The Binder's Road (The Sequel to 'Illumination')

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The Binder's Road (The Sequel to 'Illumination') Page 5

by Terry McGarry


  Pelufer slipped into the gutter behind the stalls, to pass close by the shortstreets that opened on the long every dozen threfts. Safe from roadway traffic, she would blend with the tinkers’ children, though most her age slaved at bending brake or jennie. A band of young ones surrounded her in some ring-a-lo game. She lunged with a hard stamp of foot and a jut of jaw too overacted to be serious. The ring burst and the children flew giggling and tumbling away through billows of mist. Conversation drifted back on the settling vapor, the gossip and byplay of experienced customers and traders. “We’re losing this town,” she heard, and “We’ve lost it already, all the waysiders to feed,” and “I’ve patched and rehammered all I can, it’s new tin we need.”

  You hear that, Elora?

  River waters had fed Gir Doegre even when they could no longer slake its thirst, and there were still the roads: maur-to-Knee, Boot-to-Girdle, Heel-to-Highlands. A good place for traders, an easy pitch. But you had to have something to trade, and if you made things out of other things, you had to bring something here from somewhere else, or send someone to fetch it.

  That would be good work for us, Elora. If there was tin out there, and copper, and the miners and sifters weren’t all dead of flood or plague or the dozen other disasters invented or garbled by too many tellings ...

  She might as well speak to the dead. Elora clung to this place like a haunt.

  Far above, in the sickly haze that was the sky, thunder rumbled. Gawpers sighed in anticipation. From away, they were; Pelufer ignored the sky. It was helpless thunder. It rolled across them all the time, on its way Heartward. Never gave a drop of rain. Only lightning, now and then, to stitch the sky, or strike what houses had stood firm against rot and mites and borers.

  At the next stall, the same conversation, repeated up and down both shorts and longs: This town is rotting, it’s starved for metals, it’s as good as dead, just look around you. “The Khinish will wake [44] before you see the end of this place, it’s always been here and always will,” she heard, a trader’s optimism, and then something else, something she must have heard wrong, except she heard it again, a low sound-shape of promise and menace:

  The Khinish are waking.

  Her heart leaped, part fear and part exhilaration. If it was true ... if they came ... there would be an end on the dancing then, the Khinish wouldn’t abide that, but there would be work, too, real work for her, for them, no more mooning at tinkers’ get with their useful chores or being turned away from harvests so poor that not even cottars were needed to bring them in. The Khinish were strong. The Khinish were capable. The Khinish could put the world to rights. If they woke. If they came.

  But rumors were hardly ever true. And if this one was, it would give Elora enough to beat her at stay-or-go. And then she would never be free of them.

  She kept moving. Pewter Short, Brass Short, Stone Short, each with stalls crowded right up to the end. The longstreet side of any stall was its weak side—accessible but not closely watched. Custom passed in front, and no one expected trouble from the backs of Tin Long traders watching their own wares. Most end stalls had baffles to shield them against quick-fingered children. And traders knew better than to let their wares spill over the front of the stall onto crates and shelves beyond the reach of their arms. But times were hard. They had to display all the stock they could. The smallest items, the least likely to be missed, the most eye-catching but least valuable, migrated out and down and away from the protection of the stall like waysiders seeking something better for themselves.

  That was how two glittering stones made their way from Mireille’s stall into Pelufer’s pocket.

  Too late, she sang in silence, too late, as Mireille’s snub nose came up and her head turned as if pulled on a string. Quick as a cat she was out from behind her planks. Her little mouth was a round dark opening. In another breath, curses would fly out of it like bats. Her narrow-eyed gaze speared the hand that had dropped near Pelufer’s pocket. So she hadn’t seen the stones go in. She wouldn’t call the keepers unless she was sure. Pelufer had tricked her too many times.

