Aloren Page 4

  A lantern hung on a post, sputtering in the rain––a welcoming sound. The rest of the village twinkled below, and I gave a sigh of relief, and walked quickly forward for fear the place would be swallowed by mist before I reached the door.

  “Wait a moment,” called Mordan. “There’re people down there.”

  “There’re people everywhere.” But I hesitated.

  “It’s an inn.” Floy flew up between us. “The Milodygraig Inn. Noisy and crowded this time of day. I doubt she’ll be noticed.”

  “A little girl in from the rain and dark?” said Mordan. “Let’s wait till tomorrow.”

  I knew what he was really thinking. She’ll forget herself and say something stupid, and we’ll be undone.

  “I won’t say anything,” I grumbled.

  “When your mouth drops off.”

  “Jackhole,” I said, and Floy suggested loudly that we sneak round to the back.

  I stepped over a stout stone wall and began salivating. Hints of rosemary, garlic, and roasting fowl hung about the back door. There was a saucer of cream on the stoop.

  “What’s wrong?” said Floy from the dripping eves. “Think the cat’s going to tell?”

  I walked with the bowl to the shadows at the edge of the lawn. The cream was thick and frothy, and I drank it down. All it did was make me hungrier.

  I threw the bowl on the ground and cursed all saebels in all forms of water, rock, mud, and plant in a loud voice that earned me a hiss from Mordan.

  “Reyna,” said Floy, “you could pretend you’re a saebel.”

  “Why should I want to do that?”

  “You’d get fed.” I stared at her. “Don’t you remember,” said Floy, “the stories about saebels that do yard work at night and get paid with meals in the evening, because the homeowners don’t want their fingers fused together?”

  “They’re true?”

  “True enough for these folk.”

  “Saebels have insatiable appetites,” quoted Mordan. “And they don’t talk sense.”

  “They’d do anything for a bit of meat,” said Floy.

  “I’d anything for a bit of meat,” I said.

  “Then you’d better get some sleep before working tonight,” said Floy.

  When the windows of the place were all dark I struggled with hushing the cow and hauling tool after tool out of the shed. Then I stood despairingly at the edge of the large vegetable plot.

  “Don’t look so glum,” Floy said. “It’s half done already and the ground’s wet.”

  I walked through the wattle fence and picked at the ground.

  “You’re not planting wildflowers. Use some leverage––stick the pole between your elbow and knee.”

  Floy’s heckling set a fire in my limbs and I gradually pushed all the way through the unbroken ground.

  After that I strung up the poles that had been lying in a pile for the runner beans. Then I slid around on the wet grass to rid myself of mud, stumbled about in the woods, and fell into a pile of leaves.

  I slept like a boulder all through the next day and woke in the evening, sore and sick with hunger.

  The birds were roosting in a pine. I threw a clod of dirt at Mordan.

  “None of that!” He shuffled out of range. “I’m trying to keep cleaner than you, at least.” They both followed me to the back door to find what the innkeeps had left. There was a bucket of cream this time, but more exciting were the loaf of rye and the round of white cheese.

  “Don’t eat too fast. You’ll throw it up,” said Floy. I wasn’t listening. I sat on the stoop and threw Floy and Mordan morsels of bread; and was finishing the cheese when somebody who wasn’t a bird interrupted:

  “Lord, do you eat once a month?”

  I jumped up and slopped cream down my dress.

  “Quiet,” said Floy and Mordan. I choked on a piece of cheese. The boy, a few years older than me, slugged me between the shoulders. The cheese came up in my mouth.

  “Bright one, ain’t you? Can’t even chew properly.”

  A little girl poked her head through the door. “You’re loud, Wille Illinla.” She spied me and her eyes grew wide. I didn’t wonder at it. My yellow dress was mottled with mud and my hair bristled with sticks and dead leaves.

  “Our saebel!” The little girl stepped off the stoop.

