Aloren (10 page)

Eleven

“Dancing for money?” said Mordan.  “I hate to tell you, Reyna, but you’ve hit rock-bottom.”

“It’s a decoy,” I said.

“A decoy?  For getting what?”

“Money.  It can’t hardly be helped––”

“Lawks, Reyna, you’re eleven.  Start speaking like it.” 

By the time the snows came and stuck, such conversations were sounding all over the middle hills. 

True to his word, Seacho had come back from a raid with a big woolen blanket, and after giving it to me, sorely regretted it, until he came back with another for Emry, then another for Gattren, then the last for himself. 

So Tem’s prediction came true, and I was stuck in midwinter with a horse blanket.  The others weren’t much better off, or worse. Wille stole an overcoat off a scarecrow, and poor little Oseavern went to a better place.  Early in the winter he grew quiet and pale.  A cherry-red rash spread from his cheeks to his chest, and we looked after him as best we could, but one morning he didn’t wake up.  We buried him beneath some boughs cut from a yew, and thought no more on it.

My first raid took place in the early morning after winter solstice.  The little town was silent, sleeping off last night’s festivities, and Wille, Seacho, Begly, Tom, Toughy, and I walked boldly up to the gates, pretending we were itinerant musicians.

No Noreme town refused entrance to musicians. We were cheerily let in by a few sentries who still seemed a bit drunk.

We set up on a street corner near the front-gate.  The street was soon filled with townsfolk going about their morning errands, and Toughy pounded away at his drum, Tom fiddled a hornpipe, Begley played Mandy’s flute, and I began to dance.

People gathered round.  Even the sentries came over for a look, and as the morning wore on, we drew a goodly crowd.  They clapped and laughed, more and more coming until I suspected the whole town was gathered before us.  They tapped all the misgivings from my chest; and I was caught up in the joy of it, floating a hand-span above the ground, when something unexpected happened. 

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Wille and Seacho unbarring the town gate to let the brigands through.  And the oblivious townspeople dug their hands into their pockets, and threw their coins at Begley, Tom, Toughy and me.

“What the hell’s this?”  A copper bounced off Toughy’s drum.

“Look at that,” shouted Begley over the clapping.  “We’re working fer our money––a mortal insult!”

“If this here’s an insult, y’can call me a whiskey-wallopin broken-belted blackguard wid his arse knockin at his knees.” Toughy launched into a quicker time with his drum.  “An gimme s’more, please.” 

“Do we gets to keep it?”  Tom’s fingers zipped up and down his fretboard.

“Why, o’ course Tommy. Earned it hain’t we?” said Begley.  “But best not tell old Chief, eh?  So’s to avoid getting our thumbs twisted off.”  And he lay out his coat to collect the coins.

When we were through, Begley, a decent chap at heart, decided we’d split the earnings four ways as they’d been made fairly.

***

We stole the scrutiny of too many. Seven houses were plundered and six people killed. 

I took my coins into the woods that evening and buried them under a little rowan.  I refused to dance for a while, but Fillegal beat me until my mouth ran red, and threatened to cut off my foot.  I had no doubt he would.  Begley was missing an ear, and Toughy had no thumbs. 

So I danced at knifepoint for other raids.  I spent the coins on food,  persevered through the guilt, and in time only felt indifference for what I did.  And when Emry, small enough to fit, was shoved up latrine chutes and pushed through sluice gates, everyone was acquiescently helping except Gattren, made to scour the pots and dole out favors with Peach. 

The raids were dangerous and seldom rewarded.  All the profits went to Fillegal to parcel out as he pleased (but neither I, nor anyone with me, said anything about the busker’s wages we were earning), and late in the winter I had a miserable experience with a floodgate beneath a city wall. 

Being the smallest, I was expected to dive beneath the water, slip through the bars, and loosen the bolts on the other side to let the boys in.  But as I pulled myself through, my dress knotted on a catch in the metal.  I believe I hung there for a minute before tearing the dress from my back.  When I climbed out half naked, Wille wrapped his overcoat around me and told Seacho to hug me so I wouldn’t freeze, while he, tall but skinny, did the job himself. 

