Fourteen
The fiddle clattered over the wood. The man grabbed my shoulder, and said, “Is this your wicked murderess?” They seemed to hold him in some regard, for they stilled themselves and grew quiet. I fought with his hand and he caught me by the chin. “Can’t be more than ten––”
He took a step backwards. My head grew heavy. I wondered if I’d finally done it––gone mad.
He would play White and Tan Brachet and Corpse Gives a Rattle on his red fiddle; and I would dance and Arin would kick my shins.
It was Hal, our old groundskeeper.
He parted his lips, and I collected my wits and shook my head. He was quick enough to notice. “This girl wouldn’t have done it. Not this one.” About ten folk responded at once:
“The blood’s all over her.”
“His blood?”
“Finally lost his wits.”
“Shut it, Gwat.”
“He’s a more sensible head that what you’re banging around.”
“What’s she done, then? Who strung her up there?”
“Let’s hear what she has to say,” declared a tall hooded man.
“Come on, girl. Out with it,” snapped a woman in a blue shawl.
“Out with what?” said a familiar voice, and Wille tackled his way through the mob. “I don’t think much of your new friends, Lally.”
Padlimaird stumbled through the crowd, and Nefer pushed through at a mad pace right behind him, knocking him two feet forward.
“What sort of mess you in, girl?” Nefer placed himself between the crowd and me. He was awfully big and had a face on him like a mother bear, and the people backed away. I found I could breathe slowly again.
“Lally?” Hal’s brow wrinkled up.
“She looks like she’s had a rough night of it,” said Padlimaird.
“Rough night, or not.” The woman pulled the blue shawl together and made her face pop. “Who killed him? Who was it killed Ederach, if it weren’t you? I see his blood all over you, child.”
“Give her time, Goody,” said the hooded man.
“The Queen.” I fell to my knees, and just in time, leaned over the pier and heaved the contents of my stomach into the water. I came up, and Wille and Padlimaird gawped.
“You saw the Queen murder Ederach?” Paddy said, twisting his face with such a frown that his ears wiggled. I sat, rubbing life into my legs, and Floy scratched at my hair.
“Let’s get you cleaned up, Al.” Nefer lifted me with his one good arm and slung me over his back. Hal picked up his fiddle and insisted that we follow him. He led a group of us along the wharf and down a side street.
We stopped at a low building with a grimy front and harbor water swilling at the back. The sign shone in the streetlight, spotless, as though the name were all the owner cared about. Six White Ships it said, and we went inside.
Lamps cast leaping shadows around a room full of laughing folk deep in their cups. Hal weaved his way through, and Nefer tightened his hold on my legs.
Hal stopped in the back of the tavern at a wooden door without a handle. He performed a complicated knock with all five of his knuckles. The door opened a crack. “Aibelde twy eaor cair,” he whispered inside.
A small girl with a head of wild black hair opened the door and ushered us through into a dark and cavernous room––a boathouse of some sort. A water gate winked at the back, and the harbor crept through, and lapped at a wooden landing spread with tables. At these sat a number of people, who stopped in mid discussion to eye us suspiciously.
“Is it true?” said a stout man with a full, black beard. “Ederach’s dead? Mother Chaos and her frozen tits! How’re we to do without his letters? That’s the on’y reason we know they’re aiming to hang Nat at first light to––”
“Hold your gob.” The black-haired girl pounded a tankard on the table.
“Bequen,” said the hooded man to the girl, “this one saw it.” He pointed to me. “So she said.” He threw off his cowl; he’d a Rielde head of curling blond. All the eyes in the room locked onto my face.
Hal jabbed him with his bow. “And I will do the interrogating, if there must be any.” He gave his fiddle to the Rielde, and said to Nefer, “I won’t hurt her, and it will only be me.”
I pulled at Nefer’s shirt, and he set me down. Hal called for a bucket of water and bar of soap. Someone went and fetched them, and Hal led me down a little stone arm of the jetty. He pulled me into a side room, and shut the door.
He looked me up and down. Then he turned away, because he had begun to cry.
