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

by Terry McGarry

  It was already too hot to hug herself close, to drive away the flesh’s memory of Kara’s little-girl body, stiff in her farewell embrace, straining to be released.

  Gir Doegre

  From the crest of a mint-scented rise Louarn had climbed for just this view, the town looked typical of the region. Strong Leg towns were wedged—into the fork of a road, the tines of a river, two rivers coming to confluence, a depression among hills. This one sloped up the surrounding hills rather more than smaller villages did, but otherwise was remarkable only for its three angled crossroads and for the misty pall that hung over it.

  The wind was out of the Sea of Charms, not strong but constant. It seemed to blow crosswise to the movement of the clouds. Though it set brown leaves skittering across the hilltops, it touched the town only lightly. There was a chill within the sweltering heat, a kiln dryness beneath the humidity. Damp air and dry seemed unable to blend. Mists shifted, settled, shifted, as if finding no seat to their liking.

  A town like this would never lie easy. It drew him. It challenged him to learn its byways, make its unfamiliar streets his own, to solve the puzzle of itself. He would stay here no longer than it took to earn or beg a meal and some transportation faster than his own legs. But he felt, if things were different, that he might have bided awhile here, given Gir Doegre time to reveal itself to him. It would be wanting to show him things. He would have liked to stay long enough to see them.

  As he moved downhill, sidling from tussock to tussock past [163] uninterested sheep, he could see crowds flowing up and down the long streets that defined the town’s wedge shape. More than their share of waysiders, a man near Dindry Leng had said. What attracted them? Maur Lengra had flooded its banks, not once but three times in recent years, driving maurside dwellers inland. But in the Weak Leg they had flowed down to the seaside and out into the Haunch and deep into the Toes. They found cracks and fissures to sink into, villages that had need of their skills and space for them to settle in. Were there no cracks or fissures in these hills?

  He regained the road and walked the rest of the way into town, passing fallow cottars’ crofts at the point where his road crossed one that angled upland, then coming to a choice between three market streets. Down the center, a redolence of cooking—herbs and roast vegetables, fried plantains and simmering leeks, rich oils and spiced sauces, all mixed unpleasantly with the reek of whatever the cooks burned for fuel. To the left and right, a cacophony of metalworking and hawkers’ cries. The center street was the more crowded, and slightly less of an assault on the ears, but the smells turned his empty stomach. He took the leftward, the downland side of which was a long row of inns and public houses. He would blend here, in his subdued, road-worn attire, and if he asked questions he might be able to hear the answers.

  Befween the public houses he saw steps, some of chipped stone, some of rickety wood, leading down to a river that one might bathe in but not drink from. Though he had come midway into the Strong Leg, he was not yet out of the Druilors’ shadow. The Blooded Mountains, they were called, for the iron rust they bled, and they stretched far enough into the leg to poison the water table with their deadly minerals. Another town or two Kneeward he should find clean water. Here, it seemed, they drank dew and mist from barrels guarded by peacekeepers with longblades. He stood in line to drink with the rest, and was told that the keepers’ tithe would be dispensed at noon, from a tavern called the Owls’ Barn.

  He went there. Families waited in weary patience, children making no fuss. “Inside’s already full,” someone told him. He stuck his head through into dimness long enough to make out an equally quiet crowd around the tables inside, and catch a whiff of old droppings that had never quite been scrubbed out of the planks. It reminded him of the Dindry Leng downmongers. No barn owls were evident, although the close rafters would have suited them well, and clearly they had once been made welcome, droppings or no. That reminded him of the Dancing Gull, in Esklin, on the Dreaming Sea. One gull there, long ago, had developed a stamping footwork that jiggled small [164] sand creatures loose in the receding tide, and eventually whole flocks had learned the trick. He would have liked to see the sight. Old-timers there claimed it gave them no end of laughter. But disease had swept the local bird life like a tidal surge, and the gulls of Esklin danced no more.

