by Kate Elliott
A heavy stride hammered along the porch. A man’s voice raised in the shop next door.
“You promised me eight new halters, but here are only four. I’ll need coin to make up for the ones I’ll have to purchase elsewhere.”
A murmured reply answered him. Marit could not hear the exact words, but terror drifted like a miasma. Beside her face, dust smeared the lowest shelf and its discarded goods, and dust stirred in an unsettled swirl of air as the man stomped into the shop where she hid.
“Heya! What about it!” he shouted, although there was something insincere about the way he bellowed. “Where are those lead lines you promised us?” In a lower, more natural voice, he added, “What news, you cursed worm?”
The shopkeeper replied in a rapid whisper. “There’s little to tell, Captain. The leatherworker is hiding the rest of his stock in the grain house in his courtyard. The woman who makes banners is hiding stock down by the mulberry orchard, in the old tomb of the Mothers, plenty of good cloth for tents and other such things. This is the third week the farmers have refused to come to market.”
“We’ve taken care of the farmers.” His voice had a snarl in it. Marit’s skin prickled; it was like being close to a lightning strike, wondering where the next bolt would burst free.
The shopkeeper groveled. “The blacksmith left town. Thought he’d walk to Toskala. Hoped to be safe there.”
“He didn’t get far.”
“Eh, hah, sure it is you’d not let such a valuable man walk out on you in your year of need.”
“He’s working where he can’t argue so much, it’s true. You’ve told me nothing I don’t already know, excepting for the bit about the leatherworker hiding goods from us. I know you have a daughter as well as the lad. I need more than this in payment, ver.” His tone was sly and nasty, drunk as much with the power he held as with the wine he’d been drinking.
Marit wanted to grab the slimy weasel and slam him against the counter until he begged for mercy and returned all that had been stolen, but of course this village had clearly lost far more than could ever be restored now. Anyway she had no weapon except the old knife, whose wooden handle was coming loose, and her walking staff, hard to use effectively in a crowded shop. She hated herself for what she could not do.
“A reeve came through,” said the man reluctantly.
“Sheh! You know it’s forbidden for you folk to talk or tithe to reeves.”
“I know it, I know it,” he gabbled. “But the reeve wore the Star of Life, like you folk do. He said he was flying down to Argent Hall, where a marshal was to be elected or murdered or some such. That’s what he said. How can we stop a reeve from flying in, when all’s said and done? Eh? Eh?” He was whining. “There’s nothing we can do when folk do walk into town on their own feet. We can’t stop them.”
“Maybe so.” The news had distracted the captain. Marit heard him scratching in the stubble at his chin. “Argent Hall, eh? Wish they’d made their move at Gold Hall, to get those cursed reeves up there off our backs, but there it is. The lord knows his business, just like you know yours, eh? The reeve halls will topple soon enough. What else? You’ve got that look about you, ver, like you’re hiding somewhat from me.”
“Neh, neh, nothing at all. Just a word I overheard the other day, a passing comment, you can’t trust chance-heard conversation, can you? Anyone can talk and say anything they please, can’t they? How can a poor soul know what’s true and what is just sky-spinning?”
The captain’s silence made the shop seem abruptly warmer, stuffy and hard to breathe. From the street came calls and cries, so remote they might as well have been meaningless: a woman sobbing, a man’s triumphant giggling as with a fit of cruelty, a spasm of coughing and spewing. Marit heard, from the back of the shop, a murmuring like mice rustling below the floorboards, words exchanged between two people in hiding:
“He’d not betray her, would he?”
“Hush, girl. He’ll do what he must to save us. Hush.”
The words, sounding so clearly in her own ears, evidently did not reach the captain, who rapped a metal blade on the counter. “I haven’t all day to wait! We gave you this chance to work with us rather than be cleaned out like the rest. I can burn down this shop if I’ve a wish to do so. Or take your daughter, like I did your son.”
