by J. V. Jones
On the second day, the Sull had led them from the Deadwoods and onto the rolling pasture northwest of the Bluddhouse. On the third day they were gone. It was strange, no one except the bairns had mentioned them since. Everyone was thinking of them—the Sull’s solemn formality had affected the entire camp—but no one wanted to be the first to speak of them. It was possible the men were waiting upon some signal from their chief. The Sull are still our enemies. The Sull are now our friends. Truth was Vaylo did not know what the Sull were to Bludd. Trespassers, certainly, but as the Sull had once held Bludd land who was trespassing where?
“Granda. He’s drinking the milk.”
Four heads, one human and three canine, turned toward the camp, where Pasha and Aaron were lying on the grass, poking a milk-soaked rag through the globe-shaped starling cage. Vaylo frowned at that lot of them—dogs, grandchildren, bird—and then standing, went to sort two of them out.
“Easy,” he warned. “It’s a bird. Not a toy. And who says it’s a he?”
“The Sull did,” Aaron said, not the least bit ruffled by his grandfather’s rant. “His name is Mir’xell. Homecomer.”
So his grandchildren were now speaking Sull?
Vaylo watched as the bird walked forward, rolling the flexible leather cage around itself as it moved. It was a tiny thing, black with a bit of green in its wings. Vaylo scooped it up and delivered it to Nan. “Seeds and water, only,” he told her.
Nan gave him one of her looks which just about said it all. She was beautiful today. Her long silver hair was dressed with ribbons and there was a fine chain around her neck. Vaylo touched her shoulder. As apologies went it would have to do.
“Chief,” came the cry he’d been dreading. “Hammie and Odwin have returned.”
Forty-five had left the hillfort in northern Dhoone. Now, including Nan and the bairns, they were down to thirty-two. Three were bedridden and two more—if they had any sense—should be lying right along with them. That left twenty-four able-bodied men. A good number for a chief’s personal guard. A laughable one for a strike upon a roundhouse.
There was a very strong possibility that Quarro Bludd had laughed.
Vaylo composed himself. As he took up position at the top of the hill, he was aware of his men forming a line behind him. All were silent. Their families and loved ones lived inside that house in the far distance: sisters, mothers, fathers, wives. The men wanted home.
Odwin Two Bear was young but he’d learned a bit about diplomacy and his face, as he approached, was a neutral mask. Hammie Faa, gods love him, gave away the game. His slumped shoulders were an open book. Dismounting before they crested the hill, both men approached on foot.
“Chief,” Odwin Two Bear said in greeting. A muscle pumped beneath the warrior’s mark on his left cheek as he looked at the men behind Vaylo.
“You delivered the message?”
“Aye.” Odwin glanced at Hammie who nodded for him to continue. The young swordsman met Vaylo’s eye and then looked down. “Quarro denies you entry to his house.”
Men inhaled. Someone murmured, “Bastard.”
Vaylo stood and absorbed the blow.
Hammie could not bear the silence. “He thinks the stuff about you not being chief is just a sham to gain entry, and that once you’re inside you’ll knock off his head.”
Vaylo was touched by Hammie’s indignation, even though he knew Quarro was right. It had been a nice theory—the old chief retiring to second place to back the new chief—but in reality it would never have worked. Why then had he sent the message? An appeal had to be made, yes, but it was more than that. The Sull said his house was in danger. What was biting his tongue and taking second place to his worthless first son compared to that?
“They know our numbers?”
Hammie nodded, but it was Odwin Two Bear’s face that Vaylo was drawn to, its stillness. Vaylo’s gut began to turn.
“Will they accept the injured?”
This time Hammie’s nod was a confused, diagonal affair. Odwin Two Bear remained still.
Vaylo looked straight at him. “What are Quarro’s conditions?”
The swordsman swallowed, found his strength. “Quarro says he will accept everyone in this party except you. Or no one.”
Men gasped. Out of the corner of his eyes Vaylo saw Nan drawing Pasha and Aaron away. She had brought the bairns forward to listen to the parley but now . . . Now this was no longer children’s talk.
