Thornlost (Book 3) (7 page)

“You shouldn’t worry too much about it,” he said on impulse. “You haven’t been married all that long, and sometimes it takes awhile—”

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” Her tone warned him that he’d better not have any idea what he was talking about, either. He reached over to her, wanting to comfort. She shook him off and wouldn’t look at him. “I think these are done,” she said, pointing to the stacked and polished plates. “Rikka can arrange them when she comes in. Beholden for the help.”

“Blye—”

“Go home, Cayden. Just—go home.”

He gazed down at her bent fair head. Then he went home.

A slow, steady rain had dampened his shoulders and hair before he reached the back door of Number Eight. On the lowest of the three short steps was Mistress Mirdley, sheltered under the awning as she waited for the rain to fill an iron cauldron usually kept in her stillroom. Folded atop a stool on the step was the counterpane Mieka had given Cade last night.

She didn’t glance up as he approached. “You’ll be wondering why it already wants a wash,” she said. “You didn’t feel it, did you? Not any of it.”

“Any of what? I was supposed to feel something?” He brushed rain off his clothes and jumped up to the top step, out of the wet.

“Wizard,” she accused cryptically. From a pocket of her apron
she tugged a blue glass bottle, then a green one, then a brown one, then a clear one. “Never sense any magic but your own, do you?” she went on as she measured out careful droplets from each bottle into the virgin rainwater. Scents wafted from each: anise, bay, lavender, sage. “You’ll not be remembering much from what I taught you of hedge-witchery when you were little—”

“I remember enough,” he said brusquely. “I know that’s not just washing water, it’s for purifying.”

She tucked the bottles back in her pocket and took out several more, these of silver stoppered with cork. The contents were trickled by turns into the cauldron. “Your nose reminds you. Good.”

“The sense of smell is probably the most evocative,” he said, quoting Sagemaster Emmot, taking refuge in rote learning just as earlier, with Blye, he had taken refuge in societal cant. “It goes directly to the brain, bypassing what you use to analyze and define what you see or hear or touch. It calls up memories—” Aware that he was babbling, he compressed his lips for a moment, then asked, “Why the clove?”

She ignored the question. “You recognize some of these from what I put into your satchel when you’re off gallivanting about. Ever taken an itch from nasty sheets in those upstairs tavern rooms? Of course not. What’s washed into your nightshirts protects you. Now, these others, they’re things you’ve not been needing until now.”

“Clove?” he repeated.

“Recall it from toothaches, I’d imagine,” she said grimly. After stashing the silver vials, she produced a wooden spoon and crouched to stir the mix. Widdershins, he noted absently. “More to it than that, or so my old granny avowed. What you’ll not have recognized is mulberry. Betony. One or two others.” She looked up at him and he took an involuntary step back, his spine against the door. “It’s purifying that’s needed here as well as protection, and banishment, and a reverse of spells to send them back to the one who cast them.”

“Spells!”

“Here.” She gave him the spoon. “Keep stirring that.”

Bewildered, and not knowing whether to be scornful or scared, he crouched down and circled the spoon leftwise round and round the cauldron. He knew who had made the counterpane, cut and pieced the material, embroidered all the feathers, stitched every stitch. It was ludicrous to think that there might be something dangerous about it.

A sudden glimpse of a remembered Elsewhen: slender fingers taking tiny, quick stitches in silk the color of irises, and unintelligible words chanted low and fierce as the girl worked on a gift for the Elf she so deeply desired. And then a memory: he and she in an alleyway, the gloat of triumph in her eyes that told him she was winning and knew that eventually she’d win.

No. She wouldn’t dare.

Rain dripped onto his head from a hole in the awning. He cursed under his breath and shifted position, still stirring, his shirtsleeve wet to the shoulder.

But hadn’t Jinsie said last year that there was magic about, some sort of spellcasting being used on Mieka—

She wouldn’t
dare
.

And even if she dared, even if there was some unrightness about the counterpane, why hadn’t Mistress Mirdley refused to be anywhere near it last night in the carriage?

But then he remembered that she’d gathered it around Derien and Lady Jaspiela, and not a bit of it had touched Cayden at all.