“My poor girl,” he said. Looking at my reflection in the window I though ‘poor’ was a bit terse of him. Then I remembered what Mordan had thought, that this man had given us up to the Queen.
“How’re you still alive?” I said. “She gets rid of everyone she uses, don’t she?” My limbs jerked, and to top off the night’s events, I burst into tears.
“Reyna, look, you think––” He frowned and ran his hands through his grey hair. He knelt in front of me. “I never thought bitterly about what happened. In fact, I needed a well-earned break. Your father thought so, too.
“But you must believe––I’d never have done anything to harm you and your brothers, and if Mordan has come to some mooncalf conclusion, I beg you rethink it. You will remain my secret, if you wish. But what has befallen the others?” He looked me straight in the eye as he spoke, and I stopped trembling. “You won’t say anything.”
“People are dumb,” I said. “And mean.”
He dipped his kerchief in the water and blotted blood from the gash on my cheek. I pulled away, and he drew me back. “Sure. But the folk who threw stones are already regretting it, I bet.”
“Should’ve thrown stones at the right people. All them in charge. They’re dumber and meaner than a sack of eels.”
“They’d throw back worse than stones.”
“So?” I thought of the sign: Six White Ships. “You’re the White Ship rebels, ain’t you? You get the letters.”
He looked up quickly, so I must have been correct. “You know about the letters,” he said. “There haven’t been many lately. Will there be more?” His eyes were very bright.
“Yes,” I said stubbornly.
I opened the door and left him standing with his old musician’s hands wound round a bloody kerchief.
I had it in my mind to quit the boathouse before being spotted, and was halfway to the door we’d entered through when a girl pulled me back by my shoulder strap. She looked about fifteen, with pretty grey eyes and red hair bound up in a tatty cloth. “Shouldn’t be going that way by yourself, lass. I suggest that bright portal.” She pointed to a door at the west end of the landing. “That’s the leeward way. Elements don’t batter on so and your ship’ll better listen to her rudder.”
“You should know, Sal,” said Wille, who took the opportunity to sit down next to her. “Tell Lally what to do, and she’ll go out of her way to do exactly the opposite and get herself whomped.”
Sal took the pipe from his mouth and snapped it in half. His eyes bugged.
“I’ll say as I please, you elf-locked lout.” She gave him the pieces. “I don’t go with smokers, smackers or smarmers, but you’re welcome to share in this fine poteen.” She dragged a jar across to him. “Don’t go blind.”
Wille must have been really taken with her, because he took a big swallow.
He began to cry, and blew his nose on his coat sleeve. “I’ve never tasted anythin so good in me life.” He ducked under the table with a mug of water.
Nefer, sliding up the bench to elope with the whiskey jar, saw me heading toward Sal’s bright portal. “Al, where’re yer feet carryin you?”
Everyone turned and looked, and I slid my hand around the doorknob.
“Going to witness another murder?” said Padlimaird.
“Nefer’s leased a little place,” said Wille, wiping his eyes. “And we’re gonna turn it into a silver smithy. You probably won’t be much help in any kind of a smithy, but yer welcome to join in.”
“I’ll take care of you,” said Nefer.
“Take––what?” I tried to remember what this had felt like. My cheek throbbed. “What do that mean?”
“Keeping you out of trouble,” said Padlimaird. “Damn near impossible, I should say.”
Against Floy’s wishes, against my wishes, I fumbled behind my back with the doorknob. “Don’t bother.”
“Now, wait just a minute,” said the Rielde man. “We haven’t done with you, yet.”
But I slipped through the door.
A few people ran out after me, and I hid beneath some steps until they went away.
It began to drizzle, and I walked west along the quay. Floy broke into my thoughts: “Where are we going?” I stopped on the edge of a long square that opened onto the estuary, and she nipped my neck.
“Take care of me?” I brushed her away and walked into the square’s dark center so I could avoid looking at myself in shop windows. I was an offensive sight––filthy, crawling with fleas, hair matted into webs.
“From now on,” I growled, scraping up some gravel, “I’ll take care of meself.” And something else spoke out to the dark. Don’t get too close, my spirit cried. You’ll cut yourselves. I blocked her out. “Alone.” I ran toward the river and threw the gravel over the balustrade.
