by Martin Davey
Was that a joke about her height? “Well, I’ve been spending most of my days with Guardian Cioran.” She nodded to the inn, the doors were open already, the thatched roof littered with yellow leaves and the white paint peeling near the windows. “I was just going to, er...”
“Guardian Cioran?” Tiege said, his smile more questioning, unsure. The man and woman reading the book had looked up from the pages, Ysora saw. “I’d thought you were joking about the dog being at his house.” Tiege’s easy charm was gone now, replaced by something colder, and, Ysora couldn’t help feeling, more natural.
“Joking? Why would I be joking?” More villagers were going into the inn, the sound of a woman’s laughter, high and shrill and flirtatious drifted through the window. Ysora had hoped to speak to the innkeeper before it got too busy.
“Why would you be joking?” Tiege sucked his bottom lip as though deep in thought. “Now why would a Guardian of Keeper Martuk find a woman dressed in rags and accompanied only by a hound which is more horse than dog out in the road and then take them into his own home?”
Ysora couldn’t help bridling at Tiege’s questioning tone, she felt her hand tighten around the book of poetry. Hadn’t Tiege also insulted the greatest poet of the age? Maybe he was one of those people who found fault in everything and everybody. Like her mother had. “Guardian Cioran is a good man,” she said. “He was also married to my mother, not that it’s any business of yours.” She was sure her face would be flushed. Now all four of Tiege’s friends were watching her and she didn’t like the sympathy she saw in their eyes.
“The Guardian was married to your mother?” Tiege looked around at his friends, none of the playful banter evident in any of them now, all looked at her, arms crossed on the bench before them, eyes intent. “How old was your mother? Guardian Cioran can’t be any older than you, if not younger. What does that make me? Your long lost grandfather?”
Ysora looked down at the Solphin book in her hands, trying to think of something to say. Any argument to explain Cioran’s marriage to her mother sounded stupid before the words were out of her mouth.
The blonde woman who’d been reading the book finally spoke, “Tiege, go easy on the woman. She’s new here. Just give her some space.” She walked around the bench, barefoot in the grass. She wore long skirts like Ysora, though they only made her look graceful instead of bony and awkward. “Come and join us for a while,” she touched a hand to her the breast of her pale blue jacket which clung tight to her slight body. “My name’s Addison and that,” she nodded a head to the black-haired man with green eyes and a week’s stubble lining his jaw, “Is Rickel.” Addison looped a hand through Ysora’s arm and guided her to the bench. Ysora felt rather than saw the nod Addison gave to Rickel and the man hurried off into the inn.
She sat in Rickel’s empty seat, noticed he had left his book there, now closed. Another volume of Solphin poetry according to the title on the cover. “Ysora Siran.” A quick glance around the faces of her new companions showed that none recognised the name.
And then she remembered. When she had first met Tiege he had said he played in Farmer Retol’s field. The same field she had played in as a child. She looked to Tiege now, carelessly handsome as he sat on the bench, his booted feet stretched out before him. He showed no sign that he recognized her name. She thought of the children she remembered playing with in the field, the fat farmer chasing them with his red face and his bouncing belly. Russil, she remembered, a boy with long brown hair and rabbit teeth. Vicki with her thick thighs and too-tight dresses. And Garol, always smiling, his hair so yellow it was almost white. But no handsome dark-haired boy with a mocking smile called Tiege.
The final man, perhaps barely past his twentieth summer, leaned on the table with an elbow while holding out a hand to Ysora. “A pleasure to meet you, Ysora Siran,” he had a long thin, serious face, pale as a Clerk. “My name is Frim.”
Ysora took his hand, cool to the touch, and offered the younger man a smile though it felt weak. She placed her book of poetry next to Rickel’s, trying to avoid everybody’s expectant eyes that she knew would be fixed on her. What did they want of her?
“So where are you staying, Ysora?” Addison tried to make her feel more comfortable, though the words sounded awkward in the quiet.
Ysora nodded to the other side of the village, beyond the temples of the Keepers. “At the Keeper’s Dawn. Cioran was good enough to find me a room there.”
