by Sarah Remy
The guards at the north gate paid them little attention, sending them through with a wave after the briefest consideration. It was a far cry from plague season when every man, woman, and child was checked thrice for sickness before being allowed into the city. Liam wondered if it would change again when Wilhaiim allied with Roue against the desert lords. The desert seemed strange and distant, many days’ ride beyond the mountains. It was hard to imagine any meaningful threat from so far away.
The horses’ hooves clattered on cobblestone; even in the heat the animals were eager to run. Parsnip glanced Liam’s way for permission, but he shook his head.
“Not till we’ve passed squatters’ row,” he cautioned. The ghetto tended to sprawl across the highway with no care for traffic, despite efforts by the king and the temple both to ease overcrowding. “Take care where the horses step, and keep your eyes front. We don’t need any trouble.”
They went single file through the ramshackle settlement. The horses, well broke, paid no attention to the ghetto’s exotic-looking hovels but Liam caught his companions peeking around at their odd surroundings. The shacks were built up against the curve of the city wall out of anything sturdy enough to keep back wind and rain: lopsided tent poles, canvas and burlap, wooden crates and chunks of gray stone. Colorful flags of torn fabric flew outside makeshift doors, some marked with paint or embroidery; squatters’ row had its own thriving economy. Many of the merchants who worked Wilhaiim’s Fair lived in the ghetto and did private, more delicate business outside the city, away from Renault’s watchful Kingsmen.
The ghetto at midday appeared mostly deserted. A theist stood outside one of the larger huts, brown robes soaked through in places with sweat, tonsured head gleaming. A bucket of steaming water sat in the mud by his sandaled feet. He paused in drying his hands on a rag as the horses trotted past, regarding them warily. New blood flecked his chin and the side of his nose; tooth-pulling forceps and a set of costly silver dental tongs warmed in the bucket.
Liam shuddered. He crossed himself, running the tip of his tongue gratefully around his own still-strong teeth. Arthur laughed under his breath.
“The pulling’s not so bad as that, sir,” he murmured as they left the theist and his tools behind. “No worse than the pain of a rotted tooth, that’s for certain. Some of them healers are kind enough to give you a swallow of the opion syrup before they start yanking.”
“Opion? From the flower?” Startled, Liam forgot caution. The gray shifted uneasily beneath him, alerted by his sharp tone. A woman with a dusty kerchief over her white-blonde hair stuck her head through the flap of her crooked tent. She frowned in their direction.
Arthur shrugged. “It tastes bitter as spit but it makes the pain go away. The priests hoard it like it’s true gold melted into a tincture. Didn’t work much on the Worm, though. Just because you forget you’re going to die doesn’t mean you won’t still do.”
Morgan laughed but Parsnip clenched her fists in her horse’s mane. The woman in the kerchief disappeared back into her tent, pulling the flap firmly closed. Liam remembered watching Mal take Khorit Dard through the throat with a dagger, how the Lord of the Poppies had fallen, blood gashing from beneath his chin. Gouts of red had splashed across a golden chest filled to bursting with twists of black opion tar. Liam knew what was in the chest because Mal had forced it open with the tip of his knife and smiled at what he saw there, but it wasn’t a pleasant sort of smile, not the usual self-mocking grin Liam had come to expect whenever the magus relaxed enough to remember pleasure.
No, Mal had smiled down into the chest like a hungry wolf sighting spring lambs unguarded on the Downs. That was when Liam understood that something in his master, some important part of Mal, had gone wrong.
Past squatters’ row there was room enough on the highway to ride two abreast. The walls of the city were at Liam’s left shoulder, farmland on his right. The early summer crop had reached its height; wheat, rye, and barley turned the rolling hills amber, standing proud even in the heat. A scrap of green against gold hid a distant farmhouse.
“Holder’s plot is further east,” Parsnip said. “That’s rented land, there. They keep to themselves, mostly. Can we gallop now?”
The wide white road was empty as far ahead as Liam could see. The glare made rainbow ripples in the air just above cobblestone. The barest of breezes ruffled the fields, making the crop sigh.
Liam grinned. “Race you to Flossy Creek,” he said, kicking his horse forward. The gray, delighted at the opportunity, grabbed the bit in his teeth, stretched his neck, and ran.
