Aloren

by E D Ebeling

  ‘The Gates of Hell’ said some, and ‘The Queen’s Nightgown’, said others, and finally I got a proper answer from a cooper with a kind face. In the summer, he said, the prince lived in a walled house on Skyfane Street, on the north side.

  The cooper gave me directions from his shop and shook his head sadly as I went on my way, as though he wondered what a savage little girl could possibly want from the dead king’s brother.

  I spent half the day picking my way around a canal swollen with floodwater, before I found a bridge crossing it, of old rope and clapboards. Then I came upon a large square full of locust trees and stood befuddled under a tall white belltower until Floy found the right streets, which had been mapped out in no discernible pattern.

  We continued on, and the streets widened into avenues. The shops shed their lime daub for clean white stone and morphed into residences, which grew in size as I walked north.

  Even then, some darkness settled over my mind, some foreboding. I wonder now if I should have quickened my pace, or not gone at all. But for good or ill, the sun kept shining, and I pushed the dread away, thinking it nerves.

  At last I reached Skyfane Street, where a row of big houses faced the sea. It was late afternoon. I eyed the wall enclosing my uncle’s house, gnawing on a hunk of old bread and wondering how best to get inside.

  The front gate was out of the question––after one look the porter would run me off.

  So I hid my saddlebag behind a loose stone, threw my boots under a shrub, and climbed up the wall. I jumped down, and landed on a lawn dappled with tree shade and fading light.

  Candlelight flickered from a pavilion. I peered through the stone columns––it looked as though someone had just been there; sheets of vellum curled and skipped over the floor stones.

  The candle was on a table, washing the place with light. I took Father’s ring from my pocket, dripped wax over the letter, and sealed it. The wind picked up, and the candle went out. I could barely see in the pavilion, and I put the ring on my finger.

  My ear caught a faint murmur––I couldn’t tell where from. I left the pavilion and walked into a recess gloomed by firs. There was wall close to the firs, and an arch opening into another garden. The voices came from a bench to one side of this.

  “Reyna,” called Floy, “exercise caution.” I stayed where I was, needles pricking my feet, and studied the two people: a man and woman, both of them hooded and cloaked. She held a goblet against the swell of her stomach.

  The man bowed in a spasm of coughs, and the lady said, “See? It’s become worse in this horrible damp, and I shall make you do something about it.” She spoke in the trader’s tongue with the same clipped accent I’d heard Calragen use.

  The man laughed, and I saw his face better: skinny, with light eyes. Mordan. But it wasn’t Mordan––this man was older. “My dear lady, you have a worse effect on me than ever the weather has.”

  The lady shrugged off her hood. I tried to smash the letter into my pocket. It didn’t fit. The seal broke off and went into the pocket, and the parchment dropped to the ground. She slipped the goblet into his hand.

  “Faiorsa,” he said, staring at it, “you’ve made enough people miserable. Why can’t you let me be?” He brought it to his mouth.

  I knew who Faiorsa was. “Don’t drink,” I whispered. The woman’s head lifted; her eyes darted around. I swept aside the boughs and said louder, “Don’t drink it.”

  “Reyna,” said Floy, “you idiot.”

  “What’s this?” The woman stood up. The man, too.

  “Take it away,” he said, giving it back to her.

  “Why? You’ve gone all pale––has she frightened you?”

  “Yes.” He smiled. “Perhaps she saw you slipping in a bit of laburnum or bandorscroll.”

  She laughed. “Why should I bother with poison?”

  “For in case the knife doesn’t stick.”

  “This little scrap––is she yours?”

  He eyed me musingly. “Not unless her mother didn’t say.” He said to me, “Why shan’t I drink, little scrap?”

  “She wants to do you in.” I took a step backwards. “You’re the last. Look at her––she wants you dead.”

  “Yes,” said the woman. “Look at me, do. Watch me take a sip for myself, as you, and you, little ghast, are so convinced of my evil intent. But first,” she said, touching Ederach on the chest, “I must catch for myself something to remedy.” She gave him a kiss.

  I stood and watched, waited for him to pull away. But though he never moved with her, he never separated.

