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The Winter Road

Page 23

by Adrian Selby


  “We’ve done what I promised we would do, Merchant Knossen. I vowed to deal with you if you did not leave the Circle when my brother told you to do so at the Almet. Teyr—and you shouldn’t call her Amondsen because it’s not right—Teyr chose violence, and you are all that’s left of her van, apart from Yalle and her crew, one of your mercenaries? They bade farewell to your van barely having left Amondell, abandoning the purse. I expect they went south and you can’t blame them, so few of them and so much to protect. Sanger wasn’t so lucky, nor Eirin and her crew. All now dead.”

  He could have been telling a story to a friend in a tavern.

  “Now, Merchant Knossen, let’s begin with your family. I have a proposal. I can kill you and your son Calut, and your keep and girls go free. Or I can let you and Calut live and go free, and your keep and girls stay with us. They’ll be well treated enough, could even be keeps for my whiteboys, when they’re old enough.”

  He smiled and watched Chalky and Edma closely. This was a form of pleasure for him. A stunted life under a brutal father had killed something in him early on. I’d seen it in others.

  “We have to take the second choice,” said Chalky. “Don’t we, Edma?”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment, her gaze was cold. “You might have told this horse gobbler he could have your coin and your ships, even that he could have our own lives if he but spared the children.”

  “Come now, Edma, that’s not what he said.”

  “Think on it. You spoke awful quick in favour of me and our girls being slaves all our lives.”

  “He did, didn’t he?” said Khiese. “He might have offered me his shipping interests. Anything really.”

  “No, Khiese, you wouldn’t have taken them; you gave your options. Of course I can sign over my main ten shares in ships and sheds.”

  Khiese looked over at Edma. She bowed her head and started crying.

  “Edma, he just wants you all to suffer; he’s got no interest in coin,” I said.

  The rest of Khiese’s whiteboys stood in a circle around us, watching this play out while they chewed on bread or drank from the flasks of wine from our wagons.

  “Indeed, Teyr, what does coin buy out here?” He gestured to one of his crew. “Fetch Knossen and his son a couple of flasks and a pack of bilt and bread. A knife as well, in case they come across any wolf packs.” A few of them laughed as his man walked off.

  “Any final words for each other?” he said.

  Chalky began crying, as did Calut, who leaned into him best he could.

  “Why are you doing this to us?” cried Edma. “Why be so evil?”

  “Evil?” Khiese pondered this a moment. “No. I’m only doing what is necessary. Perhaps I’m cruel, but I’ve never seen kindness achieve anything worthwhile.”

  “You …” I began, but stopped myself. Appealing to the memory of his mother Cwighan might play badly and get my brother in trouble.

  “I, what? Go on, speak.”

  “You could let us all go, now. We’d ensure that your message to Othbutter got through. Those two won’t make it alone. I could take them. I’m sorry if we did not heed your warning clearly enough. We heed it now.”

  “I won’t dignify that with an answer.”

  His man returned with a small sack. Khiese gestured for Chalky and Calut to be untied.

  “This expedition continued into the Circle after I commanded it to leave. This isn’t your fault, it’s Teyr’s. I would say I hope you make it back to Hillfast, but I couldn’t care either way. Go.” He threw the sack at Chalky’s feet. Chalky leaned down to pick it up. His girls tried to rise and run to them both, but the flat of a spear was laid across each of their chests.

  “I love you,” said Chalky. He wiped his eyes as Calut took his hand.

  “Take care of the girls, Ma, we’ll see you again,” said Calut.

  “Go, Calut, before I change my mind.” Khiese turned to the men guarding Edma and the girls. “You two, take these three back to our camp, find them something to eat and drink.” Two whiteboys lowered their spears and walked towards Chalky and Calut, who backed off, unable to take their eyes off Edma and the girls, who was pulled to their feet and dragged away, Edma managing a single punch in the face of the man holding her arm. He dropped his spear, put both hands on her shoulders to face him and drove his head into her face. The girls screamed as they watched their mother being dragged along the ground, her guard cussing to himself, the other whiteboys hollering and laughing after him. It wasn’t long before Chalky and Calut had vanished from sight into the darkness, goaded and threatened by Khiese’s men.

