Aloren (16 page)

But your lad instead, your heart I’ll steal

In place of his, for I hunger with

A hatchling’s greed for a good first meal.”

“Gorn.” He blew his nose.  “She’s as big around as me thumb.”

“What earthly good are you doing as a thief with a thumb that size?”

“Alright, ducky.”  He bit his cheek.  “We’ll give it until the excitement dies down to a couple flying benches.”  He stuck his dagger into his belt.  “Not challenging enough?  Should we tie our hands and use our teeth?”

I sneered at him, and turned to a big man behind me.

He was inebriated and jabbing his elbows through the air, for he was trying to rid himself of his vest and had got his thumb stuck in a buttonhole.

“She laughed to herself, ‘I’ll wish my lad

Straight inter me arms, heart and the rest.’

No sooner than when she’d wished aloud

Did I appear clenched cheek to breast.”

I rammed palms into the big man’s back, pushing him into a crowded table.  Then I stuck my foot under the next table over and kicked someone hard enough in the calves that he jumped from his seat and wheeled round.  But I had crawled beneath the table. 

The first man picked himself up, tore his vest free, and clobbered the ears of the man whose shins I had kicked.  They locked in a hug, grunting like bears.

“But he took both hearts, the firebird did,

For now both chests were close enough

To sweep aside with his iron claws

And rip the rubies from the rough.

The wish for which my lass had faith

Was the wish that every lover spake,

And the clever firebird used the wish

To procure two folk and two hearts to take.”

The grey thief and I snuck about the drunks, and soon we’d banged up a magnificent brawl complete with exploding pottery, stools breaking over heads, and Wille, dancing wildly with Sal and nicking drinks from abandoned mugs.

“But cunning as the firebird was,

My lass and I had flown the test,

For heartless folk are lawless, too,

And rules don’t hold with an empty chest.

Cutting feet free of earth-bound laws,

We trapped him in his Enna Tree.

We made him cry, the bloody bird;

He’d about two thousand more hearts than we.”

Fists and boots smashed around me.  I held my knife ready in my hand to cut purses from strings, and I slipped wallets from pockets before the pockets jumped away.  In and out went my arms and feet––a bit like dancing a very fast jig. Poor Floy, whom I’d been ignoring, sped past my head shrieking all manner of useless advice.

“And when he shook with livid tears,

His perfect breast was too, too slow

To keep the trembling hill of hearts

From slipping t’ward the rocks below.

He’d too much pain and hurt to catch

One thousand eight hundred dimming lights,

And dripping in shade from his starry roost,

They broke to a cold five years of nights.

As the crimson firebird turned to blue

We took our broken hearts from him.

We held them close and kept them warm

Until their light had ceased to dim.”

Folk were slowing now, lying about, and nursing their bruises. 

I crept up to my competitor.  He was busy with two fellows wrestling on the ground.  As he stole a wallet off one of them, I lifted a good amount of his earnings from his pockets and slipped them into my own to ensure my victory for Wille’s sorry sake.  Then I stood to the side until the rest of the brawlers had worn themselves out, knocked themselves silly, or grown bored.

“The hearts burst into glorious day

And shone through links of starless chain,

And loath was I to let my lass

Ride an ill-shod horse abroad again.”

I led the man over to Begley’s table, to lessen, in the presence of five witnesses, his desire to slit my throat when we counted our coins.  We spread them on the table. Begley whistled and the man left with nothing but a sour look.

Wille gave me his winnings.  “You’re a lucky fool,” I said, putting coins into my pockets, after giving most of them to Begley’s troop, who hadn’t got many of their own because of the brawl.

“For certain.”  Sal gave Wille a nudge.  “But if he was convinced all the way to fifty silvers you’d beat the man out, he must’ve been fair confident about your worth, miss.”

“Probably cause he don’t got none to compare it to.”

Wille leaned back, looking obscenely satisfied.  “Thank you, little sister.” 

