Sonata Form

by Carole Cummings

  “Who’re you?” the man wanted to know, bold and arrogant as he stepped up right in front of Ellis, thin lips pressed flat and eyes narrowed. “What’s your business in Newridge?”

  “We’ve no business in Newridge, hence why we were attempting to drive through it. Not that my business, or lack thereof, is any of yours.”

  Ellis peered around again, the shapes of it all coming into clearer focus now that he was getting used to the light. It was a motley little crowd—men and women, all armed, whether with some kind of firearm or merely a good solid staff, even down to what looked like a long, curved hunting knife in a teenaged boy’s hand.

  It had every appearance of a nascent mob.

  He looked again at the lorry, at the people hunched in the bed of it, at the people apparently keeping them there. His chest got tight, and his heart knocked a quick staccato against his sternum.

  “Who are those people?” Ellis asked slowly, though he was fairly certain he knew.

  “Tirryderch was bombed today, or hadn’t you heard?” This from a woman with a wicked little pickaxe propped against her shoulder. She looked remarkably young and rather delicate, like she should be in a well-appointed parlor somewhere waiting for someone to bring her tea.

  “I heard.” Ellis jerked his chin at the people apparently being… well, there was no point in trying to dress it up—being held prisoner. “Are you telling me what looks to me like two old men and three children no older than twelve did it?” He lifted his eyebrows all ’round, though he still couldn’t see some of the people lurking behind the rest of them, nor could he tell how many were surrounding the lorry and what kind of weapons they held. “Capture a dangerous ring of saboteurs, did you?”

  “Word’s come down it were a couple’a Dewin Verds.” The man puffed out his chest. “So we’re collectin’ ’em fer when a Warden comes through.”

  “Collecting them.” Ellis’s hands fisted and he had to deliberately keep his jaw from clenching. “I see.” He put on a smile, nothing but teeth. “Tell me…” He raised his eyebrows, all cool command and expectation.

  The man shifted uncomfortably, but offered, “Kane.”

  “Kane.” Ellis nodded. “Tell me, Kane—those bombs went off this afternoon. One all the way down in Littlederch, and the other not far from Tirryderch Station, which, granted, is a little closer, but not by much. And since the trains weren’t running, I’d say a car or lorry might get those responsible somewhere around Newridge by now.” Ellis paused, and made a show of peering around with a frown. “So where’s the car these people were driving?”

  Kane set his teeth and lifted his chin. He didn’t answer.

  “Oh.” Ellis tilted his head. “I… see.” He put out a hand. “Well, a fast horse, maybe, but you’re still talking another few hours. And walking would take…” He blinked inquiringly at Kane. “How long d’you think it would take someone to get from Littlederch to here riding shank’s mare, Kane?”

  Again, Kane didn’t answer. He looked away this time.

  “I’d say it’d take someone at least until sunrise. No, actually, make that early afternoon.” Ellis looked around again. The guns had lowered but not enough. There was confusion, maybe, on the various faces, but not shame. “That’s if they walked steadily at a good clip and didn’t stop to eat or sleep. So here’s what I think happened.” Ellis let his gaze shift slowly, meeting every eye that would look back at him. “I think you heard about the bombings and decided someone needed to pay. And since everyone seems to think that somehow the Dewin in Colorat and Taraverde getting killed by their governments for being Dewin, somehow that makes the Dewin Preidyn’s enemy. So you took it upon yourselves to drag five people from their homes because, you know, maybe they’re Dewin. I mean, you don’t know they are, but you think maybe. But that’s good enough for you, because what they definitely are is immigrants.” He stopped, flashed the same toothy smile. “Aren’t they?”

  He didn’t even pretend to wait for an answer this time, because he already knew it and he no longer cared. “Hoy, over there!” Everyone was already looking at Ellis, but right now he only cared about those in the lorry. “Any of you Verdish spies? Saboteurs, maybe?”

  The three children—two girls and a boy, now that Ellis could make them out, all of them younger than he’d first thought—only stared at him, clearly terrified and confused. One of the men, though, glared, snarled, “No,” through his teeth then spat to the side. “I’ve lived here all my life, Nerys Bennett, and you bloody well know it!”