Vaylo closed his eyes, shutting out the light and the sleet. He had five men here who needed a healer’s care. Twenty-four who hadn’t seen their families in the better part of a year, two children under ten whose mother was dead and whose father was hundreds of leagues to the south, and one woman whose dearly loved sister Irilana was waiting in that house.
The decision made itself.
“Tell Quarro I accept his conditions.”
“No, chief,” said Odwin Two Bear. “I will not.”
Hammie stepped forward. “Nor I.”
Vaylo shook his head, but even as if he did so the roll call started behind him.
“Nor I,” said Jud Meeks.
“Nor I,” said Boddie Bryce, brother to Yuan.
“Nor I.”
“Nor I.”
And so it went on as every man in the camp refused Quarro’s terms. The injured were carried over on stretchers and those who could speak did. One man moved his fingers. All understood what he meant.
Vaylo continued shaking his head at them, but some unlikely condition of the throat prevented him from speaking. When Nan stepped into his line of view and declared “Nor I” the men cheered. Pasha and Aaron followed, pushing themselves to their front, their small faces grave.
“Nor I.”
“Nor I.”
After that the dogs began howling and Hammie exploded into laughter. The dogs howled even louder to compete with him and began jumping like crazy things in the air. Then everyone began laughing, deep belly laughs that made your ribs ache. The dogs were insane. The men were insane. And they had an old and crazy chief.
Vaylo looked at them, all thirty-five including the lunatic dogs, and he felt the pressure ease in the part of his heart where his mistakes were stored. He had been many things in this life—his brothers’ killer, a poor father, a bad chief—but he had always had the good fortune to lead fine men. There were the fine men who had helped him steal the Dhoonestone from Dhoone, those had faced off against the Sull at Cedarlode, and the thirty-six who had died defending the Dhoonehold. Bluddsmen were fine men.
Bludd was a fine clan.
Now how the hell was he going to save it?
CHAPTER 24
Stillwater
“I’M NOT PUTTING my feet in that water,” Chedd said, sitting next to Effie on the dock. Instead of swinging his legs over the end like she had, Chedd scooched up his knees, tucking his heels against his butt. He didn’t look very comfortable but that was Chedd.
Effie ran her toes through the water. “It’s cold but it wouldn’t kill you if you fell in.”
“As long as you keep your mouth closed and don’t drink any of it.” Chedd sent a chunk of clinker spinning parallel to the water. “No good for skimming,” he commented when the stone dropped, without bouncing, into the lake.
His voice sounded a bit despondent so Effie turned to look at him. The cut where his chin met his jaw, despite numerous washes with alcohol and witch hazel, was still looking puffy. All of him looked a bit puffy. And pale. To cheer him up, she pointed across the water. “Look. He’s bringing up one of his traps. Let’s take bets on what’s in it.”
Chedd’s gaze followed the direction of her finger. “That’s easy. Eels.”
They were sitting on the Grayhouse’s east landing, facing east. The Stillwater, the freshwater lake that surrounded the roundhouse, was looking especially murky and black. A handful of fishermen were out on the water. The one Effie had pointed to had just removed his float from the surface and was hauling up his trap. The tra
p was so heavy that it was chained as well as roped and big sinews popped out on the fisherman’s arms as he pulled it from the water.
“Turtles,” Effie said quickly before the trap broke the surface. “Loser relinquishes their rights to his or her midday meal.”
“Done.”
They watched in silence as the fisherman brought in his catch. The trap was a cage woven from cane, and weighted at the corners with little balls of iron. As the fisherman swung it onto the boat, water flooded from the trap. Slimy yellow pondweed clung to the cane and the fisherman pulled it off as he settled the cage in the bow of his flat-bottomed boat. He was wearing heavy boar’s hide gloves.
Effie saw something twinkling in the corner of the cage as the man ran his fingers across it. Swinging toward Chedd she bumped him with her shoulder. “What’s that?”
