Without complaint, he leaned his belongings against a wheel of the cart, accepted the axe, and wandered into the trees. While the boy was gone, she gathered kindling and her cooking supplies. Once finished, she went looking for the boy. She found him a short distance away, in a clearing made by a fallen pine. He had found a small log partially pinned beneath the larger tree. Both log and pine showed signs of age, both had been dead for some time. In one sweep the boy separated the log from the pine. He rolled it into his arms then leaned it atop the larger trunk. He swung the axe again, another clean cut. He repeated the process. Despite his frailty, the boy accomplished the feat again and again; one clean cut after another.
“You’re good at that,” she said.
Without turning to face her, the boy nodded.
“I figured you for a scribe,” she said. “Not a woodsman.”
The boy lowered the axe. “You went through my things?”
She ignored the question. “It makes sense. I doubt the North has much else to offer besides the trees nowadays.”
“Just wood and manners it seems.”
“I was looking for the knife. The sheath was empty.”
Shrugging, the boy lifted the axe to resume his chopping.
When he said nothing, she continued. “I used to trade up there – before the iron ran out of course. Wasn’t any reason to keep going back once it was gone. Though I was luckier than most. There’d been rumors for years that the iron was running out, but nobody believed it. Had a friend in Riften who worked the smelters though, and he told me the fort was going to be abandoned soon. Figured if the soldiers were leaving there must be nothing left to protect. You’re from Vale, right? I recognize the accent. The Riftener’s have a bit of a rasp to their words – like they’re speaking with their throats instead of their tongues. Anyway, it’s a nice place. At least it used to be. Haven’t been in six years or more. You might be too young to remember what it used to be like though. What are you? Fifteen, sixteen?
“Fifteen,” he said. “It’s quieter than it used to be. The camps are all empty since the miners left. Riften’s shrunk a bit, but it’s still standing.”
“And Liv?”
“Gone. Without the fort, the town fell apart. That’s where I grew up actually. My father was the garrison’s scribe.” The boy stopped, a shadow creeping over his features. He handed her the axe then gathered a few of the cut logs and motioned for her to precede him. “Well, lead on.”
She moved to obey.
“You’re a trader?” the boy asked. As they entered camp, he dropped the wood near the pit she had dug. He took the axe from her hands and set one of the logs on a stump. He split a few then found the kindling she had gathered and started a fire.
“Yep. Well, more of a caravan merchant, without the caravan. I used to travel with a larger group, but I found that I enjoy being alone.”
“You talk a lot for someone who likes to be alone.”
“And you’ve got a smart mouth for a starving little runt. Better shut it if you plan on eating my food.”
“I’d say that it’s the least I deserve after you tried to kill me.”
“The least you deserve is an arrow in your throat. Too bad it missed.”
“I’m starting to think your solitude isn’t a choice.”
Light and sparks flew from the pit as heat appeared from nothing. She resisted the urge to kick him into the newborn flames. He crept away from the fire then stood to face her.
“Apparently, the North ran out of manners too. What’s your name, boy?”
“Jem. And yours?”
“Mind your own business, boy.”
“Jem,” he insisted.
“Boy,” she countered.
The boy, Jem, sighed then lowered himself to a sitting position. She gathered the cooking supplies and some food from the cart, then threw the meat, vegetables, and water into the compact iron oven. As the logs heated, they sat in silence. When the wood became black and scaled she used a stick to break the fuel into char. With that done, she lowered the oven onto the fire, and with a large pair of tongs, placed a handful of coals on the oven’s lid.
“It’s Trin,” she said.
“What?” the boy asked.
“My name. It’s Trin.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Trin. Sort of.”
“You’re alive. Stop whining.”
“I’m not whining.” Despite the day’s heat, the boy warmed his hands over the fire. They were darker than the rest of his skin, as if coated in mud or clay, or perhaps a strange tattoo. She didn’t recognize the design. She wondered if it had anything to do with the scars on his body.
“Well, you look like a whiner.”
