Redwing

by Holly Bennett

  HOLLY BENNETT

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2012 Holly Bennett

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Bennett, Holly, 1957-

  Redwing [electronic resource] / Holly Bennett.

  Electronic monograph.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0039-7 (PDF).--ISBN 978-1-4598-0040-3 (EPUB)

  I. Title.

  PS8603.E5595R43 2012 jC813'.6 C2012-902218-7

  First published in the United States, 2012

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012937566

  Summary: Rowan, a young musician whose entire family has died from the plague, forms an uneasy alliance with a young man who possesses peculiar powers.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover artwork by Juliana Kolesova

  Cover design by Teresa Bubela

  Author photo by Mark Burstyn

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO Box 5626, Stn. B PO Box 468

  Victoria, BC Canada Custer, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  15 14 13 12 • 4 3 2 1

  Five novels, and I still haven’t dedicated one to

  my husband, John. It’s well past time! From my first

  tentative pages, he has supported me on this labor of love

  that is writing. He chauffeurs me on wild-goose-chase

  research jaunts, celebrates every new title and brags

  about my books when I’m too shy to mention them.

  Plus, his music seems to weave through all my novels—

  especially this one. Thanks, my man:

  I am lucky to have you.

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ONE

  The caravan was never intended for winter use. When the wind came up, whatever heat Rowan could coax from the smoky little stove seeped right through the canvas walls. He prayed for calm weather, and on bad nights like this he huddled shivering in a roll of blankets, listening to the canvas rustle and crack like a ship’s sail. He never felt more alone than on these black, moaning nights. Sleep seemed impossible—until, at last, it took him by surprise, and he escaped into uneasy dreams.

  Rowan!

  He raised his head groggily. “What’s wrong, Ettie?” His sister’s voice had been sharp with alarm. Then he remembered. Not Ettie—just a dream. He slumped back into his mattress, hoping that sleep would reclaim him before the memories did.

  Rowan!

  Rowan sat up this time. The voice seemed so clear. Then he leaped to his feet.

  The caravan floor was on fire. The sensations hit him all at once: the smell of acrid smoke, the jumpy, crazy light of flames, an icy blast of wind, the noisy flap of canvas.

  Ripping the blankets off his bunk, Rowan threw them over the blazing floorboards. The caravan went pitch-black. He beat at the flames through the thick covering, cursing as his hand hit the squat shape of the stove. That must be where the fire started, he realized. Usually the little bucket-shaped stove sat in a snug metal housing under the galley cooktop, but Rowan had moved it into the middle of the floor in an attempt to warm up his bed. He peeled the blanket back over the top of the stove and then tried to grab the stove handle to haul it away from the fire. He yelped as the hot handle bit into his palm and again as he smacked his head on the edge of his bunk while groping for some kind of padding for his hands. Finally he stripped off his own nightshirt and used it like a pot holder to drag the stove out the door and into the snowy night.

  Back inside, the flames seemed to be out but Rowan still pounded every square inch of the blanket to be sure. Then he felt his way to the lamp by his bed, scraped the spark striker and lit it. He unclipped it from its rack and peered around.

  The caravan was basically a long wagon with chest-high sides topped with a frame over which was stretched a canvas ceiling and walls. The canvas flaps could be rolled up and tied in fine weather to allow sunshine and fresh air inside. With a tiny galley at the front, a single drop-down bunk along each side and a larger platform bed at the back, the caravan was a cozy, comfortable travel home for a family of four—in the summer.

  It didn’t take long to find where the wind was coming from. A canvas fastener had ripped loose right above his sister’s bunk, leaving a flapping breach open to the weather. A pile of wet snow lay clumped on the wooden sleeping ledge. Rowan grabbed the loose canvas flap and wrestled it back into position, then tried to think how to fix it. The childish part of him wanted to simply roll back up in his blankets and let the other side of the caravan fill with snow. But his blankets were scorched, and there was no one to deal with this but him, so he made his way through the cold caravan to the store box. He found a length of rope, fished again for the flap and found the broken fastener. There was, as he’d hoped, enough of a stub to tie on the rope as an extension. Then he lashed it around the cleat and tied it off. He’d try to neaten the repair in the morning.

  He gathered up the smoldering blankets and threw them out the door. Maybe they were salvageable, but he wouldn’t find out till morning. He scooped the snow from his sister’s bunk onto the burnt floorboards, where it melted instantly. Still warm. How could he sleep, he wondered, with no way of being sure there wasn’t a spark hidden in a crack, waiting to be coaxed into flame? He made one last trip, this time to the galley, where he kept the clean water. Half a bucket left. Rowan dumped a large puddle onto the floor and then padded on damp, freezing feet to a storage bin. He hauled out the two spare blankets and scrambled into his bunk.

  I could have died, he thought, shaken at how easily he might have slept until it was too late. He was too exhausted and overwhelmed to push back the thought that slipped in next: Better, maybe, if I had.

