Full Circle (24 page)

I did my job for a local farmer and we went on our way. Nothing else I could do.

My mam died the next year, and after that I Travelled alone. I had my round, meaning I called in to regular customers once
every three years. Never short of business. South in the winter, north in the summer. Then this last year the call went out
for wallers and masons to come to Sendat. My lord Thegan was building better fortifications.

I went because it was good money and it’s better not to say no to a warlord.

So. She was there. At the fort. Acting as maid to the Lady Sorn. That first day, I was working on the new storage sheds and
I saw her walk through the mustering yard after the Lady, so the next morning I was there at the altar stone before dawn,
and sure enough she came. A little older; just the same. It was just the same for me, too. I don’t think she even saw me.
She was with a sergeant. He had a good face, that one, and tall, blond. I found out later his name was Alston and they were
hand-plighted. I could tell, the way she looked at him.

There never had been any chance for me, so I wished her well. But I didn’t go back to the altar at dawn. Made my visits during
the day, when she was busy in the hall with the Lady.

She’s a real lady, that Sorn. The weather was getting hot, and she made sure that there was small beer for all the workers,
and good food at mealtimes, and decent lodgings, even for the Travellers. Alston organised things so that the Travellers and
the blondies weren’t working together, which made life better, too. He was all right.

But I heard that they couldn’t get married yet. Alston didn’t have a house to take Faina to, and her father wouldn’t let her
live in the barracks with the other soldiers’ women. Don’t blame him. No place for a gentle girl.

I heard Alston talking about it to my lord Leof. “I’ve got land,” he said, “down by the stream, that my lord ceded to me after
I got my sergeant’s badge. But no house.” He sounded rueful.

“And no chance of getting one until all this work is done,” Leof said, looking at us, labouring to shore up the walls around
the fort.

Alston shrugged. “We can wait,” he said. But he sounded wistful, and I thought she was probably wistful too. “Even one sound
room would be enough for the present.”

I found out where the land was, and went to have a look. It was a good place. Alston must have pleased Lord Thegan, to get
that land.

I used some of the things the demons had taught me in the Deep, and I scried the land underneath, to learn its strengths and
faults. It’s not a thing I do often. It takes too much from you.

The bedrock beneath it was solid, there was a spring as well as the stream, the earth flowed gently into a naturally level
place, which is where, no doubt, they meant to build. But that place was where the spring started, and it travelled underground
a ways before it came up. Put a house there and it would sink to one side in a year.

But down the other side was an outcrop of granite, which had calved enough stone to build with, and if that was cleared away
there was enough room for a house. I scried that place, too, and felt the layers speak back to me, clear as quartz in the
sun. Granite bedrock, solid as the earth itself. That was where they should put their house.

Well, I was a waller, and there were walls to build. What else could I do for her? It was for living in, so I used mortar
to give them straight walls (and maybe I thought I could come back and repair those walls in the future, and see her). I worked
at night, after Lord Leof let us go from the fort.

I was tired, of course. Got tireder, working two jobs. Didn’t matter. Walls went up, slow and then quicker once the foundations
were done. I made her a good house. Strong. Facing south-east, with two windows, but none on the north side where the wind
whistled.

Two rooms. Didn’t let myself think about what might happen in that second room, between him and her. It didn’t matter.

I made her a solid house, a house she could trust, with a chimney of river stones, all blue and grey, and a good white doorstep
and a high-pitched roof to slide the snow off, because they told me it snowed mightily in Sendat. I traded some silver for
slates in another village, told the man it was for my lord’s work. Cut the trees for the rafters from their own land. I even
put a floor in, flagstones, hard to cut. Didn’t get much sleep that week. Alston got a bit short with me — told me to pick
up the pace or get a whipping. Didn’t hold it against him, much. He was right. I had been slacking.

Didn’t matter. What mattered was, I couldn’t figure a way to be there when she saw it.

I couldn’t tell her. Alston was so much at the fort that he hadn’t been to the land in weeks. I’d counted on that, but now
the house was finished it was not so good.

