, the port city of Ellyned rose to greet us in the morning with her mossy limestone towers and roofs of blue slate; and Padlimaird threw up after drinking the estuary water.
***
Nefer moored the boat at the third wharf from the breakwater. All around us were trawlers, schooners and gigantic merchant vessels loading and docking with chaos enough to send all our heads spinning when we jumped onto the wood and shook out our legs.
Right away Nefer began extolling our faithful vessel with enough earnestness that it was soon sold to a young fisherman for one hundred silver celms. This allowed us to pay the mooring fee of sixty silvers. The fee was so high, we were told, because the Daldera shipping line owned three wharves and closely minded the other two’s business.
“Fancy the name sounding so human.” Wille glanced at a ship with three masts and Daldera painted across the side in strange letters.
“It is.” The dockhand took a swig from a bottle. “Belongs to Herist. The big whoreson snake owns the whole fleet. Mind you call him Commander to his face, though.”
Calragen booked a passage aboard a little clipper bound for Evenalehn, and we spent a last awkward night with him in a quayside boardinghouse.
We went down to the docks the next morning to see him off. The air smelled of tar and pine, and fog curled out of the streets in shreds, melting away in the sunlight. Calragen had asked us the night before if we would like to come with him, to live in Evenalehn. Nefer and the boys declined, thinking of their loot and what they might make of it here. I couldn’t answer.
Redstart boarded early with the other passengers’ horses. Before joining her, Calragen said to me, “Pity about that broach. It was so close.”
“Got your sketch, still, mate?” said Nefer, who had heard the tale from us. “I might have made you another, if t’weren’t fer me arm. If ye’ve drawn up all the correct measurements…” He laughed, peering at his left arm in its sling.
“I fear you’ll have to find a better healer,” said Calragen. “I’ve probably set it badly.”
“Or chop it off and stick Dravadha’s arm inter the socket,” said Padlimaird. “Ye can’t make a replica of somethin like that unless you bargain hard with a demon.”
“Don’t talk about demons.” Calragen pulled a ragged bit of parchment from his cloak. “See what you can make of it.” He put it into Nefer’s hand. “The girl can help, if you manage to get that far.” He looked at me and frowned.
“I asked Marna about you once. She said you were a fidgety twit who didn’t know a spindle from a needle. Said the boys would’ve chased you off, weren’t for her.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine the boys chasing you anywhere now.”
“Lally’d be chasing them,” said Padlimaird, and Wille pulled his ear.
“You’d have been one of them boys, Padlimaird.”
I pretended to see something interesting on the horizon. Calragen spoke to the back of my head:
“Nevertheless, I think you ought to come with me. There’s plenty of room––we can just nip back to the booking tables––”
“Only those without burdens can scale walls.” It was silly; a proverb our old groundskeeper, Hal, used to say. “But you promise,” I said. “Promise you’ll bring back help. After all, you just about lost yer head in a country you claimed was untroubled. Promise!”
“I promise.” He gave our faces a last look. Then he turned his back to us, the hunched back of an old man, and for the second time he was gone.
The boys stood looking after him. But I remembered something from long before, and walked from the wharf before the clipper had left the harbor.
***
No one came after me, and Floy flitted nervously around my head while I wove through crates and stinking heaps of fish. My saddlebag had acquired a character all its own of chapped and cracked leather, and I felt very fond of it as I dug for the letter Tem had written two years ago. I found it, and crept into the shadows under a low eve to read:
Uncle,
This letter’s messenger may look different by the time she reaches you, but you should find this description somewhat alike: A girl of ten or eleven with straight, dark hair, a round face with a sharp chin, blue eyes, an upturned nose, and (by now) a scar on her left forearm where she has cut herself on something. And lots of freckles. She is your niece.
The facts are these: Her brothers are under enchantment, and she has agreed to undo it––a task involving the mending of spirits over a period of five years. She needs your protection until the five years are spent. Please refrain from asking questions. She will not be able to answer them. She must remain in complete anonymity for her safety, and should be kept from the sight of all but the immediate household. Also, if she must venture out, don’t try to stop her.