“Brothers don’t act like that.”  But I flicked him a coin and thought longingly of Tem.  And Mordan and Leode.  And even Arin. 

***

I sat still until the blood had stopped thumping in my head, then I went to dump the coins into the saddlebag.  I crawled near the table, and the blood come back hot and heavy. Someone was crouched beneath it.  The saddlebag was gone and the bottom of my stomach dropped out. 

The human boy, the one I’d snared two months before, smiled and said, “You oughtn’t attract so much attention to yourself.” 

“Where is it?  Where’d you put it, you fire-breathing worm––”  I dove beneath the table.

“Trid!”  He pummeled me away.  “Trid, get her off me––she’ll tear off my face.” 

Trid appeared from wherever he’d been hiding, grabbed my legs and pulled me off. 

I jerked my limbs every which way, but I was no match for two big boys.  They carried me across the street by an arm and a leg, and pushed me into a corner behind some crates. 

Floy tore out of nowhere.  She agitated their eyes and hair; they tossed her aside, and worried they would hurt her, I yelled at her to stop.  Their shoulders reached far above me, and I slumped against the wall, thinking of my father’s signet ring.  The boys were highborn; they would find it, know what it was.  I would be handed over to the Queen-–

“What have y’done with the fool bag?” I shouted. 

Their eyes shone gold in the dark, like cats’.  “It’s found a new home.  Bit cleaner than its last.”  Andrei blotted blood from his nose with a sleeve.

“You needn’t worry,” Trid said, a hint of wonder in his voice.  “It’s perfectly safe.”

“I’ve hidden it,” Andrei said.

“You had no right,” I said.

“Yes I did.  You’ve got the brains of a sausage and I’m bigger than you.” 

“You wart-bitten son of a castrated mule.”

Trid laughed. “This one’s got a mouth.”

“What d’ye want?” I said.

“A slave,” Andrei said.  Trid frowned at him.

“We want you to pick a lock for us.”  He pushed dark hair from his eyes.  “We found your supplies hidden in the bushes.  Can’t imagine a stable hand giving you a key.”

“Aloren, they call you?” said Andrei. “Pretty. More like a banging bit of slime mold.”  I spat in his eye.  He raised his hand to strike me, but Trid caught his wrist.

“Was Lady Grete disgusted when she found ye?” I said.  “Or’d she make room in her bed?”

“Do you ever want to touch your horrible bag again?”

I turned to Trid.  “What lock?”

“It’s a matter of locks,” Andrei said, “and years.  I shall delight in making you miserable for as long as possible.”

“Andrei––”  Trid stepped between us.  “You’re not going to strut around being as cruel as you like––”

“You’d
argue
over the sparrowshit?  Come on, Trid, when we’ve exhausted the tool, we’ll drop it.” 

Trid seemed troubled by this, but he decided to clean his hands of it.

“It’s your feud.”

***

They designed for me to meet them at the corner of Perry and Crewald Streets at sunset the next day, as Andrei thought the belltower too public a place to be seen with me hanging about them.

I paced back and forth after they left, and tripped over a broken crock from the brawl.  My foot bled.  I picked up the crock and smashed it against the wall.  “Floy!” I pulled the strings on my chemise.  “What do I do, Floy?  He has me father’s ring, the cocksucking pickled cod.” 

“You’ll do as he says” said Floy angrily.  “You won’t draw attention to it.”

I sank to the curb, head cradled in my hands.  “No, I can’t.  I can’t.”

“There are more important things at stake,” she said, “than your freedom, or pride, or whatever it is you’re moaning about.”

Sixteen

Crewald Street ran next to the river in a run-down quarter of the city.  Perry slid through the ramshackle houses at an angle, and ended at the river.  I sat atop the boardwalk railing, rolling a stolen chisel and needle across my lap, rubbing the part of my neck were the saddlebag strap should have been, watching the poplars across the water change to gold in the sunset. 

I heard a clacking and turned round; Trid rode towards me on a brown horse.  She sidled when a buckskin squeezed past her, so that Trid had to curb her sharply and wheel her round.  The buckskin carried Max and Andrei.