A little shower of sea salt went into the cauldron, startling him. Sprigs of mint, marjoram, rosemary tied together with black silk thread were tossed in. At last the counterpane itself was squashed into the water, the rain still drizzling down.

“Why?” he managed.

“Why did they do it, or why is this necessary?” She took the spoon from his hand and jabbed at the counterpane, shoving all of it underwater. “You don’t know what they are, those two,” she muttered. “
Caitiffer
they call themselves, as if no one remembers the word.”

Cade was possessed of a vocabulary rather larger than the usual, even for a tregetour, and he’d never heard the term in any context other than this particular surname. He said as much, tentatively.

“And a good reason for it, you’ll be thinking once you know!”

“Tell me?”

“Not here. Not where anyone could walk by and listen.”

So it was in silence that he helped her wring out the soaked counterpane, wondering the whole while why she didn’t use an Affinity spell to return the water in the material to the water in the cauldron, the way she did with all the other washing. He made as if to tip the cauldron over so the remains could spill down the little slope to the runnel in the middle of Criddow Close and thence to the sewers.

“Leave that be!” snapped Mistress Mirdley. “There’s other uses for an unbemoiling! Come inside out of the wet.”

In the stillroom, chairs were arranged and the material was draped over it. He was relieved to see that none of the colors had run, but when he saw that the little charm was missing, he finally broke the silence.

“Where’s that droplet thing of silver that was at the tip of that feather?”

“
That
I took care of last night, and melted in Blye’s kiln this morning before you were even awake.”

“You can’t mean—”

“I do mean. Methinks Blye sensed a bit of a something about it, but I had it in the fire before she could be sure. Silver? Huh! Naught but polished steel—and all the more powerful because of it.”

He knew about steel. His other grandfather, Lord Isshak Highcollar, had worn a steel ring on each thumb. They were not just tokens of his submission to the King or reminders of the King’s mercy in not lopping those thumbs off, as had been done to Sagemaster Emmot. Expertly bespelled, the steel rings—or, more accurately, the iron used to make them—prevented a Wizard from using his magic.

Settling herself on a wooden stool at the stillroom workbench, Mistress Mirdley dried her hands on her apron. “Now. Heed me smartly, Cayden. When first I saw those two, I gave them the benefit of kindness. It would be as if people judged you by your grandmother Lady Kiritin. And that wouldn’t be fair.”

He shrugged. The devastations caused by his grandmother’s idea about using withies as exploding spells that maimed or killed had resulted in laws forbidding glasscrafting to all Wizards. He’d broken those laws on several occasions.

“But to keep that name…” Mistress Mirdley shook her head. “Thought it would be taken for a married name, I suppose, come from the male line and not the female.”

Before he could ask why this made a difference, she opened a little jar of salve and began rubbing it into her hands as she talked.

“What it first meant was ‘slave.’ Generations ago, with the First Escaping—you’ll have heard of that in school, I hope?”

He nodded. Magical folk had at various times through the centuries departed the Continent, unwelcome at best and persecuted at worst. They had found refuge in Albeyn because the Royal Family had a few Wizardly bloodlines, and mayhap other things besides.

But what Mistress Mirdley told him that morning was something he’d never heard before. Not in littleschool, not at Sagemaster Emmot’s Academy, not in rumors or gossip or even a hint in a very old play. Wizards and Elves, Goblins and
Gnomes, and all other magical folk had been allowed to leave the Continent freely—though freed of most of their possessions. But the Caitiffs, Mistress Mirdley told him, had been sold. What they called themselves was unknown. They were given a name that meant “slave” and sent to the Durkah Isle. On maps it was indicated by a ragged outline, a name, and symbols that designated nothing but mountains of ice.

“Some tried to slip away, but almost all were caught. Or so it was said. All of them women, by the bye, for their magic doesn’t pass to their men.”

A test was performed on those suspected of being Caitiff. Taken to the nearest Trollbridge, the prisoner was stripped naked and inspected by the presiding Troll for certain signs. If these were present, the woman was cast into the water.

“The testing was always done the day after a good strong rain, so that the water was new. Pure water won’t tolerate a Caitiff.” She paused. “It’s said to be agony beyond any agony for them.”

