Bloodflower

by Bloodflower (The Returning) (retail) (epub)

  ‘What else do you have to tell me about Kayforl?’

  ‘I . . .’ Gyaar shook his head and spread both hands. ‘I don’t know what you are asking of me.’ He tried again, setting his hand on the grey horse’s mane. Cam let go his grip on the saddle and made a single backward step, awkward, clumsy.

  ‘You and I . . .’ Gyaar folded his hands together, and held them up. ‘We are Up- and Downlander. And now a marriage between us, North and South. And I thought . . . the Koi-boi—’

  ‘You leave her out of this.’

  They rode back alongside the burial meadow, stiff with each other. Gyaar reined back, halting them before they should reach the gates.

  ‘It was no intention of mine to hurt you, Cam. Can you not see that it is something to celebrate?’

  Cam said, suffer yet, formal, ‘I would see you in, My Lord, and then I have work I must attend to.’

  ‘Bah.’ Gyaar left him there and rode under the gate alone.

  Gyaar stood on the bridge. The evenings were longer, and soon he would go with Father to Fenister Fort, to meet his bride. When Gyaar thought of Cam, it hurt, a physical pain. In sudden decision, he tapped his knuckles upon the parapet and strode across the lawn to the barracks. Cam was playing some kind of gambling game involving chicken bones. He bowed, formal, then sat silent, waiting for Gyaar to go. Gyaar swept the chicken bones aside and sat on the table before him. ‘I have a fancy to visit the tavern.’

  Cam bowed. ‘My Lord, I do not think we should visit the town tonight.’

  ‘Cam,’ said Gyaar. ‘Do you want me to order you?’

  They went through the town in silence. At least, Cam was silent, against all Gyaar’s efforts at talk. As they walked a small crowd was gathering, shuffling along; was growing, penning them in.

  Under the shadow of a building, Cam shoved Gyaar suddenly into a cross-street. He kept his hand on Gyaar’s shoulder. ‘Be as quiet as you can.’ His voice was a thread of sound.

  The houses stood further apart as they approached the keep walls, the streets darker. Gyaar could barely see Cam, could not hear him. His owns steps scuffed against the cobbles from time to time.

  Without warning, the night jolted. Gyaar’s knees hit the ground, his shoulder, face. The breath was hammered from him. Cam had knocked him down. The air whistled in Gyaar’s ears, and he heard the high vibrating drumming of quivering wood. A spear, embedded in a surface nearby.

  Cam’s hand still held Gyaar flat by one shoulder. Gyaar’s shirt was wet there, from Cam’s sweat. The hand moved, pulled him up, and they fell, a short bruising slide down scree; hit rock and cold water: a culvert that fed the town’s water cistern.

  The noise of the water hid that of their fall, masked any sound from their ambushers. Gyaar once again answered the tug on his arm, and followed Cam upstream, floundered up a bank and followed the castle wall north and west.

  ‘We have lost them,’ Cam leaned close to whisper, ‘but I dare not go around to the gate. I will show you my other way into Dorn-Lannet Keep.’

  ‘Cam, if I have caused you offence . . .’ Gyaar listened to their footfalls, soft brushings in the long grass, halting from time to time as they paused to harken for pursuit. He thought, He is not going to answer.

  ‘I saw you, more than once.’ Cam meant during the fighting. Gyaar knew that, knew he did not want to say it. ‘You spared me.’

  ‘No,’ Gyaar cut in. ‘You spared me, and so I spared you.’

  ‘I did not spare you: I was afraid. You could have killed me then.’

  Silence. It stretched long with Gyaar’s thinking. There was a picture he had carried around in his head, of a Downlander boy, lowering his bow that his enemy might walk away. ‘But you didn’t kill me. That was the first bond.’

  Cam was a voice, a deeper darkness in the dark night, that was all. ‘Here is another: you looked at me and it was like looking into a mirror, in time to come.’

  Second bond, thought Gyaar.

  ‘After that,’ said Cam, ‘I watched you, when I could. Once I got past your guards and into your camp. I could have killed . . . I wasn’t there to kill. I watched you, and you ruled . . .’ He was trying for words, but not finding them easily. ‘My own would not show the mercy you showed me. My own would not show that even to theirs. If we would run from the army, we were caught and hung. If we would eat, we destroyed our own countryside to do so. I know many killed villagers, and the women . . .’