“Peace! Peace! Just a cricket in my throat got me choked.” He made a business of clearing his throat. “There, it’s gone now.” Once started, the shopkeeper flowed like a stream at spring tide. “A merchant come through, a stout fellow headed southwest on the Lesser Walk and meaning to head onwards down the Rice Walk to Olo’osson. This was a few weeks after the new year’s festival. He was still wearing his fox ribbons, all silver, very fine quality and embroidered to show how rich he was.”
“I’m surprised a rich man chooses to strut his wealth these days. The roads aren’t safe.”
“Heh. Heh. You’d say so, ver, wouldn’t you? Eh, he wasn’t afraid. He was a cocky fellow, even if he did have that cursed sloppy borderlands way of speaking. He would sneer at our humble town, though he’d no reason to do so. He ordered me about when he could just have asked politely for the items he needed.”
“What does this have to do with anything?”
“Oh, eh, it’s just I notice such things, being a shopkeeper. We have to size up our customers. So when I went into the back to fetch out another lead line, I heard him saying to his companion that he had powerful allies in the north. That they were going to march on Olossi later this year. He did like to hear himself talk. He was indignant, said it wasn’t his fault he’d had to make outside alliances. It was just that there were troublemakers in Olossi trying to elbow their way into power and push out those who had been good stewards for these many years, and he had to protect his clan.”
It was a common saying among the reeve halls that some came into service possessed of good instincts while some learned good instincts during service, and that those who neither possessed nor learned did not survive. Marit had good instincts, and had learned better ones in her ten years as a reeve, although not enough to save herself from a knife to the heart.
But ever since she’d woken, she heard and tasted and smelled with cleaner senses, as if the Four Mothers—the earth, water, fire, and wind that shape the land—had lent her a measure of their own essence.
The captain said, “Who else did you tell?”
He’s going to kill him. The air told her because of the way his sour scent sharpened. The earth told her because of the way his feet shifted on the floorboards, bracing for the thrust.
The shopkeeper scratched his head, nails scraping scalp. She could smell his fear, but he wasn’t afraid enough. He didn’t see it coming.
“None but my wife, as a curiosity.”
Because he thinks he can sell the information later. Because if no one else knows, then he can hoard harness and the used traveling gear he accumulates in the hope of making a greater profit off it later by selling to a mass of men on the move—an army—who need goods immediately and can’t wait. The fate of the folk of Olossi concerns him not at all.
“If the troubles down south settle out,” he added, “then maybe more folk will be on the roads, we’ll see more trade. Trade’s been scarce these past few seasons. Folk don’t want to be out on the roads because they fear—”
She stood in the moment the captain drew his sword.
In the lineaments of a face shine the spirit; in the posture of the body speaks the soul. The tight set of a jaw reveals anger. A hand clenched around the hilt of a sword shows resolve.
Fear settles where a man leans back.
Shoulders hunching, a hand raised helplessly, the shopkeeper glanced toward Marit.
I am dead now, but at least I kept the secret. At least my sister will have escaped them. The shopkeeper’s thoughts might as well have been words spoken aloud, they were cast like seeds in a broad spray, everything about him caught between his small, fatal victory and his simple fear t
hat the blade, striking him, would hurt terribly as it cut and smashed his flesh.
We all live in terror of pain.
“You not least,” she said to the captain. “You are one of those who will die in pain. You have sown with cruel seeds, and the bloody harvest will devour you.”
His sword point dropped. She studied his face so she would remember it no matter how much time passed before they met again: a broken nose; a scar under his left eye.
His lips parted as he trembled. “You are death. Where did you come from?”
“Answer your own question. Go from this town. Don’t come back. I know you now. I’ll hunt you down if harm comes to any here.”
His thoughts spilled as water over the lip of a fountain. I’ll be rewarded for this message, for telling them I’ve spotted one of the cloaks walking abroad in daylight. Or what if she is already acting in concert with them? What if this is a test? To see if I act rightly, follow orders? What if they punish me? Aui! Aui!
