Well, all right, she was laughing at him, but that was a good beginning.
• • •
After washing up as best they could in the gentle river, they went back to the tavern to have some dinner. Some few of the villagers came for the same purpose, mainly younger folk who took the opportunity to get away from their families for a bit and chat among themselves.
Gilly was getting cranky, so as soon as she’d eaten her bread and drunk her milk, Embry took her upstairs for a nap. Arvil settled down to chat with some of the younger people and find out what they knew about Mort and Bayla.
As Embry had said, Bayla’d been sweet on Mort for years, and everyone knew it. Mort had been sweet on Bayla since she’d grown into a woman, which was perhaps not quite so long, but his affections, once attached, hadn’t wavered.
“Were any of you particular friends with them?” he asked. “Secret-sharing friends? Maybe Mort wasn’t off to the Guards after all. If they’d actually had something else planned, who’d know?”
The young folks looked at each other and shrugged. “I were Bayla’s best friend,” said a young woman named Annik. “She told me he were going to the Guards and that she meant to wait for him. He wanted to earn some money first, then marry her when he came home on leave some time. That’s what she said, then she was up and gone. Whatever they were up to, they didn’t tell nobody.”
A young man who claimed to be Mort’s best friend said the same.
“They weren’t close to anyone else? You’re sure?”
Annik and two other girls looked at each other and giggled. “Well,” said Annik. “There’s Danil, o’course. He was sweet on Bayla, swore he were her soulmate, like. Tried to woo her to him. He were kinda stupid over her, aye?”
“But she rejected him?” Arvil asked.
“She weren’t mean about it,” said Annik. “But, aye, it were always Mort for Bayla, and she never made no secret of it.”
“So she wouldn’t have told Danil about any secret plans, then.”
The whole group laughed at that and shook their heads.
“Well, if you think of anything else, come find me?”
They all agreed, then turned back to their food and their chatter.
• • •
Arvil took Graya with him when he went back to the burned-out house. “Maybe you’ll see something I miss,” he said. “Or smell something.” She tossed her head in a nod and followed him up the road, her hooves ringing on the rocklike dirt.
“I remember the shop,” he said. “The floor was laid with tiles, not boards. There weren’t even any rugs.” Stepping carefully through the mess, sure enough he found no charred floorboards. The only blackened wood had been timbers and furniture. And he seemed to remember . . .
He walked around the kiln, and there it was. A smaller opening on the opposite side to the larger one, where the pottery went. “There,” he said. “There’s a smaller oven here on the other side of the kiln. That’s where Nilly cooked and baked, in the back room. The chimney’s fallen, but it went up to the second floor and heated the bedrooms in the winter. Very thrifty. And very safe. There was only one fire, here in the kiln, with tile all around it—nothing to catch.”
Graya reared up and propped her forefeet on a fallen timber to get a good look. She wouldn’t try navigating the uneven tumble inside the building unless she had to, he knew, but she looked in from various angles.
“It wasn’t a hearth fire because there was no hearth, not like the other houses have. So perhaps it was an overturned lamp or a carelessly placed candle after all?”
Graya kept circling the building, looking and snuffling. When she reached the back of the building, she whinnied and stamped.
“What is it?” Arvil made his way over to where she stood, kicking against the remains of the back door. “What are you looking at?” he asked, wishing for the thousandth time the Lady had blessed him with Mindspeech.
Graya tapped her hoof along a curving band of darker wood in the door, then pointed with her nose at a similar band running up one of the still-standing timbers.
Arvil frowned at the markings for a moment before it hit him. Oil.
His trainer, Herald Jinnia, had shown him markings just like that in a fire they’d investigated. A merchant had found himself deep in debt and burned his own house down, hoping for sympathy and to have his debts forgiven in light of the tragic “accident.”
Someone had deliberately set Corden’s house on fire.
Well, of course they had. That was what he’d been thinking all along, wasn’t it? Even if he hadn’t thought it in so many words. Someone had doused the house—the back of the house, hidden from the street—with oil, then set it afire. With the timbers soaked with oil, the fire would’ve spread quickly and hot, which was exactly what’d happened.
But why? No one had mentioned Corden or Nilly having any enemies. Why would anyone want to kill them? Hate them enough to try to murder the whole family?
Then he thought of where he’d heard Danil’s name before that afternoon, and everything slotted into place.
• • •
Arvil gathered a half-dozen men with shovels and went back to the riverbank to dig, while Embry stayed behind with Gilly. It was nearly sunset before they found the bodies of Mort and Bayla.
The grim men and weeping women of the two families saw to bringing the bodies up and arranging for a more respectful burial, while Arvil and Graya took six men to find Danil Farmer. With two men holding him and under a Truth Spell, Danil eventually admitted to the murders.
“He didn’t deserve her,” Danil spat. “A Guard? What kind of husband would he make, never two coins to rub together? I have a good farm, a house, I’d have taken care of her, of our children. He turned her head, made her foolish.”
“You murdered him for her?” Arvil wanted to be shocked, but he’d heard too many similar self-righteous justifications.
