Sing the Four Quarters (18 page)

Back out on the street, she barely had time to finish her call—
Shall I Sing the earth for you/shall I Sing growing
—

before the elderly man from the next house in the row dragged her through a cluttered first floor room to a tiny walled garden identical to the one she'd just left. "I could hear you over there," he told her as he fussily positioned her in the center of the rectangle of dirt. "See that you Sing mine as well. The rest are out at their jobs, but I'm not so old and deaf that you can pass off any second-rate tune. So you just see that you Sing mine as well as you Sang that babbling featherhead's next door."

"I heard that!"

Annice rolled her eyes as the young woman's voice floated up over the wall and resisted the urge to Sing up a fine crop of thistles.

Eleven gardens, a handful of coins, and a really pretty pair of shell earrings later, Annice decided to call it a day.

While the actual Singing was almost effortless and she seemed to pull as much or more energy from the earth as she put into the Songs, she'd had just about as much contact with the middle-class citizenry of Elbasan as she was able to cope with.

The next person who tries to grope my belly is going to find themselves marched down to the harbor and Sung off the
end of a pier.

Late afternoon shadows seeped chill into the narrow streets as she hurried back to the River Road and her favorite soup shop. She'd have an early supper before heading back to the Hall. With every mobile bard off on First Quarter Walks to discover how the country came through the winter, the Hall was pretty nearly empty. She found the huge dining room depressing and eating in her own quarters lonely. Even the fledglings had gone off in the company of older, more experienced bards. In an effort to become used to children, she'd been spending time with Terezka, but three days before, Terezka had strapped Bernardas into a padded cart and left to make a round of Riverton, saying, I
know it's not far, but if I don't get back on the road, I'm going to go crazy
. Annice understood completely.

7
think tomorrow I'll head over to the Crescent. At least there I'll be dealing with servants too busy to indulge tactile
curiosity
.

The sounds and smells of the busy thoroughfare caught her up as Chandler's Alley spilled her out onto River Road and she quite happily jostled along with the crowds, enjoying the anonymity. This having been one of the first rain-free days of the quarter, shopkeepers had done a brisk business and continued to do so even though sunset would bring out shutters in a very short time. Annice watched people, was watched in turn, and found she didn't mind the smiles when they came unaccompanied by a homily and a pat. Humming cheerfully, she stepped around a donkey cart piled high with bundles of dried fish and froze.

In the distance, she could hear shouting and beneath the voices, the clatter of hooves against cobblestones. She glanced around. Could no one else hear it? The sound continued to grow and with it alarm, excitement, anger, until he advance wave finally crashed down on the people surrounding her and dragged them around to point and yell.

"The guard! The guard returns!"

"They have him! They have the traitor!" Annice shrank back against the rough willow weave of the cart, wishing she was somewhere, anywhere, else. A thick patina of mud covered horses and guards alike. Only the Troop Captain sat erect, eyes ahead but obviously conscious of the crowds lining the route. I
have saved you all
, his posture declared and the crowds responded. Everyone else sat slumped in the saddle, wearing the exhaustion of a Fourth Quarter march to Ohrid and back. Had Stasya not been Singing a gratitude as she rode, Annice wouldn't have recognized her.

She tried to look away as the prisoner went by and found she couldn't.

He'd been tied to the horse, thick ropes cutting into each leg then secured beneath a mud-caked belly. His hands were bound to the pommel. Blood and dirt encrusted his face and his beautiful hair was a tangled, knotted mass clubbed up in the center of his back. He swayed, hunched over his left side, his left eye swollen completely shut.

It was no worse than she'd expected, given the messages Tadeus had relayed, but it made her feel sick. An egg smashed into his shoulder. He ignored it but not with the despair of a broken man. He ignored it because it had nothing to do with him.

You can't lie under Command. Why can't he go to the block with some semblance of dignity?

Annice closed out the babble of the crowd and turned toward the Citadel. Stasya was home. She'd hold onto that.

"You haven't touched the supper I brought up."

"I'm not hungry, Leonas."