“And what about me?” Floy said. We began right away with a bad night’s sleep on a door stoop.
***
I woke with sun pooling into my mouth.
A little boy trickled dirt into my nostrils, and I jumped up spitting. He ran off into a great throng of people, and I sat back down on the step, caught between curiosity and wariness.
The curiosity won out, and I wandered nearer the crowd of Elde, and Elde they mostly were, of a truculent variety. They surrounded a gallows built on the western side of the square, near the estuary. I hadn’t noticed the thing in the dark, and I shuddered, thinking of my spending the night so near to it.
I pushed my way forward and was shunted around the crowd, and after trying to resist it for a while, drifted towards a line of old, flowering fruit trees. The gallows loomed on the platform, contrasting strangely with the bright trees. Upon the scaffold, shouting something I couldn’t hear, an old, blindfolded Gralde man stood between four guards in green and grey.
“See that?” said a boy into my ear. “That’s where you’ll end up if ye don’t learn at making a livin.”
I reached over my shoulder and grabbed Padlimaird’s red hair. “What about him?” I pointed at a bailiff. “He earns a handsome livin, and he ends up at a gibbet every day.”
“Oh shoot,” howled Padlimaird.
Wille appeared then and took us each by an ear. “Why, if it in’t a big mean dog pickin on a little flea.” Padlimaird pushed Wille away and rubbed the back of his head.
“Why are you always here?” I said to them, and trod on the shoe of a big, red-faced woman.
“Why am I here?” She bore down on me, scowling.
“She didn’t mean it, ma’am.” He shoved Paddy and me out of her way. “Be careful of these folks, Aloren. It’s crazy old Nat Breldin up there. He’s getting hanged for the third time now, and they’re going to make sure he’s around for a fourth, or they’ll revolt in all sincerity, an’ the garrison in’t ready for that.”
“You should climb a tree,” said Padlimaird, “before you get squashed. They’re going to storm at some point.” He jumped away when a brawl broke out behind him. “Just look at em!” He ducked an airborne whiskey jug.
“Such nobility and sacrifice,” said Wille. “Come on, Paddy, let’s see if we can’t get closer.” They bungled their way through the mob.
I shook my head and took a step, and my chemise swung forward as though the pockets were filled with stones.
“Oh,” I said to Floy, “they didn’t.”
I reached into my pockets and dug through the coins. I wondered how they had managed it. And of course they could’ve, and quite effortlessly, because it was that much easier to slip something in a pocket than take it out, and they were both skilled pickpockets.
My ears grew hot. I ripped the coins from my pockets, and flung them at a tree, scattering blossoms.
“Reyna!” Floy flew round my head. “What in all the wide world and welkin are you doing?”
“I can’t stand it.” I hurled another handful and pain shot through my shoulder. “I can’t stand it.”
“So you’ll throw it all away? Stupid.”
“But––” I shut my mouth, refusing to argue, because she always won.
I knelt and scraped some celms into my skirt, dribbling the silver between my knees, and noticed that a group of folk next to me had become very still.
I stopped, and glanced up at their red faces. The back of my neck pricked, and I took up one more coin. I stood up and hurried away.
“They’re following us,” Floy said.
“Damn.” I dove through someone’s legs, left a pile of silver, and started running.
“Thief,” someone called. I tripped over feet and knocked bodies aside, and a stream of coins fell through a hole in my skirts, attracting more attention.
I broke into a sprint, neared the river, and thought of jumping the wall, into the place where the water lapped close. Then Floy noticed the next tree growing from its stone plinth.
“The tree,” she said. “Like Padlimaird said.”
I turned my head and rammed into the balustrade. The coins popped over the river, flashing like jumping carp.
“Don’t jump after them. The tree––it’s in blossom––”
I swept her out of my hair, and dashed around the plinth; folk were sitting on every stone of it. A few boys jumped from their places to tussle on the ground.
I bounded onto the stone and scrambled up the trunk. No one noticed; the branches were laden with white and my chemise kept me hidden, and I climbed to a comfortable fork.
