“Thank you,” he told Cam.
“No need,” Wee Cameron said, striking the hot iron so that sparks flew. “Be on your way. If you need my help, you know where to find me.”
* * *
Part 1: Portent
Chapter 1: Survivors
The road was wet from spring rain, but gravel and mountain rock kept the wagon wheels from miring. Sitting on the back with her legs dangling off, Maggie Sheffield held the rails as the cart bounced and rumbled down a steep mountain slope toward the outcrop-strewn village of Morvo. Beside her, Virginia Ramsey rode with her usual placid expression, holding a plaid woolen cloak of grey and green around her shoulders.
They leaned on the tarp-swathed cargo behind them: housewares and tools from the nearly abandoned city of Pravik and a few well-protected precious stones from the Darkworld. The Ploughman hoped to earn enough food from the jewels to feed his people for the summer.
But it all depended, as Maggie well knew, on how they were received.
The road stretched back up the slope behind them, the earth dark with rain, bright green trees bending over it, rock erupting along its borders. Maggie hummed to herself as the wagon strained down the slope, a song picked up from the mountain air and the budding trees, woven into sound by her own peculiar Gift. Virginia smiled.
“A cheerful melody,” she said.
“Spring songs are,” Maggie answered. “At least, so it has seemed to me since I began singing.”
“And what have you learned of the other seasons?” Virginia asked.
Maggie considered. It had been two and a half years since her Gift of song first manifested itself, restoring a burning room and driving away the power of the Blackness. It had never shown so dramatically again. But she had been learning the Gift, slowly, honing her skill month by month. “That winter is expectant,” Maggie said, “summer drowsy. And fall melancholy.”
“Protesting winter?” Virginia asked.
“Perhaps,” Maggie said. “But needlessly, I think. Winter doesn’t wallow in itself. It looks ahead to spring.”
The wagon drove over a deep pothole in the road, and Maggie laughed as she grabbed more firmly hold of the rails. Virginia seemed unshaken. It wasn’t easy to jar the blind Seer of Pravik.
“When did you first know you were Gifted?” Maggie asked.
A shade of trouble passed over Virginia’s face. “I was a child,” she said. “My visions began to come not long after I lost the last of my eyesight.”
Maggie regarded her companion curiously. “I thought you were born blind.”
“Nearly,” Virginia said. “I lived in a world of shadows and shapes for a time. I could see the sun, and the openness of sky. But the world faded away. I was seven when it all went dark for the last time.”
“So young,” Maggie said. “And then you began to see?”
Virginia nodded. “Some things.” She smiled wryly. “It did not make people love me.”
A masculine voice called from the front of the wagon, “Nearly there!”
“I thought as much,” Virginia said. “There has been smoke lingering in the air for some way now.”
Maggie shook her head at Virginia’s sharp perceptions. She held the rail tightly as she stood in the rattling wagon and looked over the pile of cargo to the village below. Morvo was one of the larger towns in the mountains of Slojzca, sitting in the bottom of a small valley, its houses and craftsmen’s shops built of stone and shingled with slate. Outcroppings of rock were scattered through the village, and the human habitations were built all around them.
“There it lies,” said the Ploughman. “Our best hope for trade in these parts, I think.”
The Ploughman rode at the front of the wagon, head and shoulders taller than the driver, his hood thrown back from a handsome face and thick dark hair. He wore his usual dark cloak, and Maggie knew he carried a sword beneath it. But he would not show the sword, only his staff and his wares, as the man who led the only free city in the Empire came to trade with his neighbours like a common peddler.
It was the Ploughman’s willingness to sell housewares as readily as lead an army that made him beloved among the few hundred rebels who now lived in the city of Pravik. After five hundred years under the rule of a tyrannical dynasty, the Seventh World needed a ruler like him.
