[Books of Bayern 1] The Goose Girl (23 page)

"There's the princess," said Enna.

Enna's voice sounded like a warning, and Ani started to back away, before Selia saw her. But Geric was looking toward his lost spear. It had fallen not far from where Ani crouched, and when he looked up, he saw her.
Isi,
he mouthed silently. She could not move.

His gaze held her. Selia stood at his elbow, jeering and laughing, any moment sure to turn, to see what it was he saw. Yet all Ani could do was stare.

"Isi, that's the princess." Enna tugged on her sleeve.

She blinked under Geric's gaze, lowered her eyes, and moved away. They weaved their way out of the crowd and stretched to be back in open space.

"Why can't we stay and see the prince?" said Razo. Enna glared at him and kept walking away.

Geric had not seemed surprised to see her, or pleased. He had seemed sorry. Sorry to see her or sorry not to? She closed her eyes briefly and remembered that biting line from his letter—
I cannot love you as a man loves a woman.
And Selia had spoken with him in a familiar way. Ani shuddered to think how close she had come to telling him all. She had been wrong to think she could trust him.

"That yellow girl, she's not so pretty," said Razo. "I think our goose girl's prettier than the princess." Razo extended his arm with a flourish, took Ani's hand, and rested it lightly on his. "My goose lady." He was only kidding, but the attention felt good to her just then, and she placed her hand atop his.

"My sheep lord," she said.

They stopped to buy dark wheat cakes with cherry preserves. Ani, who was saving her coins for a long trip, ate the cracker bread she had brought from the hall. One of the sheep boys paid a street artist to paint an ink tattoo on his arm, a design of the Bayern sun surrounded by black blobs intended to be running sheep. The boy, proudly, asked the group if he did not look like a mercenary or a member of a rogue hundred-band.

"Guaranteed to last two months," said the artist.

"It'll wash off in your first bath," said Enna, shaking her head.

"Right, so it'll last him about two months." Razo grinned and got socked in the arm.

The group was giddy, singing catches of Forest songs and hopping to any sorcerer's drums. Razo spun Ani around in an improvised dance, and she leaned her head back and laughed. But when she ceased spinning, her middle felt heavy again and her feet were cold.

She looked back often to the game booths. A tangled mass of people separated them.

They headed toward the main avenue, where the mounted procession would pass.

Conrad was intent on witnessing the costumed group of men who wore horse heads and rode horses that were dressed as men. They passed the mouth of the square and the scattered group of witches perched on their crates like wise old lizards in the sun. Ani caught the eye of one woman with stained hands and purple lips. She dropped out of her group and went to her.

"I met you," said Ani, "at an autumn marketday."

The woman nodded.

"You said I had something new in me, that I didn't know it."

She nodded again, her piled hair bobbing precariously with the movement. "It's festival.

You want to know things, you give a coin."

"I can't spare it," said Ani.

The woman shrugged. "You'll figure it for yourself, then." She considered Ani a moment, as though she were a chicken she might purchase, and then dug through her mouse-eaten bag and pulled out a drying scrap of thornroot. Pointing to her eyebrows, she said,

"Time again."

Ani wove her way among the crates, overhearing bits of purchased witch wisdom.

"You'll find love in the out-towns." "You'll find love in the city." "You'll find gold coins buried under the cowshed." Ani pressed the thornroot with a thumbnail, wondering if there was any living juice left. Nothing dripped from the break, but her nail gleamed with a light sheen of brown. She bumped into somebody and, mumbling an apology, looked up to see where she was going.

Yulan. He stood before her, grinning, his fist resting on his hip. Ishta was beside him.

Both held long, unsheathed knives.

Ani turned to run. With an easy yank, Yulan had her arm and pulled her close to him, her back pressed against his chest. Ishta stepped in, closing the circle.

"Hello, little princess," said Yulan. He pushed the long edge of his knife against her back. "Give me a coin, I will tell your future."

"Traitor," she said. Her voice responded to his accent with her natural own.

She could feel his chest shake with a chuckle. He held her wrists in his sweaty grip behind her back.

"Ishta, the bad little bird has come neatly back to her master. I nearly didn't recognize her with all her fair hair hidden. Clever little thing."

Ishta nodded. He was watching the movements around them, his body stiff and ready for action.

"Did you kill them all?" she said.

"All," said Yulan.

"Traitor!"

He laughed harder.

"If you ever return to Kildenree," Ani said with desperation, "my mother will hang you, as they do here, with your cold, dirty body on a wall for all to spit at and for dogs to gnaw on your toes and for birds to pluck out your hair for their nests."

"You have a lot more bite in you than I remember, though you still yap like a magpie."

He put his face against her neck and breathed deeply. "And you smell like a magpie's nest.

What, no one here offers to bathe you and drench you in scented oils? Perhaps Selia will let me do it, later."

She tried to push his face away with a knock of her head. He chuckled again, pleased with the struggle. Ani looked around her at the hundreds of people who stood near and passed them by, none glancing their way, none stopping to help.

"Later," said Ishta. "Take her to Ungolad."

Ani could not help wincing at the name, and Yulan noticed.

"You like to talk about what your mother would do, your pretty little mother who is half a year away? Let us think about our papa Ungolad, who is only up the road. Hmm, what will he do?"

Yulan pushed her forward, and the knife's edge against her back encouraged her on. She wrapped a leg around a horse post, and Ishta kicked it free. She began to scream and was answered by Ishta's hard fist in her belly. She could not make enough breath to scream again.

After a block of struggled walking, she pulled breath enough to whisper.

"It is useless," she said. "They will know. You can't keep it a secret. Visitors will come from home. They will see the impostor. You will all be hanged."

"Oh, my darling girl, you're going to give yourself a wasting disease with all this worry.

