Sing the Four Quarters (11 page)

One hand wrapped protectively around her belly, Annice threw back the rough wool blanket and carefully sat up.

"Let's get this over with."

"Are you crazy, Bard? Me hurt Jurgis?" Nadina looked as though she'd just been hit. Her left hand even rose to cup her cheek. "He's all I live for."

A concurring murmur ran through the surrounding crowd.

Leaning against the door of the healer's house, Annice dragged her tongue across her lips. She hoped she had the energy left for this. "Is there a quorum of villagers present?"

Beside her, Taska finished counting. "There is."

Annice straightened. "Nadina i'Gituska, step forward."

Red-rimmed eyes welling with tears under nearly white brows, Nadina had no choice but to do exactly as she was commanded. The semicircle of villagers shifted nervously.

Holding the other woman's gaze with her own, Annice spoke the second of the two ritual phrases. "Nadina i'Gituska, you will speak only the truth." Now that the command had been given, the questions themselves could be asked in a normal voice. "What were you doing to the child, Jurgis, out on the bay this afternoon?"

Above the salt-stained collar of her jacket, Nadina's throat worked, fighting the compulsion. Finally, she sniffed and rubbed her nose on her sleeve. "I was trying to get him to Sing."

There was no mistaking the bardic emphasis. Annice blinked and wondered if she looked as astonished as everyone else. "To Sing? Why?"

"Because I'm tired of working so hard. Tired of watching
her
…" A weather-cracked finger jabbed toward Taska. "…

bring in catch after catch while my lines run empty, and my nets tangle." Nadina tossed her hair back off her face and, unable to turn, appealed to the crowd behind her with a gesture. "Why should
she
be the only one to benefit from the kigh? That's not fair, is it? So…" Her tones slid from injured to self-satisfied. "…

six years ago I got me a baby off a bard who Sings water and today I took him out to Sing some fish into my nets."

"But boys never Sing until after their voices change." Annice was so startled she lost eye contact.

It didn't matter. "That's what I thought, too, but I heard him this morning. And I know when water acts like it ain't supposed to. I figured the Circle moved in my favor, seeing as how he wasn't the girl he was supposed to be. So why should I wait any longer? He can Sing all right. He just wouldn't." She ground out the last word between clenched teeth.

Feeling slightly sick, Annice rephrased the first question, "What did you do to him?"

"I shook him." Her chin went up as though she were daring anyone to deny her right. "And I shook him. He made me so angry. All he had to do was Sing and he wouldn't. Then he made this noise and the boat started to in circles and he kept saying he didn't know what I wanted, but the boat wouldn't stop…"

In memory, Annice again looked down from the cliff top at a boat making circles in the bay.

"… so I hit him, and I hit him…" Her hands were clenched on air and slammed an invisible burden up and down. "But the boat still wouldn't stop, so I thought, if he thinks so much more of the kigh than me, he can just go to the kigh."

"You threw him overboard?" This from one of the men in the crowd.

Nadina turned on him. "No! I just held him under the water. I pulled him in as soon as the boat straightened out. As soon as we started heading for shore." She was panting, moving back and forth between her neighbors. "He wouldn't Sing. I knew he could, but he wouldn't do it. And after I waited so all those years. Six years watching her bring in more fish than the rest of us combined. Then he called the kigh on me. On me. His own mother. I had to do something. Look at my hands! I almost froze my hands."

A teenaged girl stepped back, away from her. "You almost drowned your son!"

"Well, he's
mine
! Mine, no one else's."

"Not
any
more."

Taska's voice drew Nadina around. "What are
you
talking about, old woman? I bore him. Me. I raised him. He's
mine
."

Annice stepped back as Taska stepped forward.

"You do not own your children," the village Head told Nadina, her voice harsh. "Their lives are their own. By bearing them, the Circle grants you the right to guide them and to love them and raise them to be the future of us all, but nothing else. By your actions, you have proved yourself unfit for this responsibility."

"Unfit? He owes me! He wouldn't even have a life without me!"

Taska ignored her. "Do I have four witnesses from those who know them both?"

