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

by Terry McGarry

  She saw him before she saw his barrow. He was partway out in the long, hawking his wares in a singsong voice that came just short of sacrilege. Soon she was close enough to see the sheen of sweat on his face and neck. It made her aware that she was shivering. Noon closed the air in like an oven, though it was only sowmid. Good. It would help her forget the scares she’d had, the sleep she hadn’t. It would bake the deep cold from her bones.

  She slipped between stalls and came around behind and hunkered down between the shafts of Nolfi’s barrow. She could smell the heat-warmed copper. It smelled like Mother’s craftery. Elora and Caille were nowhere to be seen; that was good, they were hiding well. The trader at the next stall saw her and gestured to Nolfi, spoiling the surprise. Pelufer popped up anyway, still quick enough to startle him when he turned to look for her. “Where’s Elora?” she asked.

  “Pel,” he said. She frowned at the twist of his chin, the way his shoulders shrugged up, his hands turning outward. “Pel,” he said, “I’m sorry ...”

  Sorry for what? People were sorry for death, sorry for disaster. Something had happened to her sisters—

  A keeper stepped up next to Nolfi. She felt presences behind her.

  “Don’t grab her,” Nolfi warned, “she’ll go mad.”

  She dropped her upper body and drove back with her legs, pushing between the two behind her and underneath the sweep of their arms, but she came up hard against a third—four keepers, they sent four for me—and he hugged her arms tight against her sides while one of the others got an arm around her legs. Then she went mad. Nolfi’s warning was nothing compared with the way she fought, bucking [81] and twisting and biting, pounding her hard head back into one’s chestbone as she got one leg free and kicked another, pulling them all off balance and crashing into Nolfi’s cousin’s stall, serves him right for giving me up—

  “Stop it, stop it, you’ll hurt yourself,” Nolfi cried, elbowing in to get near her. She snarled and would have scratched him if she could have reached with the clawed hand pinned to her side. But the keepers were big and there were too many of them. They wrapped arms around her until they had her immobilized on her side off the ground. In response, she shrieked. It came out horrible, her throat rasped raw by the night before, but that made it even worse on the ears, and Nolfi stumbled back as the keepers winced and swore and turned their heads. “Bloody spirits, we’ll have to gag her,” she heard one say as she drew breath for a renewed assault—but it was clear they weren’t going to drop her, she didn’t have enough lung power to force it, and though a gag would stop them hearing any names that might come out, she couldn’t let them do that until they’d told her what happened to her sisters.

  She went limp and turned pleading eyes to Nolfi. “Elora,” she said. “Caille.”

  “They’re fine, they’re all right, the keepers will take you to them, they’re all right. Spirits, Pel!”

  She wanted to hit him for making it sound as if she was the one making all this trouble. Relief won out, and then, in the same heartbeat, fury that he’d made her think the worst. “ ‘I’m sorry’!” she spat. “You’ll be sorry, all right!” She followed that with a string of invective that would have made her father blush, and she’d learned the art from him. Nolfi looked hurt but not chastened.

  “Let her down,” he said, “don’t carry her like an old carpet!”

  Two of the keepers laughed outright, looking from spitting, twisting, swearing Pelufer back to Nolfi.

  “It’s not my fault,” he said as they carried her off.

  She called him every name she knew and then began inventing new ones. His voice, righteous and regretful, followed her down the long as the keepers bore her toward the pitches, and cut through the expletives that grew faint as her voice went hoarse.

  “It wasn’t me!” Nolfi called, as if across the gulf of years that separated them from the childhood friends they had been. “Elora sent them!”

  “I was worried sick,” Elora said, and her hand twitched as if it wanted to slap her, although it was only dabbing a wet cloth on facial [82] scratches Pelufer hadn’t felt until her sister started tending them. “I had to get help. It was the only good choice.”

  “You could have trusted me,” Pelufer growled. Her throat was so sore that everything she said sounded jaded and threatening, a satisfying effect. “And now look where we are.”

