Mapping Winter

by Marta Randall

  When she looked up again the inn was quiet, her eyes felt heavy, and her stomach complained. She stretched while ink dried on the map, pleased with her work. She slid into her boots and went in search of the kitchen and something to eat, whistling silently as she came down the stairs. This evening had been, as such things went, almost pleasant; tomorrow her mission was over and she’d return to Sterk through what promised to be new country. That the cross-country route wasn’t authorized didn’t bother her. With the excitement of the passing up castle her prolonged absence might not be noted; besides, Cadoc might already be dead.

  She paused at the door to the darkened kitchen. There should be a menial sleeping in a corner of the huge hearth. She touched the heavy doorjamb and rapped it with her knuckles.

  “Wait, wait, I’m coming.” The voice was young and irascible. Somebody cursed and stirred up the embers.

  “I want something to eat,” Kieve said quietly. “Cold is fine.”

  The light grew and in it she saw a boy. Bright, dirty hair glimmered as he turned toward her. Not a mountain face at all, not with all that yellow hair and those hazel eyes. He planted his hands on his hips and glowered. He couldn’t be more than ten years old, she thought. He should have run from her in terror.

  “Rider,” he said with contempt.

  She pressed her lips together.

  “Who have you come to kill?”

  “I said, something cold to eat,” she said, her voice icy.

  He glared at her a moment longer before grabbing a hunk of cheese and a crust from a pantry and slamming them onto the worn table. Kieve snatched them up and stalked out of the kitchen, letting her boot heels ring against the stone floor of the common room. She gripped the cheese so tightly that it slipped from her fist and in grabbing for it her knuckles brushed against the black and crimson guildmark stitched onto the breast of her black cloak. She paused, her fingers still on the stylized stirrup and pen, and listened to the silence in the room.

  There would be a ferret in Minst. There was always a ferret. He or she had been there tonight, sipping wine with neighbors and listening, always listening. And, on occasion, reporting to a superior, probably in Three Crossings. Cadoc’s network of ferrets covered Dalmorat from the bank of the Morat to the peaks of the range bordering Bergdahl, from the outlands border to the great Falls of the Morat at the southern tip of Dalmorat Province—an invisible plague of spies listening, watching, reporting. A report might pass up the net to Cadoc himself and if he saw fit his Rider would move through the province, not to deliver news or bring messages or map the countryside but to bring someone to Sterk, and from there they did not return. The precise journey of these reports was a mystery withheld from everyone, including Kieve. But Kieve’s role was not a mystery at all. Only Dalmorat Province had such a system; only Lord Cadoc used his Riders so.

  Her fingers stung with cold. She tucked them, and the bread and cheese, under her cloak and went up the stairs, stamping out her hatred of Cadoc, the ferrets, and the folk of the province who heaped their sullen animosity on the Riders, the only visible symbol of the entire filthy thing.

  * * * *

  Now she again sat by the fire, staring at the unrepentant boy who had tried, and failed, to hurt her horse. Even in the dim light his eyes looked puffy. Unbidden, Welfred brought an extravagant breakfast: a pot of tea, hot bread, a thick slab of fried mutton, butter porridge, eggs. She placed them on a table at Kieve’s elbow, together with a mug and spoon. Kieve sighed. She might as well be late with a full stomach. She reached for the bread.

  A rustle from her audience. She put the bread back down and looked around the room.

  “Go,” she told them. “All of you.”

  They scuttled from the room, leaving the boy standing in front of the Rider and the innkeeper’s wife wringing her hands.

  “Mistress,” the innkeeper’s wife whispered. Kieve looked at her.

  The woman bit her lip. “He’s in bond, mistress, but he’s only a child. Please don’t be harsh with him.”

  Kieve looked at the boy. “What’s his name?”

  “Pyrs,” the boy said. “My name is Pyrs.”

  “Come here.” She waited until he stood across the table from her. “Sit down. Eat.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said to.” She cut a hunk of fried meat and brought it to her lips. After a moment he pulled up a stool and sat and reached for the porridge. His rough shirt was too small, baring his wrists. The innkeeper’s wife brought him a mug and spoon, and at Kieve’s gesture retreated to the kitchen. The inn creaked and was again silent. Kieve filled both her own cup and his.

