For the second time that night, I told the story of the rescue of the gypsy, and of our decision to return her to her people when Roland could not heal her.
“It was a risky thing for you to have gone in alone to face the Herder,” Domick reproved. “Those villagers might have killed you at once.”
“Not with th’ gypsy shootin’ arrows at them from th’ trees,” Matthew said gleefully. “Besides, we could hardly leave her to burn, now, could we?”
An odd expression flitted over the coercer’s face. “Sometimes you have to endure a lesser evil in dealing with a greater one.”
Kella stared fixedly into the fire, as if disengaging herself from the conversation, but Matthew was openly indignant.
“Ye mean we should have left her? I doubt she’d call that a lesser evil!”
Domick shrugged. “If you had been caught, it would not have helped her, and it may well have done great, even irreparable, damage to our cause. Which, then, would be the greater evil? To let an unknown woman die, or to intervene and see your friends perish for it?”
“We got her free, didn’t we? An’ we weren’t caught,” Matthew returned stubbornly. “If we thought like you, we’d nowt even have tried. There’s evil fer ye. Nowt even tryin’ to fix somethin’ that’s wrong.”
“You are naive,” Domick said dismissively. “If the woman is as sick as you say, there is every likelihood she will die despite your help.”
Matthew flushed. “Meybe I am naive, but rather that than bein’ someone with ice fer blood an’ a clever tongue an’ shifty brain instead of a heart!”
They stared at one another for a moment; then Domick relaxed back into his seat. “And is that the reason you have come to Sutrium, Elspeth? To take an irrelevant gypsy back to her people?”
I suppressed a surge of anger at his callousness and the temptation to tell him what Maryon had futuretold about this “irrelevant” gypsy. But with the woman so near death, there was enough urgency without piling the burden of a portentous vision on their heads.
“I would also like to see Brydda Llewellyn,” I said mildly. “Maybe he could suggest some safe way to locate her people.”
“I am not sure there is any way that is safe,” Domick said. “Is she a halfbreed? I suppose she must be,” he answered himself.
“I think so. Yes,” I added more positively, remembering the Herder had called her that. “Does it make a difference?”
Both Kella and the coercer nodded.
“A Twentyfamilies gypsy would not break the Council lore forbidding healing,” Domick explained.
“Twentyfamilies?” I echoed, surprised to hear the odd word again. “What does that mean?”
“It is what pureblood gypsies call themselves,” the coercer said. “It was not a name any but traders of expensive trinkets knew until the Herders started bandying it about. They hate gypsies and Twentyfamilies most of all, because it was they who negotiated the safe passage agreement with the Council that exempts gypsies from Herder lore. Herders preach that gypsies ought to be made to settle. They claim the plague was spread by their wanderings.”
“The Herder in Guanette said the plagues were a punishment from Lud because of people ignoring the Faction,” I said.
Domick shrugged. “Same thing. There is a lot of talk to that effect encouraged by the Herders, but it will not give them power to force the Council to make the Twentyfamilies settle. The halfbreeds are not so lucky, for the safe passage agreement no longer includes them, yet nor are they allowed to settle. They are persecuted by Landfolk and Herders alike, as you know. But it is worse since the plague.”
I began to see that returning the gypsy before Maryon’s futuretold deadline would be even harder than I had anticipated. Hitherto, I had imagined I understood something of gypsy society, but in truth, what I knew arose solely from memories of a single friendly troupe that had come through Rangorn every few seasons when I was a child. I did not even know if they had been pureblood or halfbreed.
“You talk about Twentyfamilies gypsies and halfbreeds as if they were two separate races,” I said.
“That is very nearly what they are,” he answered. “The division between them has its origins in the days when gypsies first came to the Land. Some say they walked here; others say they came by sea. Either way, they didn’t want to be ruled by Council or Herder lore, so they came to an agreement with the Council to remain as visitors, never settling or farming the Land, never owning any of it.”
