Zanner realized that the only thing to do was go with the Watchmen. This was Haven; there’d be a Judge, so Zanner could demand a Herald and then go free in time to perform tonight. Trying to look as innocent as possible, Zanner responded, “I’ll come with you. I didn’t do any of this, and I want to see a Judge and a Herald.”
The shorter one frowned. “We have other problems at the moment; you’re going to have to wait in the jail.”
“Wait, what? You’re arresting me but telling me that we can’t get this cleared up?”
“Look, kid, vandalism isn’t nearly as big as the other stuff we have to deal with. But you fit the profile of a suspect, and I’m not going back to my sergeant to tell him that we let a suspect go.”
Zanner swallowed. “How long?”
The taller Watchman shrugged, and gestured for Zanner to go with them.
• • •
“They stuck me in the common jail cell and forgot about me. Eventually I got someone’s attention and asked him to get a message to Serril, so Serril could at least get me out of there.” Zanner looked up from the floor. “It was so late by that point that I knew I’d missed the performance, but if I could get out, I could at least try to explain. I didn’t really think any further than that.”
Ronnet had sat on the floor during Zanner’s story. “It’s late enough that I think maybe we should all get some sleep. We’ll figure out what to do, if anything, in the morning. Do you want a hand up? A hug?”
Zanner fell into Ronnet’s arms, and the strongman held Zanner close while Zanner sobbed some more. “That’ll be a hug, then.”
But none of the Family could sleep after Zanner’s story. Ella and Hallen huddled together over the pile of coins, quietly discussing ways to make it bigger. Finn told stories about life on the road to Lisbet, who had pulled out costumes and was busy mending and adding embellishments. Conna and Wenn listened as Serril talked more about how Jayin was doing, and the kind of training she was getting at the Collegium. Soon, Serril had the entire Family gathered around him, telling stories about anything and everything he’d experienced, mostly around being a Healer and the sorts of things that Jayin could expect once she became a full Healer. He even—at everyone’s demand, even Zanner, who’d finished weeping by that point—told the story of his fling with Kerina.
Serril was just at the point where he and Kerina had finally found a private place out in Companion’s Field when the door opened, this time more carefully, to reveal Herald Kerina entering, her earlier smile completely gone now.
“Avelard timing,” Zanner managed, while Conna and Wenn laughed a bit.
“Zanner Avelard, I’m sorry to say that we’ve caught the vandal.”
Zanner blinked. “Oh, no.”
“Yes, you were right. Do you want to come with me? The person in question is, well, not being polite about a number of things, but your suspicions helped identify her well before any of the Watch would have considered her. I think you deserve this vindication, but it’s up to you.” Kerina offered a weak smile now. “I understand if your answer is no. But if it is a yes, you can bring a few of your Family along with you.”
“Serril, Ella, and Ronnet,” came Zanner’s instant response.
• • •
The sergeant who’d been there when Serril came to get Zanner just gaped when the five of them came in, and he bowed to Herald Kerina. “Yes, Herald. She’s in a private cell as you requested. She’s not violent or anything, but she is a bit young to be kept in with the drunks.” As the Sergeant turned to lead them, he said over his shoulder, “She’s got a mouth, though, and no mistake. My da would have had soap in that mouth right away.”
The private cells were empty save for one at the very end. A teen girl, skirts clenched in her hand, looked up and saw the five of them, but she immediately stared with blazing eyes at Zanner. “You! You did this to my brother! You’re the one that corrupted him!”
The target of her anger paled, but Serril and Ronnet both put a protective hand on Zanner’s shoulders. “That’s not the truth, and you know it.”
“My ma and da told me you’d lie about my brother—anything to save your own skin!”
Kerina looked at the raging girl and asked, “Why, though? Why did you do it?”
“Because my brother doesn’t know what it’s like out there. He’s in danger if he’s not with his family, because we’ll take care of him and make sure he’s safe!”
Zanner said with some acid, “Oh, safe? Like kicking her out of the house and telling her never to come back?”
