by T. A. White
Most of the buildings were made of stone and a clay-like plaster that dried to a creamy white. All the roofs had the grey tint of slate, while the streets were smooth cobblestone the likes of which had never graced a Highland village.
The town proper was surrounded by massive stone walls. Spreading out from the stone center, acre upon acre of farmland stretched until finally giving way to a dense crop of trees.
Every spring the region funneled the spring melt, feeding the rivers and streams that spread over the land like spidery veins into irrigation channels that traveled over miles of farmland. This enabled them to grow a decent crop even when drought hit.
They even had a market where people could buy supplies.
It wasn’t the nicest or biggest town the Lowlands had to offer, but it would seem luxurious to the men in Shea’s party. Shea had been many places and seen many things. This wasn’t the best of what she had seen, but it wasn’t the worst either. She’d guess it was middle of the road. Nice enough, but hungry to be one of the trade meccas.
The town’s atmosphere was strange today, Shea noted. A couple eyed her as they gave her a wide berth. Now that she thought about it, the fruit merchant had seemed a bit subdued as well. Normally, he was much more vocal in his welcome.
People had begun avoiding the spot where Shea sat, until an invisible circle separated her from the rest of the square.
It was as if a pall hung over the town. Fear coated the houses, and Shea felt eyes watching her from the windows. It had been in the elders’ faces as well. A tightness when they argued and a reserve that was not normal for a simple trade negotiation. It was as if they were waiting for something. Something bad.
Shea tossed the core of the peach behind her into one of the bushes.
She got up and walked slowly towards the closest stall, stopping and perusing the goods. The two men in deep conversation with the owner abruptly fell silent once they noticed her. Giving the owner a chin dip, they departed.
Shea watched them go. Not her imagination then.
She gave the owner, who eyed her hostilely, a small smile before moving away. Never letting her attention focus too long on any one thing, Shea noted that she seemed to be the center of attention.
Was it just her or were the others from her group experiencing the same thing?
She wound her way through the market, ending up on the opposite side of the square. She found a bench seat overlooking a small grassy area that was surrounded by narrow garden beds filled with the first buds of spring
Maybe if the townspeople stopped focusing on her, they would forget some of their fear, and Shea could hear something interesting.
After a while, Shea grew tired of just sitting there and leaned back, laying down on the bench to look up at the sky. The clouds today couldn’t hold her attention, and before long, she grew drowsy.
She drifted in that odd in between place of sleep and consciousness.
“The elders have a plan, I tell you.”
“They’d better. No one wants to go the way of Edgecomb.”
Shea kept her eyes closed, though she stopped drifting.
The first speaker’s reply was muted.
“They do, and I’d bet anything those strangers are factor into their schemes.”
Another response that Shea couldn’t make out.
“Let them pay the tribute….” The second speaker’s voice faded as he moved out of hearing range.
Well, wasn’t that interesting? It wasn’t much, and Shea hadn’t understood most of it, but she was surer than ever that something was very wrong in this town.
She opened one eye and grunted. The sun had begun to set, scattering stripes of reds, oranges and blues in wide arcs. It was probably best to head back to the lodging before full sunset.
She rolled off the bench, grimacing at the tight knots in her back, and stretched. Perhaps a bench wasn’t the best place to sleep.
The walk back to her temporary home went quickly. She passed few people, and the ones she met refused to meet her eyes, keeping their heads tilted down or turned away.
She entered the two story house that served as a part time inn. It was part time because the town didn’t have many visitors. As a result, there wasn’t enough room for the ten in Shea’s party. The men slept three to a room while Shea got her own chamber.
Some of the men had had a few snide remarks to say about that, but Shea mostly ignored them.
She’d have been just as happy in the stable, but the innkeeper had been aghast that a woman would even consider such a thing. No, a lady must have her own room.
Shea wasn’t a lady. She was a pathfinder.
Still. That bed was something else. Soft. Comfortable. And the sheets felt amazing against her skin. It was like sleeping on a cloud. A great, feathery cloud.
