by Jenna Rhodes
Keldan rocked back. His thick, curly hair fell over his brow as he nodded. “Truth in that.”
“What’s the lie, then?” Garner crossed his arms about his chest, a protective movement over his rib cage that he’d begun doing, a habit that he scarcely noticed, since the attacks.
“We didn’t find her on the river,” Tolby told him. “We found her asleep in the barn, as if she’d been left there or crawled in for shelter.”
“Why didn’t we try to find her family?”
“Because,” Tolby said, firmly. “She’s half blood and no one accepts Vaelinar half bloods, and we could not leave her to that fate.”
Rivergrace found her throat almost too dry to ask, but she managed it. “Is that true?”
“Half-blooded? We’ve no way of knowing, lass, and it couldn’t matter less to those who love you. But in the city, you’ll see and hear a different tale. Vaelinar true-blooded and blood-tainted, invaders like all the others, none of it liked by the Kerith-born. There are some who will say the only good Vaelinar is a dead one because of the strife and slavery they brought to our lands. Others will say that we never could have turned back the Raymy or survived after the wars of the Magi if they hadn’t come. As for the Vaelinars, they hate any thinning of their heritage. There’s no love from them for those with mixed blood, and that’s what Mistress Greathouse worried about. She knows the towns and great cities. It may be hard for you, Rivergrace.” Tolby watched her face.
How could it be harder for her than for the Farbranches who’d lost everything they’d built? Walked away from years of their past? She’d been found, and saved, and loved. The ache to know what she might have been if they hadn’t found her gnawed at her. Wretched and alone and despised. How could she be worthy of what they’d done, what they were doing, for her? “You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have brought me.”
“It was time to move on,” Tolby answered firmly. “Nutmeg and the boys have prospects to find that don’t lie at the bottom of an apple barrel. As for you, perhaps more than anyone, you need to be out in the world. It’s a knife’s edge, my lass, and I know it, but you’ve got to begin walking it sooner or later, and now seems to be a good time, while you’ve still got us for family. We can help you keep your balance, keep you safe.” His voice lost some of its country lilt as though even the city had its own way of talking, stern and solid, and she inhaled after a long moment.
“I understand. I’ll be careful for all of us,” she murmured as they all waited for an answer, of some sort.
It seemed to be the right answer, for they sighed almost together in a kind of relief.
The day dawned when the city towers of Calcort could be seen from the road, even as it wound through crofts and holdings, smaller warehouses and factories, and the very air smelled of its industry rather than the ripening shoots of the fields. Rivergrace and Nutmeg put their shoulders together, staring.
“It’s immense,” Grace breathed, faintly.
“It’s huge.” Nutmeg ran her hand through her thick, amber hair, flipping it back over her shoulder. “We’ll get lost.”
“A Farbranch? Lost? Never. We were born with the northern moon in our night eyes, and a map of the First Home in our hands,” said Tolby.
“That does not explain our courting days when you came by late at night, exclaiming the new roadways turned you around and kept you from the right time,” replied Lily.
“Well, um.” Tolby cleared his throat gruffly. “I might have been delayed by a game or two of knuckles, trying to win you an engagement ring and such.”
“That explains it.” Lily shot him a glance of such sheer adoration that her husband turned red in the glow of it, and she chuckled.
“What happened to the ring, then, if he won one for you?”
“The ring? Oh,” and Lily put up her unadorned hand, turning it back and forth. “We sold it to help buy the cider press. A future for a future. It seemed a fit bargain then, and still does.” With a smile at Rivergrace, she tucked her hand back into her apron as the cart jostled her slender figure about.
“I’m old enough to remember that,” added Garner. “A great hubbub when it was delivered, on a huge wagon barge pulled by eight great horses. Everyone turned out to help unload it and look it over, and we had dancing and building for days. I kept walking under the table and people would sneak me cookies.” His voice grew silent, and a shadow crossed his face, as they all remembered that the press was nothing more than a charred ruin now, for all its greatness then.
