Valiant (2 page)

“He spoke to you?” asked Fine Coat. Oh, he was angry.

I didn’t care. “Yes. If you can call it that.”

“What did he say?”

I raised my eyebrows. How did this man manage to make a simple request sound so rude?

Smiling One put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You’ll pardon Galen, miss. This man has barely spoken the entire journey. We don’t even know his name. It’s important you tell us what he said.”

I reached into the wagon and pulled a bit of blanket up to cover the man’s arm. The morning was still cold. “He said he was sorry. That he was glad to see me again after the”—I hesitated, not wanting to use the word—“
monsters
had found me.”

Fine Coat glanced at his friend. “What else? Was there more?”

“He said they’d tried to stop someone but failed, so he’d ridden to find help. That’s all.” I shook my head. “It must have been a brutal raiding party.”

Smiling One couldn’t hide his surprise. “You heard us?”

I nodded.

Fine Coat studied me, eyes dark with concern. It wasn’t concern for me. “You shouldn’t have bothered him,” he said. “And you shouldn’t have been eavesdropping.”

I crossed my arms. “You shouldn’t have been talking so loud I could hear you.”

Smiling One laughed. His friend glared at him, opened his mouth as if to speak, then clamped it shut.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t repeat your story.”

Why would I? The thought of boiled bones itched inside me. I wished the wind gusting over the fields could reach into me and sweep it away.

Fine Coat glanced at the man in the wagon, who was now sleeping.

“Tell me if he speaks again,” he told Smiling One. Then he walked ahead, toward Father and our wagon, with only a backward glance.

Good
. I wanted him and his stories as far away from me as possible.

Smiling One fell into step beside me. “I am Lynden. And you are …?”

“I am Saville Gramton,” I said, glad for his company after the sick man’s fears and Fine Coat’s rudeness. “My father and I are traveling to Reggen.”

He nodded to Father who walked farther ahead. “Is he a merchant?”

“No,” I said. “A tailor.”

Lynden raised his brows in surprise. “A tailor! He doesn’t look like any tailor I know. Still, it’s a pleasure to meet his lovely daughter.”

It was my turn to be surprised. I had Father’s square jaw, and though I sometimes thought my eyes were pretty, my lashes and brows were as wheat colored as my hair. They made my face look pale all over. And I was covered in grime after four weeks of walking.

“Tell me,” I said, “how long have you been traveling?”

“Over a month. Galen left Reggen to visit villages near the Steeps, and I have been his guide. Why do you ask?”

“You’d have to be on the road at least two months to give a compliment like that and
mean
it.”

He smiled, dimples showing. “I still say you’re lovely.”

“Then you’re too easily pleased.” I glanced at the man sleeping in the wagon beside us. “Or trying to distract me.”

“Perhaps I want you to distract
me
. It hasn’t been a cheerful
trip.” Lynden smiled again. “But I will not try to compliment you again. What should we talk of?”

“Tell me about Reggen,” I said, looking ahead. “Tell me about the Guardians.”

“You know about the Guardians?”

I gestured at the caravan. “I’ve traveled with these men for a month. How could I not know about the Guardians? They’re the only part of Reggen I want to see.”

Reggen, I’d been told, was built between towering cliffs and a curve in the Kriva River. The Guardians were two great reliefs carved into the cliffs, one on either side of the city.

Lynden peered ahead. “You’ll see them soon, when the sun shines on the cliffs. Believe me, a hundred merchants could tell you of the great Guardians, but the first time you see them …” He shook his head. “They’re old, old as the city’s foundation stones. Some say giants cut and laid the foundation as a gift to Reggen’s first king, then carved themselves into the cliff behind the city as a reminder of their service—and of their existence.” He grinned, as if daring me to be scared.

I raised an eyebrow. There were things that could scare me, but storybook monsters were not among them. “I heard that the architect who raised the city walls carved the Guardians. He was a humble man, I’m sure, to carve himself twice, each image as tall as fifty men.”

“The Guardians only stand as tall as forty men,” corrected Lynden. “So perhaps the architect was not so arrogant.”

He laughed and I laughed, and the tightness in my shoulders eased.

Father turned to glare at us.

“I’ve angered your father,” said Lynden.