Morgan whooped a challenge. He spurred his horse into the race. Arthur, choking on road dust, flung a string of bitter curses after them.
For all his awkward lines Liam’s mount had spirit. The gray’s long legs ate up the ground, hooves pounding out a steady rhythm. Farmland rushed past even as Wilhaiim’s walls unspooled behind them. Liam stood tall in his stirrups, laughing. Morgan on his Wythe stead galloped half a nose behind, but it was Parsnip on her skinny chestnut who won the day, surging past just off the highway, trampling good soil and stems of wheat as they flew by. Parsnip stuck her tack with natural grace, obviously at home in the saddle. Liam, squinting after the chestnut’s streaming tail, wondered in amazement if Lane had ever actually seen the lass ride.
Parsnip, he thought, could have handily ridden any horse in the king’s stable, never mind the hot-blooded black mare.
Morgan whooped again, shouting his horse forward but Parsnip was too far down the road to catch. Gasping past giggles, Liam slowed the gray to a canter, looking back over his shoulder for Arthur. Sweat trickled into his eyes, stinging. The gray lashed its head, nostrils blowing pink. Liam pulled the reluctant gelding up. He could hear Arthur before he saw him; boy and horse came around a bend of crop at a trot, reins wrapped tight around Arthur’s fists. Liam felt a twitch of pity for the poor pony.
“You can’t help me with this,” Arthur said through gritted teeth when he reached Liam. “Not like the sword. Doesn’t matter anyway, does it? It’s infantry for me.”
“Even infantry mount up on occasion,” Liam pointed out, but Arthur shook his head.
“I can ride well enough,” he argued, even as he tugged nervously on the pony’s mouth. “It’s the galloping hell-for-leather across cobblestone I don’t much like. That’s good sense, innit? Parsnip knows better, but she’s likely never fallen from a horse in her life. She rides like she was whelped in the tack.”
Liam frowned. “She’s got Lane well fooled, then.”
Arthur brightened. “Aye, she does that,” he agreed. “If she let on she’d be moved straight to calvary and that would break her heart. It’s the infantry for Parsnip, too, because her da was an infantryman, and her cousin Alf was meant to be before the plague took ’em, and Parsnip wants to walk the family path.” Realizing they’d been left well and truly behind, Arthur shook the pony’s reins. “Ayup! Slow and steady, old man. The stones are slippery and I’ve no wish to crack my head open if I can help it.”
Liam forbear to point out Arthur’s feet almost scraped the highway. The bay pony was no Kingsman’s courser. A tall man could step off her at the trot. From the glazed look in her rolling eye Liam thought the pony very much wished Arthur would.
“Creek’s not far,” Liam said. “We’ll walk.” He kicked off his stirrups, swung a leg over the saddle, and dropped to the road. Arthur’s sour expression said he wasn’t fooled and didn’t appreciate Liam’s kindness.
“Infantry, aye?” Liam prompted. “Better get used to walking now.”
Arthur clamored awkwardly out of his saddle, wincing. The bay pony blew a sigh of relief. Arthur scrubbed fingers across his sweaty face as he peered ahead in the direction his friends had gone. Then he crossed himself, shoulder-to-shoulder and brow to groin, absently sketching the old theist warding sign.
“One for sorrow,” he recited before gathering up the pony’s dangling reins.
Liam looked up over the cr
op. A black speck wheeled in the white sky. He’d watched the same flyspeck for hours from the deck of The Cutlass Wind. He’d recognize that distant glimpse of feathered wings anywhere; more than once the raven had been the root of his courage.
“That one’s sorrow’s enemy,” he corrected Arthur as Jacob banked low on unseen breezes. “Come on; the others will be starting to wonder.”
Flossy Creek was a merry brook. The clear water was high even midsummer, burbling as it whirled around rocky outcroppings, meandering in a westerly direction where Liam assumed it would eventually meet a larger watercourse and join the sea. A gray stone bridge—just spacious enough for a farmer’s wagon—spanned the scant gap between banks. Green-and-yellow moss speckled the bridge’s underbelly while above the stone was dust dry.
