by Kirby Crow
He shook his head. “Zsu can do better than a pedlar who can't find his way home twice in a moon.” It was excuse and he knew it. Zsu's prospects for a Hilurin husband had been sharply curtailed by the burning of Lysia. Now Deni and his father would have to accept that Zsu must go much further away than they were prepared for if she wanted to marry properly, or let her take up with some less-acceptable Aralyrin soldier or merchant who traveled the river. Neither prospect was appealing, if he knew Deni.
Deni's disappointment showed. “You'd be a partner in the business,” he offered further. “Dad's thinking about buying out Skeld's Ferry too, since Kev is moving on with his sons. You'd never go hungry, Scarlet, and you'd be able to visit Annaya as much as you want, once the ferry and boats are ours."
The offer was more than fair: property and belonging and a decent Hilurin family who would welcome him as one of their own, no questions asked. Scarlet glanced at Zsu and saw that she and Annaya had fallen silent and were looking at him: Annaya with sadness and Zsu with some surprise.
"You will not find another Hilurin wife so easily,” Deni urged.
He regarded Zsu, wavering in his decision, for he was fond of them all and she was probably the prettiest girl he had ever seen, next to Annaya. She had wild black hair that reached down to her knees and large dark eyes fringed with heavy lashes, so that when she raised her eyes quickly she had the aspect of a startled deer. She was not too fussy either, and liked to climb trees and go fishing and chase after the goats.
"And what do you want, Zsu?” he asked softly. “Would you be happy with a wandering husband?"
She hesitated, shooting a look from her father to her brother and back to Scarlet before clasping her hands together in front of her and bowing her head. “No,” she breathed.
"What?” Deni exclaimed, clearly not having considered she would have any objections or thoughts of her own. His father started to shout something or other, but suddenly Zsu raised her head, and there was fire in her black eyes.
"I said no,” she stammered. She was scared but standing her ground. “I want to run the ferry myself, and when it's slow in the winter I want to travel to Zarabek and Patra and Morturii to sell goods to the army camps, just like you meant for Scarlet to do."
"Scarlet is a man!” her father roared, ponderous with his anger in the way that only old men can be.
Deni gaped in shock. “You'll do no such thing!"
"I will so!” Zsu shot back, her little hands balled into fists. “I've got the wilding and I'll do as I please, and if you try to stop me or marry me off or put me in chains I'll run far, far away and never come back!"
Scarlet could see that their visit had thrown a hornet's nest into the lap of Zsu's family. He apologized and promised a future visit and hurried toward Skeld's Ferry, hearing Deni's protests and the father's bellowing for nearly a mile.
Annaya smirked at him as they walked in the spring sun. The air was chilly but not too much, and moving kept them warm.
"What?"
"Zsu. You thought you could just take her or leave her.” She smirked again, very satisfied.
"Did you know she had the wilding?"
"Oh yes,” she said wisely. “I've always known."
"You might have told me," he said crossly.
She only giggled again and whispered to Shansi behind her hand, and he was annoyed even more. Women! “I do like Zsu very much, you know."
"But you don't love her."
He had only Scaja's teachings to go by, a typical Hilurin who thought little of passion but much of loyalty and constancy. “Well, is that necessary?"
"It might be, to Zsu.” She had some fire of her own, his sister, and it showed in her narrowed eyes. “Dad didn't know everything about women, you know. Mum just liked to let him think he did."
It irked him to suddenly realize that Linhona and Annaya had shared an altogether foreign, feminine world that excluded him and that he had never known about. Scarlet would hear no more disrespect to Scaja, so he set his teeth and walked faster, not speaking to Annaya until nightfall.
* * * *
Annaya nearly drowned Scarlet with tears, but she could not convince him to stay in Nantua. It was a larger village than Lysia, the surrounding countryside flatter, and (he thought) uglier, with less color and also no high view from the foothills of the Nerit. The village itself was hardly prosperous, even less so than Lysia, and there had been a grain blight the previous year that left a deep scar on the place. Scarlet knew that he would never feel at home there, and six days after arriving in Nantua, he was ready to leave again.