Traffic on the road grew crowded, and Tolby guided the cart to the side, so that faster traffic could pass their slower-moving little carriage and greater wagon. Hoofs clomped loudly on the tightly-packed dirt, and riders wanting to get by quicker clucked their tongues and popped their riding whips in the air and occasionally on a hide. There were great, shaggy long-horned beasts that looked incredibly menacing, for all the yokes and harnesses upon them, as traders and their long caravans drew close, then went by them. There were many strolling on foot, or with hand barrels, carrying backpacks of tools and goods. Some were couriers, with overcoats embroided in the bright threads of important crests, and some riding were soldiers and guards, their mounts in fine fettle, and Hosmer’s eyes gleamed in spite of himself.
Rooftops gleamed in the bright summer day. The canopy of blue sky was streaked by mere wisps of clouds here and there, moving like ghostly banners over the city of red clay roofs, and bright blue-glazed tiles on domes and eaves, and painted wood wherever the eyes could see. The city looked like a fallow field given over to wildflowers which bloomed all at once in a cacophony of color, a field that would last more than a day or even a season, in all its glory.
It did not, however, smell like a field of flowers. It smelled strongly of dung, and burning charcoal, and hot metal forges, and other scents that Grace could not name, and made even Bumblebee put his head up and whicker back in challenge as they approached huge gates through which everyone drove. Keldan wrinkled his nose, but Hosmer clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re smelling the brewery,” he said, with a wide grin. “It smells much better in a mug!”
His brothers laughing at him, Keldan fingered the reins tighter and gave a tight cluck to move smartly out after Tolby and the carriage cart, which headed north and west as soon as they passed the gates. Rivergrace craned her head back to look at them, massive, with copper shielding that had been pounded out in a pattern of circles and stars which dazzled her eye when she tried to follow the train of the etchings. They trotted and bumped and rattled across streets that were as much flat stone as hard-packed dirt. Tight narrow streets lined with buildings that leaned upon each other gave way to wider streets, with buildings no less close to each other but far greater and grander. Then, after many streets, the lane widened and wandered a bit, and the buildings here had room between them, if only so that they might fall down in piles of refuse that spilled out onto the roadways. Things skittered from them, even in broad daylight, that moved too fast for Grace to identify although she knew their ilk well enough.
Nutmeg pitched an apple core at one with unerring accuracy, and the rodent disappeared with a disagreeable squeal under a heap of garbage. She sniffed. The cart and wagon continued to rumble northward, through most of the far-flung city, with Grace and Nutmeg talking to each other about how people could live so close and where their gardens might be, until the narrow streets broke into wide, rutted lanes and houses became small farms and stockyards, and then even vineyards and orchards, with a stony ridge of sharp hills replacing the actual walls of the city, and it was toward this end, where finer houses and shops began again, that Tolby turned the cart and the wagon followed, down a broken-stone road where weeds dotted the gutters and the shops grew smaller and shakier. So odd to see how the finery of the city grew and shrank without warning, and although they were far from the rodent-filled garbage heaps near the gate, this quarter of the city was old and quiet and faded looking. It was outside the Northern Gate,
Tolby pointed out, the gates massive wooden posts that swung across the curving lane, cutting off the quarter they drove into, which sprawled over low hills where the city had literally overflowed its ancient boundaries and nurseries and small farms nestled right up to the lanes.
He pulled up at a rundown establishment, a brewery and winery, whose warehouse doors were thrown wide open and two carts were being hurriedly loaded inside even as Tolby jumped down and strode in. They all followed, although Keldan kept a hand on Nutmeg’s shoulders and Garner stayed at Rivergrace’s side, for the men inside were Kernans, tall and rough-cheeked and a surly looking lot.
“What goes on here?” And Tolby raised his voice to be sure he could be heard over the din of the movers.
“Place is going. We’ve orders to strip it bare.” A stoop-shouldered Kernan with cheeks shadowed blue-black with stubble patted his pocket, and parchment rustled there.
