"We'll just question him normally."
Everyone seemed to relax. Hasso uncoiled, and stretched his limbs. "Fine," he said, "fine." Martan looked relieved. Jizbel smiled sweetly.
One of the guards dumped a bucket of water over the Son's head, then they hauled him, groaning, back into the chair.
We tried to question him normally about whether Edrick had slipped away, where to, and why. And of course it was still possible that Edrick was dead. "Giving Verrino the slip" could have meant just that: getting himself killed.
We tried. The Son put on a fine show of being brain-scrambled and incapacitated, confused and crippled with amnesia. We had to give up, and he was led away. If the brute was play-acting, he contrived to stagger and slump about so convincingly that the guards almost had to drag him.
What should happen then, but a complete volte-face on the part of the good Captain? A few minutes earlier he had quite dismissed the notion of combing the countryside. Now he suddenly leapt in the face of that resolve by announcing that he would lead a small party up-country for a day or so in search of clues.
I think Martan had decided that he simply had to get away from the Pens for a while; maybe the bludgeoning had tipped the balance. A two-day stroll around the immediate hinterland of Verrino would be unlikely to bear fruit except by wild coincidence. On the other hand, a brief working holiday might be no bad idea.
Would I accompany him and his patrol? And would Hasso?
Why yes, we would.
"If we head out Tichini way," suggested Hasso, "we could stop overnight by the vineyards."
"Why not?" agreed Martan lightly. "If any Son's hiding in a wine-cask, we'll swill him out."
So the next morning Hasso and I rendezvoused with Martan and six 'jack soldiers, and we set off inland. All of our spirits lightened as we walked along. It was a hot summer's day but the sky remained hazy so that we weren't baked; and the dust underfoot provided a soft tread. All stones and large pebbles had been regularly raked off this road for years, till both sides were lined with low embankments, twin dry walls. A roadman was specially employed to this end by the village of Tichini. Thus empty bottles, making their way by barrow from Verrino glassworks out to the vineyards and returning full along the same route, would not get tossed around and smashed. So Hasso explained as we travelled.
But we had hardly gone half a league before we reached a long stretch of road where the embankments were broken down, kicked around, scattered all over. Amidst the golden-blooming furze bushes off to one side I spied a boot and trouser leg protruding.
I pointed.
Martan pursed his lips. "Seem to recall a skirmish here."
The corpse wasn't wearing a fork-toed boot, so it couldn't be an unburied 'jack.
"Maybe that's Edrick," I said vaguely.
"Might be anybody. Shouldn't think it's him out here, if he escaped near the very end. Assuming that's so."
"Shouldn't you take a look?"
"But I don't know his face, Yaleen—aside from your description. Only you have his features by heart."
"Oh." I swallowed.
"I'll come with you," offered Hasso; and together we made our way through the furze to inspect the dead body.
The corpse lay on its back, leathery and smelly in weatherstained trousers and shirt. The face had been hacked in half, and insects had feasted. The remains weren't recognizable. They weren't even nauseating any longer. Soft tom flesh is awful, but not bone and leather. We returned to the road. I shrugged, and we carried on.
Soon shrubby cones of hills arose around us, disclosing after a further hour or more the village of Tichini hugging a hilltop. That particular hill and its immediate neighbours were all terraced around their southern slopes and neatly vine-clad. The road climbed gently, taking us up through a vineyard where swelling clusters of mauve grapes hung from the new staked growth above the twisted knobbly stocks. The soil looked quite varied between one hillside and the next. When I remarked on this to Hasso, he told me that the soil constituents—clay, limestone and porous mineral-trapping chalk— were the same, but that there were different mixtures on different hillsides. Originally, long ago, the terraced soils had all been blended by hand, to different recipes; and every winter, depending on the taste of the new wine, the slopes were top-dressed with a little more chalk or lime or clay. This, plus a variety of water sources and different vine-stocks, added up to a notable range of vintages within a comparatively small area. A few people were working on the slopes.
"Isn't it neat?" I said. "You wouldn't think there'd been battles."
"There weren't any out here," said Martan.