I went to the altar at dawn and she was there, right enough, but —

I’m no good with people. Don’t understand how they work. But I thought, if I tell someone else, and they told Alston, or her
…

Couldn’t think of who to tell.

So I went to the new stonecaster, Otter, down in the village. Didn’t tell him what I wanted. You don’t have to. He cast, but
the stones were so mixed up, he said, that he couldn’t make head nor tail of ’em. An empty house, he said, and a forlorn love.
He looked curious, but trustworthy enough. So I told him. Not everything. Just that someone had built a house on Alston’s
land and I didn’t know how to tell him. Didn’t want to get involved, I said, but I think he could tell I was already involved,
up to my armpits.

“I’ll mention it to my lord Leof,” he said gently. “Next time I go up to the fort.”

He was there next day. I was working on the gate with Lord Leof inspecting the work when he arrived. I saw him talking to
the Lord, and he was good to his word, because he didn’t so much as look my way. He visited the Lady, too, while he was there.

So then I kept a watch and, sure enough, after dinner, Faina slipped out with Alston and they went down the hill together,
taking the back way to the land.

I followed ’em. Heard ’em find the place. Alston had brought a lantern to light their way, though it wasn’t full dark, and
he took it inside. I saw them in the window, saying, “But
who?
” and concluding that it was my Lord Leof and the Lady Sorn, together, had organised it. She couldn’t think of anyone else
who would do something like this for her.

She was crying. That was all right. I’d seen my mam cry like that when my brother had his child. It meant I’d built her a
good house, and she liked it. That was my satisfaction, right there. All I needed, I thought. Then he came up behind her and
she turned her face to his shoulder and he put his arms around her.

I went away.

Nothing else I could do. For her. For me. Not while she loved him. Not even if she hadn’t. Only time in my life, though, I’ve
wondered what my life would have been if I’d had blond hair. If I could have gone up to her that first time, in her old village.
Said, “Nice morning, isn’t it?” as we walked away from the altar. Courted her. Won her. Built her a good house, a strong house
that she could trust, for the both of us to live in.

Not in this life. Not nowhere in the Domains. Not now, and not never, probably. But I wondered. Wanted. Got angry for the
first time, about how it wasn’t fair and never had been. Thought, “It shouldn’t be like this.”

It shouldn’t.

S
OLDIERS LINED
the road ahead of him, checking everyone. Not that there were many people on the road to stop. Everyone who could be was
hunkered down behind their shutters, shivering with fear.

Saker smiled, but his smile faded as he saw the merchant’s party ahead of him sorted into two groups. One, blonds and red-heads,
who were allowed to go on their way. The other, dark-hairs, kept in a group to one side, where the road widened into a water
meadow.

His own hair was its customary reddish brown. He always carried some rosehips to make the dye, because they looked so innocuous
if he was ever searched — “Oh, yes, sergeant, rose-hip tea is very good for you, you know.” Whereas anyone found with henna
traded up from the Wind Cities was assumed to be a Traveller in disguise and treated badly. He had dyed his hair very carefully
before venturing out of the mill. But would it fool the soldiers?

The pouch of stones he tucked inside his jacket. Stonecasters were not always Travellers, but most were. He remembered the
red-headed woman from Carlion who had had Traveller blood — perhaps, like her, the stonecasters who were not Travellers had
old blood in them after all.

His throat tightened as he walked towards the soldiers, conscious that if they found the bones in his pack he was dead on
the spot. A sergeant was in charge of them, a large grey-haired man in his fifties. “Ho, sir!” he said with professional geniality.
“Where are you off to?”

“Sendat,” Saker replied, smiling. “I have family there, and they say it’s the safest place in all the Domains right now.”

“Family, eh?” The sergeant looked at him closely. “Who would that be, then?”

