Deep Water

by Pamela Freeman

  Safred shook her head. “The ghosts would still be there. Now they have been called up… the gods say that killing Saker will not end it. Others will learn how to call the ghosts. There are many who are angry. Now they have proof that an army can be conjured… even if Saker dies there will be others. Too many others, for too long. The Domains would be destroyed. Thousands would die.”

  “Deal with the others one by one, as they arise. Stop this one now.”

  “It seems to me,” the dark-haired girl said unexpectedly, her voice deep and pleasant, “that the problem is the ghosts, not the enchanter. Without them, he’s helpless.”

  Safred smiled at the girl. “That is true. It is the ghosts we must dispose of.” She looked around the table and gestured to the girl and boy, introducing them. “Zel and Flax, Bramble, Martine, Ash.”

  The girl nodded and the boy smiled at them. Zel and Flax, Bramble thought. So she did look like Osyth — these were Gorham’s children. Bramble had never met them, but Gorham had talked about them often enough. And Zel’s careful speech, with no trace of Traveler in it — that was Osyth’s training. Zel was trying hard to fit in here.

  “When ghosts quicken, they must be laid to rest,” Safred said.

  They sat for a moment, thinking that through. Bramble remembered the last quickening she had seen, the warlord’s man whom she had killed, rising three days later as ghosts did if they were not prepared for death. She had been ready to go through the ritual that would have laid him to rest, would have offered her own blood in recompense, but she had been prevented. She wondered, uneasily, if his ghost still haunted the linden tree near her home village.

  Safred looked at Ash. “You have done it,” she said.

  He nodded. “They need blood.”

  “They need specific blood,” Martine said quietly. “The blood of their killer.”

  “They need more than that,” said Safred. “The blood is just a symbol.”

  “Acknowledgment,” Ash replied. “The killer must acknowledge his guilt and offer reparation.”

  “These ghosts are hundreds of years old,” Cael said slowly, his deep voice doubtful. “Their killers are long dead.”

  Safred nodded and placed her hands flat on the table. Ash noticed that they were not pretty hands, not the hands of a warlord’s daughter. They were sun-speckled and the nails were cut short. Safred seemed to lean on the table for support, as though even she could not believe what the gods were asking.

  “Yes. A thousand years dead. Like the one responsible. The one who can acknowledge what was done.”

  “One?” Cael asked. “Just one for all of them?”

  Bramble went cold as she realized what Safred meant. “Acton.”

  Safred nodded. “Who else?”

  Acton had led the invasion of the Domains, leading his men from beyond the western mountains through Death Pass in the last days of winter, falling upon the unprepared inhabitants like a wolf pack. He was a legend, a hero to most people in the Domains, a name out of history. Hard to think of him as an actual human being who might have a ghost, just like anyone else. Bramble’s Traveler grandfather had raised her to consider him as an invading murderer, the leader of the dispossession, but even she was used to thinking of him as larger than life. More evil than anyone. Treacherous. Greedy. Filled with the lust for blood. They said he had laughed as he killed.

  It was one thing to hear that an enchanter had conjured up ancient ghosts and given them bodily strength, but it was quite another to think about conjuring Acton’s ghost. For surely that was what she meant. Which was ridiculous, wasn’t it?

  Bramble was abruptly aware that the sun was setting and the shadows in the corners of the room were reaching out. She shrugged off the feeling of unease and looked around the table. Each face had its own kind of uncertainty and reluctance. Except Ash’s. His was carefully blank.

  “According to the song about the enchanter from Turvite who raised the ghosts,” Ash said quietly, “you need the bones of the person who was killed. Acton’s body was never found. Even if we could learn how to raise a ghost, we wouldn’t be able to find his bones.”

  “Why would he offer acknowledgment and reparation anyway?” Zel asked. “He weren’t sorry for what he’d done while he were alive.”

  Bramble noted Zel’s slip back into Traveler speech — it was a sign of how shaken she was by the idea of raising Acton. They all were. Ash’s hand had gone to the little pouch on his belt.