“It doesn’t take much. Talking with me would be enough.”

“I’ve been watching him. All the tailors I know are skinny, hollow-chested men—nothing like your father. He reminds me of a badger I met when I was a child.” Lynden laughed. “I think he’d hit someone; I really do.”

Lynden was right. Once, when Father returned from a meeting with the guild, I’d told him I didn’t care about coats that made a man look like more than a man. Or whether he found an indigo velvet for a customer. He’d struck me with a half-closed fist. He’d wanted it to hurt. I’d flinched—I couldn’t help it—but I didn’t duck away and I didn’t cry out. To my delight, Father bruised one of his fingers and couldn’t hold a needle properly for a week.

He never touched me again, and I never mentioned tailoring or the guild.

A year had passed and I still remembered the way my vision had danced. But I laughed as hard as Lynden at his description of my badger father. I made sure of it.

I was laughing still when the wagon wheel broke.

It sounded like a crack of lightning. The wagon lurched forward and then rocked back as the wheel near Father collapsed. He stumbled and I knew he’d be pinned beneath it. Before I could shout a warning, I saw a flash of movement:
Fine Coat yanked Father away just as the corner of the wagon dropped to the ground. Trunks tumbled out, end over end.

It didn’t seem real: everything too fast and too slow at the same time. But I felt the impact of the trunks falling. They beat the ground like a drum.

The horse reared up, straining in its harness, scattering more trunks behind it—Father’s trunks. Several broke open, spilling their contents along the trail.

There was a sound like broken bells and a shower of silver notes.

I barely heard Father’s cries over my own. I gathered my skirts and ran past Father, who lay where Fine Coat had pulled him, stopping only when I saw some of the fabric buried under a trunk.

I rolled the trunk away, barely feeling its weight. Canvas-covered bolts lay beneath; one was partially open, revealing a glimpse of crimson in the debris. I threw it over my shoulder, ignoring Father’s shout of protest. Two more bolts followed, along with several books and a wooden box of Father’s supplies.

And then I found what I searched for—the pieces of it—under the last bolt.

Mama’s music box lay shattered, its tin heart spilled out beside it. The thin bands of metal that had sung the simple notes were crimped and bent at odd angles.

“No …” I breathed out and in, out and in, my chest tight with the pain of it.

“Let me get the cloth, Saville!” The fury in Father’s voice didn’t scare me. He grabbed my shoulder, trying to pull me away from the wreckage.

I shook him off and tried to pick up the pieces of the music box, but my fingers trembled too much.

Father’s grip on my shoulder tightened painfully. “Out of my way, girl!”

I wrenched free and stood so quickly it startled him. I was nearly as tall as he was, and he hated that I could look into his eyes. It was only Father and me for a moment, as the merchants surrounding us faded away.

My own anger rose up to meet his, not a bit softened by the small trickle of blood down his temple. When he tried to reach around me, I stepped to block him. He could forget his precious fabric just once.

“Let me past, Saville!”

“No.” I shook my head, glad for the strength my anger gave me. “Not until I pick up Mama’s music box.”

I held his gaze for one more heartbeat. Then, before he could decide whether to slap me in front of the crowd, I knelt and gathered the pieces of Mama’s last song. When I was finished, I stood a moment longer between Father and his fabric.

He hated even that delay.

Then I walked away from the wreck, the fragments of the music box cradled in my skirts. Father shouted orders about his fabric and the men around him sprang into action to salvage what they could.

I moved through them like a ghost, unnoticed by all but one.

Luca limped up, favoring his bad hip, and handed me a small burlap bag. He tended the caravan’s fires and drove the wagon that carried the food. He’d tended to me, in his own way, the entire journey.

I transferred the pieces to the bag and tied it shut, trying not to think that I’d lost the music box and Mama’s song. And I was going to lose Luca, too.

“I’m going to miss your stories,” I said, rubbing my thumb over the burlap’s roughness. It was the closest I could come to saying I’d miss him.

“It looked like that young merchant was telling you a fine story,” said Luca.

I followed his gaze. The other caravan was already traveling on toward Reggen, taking with it Lynden and Fine Coat and the poor young man who’d whispered of monsters.

I sighed. It had been fun to laugh with Lynden.