After a moment's shuffling, two men, an elderly woman, and the teenage girl who'd accused her of almost drowning her son, stepped out of the crowd.

"Nadina i'Gituska, as of this moment, we take the child Jurgis from your care."

"Witnessed." The four voices spoke in ragged but emphatic unison.

"Bard?"

"Witnessed." As the woman began to shriek profanity, Annice turned and went back into the healer's cottage. The mother wasn't her problem, but it very much sounded as though the child was. Moving slowly, and thankful for the curling driftwood banister, she climbed up the steep and narrow stairs and ducked into the other second-floor room.

It was identical to the one she'd been placed in except that the bed held a small boy and, bending over him, the oldest man she'd ever seen. "Healer Emils?"

The old man turned and squinted in her direction. "I don't know the voice," he said, his own voice a rough whisper, "so it must be the bard."

Annice stepped forward and saw the milky film over both his eyes.

He snickered, as though aware of the direction of her gaze. "Lifted the fog from any number of eyes but can't clear my own. Everything else still works, though. And why are you standing up? After that stunt you pulled, your baby needs you to rest. You know very well where the energy to control the kigh like you did comes from."

"How's Jurgis?"

"Well, he should have frozen solid, but he didn't. My guess is that those water kigh he called somehow protected him."

"How…"

"How do I know about that? How do you think? You were questioning the woman right under my window. Sit down on the edge of the bed." Clawlike fingers reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her to the bed and then pushing her down. "Have a good long look, then get back where I put you. I haven't lost a patient in… in… well, in a long time, and I'm not going to start with you. Or your baby. How do you feel?"

"Tired." She had no intention of denying it, but she needed to see the child.

The hair fanned out on the pillow was bleached a fine white-blond and against the tanned skin of his face, his brows, the same sun-kissed color, almost glowed. There were smudged circles under his eyes, but whatever else his life had been lacking, at least he seemed to have gotten enough food. Annice smiled as she recognized the line of his jaw and the unmistakable alignment of his features and wondered how six years of bards Walking the north coast had missed it.

Wondered how
she'd
missed it when she'd walked through three years before. Her smile slipped a little at the green and purple bruise still discoloring one temple.

"Got a baby on a bard who Sang water," she murmured.

"What?" The ancient healer groped for her shoulder. "What are you talking about?"

"I know who Jurgis' father is."

"Good. Good." The clutching fingers moved on to administer an approving pat on the head. "A man should be told when his seed bears fruit."

She told him three days later, sitting on top of the cliff with the boy cradled on her lap, weaving his father's name in an amazingly complicated descant around her message. It was obvious that Jurgis had inherited the ability to Sing both water and air as the kigh no longer responded with such willingness for her alone.

When they finished, and the pale bodies had disappeared against the clouds, Jurgis pushed his head into the hollow of her throat. "What if he doesn't want me?"

"He will." Annice added just enough Voice that he couldn't doubt her, confident that Petrelis would be overjoyed to discover he had a child. The older bard was one of the finest teachers the Hall had ever had; kind and patient with the fledglings, soothing fears and bringing out the best in each of them. She couldn't think of anyone who'd be a better father.

"Mama doesn't want me."

"Your mother's sick. In her heart. Emils is trying to heal her, but the sickness makes her fight against his help."

"Tell me again about being a bard."

"Well, bards are the eyes and ears and voice of the country. We bring the mountains to the coast and the coast to the river and the river to the forest and the forest to the cities. We're what keeps all the little bits of Shkoder together and…"

"No." He twisted indignantly until he could stare up into her face. "Tell me the good stuff. About Walking and the kigh."

So she told him while they waited.

Petrelis' answer came just as the cold had begun to seep through layers of clothing and Annice was about to suggest they go back to the village to warm up.

Overjoyed to have a child was putting it mildly.

The kigh who brought the news that he was on his way if he had to bring all three fledglings with him, wove ecstatic circles in the sky.

Watching Jurgis running about, laughing and Singing and trying to catch kigh that whirled just out of reach, Annice shook off a mitten and slid her hand beneath her jacket.