  THE NIGHT’S SNOW had nearly melted away when Rowan woke. The day was decent for traveling—overcast but mild, with a teasing hint in the air of the spring to come. It was actually pleasant to sit up front and drive the mules, and as he chewed on the end of bread he had saved from the day before, Rowan tried not to worry about how bony Dusty and Daisy looked. “You’ll have a good feed soon, girls,” he promised.

  Funny how good things came from bad, he mused. His first discovery was that there hadn’t been much fire damage to the floor after all. Mostly what had burned were his clothes from the day before, left in a heap when he changed for bed. Stupid to leave them so close to the stove. A stray spark blown by the wind gusting through the open flap was all it had taken to set them alight. His search for tools to repair the broken fastener had l
ed him to a second, even better, discovery: a small lockbox tucked under the needles and yarn and fabric scraps in his mother’s sewing kit. He didn’t have the key, but he did have an ax, and soon he was fingering a stash of money—a few coins, mostly paper scrip—that must represent whatever his father was able to grab before their hasty flight from their home at Five Oaks. Two months on his own had already taught Rowan enough about costs to realize that it wasn’t going to last him long. To keep it safe, he had divided the money up and hidden half in the caravan, half in the lining of his button box case. He intended to keep it for emergencies only—but a mule team on the edge of collapse was an emergency, and he had kept out enough for a few bales of hay and enough oats to see them through the last weeks of winter.

  TWO

  Samik made his way down the gangplank and stumbled as the ground heaved under his feet. Raucous laughter erupted from the sailors behind him. “Lost your land legs in only a week? Maybe you’d best stay in your cabin where it’s safe!” one gravelly voice teased.

  Samik turned, fighting the feeling that he needed to sway to stay upright. How very odd, to be rolling over waves on dry land! He offered the burly, tattooed sailor a formal bow (despite the risk of pitching headfirst into the cobblestones) and a wry smile. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Azir, having me with you forever? I’m touched that you’ll miss me so much.” More hoots of laughter, this time at Azir’s expense.

  “No, I must be off,” Samik continued. “But I thank you for my safe passage. I’d like to compliment the comfort of the accommodations and quality of the food, but sadly…” He gave an eloquent, rippling shrug and set off carefully down the quay, keeping K’waaf close beside him.

  The dockside area of Shiphaven was not so different from Guara, the Tarzine port he’d sailed from: noisy, crowded, rough around the edges. The people were different though. Prosperian dress was awfully drab—so much brown and beige and black! Did they not know how to dye cloth? And it was strange to be surrounded by a foreign language. Samik’s mother had taught him well, but the rough speech of the dock workers was a far cry from her cultured tongue.

  Now what? he asked himself. “I must be off,” he had announced grandly, but in truth he had no actual destination. “Head inland,” his father had advised him. But where, and how?

  First things first. Jago’s men would not be on his heels—they might not even realize he had fled the country. Surely he had a few days, at least, to take his bearings and make a plan.

  A room, a bath and a meal. That was a good plan. But he would make his way a little farther into town, away from the docks, even if the price of lodging was higher. If Jago’s men did come later and ask around, he didn’t want anyone to remember him.

  THREE DAYS LATER, Samik was feeling much steadier, and not just on his legs. His ear was becoming attuned to the language, and he had found a comfortable room with a kindly widow amusingly named Missus Broadbeam. While the landlord of the first lodging house he had tried had taken one look at K’waaf, muttered “no dogs” and hastily closed the door, Missus Broadbeam had fawned over the huge beast as though he were a baby. She had taken a shine to Samik too-her grandson, she said, had the same long white-blond hair, and that seemed to make Samik an honorary relative. So when she asked about his plans at breakfast on the third day, he decided to confide something of his plight.

  “Oh, my dear!” Missus Broadbeam pressed her hand to her ample bosom and cast her eyes to heaven. “Oh, you poor lamb. All on your own, and with a price on your head? And your mother must be that worried about you!”

  It was Missus Broadbeam who declared he must change his name. “Otherwise, you might just as well tell everyone you meet you’re a Tarzine foreigner!” And so Aydin was born.

  In fact, Missus Broadbeam was a fountain of good advice. She had asked Samik about his viol, and he confessed that he hoped to earn some money with his playing, since what he had come with would not last long. “Oh, that’s grand. Musicians are very well regarded here,” she enthused. “Would you do me a favor, dearie, and play me a little something? It would do my heart good.”

  But Samik—Aydin, now, and he’d best start getting used to it—hadn’t played long before Missus Broadbeam scrunched up her face. “Now, no offense to your music, my dear, it’s very lovely I’m sure,” she said, “but you can’t be pretending to be one of us and play that outlandish stuff. And once you’re away from the port towns, you won’t make much coin at it either. The country folk are not like us in Shiphaven, who are used to all sorts. They like what they know.”

