by Jude Fisher
Saro told her and she nodded briefly as if storing it away for future reference.
‘But what if he remembers when he wakes up?’ Saro said suddenly, agonised at the thought.
‘He’ll find a different person on the stall, with no knowledge of a girl with hair like a broom’s head.’ She laughed. ‘Anyway, I think I’d best keep it hidden for now, don’t you?’ She picked up a piece of oily cloth from under the stall and wrapped it quickly about her skull. ‘There. A Jetran princess!’
Saro smiled. Whatever did these northerners think of them? ‘I’ll pay you for the dagger,’ he said, picking up the weapon Tanto held in his outstretched hand. It seemed hot to his touch, as if it pulsed with some sort of life. Disconcerted, he held it out to her.
Katla waved it away. ‘You won’t. It’s my gift and my thanks; and it’d give me great pleasure that you should keep it, rather than your vile brother have it.’
Saro smiled uncertainly, then slipped the dagger into his tunic, where it lay, pulsing gently: or was it the thump of his own heart he could feel? It was hard to say: this girl made his senses spin. He tried to focus on what she had said. ‘Tanto thinks no woman can resist his charms.’
‘He’s obviously not much travelled, then,’ Katla said, regarding the unconscious Istrian. ‘Rather better company when he’s like this than when he’s awake, I’d say.’
‘You’d better go before he comes round.’
‘Indeed.’
She gave him another of those miraculous smiles, then with expert hands began to fold each piece of weaponry into its own twist of oiled cloth and stow it in a huge iron box. Saro turned to inspect his recumbent brother and was confronted by a tall young northerner with a white-blond beard and hair braided into complex knots threaded through with scraps of coloured fabric, shells and pieces of silver who had appeared silently behind them.
‘Are you having any trouble here, Katla?’
Katla whirled around, hands up to her mouth, but when she saw the newcomer, she smiled. ‘Hello, Erno,’ she said, and her voice was warm with affection. ‘No trouble: not any more.’
Saro felt his heart constrict and looked quickly from one to the other. Let this be a brother, he found himself thinking; a brother, no more than that. But the look in the tall man’s eyes as he watched Katla stowing away her wares was far from fraternal.
A groan brought his attention back to the matter of his brother. He looked down. Tanto’s eyelids had begun to flicker. Saro bent to him, feeling a sudden mixture of remorse and dread.
‘Tanto? Can you hear me?’
Tanto’s hand flexed convulsively and for a brief moment, Saro thought he would swing wildly up with it and hit him, but the movement seemed to be no more than a reflex action, for then Tanto kicked out once with both feet and sat bolt upright, much too fast for one who has been struck unconscious. He grasped his head and groaned again.
‘Wh— what happened?’ he said groggily, struggling to focus on Saro’s face.
‘Can you not remember, brother?’ Saro asked carefully.
Tanto frowned, the effort to dredge his thoughts clearly producing a mental pain that complemented his physical distress. ‘I remember—’ Saro held his breath ‘—I remember . . . the woman . . . the foreign woman . . .’
Saro’s pulse thumped in his head. He looked quickly around, only to see Katla, having locked her strongbox with a great iron key, saying something in a low voice to Erno, then turn and disappear between the booths. Suddenly, he felt very empty.
‘What foreign woman?’ he said sharply.
Tanto glared at his tone of voice. ‘The dancer, dolt . . . the one with the . . . ribbons of leather . . .’
Saro made his pent-up breath escape as normally as possible. ‘Oh, that one. Nothing more?’
‘How did I get down here?’ Tanto stared about him in an accusatory manner and seeing no one else to blame, glared at his brother.
Saro, trying desperately to avoid an outright lie, shrugged. ‘You did have a lot to drink,’ he said gently. It was, after all, at the root of the problem. Had Tanto not raided every araque stall between the Vingo tent and the knife-stall, he might have been less confrontational, and unlikely to have provoked Katla into mocking their lack of battle-scars. Saro remembered the thrill of her strong fingers on the skin of his forearm, and knew it was a memory he’d return to again and again.
‘Do you need help returning to your family tent?’