  With lazy ease, Pelufer unlooped her water ladle from where it hung next to her left tunic pocket. She didn’t have to look back at Mireille as she slid into the queue by the public barrels. She could feel the spite through the misty air. Mireille would be counting stones for the rest of the day, then recounting them to make sure the mistake [45] wasn’t her own. It was so hard not to burst out laughing that tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.

  The woman who had been last in line, stiff with impatience or the effort of waiting, went soft in the spine and shoulders and expansively gestured Pelufer ahead of her. A generous hostess welcoming a guest into space that was not hers to offer. The motion jostled the man before them. He turned, puffing up in preparation to take affront. “The child’s crying with thirst!” the woman said.

  His stance relaxed into something lazy, hipshot, but still balanced, still ready for ... what? Best not rile this one, Pelufer thought, beginning to regret her choice of ruse. “Bit inefficient, wouldn’t you say?” he remarked. “Cry less, drink less.”

  Pelufer sniffled and rubbed a bare toe in the sticky dirt, eyes downcast. She needn’t see the man’s face to know that he’d dismissed her with wry amusement and returned to contemplating the wait. The way he moved spoke louder than any word or smile. People were shapes and subtle shifts of weight, angles of shoulder and cant of legs. Eyes and voices could hide a nonned things. The language of limbs could not.

  “Are you hungry?” the woman said. “Does anyone look after you?” She was standing too close. Pelufer smelled travel sweat and the moldflowers keepers washed with after hauling the dead away. She shouldn’t smell like a keeper. This wasn’t right.

  “Water’s free,” Pelufer said vaguely, glancing over her left shoulder. She could run, now; she could leave Mireille counting, forget the ruse. But Mireille was talking to a keeper. Mists shifted, and brief dilute sunlight rounded the pommel of his sheathed longblade to a muted shine. Mireille’s hands danced a pattern over her planks, then fluttered at Pelufer. The keeper turned to look. Pelufer was staring to the left, as if watching a mange-ridden dog forage in the midden behind a shack, but she had them clear in her side vision.

  A pattern, she thought. Poxy Mireille. She didn’t need to count. She’d laid them out some way that she knew when the shape had changed. It was what Pelufer would have done. She’d never expect it of Mireille, always so quick to pounce on sacrilege.

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t say no to a treat,” the not-right woman behind her said. Her hands fell on Pelufer’s shoulders. A protective gesture. People were always trying to mother her. She hated it. But this was something more. There was something wrong with those hands. Her insides felt strange.

  “I don’t take handouts,” Pelufer said, harsher than she should. This too-kind woman might keep the keeper off her. But there was something bubbling inside. The not-rightness was growing, radiating [46] from the woman into her and forming into a thing inside her, connected with the light hands flat on her shoulders.

  The keeper was heading over. Mireille’s complaints goaded him like little missiles. Pelufer had to watch him without watching, had to gauge sternness or exasperation from the way he moved, to tell if he was on Mireille’s side or not.

  “Not a handout. Something in trade. Perhaps you’d tell me a little about this place, I’ve only just come and I’d be grateful for a local guide and you could earn yourself a treat, even a meal, perhaps your mother and father and sisters and brothers ...”

  Be quiet! Pelufer needed to sense the movements, the dance around her. She could tell the keeper she was with this woman. She might use this. But too much was happening too fast. The woman wasn’t right. She offered work, a day’s work, that was all Pelufer had ever wanted, that was all Father had ever wanted, a day’s work to feed his family, but Pelufer knew a ruse when she heard one, she felt the lie running tense down the woman’s fingers, don�
��t try to use someone who would use you, it twists on you—

  They were only four from the barrels now. The water keeper was bladed, too, but water keepers didn’t handle the dead. “Three more,” he said, the customary warning as the barrels ran low, “the rest of you try down the long,” and the customary moans slid along the queue as obedient folk moved on to the next station, there were three for every long, they never all went empty at once.

  Her own ruse had run out with the water.

  It was the woman, or the keeper, or the dance now.

  She couldn’t use the woman against the keeper or the keeper against the woman. She wanted to. She wanted to be clever and do that. But adults had a nasty habit of siding with each other.