“The place is gone,” Tolby told him. “Into my hands, lock, stock, and barrel from Mistress Greathouse. And,” he turned on his heel, gesturing to the carts. “If I’m not mistaken, those are my barrels.”
The stoop-shouldered man let out a curse and simply ran from the warehouse, without another look backward, leaving his crew dumbfounded, their hands full of crates and barrels, and their jaws hanging.
“Put everything back and I’ll not have the guards on you,” Tolby told them. “Following your orders, you were, even if the man giving them is a thief.”
The Kernans did as suggested, grumbling a bit, and cheering up only when Tolby opened a keg of hard cider from their own wagon for them, and they left with a promise to look in now and then for odd labor. After the other carts had pulled out, Tolby closed the warehouse and they went to look at the housing and the press.
A strong wind might have blown down their new home, from the looks of the weathered and leaning wood. The well in the back had been boarded over and lay under a heap of composting leaves, and the small vineyard looked as if it had never seen rain or a pruning hand, although it stretched for a good bit off the street and into the free hills off the northern gate. Tolby scratched his head in dismay and looked at the ruins. “What have I done?”
Lily put her hands on her hips. “I’ve slept in a cellar and up a tree. The floor looks all right for tonight! Then, we’ll see.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A FOG CREPT UP the foot of the great oceanside cliff, buoyed by the heaviness of the sea and its spray below it, battling for a greater hold on the shore but soon to lose it to the blast of summer’s sun and heat. Yet it lay frothy gray and white over the tumbled stone and sand and looked convincingly as if it might gain hold as it glided off the gray-blue waters and onto land. Tranta climbed out of the fog and mist, hand over hand, foothold by foothold, scaling pylons that had grown ancient, though he remembered the day they’d been placed in the rock. Although, admittedly, he’d been but knee-high then.
Tranta adjusted his ropes and reset himself, feeling the dampness of the fog trying to seep inside his clothes, but he did not mind the chill even though the wind pressed and keened by him. He’d inherited this task, but he’d begged for it long before that, and it had often been his before it became part of his legacy. Now he did it thoughtfully, lovingly, meditating as he climbed as effortlessly as others set out for a stroll. The sea cliff knew him, and welcomed him. The Jewel would be another matter altogether. Its fire could scald him as well as any intruders sailing along the coast, making for the great, widespread natural harbor far below him.
The Jewel of Tomarq should recognize him as from the bloodline which made it, but there were times when it had not, and those times had all come recently. The moment of acknowledgment each time had come closer and closer to the moment of immolation and annihilation for which it had been created. His jaw tightened as he scaled another rocky ledge and paused a moment, gathering both his breath and his resolve. The mists swirled down below as if another stirred them yet unsettled by his own passing and by the wind off the ocean which would soon sweep them away altogether. His dark blue hair had been slicked by the dampness to his head and down the back of his neck, and he thought to himself that he might have considered doing this another day.
Few were the days, however, that did not begin with heavy fog about the cliffs on which the Jewel was mounted, and Tranta berated himself for being a coward. As his brother had instructed him, he should remind the Jewel that it came from his blood, not that he belonged to it. Who was master here?
It did not take a genius to feel that, undoubtedly, the being with enough power to incinerate an invading fleet would be the master. Tranta wiped his face with the back of his hand and resumed climbing.
By the time he reached the uppermost edge, the mists had curled away and the wind which whipped about had nearly dried his hair. Sun blazed down from a sky so blue it looked like a brittle shard of agate, and he secured his climbing rope in his harness and stretched to loosen his muscles before stepping toward the metal-and-gem rigging known as the Jewel of Tomarq or the Shield of Tomarq. If those of Kerith had had their way, there would be a temple here, with priestesses and novitiates worshiping the Jewel as it deserved, he thought. His mouth twitched. A novitiate might actually be welcome, but his House had never let a temple be built. For one thing, the power of the Jewel was such that those living nearby would be at risk—as the Jewel itself would be. Constant vibrations would mean frequent retooling, danger to them all. Not to mention that it was not a Godly thing at all, but a highly tuned focus, magically formed yet chiseled by mortal hands and eyes.
