The Dowry Blade (41 page)

Ashe glanced at the sword, and her breath stilled. She had to drag her attention away from that plain hilt – she would like to laugh. She would like to tell her companion that it was no accident that they had met. She ought to touch that hilt, and close off her last spell, but that felt more of an ending than silencing herself had done. Let it stay, for now, a whisper of power, a reminder of what Ashe could no longer do.

Accustomed though she had become to silence, Brede was consumed with curiosity about her companion.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked, then almost immediately, ‘Are you continuing east?’

Ashe cautiously unhooked one hand from the belt and held it up where Brede could see it, in the sign of agreement used in the market. ‘How many days?’ Brede asked.

Ashe spread her hand then held up four fingers.

‘Four days, maybe?’ Brede interpreted. ‘Walking? You’re going to the witches’ city then?’ Brede’s voice was husky with unease.

‘Do you think they can cure you?’ Brede asked, tentatively.

Ashe signed
no
.

Brede shrugged; her uneasy curiosity unsatisfied.

‘It’s your business. Me, I’m going there. I’m aiming to get cured, even if you’re not.’ An unexpected kind of truth: a kind of healing. ‘Besides, it’s not safe for you to wander about on your own without even a weapon, not that you could use one I suppose? I can cut a day or two off your journey. You can pay me with the food that’s doubtless in that bag of yours. I’ve nothing, but I’m not drawn to brigandry.’

Unused to the sound of her own voice, Brede felt over jovial, and false;
enough talking
. She wished the woman could sign, she could find a comfortable familiarity with that. And had she been able to sign, what chance she would have used the same system as Brede had learnt? Brede half laughed. Even Kendra’s
yes
had been subtly different.

Hours later, far into the forest and with dark falling, Brede found a reasonable camping ground, prudently far from the road, and Ashe struggled to the ground. Her feet were agony; the muscles of her legs would scarcely hold her.

Brede made an effort. Helped by the stirrups, she swung easily from Guida’s back, but on the ground she was once more awkward and slow.

Ashe watched her and realised that no one could heal that damage, or that pain. She began to understand that look of having lived through more unpleasant experience than should be crushed into any one lifetime.

War
, Ashe reminded herself.

They prepared a meal together and huddled over the meagre fire. Brede attacked her share half-raw and scalding; unaware of Ashe picking at the food she could scarcely stomach. Brede stretched, and limped a slow circle about the camp singing quietly. Ashe touched Brede’s arm, making the only sign she knew for what Brede had done. It wasn’t a flattering one. Brede laughed abruptly.

‘No, not me. I learnt that from a witch I travelled with for a while.’ Brede hesitated, wondering what had brought her to speak of Sorcha to a stranger. She shrugged, ‘I don’t really know if it works, just – superstition.’ Brede looked curiously at the woman beside her, at the dark smudges beneath her eyes. ‘You don’t miss much do you?’

Brede settled into her cloak to sleep. She glanced at Ashe, still rigid and uneasy.

‘You rest. I can hear in my sleep. Anything that disturbs us, I will deal with.’

Ashe discounted this assurance, but knew they were safe within the wards.

Brede rested on her elbows, too full of curiosity to quite relax.

‘I don’t understand why you can’t sign. You look rich enough to afford the best teachers. Are you only recently mute?’

Ashe nodded. Far more recently than Brede could imagine.

‘But surely you’ve connections at court, couldn’t you have gone to the witch they hired for the battle instead of traipsing out here?’

Ashe let her hair swing forward so that her companion would not see the hot flush of shame on her face, terrified that Brede would follow her thought to involuntarily discover the truth. If she had travelled with a witch she might yet guess.

‘Squeamish about blood are you?’ Brede asked, trying not to show scorn in the face of this woman’s delicacy. ‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t there, so I can’t upset you with details. They wouldn’t hire an old warwound like me even for the child’s play they were at this morning.’

Child’s play?

Bitterly Ashe condemned all warriors, and this one in particular.

She huddled her knees closer to her chest, making a protective barrier between herself and the casual cruelty of the warrior’s words.

Brede saw that movement as a flinch.

‘Oh,’ she whispered, shocked at the thought that bubbled into her mind.

Ashe saw her eyes gleam in the fading firelight.

‘You’re one of the rebels aren’t you? That’s why you were leaving – running away. No wonder you couldn’t go to the witch to be healed.’

Ashe gazed at her in astonishment. Brede had woven her two theories into such a glorious mess that Ashe could only admire her imagination, yet she was horrified at where it might lead.

Ashe shook her head slowly and emphatically. Brede was sure she was right, it was the only logical explanation for this naïve young woman to be on the road without an escort; but she shrugged and lay down.