  “Now,” she said, when she was done, “let us move into the light, to better witness my sip.”

  I followed them beneath the arch, into the next garden. She touched the goblet to her lips.

  The air darkened. The wind strummed my sore heartstrings, and I took a shallow breath. Gasping, searching, I knocked the goblet from the lady’s hands and the tonic darkened her cloak as two arrows, one from the front and the other from behind, met my uncle in the back and chest.

  “Oh.” I watched him collapse. “Not this.” I saw my father all over again, the dark on his shirt, the failure on his face. I knelt next to him.

  “Closer,” he said. I got so close his voice was muffled in my neck: “I thought I could out-step it a while.” My shoulder grew warm with his blood. He stared at the ring on my finger.

  “Change the address,” he said. “White Ship Tavern. They’ll help you––” He took a breath and blood trickled from his mouth.

  The woman bent over us, and her hair brushed my cheek. It felt like a bee sting. “Poor little girl.” She wiped her stained front with a kerchief. “Half-crazed. Covered with his blood.” She lifted my chin with a finger, and her eyes turned thoughtful. “There’s something familiar about you.” I didn’t move, lest something worse happen. “Ederach.” She shook her head, stood up.

  I buried my hand in the grass, hiding the ring, and counted four men behind her in green and grey surcoats, quivers on their backs. “Sirs,” she said, “this little mad varlet has murdered the city’s champion. Turn her over to its people. They can deal with her as they see fit.”

  ***

  She must have thought me pathetic past threat––it was a wonder she didn’t kill me. Instead, the soldiers tied me to a post at the end of a pier.

  I forgot the letter beneath the pines, and gave my captors little trouble on our way to the quay, but I woke enough, as they led me down the pier, to wrench my arm from one man’s grip. Twisting round, I slipped my fist into my pocket to cast the ring off.

  A tall officer put his paw round my neck. I stood choking at the edge of the pier, and he caught my wrist, looked at my hand.

  Shining yellow in the lamplight, plastered to my palm with blood, was the wax seal that, two seconds before, had been somewhere in my pocket.

  I gave my wrist a yank. He held it fast. I pressed my fingers down hard, crushed the thing, and flicked it from my hand into the harbor. The black water made scarcely a ripple. All this happened in such quick succession that no one but the officer noticed.

  He looked into the water, said something to his men in their own language. Then he strode towards the lantern, dragging me by the wrist.

  They tied me by my waist and ankles, and used my right hand to make a bloody print on a piece of parchment. This was then scribbled on with charcoal and nailed above my head so I couldn’t see what they had written. And my arms were wrapped around the post and tied, and they left me alone.

  In the dim glow, my scrawny body tight against the post, I must have seemed a strange warp in the wood. No one came near for a long time. I slouched lower and lower, and the bonds cut into my ankles and slid up my torso. My back ached, and Floy burrowed into my hair and told me gay stories.

  The water lapped below us. A fiddle sang a forlorn ballad from somewhere ashore, and I slipped in and out of bad dreams. A girl in a grassy cloak came closer, pouring water from a bucket over the wood to was
h feathers and dung into the harbor.

  She peered out my direction a couple times before noticing anything strange. Then she frowned and walked forward.

  She read the parchment, biting her lip. She glanced at me just once, dropped her bucket, and fled with the news, dark hair streaming behind.

  Floy went temporarily insane, clawing my hair, banging against my cheek, and then they were there. She took flight. Dung crumbled against my shoulder.

  “Little bitch,” said a man. “Did the Queen promise you a good man?”

  “This is how she pays her servants,” said another.

  “See her bloody hands?” More dung pelted my neck, and I twisted my head away.

  “Was it so easy to kill the last of them?” A stone opened my foot. Sweat and blood dripped down my legs. “The last of our family,” and the voice broke, a woman’s voice. She wept, and I wept too.

  A stone hit my cheek. I closed my eyes, expecting more, but a group of folk cut through my ropes and pulled me down.

  “Set her hair alight.”

  “No, bring her to Ackerly.”