Saker blessed his years of roaming from town to town as a stonecaster. “Old Lefric, the chairmaker,” he said confidently.
“He’s my great-uncle.” And Lefric would confirm that, too, because he had decided, hearing Saker’s made-up ancestry over a
drink in the inn, that he was his niece Sarnie’s boy from Whitehaven. He’d invited Saker home with him that night and he’d
stayed with the old man several times since, thinking there might come a time when being able to claim a family would come
in handy. He was feeling rather satisfied with his forethought right now.

“Lefric?” the sergeant asked. “Bit of a drinker, that one.”

It was a test.

“I think you may have him mixed up with someone else, sergeant,” Saker said. “My uncle never drinks anything stronger than
small ale.”

The sergeant smiled. “All right, go along with you.” He turned his attention to another party coming along the road, dismissing
Saker without another glance.

Saker went on, deliberately ignoring the group of Travellers as he passed them.

He made it twenty paces down the road before his hands started to shake, his heart pound. Why would he be afraid now? It was
over. He’d passed the test and he’d survived. It must be anger at the treatment the Travellers were receiving. But he had
to tuck his hands well into his pockets and breathe deeply for more than a mile before he had himself under control.

Unlike the farms and villages he had passed on the way, Sendat was open for business. The market square was as full as always
— perhaps fuller, although there was not as much produce on sale as there had been the last time he had visited two years
ago. Saker thought that the farmers were not willing to risk the journey to town.

He noticed, too, that there were very few tools out in the open, and no axes at all. Had the warlord given orders to lock
up the one type of weapon that would make these people vulnerable to his army?

He made straight for Lefric’s house, in case the sergeant from the road, who had looked no fool, checked up on him. Lefric
was in his yard, as usual, setting the legs into a stool.

He looked up as Saker came through the gate, and his face brightened. “Penda!” he called. He got up creakily and put the stool
down on his workbench, then hobbled over to greet Saker. His knees and hands were even more swollen with arthritis than when
Saker had last visited, but his eyes were still bright blue, unfaded. “It’s good to see you, lad!”

He clasped his hands around Saker’s arms and gave him a small shake of welcome.

Saker smiled. Although Lefric was one of Acton’s people, he had always liked the old man. “Ho, uncle!” he said, smiling. “Thought
I’d come and see how you were faring, these strange days.”

“You’re a good lad, Penda, a good lad, and it’s good to see you. Come away in and have a bite. You look like you’ve been journeying
a good while.”

Saker glanced down at his clothes. They showed the wear and tear of sleeping rough and washing little. “Aye,” he said, “I’ve
come a fair step.”

Over supper, he and Lefric exchanged news. He made up stories about his supposed mother, Sarnie, and his siblings; Lefric
told him, in detail, all the goings-on of the warlord and the fort. Saker listened intently. Travellers being gathered together?
Offered shelter and safety? He was shaken. Surely a warlord would never protect Travellers at the risk of his own people?
Such an action would be beyond generous… He had always heard that this Lord Thegan was a hard man, although loved by
his people. Could he be a just man, too? And if he were, what did that mean for Saker’s plan?

The next day, he quartered the town, looking for the best place to cast his spell. With his army so large, now, Lefric’s yard
wasn’t big enough. It wasn’t easy to find a suitable place. He had to be sure of enough time to raise the ghosts, and the
more he looked, it became clearer that there was nowhere within the town where he could ensure privacy.

He came back to the yard preoccupied, and was greeted by Lefric’s request that he go to the coppice south of the town, to
cut ash for chair backs. He had marked the tree with his colours, so Saker would have no trouble finding it.

“Save me the trip, lad,” Lefric said, beaming as Saker nodded. “It’s good to have family to help out.” He paused. “Might could
be it’s time for you to settle down here, lad. Take on the business.”

For a moment, Saker had a vision of what life might be like, living here, working at a solid, simple craft. Making friends.
Marrying, even.

His vision faltered at that. His time with Freite had made him wary of touching any woman.

Just as well.

The guards on the road leading south refused to let him take an axe to the coppice. “Saws only,” they said, and made him take
the small hatchet that Lefric had given him back to the yard and lock it up.

“Aye, aye,” Lefric grumbled. “I’d forgotten. Those are the new rules.”