  The woman with the pickaxe set her chin and looked out into the darkness. Which probably made her Nerys.

  “Your cariad hasn’t!” she snapped back, derisive, like the word tasted bad, but she still wouldn’t look at the man. “And those creadurs can barely even speak the language, only that Verdish chatter!”

  “He’s my cousin! And they speak Coloran, because they’re from bleeding Colorat!”

  Right. The picture was becoming clearer with every word. The other man and the children were relatively new immigrants, and these people likely didn’t appreciate them “mixing” with one of their own. So they’d watched as they’d taken in all the Purity Party venom, and they’d built a bogey, just as Alton said they would, and when the opportunity to do something about it arose…

  “All right.” Ellis clapped his hands, once, then walked deliberately through the gauntlet of farmers and miners with weapons toward the lorry until he was close enough to lay a hand on it. “Here’s what’s going to happen. This is mine now.” He patted at the back fender then turned with his hand out. “Who has the keys?”

  Silence.

  Then: “Who d’you think you—?”

  “Ellis Morgan, First Warden of Wellech, pleasure to meet—well, actually, not so much a pleasure, if I’m honest. I don’t generally like it when people kidnap and threaten their neighbors. Sort of reminds me of what Taraverde likes to call their ‘Elite Constabularies’ but most people of good conscience just think of as monsters and murderers.”

  The word—murderers—out in the open and satisfyingly loud like that, did the trick. Mouths fell open, heads turned, eyebrows went up. All as if to say How dare you! and I would never! even though every one of them were clearly capable of at least considering it. It was only that it hadn’t had a chance to progress that far yet.

  What might’ve happened if one of those men had tried to run? What would have happened if one of them had fought back? The gratifyingly mouthy one, the one from here in Newridge, might’ve got away with a beating, but the other one? And even if none of these people had the heart yet to hurt a child, they plainly had no trouble with scaring the life out of these three. If the mob had grown big enough that those making it up felt almost anonymous, if this situation had gone on much longer…

  Ellis didn’t want to think about what might’ve happened. Mostly because he was afraid he knew.

  “But anyway,” he went on, still holding his hand out, “you said you were ‘collecting’ your neighbors for a Warden. And, what luck, now you have one. So what we’re going to do is this: we’re going to put these people in that car”—he pointed over toward Howell, still watching everything through the windscreen—“and my friend over there is going to take them away. In the meanwhile, I’m going to start thinking about what I’m going to say in my telegram to Eira.” He paused, smiled. “She’s the First Warden of Whitpool, in case you didn’t know, which makes her your First Warden. A good friend of mine. I’m sure she’ll be… interested in what you’ve all been up to tonight.”

  “So…” This, tentative, from a boy leaning against the lorry’s driver-side door. Young, probably a local peer of the children he was meant to be guarding, and armed with a rifle almost as tall as he was, though it rested upright and harmless against his shoulder. He shifted uncomfortably beneath Ellis’s questioning gaze. “Why d’you want the keys to the lorry?”

  Which meant he had them.

  Ellis took a step toward him, and set
his mien firm—not menacing, exactly, but he was more than done with these people, and flat tamping that someone in this crowd thought it a grand idea to involve a boy who wasn’t even old enough to shave yet, give him a gun, and tell him to use it against someone they told him he should hate. Ellis held out his hand again, crooked his fingers.

  “Because I don’t like the use it’s been put to. Because I can. And because I still need to get home.” He turned on the crowd again, and raised his voice. “So I can make sure the people of Wellech haven’t already descended into craven brutes like the people of Whitpool, specifically the people of Newridge, have apparently done.” He shook his head, and allowed his disgust to show clearly. “Bloody damn, war’s not even two days in yet, and look what you’ve already become. P’raps you’d do better to take all this zeal for guns and violence to the recruiting offices. Oh, but then there’s a chance you might come up against someone who’s not a child, who’s armed, and capable of shooting back.” He said the last through his teeth, then spun on the boy again, hand out. “Give. It. Here.”