CHAPTER FOUR
In the morning, Jem woke beside a burning fire. It was the sounds he noticed first. The chattering of a squirrel, the crackling fire, and water bubbling. Above him, light cascaded through bough and needle. Jem lifted his head and looked around. The merchant was at the fire tending to the boiling oven, her long brown hair in a braid that overhung one shoulder. He was groggy from this long awaited restful slumber, so he did not greet the merchant. Instead, his mind and eyes trailed to the ox where it had nested at the foot of a pine. For a moment, he was startled as the memories of the day before puttered back.
The ox was different than those he had seen at home. It did not have the short black hair or the horns of a bull. Instead, long, shaggy hair draped the animal like wool on a sheep. The horns curved downward along the cheeks before curving back up just above the chin. The thing looked more like an overgrown ram than any kind of ox. It was ugly, but it was also large, twice the size of the oxen he’d seen before and looking heavier and more stalwart. It watched him as he studied it. When he met its eyes, the ox turned its head away.
“Eying my ox, boy?” Trin asked. In her hand, she held a wooden bowl. She ladled something out of the cauldron and handed him the bowl and a spoon. He sat up to receive it.
“Just looking.”
“Well don’t. She doesn’t need any suitors.”
Jem stared at her, awestruck, with his spoon hanging in the air.
“Don’t give me that look. I know what you northerners do to sheep.”
He studied Trin’s face and couldn’t tell if she was joking or serious. Her full cheeks were rigid and the lines around her mouth sat at rest.
“I wouldn’t,” he protested, but in spite of himself, he could feel the heat rush to his face.
“Oh yeah? Then why’re you blushing?”
Jem didn’t answer. Instead, he busied himself with the food before him. It was a stew, made from whatever meat and roots had not been scraped from the oven’s use the night before. Trin ladled herself a bowl and for a time they didn’t speak.
Before the words were awkward, now the silence overwhelmed him.
“Where are you coming from?” he asked.
“East. From Lock. But that won’t help you. The ox isn’t from there.”
“I don’t want to fuck your ox.”
“Well now, you don’t have to hurt her feelings like that. Even if she doesn’t like you, she doesn’t need to hear that. A woman wants to feel desirable.” She rubbed her hand against the black flesh shrouding her right eyelid; the bruise framing the subtle blue of her eye.
Jem gave her a silent stare. His thoughts flashed to the arrow he might’ve buried in that black patch of flesh, but something told him she had seen enough suffering already.
“Calm down, boy. It was just a joke.” Trin pulled a canteen from inside her long coat and drank. She replaced the cap before speaking. “I’m coming from Lock’s capital, Dekahn. I had an errand there and on the way back I picked up some tools and iron to sell at one of the outposts on the border. Thought the prices would be good, what with the scuffles with the Lockish folk. Sure, it wasn’t the most honest plan, buying from the Lockish to sell to their enemies, but the Dekahnians don’t seem to care much for them Vandu at the border. They seem to think o
f ‘em as raiders and highwaymen, and having spent some time with ‘em, I can’t say I disagree. Didn’t do me any good though. The Legion confiscated all my goods when I crossed the border and all I got in return was some stupid paper with some scribbles on it. The soldiers told me it’d reimburse me for all the things they took, but what’s that good for? Took one of my oxen too. Would have had them both if I hadn’t talked ‘em out of it. I said to them, ‘How you expect me to pull a cart without an ox? Can’t bring you more supplies if I can’t pull my cart.’ Scammed ‘em good ‘cause I’m not going back there after that. I couldn’t even buy goods for the return trip since the vendors there wouldn’t make deals based on a piece of paper on some legionnaire’s word, so now, I’m out half my profits ‘cause I got nothing to sell back in Trel. It’s the gods’ word they told me. More like the gods’ shit. As I’m always saying, if the gods don’t speak in Trellish, how’s a priest know the difference when a god speaks and when a god shits in their ear? Probably sounds the same I bet. Anyway, so now I have’ta go back to Trel, and take this paper to some priest at the vaults and hope they pay me back. I’m sure that when I get there they’ll tell me that it’s the gods’ will that I accept payment in the form of salvation. But I don’t need any salvation. I need a pile of gold and a new ox. Salvation isn’t transferrable. I tried that already.”
