by Glenda Larke
As she stepped up to the fire, they all fell silent. She said, faltering in her courage, “I heard the crying. I was wondering if any of you can feed the child I have here. Salamander said to come. My name’s Sorrel, and the Regal’s men are hunting me.”
The silence stretched until she wanted to scream at them to say something, anything. One of the older women stood up to see her better. She had a black patch over one eye, and her clothing looked more like the contents of a ragpicker’s bag than anything that had ever been sewn into a garment. After careful scrutiny, she apparently approved of Sorrel because she said, “Minnow here has milk. There are them offering a reward for turning in the glamoured bit-picker, but here we don’t never turn away a babe.”
A younger woman, hardly more than a girl, who had been sitting on a heap of fallen brickwork stood up. “I’m Minnow,” she said, and held her arms out offering to take the baby. She had a waif-like face, but her eyes were old with experience. “You got no sap in your tits?”
“She’s not mine. Her mother died.”
“Give ’er here. Whasser name?”
“She hasn’t got a name yet.” She handed the baby over to Minnow, who peeled back the blanket to uncover her face.
“Oh,” the girl said, and her face softened with wonder as she loosened her clothing to offer her breast. “She’s polished new. Be blest in the world, littl’un!”
“Her name’s Piper.” It was the older woman who’d spoken. “I’m Bitterling and I read the waters. And she is Piper, born to travel far on the winds. She is a child of summer and spice.”
Piper. The sandpipers and windpipers that flew to the coasts from far-off lands every summer, to bob and dip along the beaches where sand met sea…
She smiled. “Yes,” she said. “That shall be her name. Piper.”
For the first time since she’d left the seminary gates, she felt safe.
In the morning Saker was on the wharves early. They were already chaotic and crowded. The newly built Spice Winds, fully laden, was at anchor in the middle of the Ust estuary, side by side with the galleon of the fleet, Sentinel. The ageing carrack Spice Dragon and two more new fluyts were tied up at the wharf. Workmen were still putting the finishing touches to the superstructure, polishing and varnishing. Longshoremen were loading barrels and butts of food and water in a continuous stream.
A drayman screeched his outrage as both he and a muleteer tried to manoeuvre their beasts close to the gangplank. “I were here first, you misbegotten son of a bawd!”
“An’ I got more to deliver, you pizzle of an ass!”
For a moment Saker wondered if the two men would come to blows, but a ship’s officer intervened and a line of dock-hefters quickly formed to lug the provisions on board. The moment of order was short-lived. Tempers frayed, carters fought over who had precedence, company clerks counted and recorded, ships’ officers disputed the tallies.
Ensuring even greater tumult were the families of those about to depart. They gathered on the quayside to snatch a final farewell with the loved ones they could, at best, expect to see again about two years hence. Tears were shed, children wailed, couples wept or argued.
Piled on the dock, blocking free access to the ships, was all the cargo not yet loaded. Some of the first arrivals that morning had been the farm animals, and as these were mostly deck cargo, they were also going to be the last on board. Saker saw goats, pigs and sheep, all bleating their distress, but it was the chickens in their coops that overwhelmed him with their distressed inanity.
He groaned. For Va-sake, this fobbing bird witchery could make him as miserable as a wet winter’s day. And how in all Va’s marvels was he ever going to find Sorrel in all this? If she was here. If she had thought to seek out Ardhi.
He worked his way from one end of the docks to the other, pushing his way through the throng. Twice he was stopped and questioned about his own witchery; twice he escaped real scrutiny by showing his letter of appointment. The worst of the hubbub was at the several access roads, where castle guards, Kesleer officials and men of the Dire Sweepers were trying to regulate entry to the wharves. They wanted to question everyone and have them passed by a witchery-gifted cleric or shrine-keeper. When Uthen Kesleer decided they were slowing down the smooth flow of carts in and out, he descended on those responsible with all the ire and fury of a powerful man for obstructionist underlings.