“Yes! But she came looking for him, they were supposed to meet, I didn’t know . . . She started screaming, and I had to quiet her.” Danil finally broke down and sobbed. “I didn’t want to kill her. I had to. I buried them by the river, and everyone thought they’d run off together. Everything was fine until Corden started digging there. I couldn’t let him find the bodies, so . . .” He shook his head and looked down. “I’m glad Gilly is alive.”
Arvil left the village men to do what they did with murderers and went back to the village to find Embry.
• • •
Four days later, Arvil, Embry, and Gilly stood over two fresh graves. They all had bunches of flowers, and Gilly divided them up carefully between her mam and her da.
Arvil was pretty sure she didn’t understand that her parents’ bodies were buried there, but when she was older, she’d remember laying flowers and would maybe take some comfort in it.
“So much death, and for love,” murmured Embry as they watched Gilly switch flowers around in some arrangement that made sense only to her. “Such horrible things done because he wanted to make a family with her.”
“He never loved her,” said Arvil, his voice just as low. He slid an arm around Embry’s waist and hugged him close. “He wanted her. She wasn’t a person to him, not really. She was just a thing he wanted to have, like a fine coat or silver bowl. He didn’t care what she wanted, what would make her happy.”
“I don’t know how you stand it, being around people like that all the time.”
“It’s not always like this. But, yes, it can be hard. I think of the people I’m helping, I do it for them.”
“For Gilly,” said Embry. “And for me. We have justice, and I suppose that’s something. It doesn’t feel like much, though.”
“No. But it’s the best we can do right now.” Arvil turned and pulled Embry full into his arms. “Let’s go home. We’re Gilly’s family now. We’ll love her and tak
e care of her. And we’ll make sure she remembers her parents.”
Arvil felt a little arm go around his leg, and Gilly cried, “Hugs!”
Embry gave a watery laugh and picked her up. They all three of them hugged for a few minutes, standing there by the two graves, then they turned away and started for home.
Bootknife
Stephanie Shaver
The Ferryman’s House hadn’t changed much, and neither had its primary inhabitant. Both were a little grayer, a little weathered; his face had more lines, and the roof had a few loose shingles. But both persevered, so intrinsically a part of Cortsberth that the town couldn’t exist without them.
“Papa,” Herald Wil said to the old ferryman.
“Wil,” Langfirch said. He craned his head to look at the small figure riding pillion behind the Herald. “Ivy, yes?”
The child peeked out, waving shyly.
Langfirch then nodded at Carris, who rode the other Companion accompanying Wil. “This my grandchild, too?”
Wil squinted. Silver laced Carris’s faded red hair and her face carried its fair share of crow’s feet. No one would mistake her for a youth.
Did he just tell a joke? he thought.
:I think . . . yes?: His Companion, Vehs, seemed equally astonished.
“This is Carris,” Wil said. “She’s a Master Bard under arrest for high treason.”
Langfirch scratched his cheek slowly, clearly thinking over an array of responses.
“I have questions,” he said at last. “Many questions.”
“I have answers,” Wil replied.
“And I need to pee,” Carris said.
“When I was a little-little little, I liked snails,” Ivy said.
:I feel like I should interject something, too,: Vehs said.
“Snails you still like?” Langfirch asked his granddaughter.
“They’re okay,” she said, looking everywhere but at him.
“My garden, would like to see? Many snails. All you can have.”
“Yee!” Ivy hopped off Vehs faster than Wil had ever seen her. “Oh! I need a jar!”
“Help with that I can, too.” Langfirch put his hand out to her but kept eye contact with Wil. “Where outhouse is, you know.”
“Yes, sir.” Wil dismounted. “C’mon, Carris.”
“Yee,” the Bard said dryly.
“Meet in house when done,” Langfirch said. “And then, answers.”
“Answers,” Wil agreed. But for your sake, not all of them.
• • •
“So . . . a Karsite.”
Carris said it with just the faintest hint of disdain, but Wil knew better. Bereft of her physical weapons, the Bard had turned to the ones her Circle had trained her on. Insinuation, intonation, words.
“Is he from the brigand or the bad weather side of the country?” she asked.
“Says the traitorous murderer with a bladder the size of a teacup.” He gave the privy door a meaningful look.
Her mouth twisted. “Now I must wonder how far the apple fell from the tree, or if it fell on Valdemaran soil at all.”
“Some of our finest weren’t born here. Have you met Alberich?”
She rolled her eyes. “Typical Herald nonsense,” she half-muttered.
“Do you think you’ve figured something out, Carris?” Wil asked, steering the conversation toward broader waters. “Does it matter where I was born, or what color my mother’s hair was?”
“With Selenay selling our country out to other countries, I’d say yes, resoundingly. A foreign Weaponsmaster. A foreign Herald Captain. Not one, but two foreign spouses, one of who plotted against her. And let’s not forget about Elspeth’s disaster of a betrothal.”
“That’s just a fraction of the Heraldic Circle you’ve named, and the Council is almost entirely Valdemar-born. You’re a Bard; you know royalty marries into foreign families all the time. It’s politics.”