  “Who speaks for you?” she said.

  The boy looked up from his porridge and shook his head. “Unig Innkeeper.”

  “Does he beat you?”

  The boy didn’t answer. Kieve drank some tea, watching him.

  “No blood relatives?” she said.

  “Not anymore,” he muttered.

  She swung her legs over the bench and took her mug with her into the kitchen. Fires smoldered under two of the three large ovens against the inner wall. The inn must function as the village bakeshop and brewery and meeting hall. Probably Unig Innkeeper rented out the common room to the seminarian for the school, too, and for whatever social or religious services the people of Minst might require. The innkeeper must make a comfortable living, she thought. Certainly comfortable enough to afford to clothe his bondslave.

  Unig Innkeeper and his goodwife stood by the door, conferring in whispers with some townsfolk. They didn’t notice her at first, then they all stopped talking and looked at her in silence.

  “The boy is in bond to you?” she said.

  “Yes, Rider.” The innkeeper’s hands flew under his apron and twisted about each other, rucking the smooth white cloth.

  “Show me the deed.”

  For a moment it seemed that he might object, then he jerked his head at his wife. She scurried into an adjacent room. In her absence the townsfolk looked at the floor or at their hands or at the walls. Their fear reawakened her anger. She slammed doors on it in her mind and finished her tea.

  Welfred returned and held the deed out. Kieve took it and opened the creased paper.

  It said that for a cost of twenty-seven capits and at a time about six years previously, the boy-child known as Pyrs, five years old, of such a weight and such a height, was sold in bond to Unig Innkeeper of Minst, until such time as he could repay the innkeeper for the cost of his purchase. It was a perfectly standard contract, this one signed by Master Adwyr, Chancellor to Lord Cadoc. It was one of the Chancellor’s dirty privileges, to sell the children of criminals.

  “How much of his cost has he earned?” Kieve said. She refolded the deed and tapped it against her thigh.

  “Why, none, Rider,” Unig said, spreading his hands. “He works for his keep, it is all he’s worth.”

  “Yes?” Kieve looked down at him, her lips tight. “I have seen his clothing, innkeeper, and the body within them. You have spent little on either. How much of his cost has he earned?”

  For the first time Unig looked more angry than terrified. “Perhaps a quarter of it, no more,” he said. “He is not an obedient boy.”

  Welfred, however, shook her head. Kieve looked at her.

  “He’s a good enough boy, mistress,” the woman said. “And he works hard. He was a baker’s son, he’s useful in the kitchen. He is our only help. You won’t ... take him, will you?”

  A thought slipped into Kieve’s mind, and she smiled. “Of course I will,” she said, and put the deed in her pocket. Someone gasped. “Saddle my horse, and a second one. The grey, I think. It’s not lame or sick, is it?”

  “The mare? No, Rider,” the innkeeper said, miserable. “A very fine horse, the grey. My best horse. My only good horse.”

  “Good. You, goodwife, pack Pyrs’ winter gear. Two saddlebags, no more.”

  Welfred opened her lips, then pressed them together hard. If Kieve ch
ose to buy their bondslave, the couple had no choice but to sell. “Yes, mistress,” Welfred said, looking down at her clasped hands.

  Kieve stared at her a moment. “Fill my water pouches and fill two for the grey. And a way-meal, enough for two.” A wisp of smoke rose from an oven, bringing the scent of charred bread. Kieve walked out of the kitchen.

  The boy had finished his meal and sat with his elbows on the table, running his fingers through his tangled yellow hair. He stopped when he saw her and put his hands in his lap and looked at them.

  Kieve picked up the last of the meat with her fingers and chewed it. The boy tipped his head back and glanced at her through dense eyelashes. Kieve finished the meat, looking at him.

  “Wait here,” she said, turning away.