Ashe stayed upright, sleep far from her mind; nursing her aches to her as some false consolation for the pain she had caused others. At last she lay down to sleep, but every time she closed her eyes she saw that bloody field and all the lives wiped out. Ashe peered at her hands, obscured by darkness, and imagined them dripping gore. She wiped her palms against her legs, and despaired.

Chapter Forty-Five

Ashe started awake from fitful, nightmare-filled dozing to a slow and feeble dawn and mist hanging from the trees.

The wards flickered faintly and her companion slept. Ashe struggled to her feet and the horse snorted in shock, having forgotten her.

Brede did not stir. Ashe smiled to herself; so much for her great hearing. Ashe shook Brede’s shoulder gently and she rolled suddenly away, clutching at the great sword but completely unable to get to her feet.

Brede woke fully and swore, incapable of being civil.

Enemy territory,
she reminded herself, thinking of Maeve, and suddenly missing her scorn. She could use someone to keep her up to the mark. Away from the constant threat of the city, secure with a horse,
her
horse, once more, she was already getting careless. Using the sword as a crutch Brede hauled herself up. The damp earth had aggravated her pain. Ashe saw all of this. It would take only a few notes of a simple song to ease, and she couldn’t do it. Brede staggered bad-temperedly away to relieve her bladder and Ashe set about seeing to some food and a warming drink to drive the cold and damp from their limbs.

Now that they were some distance from the city, the urgency had left Ashe, and there was only a nagging ache in her mind that told her to get home. She had an odd dryness in her throat that caused her anxiety, for she had no way of healing it.

Brede returned, her temper under control, and devoured food with no less ferocity than the night before, ignoring the pain in her stomach, desperate to end her weakness and get strength back into her muscles. She scrambled from a fallen tree to Guida’s back, closing her mind on the lack of dignity, the shame of a Plains woman struggling to mount, somehow more acute now she had her own, Plains-bred horse again; as though Guida was noticing and sneering at her rider.

She tied Ashe’s belongings to the saddle and helped her up. Ashe watched the wards fade as they passed them and wondered what her sisters would make of her devastating choice of silence.

Brede whistled to Guida, a string of subtle communication that had Guida’s ear forward and alert, good spirits surfacing easily. Ashe half listened, and hope rushed over her.

Whistling: surely she could whistle? She could still use tune, it wasn’t the same as song, but there were some small things that didn’t need words, some small things that could be hers again. She would not be able to set wards, but she could bring sleep and, perhaps, take some of the pain from Brede’s leg – if she could find the right tune. No words – damage came only from words.

Ashe hadn’t whistled in years. She wasn’t sure she remembered how.

The forest stretched before them. Brede kept a wary watch for the suggestion of other paths, and or trouble.

With nothing else to occupy her, Ashe inspected the trees, noting which had lost their leaves; distracted by the way the earth smelt and the way the light fell, green and strange, peaceful. Her throat ached, and she coughed fitfully –leaning against Brede’s back to draw breath.

‘If you will travel half-dressed you can expect to catch cold,’ Brede observed. ‘Sorcha used to dress so, but then, she could keep the cold away.’

Sorcha.

Ashe knew that name. It shook her. Goddess, yes, she knew that name. Surely there couldn’t be another?

Sorcha of the voice like molten sunlight, of ice turned water? Sorcha who had enough skill for twenty: Sorcha
the
Songspinner? Could she be the witch this woman once travelled with? Was it possible? Ashe shook Brede’s shoulder.

Brede turned, but Ashe couldn’t explain. She reached round Brede and pulled at the reins, forcing Guida to stop.

‘What are you doing?’ Brede asked, exasperated.

Ashe fell from the horse, replacing pain for pain, and scrabbled in the leaf mould. Brede stared at the writing, then at Ashe. She understood that what she had written was important, but they were doomed to silence between them.

‘I can’t read,’ Brede said.

Ashe glared at her in disbelief, and still crouched in the dirt she buried her face in her hands, giving way to the frustration and anger and grief that had been brewing for a day and night, weeping until she had exhausted herself.

Ashe wiped her face on her sleeves and straightened. Brede was settling the edge of Guida’s saddlecloth with great concentration. She looked up at last with an expression Ashe didn’t recognise and offered a hand to help her up, and brushed the worst of the dirt from her clothes. Ashe tried to explain. She made the sign she knew for witch and pointed at Brede, then again wrote
Sorcha
in the earth. She hissed an ‘
S
’. It was the best she could do.

‘Sorcha?’

Ashe nodded, relieved that Brede understood. Brede wished she did not.