  In a tavern on the river side of Bronze Long, the Mute Swan, named for the birds that congregated behind it before the crowfever had them all, and a good bit of Lowhill with them. The sound of the River Doegri lapped over the sills of the unshuttered back windows, and she could almost hear the grinding of the mill over on its maur-bound tributary. Their house had been in Lowhill, across the river; if she looked out the window now, she could probably point to it. The singing whisper of river currents and the stony rumble of the mill had made her sleep, when she was very small. But she’d had her fill of memories—other people’s, and her own. She knew perfectly well that she’d been saying goodbye to Gir Doegre in her heart ever since she set out last night, ever since Elora had agreed to leave. Goodbye, forest. Goodbye, roads. Goodbye, warm-copper smell. Goodbye, grinding millstones. Goodbye, whispering river. Next it would be “Goodbye, Mamma” and “Goodbye, Padda,” and it made her sick, it made her want to spit, it made her want to hit something. It’s time to go it’s time to go!

  But they couldn’t go until the men and women seated around the tavern’s tables said they could. All the alderfolk of the town assembled here, three senior and three junior, and not a few traders once the word got out that some big decision was in the works regarding trader children. All this attention brought to bear on them, all because Elora had to run to the keepers instead of trusting Pelufer and waiting as she was supposed to.

  “I did trust you,” Elora said. “I trusted you to be back by dawn. That’s what we agreed. Dawn at the byre, and at Nolfi’s barrow if Caille and I had to leave there.”

  It was true. But you had to be more adaptable than that. You had to keep your head when things didn’t go as planned.

  And if that man had decided to kill me, I’d have been glad to see keepers then, wouldn’t I. That was Elora’s kind of sense. She tried it on, and decided she didn’t care for it. No keepers had been anywhere near there. He could have cut her throat and the bonefolk would have had her before anyone ever knew, and no one like her to tell the tale, no one like her to say “Pelufer” and explain how she had died.

  She was the only one like her. Elora and Caille were the only ones like them. They could not afford this kind of scrutiny. It’s time to go!

  [83] “But it’s all right now,” Elora said. “I negotiated with them. I made a deal. It’ll get us out of Gir Doegre, the way you wanted.”

  “What kind of deal?” Pelufer said uneasily, straightening.

  Elora glanced over her shoulder. “You’ll see when she comes back, she had arrangements to make for us. It’s brilliant, Pel, you’ll be so proud of me. I know you’re angry that I went to the keepers, and I was sorry too right afterward because it got them worried about all of us and they brought Caille and me to the alderfolk and it really was getting out of hand, but I met this woman, just wait, you’ll see.”

  The terrible thought that went through Pelufer’s mind could not be what Elora meant. “What does this woman look like, Elora?” She swallowed. “What does she smell like?”

  Doubt flickered over Elora. “She was in town looking for prentices,” she said with a frown. “She didn’t know anything about us, she was just sitting in here with the alderfolk, and when they started to talk about putting us into care, I ...” She shook her head and threw down the wet cloth. “You said it was a woman and a man, Pel, and you didn’t tell me what they looked like, you never say what color people are or how tall they are or anything useful, and they were dangerous and scary and this woman isn’t, and there was no man with her—”

  “Because he was in the spirit wood.” Pelufer didn’t need
her raspy voice now to sound dark. “Trying to catch me. I got away and now it turns out you’ve given us to her. You idiot, you idiot ...”

  “It’s not her.” Elora had made up her mind. “It’s not. You’ll see. You wanted work for us, honest work, and I’ve found us some, I’ve found us a way out. We’ll prentice as healers, and if we don’t like it we’ll run away. It’s simple. It’s perfect. You’ll see.”

  The low murmur of adult conversation had faded into the sound of the river, but one of the senior alderfolk turned to them now—Anifa, a sallow, graying woman whose family had traded on Tin Long for generations—and said, “Have you explained it to her, Elora?”

  Elora gripped Pelufer’s arm and sat up straight with a prim nod. At her feet, Caille sat cross-legged with the tavern cat upside down in the cradle of her legs, its eyes squinched shut and its head flung blissfully back against her as she stroked its throat. Someone’s lean cowdog lay with its head on her knee.