The result was a shambles, but at least Saker thought it’d be relatively easy for a glamour-gifted woman to slip through on to the docks. He still thought his best chance of finding Sorrel was somewhere portside. If she wasn’t looking for Ardhi, she’d be trying to book a berth on the flat-boat to Borage.
As the day wore on, however, he became more and more unsettled, because there was no sign of her.
By all the acorns on an oak, where was she? The only hope he had that she was still alive was the knowledge that the Dire Sweepers and the other guards were still looking for her. Well, looking for someone, anyway. It could have been him they were after…
Around mid-afternoon he did catch a glimpse of the glow of a witchery-gifted person. A disreputable family group was pushing their way through the crowd with scant manners and much vulgar language and raucous laughter. They were grubby folk, with unkempt hair, ragged clothing and dirty bare feet. There was a man with a peg leg, another who was blind and a woman with a black patch over her eye. They seemed to be accompanied by innumerable children running in all directions, and he thought he saw a boy with a knife fingering a purse hanging from a man’s belt, but lost sight of what happened as people jostled, and the crowd ebbed and flowed like the tide.
Among them was someone with a witchery. He thought it was the one-eyed woman, but it was hard to tell because of the constant mingling and merging of people.
He pushed past some sailors who’d blocked his view, only to find the group had moved on and he could no longer see them. A cart drove past, and then another, forcing him to step back. By the time he had extricated himself from the dock-hefters swarming over the new deliveries, he had no idea where the band had gone. Baffled, he headed back to where the Borage flat-boat normally berthed.
The crowd there was irate, and the person on the receiving end of the ire was the unfortunate clerk from the ship’s chandler who sold the berths. The flat-boat was due in, but there was no ship there, and none to be seen beating its way up the estuary. Of course, it was always hard to keep to a schedule; any ship was at the mercy of the wind, so it was not the vessel’s tardiness that irritated the crowd.
“Sorry,” the clerk was saying, shouting to make himself heard. “That’s just what we’ve heared from a fisher – the flat-boat’s not coming.”
“It’s not coming today?” someone cried.
“Not coming at all. Captain won’t risk himself or his crew here ’cause of the Horned Death.”
“We want to leave the city!” someone shouted. “We don’t want to die neither!”
“Do I git my money back?”
“When will the flat-boat come again?”
“How can we get to Gort?”
“To Fluge?”
“To Borage?”
Just when it looked as it was going to get ugly, someone laid a hand on Saker’s arm. He jumped, startled, and turned to see who had accosted him. A ragged woman clutched at him, her clothes thick with dirt, a baby on her arm and a bundle on her back. She held out a hand palm up, saying, “Spare a brass bit, sorr? For the babe, like?”
Appalled, Saker blanched at her smell. “Sorrel?” he hissed. “What in Va’s name…? By the Oak, you’re filthy!”
“Ay, sorr. The poor don’t get to bathe much. ’Specially them that’s accused of theft, and chased by the Regal’s assassins. What did you do, betray me to the Basalt Throne so they wouldn’t come after you?” She was whispering, and her sarcasm eventually overpowered her assumed accent.
“You can’t possibly think that.” Nearby, an angry middle-aged man launched a missile at the chandl
er’s clerk and a fight broke out. Saker grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to the back of the crowd.
She glared as she shook his hand off. “No, I suppose not. I’m not as dizzy-eyed as you are.”
He flushed. “I think we’d better get out of here. This crowd is getting ugly.” He strode away, leaving her to follow or not. She came after him, running to catch up. “I’ve been looking for you all day,” he said.
“Those people in black – I’m sorry, but they said your friend at the seminary is dead.”
“I know. I went there too, but I guess you’d already gone.” His gaze dropped from her face to seek out the child in the bundle she carried in her arms. “Is it a girl or a boy?”
“A girl. Her name is Piper.” They had reached the stone steps down to the water-level dock, where the launches from the ships at anchor were tied up. It was quieter there. He stopped and turned to her. “Is – is she all right? How have you been feeding her?”