“Can’t you just once,” said Trid, “control your stupid animal?”

“It’s Max who’s stupid,” said Andrei.  “Wiggles like an eel. Makes him nervous.”

“Mother has people watching my horse,” said Max.  He spotted me and slithered off Andrei’s horse.  “That stunt you pulled was absolutely splendid,” he said, walking up to me.  “Are you a boy or a girl?”

“A boy wouldn’t run about in a slip.” Andrei led his horse over to the rail to tie his leads next to Trid’s mare.  I bit angrily at my nails.  “See that hole, lugworm?”  He pointed to an opening in the ground with steps looking as though they led toward the river.  “You’re going to unlock the little room at the bottom that controls the floodgate.”

“The floodgate?”  I was vaguely aware of how the sluice system worked.  In the early spring, when the river reached too high for just the canal and threatened to spill into the streets, the sluices were opened to drain water through conduits beneath the city and into the sea.  But there were two gates involved, and if the sea gates weren’t opened as well, the water had no place to go, and swamped the lower quarters with sewage.  It had happened before.  “Why?  You want to open it?”

“The whole bottom of the hill turns into a lake,” said Max.  “No good for swimming, though, as the water’s nasty.  It bubbles up through the paving stones like a fountain.”  Max had a cap of close, red-brown curls and a face like a fox’s.  I wanted to smash it with my fist. 

Trid said, “It started with my coat.”  He looked embarrassed.  “I’ve got a bunch of coats.  It really didn’t matter.”

“Yes, it did.”  Andrei swatted a fly away from his face.  “Trid left it on a horse-post outside a house, thinking no one’d touch it––he’d lived a sheltered life in Lorila.  We found it a week later in a woman pawnbroker’s shop on Dewing, and she said we’d have to buy it.  Damned if we were going to do that.”

“It even had Trid’s family’s sigil on it,” said Max.  “A big wolf.  And a ‘C’.  But she was stupid and didn’t listen, so we decided we’d better ruin her.”

“
I
didn’t want to ruin her,” said Trid.  “Max just wanted a fun time.  It was only a coat.”

“Lined with mink,” Andrei said.  “Had silver buttons.”

“She was willing to sell it back for ten celms, a third its worth.  It would’ve been easy––”

“For you, Trid,” said Andrei.  “You let people walk all over you.  But Max and I stole hairpins and those huge earrings from Max’s mam, and sent your boy––”

“Wasn’t mine.  It was Max’s.”

“Whatever, and he went to sell them to her––”

“Halio didn’t sell them,” said Max. “He left them on the counter and scarpered.  Yellow like a canary, that one.  Sings like one, too.  My mother fancies him.  He tipped her off about the pawnbroker, said she had stolen the earrings, and my mother lapped it up.  So the old woman was brought in for questioning and she was questioned all right.  So was I.  Guess who my mother believed?”  Max shook his head sadly.  “My own mother.”

Andrei snorted.  “We should’ve stolen my mother’s earrings.  She’d have chopped off the hag’s arms.  Instead we had to scrub the larder floor.”

“So we’re going to flood her out,” said Max.  “She’s the reason Mother watches my horse.”

“On the contrary.” Andrei looked over at him.  “Without those bells hanging from her ears she can better hear you talk.  But let’s get on with it before dark.  I shouldn’t want to miss all the Elden shrieking.”

I took a deep breath, to calm myself.  “You’re all great idiots, you know.  The biggest bunch of idiots ever.” 

Max laughed.  “Now, you shouldn’t––” Andrei stepped hard on Max’s foot.  “Shithead.”

“Let her talk––should be funny.” 

“First of all,” I said, “about that old woman, that weren’t her fault at all, she didn’t steal the cloak.  She took it from someone as collateral.  That’s what pawnbrokers
do
.”  I wondered if they’d been walking around with sacks over their heads.  “And there’s more folk than her livin down there.  A whole lot of em.  Ye can’t do something like this without thinkin about their swamped-out homes.  What’ll become of them?”

