Aloren

by E D Ebeling

  Leaves dusted the corners and littered the bed. They’d never closed the window, apparently, and the ivy had crept in with the sun, rain and snow. The black rocking chair still sat in the corner, grown faded with lapfuls of sun every evening, and the rain poured in with an accustomed hiss.

  I stepped in a puddle, drew my foot back. Though she kept hidden, Floy had followed me in. I looked at the soiled bed, remembering the red of the sunset and Leode’s wet hair.

  “It would’ve happened somehow,” I said to her. “With or without you.”

  Her claws scratched about in the leaves, and careful not to step on her, I limped over to Trid, who had moved to the other side of the room.

  “Here’s the proper door.” He joggled it and it opened with a bang.

  We went along a corridor and came into a long hall with a pitched roof. Thin piers branched upwards like tree trunks. The windows were laced with leaf and branch tracery, and a gallery high on one side opened into the raining night. The room moved with wings, and row upon row of cages swinging in a light wind.

  A fear filled me, that hadn’t come from within me. “What’s this place?”

  “Sounds like an aviary.” Trid looked around and scratched his neck. “Lady Dariond’s.”

  We heard a clang of soldiers on the other side of the hall. Trid jumped. “I though we had lost them. This is the last time I’m going on a treasure hunt with leave-them-to-rot-Andrei––”

  “Why anyway? Why’ve you befriended that gigantic git?”

  We squeezed through cages, looking for an exit.

  “Don’t know,” said Trid. “Inexplicable.”

  “Kalka,” shouted a man’s voice. “Run up the center and we’ll corner them.”

  Trid pulled me west below the gallery, and the wind stirred us into a fast walk.

  I slipped on bird scat and hit the flagstones. Trid fell on top of me.

  “They heard that,” he said, and pulled me up. “Let’s run.” And holding my arm, he ran so vigorously my feet left the ground, twisted beneath me, and knocked over a cage on a stand.

  He let go of my wrist, and I looked at the cage: my chin had put a dent in the wire. “There it is––the door,” he said.

  But I only saw the bird in the cage: a dove, black as the rain-washed night.

  I temporarily lost my mind. I picked myself up and ran, heeding neither the pain in my ankle, nor Trid’s yelling. I ran in the wrong direction, right into a window, so fast I picked up scarcely a cut when I shattered the glass and fell through.

  I landed on my side in a patch of mud. My ankle throbbed in giant beats.

  I gritted my teeth and dragged myself around a corner of the building, cutting my knees on broken glass. There was an evergreen shrub growing against the wall. I crawled beneath it and curled up, thinking hard.

  “That could’ve been Leode,” I said to Floy. “We have to go back and check. There’s nothing else for it.”

  ***

  I sat beneath the bush for a long time. The lights dimmed, the curtain of rain never broke, and two pairs of boots slogged past. And knowing tonight was going to turn into tomorrow-morning, I climbed up and picked my way back to the broken window.

  I swung my leg over the sill and lowered myself to the floor, listening for voices. Nothing but the rain came, so I inched forward, hands gripping the wall. I forgot where I had knocked into the cage and someone had repaired my damage.

  The lamps were lit. The place was full of cages, wood and wire, square, round, octagonal, some hanging, some standing––and their inhabitants crowded my mind, tangling fear and bewilderment into nonsense: “Iron, sky, wind, iron, iron, iron. Stretch, stretch, look at her slow legs, wrapped in air, her reaching hands, but no stretching for us. We are heavy, like water under the rocks.” They grew more agitated as I went along.

  “I’m caged, too,” I said. “Can’t you see it? And a million keys growing up the river, so far from here. Spring passes so quick and them flowers is so far away, I should have wished for my own wings.” I leaned against the cold stones, breathing heavily.

  “Keys,” they said, as if they understood. “Keys! Keys! Keys!” So I let them out.

  I hobbled up and down the room, throwing open the cage doors, and where locks hung I picked them or pried apart the wire until the birds were able to slip through.

  Goshawks and grey ravens flew around the pitched ceiling. Greenfinches and bluebirds flitted between my legs, and my satisfaction grew with every wing I set free, so that I didn’t think once how the canaries would survive the winter.

