Blood Ties (29 page)

Gorham was in Pless at a council meeting. Bramble thought she would pack, then ride into town to say goodbye. She took her store of silver — mostly from winning chases — and the three horses she was working with at the time, Mud, Campanile and Trine.

Mud was a bay pony who had figured out early that he was much stronger than any human who tried to boss him around. He didn’t bite or kick, just refused to cooperate with saddling and unsaddling by leaning his whole weight against you, or by sitting down on his haunches. His former owner had gelded him, but it hadn’t made any difference to his temperament. After a month with Bramble he was grudgingly letting her do up the girths, and he would follow her if she was riding another horse. She used him as a packhorse.

Campanile (stupid name, thought Bramble, and called her Cam) was a flighty chestnut ex-chaser who’d been mistreated as a youngster and was terrified of the whip and even of the reins, if she saw them out of the corner of her eye. Bramble didn’t even possess a whip and rode her without reins, as she had the roan. Six weeks after taking her on, Cam was tractable and even eager to be ridden, as long as the rider was Bramble. Given another six weeks she’d have been ready for the reins, and another rider, but Bramble figured she could train her on the road and sell her if she needed extra silver.

Trine was a bad-tempered, intelligent black who’d been sold to Bramble cheap because her rider had fallen to his death from her during a stag hunt. The horse had been labeled a killer. And it was possible she was — she certainly despised humans. She took every chance to nip and bite, and Bramble had clouted her on the nose each time, aware that, as Gorham had taught her, horses were herd animals and she had to establish that she was one of the older females who would have dished out punishment in the wild.

Gorham had found Trine for her only two weeks ago, in an attempt to spark her interest in riding again. Bramble’s combination of discipline and loving care was just beginning to have an effect. Of all the horses she had trained, Trine was the most cross-grained and would take the longest to gentle. Bramble liked her.

Gorham arrived as she was settling the packs on Mud. He stood for a moment, taking it in, then silently helped her finish.

“Where are you going?” Gorham asked.

“Do you know where the Well of Secrets is these days?”

“Up north, I heard, in the Last Domain. You heading that way, then?”

Bramble stilled her hands against Mud’s sides, spreading her fingers out to feel the warmth. It was a clear day, autumn just making itself felt.

“It’s a bad time of year to be traveling north,” Gorham said. “Winter comes early up there. I’d be heading for Mitchen, myself, or even Carlion, until after winter. Besides, you’d have to go through the Lake Domain.”

“So?”

“The council’s worried that war’s coming between Central and Lake. Thegan’s looking north, they say. Maybe you’d be best off taking the long way round, by the coast.”

She smiled at him, warmed that he was not trying to persuade her to stay. The boy from the town who turned up every afternoon had been pestering Gorham for months to take him on as an apprentice, and he’d shown that he had a way with the young ones. She wouldn’t be leaving Gorham all on his own. Still, he could easily have taken it amiss, she thought, that she was just up and leaving.

As though he read her mind, he smoothed down the pack and said a little regretfully, “It’s been too long since I was on the Road myself.”

“Maybe I will make for Carlion,” she said. “That’s good advice. Thanks.”

They’d worked together long enough for him to hear all the other thanks in her voice, and the affectionate goodbye that neither of them was comfortable speaking.

“Wind at your back,” he said as she jumped lightly onto Cam’s back. The Travelers’ goodbye.

“Fire in your hearth,” she said in return, the Travelers’ goodbye to those settled in towns, and he winced, but tried to smile at her in farewell.

She paused at the gate.

She could imagine walking into Maryrose’s kitchen, into her welcome. She missed her more now than any time in the last few years and longed to be safe under Maryrose’s loving, intelligent stare. Under that stare she felt herself to be just ordinary. Maybe the demon was right, and she would never love any man, but didn’t the fact that she loved Maryrose count for something?

The road north led through Sendat, and in Sendat were Thegan, whom she had no wish to meet again, and Leof. Leof. She hadn’t thought of him in a very long time, and there was no use thinking about him now. He lived by cold steel and blood, and she wanted nothing to do with him. She definitely didn’t want to face the pain she had seen in his eyes. And Thegan, she was sure, even after that one brief meeting, was not to be trusted. It would be foolish to ride straight into his territory, especially with these rumors of war with the Lake People.

Half a mile down the road she stopped. Her stomach was churning. Taking this route, she was doing it again, ignoring her instincts. She needed more than Maryrose’s hugs and scoldings. She needed more than anyone normal could give her. Forgiveness. She turned the horses north and immediately she felt better.

At last she was back on the Road. A wood pigeon lifted into the air nearby with that distinctive
slap slap slap
of wings, and her heart lifted with it. There was no sun on her back on this cloudy day, but she didn’t care.
The Road is long and the end is death
, she said to herself, remembering one of her grandfather’s sayings.
If we’re lucky
.

Ash

H
E WAS
standing by the window keeping watch, knowing what he would have to do if Doronit sent Hildie or Aylmer back to kill Martine. Fight one friend to save another.

“I must leave,” Martine said to Ash. “Doronit won’t try to be subtle next time — it will be a quick knife as I walk past in the street.”