"Ankar is no place for a Byzan,” Annaya had argued in the warm, central room of Shansi's house. In the next room, Shansi's mother was putting the dishes on the table for supper. His parents had a large home, if a bit bare, and there was more than enough space for all of them. “What will you do for company? The only friend you have there is Masdren."
All true, but he was itching to get away and beyond reasoning. His old home was gone and he was not ready to try creating a new one. Life on the road had also lost its allure. He needed something different.
"Stay,” Annaya begged. “We could build a house for the three of us, and you could still be a pedlar."
Scarlet thought privately that she was almost as sad as he that he was giving up the life of a pedlar. She had always loved hearing the stories of his adventures and near-misses on the road, and he told her things that he had never told Scaja. For the first time, he wondered what it might have been like for her, a Hilurin girl shut away in a house, knowing she would never have adventures of her own. She had lived her adventures through him, and now he was taking them away from her. He said as much to her, apologetically, and was surprised when she laughed at him and pushed his shoulder.
"Scarlet, you want-wit. If I'd wanted to run the roads, I would have. Do you think Scaja could have stopped me? He couldn't stop you."
Again, he had misjudged her, and he stammered and his ears turned pink, angry at himself for making yet another wrong assumption about another. Would he never stop doing that?
"I don't have the wilding, love,” she said. “I never did. We don't want the same things, and what's best for me isn't what's best for you. I want Shansi and my own home and children that I can teach to love everything Mum and Dad taught me to love. But you ... you're scared, my brother. That's all. Just plain scared, and you're running to Ankar hoping Masdren will hide it for you."
"He's offered to teach me!"
"To do what?” she scorned. “Diaper his brats? You don't want to be a leathersmith, Scarlet, you're meant for the road!"
Had that ever been true? It was a question he could not ask her, because it was tied up in what he had suffered at Cadan's hands and the many dangers he had weathered in his travels before that. He sighed. “I'm just tired of it all, Annaya."
Her dark eyes narrowed. For a moment, she looked very much like Linhona in one of her moods. “This is about the Kasiri chieftain, isn't it?"
He looked away. “Don't be foolish, girl."
"Don't you girl me! I have eyes. You'd have stayed in the camp with him, but he left and now you've given up living to spite him.” She smoothed her skirt and folded her white hands in her lap. “In case you hadn't noticed, he's not here to see you pout."
"Annaya!” he cried, shocked. Scaja had known about the difference in him, and perhaps Linhona, but he was certain Annaya had not.
"It's true. He's left and you're sulking. Why don't you just follow him, you ninny?"
Scarlet sat up straight as if he would bolt out of his chair, and his mouth opened and closed like a gaping fish. After a long moment of panic, he sank back in his seat. “He didn't ask me,” he said at last. His chest ached a little, as if a soft lump of pain were lodged under his breastbone. “He didn't want me to come with him. What he wanted me for would have lasted only a single night. Beyond that, I was nothing to him."
Annaya reached for his hand. “I'm sorry."
"Don't be,” he said, pulling away and standing. “At least he didn't lie to me. I couldn't have borne that.” He could hear Shansi clearing his throat diplomatically in the next room. Supper was ready, but the smith must have been unwilling to intrude on the argument between siblings.
"Won't you stay? Even for a little while?"
He sighed heavily. Annaya meant well, but she was not thinking ahead to a time when a brother would be a bother, when there were children in the bed that was supposed to be his and not enough soup in the pot to go around. Her house would never be his parent's house, and Annaya was starting her own family with Shansi. Nantua could not be his new Lysia. All that was dead.
Annaya made one last reproach before he left. It was in the form of a gift: a leather pedlar's satchel with a deep pouch and sturdy pockets. On the oil-polished flap was a word in curling letters, deeply embossed in red dye.
He ran his hand over it admiringly, the bitterness of their last argument forgotten. “It's beautiful, Annaya. Did you have this done? What does it say?"
"I did it myself. It's your name, Scarlet."
His brow wrinkled in puzzlement. His sister could not read or write any more than he could. As far as he knew, neither could Shansi. “But how? Who helped you?"
