Havenstar (7 page)

She glanced at
her mother, wishing this conversation was not taking place. Sheyli
was tired and seemed swamped by her grief and the pain of her
illness. That casual remark from Mistress Pottle about the baby
she’d been forced to surrender to Chantry had not helped either.
She was having to make an effort to listen and pearly drops of
sweat glistened across her forehead.

Thirl was
belligerent. ‘So what if I have mentioned it to him?’

‘What’s your
interest, Thirl?’

He shrugged.
‘Harin needs capital.’

The
conversation seemed to be slipping out of her grasp. ‘Capital for
what?’

He gave an
uneasy look towards Sheyli. ‘You may as well know. We are going to
turn this place into a wayside tavern for pilgrims.’

Keris stared,
slack-minded, unable even to consider the ramifications of what he
said.

Sheyli
struggled to raise herself, saying in pained protest, ‘But you’re a
mapmaker, Thirl.’

‘No, I’m not.
I hate maps. And I hate spending time in the Unstable. I’m not Dad.
I’d be dead in my first three months out there. I’m going to be an
innkeeper. And where better than this? A day’s ride from Hopen Grat
and the kinesis chain. I told Harin years ago that this would be a
tavern if anything ever happened to Dad.’

‘You are going
to change your father’s shop into a pilgrim’s hostel?’ his mother
asked, incredulous.

‘Not exactly.
Into a tavern that also has rooms to rent. In partnership with
Harin. Because he knows the business.’

Sheyli was
appalled. ‘A
public house
? You would try to seduce pilgrims
away from the holy nature of their journey and into the
licentiousness of a tavern?’

Keris added
her own touch of acid bitterness. ‘And my dowry is supposed to
supply the capital for their seduction, it seems.’

Sheyli shook
her head. ‘It’s just not possible. You are Piers’ only son: you
have to continue his trade. That’s the Rule. There has been a
mapmaker’s shop on this site since—since—well, probably since the
Rending. Chantry will never countenance such a change.’

Thirl smiled
thinly. ‘Mother, Mother, do you think that everyone follows the
Rule to the letter? Nothing would ever get done! Anyway, this is
one change Chantry will countenance because they don’t like
Unstablers and I’m offering to become a good solid citizen instead
of a mapmaker who spends half the year in the Unstable. I spoke to
a chantor at the Rule Office of Order in Upper Kibble only today.
And he is willing to grant me a dispensation for a, er,
consideration.’

Sheyli almost
choked. ‘You
bribed
him?’

‘I will, yes.
Don’t worry, Mother, everybody does it.’

‘I don’t,’ she
said, with dignity. ‘And your father didn’t either. Creation above
all, Thirl! Order must be maintained, and if some people pay others
to thwart the Rule, then Order crumbles, and with it our
safety.’

‘My not being
a mapmaker is hardly going to disintegrate Order, Mother, any more
than your frill flowers do, planted where there should be
cabbages.’ He smiled at her. A smile of rueful charm. Keris didn’t
wait for the rest. She turned and walked out of the room, clenching
her hands in an effort to suppress her anger.

It wasn’t
fair! Anger tumbled towards tears. It just wasn’t
fair.
She
would have given anything to be a mapmaker. Anything.

She went to
the stable, as she had always done when she was unhappy. There was
something calming about the presence of the animals: the two
crossings-horses standing sleepily in their stalls, the chickens
scratching in the straw, the half-wild stable cat blinking as it
woke briefly to contemplate if flight was necessary, then settling
its nose back down into its fur. It was difficult to maintain a hot
rage when Ygraine and her stable mate, the pack horse named
Tousson, vied with one another for her attention, each hoping for
some titbit from her pocket.

This time,
however, she was not given the time to cool down. No sooner had she
walked over to Ygraine than the sunlight through the door was
blocked by Thirl appearing in the open doorway behind her. He must
have followed her out of the house almost immediately.

She turned on
him, all her tearful rage bubbling out. ‘How could you do that to
Mother? You didn’t need to—not then, not now, not when she’s so
sick and not so soon after Dad’s—’ The stable cat, reacting to the
anger in her voice, scuttled away behind the feed sacks.

