No Quarter

by Tanya Huff

  Krisus sniffed. “After what happened …” No need to actually say what had happened; the memory lay like an oily film over the settlement. “… it was almost a relief that they were dead.” He jerked and stared at the bard, horrified by what he’d said. “Except for Jazep, I mean. I wasn’t … I didn’t . . when he Sang … If it wasn’t for Jazep, they’d still be walking around and Ilka would have starved and I didn’t mean we were relieved that he was dead.”

  “I know.” And they had to believe her.

  Only the baby, feeding with the single-minded intensity of the very young, remained unaffected. After a moment Evicka cleared her throat. “Could you Sing over the grave? We said what we thought we should, but the nearest priest is in Bartek Springs and it feels unfinished.”

  * * * *

  The mound of stone at the edge of the forest was larger than Karlene expected, larger and sadder.

  “There’s rock close to the surface up here,” Krisus told her. “I had to dig near the trees to get down far enough that they wouldn’t get dug up again by scavengers.” He looked at the dirt ground into the creases of callused hands. “I—we, haven’t been back to the mine since it happened. I grab onto a pick and all I can think of is …” Words failed him, and he waved toward the mound.

  Evicka shifted the baby from right arm to left. “We put Jazep’s body in with the others. We didn’t know what else to do. If the bards want him …”

  “No. Let him lie where he is.” The body without the kigh was an empty shell. Karlene knew that, had seen the proof of it, but it was harder, far harder, to believe it when the body belonged to a friend. “He liked to have people around him.”

  “We didn’t get to know him very well.”

  Blinking back tears, Karlene remembered what Virine had said. If Jazep had to have an epitaph, she couldn’t find one better. “He was kind.”

  “And brave,” Krisus added.

  “And one of many.” Karlene straightened and drew in a deep, cleansing breath. “Tell me about the others.”

  “Just the seven that walked?”

  “No, all of them.”

  It was one of the longest Songs, she’d ever Sung, but when it was over, she felt curiously clear-headed as though more than just the dead had been Sung to rest.

  Evicka smiled tentatively, then looked guilty when she’d realized what she’d done. Krisus pressed his lips against the top of the baby’s head, who woke up and started to fuss.

  “One thing I still don’t understand,” Karlene murmured as they walked back to the cottage. “In the Empire, when Kars did what he did, babies died. How did Ilka survive?”

  “Her mother was one of the dead?”

  “A possible reason, but I doubt that’s it.”

  “Our babies are tougher?”

  Karlene shook her head. “Nice to believe, but I don’t think so.” Turning and walking backward, she tickled Ilka’s nose with the end of her braid. “What is it about you, baby? Why are you still here?”

  Ilka shrieked with laughter and stretched out chubby fists. To Karlene’s surprise, she wasn’t reaching for the braid.

  The kigh slid its elongated body through the infant’s grasp and, twisting back on itself, stroked both her cheeks with ethereal fingers.

  Too stunned to notice where she was putting her feet, Karlene tripped over a rock and sat down. Hard. To her companions’ astonishment, she stayed where she was, and Sang a question to the kigh. When they answered, she bounced up, took Ilka, and swung her in the air.

  “All four quarters! You little music box, you!”

  “What are you talking about?” Krisus asked, his hands extended to retrieve the baby but unwilling to insult the bard as long as Ilka herself seemed to be happy with the situation.

  Eyes gleaming, mouth stretched out in so large a smile her cheeks hurt, Karlene handed the laughing child back to her anxious guardian. “She’s a bard. Or she will be in time. And all four quarters. This is incredible. This is absolutely incredible! I’ve got to tell the Captain!” Opening her mouth, she noticed the expressions on the two people facing her and closed it again. “What’s the matter?”

  Evicka stroked a rounded cheek, much as the kigh had. “Will she have to go away?”

  Suddenly understanding, Karlene shook her head. “Not for fourteen or fifteen years, and not even then unless she wants to.”

  Relief came off them in waves. “So she doesn’t have to be a bard?”