Yeah, Shea wasn’t too put out at accommodating the Lowlander’s sensibilities.
“Where have you been?” Burke said from his seat at the table.
Shea suddenly found herself the center of attention from those filling their plates full of food. Shea’s stomach rumbled, reminding her that the only thing she’d had since breakfast was a peach.
“Thought I’d check out the market. See if I could pick up any information.”
Shea grabbed a plate and frowned at the food. The meat looked stringy and the vegetables wilted. She tapped a roll against the table. It was hard.
Unsurprised, she placed it back on its plate and dished out small portions of the meat and vegetables.
She should have grabbed a meat pie while at the market.
“Oh? Learn anything?” Dane asked.
Shea settled at the table. It was a tight fit with all of them gathered and two of the men had to eat by balancing their dishes on their laps.
The inn’s matron bustled out of the kitchen, the swinging door giving a brief glimpse of the large cast iron, wood burning stove and the built in brick oven. It looked homey with its yellow painted walls and white trim. Herbs hung from drying racks and the meal’s makings littered the wooden island.
It didn’t look like the sort of kitchen that would produce such substandard food. It looked like the sort of place where the woman of the house might spend a lot of time doing something she genuinely loved.
Shea murmured a “thank you” as the woman set a pitcher of mead on the table along with several clean cups.
She waited until the woman retreated back into the kitchen before responding to Dane’s question.
“Nothing concrete.”
“So you wasted the entire afternoon on nonsense?” Paul rolled his eyes.
Shea shrugged. If that’s what he wanted to call it.
This was the first time she’d had Paul on one of her trips. It’d be the last time too. He was a large man who always seemed like he was sucking on something sour. Nothing amused him, but everything seemed to annoy him. He complained the entire trip to Goodwin of Ria.
Shea had been reduced to making up excuses for why she had to scout ahead so often. His near constant bitching had tempted her to break her oath of never abandoning or causing intentional harm to her charges.
“Useless,” Paul muttered when it became clear Shea had no intention of responding.
The table got quiet as all of the men avoided looking in her direction. Shea’s fork didn’t pause as she methodically continued to eat.
At this point, she’d become inured to his insults. He’d have to do better than that to get a rise from her.
Paul turned his attention to new prey.
“How’d it go?” he asked Dane.
Dane shook his head and settled his elbows on the table. Zrakovi had appointed him the leader for the expedition, and recently he’d earned nearly as much hostility from Paul as Shea.
Normally James was the diplomat on these type of trips, but the elders had kept him back and sent Dane instead. She thought it might have something to do with Edgecomb.
“It didn’t,” Dane said before taking a bite of
his roll. “We got the runaround all afternoon. Same as yesterday and the day before.”
There was a large sigh around the table as they realized they were stuck in Goodwin for another night.
Nobody wanted this.
Paul didn’t take the news well. He looked like someone had spat in his food and then told him to eat it. He sat back, folding his thick arms across his chest as he glared down the table.
In the beginning, the stalled negotiations hadn’t bothered anybody, but as the days passed and the mood in the town became more and more tense, the men grew edgy and combative.
“Something’s happening in the Lowlands.” Witt’s voice was grim.
They nodded. It was growing more and more obvious that something wasn’t right.
Paul scoffed. “Something is always happening in the Lowlands. The wind changes direction, and they think the next cataclysm is upon them.”
“Not like this,” Shea inserted. “There’s talk of Edgecomb.”
Dane’s eyes shot to her as she carefully placed the fork back on her plate. He knew she suspected the men they rescued had been Trateri. The elders had ridiculed her suspicions, and even the guild had expressed doubt when she sent a missive recounting the events of last fall.
Everybody agreed it was probably one of the bandit groups that occasionally claimed the Badlands as home. Shea hadn’t been convinced. She still wasn’t.