The tall Eyran, Erno, had returned. He held out a hand to Tanto, who stared at it as if he had been offered the aid of a shit-covered stick.
‘Not from you,’ he said rudely, shoving himself awkwardly onto his knees. He grabbed Saro’s belt and hauled himself upright.
Erno regarded him consideringly until Saro wondered whether he would punch Tanto. In many ways, nothing would give him greater satisfaction, he thought grimly. Then the blond northener said curtly, ‘Have it your own way,’ turned on his heel and melted into the crowd.
Saro watched him go with a sinking heart. The northerner was all he would never be, it seemed to him then: tall, muscular, athletic in his stride; clearly a man of action and few words, a warrior, most like, and probably Katla’s lover, to boot. The thought made him cringe.
Katla made her way across the fairground as if in a trance. Saro Vingo. Who had struck his brother unconscious to save her from discovery. Saro Vingo, with eyes like black velvet and a tentative smile that scored lines into the smooth plane of his cheeks. Saro Vingo: a foreign name for a foreign man. Even the way the syllables caressed her tongue was a fascination. She remembered how she had caught the southerner by the arm, how the skin had felt alive with heat beneath her fingertips and her memory – sharp as hallucination – lingered on the curl of the fine black hair on his forearm, silky as cat’s fur; how the opening of his tunic below the hollow of his throat had revealed a glimpse of hard-muscled chest. The colour of that skin was seductive. Something shivered in her, deep and low.
‘Katla?’
She started guiltily and found herself standing as if by magic on the threshold of the family booth with her brothers regarding her curiously, their attention momentarily distracted from the wooden chest that lay open between them. Whatever was the matter with her? She caught herself up with a rueful grin. First, she was mooning over Erno, of all people, and now over an Istrian boy she’d met once and would likely never see again. She’d become as bad as Jenna if she wasn’t careful. She dropped her own strongbox onto the floor with a crash.
Then, quick as a snake, she wrapped an arm around Halli’s neck, gave it a playful squeeze. ‘What’s up, little brother?’ He was her senior by some seven years, and twice her size into the bargain, but this had become their jest. ‘Playing bankers with fox-boy, are you?’
Halli looked around and grinned slyly at her, his slow, teasing grin. Then, quick as a snake his right hand came up and grabbed her arm, at the same time rolling his shoulder under her armpit, and thus pivoted her up and over and flipped her onto the ground in front of him. She hit the floor hard, missing the stout wooden chest by a finger’s breadth.
‘Ow!’
Fent creased up with laughter. ‘That’ll teach you for laughing at Halli when he went out of the wrestling in the second round.’
‘She laughed at me?’ Halli looked hurt. Then he buried his hairy fingers in Katla’s midriff and ran them over her like a great spider.
Katla shrieked and giggled, returned to a lost childhood by this assault, and soon her heels were hammering the floor like a three-year-old’s. Before long, Fent had joined in, too, till the three of them were rolling around the floor, tickling and thumping each other, howling like animals. At some point, inevitably, the money-chest went over, spilling its contents everywhere. It was this scene that greeted their father as he returned from his unsuccessful audience with Ravn Asharson. Somewhere between the King’s tent and his own, Erno had found him. They both looked grim.
‘What in seven hells is going on
here?’ Aran bellowed. ‘I could hear your ruckus halfway across the Fair.’
Silence fell at once. The combatants disentangled themselves and stood up, looking sheepish. The coins lay glinting around them like an accusation of wrongdoing.
‘Where did all this come from?’ Aran bent and raked through the coins, picking out a twenty-cantari piece and a couple of tens and waved them in the air.
‘We sold Tor into slavery,’ Fent ascertained, face straight.
Aran’s hand came out of nowhere and cracked his younger son sharply across the top of his head. Fent stepped back, looking shocked. His fists balled. For a moment it seemed as if he might charge at his father, but then he dropped his head.
‘We found a buyer for the whole lot,’ Halli said quietly. ‘A stonemason from Forent with a commission for twenty statues of their goddess. He said they wanted only the best, and ours is the purest he’s found, so he made us a good price. We’re going to see Finn Larson tomorrow to talk about our ship.’