Overwhelmed by all her words, Jem didn’t know what to say. The best he could come up with was “That’s unfortunate.”
“You’re damned right it’s unfortunate. You’d think that if the gods wanted to fuck me they’d pay me properly afterwards.”
“You don’t seem to have much faith.”
“I’ve got enough faith that I took that butchering paper without grabbing the bastard’s sword and skewering him right there. But you’re right. I don’t believe the way most do in the capital. Seen too many different gods. You think we have a lot, well up north at Gellin they have millions of ‘em. Had a friend I met one time when I was trading outside that big wall and he took me to all the different bricks. Each brick’s got a face, and each face is a different god. To me, all the faces looked about the same though. Sure, there were a few changes between each one but not much. Personally, I think it’s all the same person, just the sculptor however many years ago couldn’t get it exactly right every time. I said that to the Gelliner and he told me I was just being ignorant. Like shit I was. Can’t be ignorant when you’re going off what your eyes see.
“Anyway, each of those faces was a different god with a different role. Although there seemed like some overlap to me. He showed me one brick and said, ‘That’s the god of wisdom.’ Then he points at one farther down the line and says, ‘That’s the god of intelligence.’ And so I asked him, ‘What’s the difference? Those are the same thing.’ And he just snorts his pigly nose at me like I wouldn’t understand even if he told me. Damned Gelliners are damned arrogant. You think the devout in the capital are poncy, then you haven’t met a Gelliner. But I don’t understand it. They hide all they have behind that damned wall, so what have they got to be proud of? Just a bunch of bricks with faces is the only thing I’ve seen. And sure, it’s nice, but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s probably the only nice thing they’ve got. Like my friend once, bought a stallion from the stables down at Rori and then starts acting like he’s the godsdamned High Cleric. But then he couldn’t pay his landlord after that ‘cause he’d sunk all his money into that horse. And of course, the next week I see him chopping that horse up for stew. Man was an idiot. I asked him, ‘Why you chopping up that horse? Why not just sell it?’ Well, he looks at that cleaver in his hand then back at me and then he just starts crying. Anyways, I bet those Gelliners just got a big old pile of shit behind that wall. Probably why their noses are so pigly, gotta scrunch up away from that smell. The important thing here is that I didn’t talk to him much after that.”
“The Gelliner?” Jem asked. Again, his mind flashed to that mercifully silent arrow.
“No, my friend that bought the horse,” Trin said, looking at Jem as though he were slow witted. “He got all weird and depressed after killing that horse. And not the fun, let’s go get drunk and throw piss drenched snowballs at the priests kind of depressed, the other kind. Think he learned his lesson though.” With a hand, Trin waved the thought away. “Anyway, that sure was a hike, walking to all those bricks. The Gelliner kept naming them, but I stopped listening about a third of the way through.”
“That’s an option?” Jem asked.
“Pff, you are a boy. Any real man would give his right thumb to have a conversation with a woman like myself. I know how to treat ‘em special. It’s all in the way you listen, you know. Let them talk about themselves until they’re blue in the face, give ‘em a few smiles, a nod here and there. And if that don’t work, you just have’ta start taking clothes off.”
Jem looked at his thumb – he would never part with Wilbur – not even for that. Returning his gaze to Trin, he asked, “Why not just start with the undressing?”
“Sometimes I do. But that’s only when I’m real drunk. Like that time me and my friend threw those snowballs at them priests. That was one happy priest. I mean, how was I supposed to know he was a legionnaire? He didn’t look like much in those robes. Or out of them for that matter. You know, I’m starting to wonder if he lied to me. He sure didn’t have a warrior’s build. Ah well, it’s a good story anyway. And I didn’t end up in the stocks. At least, not the public ones. Some of them priests have got some strange hobbies.” Trin grew silent, a weird smile on her face, her eyes staring blankly ahead.