  In the little girl’s place stood a woman with a red nose and ashy hair pinned tightly to her head. She looked like an outgrowth of the house. “Adzookers!” she said. “It’s hideous.” She grabbed the little girl and pulled her back. “Not so close, Emry, it’s like to ravish you.”

  The boy Wille burst out laughing.

  “Ravish?” I said, and Mordan cawed angrily from the roof; and at that moment I felt contrary enough to test my limits. “I––“

  My stomach squirmed and vomit came up in my mouth. I shook, sweating under my dress.

  “She in’t a saebel, Marna, I don’t think,” Wille said.

  “How would you know?” said the woman.

  “Saebels don’t have mothers––just spring out of the earth, don’t they? If she’s really a saebel she won’t have a belly-scar.”

  Marna got hold of me under the arms. She lifted my dress and chemise, and my navel poked out above my undergarments. Wille nodded solemnly.

  “What do you want?” The woman became weary. “And what happened to you?” She wiped her hands, filthy from my gown, on her apron.

  “Brigands.” I twisted my skirt into knots. Her face softened.

  “Those? Been pouring over the border in droves. If t’weren’t for the fact we’re out of the way, I would march up to that Lorilan Ravyir and give him and all his wild folk a good thrashing. I suppose you’ll want to stay on.” I said nothing, and she blew her nose in her apron. “Those skinny arms don’t look up to much. But you’ll do fine for planting, running, cooking, even, I suppose.”

  She walked back into the house and Wille followed close behind. The little girl stepped in front of me, picking her nose.

  “You’re a saebel, ain’t you?” she said. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell.” She took me by the hand and pulled me through the door.

  Five

  The little girl, Emry, was the daughter of Marna Nydderwaic’s dead sister. Emry was Marna’s darling, and as spoiled as I had been. She threw a fit when Wille dragged her upstairs to bed. Then Wille, who liked to explain things, explained to Marna about a poultice the miller needed for a bite on his arm.

  The village was called Milodygraig. Marna Nydderwaic was Milodygraig’s leech, though she spent most of her time running Milodygraig’s inn in the absence of her dead husband. I soon found a place for myself as the orphan of Milodygraig, Floy became a sparrow of Milodygraig, and Mordan became very scarce in Milodygraig, as he was helping his brothers poke around the more exiting regions of the country.

  That first night Marna strew me some bedding by the hearth. Sleep didn’t come for a long time––the people in the next room spent half the night loudly downing their beer, and thoughts chased around my head like a cat after a bird.

  ***

  At first light Marna woke me and gave me a big basket. She told me not to come back until it was filled to the brim with palendries, and thrust me outdoors.

  Palendries, water-loving plants that sprouted silvery fronds year-round, carried no useful properties to the best of my knowledge.

  Nevertheless, she seemed pleased when I came back with a goodly amount. Sneezing something fierce, she placed some above the door lintel and put the rest in the brewing shed. The palendries above the door kept the torkies away. I asked Emry what a torkie was.

  “Crag wraiths,” she said. “They sneak through cracks, crawl into your head, light your eyes up like torches, then make you up and slaughter everyone in the house.”

  “Ugh,” I said.

  “They can’t abide palendries for some reason.”

  “I told you these people were superstitious,” said Floy from a rafter.

  It was
true. Marna had rituals and remedies for everything from curbing libido to driving snakes out of the outhouse. When I suggested a remedy for sneezing (which involved sitting on a stone outside Carderford Barrow and howling like a wolf towards Glasgenny Peak while eating the heart of a newt), she gave me a clout to the ear.

  Floy found me in the larder, sobbing between the apples and potatoes. “She’s just another frazzled old bat,” she said.

  “Nilsa didn’t hit––” I stopped myself.

  “Nilsa didn’t hit you. When they’re in a temper, you keep from the room. That’s all.”

  I stopped my crying, and resolved to make Floy’s job easier.

  “Careful Reyna,” she said two days later as I stewed laundry in a cauldron. “When the water’s bubbling like that it’s hot.”

  “I know.” My face dripped with steam.

  “Have you even put any soap in?”

