2
Brother Whisper
“Come on,” said Yedda. “It's not fair.”
“Yes, it is,” said Chilton. “You aren't allowed to compete. You aren't a guard.”
“I live here, don't I? What do you think I do all day?”
“You're a student,” he said, lacing up his boots. “You can join when you're older.”
The guard tournaments were hosted in the first week of March every year. Any guard who wanted to competed in hand to hand combat, swords, knives, archery, open weaponry, horsemanship, climbing, and running. Though the tournaments were fun, they were rewarding, too: winners in each category received days off, money, or quality equipment as prizes. Regular city folk came to watch and sell goods, turning the long tradition into a festival.
“It's not fair,” Yedda repeated. “You said I'm better than some of the guards.”
“No, I said you work harder,” said Chilton. “Look, Yedda, you've only been training since Summer's end. You don't have half a chance. Why do you care so much?”
“I want to win,” she said. “I want the money.”
“Spirits, girl. What would you even do with it?”
“You don't care.”
“I do. What do you need money for?”
“I want a dress.”
“A dress! What do you need a dress for?”
She made a noise that was, by all accounts, distressing—something between a squeal and a sob—and ran into her room, shutting the door loudly behind her.
“Can you talk to her?” Chilton asked Nyla. They leaned against the fence of the practice yards, watching two guardsmen fencing over third place in swords. Chilton had already taken second place out of two hundred-some guards, and blamed it on not getting enough sleep.
Yedda had declared that if she wasn't allowed to compete, she wasn't going to go at all.
“I haven't a clue what I did wrong,” he said to Nyla.
“Twelve isn't easy,” said Nyla. “Likely enough, you did nothing wrong.”
“Can you talk to her about all of it?” Chilton asked. “She's starting to, well, look older.”
“Consider it done,” said Nyla. “You want to give her an afternoon off? I'll buy her that dress she wants, and we can talk.”
“I'm not sure you should give in to that one. She doesn't need a dress.”
“If the girl wants to look pretty, she should be allowed to,” Nyla argued. “She didn't choose to be a guard.”
“It was that or the gallows. She should be—”
“Grateful?” asked Nyla dryly. “She's a child. Don't hold her past over her head.”
They both started clapping. One of the men had won.
More than once that spring, Chilton regretted taking Yedda into his protection. Every time the thought crossed his mind, he cursed himself for having it. She'd be dead without him. No matter how frustrating she became, he reminded himself that she would grow up soon.
“She'll come around,” Lodan told him. “Stop beating your head against the wall, and just wait it out.”
“Still, I can't believe this is what I gave up captain for.”
“This is about a badge?” Lodan laughed. “You'll get it back before you know it. Twelve is hard. I have a younger brother; I'd know.”
“Everyone keeps telling me that,” Chilton groaned. “I hope thirteen is better.”
“Keep hoping. Poor you. Do you miss being a captain that badly?”
“No, I'd just rather be in charge of fifteen guards than one twelve year old child. Is that sad?”
“You can always boss me around,” said Lodan.
“Good. Watch Yedda for a day? Or better yet, a year?”
“I had something more fun in mind,” said Lodan. “You're getting old, and boring.”
Chilton learned to compromise. Even the guards, Yedda said, got some time off; she should have the same. Every Saturday afternoon, she would have no training and no duties. He even gave her a small allowance, although she'd have to save money if she wanted to buy more than a box of candies. Anything serious, he paid for: that year she got her first real knife and a whetstone to keep it in order. There were new clothes, too, although Chilton would only buy practical clothing, boots that were good for fighting and running. As she'd promised, Nyla bought Yedda a simple blue dress, the sort of thing a little village-girl might wear. Yedda put it on every time she had a day off. Nyla also asked Chilton for money so that she could buy “the sorts of things her body might need” for Yedda. Chilton dug into his belt-purse without a question.
“That squeamish? It'd be easy to rip you off,” Nyla said with a grin. “Perhaps I should explain it all, just to see the look on your face.”
“There are some mysteries I don't need answers to,” was all he said.
“You're pathetic,” said Nyla.
