by Adrian Selby
I fret about Salia appearing like she has, but if she joins Nazz’s crew I reckon there’s time enough to work out her position. With the two guards and their bows at the ready keeping some way out of my hearing I take them onto the Sixty, which refers to the number of trails that connect the farms in the quarters which are all worked by Othbutter’s own family.
Pair hadn’t set camp in their lives, so needed some telling about what to fetch and how to do a watch. Seems like they never did night work either, not even a recipe for night seeing, and both fell asleep, needed waking as the weger birds started their scritching at the turn of Aoig.
Few bother us as we pass through with Othbutter’s seal. The big galerin mushroom sheds cluster like villages amid the runs of celery, shiel and henbane. Seems little awareness out here that there’s trouble east. Thornsen knew many of the clearks on the lots here and visited often, securing us prices that others couldn’t get in return for ensuring the people here had a few kickbacks and someone in Hillfast they could trust on their visits to the markets there.
The point of me visiting Ruifsen was to persuade him not to come with us though, despite Nazz and whatever he and Othbutter was both plotting and paying in coin. I know it hasn’t gone so well with Ru in the years since we come back to Hillfast. He put his coin into his brother’s farms but his brother’s become a soak and a dicer and lost one of them. Now Ru works them, I guess to protect his investment, managing the two left and trying to bring his niece and nephews on so they don’t lose everything, and I’d have him do that for he deserves his happiness.
Like a lot of things I wish was different, I wish I had time to have seen him more in the years I was building up my own interests and got taken up with Aude and Mosa. It’s always easy to put off seeing those you love if they’re a way away. Perhaps you think they’ll always be there, so there’s no rush. But it isn’t true.
Ru looked after me all my life, from when I first left Hillfast for the fighting on the Farlsgrad border. He had served for Hillfast for a few years by then against Northspur in the Larchlands, so he was quieter than the rest of us new recruits, who didn’t know better what killing does to you.
When I first left Amondell and my family all those years ago I joined a van that was passing through to Hillfast and for passage I signed a contract they call the Beggar’s Blood, for I had no other way of getting out of the Circle without coin, and it’s blood, back and bone that’s taken as you’re put to work. When the old Othbutter come to Fat Steppy to raise some soldiers so he could win favour with the Farlsgrad king, Steppy put me, Nazz and a few others on the ship over the Sar.
I wanted to be out of the citadel. Getting a crew to look past my babs, legs and youth was a daily war and I had to break some faces and bones on occasion. There was three of us girls on Steppy’s Blood, and the fuckers we had for masters to train us always said the girls worked hardest. Don’t think that meant we got an easier ride for our work; Grilde, our one master, was brutal but straight as a line. Riebsen, however, was crazy, a vicious cunt I’d seen cripple a couple of boys that stood in the way of me or one of the other girls he’d try and give night shifts to when we all knew what he was after.
All in all I was told I’d pay down my contract a bit quicker and I’d be away from all that shit for a few months at least. Thing is, I’d got close to Nazz in the years we’d come through together with Steppy. He was a handsome boy then, reckless and immortal with self-belief, loyal to a fault, for a while, and all of that bound a crew to him fierce. I was full of juice for him, his soft lips and deep-set eyes; he made me laugh like a gull and got us into all kinds of trouble in taverns or break-ins, and, well, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Seemed all the better at the time that my paying colour stopped my bleeds. By the time we got on the ship going west to Farlsgrad I’d stopped going with him for I’d heard he was free with his cock and he was taking different jobs to be away from me.
Of course, being Nazz, surrounded by a lot of men and women he didn’t know, he was acting up, as it was his way of figuring out who was who, by their own reaction to him. Ruifsen, on the first day of the voyage, had come over as I was sicking up over the gunwale and asked if he could have my wrists. I turned about, chin still dripping, and held them out because it was that or throw myself overboard and be done with it.
He put his thumbs down hard on each wrist and faced me. He was a giant then and a giant now, a good foot taller and wider than me, his whole family, he said, seemed to have a bit of tree sap in their veins. The sickness fell away.
“I got some ginger in my pack, always pack a bit for a rough crossing. I’m Ruifsen.”
