Dreamspinner (5 page)

“A carriage—”

“Get in it and don’t get out until it stops.”

She blinked. “But—”

“There’s gold in that pack. Find an assassin. Save Bruadair.”

She shook her head, but that didn’t clear away the persistent sensation she had of having wandered into a terrible dream. Less than
an hour ago—perhaps it was longer, she honestly couldn’t tell—she had been looking in the window of a shop and admiring a cloak that whilst grey had at least been cut handsomely. Now she stood outside the border of her country, dressed as a lad, knowing that her flight had meant death for the one person in the world she cared about—and knowing that continuing her flight would spell her own end.

“Save Bruadair?” she repeated, finding herself completely unable to understand how she was to go from merely wanting to save herself to needing to save her country.

He swore at her. “You’re dead right now, don’t you know? You crossed the border.”

She knew it, of course, but she hadn’t wanted to face it. “I didn’t have any choice—”

“Of course you did,” he said briskly. “You could have chosen to crawl back to that miserable guild and spend the rest of your days trapped in a life of endless drudgery. But you chose freedom.”

She looked at the ground, because it was safer that way. “What does that matter if I’ve sentenced myself to death?”

He put his hand under her chin, lifted her face up, and looked at her with absolutely no expression on his face. “You haven’t. There is a way to save yourself.”

She pulled away from his hand, sure she’d heard him awrong. “How?”

“It won’t be easy, or pleasant,” he warned. “The usurper who currently sits the throne must be overthrown before he destroys every last bit of—well, his plans aren’t important. What
is
important is that the rightful king takes his place. This is not a task for an army, for Sglaimir will see them and slay them before they can touch him. A mage will not manage it either, for his magic will be sensed before he reaches the palace walls—”

“Mages?” she interrupted, trying to laugh. She thought it had sounded more like a gasp of terror than anything else, but she wasn’t perhaps the best one to judge. “I don’t believe in mages.”

He blew out his breath in frustration. “Seek out an assassin, then, one who will dethrone the king for the glory of it—or as much gold as we’ve been able to muster.” He looked at her seriously.
“You have three se’nnights. The bargain must be struck before midnight of the last day or your life will be the forfeit.”

She couldn’t keep from blinking. “How do you know—”

“Because I know,” he said curtly. “Bloody hell, wench, have you no idea—nay, of course you don’t.” He shook his head sharply. “The details aren’t important. You have been granted the gift of a fortnight and a half. Complete your quest and your life will then be yours.”

“But quests should be left to Heroes.” She might have been a common weaver, but she was very well read in subjects ranging from the movements of stars to the movements of men. It took a certain set of skills to embark on any sort of serious heroic business.

“You were all that was available at the time. And you know where to go.”

She felt her mouth go dry. “Do I?”

“Did I sell you that book for naught?”

“Which book?”

“The only book you own!” He glared at her. “
The Strictures of Scrymgeour Weger
, written by Ochadius of Riamh, and gathered, from what I’ve heard, only at incredible peril to the man.
That
book.”

She put her hand over her belly before she thought better of it. There, residing under the waistband of her trousers, was a book for which she had given half of all the meager coins she’d managed to accumulate over the years doing odd things about the Guild.
The Strictures of Scrymgeour Weger
was indeed the title. Just looking at the cover had fair burned her eyes. She couldn’t quite bring herself to think about the things she had read inside.

The peddler put his hand suddenly on her shoulder and turned her away from the border. “Run. The carriage is waiting, but it won’t wait forever. Find a solution to what you’ve left behind here while you’re still alive.”

Her mouth was very dry. “But I know nothing about wars or rulers or—”

“Then every book you ever were given by the mistress of the loom during all the years she had you at her elbow was completely wasted.”

“But I am nobody,” she protested. “I am no one of consequence, without friend or family or any gifts—”

“Then no one will miss you when you’re gone,” he said shortly. He put a heavy hand on her shoulder. “There is no one else, Aisling, no one but you. I suggest you go south.”

South
.

The word echoed in her head like a great bell that had been rung just once in an immense canyon. South. There were many things in the south, many places to lose herself. Scrymgeour Weger lived in the south, on an island, or so it was rumored. She didn’t suppose he would have an army at his disposal.

But he might be able to tell her where to find someone who could do what needed to be done.

“Tell no one of your errand or of your homeland.”

She looked at the peddler. “Not even the mercenary?”

He shook his head. “Have him meet me at Taigh Hall three months from today.”

“And you think he will come?” she managed.

“He will, if he wants the rest of his money.” He gestured to the pack. “The first half of his incentive is in there. He can name his price for the rest when the deed is done. Now, go. The sands have already begun to fall. Three se’nnights, Aisling, and no longer.”

She turned and peered into the darkness, looking for a different means of escape. Unfortunately, it seemed her only escape lay along a path that was intertwined with the fate of her homeland, a land that had hosted her birth and now would be the reason for her death.

She turned back to the peddler, but he was gone.

Guards shouted in the distance. Aisling felt torn for a moment or two between two terrible alternatives. Then she took a deep breath, turned, and stumbled into the darkness.

South.

A
blond man stood in the shadows that were unrelieved by even the faintest hint of moonlight and watched the carriage roll
away. He turned his head and looked at the peddler who had appeared next to him.

“So, it is done,” he said slowly.

“Finally,” the peddler said with a gusty sigh.

The first man frowned thoughtfully. “It goes against my upbringing—”

“Damn your upbringing and all your bloody ideals,” the peddler snapped. “I arranged this end of it. If you tell me all this work has been for naught, I will kill you.”