  Floy caught their attention, and soon had a flock following her: jewel-bright, glinting in the oil lamps, echoing through the gallery, swallowed by the cold rain.

  Behind a cabinet of doves I found the black one sitting in his cage, nipping at his tail. The cage was round with turreted top, and the door had a lock. I put my face close to steady my utensils.

  “Craven crows,” said the dove, and he latched onto the other side of the cage. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Your sister.” I turned the lock. “And don’t go cussing.”

  His neck feathers puffed. “I can’t believe this.” It was Leode. “I can’t believe this. You look like a street boy. The kind that eats pigeons. You look awful, did you know? We didn’t dare say it, but we thought you were dead.”

  I opened the door for him, and he hopped onto my arm. His claws dug into my skin, and it felt so good my eyes teared up. I found it hard to speak.

  Floy landed beside him and spoke for me: “What sort of harebrained, stupid thing were you doing that you got shut up like this? The others’re probably out of their minds.”

  “A human caught and sold me.” He tilted his head. “A soldier, with orange galligaskins. I was hanging about near a horse trough with Mordan, and he left for a while, and I got thirsty. It’s awful when you’re a black bird––all the wind and dust and sunlight baking you up, and so I––”

  Scratching my wrist, Leode backed down my arm. He stared above my head. Floy took flight.

  “Did you set them all loose?” The voice was deep and clipped. “Little thief. How did you get in?”

  It was the human who had swallowed my neck in his huge hand, the soldier who had seen my seal on the pier.

  I threw Leode off my wrist. The man cracked me in the face and pushed me against the wall. He dug beneath his cuirass and drew out a wicked-looking, curved knife.

  He pinned my left hand to the wall and dragged the tip of the blade across my wrist. “Tell me, thiefling. Were you lurking around my rooms? Did some bad man pay you to sift through my possessions?”

  He made a slit across my wrist. The crease welled with blood.

  But the man dropped the blade and lurched forward; Leode, gone Elde, had jumped onto his back. The boy flashed immediately back into a dove. “There’re more?” The man called for aid.

  Two soldiers came running into the hall. Floy flew over their heads, and my knees turned to wood.

  “Leode, Floy––” I bit at the officer’s hands. “Get out, they’ll kill you.”

  I attempted to run and my ankle flopped. I went down, tripping over someone’s boots. He pushed forward and grabbed me up under my arm and leg just as his fellow dived from the opposite direction and caught hold of me around the other leg.

  They slipped, skidded, and pulled me vigorously in two directions. My thigh snapped. I screamed, fighting my arms free, and one of them put his hands around my neck.

  He lifted my feet from the ground. I choked, kicking and scratching, and Floy attacked his nose and Leode scraped at his eyes. The man dropped my neck, agile Floy leapt away, and Leode received a great whack from the back of a hand.

  He hit the wall. The boy shimmered on for a moment, and a dove fell to the ground.

  I pulled myself toward him. The man backed away.

  “It’s a demon,” he said. “Wild eyes, hair––melted clean into the air––”

  Leode shrugged his left wing. I
scooped him up and turned into the corner. “I told you to leave.” I bit my chemise and shook. “Idiot.”

  “A demon?” said the officer. “This is a breed worse. Get back to your watches. There might be more of them.”

  Floy picked around my knees and the footsteps faded. I felt the eyes of the officer on me.

  “Bit of filth couldn’t slink fast enough.” He dug his boot into my back and abruptly pulled it out.

  “Herist?” The voice was rough with tiredness. “What’s squealing? Have you stuck a pig?”

  “Children should be a-bed at this hour.”

  “It’s hard to sleep next to a boar hunt.” I bit my knuckles. “What happened to all the birds?”

  “On your way, boy,” said Herist.

  “Is that a person?” The boy laughed.

  “A thief. We broke her leg. Get you back to bed.”

  But his feet padded over the stone, coming closer. I gathered Leode into my arm, thinking disjointedly. A hand touched my shoulder; I grabbed his nightshirt, pulled myself up.

  He swung forward and his head hit the wall. It was Andrei. I froze in chagrin.

