Sing the Four Quarters

by Tanya Huff

  And now, it was too late.

  A sudden blaze of light drew her out of a deepening spiral of self-pity as one of the librarians moved around the room tending the lamps. If it was that late, maybe Tadeus had a new message from Stasya.

  * * * *

  “Hello, Nees.”

  “Hello, Imrich. Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

  The young man beamed proudly at her, close-set eyes nearly disappearing in the folds of his smile. “Going to get ribbon for Tadeus.” He held up one thick-fingered hand. A scarlet ribbon had been loosely tied around his wrist. “Must match this one ‘zacally.”

  “But it’s after dark, all the ribbon makers will be closed.”

  “Not going to shops. Going to Ceci’s rooms. Tadeus says she has ribbons to match.”

  Annice had no idea how Tadeus, being blind, could possibly know what color ribbons the other bard had, or even that she had ribbons, but had no wish to confuse poor Imrich by saying so aloud. With one arm curled protectively around her belly, she watched him walk down the hall, stocky body rocking from side to side as he hurried off to complete his errand.

  Imrich was what the healers called a Moonchild. They said that the name came from the round and flattened features, but Annice suspected that, way back in the beginning, they’d thought the moon somehow responsible—healers were very touchy about outgrown superstitions. The son of one of the cooks at the palace, Imrich had headed for music of any kind the moment he could creep and had finally, to his great joy, been taken on at Bardic Hall as a server. He adored Tadeus, who occasionally had to be reminded not to take advantage of his good nature.

  No one knew what caused a baby to be born a Moonchild or why some were more affected than others. Imrich lived a happy, productive, albeit simple life. Others Annice had seen sat grunting in corners, barely aware of self or surroundings. She felt a sudden rush of fear at the thought that her baby could be one of those.

  “Are you coming in, Annice? Or did you just come up to lurk about outside my door?”

  Jolted out of dark imaginings by Tadeus’ appearance in the hall, Annice felt her jaw drop. “What is that on your head?”

  “Do you like it?” A gentle shake sent the heavy fringe hanging off the broad brim of his felt hat swinging, the arc just clearing the tip of his nose. “There’s only so many ways you can tie a scarf around your eyes before it gets old so, hokal!” He threw the Petrokian word in with a flourish and stepped to one side. “My cousin the milliner made it up for me.”

  Mesmerized by the swaying fringe, Annice slid past him into his room. “I thought your cousin was a tailor.”

  “I have a lot of cousins,” Tadeus declared with satisfaction, following her in and closing the door. “And they’re all in the clothing trade.”

  Blindness forced Tadeus to keep his room compulsively neat and the visitor who moved a chair or set a mug where it didn’t belong was never invited back. Carved letters on the edge of his shelves kept clothing sorted by color. There were a great many shelves.

  “You’re going to have to request a double room soon,” Annice observed, “so that you and your wardrobe can continue to live together.”

  “I’m going to have to go through all this and pass on the no longer fashionable,” Tadeus corrected, carefully removing a kettle from his fire and pouring two portions of hot cider. “Shall I arrange it that you get a shirt or two?”

  “Thank you, no. I’ve no desire to look like a slaughtered sheep when that crimson fabric of yours loses its dye in the rain.”

  “Try to keep up, Nees. That doesn’t happen anymore.” He passed her a mug and settled into the room’s second chair, one slender leg draped nonchalantly over the padded arm. “Sea-trader came back from the south last summer with the secret, and now local cloth, provided, of course, it’s bought from my-cousin-the-dyer, will be just as colorfast as the imported. There’s this stuff called alum they add to the bath …” Warming to his subject, Tadeus went into a complicated explanation of the process to which Annice paid little attention.

  “Has a message come from Stasya yet?” she asked when he finally paused for breath.

  His expression grew instantly contrite. “Oh, center it, Nees, I’m sorry. I meant to tell you right away. You shouldn’t have let me babble on like that.”