As we rounded the flank of the hill, we came upon an old whitehaired man standing by the road, leaning on a rake.
"Ho," said Captain Martan. "Roadside's broken down, way back. Did you know?"
The man doodled in the dust. "You come to escort me while I rake it?"
"Why? Are there any stray Sons hiding out, so that you need escorting?"
"Who knows? When world's a pest, home's best."
"That isn't much of an attitude," said Hasso angrily. "Captain Martan, here, is as far from his own home as can be. If he'd thought home was best, you'd still have the Sons on your backs."
"Oh we had them. We had them. You needn't tell me. You can make things perfect for a hundred years—every bit of soil and pebble—then suddenly lunatics decide to hold a war. So where's the use in perfection? People might as well drink vinegar. And what's Verrino come to, these days? They blowing any fresh bottles down there?"
"They will be, after repairs to the works," said Hasso.
"So this year we'll just cask the new wine? Or pour it into old bottles, or sluice it away, eh?"
"Are there or aren't there any Sons running wild hereabouts that you know of?" repeated Martan.
"And if there are, and one's caught here or in Little Rimo over the hills or in Bruz, do we pop him in the soil, same as we're popped in the soil when we die, so the rain can wash his foreign substance down into our vine-roots?"
Martan sighed. "You aren't much help, old fellow."
"Help came too late for me, soldier. Those Sons killed my boy and my boy's boy when they came here a-thieving. There was no need of that."
"I'm sorry to hear it."
"Don't be. I'm feeling mellow now. And I'm in my right place, which you aren't. No one here's telling me to walk to Verrino with my rake."
We left the tetchy old man and climbed the rest of the way to the village, which was dominated by the sprawling vinthouse. A few villagers loitered in doorways, eyeing us silently. A goat stood wetting its beard and chewing on ferns growing in an ornamental basin where water bubbled from a pipe. A small boy with a stick was guarding the goat; at our approach he fled up a crooked alley. We entered a little marketplace. At that moment trade seemed to be brisk, in olives and bread, trussed chickens and oil and cheese; but as soon as the people saw us a lot of goods promptly vanished out of sight into bags and boxes. Three fat women sat outside a cafe, carding wool and singing; the sight of us shut them up.
I could spy no obvious damage (except in one respect), nor disfigurations, nor even signs of reduced diet, but obviously the flavour of the village had soured; and in Tichini the flavour of soil and water and minerals and air was such a delicate subtle thing—blood spilt down a hillside and the smell of fear could spoil a hundred years of care and love.
The one blatant piece of damage was that the great wooden doors of the vinthouse, leading to a courtyard, hung loose—wrenched off their hinges.
We went in, spied a scurrying apron-clad boy, and asked to see the Master or Mistress Vintner, supposing that he or she was still alive. Hasso assured us that this person would be the "mayor" of Tichini.
A man it was, and his name was Beri. He was short and fat, nearly as wide as he was tall. He welcomed us; he bustled. He quickly arranged overnight quarters: in the vinthouse for me and Hasso and Martan, in village homes for the other 'jacks. He command
ed doors to open; he commanded people to step out and smile.
Beri was the sort of fellow whom you could never push over without him rolling right back up again. And, as we soon discovered, he was a repository of all human wisdom whose joy it was to preside over everyone else's foibles and follies, orchestrating popular opinion, pronouncing on anything under the sun. In other circumstances he might have struck you as an intrusive, opinionated bore. Given the current apathetic state of Tichini, though, these traits of his were a distinct plus. It seemed as if the village waited, hushed, upon his assessment of us—of our bouquet—to decide whether to spit us out or swallow us. And Beri went out of his way to give us his blessing.
He also gave us a guided tour of the vinthouse and its vaults, pointing out where the buildings had been vandalized and looted; though really neither damage nor losses would have looked too serious if a bit of mess had just been tidied up.