  Cam halted Gyaar and they listened. ‘Yes, we have shaken them. Third bond,’ he went on. ‘Once again you had the chance to kill me, and you did not.’

  ‘Yes. That is a third bond.’ Gyaar thought of Cam’s empty right sleeve. ‘It binds both ways. I thought you were my brother. I thought you were a ghost.’

  ‘Someone else told me that once: Diido.’

  ‘Diido?’

  ‘Your Koi-boi. She—’

  ‘Cam? I have been thinking about the Koi-boi.’ He waited, but Cam did not shout him down, this time. ‘It is better that she resides in the women’s quarters, and so it has been arranged.’

  Cam had stopped: Gyaar walked into him.

  ‘What . . . what does Tseri say to this?’

  ‘You should ask your Koi-boi.’

  Cam was invisible in the dark, silent.

  ‘Cam? I would have you know, she has not had any need of his . . . protection since this spring began.’

  ‘You did that?’

  Gyaar felt Cam’s hand grip his, and returned the grasp. Despite the pursuit, the danger, he felt all at once lighter.

  ‘Here,’ said Cam. The wall climbed to the ceiling of the sky, black. Cam was lost in its shadow, but his voice came out from the darkness. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Over the top? You are chaffing me!’ But Gyaar found Cam braced, hand on thigh, back bent. He stepped up on Cam’s back, to scrabble and flounder his way over the wall – and into the care of the guards waiting below, believing it was intruders they were apprehending.

  Seven bodies lay stretched out upon the stones of the courtyard.

  ‘All Uplander,’ said Cam, standing a pace behind Gyaar, his voice wondering.

  ‘Imarii.’ Father nudged one with the tip of his sword. ‘Connected to Ay, that we did away with. They will not trouble Ryuu with spears in the dark again.’

  Father was watching Gyaar, the corners of his mouth dipped in the grimace that was his smile. I’ve moved, thought Gyaar, past the slap, that ultimate sign of respect from Father. But this was as good.

  ‘You had better move him closer to your quarters, your Personal Guard.’

  Gyaar took Father at his word and promoted Cam to Advisor, and a room of his own in the hall.

  The stream that fed the pond wound first across the lawn, cutting it in two. Gyaar sat with his feet in the water, watching Cam lose a race with Shi-Karu, setting leaves afloat on the stream and marking how far they went with stones set on the bank. The rest of the party sat on silk rugs, under the flowering shrubs.

  ‘They always banqueted like this, in ancient times,’ said Gyaar. He caught a little wooden raft and lifted a platter from it. They ate, he and Cam and the other young men and women of the castle.

  Gyaar picked strands from the rug and knotted them around his fingertips, pulling them tight, watching the flesh darken. ‘I meet my betrothed this summer,’ he told Cam.

  For a moment the stiffness was back, then it seemed that Cam let it go. ‘And I am to go, to help guard your person?’ Cam glanced towards the koi pond.

  Gyaar smiled. ‘Yes, if you’d like to think of it that way.’

  Cam nodded, slowly. ‘I’d like to . . . to see home again. I thought I never would. I thought I would never go back.’ He lay down, arm over his eyes. ‘Anyway, Kayforl is beautiful in summer.’

  HANDFAST

  Some of the farmhands were up on Fenister Fort’s stable roof.

  ‘Not I.’ Father slapped his belly. ‘Not room enough for this up there.’

  On the other side of the
yard, where the serving-girls clustered about the gate, there was a sudden squealing.

  ‘Oh.’ Graceful stood up on tiptoes, and could see nothing.

  ‘Here.’ Isla made room for Graceful at the gate. ‘Don’t let your da catch you.’

  There was a runner on the drive.

  ‘Corban’s foster-son,’ said one of the women.

  ‘Aye.’ Isla leaned forward, blocking Graceful’s view. ‘That head of his does show out like shouting.’

  Acton, Corban Farmer’s tow-headed foster-son, belted into the yard. ‘Master Fenister! The Uplanders do come, with banners and music and all. The whole village is turned out for them. Oh, I thank you.’ Posey had given him a beaker of beer. He sat on the kitchen step downing it in great gulps. ‘Every breathing body in the place is waiting on the roadside.’

  Graceful hung at Father’s side and listened.

  ‘Do you look at this.’ Acton held out a fat gold coin, shiny with sweat. ‘The Uplander Lord did give it to me, from his own hand.’

