by Glenda Larke
She reached out to pat his good shoulder. “Look, lad—”
He pushed her hand away. “Who are you?”
“I’m a proctor. That’s a kind of lawyer. I work for the Pontifect. My name’s Gerelda Brantheld.”
He had suspicion written all over his face. “That’s a Lowmian name.”
No gullible sluggard, this lad, then. “I was born in Lowmeer, but my home is in the city of Vavala now.”
“Show me this dead ’un. It won’t be my da.” His denial was vehement. “My da wouldn’t let anybody kill him, not just like that.”
“What’s your name?”
“Peregrine Clary. Folk… folk call me Perie mostly.”
Shenat naming, combining a bird and a herb in this case. “Well, Perie, I think your father was taken by surprise. I’m going to continue up over the pass, where those men were heading. I intend to warn the Denvian authorities about them. They were soldiers of some sort. And you need to continue downwards, to wherever you were going, where you’ll be safe. I can give you food and some money, but I can’t come with you.”
He tried to stand up, gasped in pain and sank down on to the bedroll again.
“You have a broken collarbone. Only time will cure that. I suggest you rest up here for the remainder of today, then set off down this track when you feel able to walk. It’ll take you a day or two to reach the valley where someone will give you shelter.”
He rose to his knees and then carefully stood up with her help. “I want to see this dead ’un,” he said. “Now.”
Gerelda stifled a sigh. Fob it, she couldn’t be sure he’d absorbed a thing she’d said. “On your way, you will, I’m afraid. You’ll pass by what’s left of his body. They—” She paused, wondering how to say it, and decided to disguise what she thought had really happened. “They burned his corpse.”
His mouth took on a mulish expression. He was not going to take anything she said as the truth until he’d seen it for himself.
“All right,” she said with a shrug, as if she didn’t care. “Just a moment while I put together some things for you to take.”
She separated out some cheese and pickles, a blanket from her bedroll, and parted with her flint, steel and tinderbox; she wouldn’t be lighting any fires until she was sure the lancers were nowhere in the vicinity anyway. Fortunately, she had enough coins on her to be generous, and she handed over half of what she had.
His eyes widened. “I–I’ll never be able to pay all this back, Proctor Brantheld,” he stammered.
“I don’t expect you to. This is a gift.”
“And your clothes—” He looked down at the culottes in distaste.
“I saw some of what must have been your clothes near the fires. Use them, then you can keep mine for extra warmth at night. Or use them to wrap up that bare foot of yours.” She had not found his missing boot on her way up the slope, although she’d looked.
He stared down at his feet.
“How old are you, Perie?”
“Near twelve. Da’s going to buy me some fine toggery when we reach Twite. He says twelve’s a special birthday. Says that’s when you start being a man.” His gaze hardened even as she looked.
“I’m sorry about your dad. A mile or two down the track, you are going to see something very difficult for you. You need to prepare yourself.”
He didn’t answer or look at her.
“Do you have other family anywhere? A home?”
He shook his head.
“If your father was a petition writer, I assume you can read and write too?”
“Course I can. Da says I have a fine hand!”
“Then you can find work, even though you’re young.” She handed him the bundle she had put together. “Food, money, blanket, the means to light a fire. There are several streams crossing the track on the way down, so water is no problem.”
He nodded, took the bundle and turned to walk away, wincing with every step.
Blister you, Gerelda. You are going to feel bad about this for the rest of your life. She sighed. Duty. It was all about duty.
She gathered her things together and went to repack her saddlebags. Recollections of the feeling of dread and the reeky smell surfaced every now and then; she refused to dwell on them and the memory began to fade.
The lawyer woman had told the truth. It wasn’t far down to the remains of the soldiers’ camp, but even so, every step he took sent pain ripping through him somewhere. One foot in a shoe and one foot bare, he trudged on anyway, because none of the pain was as bad as thinking his da was dead.