The wood smelled of green apples. The sun glowed through the blossoms and wore on my eyelids. I sat still for a long time, pinching myself to keep awake.
The hanging never happened––the mob locked with the soldiers in another stalemate, and the action wound down to a steady seethe, and I stayed put, anxious still over the folk who’d chased me.
I grew antsy and began knotting together a chain of apple blossoms. The chain soon reached a handsome length, and I absently spooled it around the head of one of the boys, who had fallen asleep against the trunk. The crowd had cleared from around the tree, leaving space on the plinth; and the other two boys were merrily playing dice.
One of them glanced over at the sleeper’s head. “Hark at her ladyship,” he said to his friend, “the duchess of the daisies.” The smaller boy doubled over with laughter; his cloak swept chips and silver from the stone. “Max!” said the taller. “How shall I be compensated for all my hard work?”
“You were losing, anyway.”
“Wasn’t.”
Max threw a chip at him; it struck the third boy instead, and he woke. “Throwing stuff?”
“Forgive me, milady,” said Max. “Almost got your bonnet.”
“What bonnet––” said the third boy, and a loop of the flowers fell over his eyes. He pushed them from his head and saw me. “Look at that thing. More mange than person. Stay there.” He stood up. “Don’t want it spreading.”
This struck a chord in me painful and funny all at once. Like hell I was staying there. I swung from my branch and dropped in front of him. He was a head taller than me, with tawny eyes. A human.
He put his arm over his nose. “Filthy Eldine rat.”
I put my fist in his mouth.
His head hit the trunk with a great crack, and he crumpled over the plinth. The smaller boy gasped and the other began to laugh. I whirled on them, “Funny, is it?”
The smaller boy whispered, “Let’s go find Mir.” They left, the smaller dragging the bigger by the wrist.
The third boy lay quite still. Between his feet a dandelion had slumped over. “Floy.” I squatted and touched it: the first thing I’d ever wilted. “Floy, I’m a woman.”
“That’s likely,” Floy said, and I began walking away. “Where’re you going?”
“Away,” I said.
“You can’t just leave him there. Go and drop him in the river.”
“No.”
“They’ll rob him and trample him into a pulp.”
“I hope they castrate him, too,” I said.
But something niggled in the back of my mind. So I stumped back and took him up, one long leg under each arm, and dragged him down a ramp to the river. No one noticed, the crowd having moved away. The boy’s feet stuck out in front of me, strapped into good leather sandals. His tunic darkened with muck, and his hair, too.
I dragged him across a strip of silt and pulled him into the water until it swilled over his face.
He gurgled and sat upright.
“Look at you in the mud,” I said.
He wiped his face with his arm. “What are you doing? Did the garbage pickers send you to piss all over me?”
“Aye.” I watched him shake his elbows free of muck. “They picked too deep and came across your god-awful, stinking arse.”
He stood up, towering over me, and I marveled that I had leveled him with one punch. I decided then was a good time to leave.
He ran after me, tripping over his sandals, and I bounded up the ramp.
Old Nat Breldin had been taken away to molder for another two months in the palace oubliettes, and most of the mob had dispersed. So I ran towards the bustling quay.
The boy proved remarkably nimble, squeezing through chests of tea and heaps of coal with a determination that made me nervous.
Floy was beside herself: “Cut through those gamblers; slip into that sawyer’s yard, there’s an outhouse you can hide in; that hut has an upper story, try the doorknob; look, a sewer-pipe.”
“Ain’t crawling around the sewers, Floy.” I pushed through a narrow quayside street and stopped in front of another way: an alley with a collection of stinking garbage, deep potholes, empty doorways, and walls scribbled over with coarse words, all slowly disappearing under a layer of soot. It looked familiar.
“Keep going.” Floy knocked against my head. “He’d have to be really thick to follow you into there.”
There was a dilapidated stone arch over the entrance. I hid in the corner just behind it. The boy burst through, tunic still dripping, and sprinted down the street.
“Well,” Floy remarked as my breathing slowed, “that proves he’s thick.”
I sucked on my teeth, taking a few steps after him, wondering when I had come this way before. I saw a sign hanging above a door, green in the daylight. It’d looked black last night. “It’s the tavern that gets hold of me letters.”