Nazz was nearby, had shouted over that there was others sick, not just pretty women. Ru give me a rag to wipe my mouth and otherwise ignored Nazz, which pleased me no end. Nazz had a few about him he was entertaining, but I too ignored him because I knew that wound him up the most.
The trails are signposted. There’s no fence as such when we get to Ru’s farmland, at least part of it. He and his brother gambled on growing food rather than the plant that goes in mixes. I knew from my last visit that the twenty acres before us was wild-looking; slender spruce and birch grew amid the rich soil that his family had spent years cultivating to fill with cloudberries. Before us we could see eight or so pickers in the nearest few acres, surrounded by the small furnace-orange fruits on their beds of papery singed-looking leaves. It’s beautiful land, left to itself, and their cloudberries are famous hereabouts because they can breathe the soil a bit more than other farms.
Further on we come to their great fields of barley and beyond those the fields of cattle.
My guards lose a little blood to the mosquies and flies that live off the cows as we tramp through their fields, one thing at least my colour saves me the trouble of. They’re fussing and complaining about them when we pass through a gate and I spot Ru talking to a few of his hands. They’re in their cups, a cool late afternoon and work’s done. His brother’s keep, his sister-ken, is with him, a basket of bread in her hands.
Something’s said, a nod towards us, and he turns about. His huge beard splits open with his smile. He slaps his thighs. His sister-ken I just about recognise, though she looks like she’s had a hard day on the land and her hair is tied under a scarf. She smiles and waves, obviously recognising me.
Ru runs over, delight all over him, and I shriek as he lifts me up off my feet and into his arms, crushing me and spinning me about and kissing my cheek as he does.
My eyes fill with tears, my black eye not so much of course, and I hug him back. He’s sour and wet with hard work and when he drops me down again we get a good look at each other. He’s got older, browner mostly, grey flushing through his beard and stache. His hair’s soaked to his head and he’s losing it at the crown a little. There’s a stillness in him that my eye somehow picks up, he seems rooted to the earth; the song, a hum, barely breaks between him and the ground.
He won’t say it, but my face is a concern to him. We both know it’s broken up.
“You get more beautiful, Teyr.”
“Fuck off, Ru. It’s lovely to see you.”
“Who are these boys?”
“My guards. I’m under a death sentence. And I’m hungry.”
“Right then. Well, you’d best join us at the house—we were just seeing off the hands for today. What do I call you two boys then?”
My guards aren’t in a great mood from the mosquies.
“I’m Bridmas, this is Niks,” says the one. “We’d be grateful for something to stop the itching of those bloody mosquies.”
Ru’s sister-ken come over then, Bridie.
“I can see you two poor things itching. You didn’t have a nettle cream about you?”
They shake their heads.
“Teyr, it’s good to see you again after all these years.” Like Ru, she’s staring at the black eye, the scars and broken nose, but is too polite to say anything about it.
“And you, Bri
die, how’s Jol?” I was meaning her keep Jol Ruifsen. I never used Ru’s first name, Niel, he was always just Ruifsen to me.
“He’s away at Hillfast, he says. Won’t see him for a few days and he’ll want cleaning up and straightening out when he does come back. Always glad of Niel, in’t I?”
Ru shrugs and smiles at her.
“I can’t wait to see those duts of yours, though I expect they’ll be my height now, will they?” I says to her.
“They’ll love to see you, I’m sure. We’re grateful for the oil you still bring up here. I never got to tell you that before now.”
“That’ll be Thornsen to thank.”
“How do you mean?” she says.
“Well, I’ve been away a while.”
“I knew it,” says Ru as we’re in our pipes on the porch to his brother’s house. He has a hut of his own nearer the cows, just the one room he sleeps and washes himself in. It’s late in the night, and the two guards, in fairness, got stuck into helping with making cheese and then making a few rye loaves, or kuksas as we say in Abra. Far as I know they’re sleeping in one of the barns, the mead Bridie makes could take down a buffalo, but they thought they knew better.
“I know you got that funny eye, but I knew something was wrong from the look in them generally. I never seen you so sad, Amo.”