Morgan and Parsnip stood on the far bank, waiting. Morgan’s hair dripped down his back; he’d obviously dunked his head. Parsnip’s horse pawed at the shallow water, splashing playfully. Liam led the gray across the bridge to drink. He squatted in the mud alongside the horse, rinsing his hands and face. He heaved a sigh of relief.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” Parsnip watched Arthur scoop a handful of water over his head. “Holder’s land is just on that way, not far.”
“Mount up,” Liam ordered, reluctantly quitting the creek. Arthur groaned but complied without further complaint. The bay pony rolled her eye at Liam in mute protest.
In deference to the heat they let the spent horses set a lazy pace. Over the bridge the road was packed dirt; a private lane instead of the king’s cobbled highway. Wheat grew high and close on either side of the road, an apparently endless amber wall. Liam gazed out over the top of it, looking for the green copse that marked house or barn, but saw only crop and sky and Jacob wheeling on the horizon.
“Oh!” blurted Morgan suddenly. “I didn’t realize . . . I mean, it looks different now, with all the wheat. But I should have, what with the creek.”
He’d reined up and was peering down at something on the side of the road. When Liam joined the lad he saw a squat obelisk set in the earth between road and farmland, half hidden by wheat. It was a marker of some sort, the gray stone recently cut. A clutch of purple wildflowers festooned the flat top.
“Bone Cave,” Parsnip explained in a whisper, catching Liam’s puzzled stare. “Trail’s hard to see, but it’s straight that way.” She pointed across the field. “The stone marks the turning.”
“Bone Cave?” Liam asked. The purple buds were only beginning to wilt. He thought they hadn’t been on the stone long. He squinted in the direction Parsnip pointed.
“Well, there was so many, wasn’t there?” Arthur said. “Too many all at once for the graveyard to handle. And the theist’s fires, well. They burn hot, aye, but not hot enough. There’s bones left over. Plenty of them. So King Renault, he thought of the old goatherd’s cave.” He lowered his voice, twining his fingers in the pony’s rough mane. “They’re all there, now, the left over pieces of ’em. Sealed up together. My mum’s in the cave, and my sister, too.”
“And my older brother Edward, who was earl before me,” Morgan offered quietly. “But I don’t visit the cave like Mother does. I don’t like to. I’d rather burn a candle in the temple.”
“Don’t be afraid, Morgan,” Parsnip said, still gazing out across the crop. “They can’t get out. They’re sealed in.”
Liam shivered. “Bones stay where they’re put,” he agreed, although he still sometimes dreamed of the dead walking in Stonehill.
Holder met them in the middle of the dusty road. A short man, he was dwarfed by his crop and burned red by the sun. He wore a straw hat on his head and carried a midsized scythe in one hand. His other lay on the blunt head of a brindled hound. The hound quivered all over but stayed obediently at his master’s side.
“You belong to Lane,” he deduced. His voice sounded gritty, rarely used. “Those are palace horses and secondhand tunics from the barracks. So.” He swung the scythe beside his leg. “How many do you need?”
“How many do you have?” Liam wondered, thinking of the destruction Arthur had left behind in the training yard.
Holder smiled. He was missing most of his teeth. “Depends on your coin. Come and see,” he invited. “It was a lonely winter and spring. I’ve been busy.”
He walked quickly for a short man, scythe swaying at his side. The hound paced at his heels. Liam and the pages followed at a respectful distance.
“Watch yourselves, now,” Holder warned jovially as they turned another bend in the lane. “City horses hain’t seen cattle like mine.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth Parsnip’s chestnut spooked, bolting sideways into Arthur’s pony, almost dislodging them both. Parsnip squeaked and levered her left rein until the horse’s nose was almost at her knee. The chestnut froze. The other horses snorted, dancing. Arthur’s pony, offended, lifted its tail and took a groaning shit on the cobblestones.
“By the Aug,” Parsnip said evenly, glaring down at Holder. “Can you blame them? I’ve never seen cows like that. You might have given us more warning.”
Holder put his hands on his hips. He regarded his cattle with pride. Liam counted six of the monsters, each black as night. The animals were lean and ribby. Their ebon horns curved forward around toward their noses, thick and sharp enough to gore a man straight through. They stood dozing in a dry pasture cut between walls of wheat, ears flicking.
“Those are my bulls,” Holder said. “The cows are smaller, so I keep ’em closer to the barn, away from wolves and thieves.”