  “I’ve never found a way to shut you up.” The smile in her voice took the edge off the words. “So. What’s she have to say?”

  “The duc tried to escape again.”

  “Again? How many times is that, three?”

  “Four,” Tadeus corrected glumly. “Stas is afraid he’s trying to goad Otik into killing him out of hand.”

  “No. He’s trying to stay alive. To escape the block. That’s all.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. He was one of the most alive people I ever met.”

  “Meet a lot of dead people, do you?”

  “Tad!”

  “Sorry.” He didn’t look very sorry. “After you leave and I can get a kigh to come around, I’ll tell her.”

  Annice tried very hard not to resent the fact that she’d been cut off from air, that messages had to be passed through an intermediary. She wasn’t entirely successful. “Anything else?”

  “Just the usual mushy stuff.” He grinned. “She misses you. I’m to see that you take care of yourself. You’re not to worry about her. What do you want me to answer?”

  That I’m afraid of dying. That I don’t want my baby to pay for its father’s crime. That I want her here to help me deal with all this. Leaning forward, she flicked the fringe above Tadeus’ nose and forced a calm she didn’t feel into her voice. “Oh, just the usual mushy stuff.”

  * * * *

  “I can’t keep him under Command all the time! He’ll go insane!”

  “What difference does that make?” Otik growled. “He’s going to die anyway.”

  “There’re twenty-one of you,” Stasya snarled. “And only one of him. I should think you could control him without my help.”

  A few feet away, Pjerin sucked in a shallow breath and grimaced as even such minor movement ground bones together. He’d very nearly made it this last time. Would have made it if those unenclosed kigh hadn’t given him away. Arms cruelly bound high on his back, one cheek pushed into the mud, he listened to the argument and almost wished the bard would give in, would give him an excuse not to keep trying and failing and with every failure sliding faster and faster toward despair.

  “Get up!”

  The boot drove into his thigh hard enough to lift him a few inches from the ground.

  “I said: get up, oathbreaker!”

  The second kick smashed into his hip. Gagging from the pain, Pjerin struggled to raise himself to his knees, terrified that a third kick would hit ribs already broken. A helping hand buried itself in his hair and yanked.

  He fought to stay conscious. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of throwing his limp body into the back of a wagon like so much carrion. If they were going to get him to Elbasan, they were going to have to fight him every step of the way.

  * * * *

  Gerek looked at the family crest etched into the pommel of the Ducal sword and then up at Olina, his eyes red and puffy from crying. He’d been so certain his papa would be back by First Quarter Festival that not even the festival gifts piled by his bed at sunrise had prevented a morning of tears.

  Sighing deeply, he wrapped both hands around the wire grip as far as they would go.

  “As your papa isn’t here, Gerek,” Olina had told him as they’d walked hand in hand down to the field, “you’ve got to take care of things. It’s up to you.”

  The gathered villagers murmured approval. Gerek ignored them. They’d said bad things about his papa. He remembered. He wasn’t a baby anymore.

  Olina released her hold on the sword.

  Gerek hung on. The point quivered in the air for an instant then dropped, burying itself in the dirt, marking the first furrow of the
new season’s ploughing. Legs braced, he stood and watched as the team of slow moving oxen dragged the plough to the far end of the field, peeling back the first trench for the spring planting. Not until they began their turn, did Olina reach down and take the sword out of his hands.

  “I’m very proud of you,” she whispered as she turned him to face the cheering crowd. “You’ve woken the earth from its Fourth Quarter sleep and ensured that your people will have bread this year.”

  He twisted his head to stare up at her. “I have?”

  “Yes. You have.” She smiled at him and was rewarded by a tentative smile returned. In a very short time, this child would be the Duc of Ohrid, hers to teach, to train, to rule.

