Glimpsing a white pebble under the water, she gathered her skirt and stooped to collect it, adding the small damp treasure to the others in her pocket. White was best and hard to find, at least others said so; Jenn felt quite pleased with herself as she walked out of the river and up the slight slope. The dry sand was warm underfoot until she reached the shade of the massive oak that marked this end of the village proper. The tree had a wide curved branch it would lower, if asked politely, for a child who wanted to watch for travelers on the Tinkers Road.
Or a vantage point to throw acorns.
Squirrels excelled at that. With their help, the shade of the oak would be brown with fallen acorns; to judge by those already on the ground, they’d started. It’d soon be time to open the gate to let the big sows amble through. Satin never minded a child lying on her warm broad back. Or acorn throwing, especially close to her clever snout. Filigree, though covered in pretty black spots, had no patience when feasting and, if bothered, she’d grunt a terse command to the hanging branch, which would shake loose both child and acorns.
For now, the tree was empty of children and the gate closed. Jenn climbed its cedar rails and jumped down the other side. The road led through the commons, as her aunt called the pasture where the villagers kept livestock in summer. High hedges surrounded it, full of twittering birds and the deep drone of bees. Davi Treff’s great draft horses stood slack-hipped and nose-to-tail with Aunt Sybb’s fine matched bays in the shade of the trees by the pond. The sows and Himself, their lordly, if lazy, boar, lay in the pond’s shallows and wagged their long ears at flies. Good’n’Nuf, the Ropps’ pampered bull, must be hiding behind the shed again. The cows crowded the middle gate, anxious to be milked. Seeing them, Jenn picked up her pace. Must be closer to suppertime than she’d thought.
This year’s weanlings, a tight little herd of brown and white, pranced toward her through the thick grass, huge eyes brimming with curiosity, then suddenly lost all interest and turned their attention to a game of head butt.
Last year’s calves and the riding horses, all but Uncle Horst’s and Dusom’s, grazed the ravines beyond Marrowdell under the watchful eyes of the Emms’ twins, Allin and Tadd. Bandits didn’t set foot in the valley but menaced anyone on the Northward Road. Every so often a horse or calf would manage to get itself stuck or slip into a chancy mountain stream, not that many, she’d heard, were as dangerous as the deadly cataracts that roared between the tips of the Bone Hills. Come fall, the animals would be brought back through the village and let into the fields after the harvest, there to fatten with the rest of the livestock till frost.
Maybe this fall, Allin Emms would realize she had no intention of marrying him, ever, and Tadd would break his abashed silence to speak his heart to Peggs.
Then again, Jenn grumbled to herself, some things never changed.
Come winter, everything else did. Here, snow didn’t conveniently melt, as in the cities to the south. Marrowdell shrank to narrow icy paths between homes, barns, privies, and larders, those structures roofed in white. When the weather permitted, Davi would take his team from the village to the more-trafficked Northward Road and back, the horses’ huge feet and wide chests doing what they could to keep a passage open. After storms, every adult who could lift a shovel or rake helped dig out the road. It was that, or risk being cut off from the outside until spring. Isolated, an entire village could die unnoticed, by starvation, fire, illness, to be smothered by snow.
With the sun warming her shoulders, the road dry and warm beneath her feet, Jenn found it hard to imagine winter. Fall, yes. By her birthday the grain fields would be harvested, their bounty stored as feed and flour. Larders were already filling with that from gardens and orchards: sacks of dried beans; jars of jellies, chutneys, and pickles; precious pots of honey; and onion braids. Wheels of pale cheese and crocks of brined butter rested in the cool dark of the springhouse while sausages and hams—last year’s piglets—hung in fragrant smoke. Soon they’d press apples for cider and dig the root crops. The children would collect rushes and down from nests by the river. The older ones would gather kindling; charcoal bins were already full, fuel for the cold months, and barrels of ash stood waiting. They’d be traded this fall for a share of lye in Endshere; no one in the village had the knack.