  He rubbed his head, and I lunged under his arm. My leg collapsed. I scrambled forward on my knees, not knowing what else to do, pushing the dove ahead of my chest, and Herist walked two steps after. He took up my ankle and twisted it. A throb shot through my thigh; I shrieked and the room spun.

  “Wait, you pig.” Andrei was squatting in front of me, his mouth open, and I though he was going to yell at me, but he spoke to Herist instead: “Let her be.” I had never seen such hatred in a face.

  Herist dropped my leg. “Why do you care?”

  I shoved Leode between my knees and Andrei unclenched my hands. “What’s she stolen? I don’t see anything.”

  “Fifty birds, damage to property––” Herist gestured at the room’s wreckage.

  Andrei rubbed blood between his fingers, stared at my hands. He’d exhausted his tool. I thought of being dropped at Herist’s feet.

  I caught his eye. Make him stop. Please, make him stop.

  Andrei looked away, and Herist smiled at me, smiled at my thin, tattered shift. “Try to put a contrite face on, little worm. Those who confess get off with less––”

  “Confess, Aloren,” Andrei interrupted. “He’ll give you a pardon and a fucking and a bloody stump. Don’t confess and he’ll kill you.”

  Herist opened his mouth: “For gods’ sake.”

  “Shut up,” said Andrei. “I’ll decide the punishment. Your punishment will end badly for me.”

  Herist gave a bark of laughter. “How so?”

  I put Leode in my lap and pushed with my elbows away from them. Andrei said, “You were going to cut her hand off. Her hand is quite dear to me. Without her hand I wouldn’t know what a child-killing, king-slaying whore you are.”

  Herist grew very stiff. “If I were to tell the Queen––”

  “She’d break my fingers,” said Andrei. “Right after she fed you to your dogs. I know about you and that rat, Caveira. Let the girl go, I want both her hands.”

  Herist’s eyelid twitched. “Why?”

  “To strangle you with.”

  “How clever. I’ve deduced you know something else. About a deed done under another’s discretion.” Herist bent down, so close to Andrei’s nose that I barely heard his words. “Blackmail can go very much awry. So awry, in fact, that it can be flipped completely onto its head.”

  Andrei looked toward me. “Get out.”

  Leode clung to my arm. My head was swimming with pain, and Floy told me where to go.

  I passed through the door at the back: a flight of stairs spiraled down. Floy was silent, so I moved forward with the wall. My skin grew clammy beneath my chemise, and my mouth was dry, so dry.

  The first step was excruciating, and the second washed into a tumult by the ringing in my ears. I don’t remember a third.

  Eighteen

  I sneezed. Something––a great, big something––moved to my left, and I pushed back into a heap of straw. Pain swelled through my leg, and tears started in my eyes.

  The horse looked at me over her hindquarters. I knew her grizzled face. It was Liskara, Father’s mare, well traveled enough that she had stolidly and successfully made her way back home.

  “Liskara makes for the dullest company.” Trid leaned close and peered into my face. “So we thought you’d be especially good for each other.”

  We were in a stable stall. He sat on an overturned crate. There was a small jug of water at his feet, and I stared at it until he shoved it into my arms. I drank all of it, spilling it down my front.

  “It’s mid-morning.” Max was squeezed on the crate next to him. He’d a hunk of bread and an apple, and he put them both into my lap. I almost smiled. “I wouldn’t have treated you to a lie-in.”

  Andrei pushed Max off the crate.

  “Right clever of you,” he said, taking Max’s spot, “draping yourself across my only path back to bed. I was tired enough.”

  Trid snorted. “I thought she weighed less than a dead fly.”

  “Where’s the dove?” I’d finished the bread, and I propped myself up on my elbows. “Where is he?”

  Trid pushed me back into the straw. “Roosting on the windowsill above your head. Don’t get up, you haven’t got to stand to see it.”

  “Don’t listen to him.” Andrei pulled Trid back. “Jump up and run around––better our chances at winning.”

  “Winning?” I said. “At what?”

  “Max and I are wagering twenty celms that Trid won’t be able to fix it. So poor Trid’s going to have to pay back double that amount, as well as carry you around.”