While guiding us, he held forth on how he had handled the Sons. "So I said to those devils, said I, well if that's your opinion, your Honour, why fair enough; but up in the hills here we aren't dipping our toes in the river all the time, so that we aren't as unlike each other as you might suppose! Indeed, your Honour, are people ever so very different from each other as their opinions make them seem? They were brutes, Captain Martan, and murderous brutes too, but I reckon I handled them as best as could be, though I felt in peril of my life a good few times for speaking out. But I think they respected my bluntness—even if I did feel their fists once or twice. And they stole and messed things around something awful, so that we aren't even cleaned up yet. And they raped three of our women, including my own niece; and what could the women do but endure it? And what could I feel but shame and grief, and just bottle it up?"
That evening Beri arranged a celebration in the vinthouse courtyard, attended by a number of the villagers—mainly those who would host the 'jacks. A bonfire was lit. Several chickens were roasted. Bottles of vintage, which had come through the war intact, were opened. (A lot of bottles seemed to have survived intact.) A stringed bouzouki provided twangy, jangly music. And Beri held forth expertly upon the causes and circumstances of war, amidst 'jacks who had actually fought that war. Discovering that we were on the lookout for runaway Sons and had spent weeks interrogating prisoners, Beri discoursed on the psychology of the men of the west, based on his wealth of observations. Then he offered opinions on the black current and the river guild, and wondered whether the guild ought perhaps to compensate civilian victims of war, such as the people of Tichini. And of Verrino too, of course. He invited our comments; he approved or disproved them.
After a while Martan drew Hasso and me aside. "Would you say," he asked quietly, "that our host actually . . . collaborated with the Sons while they were here?"
"What makes you say that?" asked Hasso.
"Ben's too full of how he handled the situation. And I'm sure he's lying his head off, about how rough it was."
"What about the deaths, Martan? The damage? The broken doors? What about the rapes?"
"And why have those doors been left wrecked for so long? Could it be to show visitors how he resisted? And why does the vinthouse look as though the Sons trashed and robbed it, when actually the damage and loss is—"
"Superficial," said I.
"Isn't it just? Yet it's all still on display. As for his niece and those other two women, how do you prove a woman's been raped? If someone has a sword stuck in them, that's visible enough. And how come the vineyards are in such splendid shape—when the Sons burnt and smashed other places, once they found they were losing the war?"
"Hmm, I see what you mean," said Hasso. "But how could we prove it? And if we could, what then?"
"Just that I wonder whether he would really report any runaways in the area—because if we caught them, they might tell us things about Ben's conduct. And if he won't tell us, you can bet nobody else in Tichini will. Not even a niece who's been offered to the Sons. They're all in it together. They take their cue from him."
"We can hardly challenge him," said Hasso.
"No, we can't. I might be totally wrong."
I butted in. "So do you reckon that old fellow with the rake actually lost his boy and his boy's boy? Or does he just stand on the road to waylay travellers with a tall tale about how much everyone suffered here?"
Martan shook his head. "I don't know. It's possible. Maybe we could find out from those other places over the hills, Bruz and Little Rimo. And maybe we'd be wasting our time."
The bouzouki music raced and thrummed. Feet stamped the flagstones of the courtyard. Beri presided over the revels, dispensing wisdom and vintage.
"We're wasting our time," said Martan. "Definitely so. After weeks of asking questions and suspecting lies, suspicion becomes a sickly way of life. Let's drink and sing and pretend that everything's right as rain. Dance with me, will you, Yaleen?"
So I did, because he'd asked. And then I danced with Hasso. But after a while the exertion began to tell on Hasso. He became breathless. He wasn't yet truly recovered from the siege.
Neither, perhaps, had Tichini recovered from what had befallen it during the war—namely, its own suspiciously prosperous survival.
The next day we returned to Verrino. On the way back I asked several 'jacks how they had fared in the homes of the villagers; but all had retired to bed late with a bellyful of wine, and had had the consequences to cloud their perceptions in the morning. Besides, they had all been on their best polite behaviour.
So: enigma unresolved. And perhaps, indeed, Beri had done well by his village; cunningly well. At least he had saved the future of the wine trade, though Tichini was, for the moment, lying low; and their old rakeman hadn't gone to repair the road just yet. Too much haste in that regard might have struck Beri as unwise.
The day after we got back I sailed at last for Pecawar, aboard— guess which brig?—the Darling Dog.