  Khiese took a deep breath and waited for his soldiers to turn their attention back. This was for their benefit.

  He turned to me and took out his knife. It shone, clean of poison, a polished curved blade sharp as the edge of the moon.

  “I cannot be as lenient with you, Teyr. You are a famous soldier, though years past your best. You had this great ambition to run trade through the Circle with your coin and Othbutter’s soldiers. You’ve let nothing stand in your way, ignored my warning, killed one of my chiefs, lied to my brother. You haven’t given a shit about anything I’ve said. You’ve shown me no respect at all.” He walked over to Aude and Mosa. He nodded to one of his guards, who kneeled down behind Mosa and held him by his shoulders.

  “I’ve thought about this. I’ll explain shortly why I think I have to do this.”

  He stood to the side of Mosa, grabbed his hair and pulled his head back. He drew the knife quickly and firmly across his throat.

  A red slit, a spitting of blood, the thin rolling curtain of my boy’s life leaving him, coursing down his neck and into his shirt as he convulsed in the hands of the man holding him up. He clicked his tongue, gagged, mouth wide for air, his wild eyes on mine, disbelief, then fluttering with shock. I heaved, vomited and jerked myself up, only to be kicked back to the ground. His blood flooded his shirt, a black smear creeping through it. Aude screamed, a high and animal cry, throwing himself to our son, pulling at his bindings in a frenzy to free his arms, to somehow save him. But Mosa’s head fell forward and he was still.

  I smashed my head against the ground. I called his name. Aude wailed, “My boy, my boy, come back to me.” He could not stop, the words descending to a guttural lowing.

  A cheer went around the Circle of whiteboys, some mimicking the choking sounds he made. I was kicked a few times, then Aude was kicked and spat on.

  I watched as the blood slowed. Mosa’s hair hung over his face. I waited for him to speak, to look up again. I begged him to look up, thinking, In just a moment he’ll see me.

  Through it all Khiese stood, waiting for us to wear ourselves down into a stupor. He had cleaned the blade of his knife on a rag, discarded the rag, and was looking away to the last of the light in the west, calm as a cow. Then he come over to me and sat down next to me as I lay there shivering, blowing, my heart galloping in my chest. He leaned in towards me and spoke.

  “Aude will stay with us, Teyr. I’m sure my soldiers, my whiteboys, will find a use for him. This should discourage you from coming back here. You wouldn’t want him to die as well, would you? In fact, I can imagine that after a few days reliving what’s just happened, he wouldn’t want to see you again anyway. You might also wonder, in the days to come, why I didn’t kill you, as you’re the only threat. Well, this is because I believe one or more of the following things will happen, and they are all preferable to just cutting your throat. You’ll be cut loose shortly and sent from here. You’ll most likely die of cold, and that will take time because you’re stubborn. But if you don’t, one of two things will then happen. You’ll find your way back to Hillfast and you’ll tell Othbutter that the Circle is mine. You’ll beg him not to come here with whichever soldiers he has left now I’ve killed his best, because I’ll then kill Aude. Or, and I think this is more likely, you’ll be questioned, but you’ll tell him nothing, you’ll find some way to explain what has happened, anything
so that Aude may live. And you’ll live out your life there, under my rule, unless, yes, perhaps at some point between now and then you won’t be able to live with yourself, and you’ll draw a knife over your own throat or thigh.”

  He put his hand to my cheek before smoothing my head. I threw my head around till he stopped.

  Then he stood, spoke to the man behind me. “Reinid, cut her bonds then strip her. Her arm’s broken, she won’t be able to stop you. Once you’re done, see she leaves our camp, see her on her way. I’ll make sure there’s a flask of wine kept back from her excellent supply.”

  “Yes, Chief.”

  Khiese turned to the circle of men and women around us.

  “My whiteboys, I once again keep my word and the rewards are plenty. We’ll leave this woman to her dead son.”