“You seem happy though, Ru, and that’s cheered me up. Sorry I been away so long.”
“You were getting rich and must have been busy. Your van that comes through and drops the oil off would give us news of you and your trading over the Sar. Then they were telling us you’d met a man and then that you had set up your posts over the Ridge and down near Ablitch.”
We’d been over it all the last few hours.
“How’s the two farms now? I look about and see it all in good order, from tools to wagons to fences.”
“Bridie’s managing it all now she’s got her letters. Jol didn’t want her to have them, didn’t want me near his scrolls either, but when the first farm got signed away on a bet she give him a right going-over and then I hears him hitting her and I put him out on his back, after which I said I’d be taking on the scrolls and tallies, and sure enough it was a right fucking mess. He got right for a while, because she wouldn’t have him in her furs until he did. Didn’t last. But I taught her letters so she could teach the duts. She’s running the scrolls and I’m keeping my eye on the hands and training Ilda and the two boys.”
They might have been his own children the way he loves them, and they are fond of him, Ilda the most.
“Nazz sent Threeboots up to see me a few weeks past. I’m thinking your being here has something in common with that.”
“How is she?”
“Still paid up, working for Nazz, probably running one of his crews. She’s got a bit of grey at her roots, dyes her hair a bit now, I think, and the plant’s took hold as well, like she’s shrivelled a bit. You know how it goes, one moment she’s full tilt talking about the thieving she’s been doing and the next she’s gone quiet or stops in the middle of what she’s saying and changes to some other subject.”
“How are you now, still off the betony?” A lot of us mercenaries have had trouble with betony, some it gets hold of and it’s a fight to get away from it. Ru was under for a long time in Marola.
“Aye. I got you to thank for that still, not been tempted by it since.”
I squeeze his hand, pleased, besides which I’d not seen the shakes on him all day.
“What did she say, Threeboots?”
“Nazz has a purse, a big one, going after this Khiese. Didn’t say it was a crossroads job, but she said it would clear the debts we got from Jol’s dice.”
“How much?”
“Teyr, I don’t want to go into it now—first night we seen each other in years. You’re going though, eh? Going back for Khiese?”
I nod. “Bit surprised Nazz is going though,” I says.
“He is?”
“He is. He’s leading it.”
“Don’t make any sense that. Nazz has his fingers in almost everything going on among the sheds except, it seems, yours. He got deckhands, vanners, cutters, runs dice pens, droop joints and taverns, whores. Can’t see what reason he’s got to go except to protect all that, but still don’t mean you’d go yourself.”
“What I was thinking, Othbutter’s got something to do with making him go. I was up for the noose for them thinking I had killed Crogan Othbutter, and it was a pardon if I went and did this. Nazz and the chief have something cooking and I don’t have an idea as to what it is. Then, as I’m leaving a couple of days ago, to come here, I see Salia in the Mash Fist, first time she’s been in Hillfast in years, has to be. She didn’t seem surprised Nazz had a purse for this job either. Don’t smell right, Ru.”
“Salia? Haven’t seen her since she took a boat over the Sar from Sukenstad in Jua. Well, I’ll be by your side at least. We’ll figure it, Amo.”
“No! No, you mustn’t, Ru. I come here to tell you to stay. You can’t go out there, the Circle, because nobody’s coming back, I know that much. I can’t help thinking it’s something Othbutter and Nazz must know, but regardless of what it means, you have to keep Bridie and the children safe. They’re your world now and all your coin you put in these farms—I won’t have you lose it all. My coming here was about me, well, saying goodbye, I guess. I missed you, Ru, but I come to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid for that spimrag Nazz. I can settle your debts if need be.” He puts his arm out and takes up my hand in his, brings it to his lips to kiss it. He’s quiet for a bit, looking about him at the fields darkening, but he’s breathing a bit harder, trying to stop some tears, I think.
“You tell me this Khiese is come to rule all Hillfast. Caring for this farm and my interests is at one with caring for you.”
“No, Ru, please.”