  “Tie her hands––” They sank their fingers into my hair and twisted my arms, but there was a lull when hands trying to get at my flesh pulled other hands back. I slipped like butter through the bodies, and ran into an old man with a fiddle.

  Fourteen

  The fiddle clattered over the wood. The man grabbed my shoulder, and said, “Is this your wicked murderess?” They seemed to hold him in some regard, for they stilled themselves and grew quiet. I fought with his hand and he caught me by the chin. “Can’t be more than ten––”

  He took a step backwards. My head grew heavy. I wondered if I’d finally done it––gone mad.

  He would play White and Tan Brachet and Corpse Gives a Rattle on his red fiddle; and I would dance and Arin would kick my shins.

  It was Hal, our old groundskeeper.

  He parted his lips, and I collected my wits and shook my head. He was quick enough to notice. “This girl wouldn’t have done it. Not this one.” About ten folk responded at once:

  “The blood’s all over her.”

  “His blood?”

  “Finally lost his wits.”

  “Shut it, Gwat.”

  “He’s a more sensible head that what you’re banging around.”

  “What’s she done, then? Who strung her up there?”

  “Let’s hear what she has to say,” declared a tall hooded man.

  “Come on, girl. Out with it,” snapped a woman in a blue shawl.

  “Out with what?” said a familiar voice, and Wille tackled his way through the mob. “I don’t think much of your new friends, Lally.”

  Padlimaird stumbled through the crowd, and Nefer pushed through at a mad pace right behind him, knocking him two feet forward.

  “What sort of mess you in, girl?” Nefer placed himself between the crowd and me. He was awfully big and had a face on him like a mother bear, and the people backed away. I found I could breathe slowly again.

  “Lally?” Hal’s brow wrinkled up.

  “She looks like she’s had a rough night of it,” said Padlimaird.

  “Rough night, or not.” The woman pulled the blue shawl together and made her face pop. “Who killed him? Who was it killed Ederach, if it weren’t you? I see his blood all over you, child.”

  “Give her time, Goody,” said the hooded man.

  “The Queen.” I fell to my knees, and just in time, leaned over the pier and heaved the contents of my stomach into the water. I came up, and Wille and Padlimaird gawped.

  “You saw the Queen murder Ederach?” Paddy said, twisting his face with such a frown that his ears wiggled. I sat, rubbing life into my legs, and Floy scratched at my hair.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up, Al.” Nefer lifted me with his one good arm and slung me over his back. Hal picked up his fiddle and insisted that we follow him. He led a group of us along the wharf and down a side street.

  We stopped at a low building with a grimy front and harbor water swilling at the back. The sign shone in the streetlight, spotless, as though the name were all the owner cared about. Six White Ships it said, and we went inside.

  Lamps cast leaping shadows around a room full of laughing folk deep in their cups. Hal weaved his way through, and Nefer tightened his hold on my legs.

  Hal stopped in the back of the tavern at a wooden door without a handle. He performed a complicated knock with all five of his knuckles. The door opened a crack. “Aibelde twy eaor cair,” he whispered inside.

  A small girl with a head of wild black hair opened the door and ushered us through into a dark and cavernous room––a boathouse of some sort. A water gate winked at the back, and the harbor crept through, and lapped at a wooden landing spread with tables. At these sat a number of people, who stopped in mid discussion to eye us suspiciously.

  “Is it true?” said a stout man with a full, black beard. “Ederach’s dead? Mother Chaos and her frozen tits! How’re we to do without his letters? That’s the on’y reason we know they’re aiming to hang Nat at first light to––”

  “Hold your gob.” The black-haired girl pounded a tankard on the table.

  “Bequen,” said the hooded man to the girl, “this one saw it.” He pointed to me. “So she said.” He threw off his cowl; he’d a Rielde head of curling blond. All the eyes in the room locked onto my face.

  Hal jabbed him with his bow. “And I will do the interrogating, if there must be any.” He gave his fiddle to the Rielde, and said to Nefer, “I won’t hurt her, and it will only be me.”