  They all dispersed. The man holding Mosa let him fall forward to the ground as casually as he might a sack of grain and also left. I looked over at Aude, who immediately fell forward himself and wriggled himself closer to Mosa, still whispering to him, talking to him.

  “Goodbye, Teyr. I won’t see you again.” Khiese walked over to Aude and pulled him to his feet by his bound wrists, which caused him to cry out again. He punched Aude twice in the face until he stopped writhing. I watched them leave. I called Aude’s name, but he did not look at me, his head straining back to linger on Mosa, fronds of blood swinging from his mouth. I was left alone with Mosa and this Reinid.

  He cut my bound hands, and my left arm swung free, the pain a sudden, savage burning. I held it to my side instinctively, it was limp, the forearm bruised and swollen with the break. Reinid cut through my tunic, cut it off my body, and then cut off my shirt. Then he cut away my leggings, the bonds about my legs and finally pulled off my boots and socks. He groaned at the smell, for I’d been in these clothes for days and besides having shit myself I had been pissed on.

  All I could think about was that I needed to bury Mosa. I could die the moment it was done, but with a fierce clarity I knew that I had to return him to the tapestry, though far from his bloodlands.

  “Can you get up?” said Reinid. I whimpered as my arm moved with my attempt to stand.

  “I’m burying him. Give me a stone, a plate, anything I can move soil with.”

  “I’m sorry, you have to go.”

  With a heave I got to my feet and cried out, my legs shaking with the effort. Blood ran down my ankles from the cuts the binding had made. I edged myself forward but collapsed to my knees, my feet numb, the blood needling its way back into them. I inched my way on my knees to my boy.

  There was many that I had caressed as they lay dead. He reminded me of them, the boys and girls that never got to their twenty because plans go wrong, commands are misheard or brews aren’t up to the job. As far as that simple truth went, Khiese was right. But life isn’t ever simple. Mosa let me be his ma, let me feed him and dress him, go sniffing for bluehearts and throw him in the sea because he loved the shock of it, screeching for Aude to throw me in after.

  I looked back at Reinid. He was trying not to look at me. He was chalked up white, but now I got a good look at him I could see he was as old as I was, and in his manner he was fretting.

  “Reinid, I beg you, let me bury him. I want nothing more, no help, no clothes, no food, just something I can dig with, then I’ll be gone.”

  “If one of the Khieses comes back I’ll be whipped.”

  “If this was your own boy could you leave him, unable to return to blood, to go in the tapestry?”

  He looked at Mosa. I’d put my head to the floor, begging him. I was shivering now as much with the pain of my arm as the cold.

  I felt something land next to me. It was a wooden cup.

  “Sillindar follow you,” he said, then walked away to the distant fires and songs of their main camp.

  There’s never been, before or since, a longer night. The songs my ma sang to me through my fevers or while soaking my hands blistered from work, I sang to him. I told him all my stories as I dug with that cup and my good hand, to take with him so he could sing them to his own mother. I found a stone I could cut through his bindings with and I took off his shirt, for it smelled of him, something I could keep while I pushed over his delicate, pale body and freckled face the icy wet soil that would set him free.

  Part Two

  Chapter 9

  Now

  Hillfast.

  The soldiers did some work on me during the days we tracked the coast in an old cog from Port Carl to Hillfast, but I proved a bit too much trouble when they tried to give me a beating early on the voyage. Two of them still had wrappings around their hands; I heard one was still pissing blood, and that cheered me up. Their captain remarked on my capacity for pain before putting me in a neck trap. Now they cut my breath off whenever they’re bored, and take bets on how long I’ll last before I pass out.

  There’s little left of me. Those children give me something other than myself to worry about, but now I’m facing the gallows. Fuck it.

  We’re on the Gellessens’ wharf. They was tight with Carlessen. Looks like my bounty will have to be split a few ways. Shavings of sunlight flutter through the deck planks with shadows moving above me. Beyond them the dockers’ calls and greetings, the gulls will be breeding, their yakking fills the air, though the swelling around my ear makes it sound like there’s a cup over it. I’m sure my face is ruined now. I lost two more teeth, I think, but one of them was giving me grief anyway. I’ve got cuts over my eyes and cheeks—I think one of the guards had a ring on his finger.