"Linhona taught me. It was the one thing I ever asked her to teach me of reading."
She did not wait for him to speak, but embraced him tightly, her little hands digging into his shoulders. “Goodbye, brother."
* * * *
So he left. It seemed that all he had done since meeting Liall was shed parts of his life that he had never intended to lose. He could not talk to Annaya about it, and it was more than not wanting to share how much pain he was in. He was not able to share it. Perhaps it was just the way the gods made him. He could not complain about that, but he regretted that he was parting with Annaya so badly.
She did not understand. With Annaya, it was always damn the winds and too bad if it rained harder. She had never been a quiet girl, and true to form, she was not about to start now. They spent the last night shouting at each other, and in the morning she had sent him off with a fierce hug and tears in her eyes. He crossed the river back into Byzantur at noon, and by the time he was too far down the road to Patra to turn back and apologize, he wanted to.
Sometimes the answer's right in front of us. We're just moving too fast to see it. They were Scaja's words, and he was shortly to discover how prophetic they were. If he had not been so lost in regret, he would have seen the faint smudges of color slipping through the edge of the woods alongside the path long before he drew near to them.
* * * *
"Well, well! It's the wolf cub. We heard the gypsies had gone east. Did they leave you behind?"
Scarlet's mouth was suddenly dry and he knew he had been vastly stupid. It was scar-faced Cadan and three Aralyrin soldiers blocking his way on the Iron Path. They had come up so sudden from the trees that he had seen only shadows slipping from behind tree trunks, silent as wraiths in the quiet day. They were as fearsome as wraiths, too; armed men with a look of bored villainy.
No sense asking what they wanted. Scarlet tried to bluff his way out. “Stand aside and let me pass."
"Bold orders from the bedmate of a thieving Kasiri,” Cadan said, his palms resting on the hilts of his knives. His right leg was wrapped in some kind of leather splint below the knee and he stood with his heel up, not resting his full weight on it.
"I'm not-!” The denial was half out before he could stop it. He shook his head. “Get out of my way!” Scarlet's voice was brave, but inside he had begun to shiver. This former Kasiri soldier had meant to murder him once, for no more reason than revenge on another man. His fingers inched toward the long-knives at his hips, but Cadan only stared at him, smiling coldly in silence. There were four against one. To draw a weapon now would mean his death, and Cadan knew it.
He did not know what he expected Cadan to say, some threat or promise of harm perhaps. After how talkative Cadan had been in the past, this new silence was more frightening than any threat.
Scarlet risked a quick look behind him, hoping to see another traveler in the distance, but it was hopeless. After the last raid, there would be none coming north from the Salt Road. None but he, and he had lingered too long in Nantua.
Cadan saw the direction of Scarlet's glance and signaled to his men. Lame he might have been, but he still had his authority. “Bring him."
"Wait!” Scarlet said desperately to the soldiers. “Your captain, he was a Kasiri once."
One of the soldiers spat in the dust, unconcerned at the news. “Listen to him. Whey-faced Hilurin is what he is. First Tribe scum. Next, he'll lecture us about our duty as soldiers of the vine."
Another soldier gave a grunting laugh. “Soldiers of the vine! Do we look like country bumpkins to you, pedlar? All that is past."
"You still swore to uphold the law,” Scarlet said, shamed to hear his voice shaking. “You obey the Flower Prince."
"I obey whoever pays me, and lately, it ain't been a shit-arsed prince in silk pants."
Scarlet backed up a little. He had thought to reveal Cadan's past crimes to them and appeal to their sense of honor, but when he searched their faces, he found them as hard and carved as the stone statue at the Fate Dealer's. From then on, it was pride alone that held him silent.
Scarlet darted aside and tried to make a run for it, but as two of the soldiers stepped in opposite directions and expertly closed in on him, he froze in fear and hesitated for a moment. The soldiers fell on him, pinning his arms and stripping him of his pack and bundle, jerking the knife-belt from his waist and letting it drop in the road. He was dragged and shoved in silence into the thick stand of junipers lining the road. The scent of evergreen and springtime roses was thick in the air, and his only thought was relief that, whatever happened, Scaja and Linhona could not be hurt any more. He did not know who Cadan's comrades were, only that they were probably as foul as Cadan himself, and that they hated all Hilurin.
