by Karen Myers
Reentering the mill building, he gave Maëlys the bowl with the remaining water, and she quickly added the dry ingredients for her corn cake batter from one of her small sacks and began frying them. The sausage slices had been removed to a clean piece of bark waiting for the bowls he brought back to be available. The corn cakes went on another piece of bark temporarily and she scrubbed her bowl with a wisp of dried grass after pouring the last of the batter into the pan.
She took the bowls and divided the sausage slices into them, then added the flat corn cakes, crisp and dripping with fat. She kept a few aside for toasting on a stone in the morning, and tossed the used bits of bark into the fire where they popped and flared.
While he dug into his meal, she added a bit more fat to the pan and sliced three of the apples she’d brought with her on top. She uncorked just a little honey to sweeten them and placed the iron pan far from the fire so that they could caramelize slowly and not burn while they finished the main meal.
“You’re very good at this, auntie,” Benitoe said, his mouth full. He wasn’t used to having someone cook for him like this.
She smiled at him. “I’ve always liked feeding people. I hated to see that inn standing vacant in the village—what a kitchen it must have. I’ve been thinking about it all day.”
“Running an inn is a complicated job. Things like that must have been among the first to be lost,” he said.
“Yes, but if the fae recover, it’s a good way to get them started again. A successful inn, a large one like that, needs lots of people.”
“You should take it on,” he said. “Sounds like you know what’s required.”
He was surprised to see her taking it seriously. “I’ve been considering it,” she admitted. “If I don’t find Luhedoc,” Benitoe reached over and squeezed her hand, “I’m not sure I want to just go back. I think I might like a new challenge instead.”
She looked at him. “Do you think the manor might invest in the inn with me as manager?”
Benitoe said, “I’m sure they want as many businesses established as possible. I’d be glad to help you make your proposal to them. They’ll listen to you.”
She dished out most of the honeyed apples from the warm pan into their bowls, saving a bit for the morning, with the corn cakes.
“What did you think of the farms today,” she asked. “I confess I was frightened by what we found.”
Benitoe considered the dirty and ill-kept buildings, the dull families, hiding inside when the lutins rode up to their doors. “Did you notice that the livestock was in better shape than the people? Less dirty, no sores. No empty water buckets.”
“I saw you scattering those tokens around. You even hung one on that sty.”
“Well, those were healthy looking sows, weren’t they?” he said. “We’ll go back in the morning and see if any of them were picked up in the night.”
“Where did you learn to make those tokens? Who taught you that?”
He hesitated and looked at her consideringly. “I learned from the Kuzul,” he said, “the Council.”
She stopped chewing for a moment and stared at him before continuing. “But aren’t you too young for that? Brittou told me you have to be at least fifty years old.”
“Yes, but the members nominate juniors, sort of apprentices, and Ives, Gwyn’s kennel-man, is my sponsor.”
It was just another part of his life that separated him from his peers and he was used to having them withdraw once they discovered it, but Maëlys didn’t seem to see it that way.
“What a mark of respect that must be from your elders,” she said. “Did they select you for this journey, as their delegate, or was this your own idea?”
“Both. I could spare the time, since we can’t hunt the hounds well in the deep snow, and of course the huntsman and I already work together. And I wanted to come, for personal reasons.”
“Hmm?” she said, encouragingly, as she ate.
“My family, well, my mother died when I was born, her only child. My father, he lasted about seven years before he called me into his workroom one day and gave me the keys to his tool chests. He shook my hand silently and walked out, and that was the last anyone saw of him.”
“Oh, you poor dear. What happened?”
“It’s not that bad. I knew, all my childhood, that he was only partly there, that more of him was with my mother. He tried, he did, but I wasn’t surprised when he finally gave up.” He looked at her. “I don’t think he’s dead. I think he’s gone to ground somewhere, to forget. Like our folk here.”
“What did you do?”
“I was pretty self-sufficient by then. My mother’s sister was in the habit of coming by every week or so to make sure I was well.” He paused, remembering. “It was ten days, this time. I managed the food and the animals just fine on my own, but I’ll admit the laundry was a bit beyond me.” He smiled faintly.
“She wanted to bring me into her family, her husband was a stout fellow and I was fond of him, but I wouldn’t give up my father’s house, the last of his line. I wouldn’t go. They took me by force and I kept going back.”
He was proud of his stubborn seven-year-old self, and she smiled along with him.
“It eventually came to the notice of the Kuzul, and they had a long talk with me.” He remembered that well. By then he knew he was an unusual child, that he didn’t fit in with everyone else. He wanted to go his own way, a most un-lutinish trait.
“What did you say to them?” she said.
“I told them I could take care of myself, well enough, and that I was fine where I was. And that they should stop bothering me.”
“Oh my goodness. No one speaks to the Kuzul that way.”
“You’d be surprised,” he said, with a grin. “But no child, certainly. That stumped them. We were all rescued by my aunt. She barged into their interrogation and told them that she would take me on as an apprentice instead of a nephew, that apprentices were allowed their own living quarters where appropriate. Everyone looked at each other and decided to forget that there was a minimum age for apprenticeship.