Aran’s expression became closed. His mind worked furiously. Perhaps a solution to his dilemma had just been offered. Nothing happened in this life but for a reason, it was said; and Sur was clearly smiling on his venture. ‘There’ll be no more talk about expeditions to the Far West in this family,’ he said briskly.
‘But Da!’ Halli was furious. ‘It’s been our plan all along to join the King’s expeditionary force. You said you’d see it financed from the sardonyx sales, that you’d throw in your and mother’s shares—’
‘Enough! I won’t talk about this further. Katla: you’ll be dyeing your hair black tonight: Erno told me what happened earlier—’
‘Erno!’ She glared at him, her eyes hot with betrayal. ‘You said you wouldn’t mention it: you promised!’
Erno looked uncomfortable.
‘He did it because he was concerned for you. Use this—’ Aran tossed a small glass bottle at her ‘—and when you’ve done it, keep your head under wraps. We don’t want any awkward questions about why your hair’s suddenly changed colour; but at least if guards come looking again, they’ll find no red-haired girls here. Leather and mail is safer than leather and silk. Better sure than sorry.’
‘And what about the guard who claimed a dance?’ Katla asked mutinously.
‘You could wrap it up in this,’ Erno suggested shyly. He held out to her a piece of gorgeous fabric. He’d found it on one of the nomad stalls, and it had cost him a small fortune. He’d picked it up for the colours: wild blues and greens, the grey of stormclouds, and Katla’s eyes – like them it had just a hint of purple to it – and when the woman who had woven it had smiled and told him the piece was charmed, he’d misunderstood her and said he also thought it charming. ‘No, no,’ she’d corrected him gently. ‘Charmed. Against the elements: hence the hues of sea and sky; and this, here against fire.’ She’d taken it back from his clumsy hands and unfolded it carefully. ‘See?’ Along one hem ran a line of woven flame. It was the fire motif that had decided the purchase for him: it seemed a good omen, for it was the very colour of Katla’s hair, even though he believed not one whit in the magic the nomad woman claimed.
Katla, holding her breath, unfurled the material, and a cloud of colour billowed out into the gloomy tent – greens and blues and grey swirling in subtle whorls and spirals; the soft white of a sea-mist wreathing through the whole, and all along the bottom hem, a riot of hot tones – orange and crimson, gold and vermilion – curled like eager flame.
Fent whistled. ‘That must surely have cost you a queen’s ransom, Erno.’ He couldn’t imagine liking any woman so well as to spend so much on such a gift, but Erno’s only response was to blush and push past him into the depths of the booth.
Later that night, when Saro took the moodstone bracelet out of the pouch around his neck and held it in the palm of his hand, he found that the stones in it had gone the lurid shade of green of a tomcat’s eyes.
Early the next morning, Fent and Halli found themselves outside Finn Larson’s tent, the wooden chest slung between them. They were nervous: they had never gone against their father’s express wishes before.
The shipbuilder had clearly been up for some time: he had his lads running this way and that on errands, and his son, Matt, rolling parchments into rolls of waterproofed hide. Larson was a burly man, wide of frame and thick of muscle. His shoulders, revealed by the sleeveless jerkin he wore, were as hairy and powerful as a bull’s. Fent found himself wondering whether his daughter had inherited the same characteristics, under all her lace and frippery. If so, Halli was going to be in for a surprise on his wedding night.
As it was, the surprise was not just Halli’s; nor did it – directly – concern Jenna Finnsen.
‘Hello, lads. How are you this fine morning?’ Finn twinkled at them, clearly in the best of humour.
‘We’re well, thank you, sir,’ Halli replied politely, setting the chest on the ground at the shipbuilder’s feet. ‘And we have a proposition for you.’
‘You do, do you?’ Finn was clearly enjoying himself. He sent one of his lads for three stools and a jug of bier and would let them say no more till all three had downed a jar of the bitter stuff. ‘Now what could you be offering me that your good father has not done already?’
‘Our father?’
‘You know, lad, Aran the Ogre; Aran the Bear – that’s what we called him when we all fought side by side in the last war.’
Halli leaned forward, his face grave. ‘What deal has my father offered you?’