  “No. She doesn’t have to be anything she doesn’t want to be.” There was no need to mention that the odds of any person who could attract such attention from the kigh as an infant deciding not to be a bard were so small as to be essentially nonexistent. They’d dealt with enough for one day.

  One day …

  “By the Center of the Circle, Third Quarter Festival starts tonight!”

  Frowning, Evicka began to count on her fingers. “That’s in … Oh, my heart, you’re right.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Krisus sighed. “Not this year.”

  “It matters this year more than any,” Karlene told them gently. “Grieving is a needful thing and it’s enclosed by the Circle, but it can’t be allowed to stop the Circle from turning.”

  “We don’t have much to give thanks for.”

  “I realize you’ve lost a great deal.” Her voice slid from sympathy into wonder. “But you have the strength that a loving family gave you and you have Ilka and you have each other and isn’t that something to be grateful for?”

  The young partners looked at each other over the baby’s head.

  “If I hadn’t had you,” Krisus murmured.

  Evicka took his hand and together they turned to face the bard. “All thing beings enclosed, we think that we’d like to keep the festival.”

  Karlene smiled and taking each of them by an elbow, she pushed them toward the cottage. “Come on, we’ve got to get some kind of a harvest in, there’s festival cakes to bake, and, if I’m going to Sing the Quarter around, I’m going to need some honey for my throat.”

  * * * *

  “Here, if you’re going to be sitting around in my way, you can make yourself useful.” When Kars stared at her in confusion, Ales closed his fist about the shaft of the wooden paddle. “Stir,” she said, moving his arm around in a circle.

  He looked down into the tub, smiled, and nodded. Using both hands he swirled the perforated paddle around and around in the batter. As grandmother had taken to her bed to rest up for the festival, his age entitled him to her place by the hearth. He’d spent the morning sitting and watching the bustle of festival preparations—trying to make sense out of the chaos. He didn’t understand much of what was said, but he’d have time to learn the language later.

  “What is?” he asked after a moment.

  “Festival cake,” Ales told him without looking up from the pot she was seasoning. “Enough for everyone in the settlement to have themselves a good healthy piece.” Cuffing the shoulder of the boy chopping vegetables at one end of the heavy plank table, she sent him to the garden for a horseradish root. “Cake’ll go in the Circle to be blessed at sunset, then cut and served and frankly, I think it needs more raisins. Keep stirring.” Lifting a crock down off an upper shelf, she worked the stopper free and shook more dried fruit into the tub.

  Kars frowned and worked his way through her somewhat disjointed speech. “Everyone eats?”

  “That’s right. Moment the service is over they descend on it like bears on berries. Nobody has to fake eating my festival cake, I’ll tell you—I save spices all year for this. By the time this crew is done, there’s never enough left over to bring in a mouse. Not that we need more mice after what they did to my bellflowers.” She gave Kars a quick pat on the arm and a friendly smile. “Don’t worry, there’ll be enough for you. Jorin, hurry on out and see if those chickens have …” Turning, Ales remembered she’d already sent Jorin to the garden, and bustled out to check the chickens herself, throwing a not to be argued with “Keep stir
ring” back over one plump shoulder.

  Everyone eats. Retrieving his pouch from its place under a bench, Kars worked the stopper out of the flask and poured the contents into the batter. When Jorin trotted back in, a plump root born triumphantly in grubby hands, he was stirring again as instructed.

  “Mama?” Jorin asked, looking around.

  Kars searched for the word. “Chickens!” he announced at last.

  “All right!” Tossing his root on the table, he rubbed his hands against his shirtfront and extended a curved finger toward the batter.

  “No …”

  “It’s okay.” He grinned up at Kars. “I’m allowed to taste. Really.”

  “Jorin! You get your filthy hands away from that tub.”

  The boy whirled, saw his mother had both hands full of eggs, and, with a relieved grin, began briskly chopping vegetables once again.

  “Kids,” Ales snorted depositing the eggs safely in a bowl. “More trouble than they’re worth.” But she smiled fondly at her son. “Do you have family, Kars?”