  “Ten bars.”

  Later that day I made friends with the leach barrel.

  “The water burnt me.” I showed her my red hand. “It wasn’t even hot.”

  “It’s not water. It’s lye water. Pour the vinegar over your hand, it’ll feel better.”

  “I’m never touching soap again,” I said.

  “You never touched it anyway.”

  ***

  Washing the sheets wasn’t something I had to worry about much––Marna did her utmost to scrimp. The meat in the pie was always mutton, no matter the rodent skulls you picked out of it; the porridge was so watered down you could wash in it; the bread was mostly holes; and the ale possessed a peculiar quality I was to find more about later.

  I couldn’t give my name, of course, so the folk who wanted horses watered, more beer, or the fire built up, took to calling me Sprout. A timid little drudge, I was threatened, harassed, and beaten into trying simply and constantly to please Marna. She inspired admiration, throwing equal effort into her immoral work habits and mollification of the outdated and resentful mountain spirits.

  Wille Illinla inspired admiration, too. One afternoon Marna sent us to collect flour from the miller. The miller’s wife had a lame ankle, and her maid a broken nose––from fighting wild dogs, she said. This was clearly a tale, and Wille told everyone in the common room she’d tripped in the broom closet and fell on top of her husband, who was already on top of the maid. “Then there was a glorious brawl,” he said, “where she took a big bite out of him, and they all started whacking each other with broomsticks.”

  Wille spread lies thicker than a thief at a theophany. I didn’t care. When the village boys ran after me throwing rocks, he would catch them and rub dung in their hair.

  Nobody knew Wille’s age, so he switched between being young enough for dung throwing and old enough to get pickled off the ale Marna kept for special guests. (Nobody knew my age either, but I only ever got small beer and river water.) Everyone said Wille was going to out-drink his tippler father, who’d run off to be an insurgent in Ellyned. Wille was keen on insurgency, too.

  “The city garrison almost strung Nat Breldin up by his neck,” he told me as soon as he got me alone, “but before they dropped the hatch a mob of White-Ship rebels overran the scaffold and rescued Nat and six other fellows in the name of the real Lauriads that’s gone missing. Then the nobs got angry and a rebellion broke out when they tried to confiscate weaponry and enforce a bunch of horrible new laws.”

  It took me a while to realize he was reporting current events.

  ***

  “Who’s enforcing a bunch of horrible new laws?” I asked.

  “Lord Turncoat, Commander Blackguard, and Lady Odious. They’re stirring up trouble,” said Leode. We sat in a round maple deep in the woods, hidden in the shadow of a mountain the locals called Glasgenny and took extra trouble to avoid. It was two weeks after I’d become an inn-girl.

  “Bless you, Leode,” said Mordan. “They are stirring up trouble. Bloated laws lead to a bloated guard leads to angry people. Ellyned’s like to go off like a firecracker. I can hardly wait.”

  “You want a rebellion?” Tem swung his head down to Mordan’s.

  “I don’t know. Yes.”

  “A government is an inconvenient necessity, Mordan.”

  “This one’s really inconvenient, then. Especially since the humans overran it.”

  “Humans?” I said, not really interested. “It’s only been, what, two––”

  “They’ve been pouring in from Lorila since before Father died,” said Tem. “Refugee nobles, mostly. The Queen has been very accommodating.” It struck me how frustrated he was when a new maple leaf yellowed and fell into my lap.

  “Most accommodating,” Mordan agreed.

  I was becoming antsy. “Who’s Lord Blackguard?”

  “Turncoat,” corrected Leode. “Chancellor Daifen turned his coat.”

  “How?”

  “Used to be Gralde. Didn’t he, Tem?”

  “He’s still Gralde,” Arin said. “Just a stupid one, rewriting laws, getting all matey with Faiorsa’s people, leaving our uncle to fix things by himself––”

  I started from my doze. “We’ve got an uncle?”

  “Blood of the earth, Reyna,” said Arin, “where’ve you been for ten years?”