“I made some friends among Lowmeer’s lowlife. People always say it’s the poor who help the poor, don’t they? It’s true.”
She glanced over her shoulder and nodded to someone. He turned to look, and found that a man and a young woman from the band of thieves had been following them at a distance. The woman had an older baby in her arms. The man with her was the one with the peg leg. He was leading a nanny goat on a rope. They were standing by the crates of livestock yet to be loaded on to one of the fluyts and the goat was gazing at the others of its kind.
Sorrel continued, “I’m now the proud owner of that goat and a baby-feeder, which is a sort of jug with a tiny spout. I was intending to catch the flat-boat, along with the goat. Now it seems I must walk to Vavala. With the nanny goat.”
He stared at her, open-mouthed. She was serious. “You’d do that?”
She shrugged. “What else? Actually, I don’t really think I’d have to walk all the way. I could take the flat-boat from Gort.”
“Oh, pox on it. I – I’m truly sorry you’ve been caught up in this business of the feather. I’ve no idea why they decided you were involved.”
“Well, there was that matter of the jackdaws…” She shrugged. “And the coincidence that I disappeared around the same time. It doesn’t matter. I do wonder if the best thing I could do for us all is leave this child with a wet nurse and just walk away. If they find me, and therefore the child, they might start to question where it came from. If there is any gossip within the castle about…” She let the words trail away.
“Is – is she all right? Mathilda?”
“I suspect she’s a lot better off than I am right now,” she snapped.
“Look, I don’t have much time. I have to go on board any moment now.” He nodded out at the anchored ships. The Regal’s galleon was already hoisting its sails to catch a favourable wind. It would be the first to sail, but the others wouldn’t be far behind. On the wharf beside them, the last of the cargo was being shifted on to the decks of the two fluyts. They’d be casting off any minute.
“I can see the launch from the Spice Winds heading this way,” he said, “and I suspect one of the men rowing it will be Ardhi, making sure I’m on board before the ship sails. We have to get you out of the city safely. If I can find a fishing vessel, I might be able to persuade them to take you to Borage.”
She looked at him with hope, but before she could say anything, there was a sudden surge through the crowd on the wharf and someone was yelling, “That’s her!”
They whirled to see who was shouting. A cleric. He was pointing at Sorrel and yelling back to several wardens and a black-clad Dire Sweeper.
The first person to react was the man with the peg leg. He kicked at the catch on the chicken coop beside him, knocking the lid open and spilling the coop on to its side. The hens, in a swirl of feathers and cackling hysteria, shot out of their prison. Some flew, some ran off, flapping their wings and squawking.
Saker pushed Sorrel behind him and called up as many birds as he could, not just the chickens, to attack the wardens and the man in black. Other people on the wharf – and there was still crowds of onlookers come to see the ships sail – squealed and scattered.
Within a blink, the air was thick with estuary birds: gulls, terns, cormorants, herons, even a sea eagle. The latter, at Saker’s instigation, plunged at the cleric, who took one horrified look and jumped off the wharf into the water. Sorrel’s band of thieves melted away.
The only person who didn’t appear to be intimidated, who hardly seemed to notice the birds, was the Dire Sweeper.
“I might have known the birds were your doing in Dortgren,” he said as he drew his sword. His face was still muffled, but Saker knew he was smiling. “A witchery, eh? Hello again, Saker. This time I’m going to make sure of you.”
It was the man who had called himself Dyer.
Saker already had his sword in one hand and his dagger in the other. “Oh? So certain?” He flexed his knees slightly, ready for the man’s first move. Behind him, the birds had already put the wardens to flight. He debated whether to bring them in for an attack on Dyer, but hesitated. There was something about the amusement in the man’s eyes that told him he would relish such a move.
“Send your birds away,” Dyer said. “Let’s fight this man to man, skill to skill.”
“How would that be fair?” he asked. “An assassin versus a cleric? Hardly an even fight!”