Until the King comes, Maggie thought. She hadn’t missed the strain in the Ploughman’s voice. The battles in Pravik and Athrom two years before, won at least in part because of the manifestation of the Ploughman’s warrior Gift, had freed Pravik from the Empire’s rule and transformed the former militia leader and landlord into a folk hero, a legend, and the administrator of a city that was now only barely surviving. Hopes had been high after the battles: the impossible wins had given everyone hope. But hope was wearing thin now, as the realities of hostile neighbours, little food, and their tenuous position under the Empire set in and dragged on. Two years was a long time to hang onto hopes that were not now, despite Maggie’s songs and Virginia’s sight, bearing themselves out.
As the road leveled out, Maggie heard cows lowing, voices, the rattle of trade and craft and hooves on gravel. The smells of smoke, manure, and beer filled the air. She glanced down at Virginia, still sitting calmly with one hand holding the rails, and then looked ahead to the greeting that might await them.
The wagon splashed through a puddle. A knot was forming in her stomach. Morvo was their best hope for trade—and perhaps their last. Five other villages and towns had refused to trade with them in as many journeys. None wanted to risk the emperor’s enmity. It seemed that all who cared enough about freedom in the Seventh World to support Pravik had already come to the Ploughman—and now they all had to be fed.
The wagon rolled past the outskirts and into the town. Heads turned to watch them come; eyes followed them. Here and there a craftsman left his work and followed the wagon toward the town square.
They creaked to a stop. The Ploughman jumped down and swept the gathering spectators with his eyes before turning and offering his hand to Virginia, then to Maggie. The street was soft and dappled with puddles of water. The air smelled strongly of stables nearby.
“Good people!” the Ploughman said. “We bring greetings from Pravik—and wares to trade.” He took hold of one of the grey tarps, cut the ropes that bound it, and pulled it back with a flourish. Brass lamps glinted dully amidst wooden furniture, iron tools, rolls of cloth. Libuse and her team of women had spent days going through the spoils left in the city by those who had fled after the Battle of Pravik two and a half years earlier, cleaning, polishing, and setting aside what looked to be the best of it all. A crate of books peeked out from beneath a raft of shirts tied with twine, taken from the old university of Pravik to tempt scholars among the townspeople. Not, Maggie thought, that they were likely to find many.
A broad-shouldered man stepped out from the shadow of the blacksmith’s shop and spat in the mud. “We want nothing of your devilry here,” he said.
The Ploughman plucked a solid hammer out of the wagon and held it out to the man. “Hardly devilry,” he said. “A fine piece of work, likely to be of use to you. We ask only fair price—in food, nothing more.”
“Winter’s hardly past,” the broad-shouldered man said, but he took a step forward to look at the hammer despite himself. “What food do you think we have?”
“Enough to trade with a hungry neighbour,” the Ploughman said. His voice sounded weary in Maggie’s ears. She wanted to smile encouragement at him but found she could not. He turned. “Maggie, if you would—the bundles of wool. Take them to the weaver. And the clothing to the dress shop, if you can find one.”
“She’ll find one,” the belligerent man said, suddenly snatching the hammer from the Ploughman’s outstretched hands and testing its weight in the air. “Morvo is no backwater hamlet.”
Maggie followed the man’s short nod to the likely end of the street with her eyes, then pulled two carefully wrapped bundles of wool, each the siz
e of a barrel, from the wagon. She handed them to Virginia, who slung one over her back expertly and held the other before her. Maggie drew the the bundle of shirts and another of dresses away from the book crate, and with a sigh, she left the Ploughman to reason or haggle with the men over tools.
After the battle, inhabitants of Pravik who did not side with the Ploughman had left the city. They had taken food with them, but little else. The Ploughman’s people had left the ghostly households alone for nearly two and a half years. But things were becoming desperate now. The second victory, in Athrom, had cast the fear of the Ploughman into the world, but men do not trade with those they fear. The forested slopes and rocky crags around Pravik could not be planted, and the Ploughman feared attack if his people were scattered too far from the city to plough and sow and reap. The stores of food they had brought with them had run out; they were surviving on the little they could scrape together from the river and the forests now.