  “No more.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Have again.”

  She studied him skeptically, but in the end only shrugged and said, “Sure you will. Keep stirring.” If he wanted to believe he was still capable of creating children, it was no skin off her teeth.

  Outside the open door, Kiril took his son by the shoulder and the two moved with exaggerated silence toward the gate. “I see she’s got our guest working,” he said when he thought they were safely out of earshot.

  “I don’t like him, Papa.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “He makes me feel funny.”

  Brows drawn in until they met over his nose, Kiril turned Edko around to face him, a hand on each shoulder. “Has he done anything to you, boy? Don’t be afraid to tell me.”

  Edko sighed and shook his head. “It’s nothing like that. It’s just that when I’m near him …” He stretched out one bare arm. “It feels like there’re ants climbing on my skin. He feels wrong.”

  Visibly relieved, Kiril ruffled the boy’s hair. “It’s probably just because we didn’t think anyone older than Grandmother could exist.”

  “Well, yeah, but …”

  “Cutters coming in!”

  At the sound of the cry drifting up from the riverbank, Edko twisted out of his father’s grip and raced for the gate, whooping with joy. Kiril took a step to follow and was nearly run down by Jorin charging after his cousin. The next few moments were chaotic as the family who remained in the stockade greeted those who were returning from cutting trees in the forest.

  “Where’s Enrik?” Edko demanded, clutching at the bronzed forearm of his older sister.

  She laughed and shook herself free. “He spotted a hawk’s nest halfway up a cliff and decided to go after one of the nestlings. We didn’t want to wait, so he said he’d follow us down later.”

  “But the festival starts at sunset!”

  “Listen, Sapling, I know the rest of us aren’t worth much next to the glorious cousin Enrik, but you know what he’s like. Once he gets an idea in his head, you couldn’t shift it with an ax.”

  Edko sighed and turned away, searching the edge of the forest for any sign of his favorite cousin. His sister just didn’t understand. Enrik was special. He was always willing to climb to release a deadfall, even when an uncle or aunt said it wasn’t safe. He was the first into the river in First Quarter and the last out in Third. He could throw his ax up into the air and catch it behind his back. Sometimes maybe he took chances even Edko realized weren’t too smart, but he cut the best willow whistles and he told the best stories.

  Standing apart from the rest, released from his stirring duties by the pouring of the batter into greased and floured pans, Kars watched Edko watching the forest and slowly shook his head. The boy was demon-marked. He remembered other children lost to the demons. He remembered a boy not much older than this taken from his home. His throat tightened as he remembered the screaming that he’d tried for a very, very long time to forget.

  * * * *

  Pushing one of the dogs aside, Karlene finished tracing a circle in the packed dirt of the square. Pulling the stake from the center, she coiled the four-strand measuring rope—each strand dyed to represent a quarter—and stepped over the line. A quick search of the communal buildings had found all the festival trappings recently gathered and made ready for use. Tears had flowed freely as they’d carried everything they needed over to the cottage.

  Karlene laid the measure aside and squatted, a little dubiously, to lift the huge clay bowl of water. It was as heavy as it looked. Glazed the exact shade of green used in bardic robes, and etched inside and out with stylized water kigh, it had obviously been bought just for this purpose and transported carefully up into the mountains. It went over the hole where the stake had been and Karlene considered it a small miracle that none of the water spilled.

  The four thick beeswax candles, set on each of the four compass points, were a lot easier on her back. Checking the position of the sun, she turned toward the cottage, but before she could call, Krisus hurried out with a basket.

  “They’re still really hot,” he said, laying the steaming cakes in position. “Vicka’s sure they’re not cooked through.”

  “They smell great.”

  He smacked her hand away. “Oh, no, not until after the blessing.”

  Karlene sighed and began to pile vegetables. “I love festival cakes.”

  Krisus grinned at her. “Like my mother used to say, since you have to eat them, you might as well decide to like them.” He half turned toward the communal kitchen. “Vicka! What about the . .”