  The boy swallowed, shot a quick uncertain look behind Ellis, presumably to his mam or tad, and frowned. He hesitated; Ellis didn’t look back to see what kind of silent communication was going on around him, only kept staring the boy down, waiting. The boy’s facial expressions went from mulish to indecisive to angry and back to uncertain again. But he fished in his coat pocket and came up with the key.

  “You’re not a Whitpool Warden, though,” he said as he handed it over. “Are you allowed to steal a lorry when you’re not in Wellech?”

  Ellis snatched the key out of the boy’s hand. “Report me.” He peered up at the people in the lorry’s bed. “Let’s go.”

  When they only stared at him, Ellis jerked his head with a look that said Hurry up! and reached up for one of the little girls. He didn’t pause when one of the men cried out in those same rolling gutturals Ellis had heard from Aleks, but he did try to look compassionate and unmonsterlike as he carried the girl toward Howell’s car. He watched over his shoulder as the two men gathered up the other children and climbed warily down from the flatbed, eyeing everyone around them. Hesitant. Watchful. Scared.

  Ellis kept a careful eye on everything. Waiting for the now silent crowd to object. For the mouthy man to say something at exactly the wrong time. For a bloody mole or owl or something equally ludicrous to stumble out into the center of it all and startle these people out of their confused paralysis before Ellis could get everyone into Howell’s car and away.

  Right now the only things holding them back were the new, as yet unanalyzed knowledge of who Ellis was, and the bravado he was spewing all over the place like a tom spraying his territory. He needed to move very fast before it occurred to anyone else besides that boy that yes, Ellis was out of his jurisdiction, and yes, the First Warden of Wellech did intend to actually steal the lorry.

  “Get them out of here,” he said through the open door as men and children piled in around Howell. “Don’t back up and turn around—just circle ’round the yard, then drive like a hole to the nether is opening up behind you. I don’t think any of them will follow you, but don’t take the chance.”

  Howell pressed his lips into a stubborn line. “Not until you’ve got that lorry started.”

  It took two seconds for Ellis to decide it would be a waste of time to argue. He nodded, said, “I don’t think they should go home yet. Take them to Eira. And…” He lifted his head to scan the crowd again—some skulking off, but most still watching—then dipped back down and lowered his voice. “No one knows about Aleks?”

  “Milo was afraid…” Howell didn’t finish, only gestured out the windscreen.

  Ellis knew exactly what Milo had been afraid of. Now Ellis realized it was far more insidious than Folant’s boyos in Wellech and an unreasonably bitter little woman in Brooking.

  We need Kymbrygh united, Alton had said, as though it was just that easy. Ellis was a little embarrassed that, until now, he hadn’t understood exactly how difficult it could be.

  “Right. Well. Good. Keep it that way.” Ellis tapped a restless drumbeat on the car’s roof as he thought about Aleks in Milo’s kitchen, looking wary and afraid, but still opening the door to someone he didn’t know. “And tell him to stay out of sight. He shouldn’t answer the door for anyone but you, Glynn, and possibly me, unless there are others you know you can trust with his life.”

  Howell nodded, waited for Ellis to walk calmly across to the lorry and get in. Waited some more until Ellis keyed the ignition. Ellis watched through the rearview as the lights of Howell’s car circled ’round and headed west while Ellis navigated the lorry slowly onto the road east.

  He didn’t stop clamping his jaw and watching his back until he took the sliproad toward Bamwell and crossed into Wellech. He breathed in deep, convinced he could smell the river in the chill, misty air, and made himself unclench.

  Thought about Alton and his assertions that all cruelty and brutality needed was a bogey on which to focus fear, upon which to build power. About Milo telling him that frightened people were a bigger threat than whatever it was they were frightened of. About Folant building an entire worldview on something as small in scope and petty in nature as personal rejection.

  And concluded that Wellech needed a lot of work before it could become what Alton—and Kymbrygh, and Preidyn—apparently needed it to be. Deciding how he was going to start made Ellis feel marginally less helpless and outraged.

  His head still wouldn’t stop pounding, though.

  IT WAS a hot spring, though Ellis couldn’t feel the heat and humidity against his skin the way Milo clearly could. The steam was thick, though, curling Milo’s hair at the ends, sticking it to his forehead. A magelight drifted above and before him, slicking shadow to cave walls damp and rough.