  ‘He did give all that just for running a furlong or two!’ said one of the men. ‘Do you give it to me and I will do the running, and spending.’

  ‘Oh, aye?’ Acton closed his fist tight on the coin. ‘So you can piss it against a wall. No thank you, I do keep it myself.’ He stood up. ‘I’m back to the village to watch.’ He wiggled through the jam of people and was running by the time he reached the gate.

  ‘Well.’ Father glanced up at the sun, just sliding past noon. ‘They took their time, but they are coming. Well, well.’

  Stepmother joined them. ‘Graceful.’ She smiled. ‘They will all be fighting men, Moppet. Do you and I keep out of the way, and your father treat with them.’ She slipped her arm through Graceful’s and led her to the house. Graceful looked back over her shoulder, but the sheds and stables and barns closed out the road from view.

  Stepmother didn’t keep out of the way with Graceful. She stayed downstairs in the hall to welcome the Uplanders, to be Mistress of Fenister Fort to Father’s Master, and Graceful was packed away upstairs, out of sight, out of hearing.

  ‘Alone?’ she said.

  ‘Take Isla with you,’ said Stepmother.

  ‘Keep you respectable.’ Isla winked.

  ‘You’ll need her help to get ready.’

  ‘Ready?’ Graceful did not know what Stepmother meant.

  ‘Your yellow surcoat, Graceful, the one with the white flowers. And Isla? My jewelled pins to her hair.’

  Isla was a talker. ‘Naked as newts,’ said she, as she helped Graceful put the yellow surcoat on, laced it at the sides. ‘Not a hair on their bodies. The women, they wear little wigs, you know, there, on their wedding nights.’

  ‘They don’t! Do they, really?’

  ‘Oh aye, and if you look at them direct, they can put a spell on you.’

  Graceful did not believe that.

  ‘It’s true. Dallon did tell me.’ Dallon was Isla’s sweetheart. ‘Come to the window, Miss Graceful. You do see better from here.’

  Graceful saw the sky, a hot and heavy blue, and the grey slates of the barn roof.

  ‘Look, Miss Graceful.’ The girl was bent nearly double over the sill. ‘There.’

  Hanging out of the window, Graceful could see where the drive met the Ridge Road, and horsemen, riding bunched together, the dust their going raised spreading and slowly sinking behind them. From the way the sunlight bounced and jittered off them, they were armoured. Graceful’s stomach went all up and down.

  ‘They are our friends now.’ She had to work that thought smooth in her mind. Uplanders in the new village on the river flats were one thing, but Uplanders here, in the yard, were quite another.

  ‘Oh aye,’ said the maid. Those were her words, but her tone said, I do doubt it!

  The Uplanders struck the drive, and the outbuildings blocked them from view

  ‘Do you come in, Miss Graceful, not to have them see you gawping from the window like any village scrull.’

  Graceful thought she would not mind looking village or scrullish, if she could just get a look at them, but she moved from the window and walked circles about the room. ‘Oh, this waiting!’

  Then they were coming into the yard and their voices, the iron clatter of their horses’ hooves banged from the walls. Graceful jammed herself at the window with Isla, looked down on heads, shining black and round, atop dusty armour, all bobbing about as they looked here and there and into every corner of the yard. One glanced up.

  ‘Oh,’ said Graceful, and drew back from the window. ‘What does he do here?’

  At the same time Isla said, ‘I did never! That’s Cam Attling! He does ride high now, does he not, with the Lord and everything.’

  It was real Uplanders Graceful wanted to see, not pretend ones. She leaned boldly on the window. Father was there, his head rough and greying and his belly sticking out, and Garrad, who was greying too, but lean. Two of the Uplanders came forward, and they were all grasping hands and bowing. Then Father led them all inside, right under Graceful’s window. As soon as they were gone, the other Uplanders stopped standing stiff and warrior-like and crouched on their heels, talking and laughing, all the household finding excuse to pass through the yard to stare at them, for none had seen so many of them together, so close.

  The sky slowly turned a deeper, cooler blue, and shadows lay long over the floor and against the walls. Isla left to do the evening milking. Graceful leaned against the window frame again and looked down through the curtain. The Uplanders crouched in a circle slap in the middle of the yard, so that Isla and Garrad and the maids must go wide around them to get from the house to the outbuildings, the outbuildings to the house. They talked, deep-voiced, yaddle-yaddle-yaddle in their own language. She looked for Attling’s Oldest, but could not tell now which one he was among them. She tired of watching them. She tired of her room and the long afternoon. ‘Oh! This waiting!’

