by JA Andrews
Dismounting, he led his pinto horse off the road, cutting through the grass toward the nearest tents. The tufts at the top of the winter-dried stalks tugged at his pants like greedy little fairies. After a year trying to move unobtrusively through the Roven Sweep, he’d mastered one bit of vaguely sophisticated magic. He cast out, reaching past the dead grass and finding the bits of new growth, just starting to peek out of the ground.
Slowly he extended his fingers toward the ground and began pulling the vitalle out of them, drawing it through his hand and into himself as he altered the tiny snips of life-energy into something more elusive. He let the vitalle slide out from his other hand, stinging his fingertips as he spread a cloak of disinterest around himself. A suggestion that there was nothing about him worth noticing.
It was done before his fingertips were even singed, accompanied by the usual twinge of guilt at the fact that the other Keepers wouldn’t approve.
The influence spell had become unsettlingly easy. Like every other bit of magic Will had ever tried, it had been challenging to cast at first, and even more challenging to sustain.
When he’d first come to the Sweep, he’d only used the influence spell occasionally. But the farther he traveled among the Roven, the more he realized that the Sweep was always unsafe. They distrusted all foreigners, but had a special hatred for Queensland. Parents frightened their children with stories of evil Keepers who didn’t use stones to hold their magic, but pulled it out of living things. It became easier not to be noticed, and now putting on the influence spell was like part of getting dressed. He’d renewed it so often it felt as though it never completely wore off.
The other Keepers definitely would not approve of that. Gerone’s eyebrows would dive down into a hairy scowl and he’d say there was something dishonest in it, something slightly dangerous. Which was true, but there was something definitely dangerous about having the people of the Roven Sweep find out Will came from Queensland. Or worse, was a Keeper. So Gerone and his eyebrows could say what they pleased.
Will drew close to the crowd, his hand tight on the reins. But the first person’s gaze slipped past him without notice, and he let himself relax. He skirted the edge of the festival. Runes of protection and good luck decorated each tent. The leather vests of the Roven were marked around the armholes and the neck with runes. More were painted onto their bowls and tables, and woven into their rugs. Small gems glittered everywhere. They flashed in rings, hung around necks and wrists, many of them glowing with trace amounts of vitalle. The Roven called them burning stones if they held any energy, and Will sighed at how much money he could have made on the Sweep if he’d had any idea how to put the energy of living things into a lifeless rock. The Roven filled the festival covered in runes and gems in an effort to be safe, or lucky, or shrewd.
The wayfarers, with their trinkets that looked magical, whether they were or not, were going to make a fortune in this city. They were probably the only foreign people who walked freely through the Sweep.
Will caught a glimpse of long, brown hair coming toward him, and his fist clenched on Shadow’s lead. Opening up without meaning to, the emotions of the crowd rushed into his chest with a cacophony of feelings, shoving aside his own blaze of hope.
The crowd slithered past and the slave woman shuffled into view carrying a pile of fabric. An ordinary clutter of emotions from her blossomed in him. Worry, exhaustion, mild curiosity.
Will searched her face, looking so hard for the resemblance to Ilsa that it took a moment to actually see her and recognize it was all wrong. More than that, she was too old, much older than twenty. She paid no more attention to him than anyone else, and didn’t raise her eyes from the ground as she passed. When her emotions faded, Will shoved the chaos of the rest of the crowd out of his chest.
Butter-yellow fruit caught his eye. When he offered the Roven vendor his copper half-talen for three avak, the woman looked surprised to see him for just a breath. Her eyes took in his not-red hair and the fact that he didn’t wear a grey slave’s tunic, and her lips curled in disgust. She snatched the copper out of his hand with a “fett” and went back to her Roven customers.
Will turned away, blending back into the crowd. To chase away the bitter taste of the slur, he took a bite of the fruit, and the tangy juice burst into his mouth like a splash of brightness in the dusty Sweep. Avak was one of those glorious things that was always better than expected. Like the smell of the air after rain. Or the vividness of a lightning strike. One of those things that breaks into life with the truth that there is far more…something in the world than people usually notice.