‘Why, lad, he’s commissioned from me the finest ship I’ll make this year: clinker built and of the best seasoned oak from Keril Sandson’s own plantation, no less; a stempost of yew carved by the great Gunnil Kerrson himself (I salvaged it from Ravn’s father’s old vessel, you know, but I believe it will fit our purpose well); and an icebreaker of hardened iron. I shall have fifteen of my men assigned to the task of assembling it.’
‘An icebreaker?’ Fent said, bewildered.
‘To be sure, that was one of his first requests.’
‘But there’s no ice in the passage to the Far West by all accounts, none at all. Storms and maelstroms, yes, indeed; but no need for an icebreaker.’
Finn Larson shrugged. ‘I take the commissions I’m given, lad; and if your father wants an icebreaker—’
Halli cut in: ‘What my father wants from you is no concern of ours. We have our own commission for you: sixty oars, back-curved stern and prow; fast and clean: that’s all we ask. When last we spoke you said such a ship would cost in the region of six thousand cantari. We have the best part of that sum here for you now.’
The shipbuilder looked bemused. ‘It seems that the Rockfall clan is high in funds at the moment,’ he said, then rubbed his hands together cheerfully. ‘Well, let’s see the colour of your money, then I can start my calculations. There’s a lot of work coming through at this Fair; rather more than I’d planned for. I hope you won’t be needing your ship as quickly as some of these others?’
‘For the autumn,’ Halli said carefully. ‘Autumn, this year.’
‘Ah,’ said Finn. ‘Well, stranger things have happened. Of course, to find the right wood for the back-curves is harder than for straight. I can only do my best.’
‘It is all I ask.’
Fent picked up the chest and upended it onto the ground. There was a clatter, harsh and dull, and a stream of broken sardonyx tumbled out, sending up a plume of dust. The brothers stared at the pile of stone in disbelief.
Finn Larson started to laugh, his teeth shining through the vast thatch of his grey beard. ‘It’s the . . . dawn wolf . . . takes the rabbit!’ he wheezed delightedly, clutching his huge belly and rolling from side to side on his stool, his stubby hands flexing and tightening on the folds of his jerkin. At last he got enough air to be able to gasp: ‘Well, I see you boys appear to be rich in semi-precious stone: while your father’s suddenly rich in coin; but as far as I know, you’re less rich in sisters?’
‘Si
sters?’ Halli’s usually gruff voice rose an octave as the fiasco became yet more surreal. ‘We have but one, as well you know: Katla, Jenna’s friend.’
‘Aye, soon to be Katla, Finn’s new wife. The coin Aran had was shy of the price, so we came to a slightly more creative arrangement. A pretty lass, she is, too, if a bit wild. Still we’ll soon knock that out of her.’
The brothers stared at him. Then they stared at one another.
‘By heaven, what has he done?’
PART
THREE
Ten
Insights
Later that morning, Jenna Finnsen, having overheard a bizarre and bewildering conversation outside the family booth, came looking for Katla in order to try to make sense of it. But when she reached the stall, her friend was nowhere to be seen: instead, Erno Hamson was standing behind the glittering display, looking large and muscle-bound and distinctly out of place in his homespun tunic against the rich blue velvet. In his big hands, the small dagger he was showing to a wealthy-looking Istrian man looked like a brooch-pin. Jenna grinned.
‘A fine craftsman,’ she overheard him saying to the lord. ‘Yes, one of the finest in the northern isles.’ He glanced up then and caught her eye, and looked away again at once, embarrassed.
‘You won’t find Katla here.’
Jenna whirled around. Behind her stood little Marin Edelson. Except that she wasn’t so little any more. Even cam-ouflaged by the intricately embroidered stole that she had wound about her shoulders and knotted at her breastbone, Marin’s chest was unmistakably huge. As she greeted the younger girl, Jenna found it almost impossible to tear her eyes away from the fantastic sight. Almost, but not quite. She dragged her regard reluctantly upward.
‘Erno says she’s unwell,’ Marin said. ‘She may not even be able to come to the Gathering.’ She added this detail with a hint of triumph, it seemed to Jenna. ‘So I’m waiting here until he has a break to ask him whether he might spare me a dance instead.’