Suddenly, for an instant, it felt as though a butterfly were dancing just under her heart. Her eyes welling with tears, she pressed her fingers against the smooth, soft ball of her belly. The baby, her baby, had moved.

"A man should be told when his seed bears fruit."

"
Well, he's
mine!
Mine, no one else's
."

"It isn't like that," she whispered.

Jurgis leaped into the air, Singing his father's name.

* * *

"Where?" Pjerin was already moving when he asked.

"Lukas a'Tynek's house," the boy panted, scrambling to keep up with his due's longer stride. "It flared up so fast!"

They could see the smoke rising over the wall as they raced to the gate, Pjerin gathering people as he ran. The greasy black column served as both guide and goad as the inhabitants of the keep threw themselves down the short, steep hill to the village. By the time they reached the house, flames were shooting through the thatch. Men and women threw shovelfuls of snow onto the roof in a desperate but losing race against time.

The melting snow hissed and steamed. The fire leaped past it.

"My little girl!" Bundled into a fur overcoat not her own, an ugly blister across one cheek and her eyebrows all but gone, Lukas' partner, Hanicka, strained against her sister's grip. "Your Grace, my little girl is still in there!"

The door into the front half of the house, into the living quarters, belched flame.

Heart pounding, Pjerin raced around to the back. The double doors were open, the barn empty, not yet on fire but filled with smoke. He stomped through the ice in the outside trough and soaked his scarf in the little bit of water that remained.

"Pjerin!" Olina's voice seemed to come from a great distance. "What do you think you're doing?"

He
wasn't
thinking because thinking would stop him. Eyes squinted nearly shut, he plunged into the barn. The scarf helped but not much. Bent almost double, coughing and choking, he ran for the inside door. His foot came down on the body of a chicken, dead or stunned he had no idea, and without breaking stride he kicked it behind him.

The wooden wall between the barn and family quarters felt hot, even through the palm of his leather mitt. He could hear the fire crackling on the other side as it ate at the logs. Gasping for breath, he stood so that the angle of the door would offer at least a minimum of shelter and then yanked it open. A solid wall of flame burst forth, igniting the straw and driving him back. Twice he tried to get through it, but finally, his clothing smoldering, had to stagger outside and admit defeat.

A heartbeat later, the roof caved in with a roar that almost sounded triumphant.

Dragged to a safe distance by Olina and a villager he couldn't recognize, Pjerin watched with streaming eyes as the beast devoured everything but the thick stone walls. His snarl became lost in the snarl of the fire. Han-icka's keening rose with the smoke.

"Our thanks for the attempt, Your Grace."

He turned, saw it was Lukas a'Tynek, and didn't know what to say. The man had just lost his only child.

Rubbing at the ice-encrusted ends of his beard with a cracked and bleeding hand, Lukas stared into the inferno. "But perhaps it was for the best."

Confused, Pjerin hacked a mouthful of black mucus onto the snow and asked, "What was?"

"That she died. She did this. She was singing to the fire, making it dance. Leaving the Circle even as I watched." His fingers flicked outward in the old Cemandian sign against the kigh. "I couldn't have that happen, not in my house."

"What did you do?"

Standing a few feet away, Olina jerked around, drawn by the heat in Pjerin's voice.

Lukas didn't seem to hear it. "I hit her. Not hard. Just to stop her. I'm her father. I couldn't just stand by and let her leave the Circle. She went over backward and the fire… the fire…" His voice cracked. "Better she die than live outside the Circle."

Pjerin took a step forward, his fingers closing on the other man's shoulder and yanking him around. He caught a bare glimpse of Lukas' terrified expression through the red sheen of rage then he drove his fists, one, two, into stomach and jaw. Hearing nothing over the fury howling inside his skull, he spun on his heel and strode off toward the keep.

Olina looked down at the sprawled body, now surrounded by babbling family, and then at the disappearing back of her nephew.
He makes it so easy
, she thought, careful not to let the satisfaction show. The people's loyalty to their hereditary due had loomed as a potential problem, yet that could be undermined when, with a subtle twist or two, she blew this incident completely out of proportion.