Authors: David Farland

Sons of the Oak (21 page)

BOOK: Sons of the Oak

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Adults don't believe that children can fall in love, Rhianna knew. They disapprove. But Rhianna knew that her own feelings were just as fierce as any that an adult might feel.

It's love, she told herself. That's why I killed Streben. And I'll not be sorry for it, even if they hang me from the yardarms.

And it seemed to Rhianna that they certainly would hang her. Streben was the captain's nephew. He had friends on the ship, and she was a stranger. From what she had seen, strangers tended to get little in the way of justice in an unfamiliar town.

But they'll have to catch me first, Rhianna decided.

There was nowhere to run. If she'd been in a town, it would have been nothing to steal a fast horse and race miles away before dawn.

There in the galley she cleaned herself by candlelight, washed her hands in a bucket of salt water, washed drops of telltale blood from her pants and boots. In the light of a single wavering candle, it was hard to find them all, and she looked again and again. Each time that she thought that she was clean, she found a new dab somewhere.

And she had to hurry, fearful that someone would come in, catch her washing. Daylight was coming. The cooks would be here soon. Twice she heard footfalls as some sailor rushed to the poop deck to relieve himself.

Even getting back down to the hold unnoticed might be impossible. There were chickens down in the hold, and if it got any lighter, when she opened the hatch the roosters would begin to crow. Little Sage had been making a game of it for days, closing the hatch and then opening just to hear the roosters crow. Rhianna needed to leave now.

Worst of all she imagined that Myrrima would be awake when she got back to the cabin. Myrrima, with her endowments of stamina, rarely needed sleep. Not like Borenson, who kept folks awake with his loud snoring.

It was a long, long hour before she finally crept back down to her cabin, stealthily opening the hatch and sneaking to her room, only to find Myrrima sound asleep; it was many hours before Rhianna finally slept herself.

THE JUDGMENT

Prudence demands that a lord condemn a man only for the crimes that he can prove, not for crimes that he suspects were committed. But the Earth King can see into the heart of a man and condemn him on that basis alone. I would that we were all Earth Kings.

âWuqaz Faharaqin

It was early morning when Captain Stalker realized that Streben was missing.

A deckhand found the dead ferrin on the poop deck and was about to throw it over when he saw a pool of blood, more than a ferrin could account for. It wasn't uncommon for a sailor to cut himself or get a bloody nose, but this was a lot of blood, and so the deckhand searched the ship, looking to see if anyone was hurt.

It took a long time before he realized that Streben was missing and reported the news to Stalker.

Stalker blew the whistle for an assembly, and all hands reported for the count. Streben was definitely missing; Stalker went to the bloody pool and studied it.

Humfrey's spear lay on the deck still. It had rolled against the railing. A little blood on the point revealed that the ferrin had died trying to defend himself.

The rounded end of the blood spatter was like a comet, pointing the direction that Streben had been traveling at his last, backpedaling toward the railing.

“Think the ferrin got 'im?” the sailor asked. “Maybe 'it 'im in the eye?” Stalker was an imaginative man, but such a scenario stretched his credulity. Too much blood, he reasoned silently. No, what we have here is murder. Streben's mother would demand vengeance. Of course Stalker could
always cover it up. Men fell from the rigging every day, or took too much rum and stumbled overboard.

Yes, he thought, why not? Why not tell his sister that a ferrin had killed her son?

It was ludicrous. It sounded so much like a lie that she'd think that it had to be the truth.

“I don't think a ferrin did this,” Stalker admitted.

“The ferrin belongs to that boy,” the sailor said, “the one that fought yesterday. Maybe 'e came up in the night to lighten 'is load, and the ferrin came with. So the kid â¦”

Stalker gave the sailor a sidelong look. “He's just a kid. And kids that age don't murder.”

“'E's good with a blade,” the sailor muttered.