“Ah,” Addison said, and without looking, Ysora could tell that all four of her companions’ eyes met.
“There you go,” Rickel reached over her shoulder and placed a slopping tankard of beer on the table before Ysora, the spilt liquid staining the wood brown. Rickel sucked the back of his wet hand and joined Tiege sitting on the table looking down at Ysora, the weeping willow casting him in shade. “So, what were we all talking about?” he asked.
“My mother,” Ysora said, not sure which of her new friends she should direct the question to so looking from one to the other. “So none of you remember my mother, Kara Siran?”
The other five looked to one another again. Ysora was beginning to think they did that a lot, and it was starting to annoy her. “When did you say your mother passed into the Sleeper’s embrace, Ysora?” Addison asked, her yellow hair long and straight like Ysora’s could never hope to be.
“I didn’t,” Ysora tried to keep her voice level despite her rising unease and frustration. “But she died eleven years ago.”
“Ah,” Addison smiled, relief plain in her face. “That explains it then. None of us were Called here until...” she looked around the group. “I think Tiege has been here longest of all of us, what was it Tiege? Six years? Seven?”
“Something like that.” Tiege said. Ysora couldn’t help wondering how he’d lost all his easy charm and voice at the mention of Guardian Cioran. He looked out across the road, watching a cart pass pulled by a skinny sweating horse.
“It is strange, though, how Guardian Cioran hasn’t mentioned a wife that I know of.” Addison said.
“Six years?” Ysora looked up at Tiege, his eyes shadowed under the shade of the weeping willow. “I thought you said you’d played in Farmer Retol’s field when you were younger?”
“Did I?” Tiege smiled, his easy manner returning in an instant, his eyes brightening and his smile widening. “Played,” he spread his hands, “Worked, what’s the difference? But I’ve never heard of a farmer Retol. Farmer Rolude maybe. A hard task Master that one.”
“He’s got nothing on Lester Bersol, he can be a real bastard.” Frim said. “Thank the Keepers I wasn’t there long.”
Addison nodded with feeling. “I can’t understand why Mirram ever married him, she seems like a nice woman. Too nice for him anyway.”
“Money.” Tiege said. “See a nice looking woman with an old man with a bony face and no hair and you can bet your last gold coin that he’s got barrows full of money.”
Ysora looked at her drink, still full to the brim. It was too early to be drinking the thick beer, just the thought of it made her queasy. It would take her an age to be able to force it down her throat and she wanted nothing more than to be away from these young people and their chatter of people she didn’t even know. She took a sip and put the beer back down on the wet circle on the table. The tankard still looked full. If only she could pour it on the grass when nobody was looking. And Tiege had definitely said Farmer Retol, why was he lying now? She looked at him sitting on the bench, one leg now curled under him, leaning on one hand as he talked. The easy way which he carried himself reminded her of the dancer from the dream. His tankard was empty, so were the others. “What about an older woman with a younger man?”
Tiege raised his eyebrows at her. He needed a haircut, his hair beginning to grow over his eyes. “An older woman with a younger man?” He pursed his lips as though in thought. “Well, that all depends on the age of the woman, I think. Say, a woman your age with a man still yet to see his twentieth
summer, then I could do nothing but envy the young man. A man my age with a woman your mother’s age, then I might begin to wonder whether all is as it seems.” Tiege looked away, watching a family returning from the fields with baskets full of bitterbloom flowers. Ysora couldn’t help feeling he wanted to say more, even Addison and Frim looked away, raising eyebrows and smiling nervously.
There was no way Ysora was ever going to drink her beer and still be at Cioran’s house for the afternoon. She pushed the tankard away, it scraped loudly on the table. “Thank you for the drink,” she nodded to Rickel. “But I really should be going.” She rose to her feet, thankful not to fall over her bench as she stepped over it in her long skirts. “It was nice to meet you,” she carefully ignored Tiege as she glanced around the table.
“Come now, Ysora, don’t mind Tiege.” Addison looked from Ysora to Tiege, but he was already talking quietly to Frim. His beard needed trimming, it was growing to a point under his chin.