“I know all of that,” I said, faintly impatient.
“I suppose you know, too, how they got the Council to agree to let them remain as visitors?” Domick snapped.
Abashed, I shook my head. “I’m sorry. Tell it your own way.”
He went on. “In exchange for safe passage status as visitors, the gypsies offered a yearly tithe: a percentage of the craftwares their people produced. Their works were rare and beautiful, and for a time everyone seemed to benefit from the arrangement.
“In those early days, some gypsies mated with Landfolk, so halfbreeds were born. Initially, there was free trade of knowledge and blood between full and halfblood gypsies. But that ended with the Great Divide,” Domick said. “Purebloods do not now teach their skills to halfbreeds; therefore, halfbreed wares are pale echoes of their work, based on half-recollected formulae and recipes. Invariably inferior, they bring scant coin, whereas the purebloods make more than enough to live well from what remains of their work after the tithe.”
“Why dinna Twentyfamilies gypsies teach th’ halfbreeds th’ craftskills?” Matthew demanded indignantly. “A halfbreed mun have at least one pureblood in their line of descent. Dinna this tie mean anything to them?”
“It was a matter of survival for the purebloods,” Domick said. “On the whole, halfbreeds weren’t as scrupulous about obeying Council lore as the Twentyfamilies. That caused a lot of strife. Finally, the Twentyfamilies leader had no choice but to announce the Great Divide, cutting halfbreeds off absolutely from purebloods. The Council accepted the division, because it allowed them to control the troublemaking halfbreeds without breaking contract with the Twentyfamilies. And the purebloods had to maintain the exclusivity of their work, because it was their only leverage with the Council.
“And that keeps them safe even from the Herders,” the coercer added. “The Faction wants gypsy traveling stopped, because they want all in the Land under their power. Of course, the Council has a vested interest in keeping things as they are, because if they make the purebloods settle, the bribe tithe will cease.”
“Naturally, greed would decide th’ day,” said Matthew with a flash of cynicism.
“The halfbreeds should be so lucky as to have something the Council wanted. It is hard on them. It would not be so bad if they were permitted to settle and become ordinary Landfolk, but in spite of the division, people regard gypsies as gypsies. They resent the wealth and inviolability of the Twentyfamilies gypsies, and they take it out on the halfbreeds.”
“There have been a number of incidents just recently in which halfbreeds have been beaten or attacked,” Kella said, her eyes worried. “Your disguises are now dangerous, because you are obviously not Twentyfamilies and as halfbreeds, you are fair game.”
Why had Domick not warned us of this in his reports? Before I could ask, Matthew spoke. “Why can’t we say we’re Twentyfamilies? Fer that matter, why dinna th’ halfbreeds say it? There’s enough color variation for that not to matter.”
“Twentyfamilies gypsies would know you were an impostor regardless of skin color,” Domick said.
“How could they know?” Matthew persisted.
The coercer shrugged. “They just do. You might farseek them and find out how, if it mattered enough. Yet, what point would there be in it? Your gypsy can only be a halfbreed. To reach her people, you must be one of them.”
That was true enough.
“And even among the halfbreeds, you will have trouble getting information, because gypsy or not, you will
be unknown to them,” Domick said. “Given the climate, they are understandably wary of strangers. If, by chance, they discover you are not a gypsy, they will probably kill you, thinking you are a Herder spy.”
I frowned into the fire.
“And that is another thing you must consider,” Domick went on inexorably. “I have heard no report of the affair in Guanette at the Councilcourt, but just because it has not reached the Council does not mean the Faction is ignorant of it. If they do know, they are certain to have spies watching the gypsy greens with descriptions of you in their pockets.”
“I will keep the gypsy woman out of sight and go about as a boy,” I said firmly, stamping ruthlessly on a little flutter of fear in my stomach.
“Best to abandon the gypsy disguise altogether, but of course the tan would give you away,” the coercer said.