  She took her saddlebags back to the room, where she spilled the contents of her money pouch over the coverlet and counted through the mess of coins. It wasn’t anywhere near enough. She thought for a moment, chewing on her lip, then unpacked her notebook and ink. She had never requisitioned a child before, but the form couldn’t be much different from one for a cloak or a horse. On this date, Kieve Rider took one grey mare and the bond for the boy Pyrs, to be paid at twenty capits for the horse and twenty capits one half for the boy, due upon presentation of the note at Sterk. She lettered her name at the bottom.

  Even at city rates the room and her board should not come to more than fifteen stivers. She counted coins into the note and twisted it over them into a casual, contemptuous little package. Before she put her pen and ink away, she wrote a further bill of sale at the bottom of the boy’s deed, in the neat square lettering she had been taught in the Riders’ Guild Hall in Koerstadt.

  It took little time to repack. The sky paled into full dawn and she pinched the candle out and remembered the people in the kitchen, too terrified to move. She cursed and picked up her saddlebags and went downstairs.

  Townsfolk crowded the common room. They moved back as she entered, pressing wide-eyed against each other. A tall man behind Pyrs put his hand on the boy’s head.

  “Rider,” he said, “surely you can reconsider. He’s just a child. Children play pranks, unwisely, perhaps, but just child’s play.”

  Kieve stared at him, expressionless.

  “He’s learned his lesson.” The tall man’s dark eyes gleamed. He flicked light brown hair from his forehead and smiled, sensuous and sure of himself. The village gallant. “Please, Rider. Arrangements can be made.”

  “Let him go,” she said.

  The man dropped his other hand to the boy’s shoulder. “Leave him to me, Rider. I’ll see that he’s adequately punished.”

  “Now!”

  The man’s hands flew away from the boy. A child wailed and buried her face against her father’s tunic. The seminarian’s fingers moved in the furca, the sign against evil, and the bald, heavy man echoed the gesture from near the hearth. Kieve jerked her head at the boy, who took his saddlebags from Welfred and followed Kieve into the yard. He wore a small shortcoat. The corners of his mouth were white with tension. The people followed after.

  Traveler and the grey stood side by side, their reins in Unig Innkeeper’s thin hands. At Kieve’s gesture the innkeeper boosted the boy atop the grey. She swung up on Traveler’s back, taking the reins for both horses. She reached into her cloak and brought out the deed and the twist of note and coins. Unig’s eyes flicked from one to the other.

  “Give me your shortcoat,” she said abruptly.

  Unig blinked, then took it off and handed it up to her.

  “Put this on,” she said to the boy, thrusting the shortcoat at him. He did so and dropped the old shortcoat into Unig’s waiting hands. The new shortcoat rode high around his ears. Unig glowered, almost furious enough to speak.

  “Sign this,” she said, holding the bond out to him. He hesitated but when she raised her eyebrows he took her pen, pressed the deed against the grey’s flank, and signed it. He held the deed and pen out to her, and held out his other hand for the money. She tossed the requisition and coins to the innkeeper.

  The innkeeper’s fingers counted coins through the paper. His expression darkened. Welfred glanced at Kieve and at the boy, then stared at the mud at her feet.

  Kieve moved in the saddle. Traveler walked out of the yard, the grey trailing after. A collective, quiet, unhappy noise rose from the yard. She pulled her hood low over her eyes and paced through Minst’s one street, slamming doors in her mind against her own fury. The road took them over the low bridge by the windmill, its wheel motionless. To the right the ice was smooth and undisturbed save for the tracks of skates; to the left it lay rucked and twisted above stones. The hills rose again after a few acres of farmland; fences no longer paralleled the road. As the village dropped away, so did her anger. The pallid sky of dawn darkened to a cold, pure blue, fringed on the horizon with white snowfields and black trees. They rode a little farther before she stopped the horses and turned to look at the boy, thinking of the signature on his deed of bond.

  “Is this how your parents were taken?”

  He looked startled. “No, not in daytime. How ... how did you know?”

  Instead of answering, she stood in the stirrups to adjust her cloak. “I bought your bond,” she said as she worked. “You can’t return to Minst. The closest village is sixteen leagues from here, over the mountains. You won’t make it alone.” She threw the grey’s reins to him. “Does that thing have a name?”

  He wrapped the reins around his gloved hand. “Myla.”