  Seven

  “… carrying low, so it’s likely a girl. Although …” The heavyset young woman reflectively rolled a ball of damp earth between her fingers “… as I think on it, my cousin Onele—the one who always said that Her Highness the Heir was named for her—well, she carried so high her tits stuck out like a shelf and still ended up delivered of a fine healthy girl. But, on the other hand, my Aunt Edite when she was carrying my little nephew—such a pretty baby he turned out to be …”

  Annice let the steady stream of chatter flow in one ear and out the other while she sipped at the traditional bard’s cup of clear water. I’m so tired of hearing about babies. Can’t anyone think about anything else? It didn’t help that she was Singing fertility and the hope of high yield into the earth. She’d been Singing almost constantly since First Quarter Festival, roaming the city, calling her services out for anyone who might have a bit of garden they wanted Sung—and she rather suspected that a number of people who wouldn’t normally bother took one look at her condition and figured it couldn’t hurt.

  Cup drained and formalities satisfied, she handed the small clay vessel back to her hostess and, so smoothly that the other woman had no idea she’d been interrupted, asked for the use of the privy.

  “Oh, certainly, for it’s very important that you keep your bladder emptied, not only because of discomfort—and don’t I know that babies seem to bounce on it purposefully—but because if you wait, well, infections can grow. I mark how my partner’s sister waited too long and …”

  Closing the privy door muffled the stream of information and Annice sighed as she maneuvered her bulk around in the enclosed space. I think I’ve seen the inside of every privy in Elbasan. What a recall on city sanitation I’ll be able to make. I can only hope that the captain herself gets to read every single word of it.

  It had been the captain who’d pointed out that as she was now Singing earth so strongly and as she was in no condition to begin a First Quarter Walk, she could do some work in the city. Annice had no objection to the Singing, but the symbolic watering-the-bard that followed had floated her through the last twelve days. Out in the country, village bounds were Walked and the area enclosed all Sung at once. One Song, albeit a long one, meant one watering. In the city, outside the rough community gardens of the poorer areas, every individual household wanted an individual Song and poured her an individual cup of water which symbolism required her to drink. Annice had never realized how many people actually lived in Elbasan before.

  Nor would it have occurred to me that every single one of them would have an opinion on my belly. As it appeared that the young woman had finally run out of stories concerning childbearing relatives, Annice hastily rearranged her clothing and stepped back out into the small yard.

  Although only watering-the-bard was required from the householder, most added a small, easily carried token for luck. In the country, buttons or spoons or combs intricately carved from wood or horn over a long winter trapped inside were usually presented. Annice had a horn spoon so beautifully translucent and skillfully carved that once when eating porridge in an inn, she’d been offered a doubleanchor for it. She’d laughed, spun the heavy silver coin on the table, and pocketed her spoon. In the city, coins predominated; gulls for the most part but two half-anchors nestled in the bottom of her pouch and as she moved into the richer neighborhoods she expected to get more. The Hall would take a percentage, the rest would be hers to spend as she wished. Normally, she’d toss the lot at the Hall—fed, housed, and clothed she had little need for money—but with a baby on the way, she supposed it wouldn’t hurt to have some set aside.

  Back out on the street, she barely had time to finish her call—Shall I Sing the earth for you/shall I Sing growing—before the elderly man from the next house in the row dragged her through a cluttered first floor room to a tiny walled garden identical to the one she’d just left.

  “I could hear you over there,” he told her as he fussily positioned her in the center of the rectangle of dirt. “See that you Sing mine as well. The rest are out at their jobs, but I’m not so old and deaf that you can pass off any second-rate tune. So you just see that you Sing mine as well as you Sang that babbling featherhead’s next door.”

  “I heard that!”

  Annice rolled her eyes as the young woman’s voice floated up over the wall and resisted the urge to Sing up a fine crop of thistles.

  Eleven gardens, a handful of coins, and a really pretty pair of shell earrings later, Annice decided to call it a day. While the actual Singing was almost effortless and she seemed to pull as much or more energy from the earth as she put into the Songs, she’d had just about as much contact with the middle-class citizenry of Elbasan as she was able to cope with.