  Missus Broadbeam had directed Samik to a shop where he could buy music for popular Prosperian tunes, and to a market where he might be able to find cheap passage inland with a farmer or merchant. She had even pressed a half-dallion into his hand when he said goodbye the next day. “A little off the rent, to help your travels,” she said.

  Riding in the back of a farm wagon was a bone-jarring experience, and Samik was grateful when, a good half-day later, the farmer pulled his mule to a halt and pointed down the road that branched off to the right. “There’s a town that way. Greenway. ’Bout three miles.”

  Three miles. Samik didn’t relish the hike, but at least he should reach the town before dark. He climbed out the back of the wagon, shouldered his pack and his viol, and started walking. He would find a place to stay the night and keep traveling in the morning.

  THREE

  Rowan clip-clopped the mules into the little town’s market square and sized up his prospects. Fair to middling, he judged, especially for this time of year—busy enough to have plenty of customers, not so crowded that it would be hard for him to get noticed.

  He found a spot for the caravan and climbed down to coax the girls backward into place. What was the name of this town, he wondered, annoyed that he had forgotten. Not that it mattered. Middleton, Waterford, Longview, Oak Ridge-they were all much the same, a string of nondescript settlements with unimaginative names. Cedar Glen—that was it.

  The sound of a fiddle stopped him in his tracks. Damn. Rowan scanned the square again, searching for his competitor.

  A tall boy, a little older than Rowan, stood in the gap between a wagon filled with chicken crates and a table of wizened root vegetables. A gust of wind lifted his long pale hair like a flag as he drew the bow across the strings of his instrument and then adjusted the tuning.

  The dog that stood watchfully just behind the fiddler was the biggest Rowan had ever seen. Easily as tall as the shaggy little ponies they bred in the highlands, the wiry gray hound was clearly on guard.

  Rowan considered. The next town was too far to reach in time for market; he’d have to hope for an inn that would let him play. That meant no food till nightfall, and then only if he was lucky.

  There was an unwritten code for street performers: you don’t impinge on another man’s space. But it was a good-sized square; Rowan could barely hear the other instrument from where he stood. Likely, neither of them would make as much as they would without the competition, but Rowan could live with that.

  He climbed into the caravan and emerged with a small stool and a large case. He settled himself down, drew out the button box and wrapped the whole contraption inside his jacket, trying to get enough warmth into the pleated leather bellows to ensure they wouldn’t crack when he stretched them out.

  “Get out of here!” The voice was an angry hiss right next to his head. Startled, Rowan looked up to find the fiddler looming over him. Two high spots of color burned in his narrow face. The pale blue eyes were cold and angry.

  “I…” Rowan cleared his throat. His voice had long since dropped, but it still had a tendency to betray him in heated moments. “I beg your pardon?”

  The older boy straightened and waved a peremptory arm. “Clear out. I was here first. You’ll drown me out with that thing.”

  That thing? Now Rowan was angry. “There’s plenty of room for both of us, and what you are calling that thing is a premium brass-tongued button bo
x, made by the master, Reed Blackbird himself!” His button box was the most valuable thing his family owned, and other musicians, at least, should recognize its quality.

  This one was unimpressed. “Yes, yes, I heard one before. Sounds like a dying seagull.” He pointed a threatening finger. “Pack up your little squawk box and move on.” He turned and stalked, storklike, back to his spot with his fiddle tucked under one arm.

  Rowan watched, seething with anger and indecision, while the young man set out his open case and began to play. He wasn’t afraid of a fight, not really. Though taller, the fiddler was slightly built and didn’t look that strong. But the dog gave Rowan pause, and now the moment for defending his claim seemed to have passed. Reluctantly, he laid the button box back in its case.

  Heska’s teeth, he thought with disgust, the guy wasn’t even any good. He was dogging through a basic reel now in a way that set Rowan’s teeth on edge. There was something weird about his playing, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on…

  Rowan made a sudden decision, stowed his box in the caravan and began to sidle through the edges of the crowd until he was close enough to get a good look at—and earful of—his rival.

  The more he watched, the more curious he became. Lately, Rowan hadn’t cared much about anything except eating and staying warm, but this boy…he was a mystery.

  He was dressed well, or had been once. The style was odd, brighter and more dramatically cut than Rowan was used to, but well tailored. His coat, Rowan thought enviously, looked really warm. But it was dirty too, and the boy’s pants were muddied at the hems.

  His playing was full of contradictions as well. He wasn’t a hack, as Rowan had first assumed. You could tell by the light, loose way he held the bow, its smooth draw across the strings and the sweet tone he got from his instrument. He’d had training, all right. Yet something was seriously wrong. He had moved on to a jig, another standard that any pub player could manage. What was wrong with it? The notes were all there, but the tune had no movement, no rhythm, nothing to make you want to tap your toe or nod your head.