“That’s fine,” Ysora smiled to Addison, surprised how natural the smile felt; Addison seemed a nice enough woman after all. “I needed to speak to the innkeeper here, anyway.”
“Len?” Addison looked surprised, her eyebrows arching prettily. “He’s a nice enough sort, just don’t put up with any of his shit and you’ll be fine.”
Ysora felt watched as she walked to the inn, trying to keep her steps small and dainty. Cioran had been married to her mother, how else would he have known all about her and their lives together?
The inn was cool after the warmth of the morning, blackened beams striped the ceiling and it was still early enough for some of the chairs and benches still to be standing on the tables. Old men sat at a couple of tables looking bored and young men sat at others looking bleary-eyed and weary. The air smelled of stale smoke and stale beer. Spilt ale pooled thickly on the bar and sawdust littered the floor beneath it, soaking up some dark stain which might have been blood or gravy.
Ysora coughed. “Hello?” she couldn’t see anybody behind the bar. The door leading to the back room hung open, though it leaned a little as though a hinge had fallen loose, maybe it didn’t close. “Hello?” she said again.
“Can I help you, miss?” A voice behind her, the accent thick with flat vowels and gruff tones. He was more bald than not, though he still clung to the vanity of his hair and grew what little he had left long and scraped it about his head to try and cover the bald spots. He was fighting a losing battle.
Ysora guessed by the grimy towel he had slung over his shoulder that he was the innkeeper. “I was looking for Len,” she said.
He scratched at his vest, the colour of dirty dishwater. He had bigger breasts than some women and the vest was perhaps two sizes too small. “Lots of people are looking for Len,” he said. “What might you want with him?”
Ysora made to lean on the bar and then stopped herself, remembering the pools of beer. She stood straighter, meeting Len’s puffy eyes. “I’m looking for a job.”
“Ah,” now Len smiled and walked around her to the back of the bar. He whipped the dirty towel from his shoulder and slapped it onto the bar with a slopping sound, drops of beer scattering about. “A job, is it? Lots of people looking for jobs.” He looked more closely at her, his eyes the colour of dirty clouds. “Are you pretty enough to be a barmaid? Would the thought of seeing your pretty face be enough to drag the drinkers from the whore Violett’s den and across the village to my establishment?” His face didn’t suggest he was confident that her face would be enough to perform such a feat.
“I can clean,” she said.
Len sucked a sweaty lip and looked at the bar, stained with age and covered in slimy beer. He picked up the dirty towel. “You’re hired,” he said, throwing the towel at her.
Ysora leaned to one side, the towel sailing over her shoulder. Still she got scattered by drops of what she hoped was stale beer. The towel landed with a splat behind her. “Start tomorrow?”
Len shrugged and scratched at a breast. “Start today, after dinner. Two gold a day I pay, finish before tea and back tomorrow morning before opening.”
Her rent for the room at the whore Violett’s establishment was ten gold for the week. “Three,” she said. “I’d need three gold if you want me coming here twice a day.”
“Two,” Len looked at her and must have seen the argument already forming on her lips. He shrugged, “Two gold and ten coppers. You wouldn’t want a man to go without food would you? Lose his business? My dream was to own a place such as this.”
An old man, his hair grey and his clothes ragged, coughed and spat into the sawdust.
“Two and ten, then.” Ysora said, turning away before Len would ask to shake on it.
“After dinner,” Len shouted after her.
“After dinner,” she said. A chair scraped out from beneath a table as she walked past, only just stopping in time before she tripped over the thing. She looked to the man at the table, the curse already on her lips. And then stopped.
Tiege sat at the table, his hands on the surface, and his long legs crossed underneath. Ysora swallowed the curse, looked at him, and turned away back to the doors.
“Take a seat,” he said. The inn was quiet, younger men nursing sore heads, and the old men, even when they sat three to a table, staring off into space in companiable silence.
Ysora looked at the chair, then to the bright sunlight beckoning beyond the doors, and back to Tiege. She sat down, avoiding his eyes. “You do remember Farmer Retol.”