  Kieve nodded and Traveler moved up the slope. A moment later the boy came up behind her and settled the grey in Traveler’s tracks. Ahead she saw the cleft in the mountains that marked the pass she had come to see. This valley was well mapped, so instead of taking sightings she made occasional notes in her book, which she spread over her thigh. A bit further on, the map was tantalizingly blank before it picked up again in the mountains above the valley of the Morat. That blankness fed her soul.

  Behind her, the boy’s horse snorted at something. What, Kieve thought, was she going to do with him? She could send him back, but Unig Innkeeper would have the boy and his own prejudices intact, and her note for the cost of the boy and the horse. He wasn’t likely to cancel that. She flushed with anger, mostly at herself. Let Cadoc be dead, she thought. Let him be dead so that she could ride the news to Koerstadt and never set foot in this cursed province again.

  * * * *

  At noon she pulled cheese and dried meat from a saddlebag and handed some to him. They ate while the horses picked their way through snow-covered scrublands. When the boy finished eating he pulled his overgloves on again but did not drop behind. She took another bite of meat.

  “Did you come for me?” He didn’t look at her. “Specially, I mean.”

  She swallowed. “Why should I?”

  “Riders came for my parents.” He stared ahead, the reins clenched in his fist.

  “Children aren’t punished for what their parents do.”

  He glared at her. She finished her cheese and shook crumbs from her hands before pulling on her overgloves. Myla slowed to let Traveler take the lead.

  By mid-afternoon they approached the far end of the valley. The light forest thinned and the track widened. A winter hawk circled overhead, almost invisible against the pale blue sky. Somewhere soon there would be a small alpine valley where they could shelter for the night. The boy came to ride beside her again.

  “Why did you take me, then?” he demanded.

  “You tried to hurt my horse.” She thought about what it would have done to him, to have the spikes driven into his back.

  The boy dropped back for a few paces, then came forward again. “Rider?”

  “What?”

  He hesitated before saying, “What are you going to do to me?”

  “I don’t know yet.” He glanced at her, frightened beneath his bluster. That, too, vexed her.

  “Riders don’t kill,” she said. His mouth twisted in disbelie
f. She said, before he could speak, “Who is the ferret in Minst?” thinking of the fat man at the inn.

  His mouth opened a moment, then he closed it and shook his head. “I d-don’t know,” he said. “There isn’t one.”

  “No?”

  “You would know. If there is one.”

  “No. I am only sent to deliver messages and warrants, nothing more. Nothing more. But there is a ferret, there is always a ferret. Who has money in Minst? A shepherd with fat pockets and a skinny flock? The miller? Unig Innkeeper? I promise there is someone, someone who listens and pries and sends reports, someone who profits from betraying his neighbors or blackmailing them. Do you understand that, boy? They are the spies, they are the ones to hate. Only Dalmorat Province has ferrets, only this province uses Riders thus. I do not betray, boy. I am not the ferret-master, I do not control this filthy scheme.”

  She was shouting, leaning forward on her horse toward him. Myla backed up a pace before he held her steady.

  “And t-take them away,” he said back to her. “Not just bring warrants. You take people away.”

  Her anger chilled and after a moment she nodded. “I am compelled by my oath to obey.” After a moment she shifted in the saddle. Traveler started down the snow-covered track.

  I am compelled by my oath to obey, she had said to him. She was oathed to obey the rules of her guild, and she was oathed beneath that to obey the dictates of her lord, and her lord required that she not speak, save at his direction, of the workings of his network or of her place in it. She listened to the sounds of horse and boy moving behind her, and parsed her own shouts. There is always a ferret, but everyone knew that. The spies reported and were paid for it: it was common knowledge.

  I am not the ferret-master. That. Saying that betrayed her oath.

  No one would know of it, save herself and the boy. And who would believe him, if he said “She says she is not master of the ferrets.”

  Cadoc would believe him. Cadoc would believe that she had said this.

  Cadoc was dying.

  The path skirted a frozen copse; a shower of ice fell on them. She brushed it from her cloak and glanced over her shoulder. The boy sat hunched in his anger.