‘Sorcha?’ her voice shook, but she must know. ‘You knew her?’

Yes,
no
: how could Ashe explain without telling Brede who she was? Could she afford to risk that? Could she make herself understood? Hesitantly Ashe shook her head. A drained look passed over Brede’s face, and Ashe decided to trust her. She made the ugly shape for witch again, then pointed at herself. This time Brede was sure she had misunderstood.

‘You? You can’t be a witch. You’re too young, besides, you’ve got no voice.’

Brede’s own voice faded and she covered her mouth, understanding at last, and that terrifying precipice was at her feet once more.

‘Who did that to you? Who took your voice?’

Ashe shook her head and pointed again at herself – when Brede shook her head in confusion she touched her throat and closed her fist against her chest.

‘You did it?’ Brede asked at last.

Ashe nodded. Brede took off her hat, and drove her fingers into her hair.

‘
Why
?’

Ashe shrugged hopelessly. How could she explain even if she had speech? Brede thrust the hat back on her head, and helped Ashe back onto Guida. Ashe settled on yesterday’s bruises and wondered what Brede’s silence meant.

Brede’s anger melted at last, but she had no compassion. She twisted her head, unwilling to respect Ashe’s self-imposed silence.

‘So you’re – you’re a witch. And you took your own voice. Why didn’t you just kill yourself?’

Ashe recoiled from the bitterness, recognising a quality in Brede’s voice, an undertow of power. Ashe tried to avoid her question, but it persisted.

Why didn’t I?
Because that wasn’t the point – even as she thought, Ashe doubted. There was no way to encompass how she felt about herself, no way to atone, and no way to explain.

‘Sorcha lived for her voice. She couldn’t have lived without it,’ Brede said, trying to understand. She continued her one-sided discussion, castigating Ashe for being everything that Sorcha was not; for being
alive
; building a wall of dislike for Ashe, as protection from the rawness of the loss of Sorcha. ‘She’d never have given away everything that she was. What could you possibly have wanted that was worth the loss of your voice?’

Ashe winced away from Brede’s scorn. She couldn’t undo what had been done; but she had at least made sure she could never do it again.

‘Sorcha’s dead, did you know?’ Brede said.

Ashe heard the careful control of that tone and recognised the effort it cost Brede, and the jagged anguish it attempted to disguise.

No, Ashe didn’t know. She bit hard on her knuckle, trying to drive away the pain by a physical hurt. Her eyes stung.

Dead?

Brede wondered at the shocked intake of breath, but made no attempt at further communication; blanking her mind to any thought of Sorcha, refusing to look any further into the dark uncertainty that Ashe had so unexpectedly illuminated.

Hunger prompted Brede to halt at last. Ashe refused to eat at all. Brede shrugged, and ate Ashe’s share. Ashe watched the food vanishing without regret. She crouched against a tree, unconsciously rocking forward and back, chewing the skin beside her thumbnail.

Brede wandered through the trees, to walk some of the stiffness out of her legs, and to put some distance between them. Ashe stood abruptly, staring at her hands, thinking of Sorcha. There were too few Songspinners left. She should never have discarded her heritage with such haste – she saw again that field covered in blooded bodies.

Sorcha
, dead? Ashe remembered her voice, so full of life. Her voice had cut the air, lifting words into power, lifting Ashe out of herself. Her throat ached to pour out a tribute to Sorcha and tears threatened again. She forced them down, forced the ache from her throat, breathed. Then she tried, hesitantly, to whistle.

It was ugly at first, then she caught a note that told her something. She followed where it led and there was a tune she didn’t recognise. A fine tune and there must be words for it if she but knew them. She faltered. It made no difference if she knew the words. She tried again. Phrase followed phrase and she knew that there was something in the making here. A strong sense of spinning. She had stumbled on a song of rare power– it was a song of pain and grief, and of hope and defiance and love and – abruptly, she lost the sense of where the melody led and fell silent. She wanted desperately to know whose song it was; there was a scent of belonging to it.

She listened to the horse snorting and stamping one foot impatiently, and to the hurried, scrambling, uneven, footsteps of the horsewoman. Brede crashed through the undergrowth. She came to a halt staring wide-eyed at Ashe, her hat crushed in one hand –

‘That tune,’ Brede said carefully, controlling the urge to strike out at Ashe and twisting her hands into the leather to hide their trembling. ‘Sorcha sang that when she was dying.’ Brede reshaped her hat and thrust it back onto her head, glaring at Ashe. ‘You really are a witch,’ she said sourly. She caught up the trailing reins. She half turned, an unthought-out word on her lips, but she rejected the momentary urge to confide and mounted, holding out her hand to help Ashe onto the horse.