“I can brew something that will fade it faster,” Kella offered.
I nodded. “It would not be a bad idea to have such a mixture on hand. However, given what you have said, I doubt any gypsy would speak to me unless I was obviously one of them, so I will have to remain as I am for the present. Maybe I can coerce them into thinking they know me.”
Changing the subject, I told Domick how Dragon had come to Sutrium and asked if he could send word back to Obernewtyn that she was safe.
“It will take a sevenday at least,” he warned. “My reports go through Enoch, and he daren’t let himself be seen going up to the mountains, since they’re supposed to be deserted and Obernewtyn a tainted ruin.”
I nodded. “Rushton had worried at the lack of news from you. It’s good to know you were just being cautious.”
Domick glowered. “I am always cautious. And we have had to be even more so lately. At the height of the plague, Enoch would have been stoned if he traveled openly enough to cause people to fear he carried the disease from place to place.”
“The plague seems to affect so many things,” I mused.
“How was it at Obernewtyn during the plague?” Kella asked, and I realized how little she must hear of home and everyday events in Rushton’s businesslike missives. It would not occur to him that his spies might need to hear the small details of life in the mountains.
“It was not so bad in the highlands,” I said, “though Rushton insisted we stay in the mountains for some time. How did you manage?”
Kella’s expression was suddenly haunted. “It’s so dirty here that people went down with the disease in the hundreds. So many died that there were not enough left to bury the dead. The corpses bloated and stank, and the disease spread and spread. And all to the Herder Faction’s benefit,” she added in sudden anger.
I was surprised. “You don’t believe Lud sent it on their behalf?”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “I am sure it was nothing more than a disease born of filth and ignorance. But the Herders were quick to warp it to their purpose. They claimed only those hated by Lud would die.” There was a terrible bitterness in her voice. “Are babies and old dodderers evil? Does Lud hate children and sick people? For they were the first to fall.”
“The strange thing is that so few of the Herders died,” Domick said pensively. “It seemed to prove their claim that Lud was protecting them. They did not care at all when plague killed off the sickly and the weak, but when it began to eat up the strong, they were less delighted. After all, if everyone was killed, who would be left to be preached at?”
Kella laughed. “They really started to worry when the crops were ready and there was no one to harvest them. What would they eat? Would they have to till and labor for food with their own white hands? The Councilmen were panic-stricken, of course, and right from the beginning, the majority of them had barricaded themselves in their homes with supplies. But still many of them died as well.”
She fell silent.
“What happened in th’ end?” Matthew asked, as if looking for a happy ending to a bedtime tale.
Domick answered him. “It went on and on, until half the city was dead or dying, and finally the Herders told the Council to lock up the houses of the dead and burn them with the corpses inside.”
Kella gave a sob. “Yes. That was their solution. They told the Council to employ the purifying flames of Lud. So the soldierguards went out, burning any house where there had been plague and quite a few where there was nothing, whether there were people inside or not. Dozens were burned alive.”
I swallowed back horror as Domick moved to take Kella in his arms, his expression more masklike than ever.
“I did what I could,” Kella whispered into his shoulder. “But there were so many.…”
The coercer met my eyes over her bowed head, and for a moment there was a flare of some emotion in his eyes, but it was gone too quickly for me to interpret it.
“It was difficult,” he said in a cool voice. “Brydda was bringing those of his people who had contracted the plague here. Most arrived too late to be helped. Other times there were so many needing healing that Kella had to choose which lives to save and whom to let die. She almost killed herself trying to heal them all. She would not rest or eat.”
“How could I rest with people dying every minute I slept? How could I eat in the midst of all that death?” she whispered.
Domick rose and led the weeping girl out, leaving me and Matthew to stare at one another.
“I dinna know it had been so bad,” the farseeker said in a subdued tone.
I said nothing, for though horrified by Kella’s story, I was concerned that people had been brought so haphazardly to the safe house. Yet the thought gave me hope, for surely the rebels would not use it and Kella’s healing skills so freely if they did not mean to ally themselves with us.