“Amo. How many times you saved my life? Nazz forgot it for his greed down in Marola, as the others did, but all those years you cared for us, did our worrying, got us our due. I wish you’d asked me to go with you last year. Don’t know if I could have made the difference but you’re stupider than my brother if you think I won’t be there for you now.”
“The farm, Ru, all this. It’s something you should be keeping hold of. I saw you earlier, laughing and eating with the hands and all settled. I would’ve turned back if I knew I was going to put ideas in your head. I didn’t keep us straight all those years so you’d be paying back in again, taking colour again. It was so you’d pay out ahead of all those broke-up mercs we see on the docks stammering and begging, lost on the betony, which we was close to.”
“You telling me I can’t pay you back for that love you showed me?”
“For fuck’s sake, Ru.” I tipped my head back, stars was out and a nip was on the breeze. “You’ve got to be paid up, on your Forms fierce. I worry about you on the brews again. Might be that Farlsgrad send a force if they see their interests in the citadels harmed, so your farms would be safe, I reckon. But Ru, you stand a chance to get away if Khiese does come. You got no chance in the Circle.” Can’t believe I didn’t ask Othbutter about Farlsgrad.
“If you’re so sure of dying, why are you going in there? What do you want to be dying now for? It don’t bring Mosa back and it don’t help Aude if he in’t dead already. You know that, don’t you?”
“I do. Course I do.” What I’m so sure of seems slippery when I’m trying to force it into words for they don’t come easy. “I’ve got a reckoning with myself to make. I thought I deserved what I had, I thought I should have got what I wanted just because I wanted it. And I wanted it all. I wanted to never be made keep to some Auksen runt and be pushing out duts for him. Then I wanted to be Khasgal’s queen and rule an empire. When I couldn’t have him I took you all to Jua and the biggest purses we ever had, though fuck knows it wasn’t enough. Then I come home and within a few years I’m trying to prove I can run a road where no one else dared and I’m thinking nothing can stop me because
I’m Teyr Amondsen. Now I’m old and I got nothing worth having, only coin, and that gone with this death sentence.
“This is about me settling all that best I can. Just carrying on making coin like it matters a fuck isn’t going to fill that black hole in my head. Drowning in brandy won’t bring Mosa back to life. Maybe running Khiese through won’t fill the hole either, but I can’t think of anything else might work in place of getting revenge on him.”
He’s quiet for a bit, then he smiles and lets out a good big breath of smoke.
“What’s that smile for, Ru?”
“Only ever seems women have to apologise for a bit of ambition, don’t it? We all believed in you, din’t we? Me, Nazz, Thad, Tarrigsen, then Aude. We all been with you and for you.”
He takes my hand again.
“If I’m paying back in I want you to second me. Run the Forms with me in the morning, show me how far away I am, because I been doing them regular for years but without a second you get bad habits.”
“What about Bridie? You’re just going to leave her to your cock of a brother?”
“She’ll manage.” He says it a bit quieter. I know why.
“You love her, Ru. I can see it, she can see it, I’m sure, she’s sharp as a needle. I followed your eyes all day and they was much on her. And I think she’s fond of you and all, for I followed her eyes as well.”
He narrows his lips, gives the smallest of nods, like he thought better of trying to put up some sort of denial.
“We can stop another day. I can have a word with Thornsen to have a cleark come by now and again if you are coming with me. My two guards haven’t looked so happy since I led them off the quays, I’m sure they’ll stay a little longer.”
“Aye. Perhaps we can take a day.”
We leave two days later.
Bridie and the children give all the assurances that everything is in order and that both he and I need to look after each other. They all give me Sillindar’s blessings and Ilda sings us them as we all used to sing them. The boys give Ru a beard hoop they’d been making for his birthday; it is black larch, his favourite wood, carved in which was the Ruifsen emblem of the striking falcon, his family being renowned breeders about Hillfast. Him and Bridie have a good long hug but the children are too young to read anything into it. Bridie’s eyes are full when she asks me to try and bring him back safe, though she makes sure none of the others are about when we say our own farewell. I can’t say anything then she won’t want to hear, for she knows well enough what being a soldier means, what paying colour means. Might as well juggle axes blindfolded as take a fightbrew.