“HIM!” screeched the girl. “Stop lying! It was only for the night, then Ma or Da would have come out to get him and bring him home, where he belongs!” Now, tears were flowing along with the anger. “If you hadn’t come along and taken him away, he’d be home safe in bed by now!” The girl turned away, sobbing into the mattress.
“Elly,” Zanner said, “Jeck wouldn’t have taken your sibling back. Liah, either. Or, if they did, your sibling would have been very unhappy. Trust me, my parents are very much like Jeck and Liah.”
“NO! They love us!” She grabbed the lone pillow and put it over her head.
Zanner turned to Herald Kerina and asked, “What’s going to happen to her?”
Kerina frowned. “She’s just under the age of majority, sadly, so back to her parents she goes. And they’ll be made to pay the damages where possible, within reason.” She blew air past her lips. “Zanner, Serril, can you come with me? I’ve only just met you two—” she said to Ella and Ronnet, “—but please come with us? There’s a bit we need to discuss.”
Outside, the sky was finally going pale, and they heard the sounds of a working city waking up. “She’s very, very upset, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more trouble brewing. I’ll ask someone to check in on Elly and her parents to make sure they won’t do anything rash. But that’s not really why I’d like to talk with you, Zanner.”
Zanner shrank a bit but nodded.
“You and your friends have suffered quite a bit, and I’m sure with more than just the damages. There’s probably been talk in the neighborhoods as well, yes?”
“Some. Bren is probably safe, but I’m not sure of the rest.” Zanner looked away. “And Nessa. . . . This is going to break her heart.”
Kerina snorted. “Well, yes, but I’d say it’s safer for Nessa to not be with that family. And that leads at least partly into the next thing I need to ask: You and your friends, you don’t have anyone to keep watch over you, make sure that you’re not in danger, or have some kind of support, do you?”
Zanner’s eyes got wide. “No. It’s . . . not anything any of us had ever thought about because it’s been easy for people not to believe us about other things.” Zanner glanced briefly back at the Watchhouse. “Like Elly. She won’t believe Nessa, but she will believe her parents.”
“So you need someone to believe you all, right?” Kerina grinned. “I’ve been at loose ends for a couple of months now; something about riding Circuit doesn’t agree with me, and most of the other things I could get involved in already have Heralds working on them. Would you be willing to introduce me to your friends? We can start small, maybe with Bren, and then go from there.”
Zanner’s mouth fell open. “Just like that? Why?”
“Because someone believed me years ago. Granted, that someone was an interfering, nosy, busybody of a Companion, but Errol is one of the best things that happened to me. Maybe I can pass that on, be one of your best things.” She smiled and shook her head, apparently “listening” to her Companion. “Errol says he’s seen some very odd things in his time as well, so your friends aren’t likely to be all that different. He’s also quite interested in meeting Bren, especially if your friend makes anything for a Companion’s mane.”
“I’ll say yes, tentatively,” Zanner offered to Kerina, “but first I think we
all need to get some sleep.” Turning, Zanner grabbed Ella’s hand, then Ronnet’s. “I’m sorry I hid this from you.”
Ronnet just smiled. Ella was the one who pulled Zanner into a hug, and said, “I understand why, just don’t do it again?”
Serril beamed and then yawned hugely. “I love you all, but it’s been years since I pulled an all-nighter, and Jayin isn’t easy to keep up with even when I’ve had plenty of sleep. I’ll come by in a few days, check on you all.” And he headed off toward the Palace, whistling.
“Your own bed awaits, young Zanner,” Ronnet said, “and so does ours. New day, new dawn, more people to amuse and entertain. And there’s money to be earned to help your friend—after all, Bren’s your friend, and a friend of yours is a friend of the Family’s. And thank you, Herald, for your help here.”
Kerina smiled and said, “I’ll visit in a few days as well!”
With that, the three Avelards turned back toward the Tipsy Gryphon, and the rest of the Family.
