“Oh,” said Leo again. That was a first.
“And then I begged for her help and loaded her down with enough work on the new tax system to keep five clever people busy. What your mother wants second most in the world is to feel useful.”
Leo felt that witless smile on his face. The one he usually ended up with when he came to Savine with a problem, then found she’d solved it weeks ago. With her on his side, how could he fail? “What the hell would I do without you?” he murmured.
“Luckily for you…” And she touched him firmly on the thigh with her riding crop and caused a pleasurable stirring in his trousers. “It is not a problem you will ever have to face.”
And they rode from the trees into the open.
He gave a delighted laugh to see the gates of Uffrith, dappled sunlight shifting on its lichen-spattered walls. He remembered how it had felt the first time he came here, as a boy—the excitement, the romance, the freedom—to be in the North, the land of heroes!
He spurred on, through a cluster of new huts and houses, leaving Antaup and Jin and the rest behind with the carriage and the wagons. Savine kept pace with him, through the gates and clattering down the cobbled way beyond, the dirty-faced people in their colourless clothes gazing up in wonder as they passed. A lot had changed. New buildings where Stour Nightfall burned the old ones, maybe. Grander buildings, stone and slate rather than wood and wattle.
“Good old Uffrith!” He took a long breath of that familiar air. Sheep, dung, woodsmoke and sea salt, but sweet with happy memories for him. “I spent the best years of my childhood here. I know every alley of the place!”
“That wouldn’t be too difficult.” Savine gave a scornful little laugh. “I thought you said this was one of the North’s greatest cities?”
“It is.”
He had to admit, seeing it fresh through her eyes, used to the scale of Adua and the pomp of the Agriont, it looked a mean, poor, primitive place. For some reason, that nettled him. “Things might not be so grand here as in Midderland, but they’re honest,” he snapped. “They’re good people. They have a code and they stick to it. They’re great fighters. Brought up with swords in their hands. Rikke will be a staunch ally. She’s one of the warmest, truest, most straightforward people I know!”
Savine looked calmly away from him. “Perhaps you should have married her.”
They rode on in silence.
Leo knew the pattern of the crooked rafters in the Dogman’s hall by heart. Remembered climbing among the carved animals, trees and faces, squatting in the shadows, watching the Dogman argue with his Named Men below. The bench with the worn black sheepskin was still there, where the old chieftain used to listen to his people’s complaints, pointed chin propped on one fist. The firepit still glowed, ripples of red and orange rustling through the embers, the heat pressing on Leo’s face as he came close.
But there’d been changes. The hall had always bustled with life in the Dogman’s day. Now there was a brittle silence which made Leo feel guilty over his every footstep. At this time, in this season, the shutters should’ve been wide open and the sea breeze washing in. Now hides were hung in the windows, painted with circles of runes, sinking the hall into gloom. There was a new smell, sweet and strange and sharp, like burned cakes. There were skulls on the wall in a shadowy herd. Horned and antlered skulls of ram and bull and stag and great animals he didn’t know. Animals of the utmost North, maybe, where the sun doesn’t shine and the world blurs into myth.
“Leo! Savine! I’ve missed you.” And Rikke swaggered from the shadows, arms spread wide, dangling with bracelets and thongs and charms, into the shaft of light from the smoke-hole.
Leo almost shrank back in shock. There was a great dark stain across her face. A tattoo, black runes, black lines, black arrows in a crescent from her cheek, covering one side of her forehead, to the bridge of her nose. Her right eye was turned white with just a milky pinprick in the centre, while the hungry pupil of the left had swallowed the whole iris, yawning like a grave-pit.
“Ah.” She waved a hand in front of her face. It used to be round, soft. Now it was all sharp ridges and shadowy hollows. “All this? I forget.” She tapped at her skull with one long finger, the hair on the left all clipped back short while on the right it was grown to wild tufts and tangles. “Can’t see it from in here, but I’ve heard it said the tattoos and the eyes and all can be… off-putting.”
“Not at all,” croaked Leo. “Just… unexpected.”