  Pelufer shrugged Elora off and stood up. “No, she hasn’t.”

  “We’ve had an offer to prentice you,” Anifa said. “It’s a good offer. You’ll learn a trade. You’ll get to see the world.”

  “We have a trade,” Pelufer said.

  “Your sister has a precarious excuse for a trade. It is insufficient to support the three of you. You run wild, thieving and spirits know [84] what else. We don’t know where the youngest sleeps, whether she’s cared for properly, whether she eats—”

  “She eats well!” Pelufer said. “We all eat, and not your poxy keepers’ tithe either! We take care of ourselves!”

  Anifa pulled up, huffy at being interrupted, and Denuorin, the senior alderman next to her, leaned forward to say, “Where do you sleep, child? Do you have blankets? Enough for winter?”

  We had a place till someone knocked it down! Pelufer swallowed the words at a glare from Elora, but still said, “We do better than waysiders. They sleep in the roads.”

  “With their mothers and fathers,” Anifa said. “Waysider orphans are fostered. You’re traders’ children. Gir Doegre children. We let you fend for yourselves as long as we dared, but it can’t continue. You’re a danger to yourselves. You’ll have to go into care, one way or another. With the help of your sister, we’ve worked out something that benefits all of us. The spirits were working this day. Ah, here she comes now.”

  Caille deposited the cat on the floor, smoothed its disarrayed fur, and stood up, pressing close to Pelufer, with the dog standing by her. “It’s all right, none of this means anything,” Pelufer whispered. “I’ll undo whatever Elora’s gotten us into.” Elora heard that, and she stood up, too, resentful and frightened. She was afraid of what she had done, but still determined to prove it was good and clever. Her back was stiff as a board, her mouth a grim line, all the parts of her braced and straight.

  Footsteps sounded on the porch.

  It took a long time for Pelufer to turn. Her back was to the door. It could still be someone else, some well-meaning journeyer who would get them out of this bind and out of Gir Doegre and away from the man and the woman who were killers. Anifa was saying, “You’ll prentice to this healer, and come back to us with skills and lore that will save lives,” and she meant it, she meant well, her narrow shoulders squared, her thin chest puffed out, she thought she was doing something grand, saving three trader children and investing in Gir Doegre’s future at the same time, a bargain that would benefit them all, a fine traders’ solution.

  The person in the doorway was the flowery woman.

  She stepped in, greeted the alderfolk and the traders, nodded at Elora, all business.

  Pelufer’s fingers pressed against Elora’s back to say that it was her.

  Elora’s fingers pressed into her arm to say that it wasn’t.

  She fingered that it was.

  [85] Elora fingered that if it was, Pelufer was wrong about her.

  Her step was forthright. Her spine was straight. There was no crook to her posture, no subterfuge in her movement.

  The cowdog gave a low whine, and Caille moaned and gave a wriggle as both sisters’ hands fell on her and tightened. Both certain and both doubting. Maybe there was a good reason for the names, maybe not the reason they’d reasoned out, maybe they’d reasoned themselves into a hole and it was all wrong and the woman was all right. But what was the man doing in the spirit wood? Could it be there was no connection between them after all? They’d seemed strangers at first, on the water queue, and what she’d sensed during her fit of names could have been wrong. ...

  Pelufer shook herself and gritted her teeth. “No,” she said, as loud and as firm as she could. “We won’t go with her.”

  “But it’s all arranged.”

  Traders were crowding into the tavern’s greatroom now. Nolfi and his cousins and Elander and Ofalador from Copper Long, Jifadry and Toudin and Jiondor from Hunger Long, Seldra and Prenaille from Tin Long, some Bronze Longers she didn’t know, and a handful from the shorts: Befendry, flowing in scarves; Nemrina sweating in her own woolens to show off her wares; and Mireille, smirking, as if she knew what was going on and had even had some hand in it.

  “What’s all arranged?” said Toudin the stewmonger.