  “She’s too young to remember,” said Mordan, “and so are you. The Queen has discharged Commander Ackerly. She’s blaming Father’s death on him, I expect. And meanwhile she’s promoted human Herist to Commander, and he, she, and the ex-Gralde have made an industrious triangle devoted to the implementation of nefarious plots.”

  “Have you brought the paper, quill, and ink?” Tem asked me.

  “Yes.” I shifted my weight to wrestle them from my apron pocket. “What do you want with them? You can’t write with those.” I looked at his long legs.

  “You’re writing the letter, silly.”

  “To who?”

  “To whom. Prince Ederach, the uncle you didn’t know about.”

  And so I transferred Tem’s message about Mordan’s industrious triangle onto a page torn from a record book, for the illumination of my uncle Ederach. I understood very little of it.

  As I wrote, Mordan looked at my hands. “Your hands look horrible.”

  “I’ve been working.” Underneath the ink stains they were blistered red. “I like to work.” Work made me too exhausted to cry. Except when old Mandy Olen hobbled down to the inn to play tunes limber as trumpet vine on her silver flute. She filled me with a terrible longing to dance. I wept because I refused it.

  I felt untethered, as though the earth no longer held me down. I couldn’t trust myself not to float away.

  It was a blessing I hadn’t the energy for darker bouts of self-pity. I was kept busy working, as well as dictating and tying letters to Mordan’s leg. I sealed the letters with Father’s ring, and until much later, wasn’t sure what my uncle did with them, let alone what he must have thought receiving all those letters stamped with his missing brother’s rosette seal and tied to the leg of a raven.

  Six

  “They say King Daonac’s dead,” said the waymapper. Wille had directly sat down on the bench across from him, because the man was from the south, and Wille was awfully interested in the south. Ellyned was in the south. “Someone spotted him floating in the Gael on his way to the sea. With a bloody sword. At least, that’s what the folks in Domestodd are saying.”

  Wille sank his elbow into the butter, and I stopped to listen.

  “And his children gat themselves killed by wildmen,” said a man at the next table over. “All seven of em.”

  “Five,” I said. I dropped the mug I was carrying. It cracked on the floor; beer splashed over my feet.

  “Sprout,” called Marna from her corner, “that’s the third mug slipped through your greasy fingers. One more and you’ll be gluing yourself back together as well.”

  “Oh, five was it?” Wille flicked a ladybird from his arm.

  “Five petals”––I bent to pick up the shards––“mark t
wo seed leaves.” They stared at me and my face burned.

  “You’ve got a terrible bad habit of changing subjects right when we get to the good part.” Wille turned back to the waymapper. “So all the Lauriads are dead?”

  “I didn’t say Ederach was dead,” the waymapper said. “And he’s a Lauriad so far’s I know, but I only knows what they tell me, so don’t go taking any of this as though it was true. I’m only dishing out the rumor that comes before the real food, as them gossips down in Domestodd say. Whetting your appetite’s all I’m doing. If you want to know what’s really happening, I would give you the Queen’s address, but I hain’t got me address book with me, and I couldn’t go about reading it, anyway.”

  Beside the waymapper a big brown man sat with his back in the corner.

  “He’s joined his black-haired lady,” he said. His voice was true, and when he started singing people lifted their heads and listened.

  “They lost their heartless king in the evening

  When into the river he dove.

  He wound nightshade around, bound his hands with anemone

  Rope for the want of his love.

  He shackled his ankles with weeds from the pool

  Stitched his mouth shut with blackthorn and thimblethorn cruel,

  And sank with the weight of his lady’s death jewel,

  When into the river he dove.”

  The song must have been new-made, because I had never heard it before. Other people had, though, and they started singing, too.

  “He lost his raven-haired love in the evening

  When out of the window she blew.

  She left him six birds, six broken-winged swans

  Who pecked out his eyes as they grew.

  But his old heart was gone when they looked through the holes,

  No fire was left but some smoldering coals

  That could scarce warm their wings on the grey northern knolls,