  His nose must have wrinkled as he pulled his head out and found a seat by the porch steps, for someone said, “The owls used to eat out of your hand in there, but if the publicans caught you feeding them, they’d bar you. Birds kept the vermin down better than cats, the last fever we had. Then the next one got the birds—owls and swans and swifts and all, and a good bit of Lowhill with them. A sad tale, that.”

  A sad tale repeated wherever Louarn roamed, with as many versions as there were villages. At least illness was a natural thing. He whiled away the slow breaths till noon weaving box puzzles for the children out of floor rushes he had them collect, and was pleased to lighten their spirits; but he was more pleased to hear no tales of unnatural deaths in their mist-haunted town.

  The keepers’ tithe was a vat of cooling porridge, some unidentifiable meal boiled in sheep’s milk. He took it in the same battered cup with which he’d drunk their water, and though he tried to give half his portion to a family next to him, they refused it, saying that there was plenty for all and he should go for seconds or even thirds if he was road-weary. He waited to be certain this was true, then forced another helping down himself despite the taste. It seemed unwise to share food among so many, but when he asked “Do you not fear sickness?” the reply came from several at once: “Better tomorrow to fear than die today.”

  “Is the keepers’ tithe why you stay here?” he asked the father who had declined his offering.

  The man looked as though he’d never considered the reason. “No,” he said at last, “there’s tithes and alms in other towns. But there’s no more work there than here. So we stay here.”

  He got no clearer answer from anyone else he spoke to that day, and the man was right—there was no work to be had. Wherever he went, another itinerant had got there first, and his goal—to earn a horse—would not be realized in this region, where the frothing sickness had hit hard. He sought everywhere to cadge a ride, but an afternoon haunting smithies and wheelwrights’, cartwrights’ and carters’, yielded nothing bound Kneeward. “Perhaps in a threeday,” a merchant told him. “Ships are due in Ulonwy and Glydh, some might be making their way up to meet them.”

  That was not soon enough. He needed to be under way today, or [165] first thing in the morning. But he had come many leagues on his tired legs. He would not last much longer on foot.

  He did not think the killers were on horseback. If they were, they tarried long in each town where they struck, taking care with their choice of victims, for he had not lagged far behind them even on foot. But if he did not head them off, he would be no better than a death-chaser. He didn’t mean to track them. He meant to meet them directly, and stop them.

  He considered theft. The consequences in these parts, as best he could tell, were not so severe as in the Lowlands, where they’d mark you for all to see. But of all the skills he had acquired, that was the first, and least. Only a horse or mule would be worth stealing, and those were far too closely watched.

  He considered sharing his burden at last, in this region where life’s essentials were so generously shared. He looked everywhere for folk dressed in black or white. Menders or runners would have the means to send word ahead, have their people waiting in the Knee, knowing who to warn and what to guard against. But there was no black or white among these Strong Leg folk, who clung hard to the old ways. There would be no aid for him from those quarters. Anyone else would think him a madman, or, more frightening, concoct some justification for the killers’ deeds. And he would just as soon stand by his decision to say nothing. Anyone he spoke to could be one of the killers. Anyone he spoke to might know one of them, or sympathize with them. He deeply feared that there
was more than just a pair of darkhearts. Some deep instinct had told him, when he realized the dead had been mages, that there was more to this than the bit he could see, from ground level, with his ordinary eyes.

  The sun’s hazed disk sank toward the Knee, mocking his inability to follow. He moved through the shifting vapors, gauging the progress he would have made if each step had been Kneeward rather than along the same streets on the same vain quest.

  “What kind of work?”

  “I can turn my hand to just about anything.”

  “A lad-of-all crafts, so.”

  “Yes.”

  “No crafts want doing here, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes, I’d heard as much.”

  “Easiest way up the Knee Road is in a cart to the bonefolk.”

  “That would cut the journey rather short.”

  “It would, so. What’s in the Knee for you?”

  “Friends to meet. They won’t wait if I’m delayed.”