  “We’re prenticing Nimorin and Prendra’s lot,” said the senior alderwoman Jeolle, still busty and pink-cheeked for all her fall of snow-white hair. “Making the best of a hard situation. Risalyn’s offer is a good one. Two mounts and a fortnight’s provisions for the children, and in five years we get back what not one waysider has provided us in all this time: a resident healer, to keep our folk from dying.”

  “Menders heal,” a trader said with a frown. It was Jiondor, the sweetsmonger from Hunger Long. Only yesterday Pelufer had filched treats from him, laughed at him as she danced away.

  “Menders use the things of light. Risalyn uses acceptable tools. It’s a new way, developed by ordinary folk, to do no harm.”

  “She doesn’t look a healer to me,” Jiondor said. “She looks ...” He glanced at Pelufer and shut his mouth, and Nolfi was cutting him off anyway, crying, “You can’t just prentice them off!”

  “The eldest agreed to it,” Anifa said. “In fact, it was her idea. Jiondor, Risalyn spent the night with the sick in Pointhill, and her draughts and decoctions have worked wonders. I’m sorry, Nolfi, I know they’re your friends, but I’ll ask you to keep quiet, you’re not of age and—”

  [86] “You’re trading us,” Pelufer said. “It has nothing to do with what Elora offered or didn’t. It’s you. You’re bartering us, like sheets of tin.”

  Anifa nodded. “Yes, love. I’m afraid we are. It’s for the best, for you and for Gir Doegre.”

  “Who decided this?” Jiondor persisted. “There was no traders’ meeting.”

  “This is a matter for the alderfolk,” said Jeolle. “It’s not a trader concern.”

  “It certainly is, if you’re trading our children now.”

  “They must be fostered,” Anifa explained patiently. “They can’t provide for themselves. The middle one runs wild—”

  Jiondor halted her recitation: “Then foster them to me.”

  Pelufer gaped. Alderman Denuorin said, “They’ve done nothing but steal from you lot for the last five years!”

  “I wouldn’t call it stealing,” Jiondor said. “Young Pel might, I suppose, but she’s too proud to take the keepers’ tithe and it’s all tasteless gruel anyway, no offense, and it’s meant for waysiders, not children of our own. They keep better fed by thinking they’ve snatched it off us, and keep their pride in the bargain. You’ve done them a wrong by forcing it out, but I might as well tell you, if it’s the difference between keeping them here and letting strangers cart them off.”

  “The healer is better off than we are. She’ll give the girls a better life. She has more to offer them than we do here.”

  “She can’t feed them herself if she’s bartering for their food,” Jiondor said. “With me and mine they’ll be fed and clothed and sheltered.
What more do you want?”

  “Elora n’Prendra to come back to us a healer.”

  “Then buy the healer. A fortnight’s provisions and two mounts, for training three girls on the road? What would it cost to keep her here, to serve us and prentice them? We’ll take up a collec—’’

  “I’m a journeyer,” said the woman—Risalyn, a High Girdle name. “I cannot stay. It’s not my way.”

  “You won’t take our children,” Jiondor said. His jaw was set and his bulk drawn up in a shape of stubborn defiance. Pelufer had never seen him like this. It made his thundering anger at her a joke. “If they must foster, they’ll foster to their own.”

  “You’ll feed them sweets off your stall?” Denuorin said.

  “Don’t insult me, Alderman. Nursed your brood on pewter, did you?”

  “You have two of your own, Jiondor, and another coming. How do you think you’ll support six?”

  [87] “I’ll find a way. This is their home. She won’t be carting Gir Doegre girls off to some hut in the Girdle!”

  “They’ll travel the length and breadth of Eiden Myr, learning a craft you won’t have here so long as you shun white,” Risalyn said.

  “You can count that little one’s years on one hand! You plan to haul her from Heel to Crown? She’s a baby!”

  “I come from a community of healers. We care for our children collectively. They’ll be well looked after.”

  “Healers.” Jiondor looked to spit, then thought better of it, and appealed to the alderfolk. “You can’t trade our children to f—to strangers. It’s madness.”

  “You can’t feed them, Jiondor.”