I sighed, wishing Tem or Mordan were here. Then I walked into the sunlight and boldly asked a number of strangers for Ederach’s address.
‘The Gates of Hell’ said some, and ‘The Queen’s Nightgown’, said others, and finally I got a proper answer from a cooper with a kind face. In the summer, he said, the prince lived in a walled house on Skyfane Street, on the north side.
The cooper gave me directions from his shop and shook his head sadly as I went on my way, as though he wondered what a savage little girl could possibly want from the dead king’s brother.
I spent half the day picking my way around a canal swollen with floodwater, before I found a bridge crossing it, of old rope and clapboards. Then I came upon a large square full of locust trees and stood befuddled under a tall white belltower until Floy found the right streets, which had been mapped out in no discernible pattern.
We continued on, and the streets widened into avenues. The shops shed their lime daub for clean white stone and morphed into residences, which grew in size as I walked north.
Even then, some darkness settled over my mind, some foreboding. I wonder now if I should have quickened my pace, or not gone at all. But for good or ill, the sun kept shining, and I pushed the dread away, thinking it nerves.
At last I reached Skyfane Street, where a row of big houses faced the sea. It was late afternoon. I eyed the wall enclosing my uncle’s house, gnawing on a hunk of old bread and wondering how best to get inside.
The front gate was out of the question––after one look the porter would run me off.
So I hid my saddlebag behind a loose stone, threw my boots under a shrub, and climbed up the wall. I jumped down, and landed on a lawn dappled with tree shade and fading light.
Candlelight flickered from a pavilion. I peered through the stone columns––it looked as though someone had just been there; sheets of vellum curled and skipped over the floor stones.
The candle was on a table, washing the place with light. I took Father’s ring from my pocket, dripped wax over the letter, and sealed it. The wind picked up, and the candle went out. I could barely see in the pavilion, and I put the ring on my finger.
My ear caught a faint murmur––I couldn’t tell where from. I left the pavilion and walked into a recess gloomed by firs. There was wall close to the firs, and an arch opening into another garden. The voices came from a bench to one side of this.
“Reyna,” called Floy, “exercise caution.” I stayed where I was, needles pricking my feet, and studied the two people: a man and woman, both of them hooded and cloaked. She held a goblet against the swell of her stomach.
The man bowed in a spasm of coughs, and the lady said, “See? It’s become worse in this horrible damp, and I shall make you do something about it.” She spoke in the trader’s tongue with the same clipped accent I’d heard Calragen use.
The man laughed, and I saw his face better: skinny, with light eyes. Mordan. But it wasn’t Mordan––this man was older. “My dear lady, you have a worse effect on me than ever the weather has.”
The lady shrugged off her hood. I tried to smash the letter into my pocket. It didn’t fit. The seal broke off and went into the pocket, and the parchment dropped to the ground. She slipped the goblet into his hand.
“Faiorsa,” he said, staring at it, “you’ve made enough people miserable. Why can’t you let me be?” He brought it to his mouth.
I knew who Faiorsa was. “Don’t drink,” I whispered. The woman’s head lifted; her eyes darted around. I swept aside the boughs and said louder, “Don’t drink it.”
“Reyna,” said Floy, “you idiot.”
“What’s this?” The woman stood up. The man, too.
“Take it away,” he said, giving it back to her.
“Why? You’ve gone all pale––has she frightened you?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “Perhaps she saw you slipping in a bit of laburnum or bandorscroll.”
She laughed. “Why should I bother with poison?”
“For in case the knife doesn’t stick.”
“This little scrap––is she yours?”
He eyed me musingly. “Not unless her mother didn’t say.” He said to me, “Why shan’t I drink, little scrap?”
“She wants to do you in.” I took a step backwards. “You’re the last. Look at her––she wants you dead.”
“Yes,” said the woman. “Look at me, do. Watch me take a sip for myself, as you, and you, little ghast, are so convinced of my evil intent. But first,” she said, touching Ederach on the chest, “I must catch for myself something to remedy.” She gave him a kiss.
I stood and watched, waited for him to pull away. But though he never moved with her, he never separated.