Da had been his one sure rock, ever since Ma died, along with the new babe. He’d been nine, then. Da had been away, on the road. The midwife had called the Va-faith cleric and the cleric had taken the bodies. He’d watched them being buried under the trees in the graveyard. Ma wouldn’t like resting there. She’d been a town woman, his ma.
Never mind, if you’d led a good life, you got to choose where your spirit rested when you were gone. That’s what the shrine keepers said, and he liked shrine keepers better than clerics, so he liked to imagine her looking out from the plinth of the old king’s statue, right in the middle of the high street. She’d be watching the world go by, with the babe in her arms, that’s what she’d be doing.
A tear trickled down his cheek.
He showed Da the graves afterwards when he’d come home, weeks later. That was when they started walking the roads together and he learned how to read and to shape his letters.
And now his thoughts spun without stopping, and the tears kept coming and drying on his cheeks just thinking about it.
He rounded a bend and saw the ashes on the road. Something smelled too, like a dead dog flung in a drain and just beginning to rot. Not real bad yet, more sweetish than putrid.
Dropping his bundle, he stood still for a long while, staring at the boot with the red tongue, lying there beside the charred wood of the long-dead fire. His chest heaving, he limped over to where it lay. His da’s boot, no doubt about it. He stared.
It had a bit of his foot poking out the top, chopped off at the ankle. She’d said they’d burned his body. He stared some more. But if that was all they did, then why were those two big bones over there with all the flesh cut off like slices from a roast? Roasted flesh.
He stared and stared. Mostly he couldn’t think. He just looked, but then something would punch into his thoughts with the impact of a man’s fist, and then he’d be looking at something else, waiting for another punch, another impact.
Those cut marks, just like when you carve a roast with your knife and put a slice on your trencher… Punch.
Those bones. The length of a man’s thigh… Punch.
The rib bones with the meat gnawed off… Punch.
He stood there, swaying, each punch hurting more than the last, each gasp of breath rasping into his lungs like red-hot flames.
She’d said they burned him, but she’d lied. They hadn’t burned him; they’d cooked him. Those bones had been Da, just a few hours back…
Numb all over on the outside and a mess of agony within, he stood staring straight ahead of him. A long time later he realised he was looking at an oak tree growing by the track. Not an ancient oak, all gnarly and twisted like most shrine oaks, but old enough. Va help me.
Stepping over his father’s foot, he dragged himself to the base of the trunk and put a tentative finger to the bark. A shiver shot up his arm.
Yes, I am here… to all who cry for help.
He heard the words as clearly as the sound of the wind rustling the leaves in the branches above. He leaned against the trunk, pressing his cheek to the fissured bark, and said, “I can’t bear it…”
He pressed harder and harder, trying to rid himself of a burden too great to bear, of intolerable pain that was more than he could endure. He gave all he had. The boy he had been melted and shifted, losing shape and identity. Limbs hugged him, entwined him, until he was not sure where he ended and the oak began. For
a moment he was safe and tears of healing coursed down his face. His mother’s comfort whispered in his ears, his father’s hand stroked his hair, the unseen guardian dried the tears with his breath, and he slept.
He dreamt. He saw a young man, with hair the colour of autumn leaves, and lithe brown limbs, all muscle and strength and supple resilience. Brown eyes pooled with sympathy; fingers touched his face with love.
“Am I safe?” he asked.
Safe. But Peregrine Clary, you must make a choice. You can leave and walk on, grieving alone, and in time you will forget a little, and then a little more, until the boy you are now finally becomes a man. Grief will twist your youth; bitterness will taint your adulthood. Or I can take away the worst of the pain in your heart right now and replace it with hard oak, that you may fight, for there is indeed a war to be fought.
“Who is the enemy?”
The man who caused this atrocity. The men who forgot their humanity to eat another’s flesh. This you can fight, not with a sword, but with the witchery I will gift you. But beware, the battle is one you may not win. It may be in vain, for I cannot promise victory; I can only guarantee the cause.
“Who are you?”
