The Rebellion (10 page)

“Of course,” Matthew said easily; then he gave me a sharp look. “And why not? Surely ye dinna worry he’d betray us?”

I shook my head. Brydda’s father, Grufyyd, and his mother, the herb lorist Katlyn, had come to live at Obernewtyn after the Council learned their son was the notorious rebel the Black Dog, so betrayal on Brydda’s part was completely out of the question. “It’s not Brydda. It’s the others. That rebel boy who was downstairs, for instance. Did you see the way he looked at us? If he feels that way about gypsies, how is he going to react when he discovers we’re Misfits? There’s no point in us pretending we’re all allies until it has been agreed to officially by the rebels. We don’t really know where we stand with them.”

“Is that really why we’re here? Did Maryon’s prediction have something to do with the rebels?” Matthew demanded.

I was glad when Kella’s return prevented my answering. “I’ve put her into bed,” Kella said. “The poor little mite was
asleep before her head brushed the pillow. But why on earth did you bring her here?”

I explained, and the healer shook her head in wonder. “She must be very attached to follow you all this way, Elspeth.”

Matthew rose, pulled on his coat in one ferocious motion, and went out the door, saying he was going to unpack the wagon.

Kella stared after him in astonishment. “Whatever is the matter with him?”

I laughed and, even to my own ears, it sounded bitter. “I am beginning to suspect it wasn’t me Dragon followed but Matthew. I think he volunteered for this expedition specifically to get away from her.”

“Oh, poor Dragon,” Kella said compassionately. “I remember she followed him everywhere when I was last at Obernewtyn, but I thought it was just a fleeting infatuation.”

“More’s the pity it wasn’t,” I said, suddenly emptied of ill humor. I stood up. “I am going to wash and put on some dry things.”

“There are clothes in a trunk in the bathing room,” Kella said. A lantern was lit in the bathhouse from Dragon’s wash, and as I peeled off my soaking clothes, I caught sight of myself in a mirror hanging on the wall: a long, lean girl with irritated moss-green eyes and thick, black hair falling past her waist. I glared at myself and realized abruptly that I felt less pity for Dragon’s love than exasperation at the inconvenience of it.

What a terrible business loving was. It was a troublesome and tiresome emotion destined more often to enrage the recipient than to please them. Rushton’s love for me, if that was what it could be called, had him determined to shut me up like a bird in a gilded cage, while Dragon’s love for Matthew
had driven him out of his home. What right had people to love you when you had not wanted it or asked for it?

Of course, in Dragon’s case, the only wonder was that no one had foreseen the outcome of throwing together a volatile girl, who had spent most of her life in wretched loneliness, with a boy of Matthew’s easy charm. Yet Dragon had ultimately saved Obernewtyn with his help. Her heartache and his irritation must be considered a small price to pay for that.

It seemed there was always a price to pay for loving.

I had a sudden vivid memory of a time when, taken in by Dragon’s illusions, I had thought Obernewtyn destroyed. From my hiding place, I had spotted Rushton. He had been haggard, grim-faced with burning eyes, and I had imagined he was despairing over the loss of Obernewtyn. Only later had I understood that his sorrow arose from his belief that I was dead.

I shook my head and turned to rummage for dry clothing, not liking the tenor of my thoughts nor the way Rushton’s face haunted me.

I fled to the kitchen, bringing the lamp with me, and pulled up a stool to join Matthew and Kella in front of the fire. Maruman came over and leapt onto my lap. His mind was closed, and I did not try to force entry to it.

“How long before Domick comes home?” I asked Kella, wincing as the cat’s claws penetrated cloth and flesh. “Are you expecting him tonight?”

The healer nodded, the smile fading from her lips.

I guessed she was wondering if our arrival would put Domick in danger, and for the first time, I was aware of the strain in her face. There were lines around her eyes, and her hands fidgeted constantly in swift, nervous gestures. I had been surprised at the strength of the longing in her voice as
she talked of Obernewtyn, but now I truly thought of what her life in the safe house must be like. Every day she watched her bondmate leave, knowing he went to work under the very noses of the Councilmen. If discovered, he would be killed.

It seemed far easier to take action than to sit and wait. People like Kella had the worst of it—the waiting and wondering and being helpless. In asking when Domick would return, I had surely voiced a question she never dared permit herself to ask.

Hearing the stair door creak and heavy footsteps in the hall, I felt an echo of the profound relief I saw on Kella’s face.

But when the kitchen door opened, I did not recognize the dark-clad man who stepped inside.

7

I
T WASN’T UNTIL
Kella crossed the room to embrace the man that I realized it was Domick.

The last time I had seen the coercer was at Obernewtyn just around the time he and Kella had established the safe house. Then, Domick had been on the edge of manhood, brown as a gypsy, with shoulder-length dark hair and bold, serious eyes. There was no sign of that youth in the man who now stood before me.

His skin was milk pale, and his long hair had been cropped very short. But most of all, it was his expression that made him a stranger—or the lack of expression. His face was a gaunt mask, the eyes two hooded slits. If he felt any surprise at seeing us in the safe house, it was not evident.

As a coercer, Domick had possessed that guild’s characteristic aggression, but his love for Kella had seemed to temper his intensity. I could not begin to imagine what had happened to turn him into this hard-faced man.

“Has something gone wrong at Obernewtyn?” he asked in a voice as even and emotionless as his expression.

“That is a harsh greeting for old friends,” Kella scolded him gaily, and I saw that she had not mentioned his transformation because she did not perceive it. It seemed that love was truly blind.