Maruman appeared from behind a cupboard and climbed into my lap again, making himself comfortable before the fire. I was fascinated to feel his mind curling around mine in much the same fashion as his body shaped itself to my lap.
“Maruman/yelloweyes guards ElspethInnle,” he sent, as if I had posed a question.
Domick returned.
“I have coerced Kella to sleep,” he said in a somber voice. His eyes met mine. “She is exhausted in body and spirit. You cannot know what it was like for her. She nearly went mad when she learned of the burnings. You must take her with you when you go. She cannot bear it.”
“It doesn’t seem to bother you,” I said.
“I am not Kella,” he responded flatly. “I am a realist. There was plague, and the burnings ended it. Therefore, the method worked.”
“It was a brutal solution,” I snapped. I did not like the coldness in his voice when he spoke of Kella, nor his apparent acceptance of the Herder Faction’s murderous solutions.
“Brutal?” he said. “Perhaps. But this is a brutal world. Yet it did not endear the Faction to the Council, for all its success. Too many Councilmen died and too few Herders.”
Diverted, I frowned. “Then there is still conflict between the Faction and the Council?”
Domick nodded. “There is a feeling among Councilmen that the Herders have too much hysterical power over the masses, that they are fanatical and dangerously extreme. Of course, since the plague, they command the power of life and death—or so the ignorant are led to believe—so there is no question of the Council doing anything immediately to limit their power. But, I daresay, they will find a way to curb them in the end.”
“Do you think the Council would ever disband them altogether?”
He shook his head decisively. “I doubt they will do more than pull a few teeth. The Faction serves a purpose, and the Councilmen know it. They have just recently sent a pack of Herders to soften up the Sadorian tribespeople. Why bark yourself when you can have a dog do it?”
And if the dog turns on its master? I wondered.
Domick stood up abruptly and reached for his cloak. “Come.”
My bones ached and I was still cold, but I stood, lifting Maruman from my knee. The old cat gave me a haughty look and stal
ked away. I pulled on my sodden boots and took the cloak the coercer handed me.
“We will be back before midnight,” he told Matthew.
The farseeker nodded and leaned forward, lifting both hands to the fire. I felt a stab of envy.
“Where are we going?” I asked, clumping down the dark stairs.
Domick’s eyes glimmered in the darkness as we stepped out into the windy night, and his words were an echo out of the distant past: “You wanted to talk to Brydda Llewellyn, didn’t you?”
8
THE STREETS WERE all but deserted as we passed through them like two shadows. Houses were everywhere sunk in darkness, but here and there were more of the blackened gaps I had noticed that afternoon. I shuddered, now understanding them in the light of Kella’s story.
A woman peered out of a window at us, and I wondered whether I should have insisted we take the horses. Gahltha would be angry that I had gone without him, but Domick had argued that we would draw more eyes on horseback than on foot. Because of a rising trade in stolen horses, few rode at night.
Even so, Gahltha had ways of defending himself that would discourage any thief.
With a shock, I realized I had grown so accustomed to the black horse’s presence that I felt curiously vulnerable without him.
A curtain twitched as we passed another window and a memory surfaced. “Is there still a curfew in Sutrium?”
Domick lifted his head as if to dispel a dream, and I wondered what he had been thinking about. “There is a curfew, but it does not come into effect until midnight,” he said. “It is not strictly enforced, because there are worse things than soldierguards to contend with. Only fools asking to be robbed or murdered wander the streets after dark.”
“Marvelous,” I said sourly.
“Since the plagues and the loss of crops, there is no work and little food,” the coercer went on, as if I had not spoken. “There are a legion of poor in the city. Some beg for their needs, and others take what they want. Hard times make for hard folk.”
Involuntarily, I smiled, recognizing in the phrase Brydda’s love of neat sayings. “One of the Black Dog’s homilies?”
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