The gold ring through her nose shifted as she smiled. He didn’t know the words for that smile, but warm, true and straightforward weren’t the ones. “You remember I used to have fits? Leo remembers, I reckon.” And she winked at him. She’d had one the first time they’d lain together, after all, both stark naked in a hay pile. “This is the cure.”
“The cure?”
Rikke stuck her fingertip in her milky right eye. “This eye fought the other, so it had to go. My visions come much cleaner now.” She leaned close and muttered it out of the corner of her mouth, “Don’t shit myself no more neither. And I’m still me!” She punched him on the arm. Good-natured, but hard. “More or less.”
“Could I look closer?” asked Savine, stepping towards her, not put off in the least. “I have seen a very great number of painted faces, but never such fine work.” And she put a finger under Rikke’s chin and tipped her face gently into the light. “I think it’s beautiful.” And she traced the lines of the tattoo with her fingertips. “It could not be more… you.”
Rikke gave a delighted laugh. Reminded Leo, just for a moment, of how she used to be. “Oh, I like your wife, Leo. Best thing about you, I reckon! You kept the runes, I see.”
“They feel like good luck.” Savine touched the little wooden tablets she wore around her neck. “And you kept the emeralds.”
“They feel like high value,” said Rikke, pulling them up with her crooked little finger so they cut white into her long, lean throat.
“I have another gift for you,” and Savine waved Zuri from the shadows, a length of cloth over her arm, a vivid red that seemed almost to shine in the muddy grey hall, golden stitching gleaming in the hem. “This is Zuri, my companion.”
“Is it?” Rikke narrowed her eyes, then slid them, sly as a cat, towards Savine. “Sure you aren’t hers?”
“I have heard it said God puts us all where we are meant to be,” said Zuri.
“Wouldn’t know,” said Rikke. “We don’t see much of Him up here.” She took the cloth and shook it out with a snap, holding it up to the light. “Oooooooh, you give the best presents!”
“Suljuk silk,” said Savine, “from beyond the Thousand Isles. I thought perhaps you could make a dress from it, or a hanging, or…”
Rikke was already wrapping it around herself, ending up with something between a scarf, a cloak and a hood.
Zuri cocked her head on one side. “That works.”
“I love it.” Rikke smiled as she rubbed her cheek against the shining fabric. “And I see you’ve got a gift for Leo, too.” She dropped down on her knees, staring at Savine’s belly. “Can I feel?”
“Well, I suppose—”
Rikke slid her arms around Savine and pressed her tattooed cheek into her stomach, making her gasp.
Savine stared at Leo, but all he could do was shrug.
“Oh,” crooned Rikke, eyes closed as she snuggled in tight. “I’d expect something special from the two of you but this… this will change the world.”
“Where’s your friend Isern-i-Phail?” asked Leo. “And Caul Shivers? I swear you’re the only person in the world he likes.”
“I sent ’em off to make new friends. The Protectorate’s small. We need every friend we can get.”
“You should’ve come to us.”
“I knew you’d be coming to me.”
Leo tried to smile, but it wasn’t easy. Every time he saw a hint of that gangly girl he’d played hide and seek with in this very hall, she’d flash that sly smi
le, and turn that strange left eye on him, and he’d feel as if she was looking right into him. Right through him. The woman he’d known was vanished, sure as her father, and he was shocked at how much he missed them.
Savine, meanwhile, gnawed at her meat, lips and fingers shiny with grease, a pile of stripped bones on the table in front of her. “She might look like a doll,” murmured Rikke in Northern, “but she eats like a warrior.”
Leo laughed. “Something I should know about?” asked Savine.
“She… wonders if you want a fork.”
“When I was in Valbeck I ate with my fingers.” Savine ripped some gristle from her meat with her teeth and spat it into the firepit as neatly as any Named Man. “When I ate at all. I came to the North to see how things are done here. Not to do things my way regardless.”
“Very open-minded,” said Rikke. “But you didn’t come here to improve your table manners. The two o’ you are after something or my name’s not Sticky Rikke.”