Maggie knew for herself how bad things were getting. She could feel it in the ache of her stomach, in the inches she had removed from the waistlines of her skirts. She could see it in the gaunt faces of the others. The dream of Pravik had survived betrayal, battle, and burial. But it could not survive starvation.
With her arms full, she trusted Virginia to listen to her steps and follow by her own sharp senses without touch to guide her. Maggie stepped around puddles and warned Virginia when one was coming up. People moved out their way.
Maggie scanned the street for the dress shop. The thud of wooden shutters slamming against stone walls drew her attention, and forgetting momentarily about Virginia, she clutched her bundles more tightly and ran across the street where the dressmaker was just closing up the last window of her shop.
“No, please,” Maggie panted, holding out her bundles of cloth. “It’s good cloth, and good workmanship. Please, just look.”
The woman turned such a scowl on Maggie that she took an involuntary step backward. “We don’t buy from troublemakers,” she snapped. “Least of all them which turn the world upside down and steal from good people. My daughter lived happy and pretty in Pravik until you came along!”
Maggie looked about for help and noticed Virginia slowly crossing the street. “Here,” she called, and Virginia picked up her pace. “I don’t blame you for being angry,” Maggie said. “But we didn’t force anyone to leave Pravik. It was the emperor who declared it a battleground, and all that time, we had to hide too—and we left everything alone until now, in case anyone wanted to come back for it.”
Virginia’s soft voice joined Maggie’s. “The cloth might have rotted had we left it longer,” she said. “It seemed a shame to waste what good merchants such as yourself could put to use. And we are hungry. We come appealing to you as women—to your business sense, and to your mercy.”
Maggie simply nodded. The woman kept scowling, but something in her face softened as she looked at Virginia, who, with her pretty face, unfocused eyes, plaid cloak, and bundles of wool, looked every inch a hard-working, hard-done-by peasant. To a woman who had probably raised daughters with a mind to protecting them from begging and hunger, Virginia’s appeal could not be easy to deny. The woman released the cord she was pulling and let the wooden cover spring back up, opening the main shop window.
Maggie chuckled inside herself. If this woman had any idea that she was speaking to the fabled Seer of Pravik, whose visions had launched the battle in Athrom and mysteriously affected the earlier one in Pravik, she would likely have closed the window and barred herself up inside the shop. As it was, the scowling dressmaker looked both ways, glared at a few of the townspeople watching her, and motioned for Maggie and Virginia to come inside.
Inside damp stone walls, the dress shop was a riot of colours, thread, and cloth. The air was close, almost fuzzy from the motes of thread drifting in it. A cutting table lay along one end of the shop, and the scowling dressmaker led them to it.
“Now then,” she told Maggie. “Lay out your wares and let’s have a look. But I’m not promising anything, do you hear?”
Maggie smiled in response. She laid the bundles down and untied the twine from around the dresses, spreading them out on the table. The dressmaker looked them over quickly and fingered a few of the finer garments. She grunted. “Not entirely without worth,” she said. “You’d not get silver for them.”
“We only ask bread,” Virginia said.
The dressmaker looked Virginia over again, and her eyes narrowed. “Where are you selling that wool?”
“We thought it might interest the weaver,” Maggie said.
“It interests me,” the woman snapped.
Scenting competition, Maggie smiled. “It’s good wool. But perhaps the weaver would have more to pay for it?”
“Don’t get smart with me, girl,” the dressmaker said. “You’re lucky I even let you in.” Her voice lowered dramatically. “If our magistrate wasn’t out on a hunt, you’d be run out—or hung in the square. If you’re smart you’ll not be coming back here.”
“The King protects us,” Virginia said.
The woman shot her another sharp look. Virginia didn’t react, her eyes unfocused as usual.
“It’s talk like that makes you the enemy,” the dressmaker said. “The King, the Blackness, ancient covenants… we were all better off before you came with your hateful stories.”