Andrei shrugged.  “A few Elden swimming through the wetter streets might make the dryer ones stink less.”

Max sneezed.  Trid had the decency to look uncomfortable.  “About that.  She’s got a point––”

“Gods, Trid,” said Andrei.  “Your balls are looking more shriveled every minute.  If you want to stay a girl forever––”

“You think you’re a man?” I said to Andrei.  “You’re a weasel.”

“And you,” he said in measured tones, “are in no position to call me names other than ‘my good lord’ or “my worshipful master’ or ‘my most gracious sovereign’, and perhaps somewhere far, far down the road I shall let you graduate to ‘Andrei’, but we’ve quite a-ways before we reach that point.”

Sick with fury, I bit my tongue. 

“Dying to say it, aren’t you?”  He smiled horribly.  “Well, go on.  I promise I shan’t do anything except laugh.”

My tongue bled all throughout my work.  The taste became unbearable, and I spit pink gobs onto the pavement.  

Afterwards I stood on the edge of the great wet mess I had made.  People shouted in the distance, voices echoing over the water, and big, greasy bubbles rose to the surface, popping and releasing a foul stench.  I was alone except for Floy.

“I hate you.”  The black water stirred.  “I hate you I hate you I hate you.”

***

About midway through the summer I noticed Padlimaird was drawing water for the smithy from the soldier’s fountain.  He and Wille thought the walk to the closest community well too arduous and pointless a trip at a half-mile and with the barracks courtyard boasting such a fine, clean alternative just north of their workshop. 

I didn’t fear for Wille, who was almost grown and able to talk his way out of anything.  But Padlimaird was only fourteen and small for his age.  Occasionally I spied him carrying the bucket to and from the fountain, and I balked at the idea of the soldiers catching him at it. 

Most of them were human, tall and strange, because the commander of the city garrison had put his faith into brawn, and humans supplied that at short order.  I didn’t believe in the goodwill of humans anymore.  Upon catching Padlimaird moseying back with his water one rainy morning, I felt compelled to tell him he shouldn’t, either.

He set down the bucket and said, “Wille does it, too.  Why ain’t y’dickerin after him?”

“Wille’s older than you, and his head’s always been too thick for sense––”

“Wille don’t care, and neither do I.”

“Oh, aye,” I said.
“And someday he’ll find that not caring was the worst choice he ever made, when all the trouble he never noticed’ll creep up and trounce him, where he thought it was a load o’ nothing.  And it’ll happen to you, too––”

“Trouble
is
nothing.”  Padlimaird picked up his bucket and tried to push past me, but I stepped in his way.  “Remember old Raggy?  A-feared of everything in the world, but it was all nothing in the end.” 

“The end’s not here, Padlimaird.”  I yanked him down by his shirtfront so I could look at him directly.  “Y’can’t know it’s nothing.  Calragen was mostly scared by the end.  The end is right when he dies and leaves the world a shambles for everyone younger than he is.  No wonder old folks is always so frightened––nobody else is scared enough.  The next mornin you filch water from the barracks might well be the last mornin ye spend on your idiot legs.”

“I’ll be damned if I go about shakin in me boots because of a bunch of humans.”

“Fine,” I yelled. “It’s your head.” 

Padlimaird changed subjects.  “Wille says ye look worn out as a wrung hankie.  Are you worn out, Aloren?  Cause it seems like someone’s been wringing ye of every shred o’ common sense ye used to have.” 

Our definitions of common sense differing so, I wasn’t going to make more progress.  So I turned on my heel and stormed off, making a mental note to avoid Wille. 

***

Padlimaird’s obstinacy very nearly cost him his toes about a month after we had our argument, because two of the guard caught him at it, both human, and both in need of a diversion from guarding the east armory. 