“Then we oughtn’t go any further.”
“I just knocked a boy off his head.”
“Luck,” said the sparrow. “And you’re apt to run out.”
“You think me lucky?” I said. And I walked on, with big, brave strides.
Turning a corner, I stumbled upon little, black-haired Bequen from last night.
She was agitated and didn’t glance at my face as she steadied me with her hand. Once in the alley she broke into a run, and I stared after. She went down a side street. I continued down the way she’d come––a darker road that ended with the gleaming harbor.
Walking along the gutter I heard a shout: “There you are.” The human boy ran full-tilt toward me.
I started into a stumbling run, looking about for a hiding place. Right before the harbor a small door stood open in a high wall.
I ran through it. It was suddenly dark, and I stood rooted to the ground, waiting for my eyes to adjust. I heard boiling water and tinking metal, and the air stank so strongly of spirits my eyes watered.
The room was built like the tavern boathouse, with a gate at the back for the water to come in. On two stone docks stood a number of pear-shaped pots, much taller than me, with glowing ovens in the bottom. They looked like giant lamps.
Half-sunk in the harbor water were three wooden tubs filled with a dark liquid––I couldn’t tell how deep. The stink came so obviously from the liquid that I backed away, hand to my nose. Letters on the side glimmered in the light of a single lantern: Grennandew 100 proof.
“Whiskey?” I said.
“Hide,” said Floy, and the boy’s feet thumped behind me. I reacted too slowly. He caught me by the front of my chemise, and dragged me back over to the tubs.
He lifted me over the first; the fabric started ripping. “Don’t look so frightened,” he said, face ghastly in the lantern light. “When I’ve dropped you in I’ll throw the candle in after, so you can see your way out.”
But he must have been inexperienced in these kinds of situations; his feet were planted squarely, his groin unguarded.
I slammed my knee up. He howled, and I thumped onto the wood and swung him around by the tunic. He lost his balance and fell backwards into the tub.
He stood up with a great gasp, and whiskey sloshed over the sides.
Boots galloped on wood. I turned and saw a tall woman running down a flight of stairs. She jumped the last three steps and reached for the lantern. “Someone’s robbing us, Martly.”
I sprang towards the street door. The woman threw herself in front of me, and I slipped and fell on my knees. She dropped the lantern, catching me under the arms, and the lantern rolled over the stone towards the tub. It was still lit.
“You’d better get out,” I told the boy. He obliged very quickly, putting his arms on the stone and hauling himself up. The lantern fell in with a soft ploosh, and an orange light flashed. A low, blue flame spread over the whiskey, making the tub glow green.
A man in a leather apron came down the stairs. “There’s a nice batch,” he said. “Smoked, triple distilled and burned off.” And he laughed and laughed.
“You might laugh, Martly,” grumbled a bigger man who’d come down after him. “That wash was two weeks in the make.”
A girl poked her head through the door at the top of the stairs. “Smelled like a flower, too.”
“It was her done it, I think.” The woman shook me by the arm. “Stay up there,” she called to the girl at the top of the stairs.
“That little mouse?” Martly looked incuriously at me. “Did she come in to get warm? Sometimes they do that.”
“And there’s that one.” The woman pointed at the boy, who was inching toward the door.
The boy began to run. “Grab him, Shadd,” said Martly. The other man ran and grabbed the boy by the collar. The boy jabbed his elbows about, and Martly walked over and twisted his arms up behind him so he was caught between the two men.
“Whoof.” Shadd turned his head away. “He’s all over whiskey.”
“He was in one of the tanks,” said the woman. “I saw him crawl out.”
“She pushed me in,” said the boy. He spoke in the trader’s tongue, and I wondered if he understood a word of what the others were saying.
“He’s a big lad, for a squeaker,” said Martly. “Let’s bring them out to the street. I can hardly see in here, I’m sweating rivers into me eyes.”
The men dragged the boy outside, and the woman marched me after.
Floy flew up my skirt.
“Good lord.” Shadd pushed the boy against the wall and blinked in the sun. “An owl. No wonder he was such a big bounder.”