Will took another bite.
Avak didn’t fit here on the Sweep.
The sharp tanginess perked up his mind, as it always did. The afternoon sunlight danced over the orange fabric of the tent next to him. It glinted off a set of metal spoons and shimmered down the red-gold braid of the Roven woman considering them. To the south, the ocean rose in small swells glittering like scales on a sea monster.
A bit ahead of him the flutter of the wayfarer’s wagon caught his eye.
The last bite of avak flesh pulled cleanly off the smooth pit and Will tucked it in his pocket. The Keepers’ Stronghold needed an avak bush. Gerone would be thrilled. He could plant an orchard of them.
The freshness clarified the reality of Will’s situation too. This was just another random, solitary wayfarer wagon. The search for his sister was nothing more than a far-fetched dream, and being on the Sweep was a waste of time.
Will led Shadow around a large red tent filled with blankets and stopped.
At the edge of the festival, flashing with gaudy colors and snapping ribbons, sat over a dozen wayfarer wagons lined up one after the other, in an arc.
Rooted to the ground, Will stared at the cacophony of color ahead of him.
He’d had never seen so many wayfarers in one place. Never even heard of a gathering like this.
Wagons with rounded, stout roofs parked next to ones with tall, pointed roofs. One blood-red wagon even had a flat roof, crenelated like a castle. Wildly colored shutters were thrown open and a few of the crooked chimneys dribbled out smoke. A raised stage nestled up against one painted the spiky yellow of a bumblebee, creating the impression that Will stood in a theater.
The stage sat empty, but handfuls of people sat along a row of benches stretching across the back of the makeshift theater, and he sank down on the end, dazed. He let Shadow graze, and watched wayfarers dressed in garish colors unload even more garish costumes and props for the evening’s show. A young girl holding a pot passed, trailing the earthy smell of sorren seeds. Tiny shells edging her amber shawl jostled each other with a quiet clatter.
The wagon Will had been following settled at the other end of the arc, calling greetings to the other wayfarers. Will cast out toward the people around him and the energy teeming in their bodies and the bright pinpoints of vitalle humming from the burning stones they wore echoed back to him. Countless colored gems, set in rings or pendants, swirled with light and tiny snippets of power.
Will took a bite of the second avak, his surprise fading. He’d found a band of wayfarers doing what wayfarers always did, entertaining crowds and selling marginally magical trifles. The familiar frustration gnawed at him.
A woman stepped up onto the stage wrapped in flowing layers of ocean blues and greens. “Come! Listen to old Estinn!” she called out to the milling crowd with a lilt that made her accent impossible to trace. Bits of grey hair snuck out from under her emerald scarf and her voice rang out loudly from her thin, hunched body. The crowd paused. “When the sun drops over the edge of the world, come witness a battle! Storytellers from near and far will gather, pitting their skills against the skills of Borto Mildiani, in a contest of…” She stopped, then smiled a toothy smile. “Skills!
“Are your stories duller than last year’s grass? Then keep them to yourself. But if your tales ensnare the ear, come test your mettle against the legendary Borto!”
Estinn flung her hand toward the yellow wagon behind the stage.
A black-bearded man in a loose rust-red shirt stepped out, bowing to the crowd with a flourish.
Will’s heart froze for a beat.
Vahe.
Chapter Two
Will surged to his feet before he caught himself. Rage and disbelief crashed into each other like wild, frothing waves in a storm.
Will stared at that face, opening up toward the man, as though he could reach past the crowd and feel only Vahe’s emotions. There were so many people between them a torrent of indecipherable feelings rushed into him.
Old Estinn stepped off the stage and several other wayfarers joined Vahe. The man greeted them warmly, leading them behind the wagons and out of sight. Will’s emotions were so taut he felt almost numb.