“What happened in Pravik and Athrom was real,” Virginia said. Maggie could hear the strain in the blind girl’s voice—the pain that still lingered in her memories. The others had fought for their cause, but Virginia more than anyone had suffered for it. “The Blackness is no mere story. Nor is the King.”
The woman’s lip jutted a little as she pulled a floor-length silver gown off the table and held it up.
“Leave me the wool and this gown,” the woman said. “Take back the rest.”
“All of it?” Maggie said. “But surely these—”
“Do you think I don’t know quality in my own profession?” the woman snapped. “I said leave me the wool and this gown. I don’t want the rest of it.”
Maggie bit back further protest as she started to gather the dresses up again. Virginia had set down one bundle of wool and was unslinging the other from her back when a shout in the street drew all their attention. The shout sounded again. This time Maggie recognized her name.
Her heart sank. Not again.
The door banged open, and the Ploughman appeared in it. He gestured with his head. “We go,” he said.
“But—”
“We go,” he repeated. “Now.” Once again Maggie heard the weariness in his voice. “We haven’t much time.” Maggie reached for the bundle of dresses, but the Ploughman shook his head. “Leave it,” he said.
Maggie took Virginia’s hand and led her to the door. The dressmaker crowded after them. The streets were full now—men, mostly. At the head of the street stood a man in hunting garments whom Maggie took, with a further sinking of her heart, to be the newly returned magistrate of Morvo.
The driver was already waiting at the wagon—empty but for a few scraps of wood and cloth. The Ploughman’s face forbade questions. He helped Maggie and Virginia into the back, then climbed up next to the driver. The crowds did not move as the driver started the horse, and they wheeled around and began to drive back the way they had come. The Ploughman’s hand was on the hilt of his sword.
He did not draw it. They rode past the silent crowds, through the outskirts of the town, and back onto the road before he relaxed.
“What happened?” Maggie asked.
“They took everything,” the Ploughman said. “I am grateful we escaped with our lives.”
“But why?” Maggie burst out.
“They’ve had troubles,” the Ploughman said. “Not two months ago the magistrate’s son was killed by something in the forest. They blame us.”
“The Blackness,” Virginia said.
“Other villages have spoken of monsters newly dwelling in the woods,
” the Ploughman said. “But this is the first I’ve heard of a death.”
Maggie closed her eyes. She could still recall the images of the Blackness that had chased and haunted her when she first began to seek the truth about her world: the terrible death-hound, the giant raven, the hordes of creatures and terrifying warriors unleashed at the Battle of Pravik. Suddenly the stony faces of the townspeople made more sense. They were grieving. And afraid.
“But all our wares…” she said.
“There is more in the city,” the Ploughman said. “I only hope word does not get out to the towns that we are so easy to rob.”
The driver snorted, but they ignored him. After a moment he spoke up. “As if they don’t have enough. Lean winter, they said. They were well fed, and they’ve stores yet. Mark my words.”
The road began to slope steeply uphill, and the horse strained at the wagon. Maggie took hold of the side slats again to hold herself steady. Virginia did likewise with one hand.
The driver cleared his throat. “Forgive me, my lord, but they’re not the only ones who can wield swords and make threats. There’s a good lot of food in that town. We could take it by force.”
The Ploughman turned his head to stare at his driver. “Raid the village? Like bandits?”
The driver grimaced. “We raided the High Police often enough. We were bandits then, and we weren’t hungry.”
“We ate from our own farms, whatever the emperor hadn’t taxed away from us,” the Ploughman said. “We took weapons and supplies from the High Police to stop them destroying us. Those townspeople aren’t our oppressors.”
“They’ve left us with nothing but an empty wagon,” the driver argued, but he knew he had lost the fight.
“Not quite empty.” Virginia’s voice rose from behind them, and both men turned in surprise.
“The dressmaker,” she said. “She paid for the wool. Five loaves of bread and a bottle of wine.”
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