An unseen guardian.
“But I see you.”
Some say that to see the unseen is a curse. Which would you: fight or walk on?
“Fight. My father died for me. I cannot walk on.”
Nothing will be the same. You will not be the same.
“I am already changed.”
So be it.
By the time he woke, the dream was only a confused memory. The one thing he knew was that he was different.
And much, much older on the inside. He touched his cheeks, but the tears had dried.
An hour after Gerelda set off, it started to rain. A persistent drizzle, but sufficient to turn the track–already churned up by the horses ahead–into a ribbon of gluey mud. She tried riding, but had to stop so often to clean the mud out of the horse’s hooves that she gave up and led the beast instead.
As she set up camp near a small stream that night, the clouds thinned enough to reveal a rising full moon. Even better, the rain eased off. There was no sign of anyone ahead of her, no lights showing through the trees; no sound came to her ears carried on the wind.
She ate a meagre meal, and settled into her bedroll beside the road, her sword and knife tucked out of sight on either side. Just as the last twilight vanished from the sky, she closed her eyes and drifted off into sleep.
Three hours into the night, something woke her. Quietly, she groped for her knife with one hand and edged the blanket away from her face with the other. Slowly, she raised her head. The only sound was the restless nickering of her horse, alerting her to the approach of someone. Or something. The track was in full moonlight now, and she had no trouble making out the single figure dragging his way wearily upwards. Not someone tall enough to be an adult.
She swore under her breath. Pox on the lad; what did he think he was doing? But even as she cursed, her admiration for his tenacity softened her ire.
Hang me, the boy’s got the guts of a fellhound.
With a sigh, she rolled to her feet and waited for him to reach her. When he did, he was swaying with fatigue and pain. He was, she was glad to note, still carrying the bundle. He had slung on his own retrieved clothes over those she’d given him. When she lowered her gaze to his feet, nausea rose in her gorge.
He was wearing his father’s boots.
He saw her look and said, “Da and me, we have the same size feet.”
With that remark, he dropped his bundle and collapsed into her arms.
5
The Lonely Exile
“Hey, you!”
Aureen halted, heart thumping. She knew the voice of authority when she heard it. Fear ensnared her, but she forced herself to turn. The two men walking towards her through the market crowd wore no uniform, but they reeked of confidence.
“Who, me?” she asked. Her question emerged as a squeak. Trying to hide her nervousness, she smoothed down her white servant’s apron over her hips.
“If you are the Regala’s maid, yes, you!”
She nodded dumbly.
“We want to chat to you about another one of your Ardronese servants. The Redwing woman.”
She tried not to look worried. Castle guards had already questioned her so many times about Sorrel’s disappearance, stupid questions about the theft of a valuable fan belonging to the Regal, which was ridiculous. Sorrel wasn’t a thief, and she had not fled the castle because of a theft. She eyed the two men warily. These black-clad men were not castle guards, nor were they obviously the Regal’s men. Then how did they know who she was? And worse, approaching her like this, out in the street. She had barely left the castle since the birth of the Prince-regal Karel two moons ago, and yet here they were, calling her by name.
Dear Va. Who are they then?
Her heart plunged. She’d heard whispers of men called the Dire Sweepers. Some said the Sweepers sought twin babies, in order to smother them. Others said they spirited away those with the plague; whether to cure or kill them was never spelled out. The Sweepers were everywhere, they said. They knew everyone’s business. You couldn’t keep secrets from the Sweepers…
“Where have you been?” one of the men snapped. He was the smaller of the two, a fellow with a pinched, sour face.
“Nowhere. I-I live in the castle, mynster.”
“Lackwit! I mean just now. Where were you?”
She blinked, trying to make sense of what they were asking. “I-I went to pray, mynster.”
“You lie. There’s no shrine down there.” He waved in the direction she had come from, near the riverbank.
“I’m Ardronese. I p-p-pray under an oak. There-there’s one growing down by the river. I’m s-s-sorry if that’s wrong.”