A bright dart of curiosity burst into his chest and Will’s attention snapped back to the bench. A little slave girl peered at him through strands of long, pale hair from the corner of the nearest wagon. Her emotions were a blazing fire of interest, full of wonder and enthusiasm so strong they shoved everything else inside him to the periphery. She stared at him with large green eyes, as light as spring grass. Her face was so gaunt it was angular.
At her attention he sank back down onto the bench, pushing the deluge of her emotions out of his chest. What he was left with felt almost as foreign. Seeing Vahe’s face, after wondering and searching for twenty years, loosed something inside him. Anger and relief strained against each other, but above it all rose a hope, so wild and fierce that it felt almost like terror.
It prodded him to jump up and follow the man. But throttling Vahe and demanding to know where Ilsa was, while he stood among a crowd of his own wayfarers, probably wasn’t going to get positive results.
“Are you alright?” The little girl asked, still watching him.
“I…” Why was she watching him? He glanced around to see if his influence spell had worn off, but no one else paid him any attention. “I don’t know.”
She was maybe eight years old, her blond hair as out of place on the Sweep as his black. He took a calming breath, trying to get control of his emotions. Influence spells were always less effective on children. They spent too much time fascinated by new things to be convinced to overlook a stranger.
The little girl inched around the edge of the wagon. Everything about her was dusty in a permanent way, as though she had never been clean. The bones of her shoulder pressed up against her shift like jagged stones and skeletal fingers pushed her hair back. Sitting here among the lurid colors of the wayfarers, her slave’s tunic was almost too drab to be called grey.
The Roven bought their slaves from Coastal Baylon and Napon in the east. Criminals in those countries could find themselves as easily on the slave block as in a prison. Debtors were treated the same. A debt large enough would enslave their entire family. But the Roven felt that young slaves were more trouble than they were worth. Until an age where they could be useful, they were kept in a shabby little commune, only fed when they could prove they’d found work. The smallest slaves scurried through the cities with menial jobs, gaunt faces, and tattered clothes.
Will grabbed his last avak.
“Would you like some fruit?” He held it out.
She looked at it suspiciously.
He set the avak as close to the end of the bench as he could. Slowly, she reached forward, then snatched the fruit off the bench. It looked heavy in her hand, like the weight of it might snap her thin wrist.
“It’s avak,” Will said. “They’re my favorite.” He glanced around the theater, but Vahe was still out of sight.
She took a nibble of the fruit and cocked her head to the side. “If it’s your favorite, why’d you give it to me?”
Will paused. “Would you believe it’s my way of countering great evil?”
One of her little eyebrows rose skeptically.
“And,” he added, “because you look like me. And I haven’t talked to many people lately that do.”
She glanced at his black beard and scrunched her nose.
“Well, not exactly like me.” He motioned to the Scales. “But where I come from, across those mountains, there are a lot of people who look like you and me. Not everyone has red hair.”
She studied the Scales with narrowed eyes. “I don’t like those mountains. They don’t have any grass at all.”
The stony range rose up in a dull brown, jagged and unwelcoming. “True. The mountains are barren, but on the other side the world turns green again and there’s grass. Not like here. Over there it’s greener and shorter and out of it grows bushes and trees taller than a house.” Motion of several people between two of the wagons caught his eye.
She took another bite of the fruit. “There’s nothing more wonderful than grass.”
Despite everything, the declaration was so unexpected that Will let out a laugh.
She fixed him with a severe look. “Don’t you like it?”
“I’m not sure.” Will studied the faces between the gaps of the wagons, trying to catch a glimpse of Vahe. “It’s a little…empty.”
She let out a huff of indignation. “Empty? You could walk for days and not find a bare spot. And all the roots tangle together so the whole world is an endless living thing.”
Will dragged his attention back to the strange little girl. He had to press his mouth shut to keep from smiling at the intensity of her enthusiasm. “I’ve never thought of the grass as being a thing in itself.”