And it was true. But in his heart, Stalker doubted that it was murder. Streben would have terrorized the boy if he'd found him alone at night. Streben might even have tried to cut the kid's throat. It was self-defense, if it was anything.

Maybe one of Streben's victims had finally turned the tables on him.

His mother would still want vengeance, but it would be hard to get.

“Go down to the guest cabin,” Stalker said. “Ask Borenson â¦ and his son, to come meet me for breakfast.”

Stalker went to the galley and took a seat. The rest of the crew had taken breakfast at sunrise, and so the galley was empty. He had Cook fry up some sausages and cut up some oranges to go with their hard bread, then sat at the table trying to compose his thoughts.

When Borenson and young Fallion arrived, they both looked tired, stiff from sleep. Their blood wasn't flowing, and indeed, Fallion was a tad green. Stalker had become accustomed to the pitch and roll of a ship long ago, and he hadn't even noticed that the seas had grown heavier this morning. But Fallion was taking it badly.

“'Ave some breakfast?” the captain asked, letting Borenson and Fallion find their own seats.

Fallion just stared at the platter of sausages, hard rolls, and fruit, going greener by the moment, while Stalker and Borenson loaded their plates.

“Go ahead, lad,” the captain ordered. “Nothin' will come up so long as you've got somethin' 'eadin' down.”

At that, Fallion grabbed a roll and ripped off a piece with his teeth, swallowing it as if it might save his life.

Borenson and Stalker both chuckled, and took a few perfunctory bites. Borenson ate silently, waiting for Stalker to state his business, but in Landesfallen, men didn't mix food and business, and so they ate through the meal in silence.

When everyone was full, Stalker leaned back in his chair and came straight to the point. “Thing is, see, Streben is dead. Got 'isself killed last night.”

Both Borenson and the boy looked surprised.

Neither of them squirmed at those words, but then again, Stalker hadn't expected them to. They could have taken turns hacking the man to death with axes, and he suspected that they still wouldn't have shown any guilt.

“So, gentlemen,” Stalker said, “it's your blades I'm wantin' to see.”

Borenson raised a brow. “Why, sir, I protest: I haven't killed a man in â¦ three days.”

From the glittering in Borenson's eyes, Stalker knew that he spoke the truth. He hadn't killed a man in three days. But who would he have killed three days ago?

Not my business, Stalker told himself. Yet he inspected Borenson's blade anyway. Good metal, Sylvarresta spring steel, the kind that would hold an edge for ages and wouldn't rust for a century. It was so clean it might never have been used, and the blade was sharper than a razor. But then Stalker expected that a warrior of Borenson's stature would keep his blade in such condition. First thing after a kill, he'd have wiped it, honed it. Wouldn't have slept or eaten until that blade looked as polished as new.

Stalker returned it.

Fallion presented his own blade, and Stalker whistled in appreciation. Though the haft was a simple thing wrapped in leather, the metal had a dull grayish cast that Stalker had rarely seen. Thurivan metal, maybe six hundred years old, forged by master weapon-smiths who believed that they imbued the blade with Power from the elements. It was a princely weapon, and Stalker, who had done more than his fair share of weapons trade, was duly impressed.

But even more impressive was the blood wedged up in the cracks where the blade met the finger guard.

“Where'd this blood come from?” Stalker asked, peering down at the boy.

Fallion looked up at the captain and struggled to think where it had come from. The strengi-saat, of course! Fallion had stabbed it deeply four days ago, and worrying that others might strike at any moment, he had not cleaned the blade proper.

But he dared not tell the truth. He was, after all, still supposed to be in hiding.

“I cut myself,” Fallion said, raising his still-bandaged left hand. The bandage was dirty and gray now.

Stalker shook his head. “Blood only gets in the 'ilt like this when you stab something deep, when it bubbles out all in a frenzy.”

Fallion dared not come up with another lie, for that would only hurt his credibility.

Borenson came to his rescue. “He cut himself, like he said. It made a damned mess.”