Domick exerted himself to produce a semblance of liveliness.
“Kella is right. Forgive my abruptness. It has been a bad night, but it is good to see you both.” He smiled, but his eyes remained remote, and again I found myself wishing for empathy—this time to tell me what seethed under the stoniness of his face.

The coercer removed his oiled cloak, and I saw the tension in his movements as he crossed to hang it on a peg beside the fire. Sitting down, he reminded me of a spring coiling tight for a hard recoil. Maruman watched him, then hissed and sprang from my lap to prowl about the room.

“You have chosen a bad time to visit,” Domick said, glancing up to indicate the rain thundering down on the roof.

“Needs must,” I said.

He gave me a swift look. “Need?”

For the second time that night, I told the story of the rescue of the gypsy, and of our decision to return her to her people when Roland could not heal her.

“It was a risky thing for you to have gone in alone to face the Herder,” Domick reproved. “Those villagers might have killed you at once.”

“Not with th’ gypsy shootin’ arrows at them from th’ trees,” Matthew said gleefully. “Besides, we could hardly leave her to burn, now, could we?”

An odd expression flitted over the coercer’s face. “Sometimes you have to endure a lesser evil in dealing with a greater one.”

Kella stared fixedly into the fire, as if disengaging herself from the conversation, but Matthew was openly indignant.

“Ye mean we should have left her? I doubt she’d call that a lesser evil!”

Domick shrugged. “If you had been caught, it would not have helped her, and it may well have done great, even
irreparable, damage to our cause. Which, then, would be the greater evil? To let an unknown woman die, or to intervene and see your friends perish for it?”

“We got her free, didn’t we? An’ we weren’t caught,” Matthew returned stubbornly. “If we thought like you, we’d nowt even have tried.
There’s
evil fer ye. Nowt even tryin’ to fix somethin’ that’s wrong.”

“You are naive,” Domick said dismissively. “If the woman is as sick as you say, there is every likelihood she will die despite your help.”

Matthew flushed. “Meybe I am naive, but rather that than bein’ someone with ice fer blood an’ a clever tongue an’ shifty brain instead of a heart!”

They stared at one another for a moment; then Domick relaxed back into his seat. “And is that the reason you have come to Sutrium, Elspeth? To take an irrelevant gypsy back to her people?”

I suppressed a surge of anger at his callousness and the temptation to tell him what Maryon had futuretold about this “irrelevant” gypsy. But with the woman so near death, there was enough urgency without piling the burden of a portentous vision on their heads.

“I would also like to see Brydda Llewellyn,” I said mildly. “Maybe he could suggest some safe way to locate her people.”

“I am not sure there is any way that is safe,” Domick said. “Is she a halfbreed? I suppose she must be,” he answered himself.

“I think so. Yes,” I added more positively, remembering the Herder had called her that. “Does it make a difference?”

Both Kella and the coercer nodded.

“A Twentyfamilies gypsy would not break the Council lore forbidding healing,” Domick explained.

“Twentyfamilies?” I echoed, surprised to hear the odd word again. “What does that mean?”

“It is what pureblood gypsies call themselves,” the coercer said. “It was not a name any but traders of expensive trinkets knew until the Herders started bandying it about. They hate gypsies and Twentyfamilies most of all, because it was they who negotiated the safe passage agreement with the Council that exempts gypsies from Herder lore. Herders preach that gypsies ought to be made to settle. They claim the plague was spread by their wanderings.”

“The Herder in Guanette said the plagues were a punishment from Lud because of people ignoring the Faction,” I said.

Domick shrugged. “Same thing. There is a lot of talk to that effect encouraged by the Herders, but it will not give them power to force the Council to make the Twentyfamilies settle. The halfbreeds are not so lucky, for the safe passage agreement no longer includes them, yet nor are they allowed to settle. They are persecuted by Landfolk and Herders alike, as you know. But it is worse since the plague.”

I began to see that returning the gypsy before Maryon’s futuretold deadline would be even harder than I had anticipated. Hitherto, I had imagined I understood something of gypsy society, but in truth, what I knew arose solely from memories of a single friendly troupe that had come through Rangorn every few seasons when I was a child. I did not even know if they had been pureblood or halfbreed.

“You talk about Twentyfamilies gypsies and halfbreeds as if they were two separate races,” I said.

“That is very nearly what they are,” he answered. “The division between them has its origins in the days when gypsies first came to the Land. Some say they walked here; others say they came by sea. Either way, they didn’t want to be ruled by Council or Herder lore, so they came to an agreement with the Council to remain as visitors, never settling or farming the Land, never owning any of it.”

“I know all of that,” I said, faintly impatient.

“I suppose you know, too, how they got the Council to agree to let them remain as visitors?” Domick snapped.

Abashed, I shook my head. “I’m sorry. Tell it your own way.”

He went on. “In exchange for safe passage status as visitors, the gypsies offered a yearly tithe: a percentage of the craftwares their people produced. Their works were rare and beautiful, and for a time everyone seemed to benefit from the arrangement.

“In those early days, some gypsies mated with Landfolk, so halfbreeds were born. Initially, there was free trade of knowledge and blood between full and halfblood gypsies. But that ended with the Great Divide,” Domick said. “Purebloods do not now teach their skills to halfbreeds; therefore, halfbreed wares are pale echoes of their work, based on half-recollected formulae and recipes. Invariably inferior, they bring scant coin, whereas the purebloods make more than enough to live well from what remains of their work after the tithe.”