He shrugged
carelessly. ‘You’d prefer me to live a lie? Keris the dreamer, who
doesn’t like to face the facts. I’m damned if I’ll be a mapmaker,
and I don’t care who knows it. The shop is going to be a tavern.
We’ll continue to sell maps until the end of autumn, as usual. But
I shan’t be going off into the Unstable. Come winter, this place
will be a public house. I’ll be calling it the Mapmaker’s
Rest.’

She was so
angry she was choking on it. ‘But Mother—’

‘—will be dead
by then,’ he said brutally. ‘A fact which she knows full well.’

‘Unstable take
you, you’re a heartless sod, Thirl.’

‘Not
particularly, I think. Just practical. And being practical means
facing facts. I’ll never make a mapmaker and I’ve never intended to
be one. Mother will be dead within weeks, if not days, and you have
got to find a niche somewhere. If you want to hang around and be a
housekeeper for me, well, you can—but bear in mind firstly that I
intend to marry as soon as I find some pretty and willing maid, and
secondly that I won’t be paying your fifty golds in dowry to just
anyone.’

‘That money’s
mine!’

‘No, it’s not.
It was intended to be your husband’s. The moment Dad died it
legally became mine, as long as I undertake to care for you and
Mother. And I do. But I’m under no obligation to give you a dowry
of more than two golds. I intend to have that money to help pay for
the expense of refurbishing the place as a tavern. And to pay the
bribe. The rule-chantor is not going to accept this for anything
less than ten golds. And so I shall take the money directly, or it
can come to the business, indirectly, through your dowry to Harin.
I thought to help you find a husband, that’s all.’

‘I don’t want
a husband—least of all someone like Harin!’

‘There you go
again, being impractical. What else can you do? You can’t be a
mapmaker because the Rule won’t allow it, even if anyone would buy
maps from a woman, and anyway, a woman wouldn’t last a handful of
days out in the Unstable alone. Moreover the Rule says you’re
supposed to marry, but you show no signs of even trying to find
someone. Keris, a woman who looks like you will never do better
than Harin.’

That hurt. Her
fury poured out and Ygraine, unsettled, blew noisily down her
nostrils. ‘He’s as slimy as a river flatworm! I wouldn’t marry him
if he was willing to pay me a hundred golds for the privilege.’

Thirl
shrugged. ‘That’s your choice. I don’t care. I reckon to win either
way.’

His
indifference deflated her. She took a deep breath, cocked her head
on one side and considered him with all the growing wonderment of
making a bitter new discovery about a familiar object. ‘Why, that’s
right, isn’t it! You really don’t care, do you? I wonder why I
never saw that before. There’s no feeling there inside you. You
feel no grief about Dad, or Mother, do you?’

‘Why should I?
They never asked me how I felt about anything. It was always: ‘Do
this, Thirl. Do that, Thirl. Learn how to draw maps, Thirl. Carry
the theodolite, Thirl. Come with me into the Unstable, Thirl.’
Well, now I’m saying no. And I feel no grief that their time is
over and mine has come. No grief, and no compunction. I’m no Minion
though, Keris. I’ll do the decent thing by both of you, but no more
than that. No more.’

She felt an
odd fascination with his utter lack of feeling. ‘And me? What did I
ever do to have you dismiss me so lightly?’

‘You really
don’t know, do you? Didn’t it ever occur to you that a boy might
resent the fact that his younger sister did just about anything one
cares to name better than he did? Well, he did, Keris. He hated you
when you drew more accurate maps, when you threw Piers’ knives
better, when you shot arrows straighter, when you beat him swimming
across the river pool… Count yourself lucky, Sis. If you’d been a
boy, I might have killed you. I’ve got over that callow jealousy
now, and I got good at turning on a show of fraternal affection,
but don’t ask me to go out of my way to help you, because I won’t.’
He smiled lightly, carelessly, and left her. There was no real hate
for her in him, just a complete lack of interest, and she wondered
if that was not worse.

She leant her
head against Ygraine’s neck and choked down the ache in her
throat.