Needless to say, the elders tried to place the blame on Shea for everything that went wrong. To her surprise, James stood up for her and even wrote a letter to her guild explaining his part in the events.
The village elders had gotten a slap on the wrist and a warning to start abiding by the contract or else lose their pathfinder.
This had only increased the general sense of disgruntlement the villagers felt and had sent the hostility shooting through the roof. She’d dealt with difficult expeditions all winter long. No one wanted to listen, even when it concerned their safety. Two men had been injured after ignoring her warnings. That had only made things worse, and now the people of Birdon Leaf thought she was incompetent as well as lazy.
“What about Edgecomb?” Dane asked softly.
“People are saying it’s gone,” Burke, one of the more easy going members in the group, interrupted, his eyes alight at the prospect of sharing juicy gossip. “Burned to the ground. No survivors.”
Fallon’s face flashed before Shea. She wondered if he had something to do with that. He seemed perfectly capable of punishing those who crossed him, and his men had looked disciplined and trained.
“Nobody knows how it happened?” Dane asked.
Burke shook his head.
“They do,” Witt interrupted. “Just not telling us. Too scared.”
“Whole village is scared,” Sid said into his plate.
Nobody disagreed. They’d all seen it.
“We need to leave,” Shea finally said. It had been weighing on her mind all day. Something in the townspeople’s behavior wasn’t right, and her instincts were screaming it was time to go.
Dane and Witt considered her statement carefully, though Burke openly scoffed and Paul rolled his eyes. Those two could afford to be disdainful. Dane and Witt knew better. Edgecomb had been a lesson they wouldn’t soon forget.
“We can’t leave,” Paul argued. “We haven’t completed negotiations yet. If we go back, the elders will have our heads.”
Shea wanted to groan. Typical Highlander response. Ignore the danger in favor of possible profit. Just once she’d like to lead people who had an instinct for survival.
Paul turned to Dane. “If you fail here, you won’t get another chance like this. The elders will never trust you again. Do you really want to be stuck in the village while James gets to experience Lowland luxuries?”
Dane’s jaw hardened. Everybody knew whoever established reliable trade routes with the Lowlands would have their fortune made. The expedition participants, with the exception of Shea, all got a cut of the profits.
Shea’s lips tightened. They were going to ignore her advice. Again.
She forked up some vegetables and stuffed them in her mouth to avoid saying something unwise.
“It’s true that it would look bad to return without finalizing the agreement,” Dane said slowly. His eyes flashed to Shea who was chewing busily. “What makes you think we should leave?”
Shea paused in the midst of cutting the chicken and raised her eyes to find everybody staring at her. She swallowed the food already in her mouth and brought her cup up to take a cool drink of mead, using the time to turn the reasons over in her head.
“Almost nobody was on the streets on my way home,” she said, finally able to figure out what had been bothering her on the walk home. “It was nearly dinner time but even so, how many times have those streets been totally empty? The one person I saw made it a point to avoid looking at me.”
She paused to meet the men’s eyes to see that they were listening. Or some of them were anyway.
“The elders have been stalling since we got here. It doesn’t take ten days for a simple trade agreement. All we had to do was trade the tali for the wheat. They’re waiting for something. Something big and we’re not going to want to be around when that something arrives.”
Dane’s head tilted as he considered her words. Her observations had merit. They’d all felt the tension in the town over the last few days.
“We’ll stay the night,” he decided. Shea pressed her lips together as Paul smiled smugly. It wasn’t her place to argue further. They asked for her opinion. She’d given it. On the trail her decisions carried weight, but in town it was the expedition leader’s show. “First thing tomorrow we’ll talk to the elders again, and if they continue to stall, we’ll leave.”
Shea felt a weight lift off her shoulders.
“But Dane-” Paul’s argument ended when Dane lifted a hand.
“I’m the expedition leader. Me.” His face was deadly serious.
Shea couldn’t help but feel a bit of respect for the normally easy going Dane. Since their return from Edgecomb, he’d changed. He was less likely to spend his time flirting and actually listened before opening his mouth.