Selia is a smart girl, remember? She has it all worked out. What you really should be worrying about is Ungolad."

Yulan took no care as they marched up the street, and some faces held questioning looks as to why these foreign guards laid hands on one of their laborer girls, but they passed on.

"Enna," Ani whispered. She could not shout.

Her friend stood on the corner, searching the crowd. Ani looked at her, willing her to turn her head. The girl scanned past Ani. Before she met her gaze, Enna disappeared behind the gathering crowd.

"Enna," she said again, begging all the breath from her bruised ribs. She was not loud enough.

"Hush up," said Ishta. He knocked her side with an elbow, and she doubled over, standing only by Yulan's support. They stopped.

"Keep on with that, Ishta, and you will be carrying her."

To the side, a few dozen pigeons mused over a dropped loaf of bread. Their gray heads faced down, and they cooed nervously—
Hurry, eat for winter, fill your belly with bread,
hurry, hurry.

Ani knew she would have to be loud and quick. Yulan was urging her forward again.

She took several fast, deep breaths, begged memory to serve her, and called to the pigeons.

From the building, cats! Cats! Fly away! Cats!

A rainstorm of sound erupted as the flock took to the air toward the street, their wings beating hard, ungainly flaps, louder than a crowd. The people looked up as the frenzied birds landed among them. Ani struggled anew, hoping that Enna had turned and seen, hoping to give her time. The blade pressed her back.

The street rose abruptly, and her boots slid on a wet cobblestone and out from under her.

"Walk, or I will carry you on my knife," said Yulan.

"Almost there," said Ishta.

Ani pushed her heels down between two cobblestones and resisted until her leg muscles trembled.

"Move," said Yulan. The blade felt sharper.

"Drag me. Carry me. Make a scene. I will not walk like a hooded turkey to the chopping block." Ani felt her strength enlarge as she spoke, her limbs encouraged, her will determined.

Again she had the fleeting thought, the memory of an image, that there was something else she could do. A whisper too quiet to hear beyond its breath. The pain in her back flared, and it left her mind.

"Ishta, pick up her feet."

"Make her walk," said Ishta.

"She is not going to, so get her on already."

Ishta's face was close to hers. His eyes were a pale blue. Their look felt like winter.

"Walk," Ishta said.

"No."

He held one of her hands close to his mouth. "I will bite off a finger."

He opened his lips one finger width. His mouth stank of onions and mold, and his teeth were dimly brown. Her hand shook in his grasp. She closed her eyes and waited for the raw consciousness of his sinking teeth.

"You there, yellow fellows."

Ani opened her eyes to a large man in the simple dyed tunic and trousers of a laborer.

With him stood a second man of the same class, and moments later two others jogged up to join their group. All carried smooth, well-worn quar-terstaves. They wore plainly made patches of yellow suns stitched to their shirtfronts. Not soldiers, unless homemade soldiers.

But their faces were grim and serious, and the staffs looked comfortable in their hands.

Behind them stood Enna. They were the most beautiful group of people Ani had ever seen.

"Unhand the girl," said the man.

"Peace-keepers," Yulan muttered. He straightened himself, tightening his grip on Ani's wrist. Ishta lowered her other hand from his mouth and held it casually. His touch made her shudder.

"Nothing wrong here," said Yulan. "Ease down those staffs, boys, you have been misinformed. We are friends." They did not react. "She is one of us that lost her way and committed some unruly deeds in your city that we are here to mend. We appreciate your generosity in volunteering to patrol these crowds, but no doubt your services are needed elsewhere. This girl here is under our control."

The man listened calmly to Yulan, then looked to Ani and waited for her to speak.

In her truest Bayern accent, she said, "They've a knife to my back."

The four men acted instantly. In a moment she was loosed from Yulan's and Ishta's hands and placed in the center of the peace-keepers.

"You have no right," said Yulan. His face was red, and he sheathed his dagger with an angry thrust. "This is royal business. We have fair claim here." He drew from his chest an official-looking parchment with the yellow, blue, and red Bayern symbol blazoned at the top.

"She's bleeding, Aldric," said one of the peace-keepers.

Ani pressed her hand to where she could still feel the biting sensation of the dagger and brought it back marked by blood. There was a stir among the men. Ani thought they had communicated an anger among themselves that she could feel pulsating around her, hot as walking out of summer shade.

"Since when," said one, "do Kildenrean yellow boys have the right to cut Bayern women?"

Yulan shook his document in the air. Aldric, the lead peace-keeper, knocked Yulan's hand with the tip of his staff, and the paper fell to the ground.

"Fortunately," said Aldric, "we're not royal guards. They do less to protect our women than a garbage cat. And we don't buy for tin your fine order. We're out here to keep the peace.

Keep it or get knocked."

"You're done here," said another to Ani, and he touched her shoulder with a finger.

"Thank you," said Ani. She knew they heard her, but they kept their eyes on the foreigners.

Enna took Ani's hand and they ran across the street. Ani stopped to look back just to see Yulan, trembling from rage, free his long dagger and jump at Aldric. His blade never reached flesh, and his head met the quick end of a practiced quarterstaff—a deathblow. When Yulan crumpled to the ground, Ishta had already fled.

That night at the hall, the workers were hushed and eager, listening with chins in hands and bodies leaning forward. The goose girl had been seized by men at the festival and dragged up the street toward what unknown doom. The goose girl had refused to be forced, and Enna had brought help and freed her. Enna told her story, and Ani spoke as much of her version as she could, leaving out the pigeons and the reasons. They called for the story again.

She gave it while holding a wet pack of herbs to the shallow cut in her back—Ideca's orders, to help speed the healing.

"No telling where that scoundrel's nasty blade had been," said Ideca. She clucked over Ani's blue dress, mending the slash with tight, quick stitches and cursing yellow foreigners