  “That’s a pity. But I can’t help you.”

  [166] It was the same wherever he turned. Then he chanced to turn off the long tinmongers’ street onto a stonemongers’ row, and three things happened almost at once, as was so often the way of it. A young woman at the first stall eyed him, suspicion rising into interest, and he lifted a foot to approach her; young women tended to offer him sweeter trades. At that moment the nearer end of the stall next to hers gave a creak that he knew all too well. On reflex he was already reaching out when the wooden lattice holding up that end gave way. He caught the board by the corners—an old door, judging from the heft, and the hinge seating under his fingers. A few jostled playing stones rolled off, but most held firm on their bed of felt, and even the tallest of the clay vessels in the center did not totter. He nudged pieces of rotten pinewood away with his boot that he might get closer and better support the weight until the proprietor, an elderly woman now quite flustered, could decide what to do. While he was standing thus, he heard a nearby tinker say, “My driver’s ill, and I guaranteed delivery. If that load’s not there by tomorrow noon, there goes my custom in the Knee.” The elderly woman was thanking him profusely rather than solving the problem. “If you could find some crates,” he said tightly. Her mouth moved, but his ear was fixed on the tinkers’ conversation. “I’d run it up there for you,” he heard, “but ...”

  “... sure there are some about,” the elderly stonemonger said, not looking very hard. “There are crates everywhere, I could break my neck on crates a dozen times a day yet when I find myself in need of some ...”

  He could no longer hear the other conversation. He considered dropping the board and letting the goods fall, or calling over his shoulder, or telling the proprietor to hush. But he felt the young woman at his shoulder before he saw her, before she could reach to help—him, he sensed, not her competitor—and he said, “Be a love, will you, and go tell those tinkers back there I’ll be their driver if they still need one?”

  Confused but willing, the girl bade the older woman watch her stall while she delivered Louarn’s message. Unable to turn and observe the exchange, he cast about for some means of propping the board up until repairs could be made. Most stalls here were hammered concoctions of sheet metal. This hybrid of wood and tin must predate the rot that had claimed its fellows. “Can you bring that barrel over?” he said to the woman, gesturing with his chin at what had served as her seat. She eyed it dubiously—physical labor was either beyond or beneath her—but when he grunted as if the board’s weight were becoming too much for him, she managed to roll the barrel on its end, maneuvering it into place that he might lay the board down on it.

  [167] “Oh, that will do nicely!” she said, and reeled off still more gratitude—her way, he realised, of fending off a request for compensation. He decided to pity hard circumstances rather than scorn tightfistedness, and turned.

  “I’ll be going with you,” said the tinker, who had been standing directly behind him. Two arms in slings attested to why he hadn’t moved in to help. “And sprained wrists don’t stop me from cold-cocking a man who might think to make off with my goods.”

  Louarn gave his most brilliant smile. It wasn’t hard; dark bluster suited the man’s kind face so badly it was harder not to laugh. “Your goods, wagon, and team will be safe with me. All I want is passage to the Knee. But you’ll need to drive them back again. Perhaps you’d prefer someone who can make the round trip.”

  They agreed to meet before closing in a public house called the Chimney Swift; if Louarn had found a surer ride or the man had found a there-and-back driver, they’d part ways with no hard feelings.

  “Was it a healing stone you were looking for, then?” the young woman said, drawing him back toward her own stall. “Perhaps you’d want some playing stones now, to pass the time at the Swift?”

  “I have my own set, thanks.” Louarn was assessing the older woman’s stall much as the young woman was assessing him. Seeing his attention wander, she said, “Then reward my message-running with your company. Help me close up at sunset, and I’ll treat you to that ale.”