“While in town, my decisions go. If you’re not happy with the way I lead, you can take it up with the elders when we return. Until then, keep your mouth shut and do your job.” To the others, he said, “Pack everything you can tonight. I don’t want any delays when it’s time to leave.”
There were a few grumbles, but they faded as Dane stared each man down. No one challenged him.
Shea tried to be happy with the decision. She really did. It was very close to what she wanted. They would be leaving one way or another tomorrow.
Her eyes turned to the window.
A feeling in her gut said tomorrow would be too late. That whatever everybody was waiting for would have arrived.
When she was finished, Shea carried her plate to the kitchen and scooped the scraps into the garbage before placing the plate in the sink. Chairs scraped across the floor as the others rose and began to clear the table.
“Guess you’re pleased that the boy is dancing on your strings,” Paul said, shouldering her aside. He looked her up and down, his eyes lingering at her breasts and hips before curling his lip in disgust. “You must have a cunt of gold to influence the ladies’ man of Birdon Leaf. And here we all thought you were some type of ice princess.”
Shea blinked at the man in disbelief. Before she could say anything, much less act. Witt grabbed Paul by the back of the neck and slammed him face first into the wood countertop. There was a whine of pain as Witt leaned close and ground the man’s face further into the wood.
“You must be some kind of stupid, boy, to be pulling this shit on a pathfinder. The very person responsible for getting us through rough country. If she wanted to, she could lead us into a beast’s nest and leave us there. Nobody would ever know what happened to you.” There was another groan as Witt picked him up and slammed him
back down. “The amount of disrespect for both our pathfinder and the expedition leader that I just heard come out of your mouth infuriates me. I hear something like that from anyone else in this party, and you won’t have to worry about what she does because I’m going to rip the tongue from your head and present it to your mama so she has something to remember you by.”
Shea’s mouth hung open as Witt stepped back and shoved Paul in the direction of the stairs. It was the most she had ever heard the man speak at one time.
And it seemed he wasn’t finished.
“I’m tired of the bullshit you lot pulled on the journey here.” Witt pointed to where the rest, with the exception of Dane, watched with gaping bewilderment. “When a pathfinder tells you how it’s going to be, you listen. You don’t question; you don’t argue. Same goes for when it’s coming from an expedition leader. You got issues with an order, you shut your mouth and take it up with the elders when we get home. The next person who steps out of line, I will put back in it. I guarantee you won’t like how I do it.”
Having said what he needed to say, Witt gave Shea a firm nod and strode out of the room. Silence fell as the men looked from one to another as if to ask what had just happened. Shea, for her part, stared in bemusement after him.
She started when Dane appeared beside her.
“I’m sorry for what Paul said.”
She blinked up at him and then scowled. “Why? You’re not the one who said it, and I know you never insinuated anything like it either.”
He gave her a small smile. “Still, it was out of line.”
“That seems to be happening a lot lately,” Shea muttered, massaging her neck with one hand.
“The elders don’t like you, and the rest of the village follows their lead.”
“I just don’t know what I did to cause this much hostility.”
He shrugged. “You’re a woman, and they were expecting a much different sort of pathfinder. It doesn’t help that you’re the type of person you are.”
Shea’s head lifted, and she shot him a dark look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re quiet. You say something and expect what you say to be followed but don’t explain why.” He held up his hands when she opened her mouth to defend herself. “I know. To you, it’s obvious. To them, it’s anything but, and they need that explanation. Both the elders and the villagers fear anything outside Birdon Leaf’s walls. That’s not the case for you. You understand what’s out there and don’t fear it. For them, it’s this scary place where danger lurks. They don’t like that, and they hate admitting they’re afraid. Then this little slip of a girl tells them how things are going to be but doesn’t explain why they’re going to be that way. It freaks them out.” He smiled slightly. “The women don’t like you because you’re pretty. They think you’ll try to take their men.”