“Get out,” she said, wondering if she’d have to try and grab the sword out of his hand and kill him.
But he fled.
The shopkeeper began gasping, spurts of sobs punctuated by racking coughs. The door slid back. The pretty daughter stuck her head in, eyes seeming white with fear.
He spun, hearing the door tap against the stop, and before she could cringe back he slapped her. “Get back in the closet, you witless girl! Can’t you stay where you’re told?” The purse of his mouth betrayed his shame. He looked back at Marit.
An onslaught of thoughts and images tumbled: She’ll run away, find a temple, any place to take her in, but what if the soldiers capture her as they did Sediya—? A young woman—his own sister—staggers into their humble house, sneaking in out of the alley and huddling in the chicken house until dawn. She’s much younger than her brother, the last child of their parents. Like her niece, she’s pretty enough, but haggard with misery. Her thighs are sticky with blood and she stinks of piss; she limps as her sister-in-law supports her into the house. She is crying, “They’ll come for me. I ran away. Please hide me.”
The shopkeeper jerked his gaze away from Marit.
“They’ll kill us when they learn we’ve gone against them, that we’re hiding one of the captives they took,” he said hoarsely to his daughter, but she was too stunned to speak or move with her cheek flushed red from the blow. Her silence infuriated her father. He raised his hand just as the captain had raised his sword.
“Don’t take your anger out on her,” said Marit, “or she’ll run and you’ll have bartered away your honesty and your honor and your good name for nothing.”
“Just get out, I beg you,” he said, his movement as stiff as that of an aged elder as he kept his gaze averted. “Take whatever you want.”
Reeves could accept tithes, receiving from those they aided the necessities that allowed them to live. She grabbed what she wanted: a feed bag, a pair of brushes one stiff and one softer, a hoof pick, a lead line, rope, and a bundle of tough rags.
She paused with the goods stuffed into the feed bag. What if a reeve became greedy? It happened; they took more than they needed, or they taught themselves to take what they wanted and told themselves they deserved it all. “He passed under the gate into the shadow.” In every one of the Ten Tales of Founding, more than one man and woman crossed the Shadow Gate to the other side, where corruption takes hold in the heart. With each step, the path got smoother as you told yourself why it was acceptable to walk farther down this road. The tales of the Hundred told the story of humankind and the other children born to the Four Mothers. It was natural that some succumbed to the shadows.
Maybe it was unnatural that any did not.
“Where are the reeves who should be aiding you? Isn’t Gold Hall patrolling? Isn’t there a temple of Ilu nearby that can send an envoy to Clan Hall in Toskala to ask for help?”
He laughed recklessly. “The reeves can’t help us. You can walk out of our town and never come back, but we have to live here. No matter what you said to him, they will come back. It’s us will have to face them. Not you.”
“That merchant,” she said. “You said he was from Olossi. Did he give you a name?”
“Quartered flowers were his house mark. Is that enough? Will you go?”
Marit followed the sniveling girl into the narrow living quarters, tromping through in her outdoor sandals like the rudest kind of intruder. There was a single table and two cupboards, everything put away neatly except for a single ceramic cup filled with cooling tea set on the table. The floor was swept clean, and this homely indication of a woman doing her best to stem the shadows by keeping her home tidy made Marit hurt as if she’d been punched under the ribs.
She shoved open the back screen and clattered onto the porch and down three steps to the courtyard. The damp of night rains still darkened the ground. The gate that led to the alley was tied shut. She fumbled with the knot, her hands clumsy.
Where were they hiding the fugitive sister?
She paused to scan the yard: the squat house with scant room above the eaves; the small grain storage up on stilts; a pit house with the sticky scent of incense drifting; the henhouse, an empty byre, and the surrounding wall too high to see over. She clambered up the ladder to the grain storage and tugged out the smallest sack of rice, something easy to carry over a shoulder.