Jenn climbed the far gate, more mindful of her skirt within the village proper. Cynd Treff looked up from berry picking and smiled, her big hat tilted so the sun caught her freckles. From the clanging, her husband Davi was busy at his forge. Off to milk the cows, Hettie Ropp and her stepmother, Covie, waved a cheerful greeting. Cheffy and his sister Alyssa went ahead, arms wrapped around empty milk jugs almost as tall as they were, laughing as they tried to bump into one another. Birds chirped in the apple trees, laden with fruit, that filled the heart of the village; Zehr Emms whistled as he worked on his house. Supper smells filled the air. Everyone was busy. Everyone content.
Jenn scowled. Didn’t they know?
The world was bigger than this.
Dark and twisted trees, skirted in moss, lined the road. Their tips leaned together, hiding the sky. The road twisted as well, hiding its future and past. A fine place for an ambush, Bannan Larmensu thought, and didn’t care. There’d been a time he’d have been on alert, his every sense tuned to the limb out of place, the rock ready to fall, the deadly lurkers in the brush.
No longer. Rhoth’s prince had lured the merchants of Eldad to his bed at last, with Vorkoun and the eastern marches the dowry. What generations of raids and thievery couldn’t defeat, a stroke of a pen laid waste. Once-proud Vorkoun now belonged to Ansnor, and he was on this road.
“Lovely place, sir.” Tir Half-face used a thumb to pry up the pitted metal that gave him his name. He spat at a lichen-crusted boulder. “Just lovely.” He settled the crude mask over the ruin left when a sword took his nose and most of his chin.
“It’s a road, not a place.” Bannan used the whip to flick a bloodfly from the ox’s wide back, not that the creature appeared to notice, then leaned back, boot braced on the plank that separated the front of the settler wagon from the end of the ox. He regarded his companion with fond exasperation. Easier to leave behind an arm than shed the man who’d guarded his back since he’d come new and foolish to the border, and been his truest friend since.
A short wiry beard, brown with traces of gray, sprouted below the mask; above, bright blue eyes returned his regard. What tanned skin showed was scarred and puckered, his ears were ringed in metal, and, on his bald head, Tir wore the straw hat he’d bought in Endshere. To blend in, he’d professed, tossing his helm into the wagon to rattle loose. Blending, Bannan noticed, hadn’t extended to removing the throwing axes from his belt.
He’d removed his weapons. Removed them. Dropped them. Walked away from them without a second glance or regret. As he’d done with his life. The settler’s garb was too new for comfort, but the leather and woven flax would fit better after sweat and rain. And work.
He needed work.
“When will we arrive—at a place, sir?”
Good question; a shame he hadn’t an answer. “I’m in no hurry,” Bannan replied, then added with a straight face, “By the map, the Northward goes beyond Upper Rhoth. We could take it to the barrens.”
“We couldn’t, sir, and that’s the truth. Ancestors Frozen and Forgotten.” Tir took a deep breath and spoke as though reasoning with the feebleminded. “No one survives winter in that wasteland. A winter, might I say, sir, coming closer by the day.”
“I promise we’ll stop before it snows.”
“‘Snows?!’” A moment’s aghast pause, during which Bannan enjoyed the unopinionated sounds of creaking wood and the breathing of the ox, but a sly look warned him Tir wasn’t done. Sure enough. “Could be, sir, we should have stopped already. They say the best land was that before Endshere. Behind us. They say there haven’t been settlers this far north since those Naalish squatters were kicked out of Avyo.”
Bannan grunted somethin
g noncommittal. Debate the twisted politics of the Fair Lease law with Tir? He’d rather clean up after the ox. Before their time, anyway. What had it been . . . fifteen? Twenty years? Those settler land grants, to his advantage now, had been the prince’s sop to the newly poor.
Being poor was another topic not to broach with Tir, or he’d not hear the end of it all day.
“They say, sir,” Tir needed no prompting to continue, “that the locals call this the Doubtful Road. Seems no one who takes it past Endshere can trust their future.”