  I stared at them. “You’re bettin on a leg?”

  “Yours.” Max leaned against the doorpost and fiddled with his belt.

  “Not really,” said Andrei, “as I rescued it.”

  “I fed it,” Max said.

  “And I’m going to mend it.” Trid knelt down and straightened it. I cried out and broke into a cold sweat.

  “I don’t know.” Andrei looked doubtful. “Maybe we should get Gadfrem. He does dogs.”

  Trid leered at Andrei. “Arguing over the sparrowshit?”

  Andrei thumped Trid in the chest, Trid fell on top of me, and I blacked out briefly and saw starbursts. I came to and gave a much louder shout than before.

  “Maxim Garvad,” came a woman’s voice in the corridor. “If I catch you torturing a cat, I’ll wallop you black.”

  Max’s ears grew red. “Didn’t have anything to do with it, did I? Why’s it always my name that pops into people’s heads?”

  “A pointless question.” She looked round the door. It was Bequen from the tavern, Ackerly’s black-haired wife.

  A muscle throbbed in her jaw. She said quietly, dangerously, “Who’re you sitting on? Is that the girl you were yammering about?”

  Trid didn’t reply. He was trying to make himself small as possible.

  ”Off her, please,” said Bequen. Small though she was, she hauled Trid off my legs by his hair. “A minute ago I could’ve sworn you had at least a scrap of Elde sense.” She gave his head a fierce jerk.

  “They were brawling over her,” said Max.

  She gave Trid another shake. “Locked her in with the breakdown, have you? Was that supposed to be funny?”

  “Yes,” said Andrei.

  “Get yourselves gone, you’ve damaged her plenty.”

  “Not before I’ve spoken with her alone,” said Andrei. Bequen ushered Trid and Max out, but Andrei stood obstinately by.

  She looked back at him. “If I hear anything––”

  “I shan’t lay a finger on her! Are you done?”

  She went through the gate, and Andrei stuck half his body after to make sure she’d gone.

  He turned back to me. “I read a letter last night. It had a near-perfect description of you.”

  I thought of how lucky I was. After all, Herist had seen the seal
and Andrei had read the letter, and they might’ve put two and two together if they’d hated each other any less.

  “And although my Gireldine is atrocious,” Andrei said, “and I couldn’t make out more than half, it sounds like someone cares about you. Fantastic job they’ve done.” He smiled grimly. “And I think I know now why you refuse to hate me. It’s not that I––It’s because you refuse to say you hate me. Funny.”

  He went out the gate. I was awestruck for a few seconds.

  I called his name and he reappeared in the doorway. “Have you any idea how many lives you make miserable every damning day?” I said.

  “Yes. Thank you,” he said nastily, “for giving me an opportunity to make Herist’s life a little more miserable. Oh!” He looked above my head into the rafters. “Fancy us putting you in here.”

  He jumped and caught a beam with his arms. His shoes dangled in front of my face. “As you won’t be running anywhere for a while…” I looked up and something fell between my knees. My saddlebag. He dropped next to it. “Didn’t check for contraband. I was afraid something might bite my hand off.” He laughed. “I hope nothing too horrible comes of it. Don’t try Bequen’s patience. She sings nicely, but she’s a tongue more acid than yours.”

  He left me alone with Liskara.

  I’d gathered some ill-founded ideas about the nature of Bequen Celdior, and when she reappeared in my stall I struggled so fiercely to get my point across that she understood me quickly, and refused me even quicker.

  “Lords,” she said. “You with the courage of a wolverine and the skin of a mudskipper.”

  Then she sang a verse about the seasons:

  Evening thins to water

  As the nights grow longer,

  And slips from blushing hauteur

  To kiss the cheek of cold,

  For he’s diligently sought her

  From the month she fled his hold.

  Then Floy flew in at the window and told me I should stay the winter. But I was resolved.

  Before Trid had the chance to do anything unnatural to my leg, I stacked the crates beneath the window and climbed over the sill. It was sunset and too dark to see how steep the hill that fell away from the stable. I climbed down, Leode and my saddlebag underarm. I took one step, tripped, and rolled down the hill, yelling all the way.