by Jenna Rhodes
After he dismounted and settled the animals, he reached for her, saying, “I’d like to untie you.”
“I’d like to be untied.”
She wouldn’t quite look him in the face, staring at a spot about a hand high off his head. He’d used his Voice on her first to keep her mild and quiet, but he was loath to do that anymore, to force her to his will any more than he already had. Rivergrace quiet and obedient was not the woman who held his thoughts. What truth would be in it if he forced her to say she loved him? None.
He undid her knots quickly. She jumped out of the cart even faster, on him with both fists swinging. He ducked the first one, but she came with a roundhouse to his right and caught him soundly. She knocked him to his duff and drew her booted foot back for a kick, and hesitated as he sat there, hand to his jaw.
“Go ahead. I deserve it.”
“Get up. I won’t kick a body while he’s down.”
He stayed where he was.
“Get up!”
“No.”
“Coward.”
“Hardly. I’ll have your whole family and Queen Lariel on my tail in another day or two. Do you think I risk that lightly?”
She stared down at him, the stormy gray-blue of her eyes lit, the serene sea-blues of her eyes disquieted. “Why do you risk it at all? Treating me like some common baggage you can pick up from any whorehouse in Calcort—”
“Whoa, whoa, m’lady! While a kiss from you would be sweeter than any pastry, that’s not why I have you.”
“No?”
Bless her but she looked a little disappointed. He stayed on his rear, however, as she kept her fists clenched and ready, and her weight neatly balanced. “No.”
The silence drew out between them, broken only by the sound of the two horses cropping at the last of the grass, and the warble of a nearby songbird hidden in the brush. She lowered her hands.
“You know the Silverwing like you know the lines in your hands, Grace. Is it clean?”
She opened her mouth, and then closed it, the curve of her lips troubled. Finally, she shook her head slightly. “There is something,” she said reluctantly. “Almost there but not quite.”
“A beginning of the taint.”
“I don’t know.”
“You know. You just won’t admit it to yourself.”
She wrenched her gaze from him and looked to the distant mountains, ranges that braced the Silverwing on one side and Larandaril with the Andredia on the other. “Are we going there, then?”
“I think we must.” He couldn’t tell her yet what he feared the most, nor would he until he could match what he recalled with what he found at the forge above the Silverwing. If it was the place of his memories. He needed her strength as well as his to get through what he thought they might face.
She smoothed her skirt down but it didn’t hide the tremor of her hands which stopped when she took a deep breath. “You intend to go into the mountain itself.”
“The trip isn’t worth it unless we do, and time isn’t on our side. It would help if you rode, and I could leave the cart behind. It would help, Rivergrace, if you came whole- heartedly with me.”
She found a loose thread on the cuff of her sleeve and picked at it pensively. “If I pull this, it could break cleanly and stop the unstitching. Or it could unravel entirely, and I lose the hem, unsewn. Which am I, Sevryn? Will I break cleanly or come unmade?”
“I pray, aderro, that you are made of sterner stuff than thread, and nothing happens to you that I can’t guard you from.”
Turning her back to him, he thought he heard her reply softly, “And I pray that I don’t already know the answer.”
He began to unhitch the cart.
They paused at the riverbank of the Nylara, its expanse dark and muddied for summer’s end, but its current no less treacherous. She watched as the Dark Ferryman rode his barge across, unseen hands inside the voluminous robes moving on the rudder as ropes pulled themselves to haul it across. A few clouds wisped across the sky, and she wished they would hide the sun even if briefly as its heat drained her very will to move. Ribbon shifted under her, nostrils widening at the river, and she let her wade into it and then back up onto the sandy bank where the ferry landed. Aymaran tossed his head and tried to look above such antics, but when the mare flicked her wet tail at him, he didn’t seem to mind the splatter of water.
“Even from here, it’s a good two weeks,” she commented.