Jem said nothing, too afraid the next time she spoke, she wouldn’t stop.
The two finished their meal in silence. Afterward, Jem stood and began collecting his things while Trin sat before the fire, still seeming to be deep in thought.
“How far is the nearest village?” Jem asked.
Trin perked up. “You mean Lane? If you leave early enough you’ll get there before nightfall. In that much of a hurry to leave me, are ya?”
He looked at her. Was he in a hurry? He didn’t have anywhere to be. Was there a reason to rush? Was returning to the endless monotony of walking really that important?
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“Well, where is it that you’re going?” She stood and began kicking dirt onto the fire.
“Trel I suppose. Ever been to the library there?”
“Of course not,” Trin scoffed. “I’m a respectable sort. I’ve never read a book in my life. Why? You looking to scribe down there?”
“Don’t have many options.”
“Of course you do. Plenty of places need a boy that can read and write. That shit’s tough. You could go anywhere. Besides, why would you want to live with all those priests? Oh gods, can you imagine? I can deal with priests telling me I need to change my ways, calling me a harlot or a drunk, or a public defecator, but imagine living with the bastards. Tear a page and the only thing you’d hear all day is how disappointed the gods are.” Trin’s voice began to shake. “Trust me, boy. Stay away from that library. It’s a hateful, evil place.”
Jem stared into her eyes and she turned her head away from his gaze.
“You’ve been there haven’t you?” Jem accused.
As she turned her head back to him and smiled, Jem realized that he had fallen into her trap.
“Course I have, how do you think I got the title ‘public defecator?’ But trust me, it’s not worth going in there. You tear a few pages from a book and the next thing you know you’re a sinner and a heathen. They’d probably hung me except the High Cleric himself shows up and tells ‘em to let me go. Apparently, he shares my opinion of the Whore’s teachings. The funny thing is, I don’t even remember having an opinion. I was just drunk and in need of some paper. Anyway, I’m not allowed back anymore. Defiling the word of Dydal and all that. But if you’re set on Trel, you’re welcome to travel with me.”
Did he want to? He asked himself. This woman wa
s somewhat eccentric. And she spoke too much. But was that a bad thing? Could he go out there on his own? Could he travel by himself, with only his regrets as company? He didn’t want to dwell on his life anymore. He didn’t want to be alone. No. It was more than that. He was afraid of being alone again, afraid of his own thoughts. Compared to the doubts and barbs of his inner dialogue, Trin’s voice was a treasure. But still, Jem wasn’t sure. Something about it didn’t feel right… Because going with her might end his penance and he wasn’t certain he deserved that.
“I’m not sure,” Jem said. Trin began to load her things into the wagon. While the merchant was turned away, Jem rubbed his hands in the ashes. The pit was still warm, but the coals didn’t burn his skin.
“Well, there’s not much to wonder about. We’re going the same way, if you’re worried I’d slow you down, I won’t. Tell you what. Travel with me to Lane at least. Then you can decide from there.” Trin’s gaze returned.
“All right, I guess that’d be okay.”
“Perfect. It gets boring by myself. There isn’t anyone to talk to other than me, and I’ve already listened to all my stories. And to be quite honest, I think I’m getting tired of hearing ‘em.” Trin gave him a smile and a wink. “Don’t worry, boy. We’ll have a good time and who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky and Old Nance will come around.”
“Old Nance?” Jem asked.
“The ox, you idiot.”
It would be another hour before the City of Lane came into view – a small city by most standards, but an important one nonetheless. It was nestled along the west bank of Rift’s River, the large and deep river that spanned much of Northern Trellahn. It entered the country through the canyons north of Riften and then joined at Lane with the Heart from Dekahn and the Trench from Rori, meaning that any cargo coming by river trade from pretty much anywhere had to stop at Lane if it was to make it anywhere else.
Death's Merchant: Common Among Gods - Book One Page 7