Tiege had chosen a seat away from the sunlight streaming through the door, his dark hair and his dark beard blending with the shadows. He nodded. “I remember a gawky young girl who liked climbing the trees and running with the boys, her knees scraped and scabbed and when she laughed it sounded like a horse snorting. She went by the name of Ysora Siran, too. A strange coincidence, that.”
Ysora leaned onto the table to look more closely at him. His thick dark hair and dark eyes, his mouth with full lips behind the beard and his eyes the colour of polished chestnuts. There had been a boy with dark eyes she remembered now. A chubby boy, his clothes always too tight around his belly. A quiet boy who had watched them play from the tops of trees or haylofts, his eyes dark and sad as he watched them play. “Redmond?” she whispered.
The only answer was a barely discernible nod.
Had Redmond’s hair been as dark as that? She remembered the boy more on the fringes of memory, a quiet figure flitting in the background watching the other children playing in the sun. He’d had thick brown hair cut roughly around the ears. “So why deny everything out there? Why make a fool of me in front of your friends?”
This made Tiege lean forward onto the table, resting on both elbows, hands clenched into fists. “Because you can never be sure who is listening, Ysora.” His voice was as low and as dark as his eyes. “I thought it was you as soon as I saw you, but then when you never showed any reaction when I mentioned Retol and I never saw you again...” he shrugged. “Perhaps I’m getting careless.”
“So you survived the plague?” Ysora asked, hating the stupidity of the question even as the words left her mouth. “What about your mother and father?” She wasn’t even sure Redmond had a mother and father, all she could remember was the boy appearing on a wall or tree, watching them from dark eyes in the morning and then sometime during the afternoon or evening, the boy would have slunk away with none of them noticing.
“The plague? Guardian Cioran told you about the plague, did he?” Tiege’s smile was cold as a winter’s night, his voice so low that Ysora had to lean forward to hear him. They must have looked like two lovers whispering sweet nothings to one another. “The only plague I remember arrived on horses with swords and bows led by a man in a suit of steel and a man with a pale face and black eyes.” Tiege’s eyes burned into her as he spoke, his jaw tight and barely moving as he spoke.
A cold fist gripped Ysora by the back of her neck, her skin roiling at the touch. “What? You’re saying they killed ev
eryone in the village?”
“I had a tree I used to like to climb out beyond the fields. I used to climb to the top and look out across the woods and sometimes you could see...” Tiege stopped himself, looked around the room. Nobody seemed to be listening, but this didn’t seem to make him any more comfortable. “Quite far away. And then I saw them, they looked like they were riding straight out of the myths, there were four men in steel suits, the one leading them looked like a giant with some strange bird’s head fashioned on top of his helm. They all shone in the sun. I thought I was seeing things.” Tiege looked around the table as though hoping to see a drink there waiting for him. “They had about twenty men with them, men with bows and men with swords.”
“Did they have red jackets?”
Tiege looked at her as though surprised at the question. “The work those creatures had in mind, they would want no uniform.” He ran a finger along the grain of wood in the table. “When I saw the man with the pale face and the black eyes, his long black hair curling about his collar, I nearly fell from the tree, but I wrapped my arms and legs around the branch and closed my eyes shut tight in case they saw me watching them through the leaves.”
“But when did this happen?”
Tiege shrugged. “A few days, no more than a week after you left. I sat in the same tree and watched you sneak away that misty morning. You looked like a ghost flitting away through the mist.”
“The Clerk wants the woman!” “So you hide here under a new name.” The cold fist tightened, every breath cold and painful. “But what about the plague? Guardian Cioran—“
“Your stepfather?” Tiege’s smile was cruel.
Ysora looked at that cruel smile, at his dark eyes at the manner in which his bearing seemed to change as frequently as the winds of her old home. Easy and fresh one moment, dark and cold the next. And then there was Cioran, kindly and considerate. “You’re lying,” she said. “There was a plague and my mother died tending to the sick. She died in her bed.”