  The next person who tries to grope my belly is going to find themselves marched down to the harbor and Sung off the end of a pier.

  Late afternoon shadows seeped chill into the narrow streets as she hurried back to the River Road and her favorite soup shop. She’d have an early supper before heading back to the Hall. With every mobile bard off on First Quarter Walks to discover how the country came through the winter, the Hall was pretty nearly empty. She found the huge dining room depressing and eating in her own quarters lonely. Even the fledglings had gone off in the company of older, more experienced bards. In an effort to become used to children, she’d been spending time with Terezka, but three days before, Terezka had strapped Bernardas into a padded cart and left to make a round of Riverton, saying, I know it’s not far, but if I don’t get back on the road, I’m going to go crazy.

  Annice understood completely.

  I think tomorrow I’ll head over to the Crescent. At least there I’ll be dealing with servants too busy to indulge tactile curiosity.

  The sounds and smells of the busy thoroughfare caught her up as Chandler’s Alley spilled her out onto River Road and she quite happily jostled along with the crowds, enjoying the anonymity. This having been one of the first rain-free days of the quarter, shopkeepers had done a brisk business and continued to do so even though sunset would bring out shutters in a very short time. Annice watched people, was watched in turn, and found she didn’t mind the smiles when they came unaccompanied by a homily and a pat. Humming cheerfully, she stepped around a donkey cart piled high with bundles of dried fish and froze.

  In the distance, she could hear shouting and beneath the voices, the clatter of hooves against cobblestones. She glanced around. Could no one else hear it? The sound continued to grow and with it alarm, excitement, anger, until he advance wave finally crashed down on the people surrounding her and dragged them around to point and yell.

  “The guard! The guard returns!”

  “They have him! They have the traitor!”

  Annice shrank back against the rough willow weave of the cart, wishing she was somewhere, anywhere, else.

  A thick patina of mud covered horses and guards alike. Only the Troop Captain sat erect, eyes ahead but obviously conscious of the crowds lining the route. I have saved you all, his posture declared and the crowds responded. Everyone else sat slumped in the saddle, wearing the exhaustion of a Fourth Quarter march to Ohrid and back. Had Stasya not been Singing a gratitude as she rode, Annice wouldn’t have recognized her.

  She tried t
o look away as the prisoner went by and found she couldn’t.

  He’d been tied to the horse, thick ropes cutting into each leg then secured beneath a mud-caked belly. His hands were bound to the pommel. Blood and dirt encrusted his face and his beautiful hair was a tangled, knotted mass clubbed up in the center of his back. He swayed, hunched over his left side, his left eye swollen completely shut.

  It was no worse than she’d expected, given the messages Tadeus had relayed, but it made her feel sick.

  An egg smashed into his shoulder. He ignored it but not with the despair of a broken man. He ignored it because it had nothing to do with him.

  You can’t lie under Command. Why can’t he go to the block with some semblance of dignity?

  Annice closed out the babble of the crowd and turned toward the Citadel. Stasya was home. She’d hold onto that.

  * * * *

  “You haven’t touched the supper I brought up.”

  “I’m not hungry, Leonas.”

  “So? Your baby still has to eat.” After prodding up the fire, he shoved a thick slice of bread and cheese onto the end of a toasting fork and stood, deaf to her protests, until the cheese melted and the bread beneath turned a deep golden brown.

  When he pointedly held it out to her, Annice sighed and pulled it off the fork, unable to order him out because she didn’t think she could wait alone any longer. Stasya had accompanied the guard directly to the palace. The Bardic Captain had rushed over to speak with her there. No telling how long before she could come home.

  “Good.” The server nodded approvingly as Annice bit into the food. “Eat that, promise you’ll eat the custard and drink the juice, and I’ll leave you be.”

  “The juice …” She couldn’t ask him to stay, he’d only fuss the more. “… it’s very, uh, red. What is it?”

  “Something my Giz got sent from her sister down coast. They call them bog berries.”