He said it with resolve. That was the lie, and they were both going to stick to it.

Damn, Stalker told himself, Streben's mother is going to be mad.

“Right,” Stalker said, rising from his chair with a grunt. “Right. Streben was a rascal. No one will be sheddin' tears for him. Got what he deserved, most like.” He forced a smile, peered hard at Fallion. The boy didn't squirm or look away.

Damn, he's a saucy one, Stalker thought. Nine years old, and he draws his own blood when the time comes, like a true warrior.

Stalker's appreciation for the boy ratcheted up a couple of notches.

“Still want that job?” Stalker asked. “I could use a cabin boy of your â¦ demeanor.”

Fallion nodded, but Borenson shot Fallion a worried look. “A job?”

“I asked if I could be a cabin boy,” Fallion said. “I was hoping to learn how to run a ship.”

Right now, Stalker imagined, Borenson was trying to understand why he'd be rewarding the lad for killing his nephew. Stalker had to wonder himself.

Because I like cunning and courage, Stalker realized. If I still had kids myself, I'd like 'em feral.

INVISIBLE CHILDREN

It is often said that children are invisible. But I think that it's not so much that they are invisible, as it is that we tend to see children not as they are, but as we expect them to be. And when we expect nothing from them, we learn not to see them.

âHearthmaster Waggit

Rhianna lay in bed for much of the morning. As the other children rose and climbed up the ladder to eat, she just lay wrapped in her blanket. Myrrima cleaned the room for the day, folding clothes, making beds. She studied Rhianna and asked, “Hey, you, ready for breakfast?”

Rhianna shook her head. “Not hungry. I feel sick.”

“Seasick or sick sick?”

“Seasick.” It was a handy lie, and wouldn't require her to hold a lamp to her head to produce a fever.

“The whole Ainslee family is down with it,” Myrrima said, referring to a refugee family that slept in the hold, near the pens of chickens and ducks and pigs. “Want a bucket, or can you make it topside when the time comes?”

Rhianna's stomach was in a jumble. Murder didn't sit well with her. “A bucket.”

Myrrima produced a wooden bucket from under one of the bunks, apparently left for just such an emergency, and Rhianna lay abed.

Borenson and Fallion came back down to the cabin; Borenson told Myrrima, “Streben is dead.”

Myrrima held her breath for a moment, and said, “You killed him?”

“Nah,” Borenson said. “Someone else did it for me.”

“The captain thought I did it!” Fallion chimed in. “They found Humfrey dead.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry,” Myrrima offered. She leaned over and gave him a long, heartfelt hug.

“And Captain Stalker found the strengi-saat's blood on my knife,” Fallion continued. “And he thought it was Streben's blood.”

Rhianna felt even worse with that news. She had a sudden vision of Fallion swinging from the yardarm for her crime.

Borenson guffawed with laughter. “Go clean your knife. You know better than to leave it in such shape.”

Fallion hurried toward the ladder.

Myrrima hissed. “You can't send him up to clean his knife. The crew will see. They'll see it as a confession.”

Fallion faltered in his steps.

“
I'm
not going to clean it,” Borenson said.

Rhianna wondered if she should offer to clean it. It would only be fitting that she get the blame.

“No one should clean it,” Myrrima said. “Leave it bloody for a couple of days, but leave it sheathed.”

She peered at Borenson and said, “So what now? Is the captain going to put Fallion on trial, or what?”

Borenson chuckled. “He asked Fallion to be his cabin boy. I don't think he believes that Fallion is innocent, so he's rewarding him.”

“Rewarding him for killing a man?” Myrrima asked, incredulous.

Borenson shrugged. “It's the pirate blood in him, I guess. I'm not worried about the captain. He seems to like Fallion. But we might have to worry about some of the crew.”

Myrrima said, “Streben couldn't have had many friends. I don't think we'll have to worry about reprisals too much. Besides, anyone could have killed him.”