“Now,” she said, when she was done, “let us move into the light, to better witness my sip.”
I followed them beneath the arch, into the next garden. She touched the goblet to her lips.
The air darkened. The wind strummed my sore heartstrings, and I took a shallow breath. Gasping, searching, I knocked the goblet from the lady’s hands and the tonic darkened her cloak as two arrows, one from the front and the other from behind, met my uncle in the back and chest.
“Oh.” I watched him collapse. “Not this.” I saw my father all over again, the dark on his shirt, the failure on his face. I knelt next to him.
“Closer,” he said. I got so close his voice was muffled in my neck: “I thought I could out-step it a while.” My shoulder grew warm with his blood. He stared at the ring on my finger.
“Change the address,” he said. “White Ship Tavern. They’ll help you––” He took a breath and blood trickled from his mouth.
The woman bent over us, and her hair brushed my cheek. It felt like a bee sting. “Poor little girl.” She wiped her stained front with a kerchief. “Half-crazed. Covered with his blood.” She lifted my chin with a finger, and her eyes turned thoughtful. “There’s something familiar about you.” I didn’t move, lest something worse happen. “Ederach.” She shook her head, stood up.
I buried my hand in the grass, hiding the ring, and counted four men behind her in green and grey surcoats, quivers on their backs. “Sirs,” she said, “this little mad varlet has murdered the city’s champion. Turn her over to its people. They can deal with her as they see fit.”
***
She must have thought me pathetic past threat––it was a wonder she didn’t kill me. Instead, the soldiers tied me to a post at the end of a pier.
I forgot the letter beneath the pines, and gave my captors little trouble on our way to the quay, but I woke enough, as they led me down the pier, to wrench my arm from one man’s grip. Twisting round, I slipped my fist into my pocket to cast the ring off.
A tall officer put his paw round my neck. I stood choking at the edge of the pier, and he caught my wrist, looked at my hand.
Shining yellow in the lamplight, plastered to my palm with blood, was the wax seal that, two seconds before, had been somewhere in my pocket.
I gave my wrist a yank. He held it fast. I pressed my fingers down hard, crushed the thing, and flicked it from my hand into the harbor. The black water made scarcely a ripple. All this happened in such quick succession that no one but the officer noticed.
He looked into the water, said something to his men in their own language. Then he strode towards the lantern, dragging me by the wrist.
They tied me by my waist and ankles, and used my right hand to make a bloody print on a piece of parchment. This was then scribbled on with charcoal and nailed above my head so I couldn’t see what they had written. And my arms were wrapped around the post and tied, and they left me alone.
In the dim glow, my scrawny body tight against the post, I must have seemed a strange warp in the wood. No one came near for a long time. I slouched lower and lower, and the bonds cut into my ankles and slid up my torso. My back ached, and Floy burrowed into my hair and told me gay stories.
The water lapped below us. A fiddle sang a forlorn ballad from somewhere ashore, and I slipped in and out of bad dreams. A girl in a grassy cloak came closer, pouring water from a bucket over the wood to wash feathers and dung into the harbor.
She peered out my direction a couple times before noticing anything strange. Then she frowned and walked forward.
She read the parchment, biting her lip. She glanced at me just once, dropped her bucket, and fled with the news, dark hair streaming behind.
Floy went temporarily insane, clawing my hair, banging against my cheek, and then they were there. She took flight. Dung crumbled against my shoulder.
“Little bitch,” said a man. “Did the Queen promise you a good man?”
“This is how she pays her servants,” said another.
“See her bloody hands?” More dung pelted my neck, and I twisted my head away.
“Was it so easy to kill the last of them?” A stone opened my foot. Sweat and blood dripped down my legs. “The last of our family,” and the voice broke, a woman’s voice. She wept, and I wept too.
A stone hit my cheek. I closed my eyes, expecting more, but a group of folk cut through my ropes and pulled me down.
“Set her hair alight.”
“No, bring her to Ackerly.”
“Tie her hands––” They sank their fingers into my hair and twisted my arms, but there was a lull when hands trying to get at my flesh pulled other hands back. I slipped like butter through the bodies, and ran into an old man with a fiddle.