"So? Your baby still has to eat." After prodding up the fire, he shoved a thick slice of bread and cheese onto the end of a toasting fork and stood, deaf to her protests, until the cheese melted and the bread beneath turned a deep golden brown.

When he pointedly held it out to her, Annice sighed and pulled it off the fork, unable to order him out because she didn't think she could wait alone any longer. Stasya had accompanied the guard directly to the palace. The Bardic Captain had rushed over to speak with her there. No telling how long before she could come home. "Good." The server nodded approvingly as Annice bit into the food. "Eat that, promise you'll eat the custard and drink the juice, and I'll leave you be."

"The juice…" She couldn't
ask
him to stay, he'd only fuss the more. "… it's very, uh, red. What is it?"

"Something my Giz got sent from her sister down coast. They call them bog berries."

She took a cautious sip and her entire face puckered. "It's a little sour."

Leonas snorted. "So's the sister." Then, without prodding, he launched into a long, complicated story of how the berries were being tried out by some of the sea-traders—"… cheaper than relying only on them imported limes…"—

and looked as though they might become an important cash crop for the area.

Annice ate while he talked, eyes locked on his face. At last he paused, head cocked toward the door. "Someone coming," he said shortly, piled empty dishes back on their tray, and turned to go.

"Leonas." She searched for the right words and finally found, "Thank you." He snorted again. "You're welcome, Princess."

Annice squelched the urge to follow him out into the hall and instead waited by the fire, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She didn't know why she was so nervous, she and Stasya had been walking in and out of each other's lives since they first met as fledglings.
All right, so the circumstances are a little different. I'm playing a duet and she just
spent two and a half months helping to bring my baby's father to his execution. That shouldn't affect us
.

When the door finally opened, she found it didn't.

"Center it, Stas, you look like shit."

Stasya sagged against the door frame, one corner of her mouth twisting up in the ghost of a smile. Although she'd managed to find time to wash the dirt from her face and hands, her clothing still bore evidence of the road, bits of dried mud flaking off the cloth with every movement. Her short dark hair lay plastered lifelessly against her head, the shade very nearly matched by the circles under her eyes. "Thanks." She sighed deeply. "I missed you, too."

"So you're still Singing fire?"

"As long as it's already contained." Annice opened the tap from the boiler, tested the temperature of the water, and closed it again. The four notes she Sang to the kigh dancing in the steel pan of charcoal provoked a burst of activity.

Satisfied, she used the rim of the tub to pull herself erect, then turned and sat on the broad edge. "I don't think I'd dare Sing fire outside where anything in the Circle might ignite." Reaching under her clothing, she scratched at the stretched curve of skin. "The water'll be hot by the tune you get undressed."

She watched for a moment as the other woman fumbled with ties and buttons and finally went over to help. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" she asked. "Maybe you should just have a quick wash in the basin and go to bed. I don't want you to drown."

Stasya emerged from the folds of her shirt emphatically shaking her head. "I have been dreaming about this tub for the last three nights… ever since we left Vidor. Do you know how long it's been since I've had a nice long soak?"

"Don't tell me." Annice wrinkled her nose and stuffed the soiled clothing down the laundry chute, trying not to touch the filthy fabric any more than she had to. "I don't think I can stand knowing." Breathing shallowly through her mouth, she checked the water temperature again and this time let it continue to run. "Was it really bad?"

"Tub first, talk later." Stasya repeated the phrase that had brought them down to the bathing room. Her hand on Annice's shoulder, she stepped over the high side of the tub and, sighing deeply, lowered herself into the rapidly rising water. "I'll tell you one thing, though, I don't care what oaths I took or how much my country needs me, I'm never getting on a horse again."

"You've lost weight."

"Weight, teeth, and my sunny disposition." Annice stopped scooping soft soap onto a huge sponge and whirled around so fast she nearly fell over. "Teeth?"

"Well, not really." Stasya sank lower in the water, rubbing without enthusiasm at the gray of old dirt ground into her skin. "But I'm sure that one of the top ones, on the right, at the back, is loose."