Yedda made friends with some of the city children. They met weekly at a park on the third tier, not having the money to sit at an eating-house the way adults did. At first, the other children made fun of Yedda's poor, unchanging clothes. When one of the boys called her Yedda blue-dress, she hooked her hip under him and threw him onto his back. The breath was knocked out of him. They all treated her with scared reverence after that.
Though she only saw them once a week, she quickly became one of them. She was particularly taken with Brede, one of the girls, who would often visit her in the guardhouse at night. They stayed up late giggling and gossiping about boys until Chilton made her leave, asking every time if her mother wanted her out so late.
Chilton had complained, but now he was nervous about Yedda moving away from the guard and into other things. He felt he was losing her. She barely talked to him aside from the necessities. She rushed her work and didn't care to ask him questions.
“I told you, let her be her,” Lodan insisted. “She needs to be herself right now. Look at you, mama duck after all.”
“Don't make fun,” Chilton said. “She's got a serious job.”
“And she's good at it, isn't she? You worry too much.”
One afternoon Chilton took Yedda on a run through the city, as he often did. When he saw her staring hungrily at the shop fronts they passed, he took her inside a sewing house to have her measurements taken for a second dress.
“Any color you'd like,” he said, and felt a strange happiness when she hugged him. He hadn't realized his happiness was so tied up in hers. Mama duck after all, he thought, but he wasn't entirely unhappy about the matter. She was still a good student, he thought grudgingly, just a little distracted by growing up. And who could blame her? It was hard to remember, but he had a vague recollection that he'd been the same at her age, minus the dresses. He just hoped that she didn't get caught up with anyone in a romantic sense. That, he wasn't ready for.
CHAPTER
When Finian and Corliss left the city, they rode in Ulla’s cart.
Sileas’ smuggler was also legally an official merchant. Her cart rolled through the lower gate with only minimal prodding and glancing at papers. The guards made a show of searching without truly doing any work.
The false bottom ordinarily might hold weapons or other black market goods, but now it held Finian.
Corliss rode alongside Ulla on the bench. The horse and pony Sileas bought them for the journey followed the cart on leads, and unlike her own sturdy carthorse Ulla declared them tradable goods.
“Have you been to the country?” Ulla asked Corliss as they left the city behind.
“I grew up in Dorchalt Proper.”
“That’s different. The true lowland, I mean.”
“No,” said Corliss. “Different how?”
“No highborn clan. There’s the rich lowland, and then there’s the rural country, the reaches, the low folk living their lives away from all the gold and frivolity. You’ll have to make up your own mind,” Ulla said. “It’s rougher in some ways, but it makes more sense to me. The way people think out there. Realer.”
“I like that,” said Corliss.
“I thought you might.”
On a quiet stretch of road far outside the city, where no watchers were in sight, Ulla pulled the cart over. They had to partially unload the back to get Finian out from the bottom. Then the three shared a lunch of hard, salty cheese and dense nut bread. Ulla meted it out, and they sat beneath a full-boughed tree while the horses grazed. Ulla passed around a jug of water.
“How does it feel?” Ulla asked Finian.
“Like home,” he said.
When they had finished eating, Corliss and Finian separated their supplies from Ulla’s. The smuggler reached into the cart and came back with two long parcels that Corliss was certain had not been there before. Corliss’ felt heavy in her palm. It was much smaller than Finian’s.
“Don’t open them in front of me. I get sentimental,” said Ulla.
“Before you drive off, merchant, I’d like to make a deal,” said Finian with a smile. She laughed.
“I’d be honored. What would you like?”
He purchased a good glass jar and pouches of spice.
“How much?” Finian wanted to know.
“If you’re brewing again, you’ll just have to pay me with a drink, when I visit.”
“Please,” Finian said, offering three quarter-silvers.
She took the money, but later, long after they’d split ways, Finian found it in his pocket.
It seemed to Corliss the forest at night was a city of its own. It was louder in the woods than it had been in Sileas' townhouse. Crickets replaced the rattling sound of cartwheels on cobbles. Instead of soft slips of drunken laughter, her ears pricked at a hooting owl. The thicket by their camp-spot rustled. She lay awake, holding the serviceable little knife that had been Ulla’s present.
