Ayah scowled at the young man, but he just looked back at her with that smug grin. She contemplated wiping it away with a slap that would set his ears ringing, but Baraban was just the kind of vindictive bully to actually go through with his threat. She suspected that he would find the results less than agreeable but persuading him of that was likely to be hard. ‘Let me think on it,’ she said.
‘Of course,’ Baraban replied magnanimously. ‘I’ll have your answer by tomorrow at midday.’
Ayah’s scowl deepened, but she nodded. ‘If that’s what you want.’
‘I do. And when you’ve said yes, we’ll discuss other ways you can pay for my silence.’
~~~
‘I need to leave the village,’ Ayah said as the trio were once again gathered around the fire.
Athelynn did not look as though her daughter’s statement was coming as a huge surprise. ‘Something has been bothering you all day. What happened?’
‘Baraban found out about the soldiers. He says he’ll tell unless I agree to a betrothal.’
‘You can’t,’ Sanden said. ‘He knows nothing said before your sixth great birthday has any meaning.’
‘I don’t think he’s too worried about that. Besides, he made it clear that he doesn’t mean to stop at a betrothal. He wants an answer by midday tomorrow. I need to leave the village tonight.’
‘But–’
‘He’s going to have his way, Laoshi Sanden. He is bright enough to know he has leverage and he’s also stupid enough to believe his father’s money will save him if the Empire of Iron comes here to punish whoever killed their soldiers.’
Sanden frowned, unable to deny the logic, but… ‘Athelynn, aren’t you going to say anything? She can’t–’
‘I thought by now you’d have learned that look in my daughter’s eyes, Sanden,’ Athelynn said calmly. ‘She’s thought on this all day and she’s determined. And you know she’s assessed the situation correctly. I’m not sure her leaving will solve the entire problem. Baraban and his father have a vindictive streak and Baraban is almost as stubborn as Ayah. I don’t want her to go, but I’ve always known she would leave Avrilatha at some point. I thought I had another Great Year… But no, the best thing we can do is make sure that she goes prepared. Then I can start praying that she does not have to stay away for too long.’
Sanden looked like he was going to argue, but then he sagged back into his chair. ‘In that case, I’ll need some help getting to the smithy. I have things there from my travelling days which may help.’
~~~
From a wardrobe in his bedroom, Sanden produced a moderate-sized backpack which was quite heavy, but still fairly compact. ‘There’s a tent and a bedroll in there,’ Sanden said. ‘You’ll be sleeping at the side of the road a lot and you can’t count on the weather staying as good as it has been. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble working out how to put the tent up. It was designed for imperial scouts so it’s light and strong. The poles just slot together and they’re Iron City steel. There’s flint and steel in there too. You’ll likely want a fire at night.’
‘Thank you,’ Ayah said. ‘You didn’t have to come here to get this. I could have found it.’
‘Probably, but there’s something else I want you to have which would be harder to find. Take the pack out into the front room and I’ll join you in a minute.’
Ayah’s eyebrows rose, but she dutifully slung the pack up onto a shoulder and trooped out into Sanden’s rather cool family room. She could hear something going on in the bedroom but could not work out what it was. Sliding sounds. The thunk of something being dropped. Then Sanden emerged from the bedroom carrying a leather pouch and a long, wooden case. He tossed her the pouch, which was quite heavy when it landed in her hands, and it clinked.
‘Money,’ Sanden said. He held up a hand to forestall any argument. ‘I’ve been saving what I could since I came here and you’ll need money at times. I’m not leaving myself penniless either, so don’t argue.’
‘I… Thank you.’
‘Good. Now, you’re not to argue about this either.’ He held out the wooden case and Ayah took it from him, frowning at the beautifully carved lid. ‘Well, open it.’