  “Cheese,” she finished, appearing with a round in her arms. “You haven’t left the baby alone?”

  “She’s asleep.” But he set the last cake down and hurried into the cottage.

  The last thing to be laid in the circle was the silver. From a dull nugget to a beautiful filigree representation of the four quarters, the individual pieces made a small circle of their own just outside the candles. Although it felt wrong when so many others had died, Karlene found herself thankful that the artisan who’d created the final piece of filigree had gone to Bicaz with the load of ore and lived to create again.

  The sky had just begun to turn when they finished.

  Krisus put the basket holding the sleeping baby in position, then moved to stand across the circle from Evicka. Behind each of them were a pair of lamps ready to be lit when it grew dark. The lamps were an addition to the service, the need for their light Kars’ last legacy to Fortune.

  Karlene draped her tricolored stole around her neck—a bard walking couldn’t be expected to carry robes—and took a deep, calming breath. Gabris and the fledglings would be back in the Capital by now, Singing at the Empress’ Center. Silently she wished them a happy festival and prepared to Sing.

  Together, as the sky to the west became a glorious, streaked pinky-orange and the sky over the mountains to the east deepened into sapphire blue, the three adults sang the choral that gave thanks for the long, hot days of Second Quarter, and welcomed the cooler days and longer nights of the Third. Just as the sun set, Evicka and Krisus fell silent.

  Fire kigh danced on the candles and in each of the lanterns, throwing more light than was possible for their size. Karlene Sang thanks for heat and light.

  The Song changed, and the water in the bowl rippled although there was, as yet, no breeze to move it. Karlene Sang thanks for thirst quenched and cleanliness, for the power of the moving stream.

  Ilka laughed and clapped her hands as the Song changed again and air kigh danced within the circle. Karlene Sang thanks for breath and the power given to the windmills.

  The Song changed a third time.

  Karlene turned in place, searching for the voice. There were chorals to be used if the bard Singing the service had less than four full quarters, and she’d just been about to begin one, expecting Krisus and Evicka to
join in.

  Somewhere, somewhere close, there was a bard Singing thanks to earth.

  The dirt in the circle began to move and a kigh emerged. Karlene stared, her heart pounding so loudly she was sure its beat must throw off the rhythm of the Song. Without the ability to Sing earth, she’d never seen an earth kigh before but everyone knew that, where the other three quarters were essentially sexless, the earth kigh always appeared to be female.

  This kigh did not.

  Its shape seemed somehow familiar.

  It was six, maybe eight inches high, broad-shouldered, short-legged, barrel-chested.

  The earth Song ended, the last notes rumbling away into the gathering dusk, and the kigh began the Blessing. It was amazing that such a pure bass tone could come from such a tiny figure.

  Instinct overcame shock and a half measure into the Blessing, Karlene added her voice. The harmony grew and rose until it touched the stars just appearing over the mountaintops. The sky seemed close enough to touch, the earth small enough to enclose in a protective embrace. For one glorious moment, the Singers became the Song and Karlene felt a presence she had thought never to feel again. Somehow, Jazep’s kigh had not gone on when he’d died; it had, instead, gone to earth.

  She Sang the gratitudes alone.

  The earth kigh was the last to leave. It looked once around the circle, its calm gaze resting longest on the baby, then, arms spread in benediction, it sank out of sight.

  * * * *

  Her own small festival service ended, Annice settled the straps of her pack on her shoulders and set her feet on the path the kigh created. She had too far still to go to allow the night to stop her.

  As she walked, she listened to a familiar voice Sing answers to her questions.

  * * * *

  Gerek stood in an open window of Celestin’s house and listened to the sounds of Third Quarter Festival spilling out of the Center. Marija only Sang fire and air, but the Bartek Springs choir cheerfully filled in the other two quarters, making up in volume what it lacked in bardic abilities. If he listened closely, he could hear the rhythmic counterpoint of Magda’s footsteps sounding against the ceiling as she paced back and forth across the room directly overhead.