“For the rest of my childhood, I slept in my father’s house, but took most of my meals with my aunt and uncle, and helped them raise their family.”
“It must have been lonely for you,” she said.
“Not really, it’s what I was used to. Still am used to.” That sounded sad even to him, so he volunteered, “Isolda would have changed all that,” and that made it worse. He stopped and stared into the embers.
“You’ll find someone,” she said, after a moment, “Not to replace her, just someone else.”
He nodded without looking at her. He knew people wanted to see that conventional acceptance. He wasn’t so sure himself. Isolda, even ten years younger, had been almost as different as he was in her quiet way, with her unconventional work driving teams of horses. He missed her, every day. He could feel himself building an outer husk of solitude, to make it easier to live alone again.
Maëlys startled him by rising to her feet and standing formally before him, her hands raised in the gesture of petition. She beckoned him up, and he stood in front of her with his hands palm-up in acceptance, puzzled, to listen and to honor her request, whatever it was.
She spoke in the slow measured tones of public testimony before witnesses. “Young Benitoe, hear me. With or without my dear Luhedoc, I am the mistress of my family in matters of relations and alliances. You have been of great service to me and I have a warm affection for you and interest in your life. You have lost your mother and your father and have been apprentice to your mother’s sister, a cold relationship, and so I judge you to have no aunt or other near relations.”
She lowered her hands and clasped each of her wrists with the opposite hand, binding her words.
“No man should be without family. I, Maëlys, would have you as my sister-son, by law and by custom, and not just by such nicknames as we use between us now. My hearth your hearth, my house your house, and my f
amily your family, for our lives and beyond.”
She grasped his open hands and pulled him forward, capturing his gaze with her own. “What say you?”
Mesmerized by her intensity, Benitoe nodded, without stopping to think about it rationally. She smiled radiantly and released him, and he stumbled back and sat down hard. This was an old custom indeed, and rare, an adoption into a clan, what they called a rebirth. Her words echoed through him, back and forth and back again. Something stiff and very old broke inside him, and he turned his face away while tears ran down it, silently.
She draped her heavy red cloak over him without speaking and patted his shoulder. Then she went to clean up the cookware and bank the fire for the evening.
Gwyn sat at his desk at the back of the council room in Greenway Court, alone. The two lamps on the desk and the remains of the fire were all the light he needed to stir a finger through the opened dispatches in front of him.
He knew he hadn’t fooled Idris any, but his marshal respected his judgment and didn’t push for the news, assuming Gwyn would tell him if immediate action was needed. Sitting through dinner with Rhian and Angharad had been intolerable. He’d tried to hold trivial conversations with the seatmates on his left instead, leaving the two of them to chat quietly together.
When he’d opened the courier bag the guards brought him late in the day, he’d checked for Rhys’s handwriting, as usual, and was surprised not to see any messages from him. Then he turned to Edern’s dispatches to read them first, as he usually did.
Over the centuries the brothers had grown ever closer together and developed a sympathy with each other that let them communicate in writing clearly, without misunderstandings. They would always be rather different people, but Gwyn thought their bond, slowly formed, was likely to last the remainder of their lives.
He smoothed out Edern’s dispatch, marred where he had crumpled it in his fist as he digested the news of Rhys’s capture. It comforted him to try and flatten it out again, as if he could mitigate the disaster it announced by reducing the creases. He could feel Edern’s grief behind the simple factual narrative—it resonated with his own. He’d fostered Rhys for nine years. It would have been longer, but he well remembered the stubborn youth who wouldn’t be parted from his younger sister and who waited for her to turn five, old enough to come with him. Gwyn loved him fiercely, he’d seen him grow into manhood, so promising. In his first rule at Edgewood he was doing well, fulfilling that promise.
Gone, all gone. And probably in pain for whatever remained of his short life. His stomach clenched.
He raised his head at a quiet knock on the door. When he didn’t respond, Idris opened it, to see if anyone was there.
“Shall I go away, my lord?”
“No, stay. I have to tell someone, and you’re the easiest, old friend,” Gwyn said, pointing at a chair in front of the desk.
Idris closed the door behind him before coming over and sitting down. “What has happened?”
Gwyn took a deep breath and said it, all at once. Maybe that would make it easier, like ripping a bandage quickly off a wound. “Madog has taken Rhys. George is going to go after him. Alone.”
Idris nodded, as if he’d expected something like this. He reached out his hand. “May I?”
Gwyn gave him Edern’s wrinkled dispatch and stared off into space.
After a minute, Idris lifted his eyes. “I am sorry to read this, my lord. He’s not very clear about what they intend to do.”
“No. I imagine that was as hard for him to write as it is for us to read.” He cleared his throat. “I have a thorough account of their plans from Ceridwen.”
He gave the multi-page document to Idris, and rose from his chair to pace while he read it.
“Well, that’s more understandable, but I don’t like it, my lord. George doesn’t stand a chance, much as I hate to say it.”