  I pulled at Nefer’s shirt, and he set me down. Hal called for a bucket of water and bar of soap. Someone went and fetched them, and Hal led me down a little stone arm of the jetty. He pulled me into a side room, and shut the door.

  He looked me up and down. Then he turned away, because he had begun to cry.

  “My poor girl,” he said. Looking at my reflection in the window I though ‘poor’ was a bit terse of him. Then I remembered what Mordan had thought, that this man had given us up to the Queen.

  “How’re you still alive?” I said. “She gets rid of everyone she uses, don’t she?” My limbs jerked, and to top off the night’s events, I burst into tears.

  “Reyna, look, you think––” He frowned and ran his hands through his grey hair. He knelt in front of me. “I never thought bitterly about what happened. In fact, I needed a well-earned break. Your father thought so, too.

  “But you must believe––I’d never have done anything to harm you and your brothers, and if Mordan has come to some mooncalf conclusion, I beg you rethink it. You will remain my secret, if you wish. But what has befallen the others?” He looked me straight in the eye as he spoke, and I stopped trembling. “You won’t say anything.”

  “People are dumb,” I said. “And mean.”

  He dipped his kerchief in the water and blotted blood from the gash on my cheek. I pulled away, and he drew me back. “Sure. But the folk who threw stones are already regretting it, I bet.”

  “Should’ve thrown stones at the right people. All them in charge. They’re dumber and meaner than a sack of eels.”

  “They’d throw back worse than stones.”

  “So?” I thought of the sign: Six White Ships. “You’re the White Ship rebels, ain’t you? You get the letters.”

  He looked up quickly, so I must have been correct. “You know about the letters,” he said. “There haven’t been many lately. Will there be more?” His eyes were very bright.

  “Yes,” I said stubbornly.

  I opened the door and left him standing with his old musician’s hands wound round a bloody kerchief.

  I had it in my mind to quit the boathouse before being spotted, and was halfway to the door we’d entered through when a girl pulled me back by my shoulder strap. She looked about fifteen, with pretty grey eyes and red hair bound up in a tatty cloth. “Shouldn’t be going that way by yourself, lass. I suggest that bright portal.” She p
ointed to a door at the west end of the landing. “That’s the leeward way. Elements don’t batter on so and your ship’ll better listen to her rudder.”

  “You should know, Sal,” said Wille, who took the opportunity to sit down next to her. “Tell Lally what to do, and she’ll go out of her way to do exactly the opposite and get herself whomped.”

  Sal took the pipe from his mouth and snapped it in half. His eyes bugged.

  “I’ll say as I please, you elf-locked lout.” She gave him the pieces. “I don’t go with smokers, smackers or smarmers, but you’re welcome to share in this fine poteen.” She dragged a jar across to him. “Don’t go blind.”

  Wille must have been really taken with her, because he took a big swallow.

  He began to cry, and blew his nose on his coat sleeve. “I’ve never tasted anythin so good in me life.” He ducked under the table with a mug of water.

  Nefer, sliding up the bench to elope with the whiskey jar, saw me heading toward Sal’s bright portal. “Al, where’re yer feet carryin you?”

  Everyone turned and looked, and I slid my hand around the doorknob.

  “Going to witness another murder?” said Padlimaird.

  “Nefer’s leased a little place,” said Wille, wiping his eyes. “And we’re gonna turn it into a silver smithy. You probably won’t be much help in any kind of a smithy, but yer welcome to join in.”

  “I’ll take care of you,” said Nefer.

  “Take––what?” I tried to remember what this had felt like. My cheek throbbed. “What do that mean?”

  “Keeping you out of trouble,” said Padlimaird. “Damn near impossible, I should say.”

  Against Floy’s wishes, against my wishes, I fumbled behind my back with the doorknob. “Don’t bother.”

  “Now, wait just a minute,” said the Rielde man. “We haven’t done with you, yet.”

  But I slipped through the door.

  A few people ran out after me, and I hid beneath some steps until they went away.

  It began to drizzle, and I walked west along the quay. Floy broke into my thoughts: “Where are we going?” I stopped on the edge of a long square that opened onto the estuary, and she nipped my neck.