  “That is true,” Safred said slowly, sitting back in her chair. “But the grave gives a different perspective.”

  “And the bones?” Martine asked.

  “There is a way to find the bones, if Bramble and Ash are willing.” She looked at Ash. “You have something of Acton’s.”

  Ash already had it in his hand. He had been way ahead of the discussion, Bramble realized. He reached forward and placed a brooch in the center of the table. A man’s cloak brooch, ornate and beautiful. It sat in a pool of sunlight, looking pretty but ordinary.

  “This belonged to Acton?” Zel asked, fascinated. She reached out as though to touch it, then pulled her hand back and stuck it in her lap. Bramble raised an eyebrow at her.

  “It’s not going to bite. May I?” she asked Ash, and when he nodded she reached out to pick up the brooch.

  Safred stopped her with a hand on her wrist. “No. To be used, the brooch must pass from its rightful owner to the Kill Reborn in the right time and place.”

  “Oh, shagging hells!” Bramble said. “Fight spells with spells, is that it?” She was very tired but sat in her chair with a straight back, determined not to show any weakness to Safred. The brooch seemed to draw her gaze. She felt a little dizzy, but that might have simply been from fighting the poisoning in her arm.

  “Yes,” Safred said quietly. “This is your task, Bramble. Not to kill, but to live.”

  Bramble dragged her eyes away from the brooch. “What do you mean?”

  “Of all of us around this table, you are the only one with mixed blood. Cael and I are of Acton’s people, the others are pure Traveler. You bring both together — the link to the gods through your Traveler blood, the link to Acton’s people through your mother’s line. You are the only one who can do it.”

  Bramble fell silent. Martine asked the question for her.

  “Do what?”

  “Find Acton’s place of death.”

  “How, exactly?”

  Safred looked uncomfortable. “I know the steps to take, but I don’t know what will happen. Will you do it? Will you let the brooch guide you?”

  The others held their breath, waiting for her to respond. Bramble wanted to say, “No. No, what I will do is ride to Carlion and make sure that Maryrose is dead and my parents are all right. Then I will find Saker and gut him.” But she hunched her shoulders as she drew breath to say it and felt the smooth way the arm moved in its socket. She remembered that her arm had no scar. Remembered that yesterday she had been dying and now she was whole and healthy. Because of Safred. She let out her breath, suddenly feeling very weary.

  “Can’t the gods just tell us where the bones are?” she asked instead.

  Safred seemed almost embarrassed. “They don’t know.”

  “I thought they knew everything.”

  “They don’t pay much attention to humans, you know. Only when something big happens, or when they take a liking to someone. Acton — I don’t think they noticed much about the invasion in the early days. It was just humans fighting each other.”

  Bramble understood. Humans did fight each other. Look at Lord Thegan preparing for war with the Lake People. She saw, vividly, in her mind’s eye, Maryrose’s blood on the floor; Merrick’s arm cut to the bone. A human enchanter had been responsible for that. Oh, yes, humans killed each other.

  “What about the stones?”

  Martine immediately pulled out her pouch and cast, then shook her head. “No. Nothing. They are not speaking to me.” She looked at Bramble. “I’m sorry
. It happens, sometimes, when the gods are involved.”

  Bramble stared at the tabletop. Her heart pulled her to Carlion; her instinct said to obey the gods. This kitchen was a long way from any altar, but… In her mind, as she used to do in her home village of Wooding, she asked them, Should I go to Carlion now? They replied, faintly, as they had done so often to keep her from Traveling, Not yet. Well, that was that. Safred studied her in shock, as though she had overheard the exchange. Maybe she had. Bramble returned her gaze blandly, enjoying her uncertainty.

  “Will it take long?” she asked.

  Safred hesitated. “I’m not sure… but we can’t do it here. We must go to the Great Forest. There is a lake there, the gods say.”

  “So,” Bramble said, “let me see if I understand you. I have to go to a lake somewhere, use the brooch in some way you don’t understand to do something you don’t understand to find out the death place of the biggest bastard who ever lived, who died a thousand years ago and whose bones may be irretrievably lost and who is unlikely to want to help us anyway.”