“Don’t make me tell you about the time the caravan was caught in an early snow and I spent two weeks peeling boards off the sides of wagons to cook and feed the men,” warned Luca.

I turned to him, knowing he was gathering one last story for me.

He grinned. “They never knew the difference. Thought it was nothing more than tough travel bread.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said. I could feel the sadness build at the base of my throat, grief for the music box and myself,
and for never hearing another of Luca’s stories. But I spoke as brightly as I could. “Even if your cooking
is
close to boards.”

“The tale is true!” Luca whipped his woolen hat over his heart. “I swear it.”

He told me the story as men collected the scattered cargo and loaded it onto other wagons. He was telling it still when the caravan moved forward once more. He even bribed a young merchant to drive the food wagon so he could walk with me.

“I’m tired of the wagon rattling my bones,” he said with a wink.

Luca walked on with me, even when he’d finished the story. He didn’t say anything else, and I couldn’t. But I was glad to have him beside me, a Guardian of my own.

After a while, he prodded me. “Look, child.”

We had crested the last low bluff before the Kriva River. A bridge as long as two fields arched across it to Reggen, which was tucked between the river and the cliffs that rose behind it. I understood why tales claimed giants had cut and laid the city’s foundation stones. They were each broader than a man could reach with his arms spread wide, and they felt old, older than bones. Reggen’s brick walls looked young by comparison, great-great-grandchildren of the foundation they were built upon.

And then there were the Guardians: two men, their bodies blurred by time, carved into the cliffs on either side of the walls, their feet near the Kriva, their shoulders rising above Reggen’s walls.

“It’s a sight, to be sure,” said Luca. “Those two standing in the cliff.”

“I like them,” I said. “They remind me of kings.”

“Or giants?” he teased.

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, giants. I’ve seen so many, you know.”

“I think I saw one when I was younger,” said Luca.

“You can’t mean that!” I turned to him, as surprised as if he’d claimed to ride dragons.

He shrugged his crooked shoulders. “He was a great big man, that’s all I know—half again as tall as most—with a forehead like a cliff and a nose like a bag of rocks. That’s how I know those two aren’t giants, like some claim. They’re too pretty, too human. A giant would be more lumpy.”

I laughed, glad for a chance to crawl out of the ugliness of the day. “Lumpy?”

“Lumpy. Do you think a giant would have fingers that could sew so well as your father?” Luca must have seen the anger in my eyes, for he plunged ahead. “Or a nose as straight and fine as that young merchant’s you were talking with?”

Then I saw the clusters of bare trees along the Kriva’s banks. They had sturdy enough trunks, but I’d never seen such branches: masses of slender limbs that hung like curtains or hair. Some nearly brushed the river. What would they look like in the spring, covered with leaves?

I pointed. “What kind of trees are those?” I thought I knew, but I needed to be sure.

Luca turned to see. “Willows. They’re common enough. Love the water. Why do you ask?”

I shook my head.

But I couldn’t look away.

Mama had named me after a place a traveler had spoken of. Saville was a tiny village, but the traveler had described it so well that Mama’d ached to see it. She’d named me after the village with the willows.

Now, at seventeen, I saw willows for the first time. For a few long breaths, they were all I could see.

Then I glanced over my shoulder. Father was arguing with the merchants about the cost of delivering us and our goods to an inn.

I scampered toward the bank, the bag gripped in my hand. A moment later, I slipped past the curtain of branches that bent close to the ground. I heard a few notes, I swear I did, as if the wind plucked the willow branches like harp strings.

Father would remember the music box soon, and he’d want it, and then we would fight because I’d never give it to him. Or he would look for it when I was away, and I’d return to discover the pieces were gone.

Better that they stay here. I looked around to mark the spot: three willows over from a tumble of boulders. Then I knelt at the base of the tree and began to scrape at the soil. Within a minute, I had a deep enough hole. I gently laid the bag in the ground and patted the soil over it, glad I’d found a home for Mama’s song.

I looked at Reggen standing between its two great Guardians, then back at Father, already shouting with the merchants. Even here, with no guild to crowd him, he had to fight. It would be like Danavir all over again—the disputes with other tailors, the arguments at night, sewing for him because no apprentice dared risk his fury. I couldn’t live like that again.