Rock crunched under his light step as he approached, and scraggly brush that grew determinedly out of cracks tried to entangle his ankles, but all his thoughts were bent upon the Jewel. He could feel, as well as hear, its hum below the sun, feel its Eye searching for enemies upon the sea, and he spread his palms. His ears filled with its deep, heavy thrum, almost out of range of his hearing, keen as it was. He filled his mind with its existence, how it had been conceived and labored to be made, and his House which had brought it into being, and after many, many long moments of him standing there, wind and sun beating upon him, he could feel the regard of the Jewel turn partially from the ocean and upon him.
The razor’s edge of its sensing swept over him. Now came the moment of his most extreme danger, and the urging for him to assert himself as its ultimate master pushed at him, shoved at him, and Tranta ignored it. Not master, perhaps, but . . . brother. He could never make a Jewel of this sort, although he could unmake it, and he could tend it. Heat shimmered over his body, the heat of a firebrand, of the sun, of ten suns, and then it passed. A sudden chill fell over him in its absence, and Tranta shivered.
He stepped into its aura and placed his hands upon the rigging, testing it, finding the gold-and-platinum-spun rope as solid as ever, resistant against wind and rain and salt and blasts of sand. He checked the arms and gears which turned the Jewel from side to side, slowly, ponderously, but the faceting of the Shield was such that it almost continuously faced the curve of the entire harbor, so that its minute shifting did not reduce its effectiveness. It was a marvel, he thought for the hundredth time during his legacy, a marvel of both magic and engineering. The oils which lubricated the gears lightly were fed by a great barrel which leaked slowly where needed. He checked the drum and found it still half full, not needing stocking for at least a hand’s worth of decades.
Lastly, he stroked the gem itself, massive, as tall as a house and wide, although much thinner, dwarfing him. Only the cliff it resided upon seemed bigger, and that not by much. He took a tuning fork from his vest pocket, put it against the gem, and listened to the vibration it transmitted to the instrument. Nothing to be done. He pocketed the object thoughtfully. Weaker, ever weaker, but nothing to be done. He mulled it over. The vibrations were correct, but fading, as if a mere echo of the original tone which focused the Shield, and, like all echoes, must eventually still. Everything else worked impeccably and would unless disrupte
d purposefully, but the Jewel itself failed, and he had no way with which to stop it. It was time, he thought, to let the others know so that it might be dealt with. If it was his failure, he must bear it.
If it was not, Gods help them all. There might not be a remedy.
He stroked the gem one last time, carefully, reverently. “For all that,” he murmured, “you are magnificent.”
Pebbles crunched behind him. “Indeed,” a hoarse voice agreed.
Tranta swung about.
A being stood at the cliff’s edge, dressed in rags which had once been elegant clothes, the elaborate hilt of a back-sheathed sword sticking out above his shoulder. He wrapped a climbing rope about his other shoulder, and wore a harness similar to Tranta’s. “Thank you for leading the way up.” He moved forward with a broken gait, and something feral gleamed in his eyes, eyes that marked him as one of them. Tranta had never seen him before, and that in itself brooked deep suspicion.
“What do you want here?”
“Merely paying homage, like yourself.” The figure halted, not far from him, but out of sword’s reach.
“Leave and leave now before you are burned to ashes.”
The man laughed sharply. “If you could have done so, you would have. The Shield does not turn her eye for you alone.” His hands stayed at his sides.
Tranta’s fingers flexed of their own volition. “Leave.”
The man shook his head slowly. “I have business here, worshiping the great Shield, the Jewel of Tomarq.” And he smiled humorlessly, his mouth strained in a lopsided gash.
Tranta reached for his throwing daggers, but he never touched them. The intruder lunged with a speed Tranta could never have predicted, great even for a Vaelinar, grasped him, and threw him aside. Rock crumbled as Tranta rolled, attempting to get to his feet, but his legs dangled over nothingness.