She went to a cupboard and took out paper, brush and an ink block, then sat before the fire to write.

“I’m leaving instructions for my man of business to sell this house and keep the monies safe for me until I send for them,” she said, concentrating on the paper.

Ash waited, silently. What could he do? He couldn’t go back to Doronit’s, not even to pick up his clothes. She would kill him as soon as look at him, he knew. All he had was what he stood up in and the few coins in his pouch. And Acton’s brooch. He went over to the mantelpiece to look at it. It glowed in the firelight, larger than life. It seemed more important than he remembered. More alive than he was. It was warm to the touch, but he felt cold, his stomach like lead.

Martine finished writing and waved the letter in the air to dry it. “Call a messenger, Ash, and we’ll send this off.” The
we
was automatic, and it warmed him a little. He knew he could ask Martine for advice.

He opened the door and gave three sharp whistles to summon a messenger. The rain had stopped for a while, though the sky was green and threatened a storm. Even on a day like this, there were three children who appeared out of nowhere, jostling in the doorway to be the one who took the message. Martine chose the oldest of them, a thin blond girl.

“Here,” she said, handing over the letter, “take this to the House of Surety for me. It’s next to the Guildhouse. Get their stamp and I will pay you a penny.”

“Yes, marm,” the girl answered, and then ran up the street. She must have been hungry to run that fast.

Ash latched the door behind her. Martine looked at him carefully.

“I must pack what I can carry,” she said. “Back on the Road, when I had thought I’d left it behind me forever. I should have cast my own future that day, not Ranny’s.” She laughed without humor. “So. I must take the Road, Ash.” She paused. “I would welcome the company of a trained safeguarder.”

His heart seemed to grow larger, enough to hurt his ribs. “I have no money,” he said. “I’d be a burden to you. I’ll probably never be able to repay you.”

“Well, come to that, I think you just saved my life, so maybe the talk of repaying should be on my side.”

He shook his head firmly.

“No . . .” she agreed, “maybe you and I should not talk of debts and repayment. But it is true I would welcome your company, and I have enough to pay for both of us — at least until we get where I think I need to go.”

Ash was too relieved and grateful to even ask where that was. She smiled at him and disappeared upstairs. He sat down by the fire. He couldn’t think; he just stared at the flames and let their warmth enter his cold bones. Later he would think about Doronit. Had he betrayed her or had she betrayed him? He wasn’t quite sure. All he knew was that she had meant to use him as a tool, like she used the ghosts and the wind wraiths. He would not be a tool. He was sure of that, too. The storm outside began in earnest: lightning, thunder and then an avalanche of rain.

In the middle of it there was a bang on the door. He reacted as a safeguarder, springing up then putting his back to the wall behind the door as Martine came in from the kitchen to open it. She sighed at the knife in his hand. He hadn’t even realized that he’d drawn it. But it could easily be Doronit or Hildie, or any of the others out there. He realized that he was ready to kill any of them instantly. It appalled him, but the determination was there, unflinching: he would kill them all before he let them kill Martine or him.

It was the messenger. She came in, drenched and crying, and held out her hand. “I had the stamp, honest, marm. He took the letter, honest. But the rain washed it off.”

Martine looked at the hand and then at Ash. If there had been a stamp, it was gone now. “Never mind, child, I’ll have to trust you.”

The girl’s face lightened.

“Come,” Martine said. “I’m leaving today. I’ve packed what food we can carry. You and your friends can have the rest. Ash, would you bring the bag from the upper room, please?”

She took the girl into the kitchen and he went slowly up the stairs, thinking about what had just happened. He had broken from Doronit, but what she had expected from him — the cynicism and control and violence — were part of him now. They would, he suspected, be part of him forever. He
was
a safeguarder.

While a small part of him mourned the boy who had not known how to slit a man’s throat or strangle someone with a scarf, most of him felt stronger. At least he had a real trade — the skills were valuable, if harnessed with his own conscience. Perhaps he could get work in another town, somewhere a long way away, where Doronit’s influence could not reach him. As he brought down the large backpack from the bedroom, his step was surer and his heart beat more strongly. He smiled at Martine as she came out of the kitchen with another bag packed full. She was followed by the girl, carrying a box stuffed full of vegetables and bags of flour and other things he couldn’t see.

“Thanks, marm, thanks, marm . . .” she kept saying.

“She lives across the street,” Martine said to him. “Make sure she gets there with her booty?”

So he went across the street, the rain hitting his skin so hard it stung, and made sure the other children lurking in the doorways didn’t rob the girl of her reward. It was a small door in an unpainted house that was much poorer-looking than its neighbors.

“Thanks to you, too, sirrah,” she said, and beamed at him from the doorway. “Gods’ blessings on you.”

It was the first blessing he’d received since he left his parents, and his eyes softened. He lifted a hand to her and went back to Martine a little calmer.

She had the packs ready, together with a storm cape for him. The oiled canvas with hood would keep out the worst of the rain. He hoisted the big pack on his back and fastened the cloak around him, then headed for the door.