Savine’s raised brow told Leo it was time to get to business. “You’re right. I wanted to see Uffrith, and I wanted to see you, but you’re right. I need your help, Rikke.”
“Naught my father wouldn’t have done for an old friend. And we go way back, eh? Used to wrestle on this very floor, didn’t we? What do you need?”
“Your father’s warriors. Your warriors, I mean.”
“Who are we fighting?”
“I hope they won’t have to fight.”
“But we both know hopes can turn out barren. You wouldn’t be asking for warriors if you didn’t have a fight in mind.”
Leo glanced towards Savine one last time, almost hoping she might give the faintest shake of her head, and they could forget the whole business. But she narrowed her eyes and gave the faintest nod instead.
“We’re fighting the Closed Council,” said Leo.
Rikke slowly eased back on her father’s bench, puffing out her hollow cheeks. “I know you like a scrap, Leo, but did you think of picking a smaller one?”
“Few of us get to pick our battles,” said Savine. “The battles pick us.”
“Maybe you should let this one pick someone else.”
“You saw what they were like in the war!” Leo sat forward angrily. “Promising everything. Giving nothing. The Union abandoned Uffrith. Abandoned your father. Abandoned you! But Angland never did. I never did.” He realised as he said it, sitting beside his new wife, that Rikke might see it differently, and he cleared his throat, and frowned down at the table.
“Calling in the favours, then,” she said. “Where’s your next stop, Young Lion?”
No point trying to trick her. She could always see right through him. And honesty can be a kind of weapon, too. “Carleon,” he said. “As you’ve no doubt guessed.”
“To beg for the Great Wolf’s help.” Rikke bared her teeth and snarled at him with sudden, shocking fury. “The man who burned half this city on a whim? Who promised to send my guts to my father in a box? Who killed my friends and yours? Who’d have killed you, if my Long Eye hadn’t seen it coming? Break what they love, he said. You’d have me link arms with my worst enemy?”
“Sometimes we must use one enemy to fight another,” said Savine.
Rikke curled back her lip and sucked a shred of meat from between her teeth. “Oh, you’re a clever one, Lady Brock. You could crawl through a keyhole, I reckon, even with a swollen belly. But last time we met it was on your ground. Up here, enemies aren’t so easily spun into friends.”
“Oh, I doubt the rules are so very different,” said Savine. “Uffrith needs protection. That is why it became a Protectorate. King Orso and his Closed Council have shown they will not help. Side with us, we can keep the balance between you and Nightfall. Turn us down, your time is already running out. It really is as simple as that.”
“So I risk everything, and in return I get what I’ve already got?” Rikke snorted. “And a scrap of red cloth, of course. You like making deals. If you were sat on my bench, what would you say to that one?”
“I would say it’s the best you’ll get,” said Savine. Leo winced. He’d come to ask for help from an old friend, but now his wife was turning the whole thing into a hard-headed bargain. One with more than a whiff of blackmail about it.
He held up his hands before things got any worse. “We’re friends! I risked my life for you. For Uffrith.” He grimaced as he shifted his leg. “I’ve got the scars. But I’d do the same again. I helped you against your enemies. I’m asking you to help me against mine.”
Savine sat back, sour, wiping her fingers on a cloth. Rikke sat back, sulky, hands on the bench behind her and her bony shoulders up around her ears. “You’re asking a lot, Leo. Of me and of my men. Don’t pretend you’re not. I need to think on it. Maybe the Long Eye’ll open in the night. Show me the answer.”
“I understand. It’s a big decision.” The uncomfortable silence stretched, and Leo looked down awkwardly at the floor. That was when he saw the Circle painted there, around the table where they ate. Five strides or so across. The same kind he fought Stour Nightfall in. The kind men of the North had been fighting in since before words were written. “What’s the Circle for?”
Rikke’s face slid into shadow, the gleam of one eye in the darkness. “Folk who don’t agree with me.”