  ‘Mistress Graceful?’ Isla came up the stairs at a run. ‘It does look like you’re to meet the Uplanders. Your stepmam’s hair pins!’ Isla darted from the room, and back. ‘That’s it.’ She stood back and looked at Graceful. ‘You’ll do.’

  ‘Graceful?’ Stepmother called, but softly, from halfway up the stairs. Just as she had led Graceful from the yard, she now led her into the hall.

  Uplanders. They stood like a wall, with hanging black curtains of hair, and shoulders square with armour. They wore tunics over their trews and over their armour, shorter than a dress, much longer than a shirt, split at the sides for their long, swinging warrior-strides, belted on the hips and swords stuck through the belts. Tunics and trews were stitched and patterned with gold and scarlet and poison-green, and under the layer of dust their boots shone black and inky as their hair.

  Father put his arm out wide and Graceful went to him and stood safe in his hold, watching from there: an old man, a young man, and Attling’s Oldest.

  ‘My daughter, Graceful.’

  She was suddenly shy. She blushed and curtsied and could look only at the floor. They bowed and spoke, yaddling.

  ‘Lord Ryuu; Lord Gyaar, son to Lord Ryuu.’ Attling’s Oldest gave their names in a strong farmer’s accent, bowing after each name, and with each bow his right sleeve flopped, knotted, empty.

  The Uplanders were laughing. So were Father, Stepmother, and though Graceful did not know at what, she laughed too. Ryuu. She mouthed it. It was a slippy sort of name, hard to get the tongue around.

  Then it was done and they were going. Past her they walked, in time, their tread heavy, their armour creaking and chinking, and then she did stare at them. At the door the younger one of them slowed, falling out of step, and sent a long look over his shoulder. Graceful saw his face aslant and beshadowed and it was everything she’d heard of Uplanders, all pushed thin, nose high-bridged, cheekbones too high, too flat. Attling’s Oldest said something, a single word, and the Uplander laughed and turned his face forward, found his fellows’ rhythm, and they thumped and clatter
ed together out of Fenister Fort and into the yard; into the yard and onto their horses; onto their horses and away, Father and Stepmother bowing, then standing and watching them out of sight.

  ‘This is the gist of it,’ said Father. And stopped.

  Stepmother patted the settle next to her. Graceful sat at her side and thought of Uplanders, here in her yard, hall! The air remembered them, smelled different, she was sure.

  Stepmother poured tea, for Graceful, Father, Garrad, herself. Father did not sit. He stood before the hearth, one hand holding his teacup (fingers wrapped around it, no saucer), the other stuck in his belt, under his belly. ‘The Lord of Dorn-Lannet—’

  ‘Arno!’ said Stepmother. ‘I’ve said, and I still say, I do think we should wait.’

  ‘Nonsense! Besides, it’s all signed and sealed now.’ Father tipped his head back and emptied his teacup in one great swig. ‘Another cup of tea, please, Vivrain.’

  ‘Aye, tea, My Lord.’

  ‘What!’ said Father. ‘Do not you go all high and mighty with me. I thought we were agreed.’

  Graceful looked from one to the other of them. ‘Is it war again?’

  ‘It will be.’ Stepmother sat very straight and proper. ‘Between your father and me.’

  ‘Gar!’ said Father.

  Stepmother clacked her teacup down. ‘Faugh!’

  ‘Well?’ Father took Graceful’s hand. ‘Daughter?’

  Graceful thought, I have misunderstood. I have most certainly misunderstood. ‘What, Father?’

  ‘Have you not figured it? The Lord of Dorn-Lannet’s son asks you to wife.’

  Graceful pulled her hand free. ‘Father!’

  ‘He is a fair man. I would not let you go to a man not decent.’

  ‘He is an Uplander.’

  Garrad shifted and scratched and said, ‘I do think there’s plenty maids in the village would say aye. Even if he does look all wrong.’

  Graceful started to cry.

  Stepmother and Father carried on the argument over the evening meal. As they sat down together at the table, they leaned and kissed each other as they did every evening, then started throwing words at one another.