We drifted in past pale green cinnamon trees, and as we turned to shore the aroma of cloves greeted my nostrils—this, and the dead scent of dust. Even the water close to the bank wore a faint glaze of dust. I sneezed several times. My nose had grown unused to filtering out motes of desiccated soil and wind-blown desert. Maybe in my absence from Pecawar my nostril hairs had thinned out.
Dockside buildings and spice warehouses were all a dusty yellow, like long low sandcastles.
In town I stopped at a cafe for a glass of cinnamon coffee, to collect my thoughts. Really there were too many thoughts to gather into any neat bundle; so I watched the world go by instead: porters, dockers, factors, bakers' boys with trays of hot sesame rolls balanced on their heads. A lad selling chilled sherbet lemonade: he was quickly scooted away by a waiter.
And amongst the people passing by I spotted my father striding down the street. Riding high on his shoulders, a little girl.
"Dad!"
He stopped, he stared around.
I waved from the cafe verandah. "It's me! Over here!"
He came at a run, to the wide steps. The little girl bobbed up and down as she hung on to the crinkly curls on the back of Dad's head, with her bunchy little fists. Dad was more bald than when I'd last seen him. Where before there had been some dark wiry sheep's wool on his crown, now there were just wisps; and I couldn't help wondering if this was Narya's fault. Did he so adore her that he had let her idly pluck and loosen his remaining locks? (It was from my mother that I received my own softer nutbrown hair.) The child seemed unbothered at the way Dad's gait suddenly broke into a gallop. She giggled gleefully, but then as he mounted the steps to my table she fell silent. He set her down on the dusty planking, and she just stood there unmoving, gazing . . . while we both lost interest in her temporarily.
Dad hugged me; I hugged him.
"So, so, so!" He laughed. "The prodigal comes home. Or at least within a stone's throw of home. ..."
"That's where I was heading; never fear."
"Oh, these have been terrible times! We were getting quite anxious
. Still, with you safely down south. . . ."
"Down south? Was I?"
"According to your last letter . . . goodness, that was long enough ago! What upheavals: Jangali men pouring into town. Arming themselves to the teeth! You were down south during the war?"
"Not really, Dad. Oh, I've such a lot to tell you. It's a blessing I met you here, actually. I was worried how you and Mum—"
"Worried?" He raised an eyebrow. "We'd never have guessed." But his tone was humorous, not harsh.
"That's why I stopped for a coffee. To give me a chance to find the words. I've some bad news."
"About Capsi, is it?"
"You know!"
Dad shook his head. "We guessed. Verrino, the Spire, the war. Well, we'd have been foolish to hope! Besides, Capsi made his own choice long ago, and it doesn't seem to have included us, or remembering us." He sounded sad, but not bitter.
Of course! I could let them assume Capsi had been killed in the war . . . Then, in another half-year, they would read the truth in my book.
I chewed my lip. "I'm afraid it wasn't the war. . . ."
Dad held a finger to my lips. "I'd rather rejoice at your return, yet a while If there's mourning to be done, we'll tackle it later. Your mother and I have got used to the idea of not . . . seeing Capsi again." Dad held his head high, surveying me. He wasn't a tall man, but he out-topped me by a good half-span. "You look well, daughter."
"Do I?"
"No. Actually, you don't. Not 'well'. You look as though you've suffered. But your heart has won through. You've grown up. You went as a girl, you come home as a woman."
"Oh," said I. "Spare my blushes." As yet Dad had no notion that it was / who had ridden the Worm downriver. The event was a matter of universal knowledge, but not the name of the heroine in question. Not yet. The guild was keeping mum till my book was published.
"Talking of girls," said I, "how's my new sister?" For the first time I really looked at Narya. She was hardly knee-high, and skinny, with lots of curly bistre hair like the knots in charcoalwood. In this respect she took after Dad. Her eyes were hazel, just like mine. I'd assumed she would seem a complete stranger to me, yet by virtue of those eyes it was as though, in her, I was inspecting a curious version of myself. She must have been watching me attentively all this while, since she hadn't moved from where Dad had set her down. Now she winked at me.
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