“It’s the biggest, most powerful thing in the world! It’s where everything comes from, and where everything goes when it’s too old to move. And”—she glared at him, setting her tiny fists on her hips—“it’s beautiful!”
Will sat back. “I stand corrected. I’ve obviously not been giving the Sweep the respect it deserves.” He set his fist on his chest and bowed his head. “I promise not to make the same mistake again.”
She pursed her lips in consideration. “And you’ll see how beautiful it is?”
Beautiful? Grass too tall to feel like grass, but too grassy to feel like anything else, spread out over the land like the worn, sparse pelt of some massive creature? She waited expectantly.
“I’ll try.”
“It’ll be easy.” She leaned forward, her face fairly bursting with excitement. “Summer is coming.”
He found himself smiling at her with a smile that felt rusty from disuse. She took another bite of the avak. Vahe still hadn’t returned. Will was just about to follow him when the man stepped into view and stood on the stage, calling instructions to a handful of wayfarers, and the surge of hatred that Will felt toward the man almost overwhelmed him.
But Vahe clearly wasn’t going anywhere soon. Will settled back and took a deep breath. He couldn’t ruin this by rushing into it.
He settled back on the bench. The slave girl still watched him curiously.
“I’m Will.”
She considered him seriously for a moment. “I’m…” She let her eyes wander over to the Sweep. “Rass.”
Will raised an eyebrow. “Rass sounds a lot like grass.”
She grinned at him. “That’s why I picked it.”
“You’re the most interesting girl I’ve met in a long time.” Will paused. He glanced at Vahe. Did Rass know anything about him? He searched for a way to word his next question. Who owns you? felt insensitive. He glanced to where she’d been hiding. “Do you live with the wayfarers?”
She let out a giggle. “No.”
“You live in Porreen?”
“In the stinky city?” She shuddered. “I live on the grass.”
The grass?
“I just came because the colored wagons tell good stories. I love stories.”
“So do I,” Will said. “I like stories more than maybe anything else in the world.”
She cocked her head to the side. “You look like someone out of a story. Sitting here and hiding in plain sight.” Her face turned wistful. “I wish I could d
o that.”
Will felt a squeeze of fear in his chest. She could sense his influence spell? Children were unsettling, sometimes. Like they weren’t exactly human yet. They were something wilder, brighter. Of course, now that he thought about it that way, maybe it was the adults who’d stopped being human.
Will grasped for a different topic. “I’ve never seen so many wayfarers together.”
Rass sat down on the far edge of the bench. “They come every spring.”
“Did…” Will hesitated, but couldn’t come up with a better way to ask it. “Did the wayfarers bring you here?”
Rass looked up at him in surprise, then let out a long, rippling laugh. “No one brought me.” She licked the last of the avak juice off the pit and held it out to Will. “Thank you.”
Will hesitated before holding out his hand and letting her drop the wet pit in his palm. He tucked it quickly into his pocket with the other pit, and wiped his hand on his pants.
“I just come to hear the stories.” She pointed at Vahe. “My favorite is Borto.”
“Borto?” The name was wrong. Will studied the wayfarer’s face. That wasn’t exactly right either. The man had too much chin. Or not enough forehead.
“He’s the best storyteller on the Sweep.”
“The best?” Vahe had told stories, but even as a child Will wouldn’t have ranked him any better than the men who told stories in his own village. “Does he do tricks with fire?”
Rass shook her head. “You’re looking for Borto’s brother, Vahe of the Flames.”
Will flinched at the name.
“He comes sometimes, but not as often as Borto.”
“Is he here now?” The words came out strained.
“I haven’t seen him.”
Will’s fingers went mindlessly to the gold ring on his finger. The ring had a wide central band that spun with a satisfying smoothness between two thin edges. Will watched Borto closely, a hundred thoughts warring with each other in his head.
“How does your ring spin like that?” Rass asked.