Brightly Woven (2 page)

We were drenched in a moment. The rain fell from the sky in heavy, fat drops. I let out a choked sound, half delight, half surprise. Henry and I stared at each other, holding our breaths for fear it would be over just as quickly as it had begun. We had been six, maybe seven at the last rain, but the twins hadn’t been born yet. They looked up at the sky, and it was clear by the looks on their faces that they were mystified.

“Come on!” Henry said, turning to run. “Allan! John! Back to the village.”

“My basket!” I said.

“Get it later,” Henry insisted.

“I’ll meet you down there,” I said. “Just go—you have to watch your brothers.”

The twins charged down the steep trail and passed right by us. We could hear shouts from the valley below, the village waking from its long, dry slumber.

Henry gave me a long look. Was he honestly worried I would get lost? I watched the rain smear the dust on his
cheeks into long, snaking lines and smiled. That was just the kind of friend he was, ready to fall over himself with concern.

“Go!” I said, giving him a playful push. We turned away from each other at the same moment, he back toward the village, barely visible through the sheet of rain. I was heading up, to the highest point of the canyon.

It had been raining for less than a minute, and already the dust had melted into patches of sticky mud. The raindrops were fat and unrelenting—a feast after a ten-year famine.

I stumbled over the loose rocks, but I never stopped, not even for a moment. I wanted to be in the village, to hear the songs and prayers of thanks. To see the look on my mother’s face, and the weight lifted from my father’s shoulders. Each raindrop was sending up a little splatter of dust, and I had never seen the dirt so dark as it was in that moment. The cracked, withered soil seemed to melt together beneath my feet.

When the men from Saldorra came to trade their water for our dirt, I thought, wouldn’t they be surprised at what they found?

The scent of rain and dust was dizzyingly wonderful, and I wished for a bottle to capture it. A new carpet practically wove itself in my mind, and I could see how to bring the blues together with the silvers and browns. I could almost imagine what the village would look like spotted with green. We wouldn’t be forced to work so hard, every single day.
The possibilities were freeing beyond my wildest dreams.

I found my basket right where I had left it, where the sun could dry the roots that Henry and his brothers had helped me pull from the ground. They were a soggy mess, but I didn’t think my mother would mind.

I wrapped my arms around the basket, holding it closely to my chest, breathing deeply. I would stay up here a little while longer, where only the rain could touch me.

Suddenly I could hear voices rising from below even with the fierce pattering of rain against the rocks. Only they were not raised in joy, they were shouts coming in a different tongue.

I pushed the wet hair off my cheeks and was to the ledge in three short steps, bracing my basket against my hip.

There were horses and men in the field just beyond the mountain, hundreds of them. Their scarlet uniforms were a blur from my vantage point, a long, twisting line of men and beasts.

My eyes drifted along the river of red, twisting down the pass. Behind the first group of horses were wagons, their wheels now trapped in the yellow mud. It looked as if the soldiers behind them were pushing vainly as the horses struggled to pull them free.

They weren’t bringing in the usual trade of water.

I took a step back, colliding with something solid, my startled cry muffled by a hand. I was pulled away from the ledge, spinning toward the overhang of rock.

“Don’t scream,” someone said in my ear. “I’m going to let you go, but don’t scream, all right?”

I nodded, holding my basket tightly.

The man let me go without a moment’s hesitation. I whirled around, the basket coming up to smack the side of his face. He staggered back, but before I could bolt past him, he had me by the arm again, and this time his grip wasn’t as forgiving.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. I kept my eyes diverted, looking for a way to escape, to overpower him. He wouldn’t let me; he hauled me around and pinned me there. The happiness in my heart was entirely gone, replaced by fear.

The stranger wasn’t dressed in a Saldorran uniform as I would have expected a scout to be, but in simple clothes. He looked to be about my age, maybe a few years older. I watched the rain drip down the length of his long nose and collect in his dark, uncombed hair. There was a small cut on his face where the sharp edge of my basket had caught his skin, but it was nothing compared to the bruise on his other cheek.

I let myself admit that he had a roguish charm about him. Some hint of softness in his eyes, at least. No, he wasn’t a soldier, but he was still a stranger, a vagabond, maybe. Even if I hadn’t seen his face, his worn boots and torn cloak would have told his story. The pressure of his hand on my arm became nearly unbearable, yet it wasn’t until I let out a gasp of pain that he released me.

“Are you from the village?” His words came out in an urgent rush. “From Cliffton?”

I nodded. “Why are the soldiers here? Do you have any idea why—?”

“Can you take me to the elder?”

“My father?” At that, I did take a step back.

“Is he in the village now?” I wasn’t sure how to respond, and he must have been able to tell. He took my arm again, this time far more gently. “You can trust me—I’m here to help you. Is your father in the village, or has he left for the capital?”

The sound of horses and men below drifted in and out of my ears. I searched for a reason to distrust him, but instead I saw the desperation in his face, the real concern.

He had a kind face, even with the dirt, even with his wounds.

“Yes,” I said finally. “He is. I can take you to him.”

He took my other arm, pulling me toward him so quickly the basket slipped from my hands. It was the last sound that reached my ears, for in the next moment even the rain disappeared. The man brought his black cloak up around us, pulling me close to him. The world spun away under our feet. I felt my stomach lurch and an explosion of pain behind my eyes, and just as quickly, darkness fell over us.

I woke, not in the yellow mud of the mountains, but in the dark chill of my room, under a pile of blankets. Somehow, the
afternoon had fallen into night without my knowing it. If the slow growl of thunder and the steady pattering of rain hadn’t been there to greet me as I opened my eyes, the entire day might have been a dream.