After hours of sleeplessness, she was too exhausted for fear. Finian had strung waxed cloth covers between the trees, in case of a rain that had not come. She crawled out from under hers.
She just saw the dim smudge of Finian's cloth across the glade. Moonlight turned the tiny clearing silver, streaking grass, clover, and flowers with its touch. The two mounts they had rode stood hobbled, heads low. Wildflower, the pony Sileas bought for her, swung his neck to watch Corliss out of one dark eye. He flicked an ear towards her, then turned away again. She went to him and calmed herself by leaning against his sturdy form and running her fingers through his long coarse mane to pry apart the tangles. His side was warm and soft as silk. He stood still, lips and eyelids drooping.
It was a comfort to be among living things. The fatigue that should have claimed her long before began to come now. Her mouth split with a yawn, and her fingers slowed to a halt. Soon she stopped petting Flower and only slumped against him. He shifted a hoof, and she stirred.
There was a human noise, a quiet pained groan. It came from Finian. Corliss started. For a moment she stayed with the pony, but the noise came again. She crept across the glade with her heart in her throat. The noise stopped. It was replaced by a soft muttering. Corliss stood at the edge of his makeshift tent. She brushed a hand out to the fabric and thought of lifting it.
“No,” he said.
“Sorry,” she whispered, fearing she'd crossed some boundary, but he didn't say anything in return. He was only talking in his sleep.
At last Corliss returned to her tent covering. She thought she'd be up the rest of the night, but she was asleep before the thought finished its course.
Finian pulled back the cloth over Corliss. Even between the trees the sun spilled brightly onto her, and she rose a languid arm to block it from her eyes.
“Come on,” he said. “We need to keep moving.” He walked away, leaving her to get up on her own.
They had brought simple food for the road, things that could last a few days. Breakfast was salted jerked hare and a wedge of dense, dark bread. They washed it down with gulps of water from a pig-bladder flask. They tied their cloth coverings with the same ropes they had used to string them up between the trees, and attached the bundles to their travel packs. Corliss rolled hers messily, and Finian made her do it over again. She pulled on a thin cloth cap to hide her naked head. Then they saddled the horses and made their way back to the road. Finian had marked the direction with his knife the night before.
They rode in near silence. Now and then Finian shared a bit of knowledge, or Corliss asked a question. Even the journey from Dorchalt Proper to the city had been a selective view of the lowland, since then Sholto had kept her to the major circuit road.
They had ridden the circuit with Ulla, but now Corliss and Finian took a fork into the Duitiel woods. They took this smaller road towards the mountains, away from the city and into the true lowland of the Duitiel clan province.
Here were areas the clan never ventured, and in result these were areas they fed to spirits.
Much of Duitiel was forested, since the eastern clan made its money off industry and tree products rather than massive farms. Travelling east towards the mountains, they soon reached a line where the woods began to thin.
The horses knew about the stag before the humans, and began to dance nervously rather than walk in a sensible manner; they wanted to stop or turn aside. A few steps further and Finian pointed it out.
It stood alone under the shadow of a tree. The eight-tine stag had its head lowered. It seemed to graze without noticing them.
After they’d stared at its frozen body for a few minutes, in flew two large birds with the crooked necks of vultures. One lit down on a tree branch. The other flew lower and landed on the stag’s back.
The stag remained motionless. It continued to pointedly not move as the vulture tugged a strip of flesh from its back.
“Off!” Finian shouted to the bird. He dismounted and passed his reins to Corliss. “Stay here,” he told her. He ran up the hill waving the long knife Ulla had given him. After a moment of hesitation, the vulture on the stag joined its companion on the tree.
Finian circled the stag and looked at its wounds. Up close there were plenty of flies. The blood was tacky and thick on the ground. He braced himself with one hand on the back of its neck, then sawed his knife across its throat as deeply and quickly as he could. More blood fell.
He wiped the blade on the grass as best as he could, which wasn’t very, and returned to the horses.
“What happened?” Corliss asked. The edges of her mouth tilted down and her voice wobbled a little.