  And empty.

  It took a bit for the import of that to hit Ellis.

  Straw old and mildewed wilted in nooks that once must have been nests. An egg the size of a small boulder lay abandoned, cracked but not broken, and half buried beneath hills of old hay and clover gone brown and brittle.

  Milo knelt, eyes overbright, and laid his hands to the shell. Stared down at it. Looked, perhaps, but Ellis couldn’t tell, not like this. Whatever Milo felt, whatever he Saw, it made his jaw set tight and his fists clench as he pulled away.

  There wasn’t time for more than that. There was no sound in this Dream either—it happened that way sometimes, one sense gone and another hyperactive—but Milo jumped and whipped around to narrow his eyes at the darkness behind him. With one last angry look at the dead dragon egg, he snuffed the magelight, and…

  Well, Ellis didn’t know. Everything went dark, and the Dream broke, giving Ellis just enough information to increase his already constant worry, and the frustration that he couldn’t do a blessed thing about any of it.

  The headache was still there when he woke.

  Chapter 18—Cadenza

  : an unaccompanied section of virtuosic display played by a soloist in a concerto

  The Council meeting went exactly as Ellis had been led to believe it would. He made his case, offered his arguments, and watched the faces of the councilmembers. Normally he could tell who was leaning toward voting with him by the way they met his gaze—or didn’t. This time, the three who could generally be counted upon to throw their votes in with whatever Folant wanted were harder to read. Ioan, Taffy, and Arthur sat like sullen statues. Pursed-lipped. Uncomfortable. Angry.

  Ellis had to wonder what Alton had threatened them with. And then couldn’t decide if he wanted to know.

  “So this is all about what’s good for Wellech.” It came from Taffy, a woman who always reminded Ellis of his Nain Hafren but for her wide frame and pale features. Nain Hafren had been as small and dark as Lilibet, outwardly soft and serene, but with an equally adamant core; Taffy had that same “bear trap wrapped in silk” way about her. “And not,” Taffy went on, “a son trying to displace a tad in ad
olescent rebellion?”

  Folant snorted. Pointedly.

  Ellis made every effort to appear relaxed and unmoved by the implied insult. He opened a hand.

  “My adolescence,” he said calmly, “while very much behind me, was spent working through the ranks of the Wardens and guiding Oed Tyddyn, and the Croft, back to worthy production and profitability.” He paused with a glance at Folant for effect before sweeping the assembly with a steady gaze. “You can’t deny the taxes you receive from the estates have increased fivefold in the past decade, enabling you to invest in our small farmers and livestock holders, thus increasing the tax rolls even more. Also, I might add, allowing for a modest increase in the stipends the councilmembers receive.” He let his lip twitch. “Preidyn has changed, which means Kymbrygh has changed, and Wellech must change with it in order to both survive and contribute to our country’s wellbeing. Especially now that war has come.”

  They wouldn’t hold his eye. Even the ones who hadn’t been in Folant’s pocket for decades.

  All you have to do is give them a bogey, Alton had said. And Folant had delivered. More than effectively. And while the outcome here was fairly assured, it wasn’t enough. Ellis didn’t only need the title of Pennaeth—he needed Pennaeth to be something Wellech would stand behind, despite the fears.

  So what, Ellis had wondered as he’d thought about how this needed to go, would happen if there was a bigger bogey?

  “Do you think,” he went on, lowering his voice so they had to actually listen, “that the horrors carried out right now on the continent won’t come to our borders? Perhaps cross them?” He waved over his shoulder. “Tirryderch has already experienced a small taste of what Taraverde would like to bring to our doorsteps. Our ships off the northern coast are tested every day, within sight of our shores—Wellech’s shores. We’ve lost a third of our Wardens to enlistment, another good chunk who’ve been called up to the Home Guard. And even so, the Wellech Home Guard isn’t ready for a fight if it comes to it, not with that Crilly minger running it. So I ask you”—he paused, lifted an eyebrow at his tad, but Folant merely lifted one back, disdainful—“how has our Pennaeth prepared Wellech for fighting back? For surviving?”