“Selenay’s incompetence is staggering, and the only reason you defend her is because there was a Companion stupid enough to Choose her and that little traitor-born brat of hers.”
Words, Wil reminded himself. They’re all she has left.
“You can call me traitor if it helps you sleep at night,” she said. “I know who the true Valdemarans are.”
Wil pointed to the outhouse. “Pretty sure my father built this on Valdemar’s soil.” He tapped his feet against the scrubby grass. “In fact, I know the caves under this Valdemaran earth better than you ever will. Which ones go down to the river, which ones drop you down a hole where you’ll scream in the dark until death comes.”
“Is that a threat?”
He sighed. “Everything’s a threat to you, Carris. Right now I just want to keep you from wetting my father’s guest bed.” He pointed to the outhouse. “Please.”
She obliged, leaving him staring at the tree line.
Something flickered in his belly. A little tremor that some people would call gut instinct but that Wil knew to be his Gift.
:We’re being watched,: he thought to his Companion. :Is it—:
:Yes. They just arrived.:
:Good.:
When Carris reemerged, he bound her wrists and threw a light Truth Spell on her. “Did you do anything in there to attempt escape?”
She glared at him. “No.” The glow over her head said she didn’t lie.
He pointed to the house. “Let’s go.”
• • •
Wil herded his captive into the one spare bedroom. She sat down on the bed as he crossed to the room’s one window. Aubryn, the Companion that wasn’t Wil’s, had already taken up guard duty outside.
“You know,” he said, “if you’d just tell me where Lord Dark’s stashing his weapons—”
Carris let out a shriek of laughter, cutting him off. He’d brought this up multiple times in their three weeks together. He kept hoping her answer would change, but—
“That’s the only bargaining chip I’ve got, Herald,” she said. “And so far, you haven’t given me a good reason to give it up.”
“Atonement.”
She snorted. “I have nothing to atone for.”
“Ferrin’s dead because of you.”
“Ferrin, the vacuous fopdoodle missed by precisely no one?”
“Murder is still murder.”
Aubryn turned her head in their direction. :And if you think Lord Dark is going to reward your loyalty, you’re mistaken,: she said. From the surprise on Carris’s face, Wil knew the message hadn’t just been for him.
“Yes, well,” Carris said. “There are worse things than death. If I keep my mouth shut, he may make mine swift.”
“And too bad if my family might be collateral damage,” Wil said, half-growling.
“That’s on you, Herald,” Carris shot back. Then she rolled over, turning her back.
:Thanks for trying,: Wil thought.
:It’s a lost cause,: Aubryn said, with her usual brick-to-the-head bluntness. :Give her to the Mindspeakers and Mindhealers. They’ll get a confession.:
:I’m trying.:
The building the locals called the Ferryman’s House had started as a one-room, dirt-floor hovel but had been built up and out over the years. First a separate room for sleeping in, then one for storage, then another. The original room was still the largest, with a hearth and a hatch leading down into the basement and cave passages below, one of which let out by the river and the ferry landing. The whole structure hid within a small forest, so only the locals knew about it. The house and its ferryman’s role had been passed down in one family since before the Last Herald-Mage.
Until fifty years ago, when the childless ferryman had taken in a Karsite refugee and her son, Langfirch.
Wish they’d worked a little more on his language skills, Wil thought as
he took a seat at the big trestle table.
“Where’s Ivy?” Wil asked.
“Collecting snails under your Demon-horse’s watchful eye,” his father replied in Karsite. “I suppose she doesn’t speak the mother tongue.”
“Your mother,” Wil said, obliging his father by switching to the language he was more comfortable with, and ignoring the jab at Vehs. “My mother was born in Cortsberth, thank you very much. And neither of that girl’s parents ever lived in Karse.”
The old man grunted. “Lucky them.” He lifted a brow and inclined his head toward the hatch leading down to the basement. “Wouldn’t the cellar be a better place for the criminal?”
“I have other plans for that. Speaking of which, I don’t suppose you have anything in the pantry for us?”
“In fact I do. Eggs and cheese, some bread and butter. And handpies from Addy.”
Wil drew a small quarrel from a pouch hanging around his neck, then rolled it around on the tabletop.
“What I’m about to do is massively unfair to you,” Wil said, “but I’m running short on options, and this is the only safe place I could think of.”
Langfirch shrugged. “It’s the job of parents to protect their children.”
“The very short version of the tale is that she’s a Bard who’s turned against the Crown and is in collusion with someone trying to start a civil war. I should have taken her to Haven by now to be formally charged and questioned.”
Langfirch raised his brow. “But instead?”
Wil hesitated. Not many knew about the assassination attempt on Elspeth, and he wasn’t sure his father should, either.
“We got . . . diverted,” he said. “An incident in Haven. It gave her accomplices time to send assassins. They’ve been following us for a few days now.”
“How many?”
“Not sure. At least three tried to ambush us at a Waystation on the way here.” And thank the gods for Gifts, or they’d have caught us, too.
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