“Yeah, but it was Fallion's ferrin that's dead.”

Myrrima thought for a long moment, then asked, “Fallion, is there something that you're not telling us?”

Borenson guffawed. “A fine family we make, all sitting around the breakfast table accusing each other of murder!”

“I didn't do it,” Myrrima said. “And you didn't do it. And Humfrey was in the cabin when we went to bed. He crawled over my feet a dozen times during the night.”

“You know how ferrins are,” Borenson said. “Most likely he found a rat hole and got out on his own. Or maybe one of the kids went up to the poop deck in the night, and Humfrey bolted out the door.”

Borenson held his breath a long moment. Rhianna lay beneath her blanket. She imagined that everyone was peering at her. They'd finally put two and two together. So she peeked up over the edge of the blanket.

No one was looking at her. They all sat with their heads bowed in thought. No one suspected her.

I'm just a child in their eyes, she realized. I'm just a sick little wounded girl.

With that, she knew that no one
would
suspect her, ever.

“I'm sorry about your nephew,” Fallion told Captain Stalker later that afternoon when he reported for duty in the captain's cabin. He wasn't sure why he'd said it. He was glad that Streben was dead, and he suspected that Stalker didn't care much either way.

The captain fixed him with an appraising stare and said, “When I was a lad half your age, me father put me on his knee and told me somethin' I want you to remember. He said, âMany a man, when 'e gets angry, will go about threatenin' to kill a fella. 'E'll scream about it and tell any neighbor who is willin' to listen. That's one kind of fella.

“âBut then there's another kind, the kind who won't tell a soul. But 'e'll come to that man's door one night, and 'e'll have a knife up his sleeve.'” His voice got soft and thoughtful. “âAnd 'e'll 'ave a hole dug in the fields nearby. And when 'is enemy comes to the door, 'e'll give no warning. 'E just takes care of business.'”

Stalker went silent for a long moment. “âThat's the kind of man I want you to be.' That's what me da tol' me.”

Stalker hadn't taken the advice, of course. For years he'd worked as an honest merchant marine, determined to forget his past, his upbringing. But when you do that, he'd found, you get soft, and the world can come crashing down on you in a hurry. Sometimes he thought that if he could start all over again, he'd have been better off listening to his father.

Stalker thought for a moment. “Streben killed your ferrin, and you killed 'im. Don't cry about it now, and don't pretend to be sorry. When it
comes time to gut a man, just take 'im down quietly. That's the dignified way. Got it?”

Fallion nodded, hurt that the captain thought he was guilty.

“Good,” the captain said, slapping him on the shoulder. “I'm 'appy to meet a lad of your character.”

Fallion peered up at Stalker in surprise. He wanted to proclaim his innocence. He hadn't killed anyone. Yet the admiration in the captain's voice was so sincere, Fallion almost wished that he had.

What's more, he was curious to learn about the captain. It sounded as if Stalker had been raised by wolves in human form. But the truth was even more apparent: Captain Stalker really was from pirate blood.

So as the captain made his rounds, Fallion began to clean his cabin. There was a great deal of booty lying aboutâwooden crates filled with Mystarria's rarest wines, valuable books, women's finery, valuable herbs and perfumes, jewels, and so on.

The captain had Fallion enter each item into a ledger. The wines went under his bed. The rest went into a secret compartment hidden in the wall above his bunk. Fallion was surprised at some of the items: there were twenty longbows made of Sylvarresta spring steel, for instance. These were in short supply even in Mystarria, and their sale to foreignersâpotential enemiesâwas illegal. The bows were too powerful.

While he was stowing gear, Fallion found a wooden box in the desk. He pulled it out to discover its contents, and found a second ledger, one with ale-stained paper, its list of contents on the last page all duly verified and stamped by the harbormaster from the Courts of Tides.