That winter I had little but a horse blanket, my chemise, and the rags I tied around my arms and legs.  Though Noreme winters are mild, I remember the cold as a constant ache.  I danced barefoot, but wasn’t so keen on the feeling any other time, so I grabbed a pair of boots, three sizes too big, off a farmhouse stoop in Domestodd and stuffed them with rags.  But they still wobbled and clunked on silent stone floors. 

I don’t remember much else about that winter. Only that I learned very well how to cheat at dice, call nasty insults, sing nasty songs, mend broken fingers, ride a horse backwards, punch a man in the privates, plan and commit various crimes, fletch an arrow, trap and skin a rabbit, and sundry other strange things.

***

Early in the spring I was sitting atop a small tower, picking a lock.  The door stood between me and a weaponry room and the lock had three pins.  I’d just broken the third with my needle and chisel, when Tem, who was in the area, landed next to me polite as you please. 

I let go of the chisel and the pins fell back in place.  “What’re you doing here?”

“I could be asking you the same question.”  .

I shrugged.  “Got to unbolt the postern.”  But he didn’t understand why I needed to break into the weaponry room to unbolt the postern, and Floy, flown up to check on me, agreed with him.

I picked a nit from my hair and ate it.  “I need a knife, or a dagger, or a dirk.”

“Why?”

“To slit Fillegal’s throat while he’s sleeping tonight.”

“Oh,” said Floy.  “Mind you make a neat job of it.”

“I want Nefer to teach me to throw a knife, but he won’t till I give him something new to throw hisself.”

“Here’s a big wolf,” said Tem.  “I think she’s eaten my little sister.”

“True enough,” I said.  “She’s dead.”

Tem found me because Mordan was tracking my movements and reporting back to a meeting place: another ruined tower in the north. I was still writing letters for them, but not as many.  Parchment was scarce among the brigands. 

Arin wondered if I was becoming friendly with Father’s killers, but I put a query to Nefer about where they’d been before Milodygraig.  He said Fillegal and his crew had come from southeast Lorila, and he had little reason to lie.

***

Spring grew up and the world softened, and I thought of the seeds that had soaked in the river water all through the dark season. 

Nefer thought of them too, but he put far too little thought into the thing, according to Mordan, who had a fit when he heard what I’d done.  “Let me get this straight,” he said, picking at his tail.  “You don’t know where they
are?
”

“I do, though.  They’re growing right as rain between that hill and the next one.”  I gestured vaguely at the hills.

“Reyna!”  Feathers fell around my head.  “You’ve lost them all!  What’re we going to do?”

“Haven’t you never heard of the Gavoran Blessing?  Great gallons of grog, Mordan.  Slow down, ye’ll run into a tree.”

Had I been older and my circumstances less strange I would’ve been more skeptical.  But when I took the seeds from the water they hadn’t germinated and rotted.  They’d turned silver. 

I spread these to dry in the sun, and Nefer led me into a spinney of alders.  He put my palm on the moss and asked if I could feel anything.  The tree song was clear as morning, and after I told him so he poured the seeds into my hands and refreshed my memory. 

He left me there, and I felt lonely in the new green.  But when I dug my feet into the soil, closed my eyes, and began singing, “
Norem braechlen lend melluin
,” a wind flew up.  The shoots tangled in my hair, scratched and broke my skin, filled my ears with sticky words:

Let us draw on thy sap, child of clay,

And we shall cease our selfish play

And pay thee back in kind.

When I was done I wiped the blood from my arms and neck and took the seeds back to Nefer.  He put them into a little burlap sack, cut three slits in the sack, and handed it to me.  Then he set me backwards on an old horse.  He secured me in place with a rope, and before I could protest, pricked the horse’s skewbald hindquarters with his cutlass. 