  The dockers are unloading bolts of cotton, boxes of plant and other cargo. Then the soldiers open the hatch and climb down the ladder to where I’m standing, fixed in the neck trap to two poles.

  The one that’s been pissing blood, he’s in charge of the other three. I can see his jaw twitch with the need to hurt me, but there’s a shimmer to him that I’m seeing it in as well. It’s taken time for these two eyes of mine to find a way to work together. The headaches have all but gone, and yet I think I’d rather not have had both eyes replaced, for all the trouble it’s caused me. The world isn’t the same when I close my left eye. I’ve struggled to see out of the left eye anyway after the attentions of clubs and fists, and I have tried to fathom what it is this black eye sees, besides what everyone sees. It sees the story of things, or rather, the riddle, for I feel as though there’s things I sense but cannot make sense of. My eye sees intent, sees shifts in feeling. Sillindar told us of the song of the earth, a sense of our belonging and place. The Oskoro must know this in a way my one eye can only signal.

  Two men unlock the poles from the beams and hold them. Their letnant steps up to me.

  “I’m going to untie you. You can walk up the ladder or be choked out and pulled up it by your trap, if you want to try kicking me again. That clear?”

  “I’ll be quiet.” I hadn’t spoken in days. It was a croak, lispy with my broken lips and bruises.

  “Good. You look a mess.”

  “Sip of water?”

  “Didn’t think the dead was thirsty,” he says.

  My arms and legs are untied and I’m brought out into the light. I manage to breathe a bit of the sea through my nose, the sour tang welcome on my tongue. The trap’s too tight for me to look about, and I want to look up over the dock, the port, to the Crackmore path that winds its way up the hillside to our house.

  There’s a gathering on the narrow run of the quay, Othbutter’s militia waiting at the bottom of the gangplank. A number have stopped their work in the sheds facing the front.

  “Gallows!” and “Hang the ugly whore!” are among the shouts, but as I’m led down the plank the spitting starts, a few stones are thrown, one of which gets me good in the back of the head and causes a cheer as I buckle for a moment. Word passes quickly along the quay that Crogan’s killer is being led along. I keep my eyes down, seeing cobbles I walked for years after I come home from Marola, inspecting cargo and running my tallies. I feel a tr
ickle of blood running down my neck. I suppose it doesn’t matter.

  “Teyr!”

  The first anyone’s said my name. I look up. Tarrigsen, aghast. He’s on the steps of the guildhall with some other merchants, who look away, though Iddie Trups and Kieltsen know full fucking well who I am and how I stood for them in years past against tithes and strikes they brought on themselves with their meanness. Tarrigsen doesn’t say any more, and I can’t turn my head, pushed onwards I’m guessing to Othbutter’s chamber of justice or the Hill, the jailhouse dug into the cliffs that rose from this end of the bay.

  I hear, in among the Common and Abra, many other languages: Juan, Farl, even Vilmorian.

  “The tourneys been already?” I shout to the letnant in front of us.

  “A few weeks ago, a success it was and all, people from all shores come for it, except for one Farlsgrad lord I heard lost his recipe book on a side bet. A recipe book! I’ll bet my balls Farlsgrad’ll be coming after whoever won it. But don’t worry, if the Hill’s fuller than usual we’ll rig up a hammock in the cess there.”

  “Kiss my cinch.”

  I’m shoved forward by the soldier wielding the pole behind me, and this forces me to cough.

  “We’re here. Let’s see if the chief’s flag is there.” By which he means the yellow flag that showed hearings was under way at the chamber.

  The chamber is set at the heart of the markets. Here all manner of catch fills my nose and makes my belly ache, but the smell of roasting nuts most of all, a smell that would have Mosa tugging my dress and pulling me over to get him some.

  The letnant is talking to one of the militia at the door to the chamber, the soldiers around me taking turns to light up some pipes and fish for the attentions of women or girls unfortunate enough to get near them.

  Soon enough he’s back, telling us no flag, but word was being sent to Othbutter that I was here.

 

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