“Somebody stole a little time from this place,” Finian said. “The stag was stuck, the birds clearly weren’t. It might’ve woken up in an hour. Maybe a week.”
“Why’d you kill it?” She asked as he mounted his horse.
“Because it was going to die either way. I wanted that to happen before it woke up again,” Finian said. “Come on, let’s have some distance from this place.” They rode on.
At last the wood ended, and they found themselves at the foot of a dry and dusty plain. The land here was of poor quality, ravaged as it was by spirit-work. Duitiel's free villages sat ahead of them, on the outskirts.
The town of Wolfstooth was small and simple. It consisted of a ring of houses with a clearing in the middle. Other dwellings scattered further out with no real order.
In every way it was a contrast to the gridded city.
This was a free town. They paid tribute to the clan, but the common born here owned the small farms they plowed.
Not a single villager ignored them as they rode in. Everybody stopped their work to stare at the newcomers, but nobody said a word. Corliss stared between her pony's ears and tried not to meet anybody's gaze. Finian reined in his horse before they reached the town center.
“Wait here,” he muttered to her as he slipped off his horse, handing Corliss the reins. “Don't talk to anyone.”
A gray-haired person came out of one of the houses as Finian walked into town. They began to speak. Finian nodded a few times, then looked in the direction the villager pointed. They shook hands and Finian walked off, vanishing from Corliss' view into one of the open doorways. An hour might have passed. She turned the pony in circles to keep them both occupied.
At last Finian came out through the door, laughing over his shoulder. He carried a large, full bag in his hands. He waved to a figure in the doorway and made his way to Corliss.
He filled both of their saddlebags with the food he had bought, what extra the village had, then stuffed the rest into the packs they each wore on their backs. The woman from the house he'd emerged from came out to hand him another bag. He gave her back the empty one.
“You can keep this. Thank you,” Finian said. He took the full sack from her with a grunt once he was mounted. It clunked when it moved. Evidently, it was heavy. He hoisted it over the saddle in front of him, holding it steady with one hand while the other gripped the reins.
“Thanks for the welcome,” said Finian.
“Of course. It’s been a while since we had a city man here,” the woman said. “Come visit once you’re settled.”
“As you please,” Finian said.
She smiled at Corliss and made her way inside. Corliss looked away. When she looked back, the woman was gone.
“What happened?” Corliss asked, nudging her pony to follow him out of the town.
“There's a cabin a half-day's walk up the mountain, shorter by horse. It'll house us both. Come on, let's go find our new home.”
“Won't these people be hungry?”
“I paid them more than it was worth. They can buy whatever they need from the other towns here.”
A stream flowed past Wolfstooth, and the mountain cabin Finian bought with Sileas' money sat high on its bank in a weed-filled, sparse field. It was a small wattle and daub house with a fenced paddock and a coop inside. The building was long empty. It had once been inhabited by goatherds, and would do well for the two of them. There was a room with a table and hearth, and a little chamber with a straw sleeping pallet. There was an old outhouse that seemed very grim after the city's sewage system, though there was no stench yet. That, Finian assured Corliss, would come in time, but it had been unused for years.
The stream rushed cleanly forward, pouring down the river to the lowland. But the mountains themselves were crumbling and sickly, the trees stunted, the soil going slowly sandy.
As the woman had promised him, there was old cooking gear left from the goatherds—her family. A cabinet held woven blankets and little else.
To settle in they each claimed shelves, and agreed Corliss would sleep in the main room beside the hearth while Finian had the room. They gathered water from the stream, and wood as fuel for the fire. There was not much wood, being a place of mostly grass and shrub, but Finian explained the horse’s droppings would also work for fuel, albeit less pleasantly.
The food they ate that first night was simple, like all the food they would eat on the mountain. Corliss made simple bean-flour dough and fried it into a sort of bread. They ate it with fried eggs from the town, and went to sleep a little hungry, both wondering how they would survive.
The next day Finian surveyed the slope and the soil and decided it might be a good place to grow wine.
“But it’s bad farmland,” said Corliss.
“That depends what you’re growing. A grape does better with a little hardship.”