Fallion compared his own ledger, the real ledger, to the one official one, and found that their contents matched nicely, so long as he only counted what was carried in the hold: hundreds of barrels of liquor, bricks of cheese, bolts of cloth, and so on. But the booty Fallion found stowed in the captain's cabin, items that were small and valuable, were worth almost as much as everything carried below.

Stalker was a smuggler.

The realization jarred Fallion. The captain seemed to be a friendly enough sort.

Fallion dutifully stowed the gear, then got a bucket of hot water
and some lye soap, and scrubbed the floors, the desk, everything.

He wanted the captain to appreciate his work. In time that appreciation would lead to trust, and the trust to greater responsibilities. Eventually, Fallion could learn how to run the whole ship.

But it all started here on the floor, he told himself. Getting the grime off.

When he was tired, he lit a candle and checked the cabin to make sure that the room was neat and cozy.

Fallion sagged into the captain's chair behind the desk, weary to the bone. He just peered at the candle for a long moment, mesmerized by the multitude of colors in a single flameâthe pale white and blue near the wick, the golds and shades of orange. He studied the way that the flame danced, stirring to unseen winds.

Fallion tried to anticipate the flame, envision which way it would bend, when it would sputter or burn low, or suddenly elongate and grow hot as it found new fuel. But he could not anticipate it. The flame seemed to surprise him, to always be just beyond his understanding.

“Are you a flameweaver?” Smoker had asked, laughing.

Now Fallion began to ask that question of himself.

He remembered how the torch had blazed in his hand when he fought the strengi-saat. He'd imagined at the time that something about the beast had caused it, as if its breath exploded like the gases deep in a mine.

But now Fallion wondered if he had summoned the inferno without thinking, so that in an instant he burned the torch to a stub.

“Torch-bearer.” That's what the old man had called him. Fallion liked that name. A torch-bearer was someone who brought light to others.

It's a good name, he thought. A good destiny.

He peered at the flame, willed it to burn brighter, to fill the room with light. But for as long as he watched it, nothing happened.

So he decided to bend the flames. He had heard of a lad in Heredon who could cause cinders to rise up into the sky, to hurtle up like shooting stars, or cause flowers to appear in the flames, or send them up in braids, creating a knot of light.

Fallion studied the light for a long time, tried to work his will with it.

But nothing happened.

“You must make a sacrifice to the light,” a voice seemed to whisper. It was a memory, Fallion felt sure, of something that Hearthmaster Waggit
had once told him. The greater Powers could not be controlled, only served. Fallion's father had been the Earth King because he served the earth well, suborned his will to the earth's.

But what did the flames desire?

Food.

Fallion recalled an old joke that Hearthmaster Waggit had once told. “What do you call a young flameweaver?”

Fallion knew that there were different names for flameweavers within their order. One who could call flame into existence at will was called an incendiary. One who could burst into flame himself, stand like a fire, was called an immolator. But Fallion had never heard the names for the lowest levels of the order.

Fallion had struggled, guessing words that were unfamiliar: an apprentice? A novice? An acolyte?

Waggit had smiled. “An arsonist.”

Because they had to serve fire. They had to feed the flames continually.

Fallion took an old slip of paper from the drawer, a crumpled paper with only a few notes written on it. He wadded it up, held it above the candle.

“Come and get it,” he whispered.

The flame bent toward the paper, magically reaching out as if with a long finger, and burning into it greedily.

Fallion held the paper in his hand even as it burned, letting the flames lick his fingers for as long as he could. It surprised him at how little pain there was. He was able to withstand it for quite a while before he threw the paper down.

In that moment, Fallion felt wiser, clearer of vision than ever before.

Are you a flameweaver? the old man had asked.

“Yes,” Fallion answered.

Moments later, the captain came in, and Fallion found himself peering up into the man's face. The books were open on the table, though Fallion had all but forgotten them.

The captain sniffed the air. “What you been burning?” he demanded.

Fallion grinned as if at a joke. “Evidence.”

BOOK: Sons of the Oak

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