  She felt as though she’d swallowed a cup of freezing bubbles.

  “It’s all right,” said the dangerous man ahead of her, beginning to turn, “I’ll be the last, you’ll both share mine.”

  She wouldn’t. Too much was wrong here. She couldn’t sort it. Time to dance. She tensed to spring.

  The woman sensed it. Her hands closed reflexively on Pelufer’s shoulders. The thing inside her burst out like a rotten center:

  “Ardis.”

  No, no, not now—

  “Traig.” She could not stop it. “Areil.” She bit her tongue, tasted rust. “Bendik.”

  The woman jerked stiff but did not release her. The man’s body betrayed nothing, but his face drained of blood, sometimes you could tell things from faces— Names vomited out of her, a gush of names [47] right here in the middle of Tin Long, this was disaster, she had to run—

  Fingers arched into claws dug into nerves between the bones of her shoulders. Her arms went tingly-numb. Names poured from her mouth. Impressions not her own poured through her head. She cut them off, an old vicious reflex: She made an axe fall in her mind and cut off the limb of a tree of names. But still they battered at her. Never so many in one place since the bilechoke fever had run through Highhill. Except for the spirit wood. She couldn’t control her mouth or her throat, couldn’t strangle it. Glittering black tar oozed around the edges of her vision.

  “It’s some kind of fit,” the dangerous man said. The stalls keeper stopped next to them. Traders and customers turned curious heads. The water keeper left the spent barrels and joined them with the same wary slow movements as his bladed brother. Fear cleared her mind but couldn’t shut her mouth. The dangerous man, the flowery woman—Pelufer felt their connection through the closing of their bodies, they meant to keep her from the keepers, too late, too late, they steal lone children like you to give the bonefolk, nonsense spouted by angry stallholders but if it was nonsense why did the bladeless woman wash with flowers why was everything funneling in not right this was not right—

  Back was stopped by the woman’s body, sidewise by her hands, forward by the man, but down was clear. She was a child having a fit. People having fits fainted. That wasn’t so hard. She’d been close enough a breath ago. She melted her legs. The pinching fingers could not support her dangling weight. She hit the ground like a full sack. The fingers came with her, closed on her shirt. She spun hard in the dirt—outward, away from the approaching stalls keeper. Old linen gave but did not tear. The woman would not let go. Her arms were numb. She had only her legs. Her teeth, if she had to.

  The stalls keeper was bending down to her. She drove herself upward into the woman’s clinging fingers. The woman swore and snatched them back. The man said, “We must get her out of the sun, it’s a heat palsy, I’m a healer, let me take her,” but the keepers weren’t having it, maybe sometimes keepers could help you, and she was whirling, spinning into the dangerous man, and the keeper reaching for her blundered into him, and their grabbing arms muddled, and she was away, across the long, through the jagged teeth of tin stalls, up the reeking midden path behind rows of hovels and then between the hovels, still small enough to fit though soon she wouldn’t be, old limewashed clay scraped her, she lost a loaf-stuffed pouch in the tight squeeze and she’d left another behind on the ground when [48] she dropped and spun, that food had been for Elora and Caille, they’d have to leave here before she was too big to get through the boltholes, they’d have to leave here sooner than that if claw-fingered strangers were stealing children, how would she explain this, a fit right in Tin Long in front of everyone, Elora would kill her, she had to get back ...

  Up a steep short, down again, up again, over, hurdling dogs, ducking clotheslines, ducking the paddles clothesbeaters turned on her for the disruption, barking apology. She never danced where folk lived, she never ventured up this hill, too many had died here. She shut her ears, tried not to shut her eyes. It wouldn’t help. She felt the whispering tickle of names in her throat. She concentrated on material shapes, objects to avoid, elude, slip between in a calculation of speed and angles. She ran out of breath halfway along the remaining stretch of Tin Long. She realised she was falling. She forced her steps wide. Just another few threfts.