“‘They say. They say.’ Heart’s Blood. When did you take stock in gossip? There are valleys. Settlements.” Bannan shifted listlessly. “The place doesn’t matter.” A dirty brown shadow strutted up to the wagon and blew a noisy response to this. Without a change to his plodding walk, the ox tipped his horned head nervously at the sound. The two animals weren’t friends; the ox, being wiser than he’d looked, had to be hobbled at night to keep him close. “Scourge agrees with me.” Bannan stretched to slap the horse’s dusty shoulder. “Don’t you, boy?”
Tir’s forehead wrinkled. “Bloody beast.”
Thus addressed, Scourge flung up his huge head and rolled his eyes till the red showed. At least he didn’t show teeth. This time. “Peace, Tir. I couldn’t leave him behind; he’d eat my nephews. What would my sister say then?”
Stiffly. “I would never presume to speak for the baroness.”
“‘Baroness,’ is it?” Bannan chuckled. “Lila’d box your ears for that, after all the times we got drunk together.” In the worst part of the city, too: the slum beneath the high bridge where no one would expect a Larmensu, let alone both heirs. His mood soured. They’d left Vorkoun as if for another patrol, pretending nothing had changed, that the farewells weren’t forever. Lila had hugged him more fiercely than usual, that was all. “You could have stayed in her household. You didn’t have—”
“And risk the baron’s jealousy, sir?” Tir protested. He laid a hand over his heart. “I’ll have you know Lila wrote of her undying love, sir. Heartbroken, she was, seeing me leave. Sent me with you to protect her marriage vows. Such a brave woman, she is.”
Bannan half smiled and shook his head.
The brows came down to scowl over the mask. “Not in so many words.”
Bannan waited.
“Heart’s Blood!” Tir threw up his hands. “All right. Sir. Being every bit as mad as you are, sir, your dear sister wrote if I let you turn around she’d take off my ears herself. I’m allowed to hit you on the head, but no unnecessary maiming. Ancestors Witness—” with vast admiration, “—I believe she means it.”
The truth at last. “I’m sure she does,” Bannan replied mildly. “Right, Scourge?”
The big horse snorted his disdain, then sidestepped into the shadows where he preferred to travel, moving his bulk between the trees and over twigs without sound. He could do it with a rider, too, and carry that rider into battle. Not any rider. Not Scourge. Bannan’s was the only hand he tolerated; he didn’t doubt his mount would, in truth, try to eat the sons of his sister’s unsoldierly husband, given provocation.
The foul-tempered warhorse wasn’t the only threat to Lila’s household Bannan took away with him on this road, nor the worst.
“The exchange was yesterday, wasn’t it?” The treaty that moved the border moved people as well. Ansnor would free any Rhothan prisoners; Vorkoun her Ansnan ones.
“The start of it, yes.” Tir gave him a somber look. “It’ll take a few weeks. No one wants blood on the streets.” The treaty said deeds on either side were forgiven, political prisoners and soldiers alike honorably discharged, to be left in peace.
Bannan thought it more likely his fat new ox would sprout wings. Of royal purple.
“How long before they compare notes?” He’d lost track of how many “they” were. The faces blurred; easier to remember the astonished anger, then fear. Every one who’d seemed innocent until he looked at them as they spoke, until he’d declared each a liar or spy. His gift, to see others for what they were, to know the truth when he heard it from their lips.
Truthseer.
They didn’t know his name. No one used a real name in the marches, not in a conflict with such deep roots on either side. Bannan had taken “Captain Ash” from the officer he’d replaced.
Those brought before him knew his face; by campfire, by torchlight, more rarely by the light of day. The Rhothan captain who was never wrong. The well-bearded Rhothan captain. Bannan fingered the novelty of a smooth chin and jaw, hoping road dust disguised the contrast between pale and well-tanned skin. All those years, the beard had hidden his relative youth; with luck, its absence would hide him now.
“They’ll figure out what I must be,” Bannan went on grimly.
“It’ll be talk, sir,” Tir objected. “Nothing more. Who’d believe?”
“Scourge does.” No coincidence that the creature chose as rider the Larmensu who saw him for what he was. “You do.”
“You can’t think I’d—”
“Peace, Tir.” Bannan sighed. This man, as all those in his company, would die for him without hesitation; he’d seen it in their faces. Had chosen them for that true loyalty.