New Friends
Rikke woke with a lurch, flinging off the furs like they were throttling her, thoughts chasing each other around her sweaty head. Took her a moment to remember where she was. Who she was.
She still wasn’t used to sleeping in her father’s bed. But it was likely the best bed in the North. Huge, even though he’d been small. Always said he wanted to keep rolling and never fall out. He’d had the frame carved by the best shipbuilder in Uffrith, monsters prowling over the wood, and bought the goose-feather mattress for its weight in silver off some Styrian merchant. Other than Rikke, it was probably the thing he was proudest of in the world. Broke his heart to leave it when Black Calder took the city, filled him with joy to find it in one piece when he came back. Always said he’d spent half his life sleeping on the dirt, so he’d sleep the other half in comfort’s pillowy embrace and make no apologies.
She still wasn’t used to sleeping in her father’s bed, but it made her feel close to him, even though he was gone. And when you’re left the best bed in the North, what should you do, sleep on the floor?
She swung her feet down and wriggled her bare toes into the cold boards, nodding to herself as all the pieces dropped into place in her mind. Might be she’d had a vision, might be she’d had a dream, might be she’d just had an idea, but whether you put it down to magic, luck or wits, she saw now what had to be done. Someone had to pick the course, after all. Wouldn’t be pleasant. Wouldn’t be easy.
“But easy is for the dead,” she whispered, and stood.
That morning had a feel of summer, chilly but bright, curved streaks of cloud high up against the blue like dragon’s ribs. Rikke shifted her chagga pellet from one side of her mouth to the other and drew that bright red cloth about her shoulders. It was quite a thing for some woven thread, so beautiful it made her feel beautiful, which was a rare feat these days. And who should be sitting on the bench in her father’s unkempt garden, watching the sunrise sparkle on the sea, but the one who gave it to her?
“Savine dan Brock herself!” said Rikke. “You’re up early.”
She seemed a different woman without all the powder and paint and costume. Younger and softer. More ordinary and more honest. Like a warrior without his mail, maybe. “No choice,” she said, laying her hands on her belly. “He, she or it seems intent on kicking me this morning.”
Rikke sat beside her. Watched the fishing boats rock on the waves while she gathered the courage to ask. “Can I feel?”
Savine considered her, eyes narrowed against the low sun, then she took Rikke’s hand and guided it to her stomach.
Rikke frowned. Waited. Frowned. A little knobbly pressure shifted under Savine’s
gown, then was gone. Just that, but Rikke found she was grinning like she’d seen High Art. “It moved!”
“That’s what it does.” Savine winced as she shifted on the bench. “That, and the moment I piss I need to piss again.”
“Sorry I was a sour host last night,” said Rikke. That came out a little sour itself. Her pride had been hard fought for and she didn’t like swallowing it, even if her father had always said pride buys nothing. “In Uffrith, we’re used to getting pushed from both sides. Being pushed brings out the worst in me.”
“Sorry I was a sour guest,” said Savine. “I am used to fixing on what I want then treading on whoever I must to get there. Where I come from, nice wins no prizes.”
Rikke slowly nodded. “Honestly, it’s much the same here.”
“I should have told you how sorry I am about your father. Leo has spoken of him so often I almost feel I knew him. He was distraught… when the news came.”
“Aye.” And Rikke frowned towards her father’s grave, half-hidden by the overgrown bushes. She was making even less progress on the gardening than he had. “He’s always had a big heart, Leo.”
Savine leaned close to murmur, “He could use his heart less, I sometimes think, and his head more.”
“Why would he need his head when he’s got you? I mean, he might come up with an idea you don’t like.”
“Fair point.”
“And your father? What’ll he feel about what you’re planning?”
“My father.” Savine’s face turned stony. “You suppose he has feelings. He always told me that to change the world you must first burn it down.”
“He’d get on with my friend Isern, I reckon. She always says you must make of your heart a stone.”
“Sound advice. I very much admire what you have achieved here, you know. It cannot be easy for a woman to take charge.”
The Trouble with Peace Page 28