The horse and I ran for an exhilarating half a mile, wherein the seeds flew out the holes into the air.

“It’s up to the earth now,” said Nefer when I came back.  “Give it two springtides an’ they’ll be coverin these hills like a sea.”  I had no choice but to believe him.

***

Midsummer came with its swathes of goldenrod, and a drunken Halfwit-Tom leaked news of our buskers’ wages.  The men were jealous, of course.  Soon full-out brawls determined who were going to accompany me on street corners with pipe, fiddle and drum. 

This got Fillegal brooding.  He didn’t like his brigands doing paid work and honest, and he became frightened for his exquisitely wrought autocracy.   He cast about for someone to blame.  Wille didn’t help. 

“Merruc’s band of brigands?” he said loudly one evening.  “More like Merruc’s band of minstrels.  Or maybe Lally’s.”  He turned with a smirk to Fillegal, who knocked him flat. 

I did my best to avoid Fillegal, and deep in my second autumn––I believe it was the night Wille, Seacho, Padlimaird and I passed around our first pipe, a shoddy thing that turned our faces yellow and made us spit until our laps were wet––there was a desertion.  Begley, Tom, Peach, and Miggon all went missing.  Along with two fiddles, the flute, a drum, a set of reed pipes, a gittern, and a lute. 

Together they made a fifth of Fillegal’s men.  Fillegal was furious, flummoxed, seething and stumped, because Miggon had been the best tracker and couldn’t very well track himself down. 

The deserters hadn’t thought to invite me.  Nevertheless, Fillegal decided it was my fault, and began looking for ways to empty his shoe of the dancing pebble.

Gattren, meanwhile, was looking for ways to scrag Fillegal.  She had always been headstrong, but now she had taken a bitter cast as well; and because Toughy ran her grandfer through with his saber under Fillegal’s jurisdiction, Fillegal was as much in peril as Toughy. 

I’m not sure why she waited until early in our second spring to make her move.  It might’ve been because she’d grown up in the past year, and the men had settled on fooling with her rather than us.  Or perhaps after long months of hearing “It can’t be helped, Gatty” and “We’ve no choice” and “They’ll break our necks, else” her wits finally snapped.

***

Early that day Toughy set me to cleaning his scabby tent canvas as a punishment for mouthing-off.  I wound sacking around my hands because I had to use black-bandorscroll: a horrible, poisonous plant with blistering juices.  Its flesh was a powerful scour, and Toughy had gathered some from the mountains. 

I was scrubbing the canvas with the evil stuff, gasping in pain, when Gattren came by and rolled up a bit of bandorscroll in a strip of cloth.

“What are ye doin?” I said.

“Scouring a cauldron.”  Her face could’ve curdled water.  “Go back to your business and leave me with mine.” 

I scarcely heard her; I was trying very hard not to cry.

There was more talk than music by the fire––Fillegal didn’t like fiddling as much as he used to.  Everyone was listening to the storytelling and I couldn’t see Gattren anywhere.  I assumed one of the men had led her away.

As usual, drinks were served first to Toughy and Fillegal. Toughy downed his in two gulps.  After this he’d launched into a tale (about how he once climbed into the bower of a courtesan to bag her collection of Neridonan crystal roosters) when suddenly his muscles began to spasm and his mouth to foam.  He parted his lips and emitted a series of sharp shrieks, like a little dog.  His black tongue curled in the air like the scroll of a bandore. 

I sat on my blistered hands.  And Toughy toppled from his log and lay in the fire-lit snow, completely still.

Wille let out a breath.  “That’s what happens when ye tell lies like an old djain.”

“That in’t lies,” Padlimaird cut in.  “That’s black-bandorscroll.  See his tongue, didn’t ye?”

“I drank a whole half of this.”  Fillegal stared at his tankard.  With shaking hands he thrust it at Currip, a man who had left his job as an apothecary to lead a more fulfilling life as a brigand.  “Is there summat bad in there?  Tell me quick, you knobby-nosed cur.”