“Gold,” Chedd said as if it should be perfectly obvious. “All the fisherman use at least one gold weight on their traps.”
“For luck?”
“No, for weight. It’s heavier than iron. Makes the trap sink right into the mud.”
“I bet it’s for luck too.”
Chedd didn’t dispute this as the fisherman was sculling his boat toward the dock and the contents of the cage were now clearly visible. Black and shiny snakelike fish thrashed against the canes. “Eels.”
Effie couldn’t say she was surprised. Animals were Chedd’s thing. He knew stuff about them, knew whether they were male or female, where they were when no one else could see them, and sometimes what they were intending to do. It was the first thing she’d liked about him: he had some of the old skills too. That’s what Mad Binny called it. Clewis Reed said it was sorcery, but Clewis Reed was dead, killed by Dhoonesmen on the banks of the Wolf. Judging by the eel call, Chedd’s skills were still going strong. Effie was less certain about her own skills. Things had never been quite the same in that way since she lost her lore in the river.
“Look, Eff. There’s a pike in there too.”
Effie felt a chill around her heart. It was a pike that had taken her lore, snapped it from her neck when she fell overboard from Waker’s boat. She hadn’t told Chedd about it—a pike took my lore being the kind of thing that crazy people said—and she had managed to squeeze the memory into a very tiny and underused part of her brain. One word brought it back.
“It’s a beaut,” Chedd said. “A redfin.”
She looked and immediately wished she hadn’t. Now the boat was closer you could see the eels were torn and bloody. The pike was flipping among them, its gills huffing as it died.
“Must have followed the eels into the trap.” Chedd spoke with deep satisfaction. “And then the beast itself was trapped.”
Effie stood. “Stupid pike. What’s it doing here anyway? In the middle of the stupid marsh.”
Chedd shrugged. “They’re strong swimmers and they’ll move upstream against a current. Could come from anywhere—even the Wolf.”
A snort of disbelief let Chedd Limehouse know what Effie Sevrance thought about that. She began to pull on her boots.
Chedd remained unruffled. “All this water drains into the Wolf. That’s how we got here, remember?” Swinging around to face her, he said. “Eff, you have to dry your feet before putting on your boots. You don’t want swampfoot.”
She most certainly didn’t want swampfoot. Groaning as if she were doing him a big favor, Effie rubbed her feet with the hem of her dress. It was getting a bit mucky down there. No one had thought to give them fresh clothes. Thrusting her feet into her boots, she said, “Looks like rain. Let’s get going.”
They ran along the landing and entered the roundhouse through the Salamander Door. The Salamander Hall was dim and smoky. It had taken Effie a while to understand why a room named after a salamander was tiled with turtle shells, but now she decided that if you squinted just right the lighter turtle shells formed the shape of a four-toed salamander stretched across the ceiling and the walls. It was subtle and kind of stylish: well worth the squint.
As she headed for the stairs, Chedd stopped her. “No. Kitchen,” he said in his nonnegotiable voice. “You owe me food.”
He was sweating hard for a boy who had only run about a hundred paces. “All right.”
The kitchen was about as busy as any place ever got in Clan Gray. Women and a half dozen children were sitting at the far end of the long table, eating heaping bowls of garlicky mussels and sopping up the juices with toasted bread. A handful of old-timers—aging clansmen and fishermen—were supping ale and chewing on reed heads while recreating some ancient war across the lower half of the table. Pieces of bleached bone represented warriors and there was some disagreement about placement and numbers. One of the children kept stealing a chief.
Effie and Chedd received helpings of mussels and bread from the Croser girl and then went to sit at the other table. Chedd ate quickly, breaking open the mussel shells and lipping out the meat. When he was done with his bowl, she pushed her bowl toward him and he took it and carried on eating. Once he’d reached the halfway point of the new batch, he said to her, “You can dip your bread in my old bowl if you like.”
Effie picked up her hunk of break, looked at it, considered mashing it into Chedd’s face, and then said, “You have it. I’m going to call over the Croser girl.”
Chedd’s mouth was full but he still managed a groan. “Not now, Eff.”