Ordinary Miracles
Rebecca Fox
It is said in certain circles that the first of many miracles heralding the return of a true Son of the Sun to Karse occurred near the country’s northernmost border, in the tiny village of Sunswatch, a place so small that its ramshackle Temple is tended by a single Sunpriest, and the village blacksmith also serves as horse marshal and mayor. The particulars of the miracle vary depending on the teller, but all the stories agree on two points: that it happened in the fifth year that Radiance Lastern sat upon the Sun Throne and that it began, as so many miracles do, with a dream . . .
• • •
The dream belonged to Kip, the blacksmith’s boy, an utterly ordinary looking lad with bony elbows and skin the color of toasted almonds and dark curly hair that always seemed to be an inch too long, and it was a dream he very much did not want. In it, young Kip knelt before the altar of an echoing temple built entirely of some sort of pale stone, in a pool of rainbow light that poured through a vast stained-glass window depicting the Sun in His Glory. He could smell incense and woodsmoke. In the dreams that came true, he could always taste and smell. It was how Kip knew them from the others, the ordinary kind.
As he knelt there, a veiled woman robed in white stepped from the shadows behind the altar. Silver bangles on her wrist chimed softly, like little temple bells. As she drew closer, he could see the blood that stained her robe. She was limping badly.
Kip stared at her. The woman reached up to push aside her veil. As she did so, there was a flash of clear, cold, silvery light.
Kip awoke sweating. It was still pitch dark in the little hayloft where he slept. With a sense of relief, he breathed in the familiar dusty golden scent of hay and sleeping horses. Somewhere outside a single cricket chirped languidly, the song of waning summer. The boy felt rather than saw the cat that jumped onto his pallet to lie beside him, and he automatically reached out to rub the notched ears and rough, dirty fur.
“I had another dream, Spot.” He hadn’t had one of the coming-true kind since that one last summer about the Temple olive grove burning, and Kip had begun to let himself hope they’d stopped for good.
“Mrow,” said Spot, rubbing his cheek against Kip’s wrist.
“You don’t understand,” Kip said, as if the cat had just voiced his approval. “If anyone ever finds out about my dreams, they’ll put me to the Fires just like my ma.”
Spot just wriggled closer and kneaded Kip’s thin coverlet with contentment.
“Of course you don’t understand,” the boy sighed. “You’re a cat. I’d trade you places if I could.”
• • •
Eventually Kip must have slept again, and far too deeply and too long, because the next thing he knew the weak light of dawn was peeking through the cracks between the boards of the barn. The entire household would already be at morning prayer!
Swearing under his breath, he pulled his boots on over bare feet, yanked his tunic over his head, and ran a hand through his tangled hair before scrambling down the hayloft ladder and pelting across the packed-dirt courtyard separating the barn and the smithy from the blacksmith’s dwelling.
He slid onto the rock hard kneeler at the back of the smith’s Sun Shrine, in between the housemaid and Sen, the smith’s apprentice, just as the smith was lighting the incense. Sen glanced at him and gave him a nasty smirk. Kip had been missed, and there would be punishment waiting.
Kip ignored him and tried instead to focus on the sound of the smith chanting the Morning Office, on the tendrils of incense smoke rising from the thurible. He wished he hadn’t. For a just a moment, he seemed to see the shape of the veiled woman outlined in the curling smoke.
Heart pounding, he shut his eyes tightly. When he opened them again, there was nothing more extraordinary about the incense or Sun Shrine than there had been on any other morning of Kip’s life. He breathed a tiny sigh of relief.
When the time came for them to make their private petitions to Vkandis Sunlord, Kip knew what he should pray for—that the Sunlord would take his dreams and make him Clean, so that he might be spared the Fires. But that wasn’t the prayer that he whispered in the secret depths of his heart.
Lord of the Morning, if there’s something you want me to do, I wish you’d tell me what it is. He closed his eyes and bowed until his forehead nearly touched the floor, breathing in the scent of incense and wood polish.