Ayah sat down on a chair and put the pouch of money aside so that she could place the case on her knees and work the brass catches. She opened the lid and her eyes widened. Set in silk padding within the box was a sword, perhaps the most beautiful sword she had ever seen. It was just like the ones she used in practice, but far more ornate and with an edge. Both the pommel and the guard were carved with intricate, draconic designs and then gilded. The grip was soft, cream leather which had been burned to give a pattern of more dragon-like creatures. The blade had been acid-etched with more patterns, but these were more complex, showing various figures from legend, Ayah thought, though she could not place all of them. It looked like a very fine piece of craftsmanship, and very expensive.
‘I can’t possibly–’
‘I said no arguments,’ Sanden interrupted. ‘It was made for me by a master craftsman in the Iron City. When he gave it to me, he told me that I would one day give it to someone who had greater need of it than I. You’ve learned well, Ayah, and I can’t think of a single person I know who might be more in need of a good sword. Call this a graduation present. I expect you’ll learn more of the Metal Form in years to come, but for now I am no longer your laoshi.’
Ayah bit back on the tears threatening to fall, closed the case, and got to her feet. She bowed. ‘I will make you proud and you will always be my laoshi.’
~~~
It was getting close to midnight when Ayah stood, dressed in what her mother called her ‘travelling clothes’ and ready to leave her home for the foreseeable future. There was a woollen tunic and thick cotton trousers. The latter were tied tight around her shins. Strong boots would keep her feet dry, and an over-tunic of rough cloth would keep her warm and help shed the rain if any fell. The leather bracers around her forearms were mostly decoration, but they were thick enough to provide a little protection too.
‘Well,’ Ayah said, ‘it’s time to go.’ Of course, now that she was on the brink of leaving, she did not want to.
‘Safe journey, Ayah,’ Sanden said. The smith was looking tired. He should have been in bed by now. He needed more rest, not to be standing outside in the cool night air.
‘I’ll stay safe. And when my mother’s fixed you up, you’ll keep her safe for me, won’t you?’
‘Of course. It will be my honour.’
With a nod, Ayah turned and pulled her mother into a hug. ‘Not going to try to stop me at the last minute?’
‘No, daughter of mine. Your destiny was always beyond the village walls. When you’re powerful and famous, come back to see your old mother, won’t you?’
‘Well, I don’t think I’m going to be either of those, but I’ll come back anyway. Goodbye for now, Ama.’
‘Goodbye, Ayah.’
And with that, Ayah turned and walked out of the village and away from the only life she had ever known.
Interlude: The Fox on the Road
On the Road, North and East of Avrilatha Village, 8th Day, Second Marita, 206.
Ayah had been walking for over a quarter of the night and she was starting to get tired. That might have been why she did not spot the fox standing in the road ahead of her until she was almost upon it.
‘Oh! Hey, hello, Mister Fox,’ Ayah said, grinning at the animal. The fox gave her a look and a sharp bark. ‘Miss Fox?’ The fox whickered something which might have been an affirmative, possibly a sarcastic one. ‘Well, it’s not like it’s that easy to tell. It’s dark and I can’t see… your bits.’ The fox raised her snout and sniffed. ‘Spirits! I’m so tired I’m talking to a fox like she was a human. I need some sleep.’
The fox tilted her head to one side and then darted into the undergrowth at the side of the track. A second later, Ayah heard a whickering sound which almost sounded like a question. Like,
‘Why aren’t you following?’ With a shrug, she left the track and followed. Right now, she was so tired that following a vixen off the road seemed like a perfectly reasonable activity. After walking barely a hundred paces, she came to a stand of low trees and Ayah spotted the fox again, trotting through the thinner grass as happy as could be.
A little way in there was a clearing and Ayah dropped her pack happily, opening it up to pull out a blanket. The sky was clear and she did not think she had to worry about rain. All she needed to do was lay out the blanket, roll it over her, and sleep. Her eyes fell on the fox.
‘Well, a little snack before bed would be good.’ Ayah pulled some of the dried meat her mother had given her from her pack and split a strip of it into four pieces. Then she threw two of them down for the vixen. ‘I hope that’s not bad for you or anything.’ The fox snapped up the meat in two quick gulps; if it was bad for animals, the fox did not appear to care.