“Like a person,” she said.
“Maybe,” he said, giving her a long glance.
Finian asked about grape seeds when he next went to Wolfstooth, and realized he’d have to go to the next town over at least. As it was he began to brew meads and ales, which were a better endeavor in any case; a planted vine would take a few years to produce fruit and he needed a craft now. After the first bottled mead was a success in Wolfstooth, he tried making a sort of wine with local rowan berries as well. He got the recipe (for the berries were poisonous if uncooked) from Lise, a friendly woman who always invited him to sit and talk when he visited town. She told him that most of Wolfstooth made and drank the simple wine, for it cost nothing but time to make, and they had nothing else to spend.
It took very little work for Finian to improve the recipe. The result, as he created these beverages, was that he had something in town to trade other than just Sileas’ money. He was able to feel, at least a little, as if he were supporting himself. Though the horses had also been from Sileas, he pleased himself making a trade of them.
Mostly when Finian visited Wolfstooth it was under the pretense of buying food. He and Corliss were working on a vegetable garden, and they were both trying to learn to fish and trap, but they needed plenty of help.
He always brought his drinks down mountain with him to sell. Finian never encouraged visitors. He didn’t want them to see Corliss, who still looked human but might not for long. Spirits were as hated in the lowland as they were coveted in the high.
He worried about Corliss, who had only him. She didn’t travel to the village like Finian. She was without contact. That was good, from a revolutionary standpoint; he spent lots of time talking with her about the corrupt clans and the need for change, and she’d seen enough already to believe him. But it could not possibly be good for her.
Of course, he didn’t know that Corliss had other company: the voice of another Bound, speaking with her mind-to-mind. Though she took great comfort in the companionship, she hadn’t told Finian.
Once he had reached the conclusion she was lonely, the answer was simple. He returned from a trip carrying a gangly puppy in his arms. The animal was mottled in stripes, pale brown and dark. Corliss squealed and took the puppy from him.
“Where’d you get him?” She asked as the dog gave her a tentative lick. It was too tired from the journey for much else.
“Her,” Finian said. “There was a litter.”
“What'll we name her?”
“I don't know,” said Finian. “You choose. What are we doing for supper? I'm too tired to think.”
“I can cook.”
Corliss wanted to eat with the dog on her lap, but Finian insisted that she give the animal some space. She burned through a dozen names in the first hour.
“How about Birch?” Finian asked at last.
“Birch?”
“It's a tree. She looks a little like the bark, with those markings. Birch. It's a good name, a strong name. Sturdy. Trees don't move. You want a dog to be loyal like that, steadfast.”
“Birch,” said Corliss, looking into the corner where the dog flopped on a folded blanket. Her chest rose and fell, the eyes closed in shallow sleep.
As Finian walked again down the mountain, he thought: I spend all my time doing this. Going back and forth. The village was steadily growing richer, despite the fact that he'd nearly bought them out of house and home with his need for food and cookware and livestock. Now he was going to ask for more flour or fruit or roots, and he knew he'd give a price that was past fair and into theft, and he didn't mind; why shouldn't Sileas' money go to these folk?
He was about to burst from the last layer of trees and brush into the first field when he saw the guards.
Wolfstooth milled with them. Warriors in Duitiel green sat on horseback, or passed through the doorways of houses. From the riderless horses roped together he guessed there were a dozen of them.
He'd been too careless with the money, that was it. They'd tracked him, or tracked Corliss, by the trail of gold he'd suddenly scattered into this area. Or maybe tracked nobody, but they'd come here nonetheless, and certainly the villagers would point the guards up the mountain, and they would find Corliss, and they would find him, and then they'd both be dead, and the Duitiel clan would have another spirit...
If he were smart he'd turn and run up the mountain and get the child. They'd flee together. But something kept him staring out from the trees. He crouched low and tried to position himself so the undergrowth would shield him from view.
At last the guards went to their horses. Finian turned and started to climb, as quickly and silently as he could. His heart pounded.
He had to cough, suddenly; he couldn’t help it. Sometimes the old sickness still came over him. He muffled himself by clamping a hand on his mouth. He glanced over his shoulder—nothing there—and kept going.
