Jenner’s face changed with this. His jaw muscles flexed and his playful expression disappeared. “She hardly knows me.”
“Maybe she knows you better than anyone. She knows people like you…”
Jenner pushed at Ranik’s plate. “Eat up. I want to stretch my legs.”
* * *
A fog, so heavy it felt like rain, covered Crag the morning after Jenner’s return. Ranik and Jenner spent the night on a plank bed with a lumpy mattress in a rented room above the tavern. The tavern keeper had insisted that Jenner pay his brother’s debts before he gave them a room, and then at breakfast, he wanted Jenner to settle his brother’s food tab as well. He did so without complaint.
Ranik wondered if he often covered his brother’s debts, but he didn’t ask. He did try to explain the fight between Jenner’s mother and the half-brother, but Jenner had simply dismissed his concerns. He claimed the two frequently fought like sailors thirsty for the last swig of ale and then forgot everything when they sobered the next day.
After the meal, they went to Jenner’s riverboat. His mother wasn’t there, but the half-brother was asleep on one of the bunks below deck. Jenner found his fishing pole and cast a line, then sat down on the bench to wait for a bite. “Why are you so edgy, Ranik?” Without waiting for an answer, he continued, “Play me something, will you? I’ve missed your flute.”
He sat down next to Jenner, leaning his back against the rail. “What would you like to hear?”
“I heard your flute notes on lonely nights when the winds woke me this past month. Over and over it was the same song.” He hummed a melody and then glanced at Ranik. “But I’d never heard it before. I told myself you were playing it for me.”
Ranik felt his skin prickle at Jenner’s words. The melody Jenner had hummed was too familiar. Ranik raised the flute to his lips and Jenner closed his eyes as he listened to the song. As soon as it finished, Jenner leaned over and kissed him.
“That was beautiful.” He smiled and pulled the fishing line. The bait was gone from the hook and the line was tangled with seaweed. Jenner sighed, baited again and cast. Within seconds, a sharp tug pulled the line taut and Jenner brought out a fat cod. “I’ve gotten the knack for these ocean fish. They are trickier than the river trout, but I’ve learned a bit this past month.” He dropped the fish in a bucket of water and recast. “Play another?”
They spent the next few hours with Jenner pulling fish after fish from the water, only by seemingly dropping his line off the side of the boat. When Ranik tired of the flute, he tried to fish, but he didn’t have Jenner’s skill. Worm after worm slipped from the hook.
“Well, I see you’re still a farm boy after all,” Jenner said, grinning.
Jenner’s brother came up from below deck. He nodded at Jenner as he passed him, then stopped cold when he spotted Ranik. His hand went for the knife on his belt, but Jenner caught his arm before it was unsheathed. His brother outweighed him by fifty pounds at least, but Jenner was quick. He managed to sweep his brother’s feet clear out from under him and set him flat on his back, then rested his boot on his brother’s panting chest. “We have a misunderstanding, I think. You don’t pull a knife on one of my friends.”
“Friend? I know what he is to you,” he said, struggling against the pressure of Jenner’s weight.
“If you have a problem with Ranik, you have a problem with me, brother.”
He struggled out from under Jenner’s boot finally, then, once standing, spat at Ranik. “I won’t have a brother who wants that.”
“I’ve paid your debts at the tavern,” Jenner said. “I’m told you’re wanted by your father back in Glen Roushe. I don’t want to see you on this boat again.”
After a tense minute, he climbed over the rail onto the dock planks. “You better learn to fight,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Ranik.
Jenner watched his brother cross the dock and then turned to Ranik. “He’s off to get drunk. It’s the only thing he’s good at.”
“You know, I can hold my own in a fight.”
“As well as you fish?”
“I’m a farm boy, remember? In fact, I never imagined you’d be very good in a fight.”
“I learned from the best. You should see my mother fight. She taught me—always throw the first punch unless you can lay them out with a leg sweep. Sorry about my brother.”