Sevryn dismounted to let Aymaran drink, the horse pulling at the water with soft lips and eyeing his rider to see if he could drink his fill. Sevryn would not let him, they had no time to care for a foundering horse, so he kept a firm hand under the horse’s chin. “I want you to pay the Ferryman.”
Grace looked at the phantom drawing near. Gooseflesh rose unbidden on her arms and neck at its closeness. She told herself it had never attacked anyone, then she remembered Bregan Oxfort with brace and cane, forever altered. True, Oxfort had attacked it first, and yet, her pulse quickened. Sevryn took her hand, uncurling her fingers, and dropped silver bits into her palm. “Tell him you want to cross, and name the Silverwing, and hold its image in your mind, that part of the river you know best, and keep holding that image when you pay him, and as we ride over on the barge. Don’t let it waver.”
He thought to distract her, and she began to demur.
Sevryn closed her hand in his. “Trust me?”
“You’ve thumped me and kidnapped me, but I don’t recall you’ve ever lied to me. Of course I trust you.” She could feel the corner of her mouth twitch.
He kissed that corner of her mouth. “Then do as I ask.”
The barge ground to a halt on the sandbar and the ropes snapped in place roughly, with the Ferryman gliding eerily off it and putting his ghostly hand out. They took their horses by the bridle, and Rivergrace looked into the cowled face of the phantom, seeing little in the emptiness but a dance of light which could be anything, and told him what Sevryn had instructed her. She bore it only because of her vision of the Silverwing, clasped tightly in her mind like a talisman.
After a moment, the ferryman named a fee, and she dropped her coins into his embrace. He clenched his hand about it, as he intoned to her a word or two of Vaelinar that she did not recognize. He waited a moment before turning away and beckoning them to board the ferry.
She held her vision of her home, even with her alna riding a wind current above it, the bright blue Silverwing tipped with white froth in its high tide days, swiftly flowing past her life, the river curled into the cove where she and Nutmeg bathed, played, and had hidden from raiders. The ferry bumped and heaved under her feet as she stood with closed eyes, imagining the place which had been part of the heart and soul of her existence, braided with the Farbranch stead and family. After an interminable time, with the ropes and barge creaking and the horses moving uncertainly, and Sevryn’s even breathing near her ear, the heat of his body standing protectively behind her, she could imagine the familiar roar of the Silverwing, and the ferry came to a halt.
“Docked,” the Dark Ferryman said in Common.
She opened her eyes and gasped.
“Hurry,” urged Sevryn, nudging her gently, and she led Ribbon off the wooden flatboat onto the banks of her beloved river. She knew every rock, every cut of the current into its bed, the apple groves on one side and the wild groves on the other, and it surrounded her. As soon as they had all disembarked, the Ferryman cast off, disappearing into a mist off the water that she had not felt on her face when they crossed.
She swung on him breathlessly. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t. It happened to me once, by accident. It seemed fortuitous to try it on purpose.”
“I didn’t do that.”
“No, he did. Whether he does it because you know your destination so firmly or whether he does it because he wants to, I can’t fathom. But it does leave me with an intriguing question or two, which I’ll have to answer some other time.” He gave her a leg up
and patted her foot comfortingly. “It shortens our journey by a good bit.” He started to shift away, but she didn’t want to lose the feel of him close to her.
“Don’t go.”
He froze in place.
“Why does hearing your voice and feeling your touch make me even happier than being near the Silverwing again?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “But it makes my heart leap to hear you say it.”
“I’ve nothing to give you,” she told him. “I don’t know how long I have.”
“Then,” and he drew nearer, his body pressing against her knee, “we have to do with every day that’s given us, don’t we?”
“Do?”
“Treasure. Love. Remember.” He moved his hand to her waist. He brought his other hand to her waist, and lifted her down off Ribbon’s back, holding her against him, sliding her down and letting her feet touch the ground at the very last moment. Ribbon turned her head, the mare snorting in equine confusion as if to say, down, up, down again, make up your mind.