Lucky for Paddy, Andrei, Trid and Max had planned to pick the lock on the east armory that very morning.  (Max, whose mother didn’t allow him a sword in his belt, was especially keen.)  I followed the human boys across the barracks bridge, through the brick arcade, and into the courtyard.

Max walked over to the drowsing sentries.  “My, but it’s muggy today.”  He waved air into his tunic, and the men immediately snapped awake and stood up straighter. 

“And it’s only going to get hotter.  Look at that sun.”  Andrei stepped into the shade.

“I’d keel over and die out here if the fountain weren’t right there,” said Max, pointing.  “Especially cold for some reason, that water was just now.”  He slipped a tin pannikin off his belt and offered it to the first sentry, a man with a curly beard.  “You look like you could do with some water, sir.”

“Go on.”  Trid wiped his forearm (after he had spit on it) across his brow.  “It’s a blister out here.”

“Gracious, do my sandals stink in this heat,” said Andrei.  “But not as much as Max’s armpits.  If you fellows feel faint you’d better leave before the fumes get to your heads.” 

Curly-beard eyed the pannikin nervously.  “Best we don’t leave our watch.”

“If the both of you don’t clear out,” said Andrei, “I’ll tell Herist how you’re all set for the night watch because of the nap you were just taking at your post.”

The soldier took the cup from Max with a suspicious look, and in a great clinking of hauberks, pulled his fellow after him towards the fountain. 

“Aloren.”  Andrei looked around for me.  “Aloren, hurry up.” 

I shuddered, and stumped over to the double-bolted door, and Floy threw herself into my hands, chipping and trilling.  The chisel dropped from my teeth. 

Trid said to Andrei, “Have you ever seen a sparrow do that?”

“The fire-headed feck,” I said to Floy.  “Did he have to choose now?”  I picked up the chisel, pushed through the gawking boys and ran towards the fountain. 

Beside it Curly-beard held Padlimaird by one of his protruding ears.  The other raised his hand and bowled Padlimaird over, and Curly-beard sat on Padlimaird’s legs to stop their kicking, and grabbed Padlimaird’s hair to keep Padlimaird’s teeth from sinking into his arm.

“Get off me, you bear in a dress,” Padlimaird shrieked.

“We’ll teach you not to hit, scab.”  The second soldier unsheathed his short sword.  “Won’t be kicking, neither, when I lop your toes off.”

“When you could’ve got off with just a quick shave of the head,” said Curly-beard. 

I added to the taunting: “Think you’re brave, now?”  And I leapt forward to stick a soldier through the heart with my chisel. 

Andrei grabbed a handful of my chemise and I fell on my butt.

“First they’ll rape you blind,” he said matter-of-factly, “then they’ll beat you into a pulp.” 

“Let go.”  I rolled onto my stomach, and pulled away from him.  “They’ll cut him.”

“Mercy me,” he said. 

Trid walked after us, saw the bucket, the wet seeping through the flagstones.

“Water?” he said, and laughed.  He leaned over Andrei, who’d fallen behind me, and unpinned a broach from Andrei’s right shoulder. “So much for keeping the peace.”  And he strode towards the soldiers, pinning the thing onto his tunic. 

I picked myself up to better watch. 

Trid stuck out a hand at the soldiers.  “Let him go,” he said.  “You’ve taught him his lesson  This isn’t Lorila.”

Both men stared at him for the minute it took their eyes to move from his face to Andrei’s broach.  “My lord.”  The soldier on top of Padlimaird loosened his legs, and Padlimaird slid out from beneath him. 

He flattened his shirt, trying to look cavalier. He said to me: “Why’re ye hanging round a bunch of owls?”

“Hasn’t much of a choice.” Andrei walked up beside us and pushed me out of the way.  “The next time you disrupt such a brilliant idea, I’ll––”

“Toss off stupid death threats,” I said.  He gave me a high look and spoke to Trid.

“You should go back to Lorila. All those oppressed Rilelden you can save.”

“But then you’d be short a friend.” Trid handed back the broach.  “And you’re not doing much to win new ones.”