  The silence was heavy with antagonism. Bramble and Safred stared at each other.

  “It’s the only way,” Safred said at last.

  “Hmm,” Bramble said.

  Safred looked at her. “There is a risk… some who take such journeys do not come back.”

  Bramble bared her teeth in a semblance of a smile.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m good at coming back.” And then she would go to Carlion and find the enchanter and kill him.

  Zel’s Story

  MURDER’S AN UGLY word, don’t never doubt that. But it’s a solid one, like a stone in your hand. I went to a stonecaster, and she plucked that Murder right from the bag, and Necessity, too.

  We was Travelers, my brer and I. We did the rounds, town to town, city to city. We scrounged off the land where we could, worked where we could, sang in the taverns every night for food, for a roof in winter, out in the stable. Sang till Flax’s voice broke; ah, he had a voice could pierce right through your body and blood, sweet as first love. In the taverns, when Flax let out those high, quivering notes, even the rowdiest of them would calm on down and get sentimental; sometimes even throw coins. It weren’t very often I had to shag for our supper.

  Then his voice cracked and we knew he had to stop his singing or risk losing his voice for good and all.

  We was in Sandalwood, then, on the outskirts near the tanneries. So we walked onto Pless, and we went on back to our parents’ house.

  They’d always been pleased to see us, before. They’d been Travelers, too, the both of them, roaming free all their youth, taking their knocks and their sweets, rambling all over the known world, my mam said once to me, even down to the sandy waste, and up to Foreverfroze, in the north. They’d met up on the road, my father a horsebreaker, my mam a juggler, like me.

  They only settled down in Pless when my mam got the rheumatics and couldn’t juggle no more, and my father found a fancy-woman there he’d a mind to keep. He set up as a horse trainer and it’s true, it’s a rare horse my da can’t spell into manners.

  We didn’t want to Settle, so they laughed and let us go, but they’d taught us how to see trouble coming and my mam showed us a few sneaky moves with the knife. Since those days we’d come visiting every year, spend a week or so and back on the Road again, and there’d be smiling and hugging enough to last the year round.

  This time it were different. It were a sharp, cold autumn already, with worse to come and the grandams saying it’d be a killing winter, graveyards fat by Winterfest. I thought we could rest out the winter there with Mam and Da, work on a new act, teach Flax some more juggling, maybe some tumbling or a mind-reading act. I could sing, but not like Flax, not with that clear, heart-aching sound that brought silver out of purses.

  I didn’t think they’d mind. I’d of worked for my keep, and for Flax’s, if they’d wanted. I didn’t realize they’d turned respectable. Da were setting his sights on the town council, and trying to forget his murky past; and Mam were pushing him hard as she could go. Me, I think it were the fancy-woman Mam had in mind; seems a town councilor got to be really respectable, and maybe the fancy-woman would of had to go.

  It weren’t the shagging that worried Mam; it were the silver that went to keep bread on that woman’s table and clothes on her back. Mam’d stick to silver like it were her life’s price to let it go; and maybe that were true, once, out on the Road.

  So when me and Flax turned up, unexpected, at the door, with Flax half-grown out of his clothes and me none so clean, neither, with the track from Sandalwood coming through swamp as it do, well, they weren’t exactly so pleased as we thought they’d be.

  Maybe we shoulda turned and walked away right then and there, before that hurt got any deeper. Maybe we shoulda said the Traveler’s goodbye, “Wind at your back,” and scooted along to the tavern and juggled and sang till we got our eating silver and our traveling silver, and just kept on going. But we didn’t. No, we was cold and hungry and hoping for some hugs, so we walked straight on in and sat by the fire, and listened to the news.

  They told us about the town council straight off, and if I’d been paying attention I’da noticed that new look on her face, that wary, not-welcoming look; but Flax had a cough from the damp swamp air and I were bustling him close to the fire and getting him cha. I just took it like a joke and laughed; my da the town councilor!