She buried her hands in his hair like molten bronze, silken and waving through her fingers, and brought her lips to his, and promised herself that she would remember every moment as if it could be her last.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
AFTERWARD, IN THE GLOW of his body and hers, she put her head on his shoulder to listen to the beat of his heart slow and grow contented, his hand on the back of her head massaging her gently. Cloak spread wide and rumpled under them smelled faintly of horse and goat, and bruised sweet grasses. An alna soared overhead, giving its keening cry, and wind whisked through the grove, branches rubbing and sounding. “He spoke to me,” she murmured.
“He? Who? The bird?”
“The Ferryman. He speaks in your language, and I never understand him.”
“What did he say?” His fingers tickled her neck.
“Nevinaya ...” She stumbled, before grasping the second word, “Nevinaya aliora.”
He took a deep breath, she felt his chest expand and rise under her face. “Remember the soul,” he said. “If you recalled that aright.”
“I don’t know. What does he mean?”
“I’ve no way of knowing.”
A kind of sadness washed through her. Her eyes filled, and she could feel her cheek and his skin dampen.
“What is it?” His fingers kneaded her soothingly.
“I never told them, my family,” she said. “About the blanket. About me.”
“Ah.” The kneading stopped, and his large hand slipped up to her hair, combing it. “You may never have to.”
“And if I do?”
She felt him kiss the top of her head. “If I teach you anything, may it be to accept from others what you so freely give them. Unlike a river, love flows both ways.”
“I’m going after her,” announced Nutmeg when Garner and Hosmer finished talking, a project that had taken some time, some jostling, a few shin kicks and glares between the brothers before all had been spilled out in front of the rest of them.
Lily wiped her hands carefully on her apron, taking her time, each fingertip meticulously dried, before she met her daughter’s eyes. “All right, then.”
“I will talk sense into her.”
To hide her smile at that, Lily turned to Tolby, asking, “Who else?”
“Hosmer is not mine to say yea or nay, his work is with the Town Guard now. I’d be loath to let Keldan go, I need his strong shoulders.”
Garner gave a lopsided smile. “Sounds as if that leaves me, Da.”
“It does. Also, you’re th’ eldest.”
“I can go alone!”
“No, you can’t.”
“Can so.”
“You’ll be needing me.”
“Will not.”
“Meg, Garner, stop it.” Lily rose, took off her apron, and put it on a hook near the stove. “The object is to find her, not keep her away with the bickering. We have no idea what’s on her mind. She could love this fellow, or it might have nothing to do with him.”
“I think,” Tolby said dryly about the stem of his pipe, “that it probably has a great deal to do with him.”
“I think,” Lily disagreed mildly, “that it might have everything to do with that blanket.” Her words splashed into the middle of their conversation like a large stone into a formerly quiet pond, and she watched the ripples of comprehension hit each of them.
“She barely mentioned it.”
“She’s hardly talked at all for a while. We’ve not heard one word of what the queen might have told her about it.”
“So,” Garner said lightly, “we don’t know if we should haul her back or not?”
“Bring her back, bring them both back. I’ll not have her start a new life in less than honorable fashion,” Tolby told him.
“A pitchfork wedding! Excellent.”
Hosmer kicked Garner in the shin under the table. He jerked, the smile on his face unwavering. “Do we know where to look?”
“Larandaril?”
“He’s the queen’s man, he might have taken her there.”
“I vote home,” Keldan said, although he’d been sitting with his mouth shut firmly, a scowl on his face.
“D’you think so?”
Hosmer reached up to scratch his eyebrow in irritation. A dried fleck of tomato flew off at he did so. “Gah. I’m going to have to soak head to toe again. I’m flaking.”
“I cleaned your tabard already,” Lily murmured. “Most of the stains came out, I believe, although it’s not really very well made.”