How had I gotten down from the pass? I had slipped and knocked my head against the rocks before, but never so badly as to lose all recollection of it. And the stranger, what about him?

“Sydelle, are you awake?” Mother whispered. I turned my head and allowed the dizziness to wash over me. The usual rasp in her voice was gone.

“What’s happened?” I asked, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. She held a candle up to her face, its flickering light catching the strands of her pale hair. I saw that my loom had been disassembled and moved from the main room of the house into my cramped room.

“That man I met in the mountains—is he here?”

There was sadness in her eyes where I had expected to find anger. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or frightened by it.

“I’m sorry about the roots,” I said quickly. “When the rain clears, I’ll find more.”

She brought the candle closer to my face, and for the first time, the warmth it provided was a relief. My hair and dress were still damp, and the rain had cooled the air enough for me to shiver beneath the blankets.

“I’ll go tell your father you’re awake,” she said. “He’s with our guest.”

My mother left without another word, leaving me alone, my questions still unanswered. I sat up slowly, wishing she had left the candle with me. All I could make out in the darkness was my loom and the shape of my father’s leather bag next to it on the floor. It looked full. What had the man asked—if my father had left for the capital yet?

“…would you…Sydelle…it’s…”

The words came in soft fragments. I strained my ears past the slow drumming of rain to the conversation on the other side of the wall. Layers of mud and plaster muffled the voices, but the stranger’s rich voice was clear, almost as if he was in my room.

“…from the capital?” asked my father.

“No, but I have spent a great amount of time there,” the stranger replied after a long pause.

“Just how old are you, Mr….?”

“North,” the man said, neatly sidestepping my father’s question. “Wayland North, if you’d prefer.”

“What are you doing around our parts?” Mr. Porter, Henry’s father, asked. I hadn’t realized he was there. “It’s unusual to find a wizard so far west, given that we’re so close to Saldorra and they don’t take kindly to your…kind.”

A wizard
, I thought numbly. The word rolled around inside of me. That man had been a wizard, one of Astraea’s disciples…and I had been so disrespectful. Had he brought the rain?

“After the king was murdered, some of the details didn’t
align for me,” said the wizard. “I needed proof, so I traveled west.”

I pressed my ear up against the wall.

“We were told the poison came from Auster. Are you saying that it came from Saldorra?” my father asked. His voice was too calm—I almost couldn’t hear it above the pounding in my ears.
Poison?
Henry and I had guessed an illness, an accident perhaps…but murder…?

Wayland North let out a sharp laugh. “I have it on good authority that the wizards haven’t the slightest idea where the poison came from. They only know it was put in his nightly glass of wine.”

“So we’ve declared war against Auster for nothing?” Mr. Porter asked, and I didn’t need to be by the wall to hear him. “On a whim—a guess? Did the Wizard Guard send you out here to search for information?”

“The Guard is still pursuing Auster as the primary culprit,” the wizard said. “You have to understand that if we go to war with them, it won’t be because they killed our king. With the king dead, Auster’s king is claiming his right to the throne.”

“By what right?” Mr. Porter said. “It’s absurd.”

“No,” my father said. “It’s not. The king of Auster is our king’s second cousin, the last of his living relatives, and you know as well as I do that our laws say that a woman cannot inherit the throne, regardless of circumstances.”

“You said a law had been introduced to change that,” Mr.
Porter said, “on the chance that the queen didn’t deliver a male heir.”

“There was to be a vote on it next month,” Father said. “We can vote it in, but there’s a real possibility that Auster won’t recognize the law as valid.”

“They’ve been waiting for an excuse to invade our country under legitimate circumstances,” North said. “Saldorra’s soldiers will join their forces. I would say they’re maybe half a day from overtaking your village.”

“Sydelle!” a voice hissed. I started, tearing myself away from the wall. It had come from outside, slipping through the small hole in my wall that was meant to be a window, without glass or fabric.

“Delle!”
It was Henry. If he had been any louder, the entire village would have heard him. I looked out to see him hunkered down in the mud, drenched straight through his clothes.

“What?” I asked, annoyed.

“Are you all right? I waited for you in the market,” he said. “And out of nowhere you appeared with the wizard—I thought you were dead, you were so pale. Did you faint?”

“Not now!” I whispered. “I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. Just go!”

I didn’t wait to see if he would listen. Two steps later and my ear was back against the wall, catching the wizard’s voice.

“…and they won’t stop,” North said. “I used the rain to
slow them as much as I could—I didn’t realize it would be such a help to you.”

“You have no idea what you’ve done for us in bringing the rain. I can’t even begin to fathom how you succeeded where other wizards have failed,” my father said. He sounded tired. “Anything we can give in return,
anything
, we’ll give you.”

“If you’re still willing to give up what we discussed before, then there’s nothing more I could ask for.” North cleared his throat. “But we shouldn’t stay much longer. Auster and the officials in Provincia have agreed on a two-month deadline to try to resolve this without magic and sword, but I’m afraid it may take me just as long to get there, and I don’t trust the mail service to deliver the report safely.”

“I insist you stay the night, then. You look worn—even your cloaks need looking after.”

I sat up a little straighter on the floor, tucking my legs beneath me. I knew what was coming.

“They all do, I’m afraid,” North said. “I saw a bit more action in Saldorra than I had expected. But wizard tailors are pricey, and I haven’t been across one in a few months. I have an entire country to cross, and less than two months to do it. It’ll have to wait until I get to Provincia.”

“Nonsense, my daughter will do the same for free.”

“It requires a bit of skill—” North protested.