Stillness was settling over the village as folk assessed the damage and checked their injuries after the abrupt departure of the soldiers. There, after all, she heard the shallow breathing of a woman trying to make no sound: the sister was hidden in the henhouse, scrunched under the nesting shelf and by now smeared with fresh droppings and the filthy wood shavings strewn on the floor to absorb the waste.
Marit took a step toward the henhouse, mouth open to speak. But she said nothing.
She hadn’t the means to support a traveling companion. It was difficult enough dealing with the cursed horse. A hundred other reasons aside told her she had to move on alone. This wasn’t the time to try to save a woman here and a man there, like trying to hold your hands over one beautiful flower in a driving hailstorm while the rest disintegrate under the onslaught.
“The hells,” she muttered. She said, in a low voice meant to carry no farther than the courtyard walls, “I’m a traveler, and I’m headed out of town. The soldiers have gone for now, but they’ll be back. If you want, you can travel with me. I offer you such protection as I can, and insofar as I am capable, I will get you to a place of safety. If there is such a place any longer. I can’t make you come, and I can’t promise you much. There it is. Take it or leave it.”
Her offer was met with a resounding silence. Thank the gods.
She turned back to the gate and fumbled with the knot, sure she had tugged on it the wrong way and caused what ought to have been an easy slipknot to jam into itself. She’d never been good with rope, not like Joss, grown up on the sea’s shore where every child learned a hundred cunning knots . . .
“I’ll go.” The voice was soft and female, and not a bit tentative.
Marit turned. A woman crouched in the low entrance to the henhouse. Her hair had matted into clumps now streaked with white droppings; her face was patched with muck and dotted where wood shavings had stuck to the damp. The color of her cheap hemp taloos was concealed beneath a coat of red clay and paler mud, sprinkled with more droppings.
The woman looked right at her.
An assault of images: a weeping girl with hands bound; the ruins of a village smolder as the line of captives staggers past, but they’re too exhausted to do more than cover their noses to ease the smell as the soldiers drive them on; an unexpected moment of laughter when eight of the captives, wary comrades now, splash in a pond; stumbling in mud while somewhere out of sight a baby cries and cries. She had lied about her name, because then all the things that happened to her were really happening to someone else, someone she was not.
Marit said, “Your name is Sediya.”
; Wearily, the woman said, “You’re one of them, one of the cloaks who pin us. The soldiers are their slaves, and we’re slaves to the soldiers. Now I guess I’m your slave.”
“I’m not one of them,” said Marit fiercely.
“You’re not going to kill me? Punish me? Take me back to Walshow?”
“The hells! Did you walk all the way here from Walshow?”
“Not really. I was swapped out to a scouting patrol, to service them while they were ranging, cook their rice, pound their nai. We walked for weeks and weeks, and I was too scared to run away. Then I got to seeing places I recognized, and that’s when I ran. They’ll kill me when they catch me. That’s the promise they make you.”
Marit swiped a hand through her grubby hair, and cursed, the biting words taking the edge off her anger.
The woman had the numb gaze of a person who has learned to gauge how close she is to the next time she’ll be hurt.
“Stupidest cursed thing I’ve ever done,” muttered Marit as she turned back to the gate, but she thought of the Devouring girl in the temple up on the Liya Pass and she couldn’t take back what she’d offered.
“Here, let me.” Sediya had a funny way of walking, favoring both legs, trying to hide that each step pained her. But she had clever hands; the knot fell away.
The door to the house scraped open. The shopkeeper stuck his head out, saw his sister, and blanched. “Sedi! If they see you, if they know I sheltered you—you’ve already brought trouble down on us. Can’t you think of anyone but yourself?”
Sediya wrenched open the gate. “I’m leaving.” She bent her head just as Marit caught a flash of dull fear. “May the gods allow that you fare well, Brother.”
Marit took a step out into the alley and glanced up and down the narrow lane. “No one’s moving. Let’s go.”
4
When Sediya saw Warning, she sank to her knees and wept.