The Farwalker's Quest (4 page)

“Go ahead to your classes,” Luna told Ariel. “Don't be surprised if the Storian sends you home again, though. The tail of the storm is still coming.”

Once in the classroom, Ariel struggled to keep her eyes open. Today's lesson should have been exciting, too: Bellam Storian was finally letting his class talk about Namingfest. Every month had its festival, but for a person of Ariel's age, April Namingfest was the best.

“So who will we lose from class this year?” the Storian began. He surveyed the two dozen students sitting cross-legged on the floor of the story-room. Gray hair kinked from his eyebrows, his jaw, and even his ears. It seemed to have gotten lost on the way to his nearly bald scalp. He stroked the hair at his chin. “Who do we have turning thirteen?”

Zeke raised his splinted arm proudly. Excitement clearing
some of the fog in her head, Ariel shot her hand up, too. Another girl, Madeleine, wiggled her fingers shyly near one ear.

“Good,” Storian said. “What happens day after tomorrow at Namingfest, then? Ariel?”

She sat up stiff. It sounded like a trick question. “We get our last names,” she replied. “Like Healtouch.”

“Or Fool,” someone teased from the back of the class. “You're lazy enough, and a goof, too, but I bet you can't dance.” Ariel whirled to fire a scowl.

“That's enough.” Storian shifted his gaze to Madeleine. “Yes, the naming, of course, but before that?”

“There's a test.” Madeleine gulped.

“Yes. The trade test.” Storian looked pointedly at Ariel. She rolled her eyes to show him she knew
that
, for heaven's sake. Frowning, he added, “What sort of—”

Thud
. All eyes zipped toward the door. The knock repeated twice, sounding sturdy enough to cave the door in.

“Excuse me, class,” the Storian growled. He stalked to the door. It had better be good, Ariel thought. He didn't like interruptions. She didn't suppose Storian would make an adult stand and recite the entire calendar, as she'd done a few times, but his scolding could be punishment enough.

He yanked the door open.

“Bellam Storian?” The voice did not match the pounding. It was male, but almost a whisper.

“Yes, and you've interrupted my class.”

Unabashed, the interrupter strode through the doorway, looking to Ariel like a tall, storm-tattered crow. A stranger, he wore an oilcloth coat with layers and flaps that fluttered about his long legs. His trousers looked like oilcloth, too, rustling stiffly when he walked. Both his coat and his knit cap were wet,
as though the storm still raged wherever he'd come from. Chestnut curls escaped his cap at his nape like ruffled feathers, and his dark, widely spaced eyes and sharp nose completed his avian appearance.

“A word with you, Storian. It's important.” Those glittering eyes swept the young faces turned toward him. Seeming to change his mind, the stranger took half a step backward. He breathed, “Perhaps better outside.”

“I'm afraid,” Bellam began coolly, sounding anything but afraid, “that whatever it is must wait until—” He faltered. The stranger had raised one palm to show a bit of glass there. The Storian exhaled into his beard.

“Very well.” Without a word to his class, he stepped out.

The stranger's eyes roved the students. Riveted, Ariel throbbed in fear of that keen gaze stopping on her. Her breath caught as their eyes met. With a soft thump of his heel, the man spun. His coat flapped. The door shut behind him.

The clunk of the door broke the icy spell on the class. Students surged to the two windows, the largest boys jostling for the best view. Zeke held back to avoid his arm getting banged. He and Ariel exchanged scowls of mutual frustration; then both looked at the door.

“They'll see,” Zeke worried as they ran to it.

“So?” Ariel replied. “He didn't tell us to stay seated.”

It was not their stubby old Storian, however, but the crow man who concerned her the most. She didn't want to attract his attention. Gripping the door handle, she put her face close so a slight gap would be enough. Zeke leaned on her shoulder to peek over her head. A younger girl scrambled to tuck herself beneath Ariel's chin. Ariel depressed the latch.

“Wait.” Zeke slapped his palm over the door, keeping it closed. “Where is it?”

“It's home.” She knew better than to name it aloud. Yesterday's surprise might be connected to this one.

Zeke moved his palm. Ariel eased the door open.

There were three people outside, not two.

Canberra Docks welcomed few strangers, but now and again an unknown Fisher sailed in to trade catches or seek shelter from storms. The men standing with their Storian looked more like they'd blown in with a swirl of dead leaves. Next to the crow fellow stood another man in oilcloth, not so tall and built more like a bear. He had ruddy skin, short yellow hair, and a patchy blond beard. A stiff leather hat dangled in one hand while he talked. Ariel did not quite believe the smile fixed on his lips.

When the blond man finished speaking, Bellam shook his head, adding a few words and a shrug.

A gust of wind flapped both strangers' coats. Abruptly, Ariel recalled yesterday's encounter with Leed Windmaster and his warning about the troubling wind.

She pressed the door shut.

“Hey,” complained the girl crouched below her. But other students scattered as well.

By the time the door opened again, everyone was seated once more. The Storian entered slowly, his hands clasped and his brow wrinkled.