Jenner leaned close and met Ranik’s lips. He pulled away and smiled. “I’d much prefer to have you on this boat than him anyway.”
“You’re staying on the riverboat?”
“We are. I’m not letting you go anywhere. We’ll run passengers up the river for the season and save our coins for that trip to the Halo Isles.” Jenner tapped the flute. “Play another song for me.”
Part Three
Chapter Thirty
Learning to fish didn’t come easy to Darin. On the ocean she caught the scent of too many things at once—scents of things she’d never considered. The oily scent of a thieving seal approaching the baited lines was too similar to the oily scent of the small but aggressive sharks that darted under the surface along the rock jetty. Both of these scents overwhelmed that of the cod she was after. With time, and Baylor’s insistence, she learned how to cast and net her catch. But she wasn’t good at fishing until she learned each animal’s scent. Then it was only a matter of dropping her line where their scent was strongest.
Finally Baylor asked her to join him when he took his boat to the far coves. They caught a handful of perch and tuna and then when she expected Baylor to turn the boat toward home, he unwrapped a sword he’d stowed with the spare rods. With their lines still in the water waiting for a bite, Baylor practiced a few moves. His balance was excellent, even with the rocking of the boat, and his moves were perfectly smooth. “You’ve been trained by an elite,” she guessed.
“An elite? No…My grandfather taught me.” He parried and cut through the air inches from her fishing line.
“Would you teach me?”
“Not if you’re as slow with a sword as you were at fishing.” He laughed and then tossed the sword up in the air.
Darin lunged for the handle and caught it before Baylor could. She made a few passes and then caught his eye.
“You know some already.”
She nodded. “But you’re better than any teacher I’ve had.”
On their next trip, he brought a second sword onto the boat. From then on, they practiced daily. Baylor was a tireless, if not unforgiving, teacher. When she’d asked how his grandfather had learned the sword, Baylor said he’d come from the North and he’d trained with a master there. Darin knew she’d been right even if Baylor hadn’t known it. There was no doubt that he’d been trained by an elite.
Months passed and instead of Alekander and hunting parties, she dreamed of boats, fish, and sword fights. When Alekander did appear in her dreams, he was stumbling and half deaf. Every night, she wrapped her arms around Aysha and fell asleep in their shared bed. If their days could go on, exactly like this, she’d be happy. But Tiersten had changed Aysha and there was no doubt in Darin’s mind that they’d leave one day. When that would happen was the only question.
* * *
Darin found Aysha hanging laundry in the courtyard, and the Widow Baylor was sitting at the kitchen table shelling peas. The widow greeted Darin warmly, as usual, and asked about the day’s catch. It was Midsummer—a night for not sleeping—and the town would gather that evening for a feast. Music and ale would be shared all night long. Darin had caught a full bucket of cod and already donated it to the feast. Leaving the widow with her peapods, she went to help Aysha hang the laundry.
“Want to take Cobalt and Onyx for a ride when we’ve finished?” Aysha asked.
“Baylor hasn’t leased them today?” Baylor had arranged with them to feed and care for the horses if he could make money off renting the pair when someone needed a wagon pulled to Eldering. Lately it seemed that the horses were in Eldering once a week. Darin had insisted
that Baylor set a schedule to switch off days so neither his horse team nor theirs was overworked.
“No and they’ve been stuck inside for two days now. Your mare kicked a hole through the planks and Cobalt pushed one of the grain buckets over.”
Darin grinned. “She’s testy when she doesn’t get a run.”
“I don’t blame her,” Aysha said.
Darin noticed the distant look in Aysha’s eyes. “We could go up that trail to the cliffs. The sky’s clear and we’ll have a good view of the water.”
They groomed and saddled the horses, took the main road through town and were soon headed up toward the cliffs. When they reached the first outlook, they pulled the horses off the path and let them graze. The sun, still high on the horizon, cast a gold glow on the town below. Looking out, Darin pointed out a whale’s tail slapping the water before it cut a straight line across the sea. Aysha spotted another, following the same line as the first. Beyond them on the horizon was a white and brown speck. They both recognized it as a boat, but it seemed so small from their hillside vantage point that it might be a pelican, flying low over the waves.