  The next few days, I were too busy nursing Flax to think much of it. There was people coming and going all the time, with Mam serving them hot wine and spice biscuits, the smell drifting up to us and making me hungry as a waking bear, but Flax were so sick he didn’t even notice. It were a bad fever, and he were coughing up blood.

  The herb woman said he’d be safe if he stayed mostly in bed all winter. That were bad news for Mam and Da. They’d not told anyone about us coming back; and then I remembered that the last couple of visits we spent a lot of time at home, not visiting or going out. I realized that not many people here knew Mam and Da even had young ones, let alone that we was Travelers — and that’s how they wanted it.

  So they told the herb woman Flax were their stableboy, and they made me promise not to come down the stairs when there was visits going on; and I shrugged and said, “If you want,” for I didn’t see much harm in it, then.

  Mam wanted us out, though, that were certain. She got this worried look back of her eyes every time the door banged, for fear it were some neighbor dropping in. Da turned quiet, and went to the fancy-woman’s for his evening meal more often than not. And that didn’t help Mam’s temper — not at all.

  Now if Flax’d been hale, I woulda just packed us up and taken the Road again, winter or not, but the herb woman warned me, quiet in the corner, that it were his life’s price to go on the road before spring, and I believed her, he were that quiet and pale after the fever left him, and still coughing like an old man.

  They knew I wouldn’t leave without him. They wouldn’t let me sing in the taverns, or juggle, in case anyone found out I were their daughter, and though I put in what I could of our Traveling silver, I had to keep some back for spring, to set us on the road again. I did what I could around the house but it weren’t much compared to what we was eating, especially Flax, now the fever were over and his real growing time began.

  Da got broody over his ale next to the fire, when he were home, though mostly he were out at the farm, working the horses.

  Then Mam started muttering and counting her silver in the dark of night. Night after night I’d wake up and hear her, clinking and counting, all alone in her bed in the clear frost silence, with Da off to the fancy-woman. Maybe it shouldna been so much of a surprise when I came through to Flax’s room and found Mam with a pillow over his face.

  I fought her off him and it shoulda been easy, an old rheumaticky woman and a young one like me, but it weren’t easy at all. She fought like it were her life she were fighting for, and I had to fling her dow
n on the floor before she give up. Flax slept through it all, and I knew she’d given him a sleeping draught in his cha.

  “Eating us out of house and home,” she said, staring up at me like a trapped rat. “You’re sucking us dry, sucking us dry . . .”

  “Let me go out to juggle, then,” I said. “I’ll pay for Flax and me, both.”

  “Nay, nay,” she said, shaking her head so hard her hair came out of its braid. “You’ll bring disgrace on us, and we’re so close, so close.”

  “Keep away from him, then. If you hurt him, I won’t sit quiet and say nothing. I’ll brand you up and down the town a killer,” I said. “Here we stay till spring, Mam, and Flax can take the road again. Make your mind up to it, that’s the way it is. If your council’s so important, then Flax’s keep and mine is the price you have to pay for it.”

  She went away, but I knew that weren’t the end. I’d have to keep an eye on her all winter, and I couldn’t. I had to sleep sometime. To eat what she cooked and to drink what she brewed, like the others. It were too easy for her to slip something in.

  I thought awhile on going to my father, but I knew him. He’d always gone along with her over everything except the fancy-woman, and now I thought on it, she’d never faced him down about that. If she had, I reckon he’da caved in, like he always did. If she’d managed to kill Flax, and me not knowing, he woulda asked no questions.

  Now, I thought, she’d have to kill both of us.

  That were when I went to the stonecaster, for, truth to tell, I couldn’t see my way out of it. The caster pulled Murder from the bag, and Necessity. And I thought, her or me. Her or Flax.

  Two lives for one, I thought. I did it that night, while Da were with the fancy-woman and Flax were sleeping deep, and Mam too, for I’d used her own sleeping powder in both their chas.

  I broke the latch on her window, like a too-strong gust of wind had blown it open, then I closed her door behind me and left her to the killing frost.