Pure water; new water; rainwater—did young Mistress Windthistle and her mother ever go for walks in the rain? If caught outside in a sudden shower, did they bundle up in hooded cloaks and gloves, and hurry indoors as soon as may be? He pushed the thoughts away and asked, “Did you ever—? I mean—”

“I’m not
that
old, boy! My mam, though, she was brought a few for testing in her time. Told me what to look for in a Caitiff, and how to clean up after one.” She nodded to the counterpane spread across chairs. “Mayhap she glossed over a mark now and then, because she knew the woman and knew her not to be what she was accused of being—it’s a rare skin without a blotch or blemish someplace. But—”

“The Princess!” he blurted. “Lady Vren—someone told me that her mother came from a distant land to the east, and when she arrived for the wedding, they stripped her starkers and
inspected
her! Was that what they were looking for?”

“It’s been so long a while that I doubt they knew the why of it, but by the sound of it… yes.”

“How does it show? I mean, is there a specific—?”

“That’s Troll-lore, boy.”

“Umm… all right,” he mumbled, chastened. “Was the Caitiff allowed to drown?”

“Fished out, dried off, and sent to the Durkah Isle with the rest of her kin. We’re not barbarians. And before you ask, iron and steel have no effect on them.”

“How many of them were here?”

“A few hundreds.” Her muscular shoulders twitched. “Best to be rid of them. They look like anyone else, but they bring a taint to a bloodline.”

Instantly indignant, thinking of innocent little Jindra in her painted cradle, he said, “There are people who say that about Gnomes and Goblins, too.
And
Trolls.”

She nodded, unoffended. “About
everyone
, at some time or another.” Once more she pointed to the counterpane. “Stitching is their specialty. A harmless, womanly occupation, anyone would say—”

Feeling contrary, and wondering why once again he was defending a woman he loathed, he said, “I trust that you know what you’re about, but I’ve seen no proof.”

“If it’s your thinking that I ought to’ve waited and let you come out all over in hives, or lose the use of your fingers, or—”

“Would I?” he challenged. “Is that what was becast into that cloth? I touched it last night, when I unwrapped it. I didn’t sense anything.”

“Wizard,” she repeated.

“You knew it was from them and yet you let Dery sleep all wrapped up in it.”

“Gracious Gods, boy, what a thorough-thinking brain you’ve
got between your ears! The thing was made for
you
. To sleep beneath. Huddled around you for hours at a time. Seeping into your dreams, mayhap. Who could know what was intended?”

“So you don’t really know, either.”

“Would you rather I’d waited to make sure?” she snarled. “Three more things I’ll tell you, and then we’ll talk of it no more. Clothwork is their specialty on the Durkah Isle. Trolls inspect
everything
, and the slightest breath of magic means the whole shipment is destroyed.”

“Why is it that Trolls have so much to do with keeping watch over Caitiffs?”

Her only answer was a shrug. “The second thing is this. There’s one sort of magical folk on the Durkah Isle, and one only. When enough of them had been exiled to the island, they set themselves to ridding the place of all other races except Human. Wizards, Goblins, Elves, Gnomes—though not Pikseys or Sprites. They stick to their forests in Albeyn and have never been seen on the Durkah Isle.”

“What of the Fae?”

“I can’t see even a White Winterchill Fae liking a life in almost year-round snow, can you?”

He had no way of knowing. His own heritage was, apparently, Green Summer Fae; his many-times-great-grandmother had said so.

“Everyone else disappeared.” She growled softly. “Illness or accident, that’s what they said for years, a climate and a land no one but the toughest Humans and the exiled Caitiffs could tolerate, until no one went there anymore except for the cloth trade. There’s but the one port, free of ice only one month a year. And on that island are Caitiff and Human, and during that month the few Trolls who inspect the cloth. And thus it’s been for hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of years.”

“But wouldn’t their bloodlines have thinned out by now? Look at Albeyn. With every generation, the mix of races loses a bit of magic—”

“Who told you that? That ‘Sagemaster’ of yours? I never did like him.”

“You didn’t? Why?”

Once more she ignored the questions. “There’s no Troll would touch a Caitiff woman. The enmity goes too deep.”

Knowing she wouldn’t tell him the why of that, either, he said, “Even so, after all that time, with only Human and Caitiff bloodlines—”