The larger man snorted. He had a round, pleasantly red-cheeked countenance, but when he stepped closer, he towered above her, his wide-shouldered bulk intimidating. “You were friends with the Redwing woman,” he said. “Have you been meeting her?”
She gaped. “I-I haven’t seen her! Not-not since she left the castle.”
“Where did she go?”
“I’ve no notion! Nor why she went, neither. And we wasn’t friends. She was a handmaiden, not a skivvy. More like a–like a lady-in-waiting, from a proper family an’ all. Hoity-toity, like. Handmaidens don’t have aught to do with the likes of me.” Her mouth dried out as she uttered the lie. Maybe that was true of most handmaidens, but she and Sorrel had slept in the same servants’ bed for months. With an effort of will, she just stopped herself from nervously licking her dry lips.
“You’re a midwife,” the other man growled, the words an accusation.
She swallowed down a choking wave of fear. “I-I-I’m the Regala’s maid.” Sweet Va, this is not about Sorrel stealing something. This is about the baby…
The other baby. Princess Mathilda’s twin daughter.
After the birth, Aureen had been in a fever of terror that their deception would be discovered. Then, as the days passed, she’d begun to breathe again. Perhaps they had gotten away with it. Perhaps Sorrel was on her way to the Pontifect with the child and all was well. She’d almost come to believe it.
Now the expression on the faces of these two men made her doubt. She wasn’t safe. Princess Mathilda wasn’t safe. Maybe Sorrel hadn’t escaped to Vavala. Maybe she’d been caught, and tortured into telling the truth…
“You are a midwife,” the large man repeated.
“I-I was,” she admitted, “back in Ardrone. But here I’m just a lady’s maid.” She wasn’t about to tell them she’d been in attendance at the birth of the Prince-regal. If they realised that, they’d know she could have hidden all evidence of an earlier birth that night. Va, help us all…
“What do you know about the baby this Sorrel Redwing was carrying?”
Her stomach heaved. “What babe? She didn’t have no babe!�
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“She visited more than one midwife before she ran off. She glamoured herself, but she couldn’t glamour her Ardronese accent. She asked about twins.”
She shook her head, trying to use the gesture to conceal her ragged breathing. “Good sirs, I know naught of this! Why would she go to a midwife? She weren’t bearing no babe. Slim, she was. Never had no babe under her skirts.”
“Yet later she had a baby with her, and tried to find a wet nurse to suckle it. I suppose you know nothing about that either? Whose babe did she have if not her own?”
“I know naught of this!” She was panicked now, and her voice was too high, like a scared child’s. Around them, pedestrians stared, then quickly glanced away and hurried on as if they sensed this was not an affair they should meddle in. “Mayhap a friend of hers? She left the castle often enough, not like us maids; she could come and go. Folk like me have work to do! Half a day, I get, each moon. But the likes of her, nose in the air, money in her purse–she came and went.”
“A twin it must be,” the large man said to his companion. “She spirited away a twin. But whose, eh?”
Her knees almost gave way under her. They know! Dear Va, save us all, they know! She stared at them, unable in her terror to speak.
“We reckon it was someone in the castle. A lady-in-waiting maybe? Tell us, and you will escape punishment,” the second man said. He was calm, and his voice was gentle now, cajoling. He reached out and patted her arm. “We just want the truth.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Words began to spill from her. She scarcely knew what she was saying, knowing only that she had to lead them away from the truth. “If it was a lady-in-waiting, you think anyone’d tell the likes of me? Anyways, that night Mistress Sorrel disappeared–we was all busy with the Regala. Reckon that was why Mistress Sorrel chose that night to run away. ’Twas the night m’lady gave birth and no one was paying any attention to what Mistress Sorrel was about. The lords and ladies were in a right tizzy. The Lord Chamberlain came to attend the birthing, and the Ward’s-dame, Lady Friselda, not to mention one of the Regal’s physicians and others of her ladies.