  He couldn’t help but smile at her trader’s patter, casting even the smallest exchanges in her favor while making them sound like favors to him. He accepted, and until sunset occupied himself in making small repairs to the older woman’s stall with borrowed tools and tin scraps he charmed from tinkerwomen. What was still serviceable of the pinewood supports he fashioned into a three-legged stool to replace her barrel perch, weaving a barrel-hoop seat of cattail and bulrush, which resisted the river’s poisons but were available in profusion since they were no longer safe to eat. The children he sent to collect them from the river he repaid with twistleaf puzzles. In all, a satisfying job of work, and the stonemonger was so well pleased, despite her protestations throughout, that she tried to press on him a trinket, an oddly shaped pale stone. “It’s no good to me, no one wants it,” she said, “but with a knack like yours who knows what use you’d find for it.” In the end he demurred with reasonable grace—he’d been amply repaid by the enjoyment of the task itself, and the last thing he needed was useless trinkets weighing him down. Then it was time to help her younger competitor pack up her goods, and before he knew it he was sitting down with her as dusk closed in and the Chimney [168] Swift’s publican lit rushlights in clay jars, filling his house with smoke to rival the restless mists outside.

  “You must tell me all about yourself,” the young stonemonger said as she got the ales in. The publicans-’ daughter gave her a sour look as she served them, reassessed her after siting up Louarn, then left them to their drinks, though her eyes strayed often to Louarn from across the smoky room.

  This made Louarn reassess the stonemonger as well. “And you,” he replied politely, regretting his decision now and wondering how long he could nurse this ale to avoid owing her for another. She was younger than she looked. “For example”—he crooked a half-smile at her, not too much lest he promise something he would not now give—what is your name?”

  “Mireille n’Jenaille,” she said, and took a breath.

  When the tinker met him, though he came early, the girl was long gone in a huff, and Louarn said, “I’m afraid it turns out my business may keep me here another day.” The tinker, relieved, said, “My sister will do the run for me after all. But if you still need a ride, she said, be on the Knee Road at midnight with a light. She’ll watch for you, she said.”

  What Louarn needed was a way to make a man who didn’t know him, a sweetsmonger named Jiondor n’Timlin, tell him where he’d put a little pickpocket who was in more danger than she could guess.

  A little girl with a pouch that spilled out stolen mages’ things. A tall woman named Risalyn, a Girdler from the look of her, the tawny Highlands kind, who collected those spilled things carefully when the girl had gone, and claimed she would return them to the spirit wood from whence the girl had ostensibly stolen them. A woman with a keen interest in the girl—a little girl with other pouches, still full and in
her possession when she disappeared.

  All this had come from Mireille, though he had a job extracting it from a tangle of bitter grievances. At first he’d barely listened. Then he’d had her repeat some recent details. Again he’d lost the main thread, as his mind seized on the contents of the pouch and the way the Girdler had collected it. His hands remembered, then, what they would have sought had he searched the bodies in Dindry Leng—what they would not have found. His mind’s eye recalled the dusty mantel in Croy’s home. There had been a triskele on that mantel. Croy had been a mage, as the downmongers had been mages. But what Louarn had not noted, when he returned to find the man dead, his inner eye [169] remembered: a clear space on the mantel, a triskele shape in the dust. The pendant had been removed.

  The killers took trophies.

  The killers had passed through here, and a little girl, known for her thieving, had filched those trophies while feigning a fit on a water queue, and the killers wanted them back. Some the woman had retrieved, but sympathetic traders had spirited the girl away before they got the rest. There would be more than a dozen that he knew of, perhaps many he did not.

  The killers would be seeking that girl.

  Again he had surfaced, questioning Mireille about the girl’s disappearance, the names of the traders who must have helped her, the barrow boy who had disappeared the same time she had. Mireille, as he intended, had taken his interest to be in her, in the clever way she believed she had influenced events to rid herself of rivals and her town of dangerous subversives. But when he had what he needed, his interest flagged, and he sank again into strategies—how to approach this sweetsmonger, earn his trust or compel his help—and he tried too late to charm Mireille into leading him to Jiondor’s home. His smile would still have got him a bed for the night, but he misjudged her self-involvement past that point, and she scented manipulation.