How different from Vorkoun’s high society where he’d been so desperately unhappy as a child, hearing the lies, seeing through masks of flesh. As soon as he could pass for a man, he’d taken service at the border, where he faced an honest hate and finally found use for his gift.
He was what he was. The heritage of his line, to be a truthseer. Now his curse. A fair trade, if those he loved were safe.
“Lila gave me orders, too,” Bannan said, lightening his tone. He pulled out the precious letter that had been waiting in Endshere and made a show of reading it. “‘Little brother. Find a wife and raise some brats of your own. Surely there are women in the north.’”
“Wife? Here?” Tir shook his head vehemently, almost losing the straw hat. “Your sister can’t be serious. Sir. They’d be—farm maids.”
“What—you don’t think one would have me?”
Tir caught his mood and gave a low whistle. “Have you? You’ll have to fight them off, sir. And their mothers.”
“A battle worth the effort. I’ll share, by the way,” Bannan grinned. “You’ll need a wife, too.”
“I’ve had three,” Tir boasted. “Don’t be charmed by a pretty ankle. The trick’s to taste her cooking first—”
“So now you’re giving me advice.”
“Wife hunting is serious business . . .”
“Says the man who can’t keep one.”
“I’ve kept them all,” Tir said smugly. “Just not in the same city.”
They both laughed.
The wingless ox plodded forward, half asleep, each step putting distance between future and past.
Jenn lengthened her stride but didn’t run. Children ran, not dignified almost-nineteen adults who expected to be taken seriously; this according to her aunt, the most dignified person in Marrowdell. Also, running made her look late, and she wasn’t today, not quite.
As she passed the village fountain, Jenn dutifully, if absently and in haste, dipped a finger of thanks into its cool water. The practice was one her father’s generation insisted upon; like the rest born here, she saw nothing remarkable in the deep basin of gleaming blue tile, always full of sweet water that never froze or fouled. The basin was rimmed by huge blocks of weathered gray stone, so cunningly fitted that only the tiniest strands of emerald-green moss could grow between. The ground surrounding the blocks was paved in riverstone cobbles that stayed free of snow or ice.
Though she found precious little good about her brother’s family’s exile, Aunt Sybb declared Marrowdell’s fountain to have water finer than any in Avyo, and each summer brought bottles to fill and take home.
Night was night and water was the same everywhere, Jenn assured herself. She passed the Emms’ house and glanced toward the mill. No sign of her father heading home yet. She walked fas
ter. She wouldn’t be so much as tardy if she got home first.
Shoes. She mustn’t forget to put on shoes for supper. She’d do whatever it took to convince her aunt she was a person who should live in the great city.
Which Marrowdell was not. The village consisted of the commons, the fountain, the mill, and eight homes linked by its meandering road and footpaths. Its buildings were simple structures, made from stacked, ax-hewn logs with any chinks between filled with red clay from the riverbank. Their slanted roofs were protected by shakes of cedar wood, themselves coated in moss, bright green after a rain. Repairs left bare patches, especially in summer. Doors, never locked, hung open on their wooden hinges in this pleasant mild weather. Precious hand-sized panes of glass, carefully framed in wood, were set into wide windows, with shutters ready to protect them from wind or weather. Some had curtains, some did not.
Each home had its privy set conveniently between garden and woodpile, so return trips weren’t empty-handed, as well as a larder dug deep into the cool earth, with sturdy doors that did lock. A spring-famished bear might break through, but not quietly. More likely thieves had clever paws and snuck about on moonless nights. Three homes had barns towering behind them, with room to store feed and provide warm quarters for all the village livestock come the cold.
Cities were grander, Jenn thought as she walked. Warmer, too. For one thing, Aunt Sybb said city people didn’t go outside to the larder or privy, trips that, come winter, were made only when desperate, followed by thawing numbed flesh by the stove.
Cities had oil lamps and furnaces and water indoors. They had crowded, busy roads, with pavements to keep shoes free of mud. The largest, like Avyo, had trolleys that ran along metal rails, though Aunt Sybb pronounced those noisy and abrupt. Every building was a lofty edifice of marble and brick and glass, with new ones built all the time.
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