But the only answer he got was the smith’s wife hauling him roughly to his feet and propelling him out the door of the Sun Shrine and into the courtyard.
“Lazy wretch! I hope you aren’t expecting breakfast after that. Did you think I’d miss you sneaking in after we’d already said the first canticle? And with your tunic stained and your hair uncombed. Sloth’s a sin against Vkandis Sunlord, you know. Honestly, boy, you’re no better than your heretic slut of a mother.” The smith’s wife was a plump dark-haired woman with rosy cheeks who looked perfectly motherly as long as one didn’t bother to look in her eyes.
The color rose in Kip’s face, but he hung his head in what he hoped was an adequate show of meekness. No sense in starting the morning with an empty belly and a beating.
The smith’s wife went on, as she always did. It was a familiar refrain. “If it weren’t our bounden duty to Vkandis Sunlord to shelter the orphan and the destitute, I’d have turned ye out to starve years ago.”
Why go to the trouble of turning me out when you can starve me right here? he thought bitterly as his stomach growled. By this and other acts of pious charity did the blacksmith and his wife win the favor of Sunpriest Aram and the Voices of Vkandis.
Kip muttered something about having to sweep and open the smithy and darted across the courtyard before he had the chance to say something he knew he’d be given cause to regret.
• • •
Just before the midday meal, Varelian the chandler brought his jenny mule to the smithy to be shod. The animal liked to bite and kick anyone who handled her, so naturally Kip was summoned to hold her while the smith trimmed her hooves and fitted her shoes. Still, dodging the mule’s teeth for a half-candlemark was not without its compensations. Varelian was also the village gossip, and he liked to stand and talk to the smith while the man worked.
“That Old Man Dunnett’s spinnin’ his crazy stories again, Smith,” Varelian said as he tamped a bit of pipeweed into the bowl of his battered old corncob pipe and lit it with a coal. “Las’ night ’round sunset, that old half-broke pasture fence of his on the west side come down, and out came all them half-starved cows of his, all over Garal’s cornfield. Garal says the old man came a-runnin’ after them, wavin’ his arms around and yellin’ how it wasn’t his fault.”
“Never is.” The smith held a shoe against the jenny mule’s left fore hoof, regarded it critically, and took the shoe back to the anvil. “What was it this time? A Firecat hunting for his supper?”
&nb
sp; Every story Old Man Dunnett told was wilder than the last. He’d once gone to Sunpriest Aram claiming he’d seen the spirit of the last Son of the Sun walking the gardens of the village Temple at twilight.
“Better. Says he saw a White Demon come galloping down out of the hills faster’n’ anything natural could possibly run and plow right through that old fence of his.”
The smith’s laugh was rough. “Old Man Dunnett is half blind and can’t be bothered to keep his fences in good repair. Probably it was that old white bull of his who broke that same fence last winter. Garal find anything?”
“Some white hair on his fence, which could’ve come from one of the cows, and a bunch of trampled corn and cow prints. Only place the thing could’ve went and not been seen is the arroyo, and Garal sent his eldest on down there to check. Wasn’t so much as a rabbit. Bah!”
“Dunnett’s trying to get Garal to pay some to fix the fence, no doubt.” The smith bent over, took the jenny’s leg between his knees, and started nailing on the shoe. “Still, if Sunpriest Aram sends word to the Hierophant like he ought to, things might get a bit interesting around these parts before long. I heard there were Voices of Vkandis riding circuit up near Jainstown.”
“Ain’t nothin’ the Voices like better than stirring up trouble for other people,” Varelian agreed gruffly. “Sorry, Smith, I know that’s blasphemy. But it’s also true.”
• • •
Varelian’s story had stirred in Kip an odd, inexplicable restlessness that lasted through midday prayers and into the afternoon. So when Sen came from the smithy with the empty kindling sack over his shoulder, Kip took the bag from him and said he’d do the gathering, even though the day had turned dark and windy with intermittent spatters of cold rain. Sen gave him an odd look but handed the sack over without complaint.
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