“Is something wrong?” Madeleine asked.

“Good question,” Bellam said, mostly to himself. He fingered one hairy ear. “Perhaps. But where were we? Oh yes.” He clapped his hands. “Namingfest.”

For the next hour, students recited lessons that Ariel had heard every year: What the word “apprentice” meant. How the trades had emerged at the end of the Blind War, and why there were more Reapers and Fishers than anything else. What happened if you failed your test and had to spend a miserable year as a Fool. While her classmates described the symbol for each trade, Ariel thought about all the other marks on her dart. She could hardly wait for lunchtime, when she and Zeke could run to her house and inspect it together at last.

When the morning could stretch out no longer, Storian checked the weather at the door. The wind whooshed in past him.

“Come back after your lunches,” he decided, dismissing the class. “We'll get a few more lessons today.”

Zeke, who had jittered anxiously the whole hour, jumped up. Ariel got stuck behind somebody slower.

“Ariel.” The Storian's voice held a silent command.

Her heart shivered. “Yes, sir?”

The other kids stepped wide around her. Whatever her crime, it might be contagious.

Storian did not go on until they had all filed out. Tortured, Ariel craned her neck, trying to see through the doorway whether Zeke awaited her outside.

“Did you think I didn't notice?”

Ariel's mind spun. Did the Storian somehow know what they'd found?

He continued. “You and Zeke did not return after lunch yesterday.”

She tried not to slump in relief. “No, sir. We were catching pollywogs, and I guess we were late.” It was true, partly.

“And how did that result in a broken arm?”

“Well, we climbed a tree, too.”

“I see.” Storian tapped his fingertips on his leg. “Don't be late today. The two of you will start our afternoon lesson by reciting the multiplication of numbers from one to fifteen.”

A groan escaped her. “Yes, sir.”

By the time Ariel fled outside, Zeke was racing up the hill toward the meadow, his splint hugged to his belly.

“Zeke!” she hollered. He had already run too far to hear her. She could guess where he was going, however, and he wouldn't want her there while he talked to his tree. She stamped one foot in annoyance. She wasn't sure how some silly tree—or even a smart one—could answer questions about strangers or anything else that didn't concern it. Meanwhile, he was wasting a good chance to look at the telling dart.

She scuffed through the mud toward home. At least she could finish her copy during lunch. Maybe Zeke would return with time to spare and come find her. She shot a last glance toward the tree line. He'd already disappeared into its shadow.

Ariel turned the corner of her cottage an instant before hearing the voices. Horrified, she stumbled back out of sight, praying she hadn't been spotted. The bearish stranger stood at her open front door. Since he didn't look sick, Ariel couldn't imagine why he had come—unless it had something to do with her dart.

Gripping the stone wall of her house, she peeked toward the blond man. He flashed his fake smile at her mother and lumbered away. Luckily for Ariel, he turned his back, not his face, toward her staring eyes at the corner. As soon as he vanished behind the next wall, she dashed for the door and burst in.

Her mother glanced up from tying herbs by the fire.

“What did he want?” Ariel asked, breathless.

“He's looking for something. He thinks it might be near here.” Luna hesitated. “I told him I hadn't seen one since I was a child.”

Ariel collapsed on her stool. Her mother had saved her.

But her mother wasn't done talking. “And you have something to deliver to Storian right after lunch.”

Ariel gasped and leaped back to her feet. “You told him that?”

“No. I'm telling you that.”

Ariel's heart started beating again. “But why? You said—”

“I know, love, but it isn't a toy. I just felt our own Storian should have a chance to see it before it went to a stranger.”

Ariel pushed tears back down her throat and slouched toward the foot of her bed. What might have happened, she wondered, if she had kept her mouth shut last night? Could she and Zeke have held on to their secret once they'd learned the strangers were hunting for it?

“Why is some old metal stick so important?” she grumbled.

“I can't imagine.” Luna sounded puzzled. “But giving it up is the right thing to do.” She patted Ariel's shoulder. “Want something to eat?”

“No.” She pulled the shining dart and her ivory copy from their hiding place. Inspecting her night's work, she raised the brass shaft to the light to compare. Her fingers, slowly twisting it, halted.

One of the symbols had vanished.

She turned the brass barrel the whole way around. All twelve trades had been marked on the telling dart last night, she was certain. Now one of the rows came up short. Bright, unmarked
brass filled the space where one symbol had been. Ariel glanced at her copy to confirm which was missing:
, the mark for a Judge.

Her mouth fell open. How could engraved marks disappear? That one may have been fainter than others, but she was sure they'd all been there yesterday in neat, aligned rows. She'd been careful to copy each in order, or she might have believed she had—

“Wait,” her confused mind muttered. A shape had changed, too. Her mother had pointed out a crosshatched sign that meant danger:
. Now a second appeared on the dart in a place where it hadn't before. The sign that used to be in that spot—the mark she had copied onto her whalebone—had a little swoop instead of one crossbeam:
. Surely that swoop made it mean something different, something less threatening than an echo of danger.