“Thank you, Mom.” He cleared his throat. “I agree with Keldan. Last I talked with Sevryn, he seemed keen on heading to the Burning Mountains, and the head of the Silverwing.” He neatly skirted how he’d spent that last conversation or what he’d heard him mumble as he’d hauled the stricken man to The Lying Wife.
“If we’re wrong, we can cut through the pass and into Larandaril on the other side, Da,” Garner said. “Weather will hold nicely.”
“Aye, otherwise I’d brook no talk of heading that way. Those mountains are treacherous past Yellow Moon month.”
“You can’t possibly think of being gone that long?” Lily’s serene expression finally turned grave.
Tolby took his pipe from his mouth. “Either find her soon or let her go. We’ll put word out to Mistress Greathouse and the others we know, that if they’re met on the roads, that they’re welcome to come back. That’s all we can do.”
“If we go to Larandaril, the queen may send word from us.”
“A’right, then. ’Tis settled.”
Garner clapped Keldan roughly on the shoulder as he stood. “Be sure you sharpen the pitchfork. Just in case.” And he gave a roguish wink. This time it was Lily who kicked him sharply in the ankle, and he let out a howl and hopped about.
They made good time without the cart. He usually woke in the mornings to find Rivergrace cleaning a fish or two, saying that the alna had dropped them for her. He never doubted it, for there were always two or three winging along with them, particularly the one with the rough white diamond on its chest. They gave cry when anything came near the camp as they rested, and even at night voiced high hoots when a predator prowled, so he took to sleeping with Grace and letting the birds keep a night watch.
He marveled at her. Shy in coming to him at first, now she filled his nights with fire bringing joy, her hands exploring every fiber of his being. The kedant lying dormant in him surrendered to her touch, filling him with a yearning that ached until explosion and then ebbing away for good, its constant pain gone. Other fire filled him in its stead, a purer flame that he shared with her, and when he woke every morning, it was with a prayer of thankfulness for the contentment and fulfillment she gave him, and he tried to return to her.
He told himself he did. Her dimpled smile flashed often and stayed, and only once or twice a day did he catch her looking toward the Burning Mountains with a faraway and lost expression in her eyes. He thought he’d k
nown what he asked of her, and had been willing to risk it, and now he knew he’d misjudged himself. He’d denied to himself days ago that she could be nothing more than a spell-wrought holder for another, and now he told himself again that it couldn’t be true. He told Grace that in every way he could find, with every tender moment and touch they shared, pouring into her an awareness of herself and the life she led. She couldn’t be destined to leave him. He wouldn’t let her believe it.
Nights grew a touch cooler as they gained the foothills and began to climb into the mountains. Dry month waned into its last hold on summer, mellowing. Rivergrace had woven herself a brim of straw that kept some of the sun from her face, and he laughed at it, and she had pouted a bit until he counted her freckles with small kisses. Always faint, even the sun barely brought them out, he had to be nearly nose to nose with her to see them against her translucent skin, but she would fuss until he stopped her. The alna finally stopped flying with them as they crested the pass leading up to the mountain, and he began to take a night watch from moon high till dawn, tracing the journey from memory so long ago. The Silverwing dipped in and out of view, as rivers born among the cracks and rills of mountains will do, and the horses worked harder and harder to find patches of grass for grazing. He’d brought grain and began to dole it out carefully. Aymaran would greedily huff up every trace, but Ribbon ate delicately, her long-lashed eyes closing now and then as she savored every mouthful.
They toiled up the broken landscape, worn thin by sun and little rain, the mountain on the edge of its life cycle, where even a little rain would be welcome. As pebbles clicked away from the horses’ hooves, tiny ground dogs ran across the dirt to hide somewhere more secure, and small lizards slithered toward safer shelter in the cracks. He let Aymaran pick his way up, and the surefooted mount did so confidently, Black Ribbon with her nose to his tail. They wound round the Burning Mountain, and as they did, the Silverwing and the valley where the Farbranches and the Barrels had once prospered fell far from sight.