  A manger beckoned. She went down, rolled under. Stifled a sneeze. Ignored the curious snuffling of soft donkey muzzles until it stopped.

  Her head was pounding. Her heart was pounding. She was patient. She let the pounding slow. She didn’t think about what happened. In a few slowbreaths, then she would think. When her breaths were coming slow enough, she’d count nine of them and then she’d think.

  Ardis. A baker who loved the sweet smell of fresh flour. A ...

  She conjured the axe in her mind, raised it high, cut the Ardis limb off hard.

  Traig. He made beds. The sheets were soft in his hands, silky, not crisp like linen or downy like flannel. Who’d think to make sheets out of silk?

  She cut the Traig limb off. Then the Areil limb—some kind of teacher, showing patterning to young people. Then Bendik, before he came clear. She swallowed a whimper. It was too much. One was too much. She couldn’t count how many this had been.

  I’m Pelufer, she thought very clearly at herself. I’m getting up now. I’m going back to my sisters.

  She elbowed out from under the manger, got to shaky feet, peered around to get her bearings. She’d come mostway up the hill. Down behind her, the long was a tin-spiked river of mist.

  What had those strangers been, how were they linked, what had they wanted, why was the world a twistedness around them, where had all those names come from? The treats in her belly had curdled, and she was, perversely, thirsty. On a renewed burst of fear, she broke [49] into a trot, then made herself walk. Damp air came hard into her lungs; she swore on every outbreath. Better to swear than to say names. She cursed Mireille and keepers and dangerous, flowery strangers. She tried on a laugh. It didn’t work. Another name burped out at the end of it, and a woman near her looked up stricken from a butter churn. She quickened her step and held a soiled kerchief over her mouth to muffle the sounds. She never came here, into the tangle of shortstreets at the upland end of town. She never came past the hovels at the front, all tin sheets and sod, never went beyond, to where the rot had not taken so many of the original structures, to the shantytown where people crammed in under any roofs they could find and camped under precarious tinsheet or tarp lean-tos, sleeping chocked against the decline. She never ventured back to where one-family cottages now hosted three, or six, beds bunked and the occupants sleeping—and dying—in shifts. She never came to Highhill. This was why.

  She picked her way around the fetid knots of shelters, through alleys and byways, down toward the head of Copper Long. The lightning-slashed clouds moved Girdleward and the watery sun moved Khineward. Angling light changed the shape of the vapors that haunted Gir Doegre. All shapes had changed; that brief shock in Tin Long had twisted the fabric of her world, and now everything seemed a wrongness, off kilter, out of place. She sensed threats lurking in byways that had been avenues of escape.

  Understanding none of it, drained and frayed and knowing her own dogged bravery for a ruse tried in vain on herself, she crossed Tin Long as furtive as a cat hearing wagons rumb
le. She dodged and twisted and turned with the twisting, turning shorts, deep inside the triangle of Tin and Copper and Bronze Longs, the center of Gir Doegre town. Hunger Long bisected the triangle, from point to base, another furtive crossing, wedge to wedge. On instinct she avoided the cold places where the names would come. She knew them all, knew every fingerspan of the traders’ wedges. There was no thought now of filching untended wares. Just the drive to return to where she had begun at sunup, the debris-strewn lot inside the intersection of Copper Long and Bronze Long, where the rot had crumbled all the shacks and now the junkmongers displayed their pitiful offerings on ragged blankets or raveled silk or stained linen, or no more than a little space cleared on the ground.

  Elora sat at the lot’s edge, a slim, silk-haired beacon among the drab huddles of fallen wrights and traders, by a linen cloth smoothed neat on the scrap of ground they had fought hard to defend for the last two years. Their pitch.

  [50] Caille, absorbed in some complex arrangement of mounds and pebbles in the dirt nearby, felt Pelufer’s approach and raised her head without turning, spoke a word to their older sister. There was anger in Elora’s body as she twisted to see.

 

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