It wasn’t
really all her fault he was like this, was it?

~~~~~~~

Harin Markle
came as he had promised. Keris was alone, working in the shop when
he came to the door, traipsing in a trail of dirt from unwiped
boots.

She tried to
be detached in her assessment. He was not bad-looking, she
supposed, even though there was a rather large spot developing
right on the end of his nose at the moment. Still, she could hardly
hold that against him. No, it was not his looks she didn’t like, it
was his attitude. He was so cock-sure when he faced someone he
considered his inferior, yet so obsequious when in the company of
those he considered his superiors. She came in the first category,
she knew, while Thirl was one of the latter. With Thirl he was all
smiles and flattery, couching his ideas as mere suggestions; with
her he spoke with a heavy pompousness and treated her as though she
were a recalcitrant horse to be persuaded out of wrongful
behaviour.

‘Keris,’ he
said, ‘Thirl tells me he’s told you of our plans for the tavern.
What do you think of that, eh? Loads of money to be made because
we’re bound to catch the trade coming up from Hopen Grat. Great
idea, but that’s your brother all round. Always has bright
ideas…’

She tried to
freeze him with a look that would have stopped a rain shower, but
he didn’t seem to notice. She said, ‘I understand that the two of
you have also had a bright idea about me.’

He was not in
the least embarrassed. ‘Why, yes—Thirl’s idea, actually, but it
seemed a good one. I mean, you and I could hook up together and
everybody benefits—’

‘Perhaps you’d
be good enough to explain just what benefit I’d get from it?’

He looked
taken aback. ‘Why, you’d be married, of course! Otherwise you’ll
end up like Old Woman Raddles, with everyone saying you’re a witch,
too ugly ever to have found a man. Come on, now, Keris, it won’t be
so bad. You’d be a tavern keeper’s wife, lording it over the other
women in the village. As for the other side of being married, well,
I know you’re a virgin, but we can get that out of the way quickly
enough, and once we’ve had a couple of kids, you won’t have to
worry about that sort of thing anymore, I swear.’

She gaped at
him, not knowing whether to laugh or be angry. ‘Harin Markle,’ she
said a last, ‘get this into your insensitive skull: if I were to
consider marrying anyone at all, you would be right at the bottom
of my list of potential candidates. Is that understood?’

Unfortunately
it did not seem to be understood at all. He laughed, made several
condescending remarks about women having coy natures, and of course
she was pretending modesty because that was the maidenly thing to
do. He would, he said, be back again, naturally.

She gritted
her teeth and refrained, with difficulty, from throwing something
at his departing back when he finally left her.

Some time
later, when she had calmed herself, she began to unstrap the packs
belonging to Piers that Blue Ketter had left in the shop. The first
things to fall out were the throwing knives, all five of them,
still in their scabbards. She pulled one free and weighed it in her
hand, feeling its balance. It was true that she could throw them
more skilfully than Thirl, although even she had not quite
perfected the knack of judging distance accurately enough to ensure
that it was always the point of the blade, rather than some other
part of the knife, that ended up hitting the target. Too often the
weapon would spin out wrongly and clatter harmlessly to the ground
as a consequence.

In
exasperation at Thirl’s even greater incompetence, Piers had told
his son to concentrate on bow and arrow, but even there she’d
proved to have more innate ability than her brother, as well as a
greater interest. She might not have been able to achieve the
distances that Thirl, with his male strength, could manage, but she
made up for it in accuracy. It was she who spent hours practising
just because she enjoyed pitting her skills against the wind and a
variety of targets. She developed muscles in her arms and upper
torso and calluses on her fingers that had horrified her mother
when she’d noticed them, but she had just laughed and gone on
practising.

When their
father had taught Thirl how to fletch his own arrows, it was she
who’d learned; when he’d shown Thirl how to select wood for a bow,
how to season and fashion it, it had been she who’d taken the
lessons to heart and who’d finally produced the better weapon. In
the end Piers had bought a bowstave from the fletcher in Drumlin
for Thirl, and he’d taken that with him whenever he had gone into
the Unstable with his father. In between times it hung on the wall,
oiled and envied by Keris, unused and unwanted by Thirl.

She fingered
Piers’ knives, remembering the lessons, the first pathetic attempts
to spin the blade through the air… The pang of those distant
memories stung now, reminding her Piers Kaylen was dead, and Thirl
lost to her forever.