The blond man stared off into the darkness, seeing things the peddler couldn’t. “Nay,” he said slowly, “the pieces are in place.”

“I still say a firm hand in the backs of the players wouldn’t go amiss.”

The other shook his head. “I have prepared my side as I could, as have you. There is nothing else to do but wait.”

“I hate waiting.”

“Which, if memory serves, landed you in a spot of trouble quite a few years ago with a particular member of your father’s family.”

The peddler cursed him, then turned and stalked off. The blond man, ageless, having watched countless souls take their turns on the world’s stage, looked off into the distance. He forced himself to simply observe. Wringing his hands wasn’t in his nature.

Then again, neither was interfering. The world was full of good and evil and both were necessary. After all, if there were no evil, what would there be for good men to fight?

He had already interfered more than he could bear to, even if his only contribution to the upcoming events had been a casual remark about the desirability of sword skill, made to a man who certainly would have agreed. But it had been more interference than he was comfortable with, which meant that he would be stringently limiting himself to nothing more than observation in the future, no matter what hung in the balance.

It was up to others now to see to the measure.

T
he carriage lurched to a stop, but given that it had lurched almost continually since Aisling had climbed inside it, breathless and convinced she wouldn’t live to see the end of the night much less the end of the journey, another bit of jostling wasn’t terribly surprising.

The door was wrenched open.

“Last stop,” a deep voice said shortly. “Everyone out so as I can be cleaning the seats ye’ve no doubt befouled.”

Aisling found herself taken by the arm, pulled from the carriage, and sent on her way.
Sent
was perhaps too polite a term for it. She was hurled away from the door. She caught herself before she went sprawling, then turned around, intending to protest her treatment, only to find her arms full of her pack that had been sent her way from its recent position on top of the carriage.

Perhaps
sent
was still the wrong word to be using. It had been flung at her so forcefully that she had caught it out of instinct, then found herself knocked off her feet by the weight of it. Perhaps that
wouldn’t have been so bad in and of itself save for the fact that she had been knocked not only upon her backside but upon her backside in a puddle of—

She looked down, then decided perhaps it was best not to examine too closely what she was sitting in. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen muck and horse leavings in the street before. Somehow, though, sitting in it and wiping it from her eyes whilst trying to recover from a journey that had seemed to go on forever left her wondering why it was she had been so desperate to leave the Guild.

After all, she had been weaving for so long that it took no thought. She could have been sitting comfortably—well, uncomfortably, actually—on a hard wooden bench, creating rough cloth for equally oppressed seamstresses who would in turn fashion it into equally ugly clothes to be worn by those who couldn’t afford better. At least she would have been warm—mostly—and dry—definitely—and not hungry. Well, not too hungry. It was true that after years and years of nothing but gruel and the occasional bowl of rather nasty vegetables to stave off scurvy that she had begun to crave even the cheapest of pub fare. It was astonishing, actually, that somehow that seemed preferable to sitting in the middle of a muddy street that was sporting smells she couldn’t—and didn’t want to—identify.

Not to mention the fact that the weaving mistress would have still been alive…

Aisling heaved her pack aside and crawled to her feet. She was in Istaur and there was no turning back. All she could do was press on, see to her quest, then take the rest of her life and do something with it worth the sacrifice that had been made on her behalf.

And when she was capable of thinking on it, she would wonder why the weaving mistress had been near the border at just the moment when she had been most needed.

She thought without fondness about the events that had followed that bit of unexpected aid. Just getting herself and her heavy pack to the carriage had been almost impossible. She’d run along a deeply rutted road in utter darkness, cutting her hands and knees when she’d fallen, wrenching her back when she’d
dragged herself upright. The carriage had indeed been waiting, along with an angry, impatient driver who had jerked open the door, pushed her up the step, and shoved her inside.

She’d never been inside a covered carriage before and hadn’t known what to expect. She’d fallen into the only open spot, a wholly inadequate space between a very large, fragrant man suffering from gout and a woman who whispered about spies and coughed incessantly, necessitating the windows being up and the blinds being drawn the entire way lest the dust enter and make things worse for her. Aisling thought there might have been a trio of silent men with business of their own facing her, but she couldn’t have said because, again, the blinds had been drawn.

Perhaps that had been just as well. She could honestly say she had never wept in the whole of her life, not even during the only other ride she’d ever taken, a journey in a rickety wagon that had left her hanging her head over the side and heaving continually until she’d been put into the care of the Guildmistress. She hadn’t wept as she’d realized that her parents hadn’t put her there on trial, they had left her there for good. She hadn’t wept a fortnight ago either as she’d stumbled in the dark to the carriage waiting for her, even though the vision of the Guildmistress holding triumphantly aloft a sword stained with blood had certainly been fresh in her mind.

Instead, she had simply counted the days and greeted the approach of each new dawn with increasing dread.

She hadn’t dared sleep at first, on the off chance that someone from Bruadair—no doubt an assassin trained in the art of following his countrymen to slay them outside the border—had followed her. After that, she had scarce managed to stay awake. Thankfully the gouty gentleman from Gairn, who was traveling to take the waters in Meith, had happily provided her with what his swollen foot told him was an accurate count of the days.

By her count—and this she could hardly believe—by nightfall, she would have been journeying a full fortnight plus a bit. That left her almost another se’nnight to get from Istaur to Gobhann. The peddler’s bag of gold was heavy enough that she supposed she might even manage to hire a carriage of some sort to take her from
the port of Sgioba to Weger’s gates. Though she was well read thanks to Mistress Muinear’s insistence, details about Melksham Island had always been rather sketchy, so she could only hope to find what she needed.