“Oh, I think he can get to the general area of Madog’s court, but how can one man alone do anything there?” Gwyn said. “I think they’ve sent my great-grandson to his death pointlessly, after my foster-son who’s probably already dead.”
“No, my lord, there I can’t agree. Rhys would be an excellent hostage, and that’s the right thing to fear. Madog would find him more valuable alive than dead.”
“This is the man who killed his parents rather than keep them as hostages, remember.”
“Yes, so we think, but we don’t know what actually happened. It can’t be easy, this business of trap ways and triggers. Maybe something went wrong.”
Gwyn grunted noncommittally. Idris was right but he thought it a slim hope.
“I am sorry, though, about the huntsman,” Idris said. “Madog must hate him personally. If he is captured…”
“Yes,” Gwyn said shortly. There was little to say about it. “I have two messages from Rhodri. The first talks about diplomacy with this Seething Magma, this rock-wight you told me about. You can read that later. But in this one,” he handed it to Idris, “he describes his work with George and the capture of Rhys, which he witnessed. It’s clear they’re not sending George. The problem is they can’t stop him.”
Idris read the document and put it down. “Well, you know how stubborn he could be.”
Gwyn noted his unconscious use of the past tense and clenched his jaw. He’s not dead yet, he wanted to shout. Neither of them are.
“Advise me. Is there anything we can do from here?”
“I can’t think of much. We can’t cross the ridge though it may be true that George can. By now he’ll have sealed the Archer’s Way from the other side. I can’t send anyone in to check that without him, but we’ll know in the morning if the Edgewood Way is reopened, and that will give us options for reinforcing them if there’s some sort of attack.”
“But you don’t think that likely,” Gwyn probed.
“No. I think all the action will be in Madog’s home ground, where we can’t reach.”
Gwyn raged with frustration. His great-grandson hadn’t left yet, wasn’t due to leave until the morning, but there was nothing he could do to prevent it. Assuming he truly wanted to—he admitted the forlorn hope of a rescue for Rhys, however unlikely, was compelling. There were no good choices.
“I can’t bear just standing by, watching,” he said. “But what else can I do?”
“You can be a rock for Rhian and Angharad,” Idris said, quietly. “A source of hope.”
Gwyn’s shoulders sagged. “I haven’t told them, yet. Let them sleep one more night in peace. I’ll wait for the updates in tomorrow’s packet. Then I’ll know for sure that George has gone.”
CHAPTER 16
As the sky began to lighten to the east, behind a veil of thick low clouds, George stood in the snow and looked at the exit of the intrusive way, west of the manor. Rhodri and Edern kept him company, with Seething Magma.
It was still closed, his seal undisturbed. He thought about where the end might come out. Underground, Mag said. Maybe there were guards there, unprepared this early in the morning.
The last time he destroyed the way that was standing here he’d simply unmade it, letting the world around it override the unnatural displacement. This time he wanted to use it as a weapon, if he could. He’d hardly slept all night, in rage and anguish about Rhys. One of the things that had occupied his mind was how to make the collapsing of the ways an attack.
He couldn’t just pick it up, the way he did Mag’s little non-traveling way in the river meadow. The other end was far away and he didn’t fully own it. But destruction was easier than fine control, and that he could do.
“Alright,” he said aloud. “I’m going to try and shut it down with violence at the far end, if I can.”
He thought if he held the near end shut and collapsed it progressively, rather than all at once, he might build up a strong wind at the other end as all the air in the passage was forced out in one direction. He visualized it as a flexible tube of toothpaste, ignoring the banality of the image in favor of i
ts familiarity. He removed the cap at the far end from his mental picture. The near end was already closed. He brought his right fist down in the real world, as well as his inner one, and shoved it away from him, squeezing the tube flat on an imaginary surface as hard and as quickly as he could.
There was a visible pucker in the air in front of him and the way collapsed. It seemed to him that the energy created by that had been successfully channeled in one direction, but there was no way to verify it.
He turned and they walked in silence to the Edgewood Way, a matter of a couple of hundred yards past the front of the manor. Rhodri clearly wanted to talk about what he’d done, but George let his expression discourage the attempt.
He looked at the scene of yesterday’s disaster without comment. Then he placed himself several yards back from the entrance. He grinned mirthlessly at his audience. “You might want to move off to the side,” he said. “That last one was fun, but I have some ideas on how to maybe improve it. Might be dangerous.”
The way passages weren’t typically very long, however much distance the way actually traveled. George thought the collapsing process, accelerated, gave him plenty of force to play with, but what he needed was more ammunition than the limited amount of air in the passage provided.
What he’d wondered, in the dark hours of the night, was whether he might be able to control the collapse, to start the process, let the near end lose its integrity so that it would be open to the air, and pulse the air from outside through the progressively compressing tube over and over until the whole thing died. He’d visualized the gestures his two hands might make on an imaginary tube, pumping it from the near end without squeezing it tight.
“Rhodri, I’ll need to reach through the Edgewood Way to do this.”