“Hennish cattle.” Morgan leaned over his horse’s neck to get a better view of the pasture. “I didn’t know there were any left in flatland fields!”
“Aye, well.” The scythe twitched against Holder’s hip. “There’s less of a call for Hennish leather since the king’s grandaddy ordered our magi brought to heel. But my own grandfather vowed to keep the lines going, and made my da promise, too. So here they are, waiting for their time to come again.”
Arthur wrinkled his nose. “I dunno. Bet they’d rather stand in your fields than be tanned for a vocent’s fancy togs.”
Holder laughed without humor. “They know their place in the world, lad, just like any man should. And like any man, they’d rather be useful than forgotten.”
Holder’s barn was hidden behind an amber knoll, built almost right into the back of the low hill, disguised by more summer wheat. The Hennish cows slept in a stone paddock near the barn. The cows were almost as large as the bulls, but they lacked the wicked horns. They watched the farmer and his visitors with soft round eyes.
“Leave your horses there.” Holder gestured at a smaller, muddy pen. “There’s water in a trough and they’ll not mind the cows. It’s the smell of the bulls that makes them nervous.” Whistling to his hound, he made for the barn door.
“Does he live out here all by himself, I wonder?” Morgan muttered as they loosed their horses. “That’s an awful lot of work for one man.”
“Look over there.” Arthur tilted his chin. “There was a cottage, but it’s been burned to the ground, but not recently. You can just see where it stood. Look how the rock all about is blackened under the grass, and that bit, there, that was the chimney. ”
Liam, who had lived through the burning of Stonehill, thought Arthur was right. “It’s been long enough that the crop’s starting to grow through the foundation.” He made sure the water trough was indeed full, then closed and secured the paddock gate, double-checking the latch. The last thing they needed, he thought, was to be stranded in the heat with Holder, his dog, and his black cattle. “Lane said Holder’s family got into some trouble, long ago. Could be the throne ordered their homestead fired.” He’d read only a few pages into Brother Lino’s journals but already he’d learned such punishment was commonplace during the Aug’s reign.
Dismissing the uncomfortable thought, he touched the pouch on his belt, making certain the king’s coin was still there.
Don�
��t let him see you’re flush, Liam reminded himself, pulling the edge of his tunic over his belt.
Inside the barn it was cool and dim. Liam and Arthur stood on the threshold, blinking. Morgan peeked impatiently over his friend’s shoulder. Parsnip hung back, cautious. Liam could hear the scuff of animals in the loft above; he smelled the distinct tang of bat.
“Push the door wide,” Holder called from within. “Let the light in.”
The barn door was hung from a narrow iron track bolted to the face of the building. When Liam set his hand to it, the door slid sideways along the track on four small cogs. The door was grand, made of old heartwood, but the track made for easy opening. Two heavy locks hung from an iron chain near the latch.
“Isn’t that a fancy thing?” Morgan stood on tiptoe to get a better look at the track and cogs. “There’s a smith out there somewhere spent many hours on those cogs.”
“My nuncle,” Holder said. He stood in the barn’s wide opening, blinking in the sunlight. “The track is his own design. He had a carpenter’s brain, but he applied it to the forge.” He stepped back into the barn, clearly expecting them to follow.
Liam went first, muscles twitching, although he saw no reason for caution. Morgan and Arthur hurried after. Parsnip followed more slowly; out of the corner of his eye Liam saw her loosen her ax in its snap. Wondering if his unease was so obvious, he took a deep, easing breath and inhaled the incongruous perfume of new cut hay and old pig grease.
Inside, the barn was as neatly kept as any house. The floor was swept clean down to the bare earth. Tidy squares of baled hay filled the loft above. Only three stalls remained and those had been changed, the box walls built up high as the loft floor and tall, sturdy doors added where once horses would have looked out onto the aisle. The other eight had been broken down, the space cleared, the plank walls turned on their sides atop ironbound barrels to make a massive worktable. A workman’s detritus covered the table from end to end: wood shavings, bits of iron and brass, several chisels, a small ax, and a set of augers laid out by size. A pair of blackened tongs weighed down bundled burlap. Liam recognized the cloth from his own practice bouts with Pumpkinhead.