Fifteen minutes later he turned and there was no sign of the guards. The woods here weren't thick. If they were coming for the cabin, they long would have caught up with him. He waited until his heart stopped pounding, then returned slowly to the treeline. No sign of the guards. It was as if they'd never been there.
If he went home, he wouldn't know if they needed to flee or not. He had to know why the guards were there. Closing his eyes, he steeled himself with a few deep breaths, then emerged from the woods as if nothing were wrong.
Finian knocked on Lise’s door. He always visited her first. She was the nicest, and she could often tell him who was or wasn’t worth talking to that day.
“Birds,” he said, after their rudimentary greetings. “I was hoping to roast one tonight?”
“Sorry, you'd better come back,” she said. “Nobody can sell.”
“Nobody?”
“Nobody, nothing. For miles. The guards will be everywhere.”
“Guards?”
“Yes, they came this morning.”
“Why?”
“Tribute,” she said, as if this were an obvious fact.
“They come often?”
“Twice a year.” From the way she squinted, Finian figured he'd just labeled himself as even odder than he'd already looked.
“And you'll be okay? I mean, they didn't take too much?”
“We'll manage,” she said. “We have to.”
“Should we expect them up mountain?”
“Nah,” Lise said, and grinned. “Not worth the hike. Besides, we hid our gold. Didn't tell those hogs you were here at all.”
“Thank you,” Finian said.
“No need. We didn't do it for you.” Lise shrugged. “Come back in a few weeks. I'll keep in mind you want a few hens. Maybe I’ll go trapping.”
One of the few fights they had was when Finian found Corliss hiding lit candles under her bed at night.
“Do you want this whole place to burn down?” he shouted, pointing at the puddles of cooled wax collected on the floor.
“As if I can't control a candle,” Corliss muttered to herself, but she finally bent and obeyed when he began to argue the cost of it.
Together they built a mudstone oven. On the days Finian traveled down-slope Corliss woke early to bake fancy bread or pies for him to barter with. Added to Finian’s drinks, they did an alright business, but the people of Wolfstooth weren’t in much of a position to trade.
The garden came in raggedly, and they lost much of what did grow to woodland creatures. They grew barley, kale, and peas. They found apple and cherry trees nearby, either growing naturally or planted by an earlier family. The trees had been there for a while, and were not in neat orchard-rows.
Farming was hard work, even on their small scale, but when Corliss had energy and time she went exploring with the gangly Birch. The dog grew rapidly.
Sileas or Ridley wrote them monthly with news from the city, and one of them, usually Finian, responded with stories about Corliss’ training or new abilities she had discovered, writing in a simple code in case anyone else read the letter. It was a day's walk to the village large enough to have a postal exchange. When Finian went, he stayed overnight. Now and then Sileas sent coins, though he was wary of mail being stolen.
The conditions of his support were simple, and not driven by love. He would make sure they were in good health, he said, if one day he could call on Corliss and her unique abilities. Sileas was as sure as ever that a war was coming, and he wanted to be certain of what side she was on.
Once, Corliss wrote to Sileas asking what forest he had found the wood Bound in. She was taken with a fancy that she might go adventuring and find another Bound, but if Sileas got the letter, he never answered it.
As Corliss aged she explored her powers more, lighting fires and pushing heat away from them on hot summer days. Finian cautioned her against doing more. Again and again, he had read that losing control was a steep, slippery slope. Her abilities, too, had strict limits. She could not create heat out of nothing, only move it around. To warm one area, she had to cool another. She couldn't start a fire without making a frost.
It was a quiet, lonely sort of life, but they were both suited to it. Finian learned to go days without speaking. Once, that wouldn't have been possible for him, but something about him had changed with jail and Rowena's death.
It was spring. Nearly a year had passed. The door was open to let in the pleasant breeze. Suddenly Birch's nose lifted into the air, and her ears pricked up, and then she bounded out of the cottage and began to bark.
Corliss and Finian followed. The tall young dog ran to the edge of the woods and back to them, barking at the tree line.
“There's someone coming,?