"Stas, you always worry about your teeth." She Sang the kigh a gratitude as the boiler drained and the charcoal went from white hot to barely warm. "And your teeth are always fine. Sit up a bit so I can wash your hair, I'm not as flexible as I used to be."

"How
are
you?"

"I drop nearly everything I pick up, my ankles are two sizes bigger in the evening than they are in the morning, I have to pee all the time, I can't bend, and I'm sick of talking about it. Rinse." When Stasya re-emerged and had knuckled her eyes dry, she added, "Elica says I'm healthy, the baby's healthy, and everything's happening right on schedule.

Nothing's changed since Tadeus left and we lost touch."

They killed another few minutes discussing Tadeus, and the few after that covering the list of "reminders" Jazep had left when he'd headed out into the country the morning after First Quarter Festival. "I'm telling you, Stas, he's worse than Elica and Leonas combined." Washing Stasya's back, Annice told stories about Singing in the city and silently urged her to bring up the one thing they had to discuss. Finally, she could stand it no longer. "Stas…"

"I know." She pulled herself up, reaching for a towel. "I guess I'm ready to go through it again."

"What are you crying about?"

Annice shrugged and swiped at her nose. "I don't know."

"Look, Nees, he's guilty." Stasya drained a mug of water, her voice rough from the recall. "Right out of his own mouth. If he'd just accepted that his stupid plan had failed and resigned himself to fate, none of the rest would have happened." She hated the very concept of defending Troop Captain Otik but found herself doing it anyway. "There was no more force used than was necessary to get him back to Elbasan and he created the need for every last bit of it himself."

"I'm not saying that he isn't guilty, Stas; I mean, no one can lie under Command. I just can't believe I was so wrong about him. I just didn't think Pjerin was the kind of man who'd break a sworn oath."

Stasya's memory ran through a kaleidoscopic review of Pjerin a'Stasiek, Due of Ohrid, from the moment she'd first seen him scowling down at Captain Otik, through the countless attempts to escape on the trip to the capital, to the final image of him struggling to rise after being cut free of the horse by the palace stables and dumped like so much garbage to the ground. While he managed to remain both arrogant and abrasive even during the increasingly rough handling he'd received, she would've sworn that his pride came from a strong sense of self-worth based solidly in the real world and that he fought for more than just a chance to avoid death.

She looked up and met Annice's gaze. "If I didn't know better," she said heavily, "I wouldn't believe it of him myself."

"Your Grace?"

Pjerin shifted on the bench, enough so he could bring the doorway into the field of his good eye.

"My name is Damek i'Kamila." The middle-aged man stepped into the room and the heavy, reinforced door slammed shut behind him. "I'm a healer."

"You'll forgive me if I don't rise."

"Actually, I'm here to do something about that." He set the small leather bag he carried on the floor and frowned up at the gray light spilling through the one tiny window. "Well, it's not much, but as they wouldn't allow me to bring in a lantern it will have to do. I don't suppose you can slide down to the other end of the bench?"

In answer, Pjerin reached down beside him with his right hand and lifted his left onto his lap. Around the left wrist, he wore an iron manacle, attached by a short length of chain to an iron ring set into the stone wall.

Damek shook his head disapprovingly. "Yes, I see. Then I suppose this will suffice. Can you not move that arm on its own?"

"I can. But I'd rather not."

"Ribs broken?"

"You're the healer," Pjerin grunted, closing his eye.

"You tell me."

"Yes. All right, then. Just give me a moment to prepare myself."

Pjerin listened to the other man's breathing fall into a slow, steady rhythm, each lungful very purposefully drawn in, each lungful very purposefully expelled and in spite of himself he began to relax. Although he flinched at the initial touch, he welcomed the warmth spreading out from under gentle fingers and, because he knew it was coming, he managed to bite down on the scream when a sudden burst of heat seared his side. It lasted only an instant and when it faded, most of the pain faded with it.

"Still broken," the healer told him as he opened his eye. "But all the pieces are aligned again and held and it should heal leaving no lasting disability. You know…" squatting, Damek opened his case and pulled out a small vial. "…