“I’ve made some enquiries about you.” They were circling each other and Dyer’s gaze never left Saker’s. “And you know what I think? You’re a spy for the Pontifect. A master swordsman, a worthy opponent. And of course, an Ardronese witan with a witchery.”
Saker was still trying to place him. No one he’d known well, he was sure of that, but he was just as certain they’d met some time in the past. At one of the Lowmian universities when he’d been a student. Grundorp, if he wasn’t mistaken. This man hadn’t been a student, though, or a tutor.
“I’ve already made sure that you won’t use those birds against me,” the man said. “You Shenat folk have a weakness … Bren! You there?”
“Yes, m’lud!”
Saker’s gaze didn’t shift. The answer came from somewhere near one of the warehouses abutting on to the boardwalk. Bren, the Dire Sweeper who’d kept the accounts for Dyer. Accounts of who’d died of the Horned Death, and who’d lived.
M’lud?
“Bren, tell my friend here what my orders are with regard to birds, if he sends his feathered friends my way right now.”
“We are to wipe out all birds within twenty miles of Ustgrind, destroy every heronry, every gull colony, every eagle nest, every rookery, every roost, every year for the next ten years until there are no birds…”
Dyer, still watching Saker, added, “Your weakness: you care.”
Blast the haggardly lout, he was right. He did care. Inwardly cursing, he sent the birds on their way. It’s not a weakness, you leprous worm. It’s my strength. The love of a Shenat witan for our world. “All right,” he said. “Let’s fight.”
They clashed, disengaged, and clashed again. Dyer was a head taller, with a longer reach and a heavier sword. Pox on’t, this wasn’t a match of equals, but a meeting of two different styles. It wasn’t going to be enough to be fast and clever, attacking swiftly with speedy retreats. Not enough to be lighter and quicker on my feet. I’ve got to get under his guard, or he’ll wear me down.
And time would be on Dyer’s side. The man’s lunges were strong and dangerous, his parries vicious. Hell, his right arm was aching already. When he blocked Dyer’s attacks, the heavy blows rattled up his arm to his shoulder. It was like trying to wrestle a bull.
He dared a quick lunge and tore a hole in Dyer’s tunic over his ribs, then brought his dagger up unnoticed to slice a thin red line across the man’s forearm on the underside. Pinpricks, dammit. And what if he defeated the fellow? He’d be up for murder! If he lasted that long. The scurvy scut’s friends were watching like vultures, ready to run him th
rough if he won the fight. Blister this for a battle lost before it began!
Another lunge from Dyer.
He stepped back to dodge and tripped over the remains of the chicken coop. Dyer’s sword whistled past in a slashing swing, missing his chest by a whisker. He somersaulted away and snatched a brief look around.
The launch from the Spice Winds had already reached the quayside. Ardhi was in the stern, holding the boat steady by clutching the metal ring on the lower landing. The two other seamen had shipped the oars, but were still seated. All three men were gazing up at him. A goat stood in the prow and a chicken was perched on the gunwale. The wet and bedraggled cleric was hauling himself up on to the steps of the landing, struggling to overcome the weight of his sodden robes. On the fluyt, sailors were lined up along the railing to watch the fight, some yelling encouragement.
His swift glance failed to find Sorrel anywhere.
In Va’s name, where had she gone? His mouth went dry. They didn’t get her, did they?
Out of the corner of his eye, all he could see on the boardwalk were the wardens, scratched and bloodied, regrouping now that the birds had gone. There was no way he could emerge the victor here.
He had to flee, and there was only one way to go.
But what about Sorrel and the baby?
Nothing suggested itself. Dyer attacked again. This time they went into a clinch, swaying back and forth as each fought for the upper hand. The cloth over Dyer’s face dislodged and he saw the man’s full face in good light for the first time. He remembered him then. One of the university’s patrons, a nobleman’s son and rumoured to be rich enough to buy the university several times over. His father was a lord … and his name was certainly not Dyer.
His extra weight won the day, and he pushed Saker away, sweeping upwards with his dagger in his left hand.