They arrived very quickly at a rough camp the soldiers had made in the woods: a canvas tent, a few bedrolls on the ground, and a heap of stones that circled a campfire dwindled down to ash and embers.
Cadan motioned to his men and they released Scarlet's arms. Scarlet had saved his strength and not struggled very much, and he stood glaring at them, his body trembling with stress and delayed fear. Still, Cadan did not speak, only kept staring with that even light in his eyes that did more to tear Scarlet down than any words could have.
"Where's your friend?"
Scarlet's mind went blank for a moment, still locked in dread. “Who..."
"The Wolf. Where is he?"
Scarlet shook his head. “I don't know. He left."
Cadan stepped forward and struck him hard across the face. “I know he left, hill-brat! Where did he go? He wasn't with the Longspur krait when they made it to Dorogi. When did he leave them and where was he bound?"
Liall's words came back to him: It is Norl Udur, as has been rumored, and I will get there by traveling to the port of Volkovoi across the Channel.
A trickle of blood ran from Scarlet's nose. “He didn't tell me."
"Oh, did he not?” Cadan shifted a look from Scarlet to his men and back. “I figured you'd be in his yurt by now, playing cushion to the great chieftain's belly. He mustn't have been that interested in you, after all."
Scarlet kept his silence, refusing to take the bait.
"There's a price on his head, did you know? The word's spread to every port from here to Ankar and even in Khet. An envoy from Norl Udur came to the army garrison in Patra, carrying more silver than any soldier will see in a lifetime. It's all for the man who brings the White Wolf back in chains."
Scarlet fought to keep his mind clear, for Liall as much as for himself. “What do they want with him?"
Cadan hawked and spat into the dirt. “Doesn't matter. I can make you rich, pedlar. Rich enough to guarantee your safety anywhere. Then you
'd be able to protect that pretty sister of yours.” Cadan's grin was ugly with menace. “Nantua, is it? I wonder if that's far enough. I bet on a windy day, she can still smell the smoke from Lysia."
With a cry of rage, Scarlet bunched his fists and charged Cadan. The soldiers tackled him and knocked him to the ground. Cadan watched the struggling knot of them, smiling his pitiless smile. “There's plenty of time,” he said. “If you won't tell me now, you'll tell me by tonight. Wait and see."
They dragged Scarlet up and two of the soldiers held his arms out straight as Cadan squared up to him. The last soldier sat down by the smoldering fire to watch.
"I told you, I don't know!"
Cadan drew back his arm and backhanded Scarlet. His head rocked back and his ears began ringing. He grunted in pain and focused on Cadan dizzily, just in time to see the soldier draw his fist back. Cadan punched him low in the gut.
The pain was worse than Scarlet could imagine. It felt like his stomach had been pushed back to his spine. His legs gave way and he retched, doubling over. Cadan's fist came down on the back of his neck.
He lost track of time. There was dirt against his face and the strong smell of earth and smoke. The soldiers hauled him back to his feet, and Cadan turned to nod to the man by the fire. The soldier slipped his knife from his belt and lodged the blade deep in the coals.
Cadan put his hands on Scarlet's shoulders. “Tell me where Liall is,” he said almost pleasantly. “You owe him no loyalty. Come,” he coaxed, patting Scarlet's cheek. “Tell me what I want to know."
Scarlet glanced to the man by the fire, watching him turn his knife to heat the blade evenly. He knew with a deadly certainty that if he did not give Cadan the information he wanted, the soldiers would kill him right here. It would not be a quick death.
He looked at the sky, the weight of the awful decision filling him with anguish. His life or Liall's? The world took on a peculiar brightness as he looked up at the dark, jagged scrawls of evergreen branches cutting through the warm blue calm of the sky. Despite everything, the murder of his parents, his home, the strong sense of loss when Liall said goodbye, now that he had come to it, he realized that he wanted very much to live.