“You’re forgetting something.” Martine nodded toward the mantelpiece. The only thing on it was Acton’s brooch.

Ash went over and picked it up. “Why do I feel all this has happened because of this?” he asked, and slipped it into his pouch.

“Perhaps it has. But Doronit wouldn’t believe it.” They grinned at each other. “Let’s go.”

They left under cover of the storm by the North Road and saw no one they knew.

Ash was happy, despite the storm and the colder weather ahead, despite his jaw clenching so tight, whenever he thought of Doronit, that his teeth were aching. He had no idea where they were going, and he didn’t care. He was relieved to leave Doronit behind him, although he felt a pang for Turvite.

The brooch hung heavily over his left hipbone, but he refused just to be a tool, even of the gods. He was leaving because he’d been betrayed by a calculating, selfish woman — there were songs about that. It happened to men all the time.
Betrayed by a woman, cast out into the storm
. . . He recited “The Lying Sweetheart” in his head as they slogged through the mud, and he felt grown-up at last.

Saker

T
HERE WAS
a village on the way to the mountains, in the poor land west of the Lake. Saker had been there often before, as he had made his rounds of the country, drawing his maps and collecting old scrolls. There had been a massacre there, but a small one, just a village. Saker flinched as he realized what he’d thought: “just a village.”
Every
death was important.
Every single one
had to be avenged.

The important thing about Spritford, this village, was that the invaders had buried the bodies. They’d learned by then about the stench and illness that came from rotting corpses. They’d gathered the dead and thrown them into a small dell, then shoveled enough dirt over them to keep out the scavenging animals. The dell was named in one of Rowan’s songs: Ravensnest Glade.

Which meant that Saker could find the bones.

It wasn’t hard for a stonecaster and a mule to make their way from Whitehaven to Spritford in the lengthening days of spring. Everywhere he went Saker mourned: the missing forests, the dead towns without trees where the pale-eyed townsfolk hurried about their greedy business. They had no beauty, no grace, none of the spirit-filled artistry of his own people. Without the Travelers, this land, these Domains would have no culture at all. It was people of the old blood who sang the songs and painted the walls and told the stories and danced the dances.
These invaders
, he thought,
just watch us because they can’t do anything else. Maybe that’s why they hate us so
.

He found Spritford easily enough, on the shore of the river Sprit, coming to it from the south toward the end of the day. Just as he came in sight of the Sprit, he saw a hawk stoop. It flashed down and struck, both feet extended forward, and then beat its wings twice powerfully to launch again, a ground squirrel dangling lifeless from its talons. As it rose slowly, he could see that it was a saker falcon, and he was immensely cheered by the omen.

“Fly well, brother,” he said, and whistled as he rode toward the village.

The land rose beyond the cottages to a ridge that concealed the river Sharp. The Ravensnest Glade, the song said, was on the Sharp side of the village. He wanted to ride on, find the dell right away, but he made himself stop at the inn, take a room, and cast some stones for the innkeeper’s sister in return for a meal, as he usually did. He didn’t want to attract attention.

He found himself spending the evening casting stones for the villagers, trying not to show how irritated he was by their petty concerns: “Will my girl marry me?” “Does my husband know?” “Will the calf from the red cow live?” “Will I be lucky at dice this full moon?” They were obsessed with the trivial — all townsfolk were, and farmers no better. Never was there a question about truth, or justice, or even rebirth. They were pitiful, pale shadows of the men and women who had lived in this land before the invasion. The land would not miss them.

“I thought,” he said carefully to the innkeeper’s sister, a thin but red-cheeked woman, “that I would go to pay my respects to your gods tomorrow. Where is the altar?”

“Oh yes, sir,” she said, “they’ll like that, I’m sure. The rock is in Ravensnest Glade, on the Sharp side of the town. I’ll point it out in the morning.”

She left him to serve another customer. He sat, feeling his body grow cold. He’d only asked the woman where the gods were so he’d have an excuse to go off exploring in the morning. The gods were in the actual place of burial. He shivered, appalled. Had Acton’s men been insane, to make the gods’ place their dumping ground? And why had the gods allowed it?

The woman came sidling back, not sure if he would welcome more chat. She was smiling at him nervously, trying to ingratiate herself as though that would somehow ensure a better result at her next casting. She was one of those women who were excited by magic, by the lure of the stones. He despised them, all of them: they were eager to use the skills of the old blood but contemptuous of those in whose veins it ran.

“The gods used to be by the river, it’s said,” she offered. “After Acton’s people came, they asked to be moved to the glade.”

Very good
, Saker thought,
the gods had decided it — to be near their dead
. That meant that the gods here, unlike most local gods, cared about what happened to the people in their charge. Most gods were not interested in temporal concerns, and seemed to care more about the beasts of the fields than about humans. Although they did like a sacrifice, so humans were useful to them in some ways.

These gods must be different. A shiver went through him at the thought, but he shook it away. Tomorrow he would raise the dead, feel their bones in his hands, replenish them with his own blood. And their gods would strengthen him when he cast the spell, so the dead could take back what was theirs.