“Some days I imagine that Ranik’s boat has sailed into Maylek’s harbor. I find myself searching out every boat that docks, thinking I might spot his face.”
“It’s possible,” Darin said. “Though I think that his boat would be too large to dock in Maylek. We only get the smaller rigs because of the rocks.”
The harbor seemed welcoming from this vantage point and, indeed, at high tide, a larger boat would have no trouble passing. But at low tide it was a treacherous pass with a narrow gap between the jagged rocks.
“Do you miss Glen Ore?”
“I wonder about my friends,” Aysha admitted. “And I think of Tillie and Helm and wish that I could be helping them with the planting and all the other things. I miss Ranik…but he isn’t in Glen Ore anymore.”
“I’d like to stay here—if you could be happy.”
Aysha eyed her. “You don’t mind pretending to be a man?”
“I hardly think of it anymore.” Darin glanced down at her trousers and the wool work shirt. “You’ve said before that these clothes suit me.”
Aysha nodded. “You’re different than the woman I found in my barn. And you changed again after Caratia. Sometimes I forget that you’re a woman at all—until I touch you at night.”
“Does it bother you?”
“I wonder who you really are.”
Darin didn’t answer. She turned Aysha’s words over and over. These past few months she’d stopped thinking about her clothes as a disguise—and no one, not even Baylor, questioned that she wasn’t a man.
“I don’t miss Tiersten either,” Aysha said, breaking the silence. “Though I feel a bit of guilt whenever I think of the friends I made there and how they must be suffering under the king’s rule.”
“What happened to your locket? You stopped wearing it…”
“I left it for Marian—so that she could send it to me as a signal if I was needed back in Tiersten.”
“You’re waiting for that then?”
“I can’t stay in Maylek forever—not knowing what I’ve left behind in Tiersten. Marian told me to leave if the city was invaded. She said she’d pass word through her cousin in Eldering. I should go find her cousin at least to ask if Marian and the others are alive, but…”
“But you don’t want to know?”
Aysha met Darin’s gaze. “Sometimes I think that Tiersten was only a bad dream. I’m not ready to find out what happened that day we left.”
Darin sighed. “It’s Midsummer. Let’s go join the feast.” She clasped Aysha’s hand. “That woman you found in the barn…That isn’t me anymore.”
Aysha nodded. “And some days I wonder if I might be a witch.” She smiled. “We’ve both changed.”
Chapter Thirty-One
A warm drizzle started with the sunrise. Aysha stood in the doorway of their cottage watching the raindrops land in the wash buckets. More of the drops splattered on the path and dark rivulets formed on the slope leading down to the barn. The rains had started not long after the last full moon of summer and had stretched on for the entire month. The ground was saturated and everyone worried about a flood.
Tiersten was on her mind more and more. As much as she tried to push away the thoughts, she couldn’t help but see Tobias’s face or hear Marian’s voice, thanking her again after she’d promised to meet with her cousin in Eldering.
Between Eldering and Maylek lay a dense forest and several streams. Since the rains, two of the streams had swelled together, forming an impassable river that cut through the center of the forest and emptied into the sea. As a result, no news or supplies had passed between the towns for weeks. It was a good excuse for not going to Eldering.
The Widow Baylor came to stand next to Aysha, holding her hand out the doorway to catch a few drops of the rain. “The floods will come. You should take the boat.”
Aysha didn’t respond. The widow wasn’t entirely in her right mind. She heard eerie songs in the wind—songs that she liked to sing back to anyone who’d listen—and talked often about the bugs she could feel moving underground. Before she’d met Darin, Aysha would have scoffed at all of it. She was an old woman who’d gone a bit mad and yet…
Every morning since the rains had started, the widow had brought up the boat. Aysha tried to ignore her, an uneasy feeling growing in her stomach when the widow started to sing about floods.