Ayah wrapped herself in her blanket and chewed on a strip of meat. The fox curled up in the grass nearby and closed her eyes. Ayah’s eyebrows went up, but if the fox wanted to stay near her… Well, there was probably not that much Ayah could do about it anyway.
Interlude: Baraban’s Answer
Avrilatha Village, 8th Day, Second Marita, 206.
Baraban had been smiling for most of the last day, but as he stalked toward Ayah’s home, he was wearing a scowl. He had had Ayah exactly where he wanted her. Now, according to rumour, she was gone. No one escaped him. He always got what he wanted.
He slammed open the door to Athelynn’s treatment room and marched in, ignoring the old woman Athelynn was currently working on. ‘Where is she?’ he yelled. ‘Where is Ayah? We had an arrange–’
‘Get out,’ Athelynn snapped. ‘I am busy and I do not have time for your foolishness.’
Baraban took a step forward, reaching out for Athelynn’s blouse. Then he seemed to think better of it: he was angry, but Athelynn was the village’s healer and not someone he could afford to anger. ‘Tell me where Ayah has gone. We had an arrangement. She was to–’
‘I know all about your “arrangement,” Baraban. You tried to blackmail my daughter into a marriage she did not want. Now she’s gone. Because of you! Get out of my house and never come here again.’
Baraban’s features twisted into a malicious grin. ‘You’ll tell me where she’s gone, or I’ll tell the next squad of troops through here exactly what she did.’
‘And you think they’ll believe you?’ Baraban spun at the sound of Sanden’s voice from the inner doorway.
‘Stay out of this, smith.’
Sanden ignored him. ‘Let me give you an insight into the mind of the Imperial Army. Call it a free lesson. Imperial soldiers are the best in the world and they all know it. There is no way that one man could stand up to three of them, so I must have had an accomplice, probably several of them. If you tell them Ayah killed one of their lieutenants, they will laugh at you so hard they may rupture something. So, they’ll torture me to find out who helped me. I’ll hold out for a couple of days, and then I’ll tell them it was you.’
‘What?’ Baraban’s eyes grew wide and he took a step away from the wounded smith. ‘They’ll never believe–’
‘You think they’ll believe an underage girl helped me? Oh no. That’s simply not acceptable to the imperial mind. You make much more sense and you clearly tried to shift the blame to a girl who had rejected your inappropriate advances. Me they’ll kill. You they’ll kill slowly. You’ll be tortured to death and believe you me, the imperial torturers are experts at keeping someone alive for weeks in pain.’
‘They’ll never–’
‘So, here’s what you are going to do, Baraban. You’re going to leave this house and, as Athelynn said, you will never darken its doors again. If you breathe a word of what happened here to anyone outside this village, I will make it my life’s mission to see you die in the dungeons under the Iron City. Are we clear, Baraban?’
Baraban’s mouth opened and then closed. He glared at Sanden for a second and then stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
‘I think he got it,’ Athelynn said. Then she turned back to her patient.
Part Two: The Festival of Growth
Growing upward. Sublimely prosperous and smooth. Appropriate to see a great person. Do not worry; moving forward toward the south: good fortune.
– The I Ching.
Saventi Town, 15th Day, Second Marita, 206.
Saventi was something of a revelation to Ayah. It was a town toward the middle of the Western Plains and, as towns went, it was not an especially large one. It still seemed to have far more people in it than Avrilatha ever had, though part of that might have been the date. It had real, permanent defences too: Avrilatha had a fence made of logs driven into the ground which was not exactly well-maintained, but Saventi had a wall. It was a wall made of a double circle of logs with packed earth between them, but it was a wall. There were big gates which could be barred closed, even if the grass growing around them suggested they were rarely, if ever, closed at all. There were even a couple of men on guard duty at the gate; no one ever mounted a guard in Avrilatha.
The principal reason why Saventi was classified as a town, however, was the market square in the middle of it. On Wood Day in each week – which was tomorrow – the square would fill with traders, both local and travellers from other parts of the Plains, trying to sell their goods to whomever might be in town. This particular Wood Day would attract a bigger crowd, however, because it was the third Wood Day in the month of Marita which made it the day of the Festival of Growth.