“They probably got in a scrap,” said the woman.
“She pushed me in.” The boy shoved against the men’s hands. “And rolled the lantern at me. Tried to kill me.”
“Good lass.” Shadd spat on the ground. “The on’y way to kill a roach is by burning it.”
“Nasty talk,” said the woman. “Thrash them and let them go. Chelda,” she called into the door, “Chelda, bring me my stick.” I heard shoes on the stairs, and the girl came out the door with a switch. She was tall as the woman and had the same face, only younger. The woman took the switch. “Hold her,” she said to Chelda. The girl sniffed at me.
“I’ve got to touch her?”
“Just do it, you’ve touched worse.” Chelda turned me round and pressed me against the wall, keeping as far from me as she could. Her mother thrashed the back of my legs, and I closed my eyes and bore it. It hurt, but it wasn’t as bad as the things Fillegal did.
Chelda loosened her hands and her mother said, “No, keep her there. I’d like to find out her father.”
“You think she has a father?” Shadd shook his head.
He took the switch from the woman and made to use it on the human boy, when a man called, “Shadd!” He ran up the street towards us. “Shadd, Martly––my wife said there was trouble.” I saw the glint of his gold hair in the sun. The Rielde from the tavern. Another man came huffing after him.
“What’re you doing here, Ackerly?” said the woman. “ They’ll catch you and string you up.”
“Like they did to Nat?” Ackerly said. He looked at the boy. “What’s this?”
“Look at his feet,” said the other man. He was the stout, black-bearded man from last night. “He’ll make a nice ransom for poor Nat.”
“And after that”––Shadd swatted the boy with the stick––“his lordly parents can pay for my ruined whiskey.”
“If you don’t let me go,” said the boy, “I’ll have your ugly, knacker heads on a pike, and I’ll make them sing––” Martly turned the boy’s head so his lips were pressed against the wall. The boy kicked his backward and got Martly in the knee. He moaned and bent, and the boy would have wiggled free if the stout man hadn’t moved in and locked him in place.
“Let him go,” said Ackerly.
“You off yer head?” said the stout man. “An opportunity like this?”
“Is bound to go sour,” said Ackerly.
“But, look––”
“Go on, Haberclad. Or my wife’ll kill me. And you.”
“She don’t need to know,” said Haberclad.
“She knows more than any of us, and that boy will be the start of an ugly scour.”
“Better do as he says,” said Martly, shrugging.
“Without even a beating?” said Shadd.
Haberclad frowned and threw the boy into the street. I was surprised he was able to get up so swiftly. He didn’t glance back, but ran toward the harbor, still dripping whiskey.
“This one, though.” The woman grabbed my arm. “She’ll do for a week of cleaning.”
“How will you keep her?” said Shadd. “Lock her in the shed? She’ll be drunker ’n Martly on Midsummer’s eve.”
“God, she smells,” said the woman. “What’s this?” She pulled a fish scale off my shoulder.
“The wasting sickness,” I said.
“Gah!” She let go of me, fingers splayed, and Floy and I ran for it. They ran after, and I darted from their hands and hid under a wagon until they went away. I crawled out, and scratching the rest of the scales from my shoulder, looked up. The human boy must’ve lost his way: he was walking along the quayside.
I chewed my nails, twisted on my heels, and did something even more stupid than usual.
“You’re going to follow him?” said Floy. “Reyna––” I swatted at her, and she flew out of my reach. “Reyna, he could have you hanged.” I doubted it, and anyway, I didn’t much care. He’d done me a world of ill-turns. My legs stung from the thrashing, and I was going to bleed him for it.
I just didn’t know how, yet.
I hid behind corners and in doorways, and followed him across the Llenad canal––over the rickety bridge––and all the way to the belltower terrace, which must have been a meeting place. The other two boys were there, scrawling dirty pictures on the steps with hunks of limestone. They laughed, backs facing the street and glaring with the noon sun.
The third stopped and stood behind them. “What true, brave friends I have.”
I made a wide circle around the terrace, and ran behind one of the far pillars.
“We couldn’t find you anywhere. But look at this one of Herist,” said the tall, dark-ha