She broke out of her song to say, “Baylor’s mare didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Maybe it was the rain. It kept me up as well.”
The widow shook her head. “The foal’s hoof is pressed against something and she can’t lie down without a pain in her belly. Bed her stall with more straw.”
“I’ll tell Darin,” Aysha said. She hadn’t heard that Baylor’s horse was pregnant and wondered if it was true.
Darin came home at midday when the rains increased to a downpour. She was soaking wet and went to change her clothes after she hung a line of gutted fish in the kitchen.
“Baylor’s family is coming for dinner,” Darin hollered from the bedroom.
Aysha stared at the line of fish, glistening like wet rainbows. “I’ll start the stew.” It did seem like this could be their life, that they could spend day after day eating well on the fish Darin brought home and what Aysha grew in the garden. And yet… She couldn’t let go of Tiersten no matter how she tried.
Baylor came with his wife and their two young children. One of the babes was still nursing and the other toddled around not yet speaking. Baylor’s wife, Ingrid, greeted Aysha with a warm smile. They chatted in the kitchen while Baylor and Darin stood outside under the overhang joking and laughing. She wondered at how close the two had become. She didn’t begrudge the friendship, but it was one more reminder of how well Darin fit in Maylek along with the other fishermen. How could she think of asking her to leave? Maybe she could forget Tiersten for Darin’s happiness.
“The stew smells delicious, but your cooking always does. You’ll have to show me which herbs you used this time,” Ingrid said, leaning over the pot to stir the contents. “Darin’s lucky to have you cook for him.”
Aysha smiled. “I’ll have to remind him of that.”
Ingrid laughed. “Remind Baylor as well, while you’re at it. Men only think of the fish they bring us, not the meal we set on the table.”
Aysha had gotten used to hearing others call Darin a man. In fact, it was getting easier and easier for her to remember to do so as well. But she stopped herself from thinking of Darin as a man—she’d never been attracted to anyone so masculine before.
Aysha leaned down and scooped up the toddler who was tugging at her tunic. Nadia twisted in her arms, laughing as she tickled her.
“The children love you,” Ingrid said, smiling at Aysha. “I hope you’ll have your own baby soon.”
Aysha realized her mouth was open and clamped it shut.
Her quick thinking had abandoned her when she needed it most. She set the toddler on a stool and handed her a slice of cheese to nibble on. “I do love yours,” she said. “But I don’t think I’ll have my own.”
“Oh, I didn’t think I’d want one either,” Ingrid admitted. “But I’m glad Baylor convinced me. Darin would make a good father…”
Aysha glanced out the window at Darin and then fussed with the toddler to avoid any more questions from Ingrid.
After the meal, Baylor and his family left and the widow retired to her room. “Go out with me to the barn?” Darin asked when they’d finished cleaning up. The barn was where they always went when they wanted to talk without the widow hearing.
The sky was clouded, but there was a break in the rain. Darin held open the barn door, waiting for Aysha to slip inside. The horses wanted their evening meal and nickered until each one had a pile of hay and a bit of grain.
“Did you know that Baylor’s horse is with foal?”
“Is she?” Darin asked.
“The widow said she needs more straw at night in her stall.”
Darin nodded. She sat down on a hay bale, twisting a bit of rope between her fingers. “Baylor’s taking a boat to Eldering tomorrow, rain or shine.”
Aysha knew what she was asking. She sat down alongside Darin and took her hand in hers. “You’re happy here. I am too. What if I never go to Eldering—never hear news of Tiersten? Maybe they’ll think I’ve died. One of the king’s hunters could have killed me by now.”
“You’re happy here?”
Aysha saw the doubt in Darin’s eyes. “I can be. In time…”
Darin gave Aysha’s hand a squeeze. “What of Tobias and Marian? And all the others? Wouldn’t you regret not going back?”
“You didn’t want me there in the first place. Now you’re the one arguing that we go back?”
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