The festival might, Ayah thought, be an issue. She really wanted to sleep in a bed for a couple of nights and enjoy the festivities. There was a pretty high chance that Saventi had an inn, but there was also a reasonable probability that it would be full. The inn would, she figured, be near the square in the middle of town, so that was where she headed for, down quite a broad thoroughfare from the gate.
Once within the walls, Saventi looked less different from Avrilatha than Ayah had expected and her nerves began to settle. She had not really noticed she was nervous until her disquiet calmed, but she managed to pin down what was wrong quickly enough: she was missing the fox. The animal had been her near-constant companion for eight days but had disappeared as Ayah approached the town. Now Ayah was facing at least three times the number of people she had ever seen in one place before and a strange town, and the vixen was not there to provide comfort.
But Saventi was like a larger version of Ayah’s home village. There was nothing really strange here. Like Avrilatha, the houses had wooden frames with packed-earth walls. For the most part anyway; Ayah spotted a couple of buildings with stone lower floors and a wooden-framed upper floor, and there were no two-storey buildings in Avrilatha. All of the stone buildings seemed to be shops, however, and Ayah suspected that the upper floor was the owner’s private living space while the cut-stone floor was the public shop. Clearly, there were people in Saventi with more money than the villagers of Avrilatha, but they were people from a settlement on the Western Plains: nothing to be nervous of.
The market square was a broad expanse of open space in the middle of town. In the centre of it was a stone-edged pool surrounded by paving slabs. The pool had six sides to it, each carved with an elemental symbol: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Sky were all represented. Ayah peered at the pool and its symbology for a second, wondering at the odd sensation of difference she felt from it, but she could see nothing to account for the feeling and turned her back on it. As she looked out from that central spot, Ayah realised that the ‘square’ itself was hexagonal and one of its faces was occupied by a large building, larger than anything she had ever seen before, with not one but two storeys of stone as well as a sloping, tiled roof! Now that was truly an amazing building and it seemed to be the inn. Maybe it would not be full after all.
The large, double door of the inn opened onto a big
room with tables and chairs in it and, at the rear, an arrangement of barrels and tables. Ayah had never been in a taproom before, but this was obviously one and it seemed as though the only staff in residence were behind the bar, so that was where she headed. There were various people sitting around the tables, enjoying a drink on a Sky Day afternoon. Most looked local or were dressed in the same sort of manner as most Plains people anyway. No one here was dressed like an imperial soldier, which Ayah considered a good thing. Only one person really caught Ayah’s attention: a tall, beautiful woman with long black hair. She was wearing a red dress with pink and purple roses printed onto the silk. It was a very form-fitting garment and Ayah had only seen a couple of women wearing one when they passed through Avrilatha. Generally, they had been accompanying a rich man on his travels. This woman seemed to be alone.
The portly man behind the counter took one look at Ayah and shook his head. ‘I’ve no free rooms,’ he said flatly.
Ayah sagged. ‘None? I’ve money for–’
‘None. It’s the festival tomorrow. By now, every free room in town will have someone in it. I let my last one an hour ago.’
Ayah sagged more. ‘There’s nowhere to stay?’
‘There’ll be a camp outside the wall. Some don’t want to pay the prices and pitch tents out there.’
‘Oh. I’d really hoped…’ With thoughts of a bed under her slipping away, Ayah gave the man a bow. ‘Thank you for your time.’
‘She can share my room.’ Ayah turned in time to see the woman in the red dress stepping up to the counter. Out from beneath the table, Ayah could see that the dress fell very straight from the woman’s hips, but there were slits down the sides from the woman’s upper thighs which probably made walking possible, never mind easier. It was a weird sort of garment in some ways: it seemed very formal, yet it showed off the woman’s figure very well and did little to really cover her long legs.
The Iron Princess (The Twilight Empress Book 1) Page 4