Ignoring him, Effie caught the girl’s eye and nodded. The girl was peeling apples and she brought over her bowl and knife so she could continue working. She didn’t sit.
Effie said to her, “What was it like at Croser?”
The girl shook her head. She was dressed in a high-necked green shift with an apron pinned over it and the tattoo on her breast wasn’t visible.
“We know you’re from Croser,” Effie said in what she hoped was a low voice. “Chedd’s from Bannen and I’m from Blackhail. Hardly anyone in Gray comes from Gray. I don’t think it’s a secret.”
The girl stoutly continued peeling her apples; little dusky gold ones with worm spots. Effie watched her closely. She was a pale thing, but the color in her cheeks was steadily rising.
“You know what I think?” Effie said. “I think you’d rather be here than Croser. I think at Croser you were different. Here, no one takes any notice.”
Done with her apple, the girl put it in the bowl. The color had gone as high as her ears. She looked at the apple, took it out of the bowl, and began to core it.
Sensing victory, Effie stood, rose on her tiptoes, leaned in close and whispered, “I think you’re like Chedd and me. I think you can do sorcery.”
The girl dropped the knife. The old-timers turned to look at her. Smiling at them nervously, she retrieved the knife and began chopping the apple into little bits
Effie addressed Chedd. “Come on. We’ve got chores.” Confident he would follow, she left the kitchen without looking back.
As soon as she and Chedd reached the Salamander Hall they broke into a run, racing up the stairs and through the house. By mutual agreement they did not speak until they reached Effie’s room and closed the door.
“Holy bird fart,” Chedd said, wheezing for breath. “You were just like a clan guide. No. You were like Behethmus, searching for the truth.” He collapsed onto the bed like a felled tree. “Where did it all come from?”
Effie thought he was looking a bit green but didn’t want to spoil the moment by telling him so. “Inigar Stoop, Blackhail’s guide, wanted me to be his apprentice you know. If I hadn’t been kidnapped I’d have been grinding the Hailstone by now.”
“I wouldn’t want to be Bannen’s guide.”
“I don’t want to be Blackhail’s.”
This struck them as funny, and they laughed for a bit. Effie was relieved that Chedd was laughing and also relieved that he hadn’t been embarrassed at the things she’d said to the Croser girl. He could be sensitive about his skills.
“So what made you think she was . . . you know?”
“Did not.”
Realizing she’d made a mistake, Effie put a hand up to placate him. “Sorry. I didn’t meant that. It just got me thinking, that’s all. Then I was remembering Waker and his crazy father. Crazy Da definitely had the old skills—remember how he vanished my teeth?” Chedd nodded. “Didn’t you ever think there was a reason why Waker chose us?”
Chedd shrugged. “We were both on the river.”
“It was more than that. Crazy Da was like a sniffer dog, sniffing us out.”
“No.”
“Yes and the kitchen proves it. That Croser girl’s got the old skills too.”
Chedd thought for a few moments. “She did look pretty uncomfortable.”
“And that stuff Rufus Rime was saying about how he hopes it will become our home? Remember, he was so sure of himself? That’s because most people who have old skills feel like outsiders in their own clan. Coming here’s a relief. No one cares if you’re strange. Everyone’s strange.” Seeing she was losing Chedd she added. “Not you. You’re different. You’ve sworn to return to Bannen. Just everyone else . . . and me.”
This was a lot for Chedd to take in. He put his head back and rested.
Effie was quiet for a moment but it didn’t last. “They’re bringing magic-users to Gray because of the curse. I can feel it. Either magic can help us withstand the curse or they hope we’re going to lift it.”
“Rime said there wasn’t a curse,” Chedd said sleepily. “Death happens because we’re living in the marsh.”
“Rime’s lying through his teeth. Not about every thing but some things. He’s tricky.”
Chedd started snoring. Effie frowned and then clambered on the bed.
“Make room,” she told him.
She slept and dreamed of the dome of the old Grayhouse, sinking slowly into the marsh.