A Turn of Light (2 page)

TWO

T
HE POUND OF
Jenn’s callused feet on the packed earth was almost as loud as the pound of her heart. Wisp and his stupid law and silly tricks . . . he was worse than her father. Much worse! At least Radd Nalynn truly needed her. She helped him in the gristmill, as much as she could, and did her share, almost always, in the gardens and around the house. Little wonder his cheerful face would cloud whenever she or Peggs talked of life beyond Marrowdell. How could he manage without them?

If Aunt Sybb could stay year-round to keep house for him, everything would be different, but she had a home of her own, a better one, in Avyo. As for her father taking another wife? Jenn shook her head. Even if he’d been willing and let it be known, Marrowdell was home to just two unmarried women of the right age. Riss Nahamm had her hands full with her great-uncle’s household and Wen Treff talked to toads.

Jenn paused at the river to hitch her skirt well above her knees. Though this time of year most of the ford was ankle-deep, the low sun caught every dancing ripple, dazzling the eye and making it impossible to discern shallow from hole. Best be safe than soggy.

The cool water soothed skin prickled by grass and ants, and eased the burn of the roadway from her soles. By the time she reached the rushes, dancing with black damselflies who flashed vivid blue as they tilted their curious heads at her, the river had washed away her temper as well. Wisp was Wisp, Jenn chided herself. As well expect sense from Wainn’s old pony, who would oh-so-cleverly find his way through any latch to eat himself sick on fallen apples. Both needed to be loved and properly managed. Her next visit to Night’s Edge, she’d take Wisp some of the thistledown she’d collected for a new pillow. He liked to fling the fluff-tailed seeds high and wide, so they caught the wind and headed for the upper meadows. Why, he never explained.

Glimpsing a white pebble under the water, she gathered her skirt and stooped to collect it, adding the small damp treasure to the others in her pocket. White was best and hard to find, at least others said so; Jenn felt quite pleased with herself as she walked out of the river and up the slight slope. The dry sand was warm underfoot until she reached the shade of the massive oak that marked this end of the village proper. The tree had a wide curved branch it would lower, if asked politely, for a child who wanted to watch for travelers on the Tinkers Road.

Or a vantage point to throw acorns.

Squirrels excelled at that. With their help, the shade of the oak would be brown with fallen acorns; to judge by those already on the ground, they’d started. It’d soon be time to open the gate to let the big sows amble through. Satin never minded a child lying on her warm broad back. Or acorn throwing, especially close to her clever snout. Filigree, though covered in pretty black spots, had no patience when feasting and, if bothered, she’d grunt a terse command to the hanging branch, which would shake loose both child and acorns.

For now, the tree was empty of children and the gate closed. Jenn climbed its cedar rails and jumped down the other side. The road led through the commons, as her aunt called the pasture where the villagers kept livestock in summer. High hedges surrounded it, full of twittering birds and the deep drone of bees. Davi Treff’s great draft horses stood slack-hipped and nose-to-tail with Aunt Sybb’s fine matched bays in the shade of the trees by the pond. The sows and Himself, their lordly, if lazy, boar, lay in the pond’s shallows and wagged their long ears at flies. Good’n’Nuf, the Ropps’ pampered bull, must be hiding behind the shed again. The cows crowded the middle gate, anxious to be milked. Seeing them, Jenn picked up her pace. Must be closer to suppertime than she’d thought.

This year’s weanlings, a tight little herd of brown and white, pranced toward her through the thick grass, huge eyes brimming with curiosity, then suddenly lost all interest and turned their attention to a game of head butt.

Last year’s calves and the riding horses, all but Uncle Horst’s and Dusom’s, grazed the ravines beyond Marrowdell under the watchful eyes of the Emms’ twins, Allin and Tadd. Bandits didn’t set foot in the valley but menaced anyone on the Northward Road. Every so often a horse or calf would manage to get itself stuck or slip into a chancy mountain stream, not that many, she’d heard, were as dangerous as the deadly cataracts that roared between the tips of the Bone Hills. Come fall, the animals would be brought back through the village and let into the fields after the harvest, there to fatten with the rest of the livestock till frost.

Maybe this fall, Allin Emms would realize she had no intention of marrying him, ever, and Tadd would break his abashed silence to speak his heart to Peggs.

Then again, Jenn grumbled to herself, some things never changed.

Come winter, everything else did. Here, snow didn’t conveniently melt, as in the cities to the south. Marrowdell shrank to narrow icy paths between homes, barns, privies, and larders, those structures roofed in white. When the weather permitted, Davi would take his team from the village to the more-trafficked Northward Road and back, the horses’ huge feet and wide chests doing what they could to keep a passage open. After storms, every adult who could lift a shovel or rake helped dig out the road. It was that, or risk being cut off from the outside until spring. Isolated, an entire village could die unnoticed, by starvation, fire, illness, to be smothered by snow.

With the sun warming her shoulders, the road dry and warm beneath her feet, Jenn found it hard to imagine winter. Fall, yes. By her birthday the grain fields would be harvested, their bounty stored as feed and flour. Larders were already filling with that from gardens and orchards: sacks of dried beans; jars of jellies, chutneys, and pickles; precious pots of honey; and onion braids. Wheels of pale cheese and crocks of brined butter rested in the cool dark of the springhouse while sausages and hams—last year’s piglets—hung in fragrant smoke. Soon they’d press apples for cider and dig the root crops. The children would collect rushes and down from nests by the river. The older ones would gather kindling; charcoal bins were already full, fuel for the cold months, and barrels of ash stood waiting. They’d be traded this fall for a share of lye in Endshere; no one in the village had the knack.

Jenn climbed the far gate, more mindful of her skirt within the village proper. Cynd Treff looked up from berry picking and smiled, her big hat tilted so the sun caught her freckles. From the clanging, her husband Davi was busy at his forge. Off to milk the cows, Hettie Ropp and her stepmother, Covie, waved a cheerful greeting. Cheffy and his sister Alyssa went ahead, arms wrapped around empty milk jugs almost as tall as they were, laughing as they tried to bump into one another. Birds chirped in the apple trees, laden with fruit, that filled the heart of the village; Zehr Emms whistled as he worked on his house. Supper smells filled the air. Everyone was busy. Everyone content.

Jenn scowled. Didn’t they know?

The world was bigger than this.

Dark and twisted trees, skirted in moss, lined the road. Their tips leaned together, hiding the sky. The road twisted as well, hiding its future and past. A fine place for an ambush, Bannan Larmensu thought, and didn’t care. There’d been a time he’d have been on alert, his every sense tuned to the limb out of place, the rock ready to fall, the deadly lurkers in the brush.

No longer. Rhoth’s prince had lured the merchants of Eldad to his bed at last, with Vorkoun and the eastern marches the dowry. What generations of raids and thievery couldn’t defeat, a stroke of a pen laid waste. Once-proud Vorkoun now belonged to Ansnor, and he was on this road.

“Lovely place, sir.” Tir Half-face used a thumb to pry up the pitted metal that gave him his name. He spat at a lichen-crusted boulder. “Just lovely.” He settled the crude mask over the ruin left when a sword took his nose and most of his chin.

“It’s a road, not a place.” Bannan used the whip to flick a bloodfly from the ox’s wide back, not that the creature appeared to notice, then leaned back, boot braced on the plank that separated the front of the settler wagon from the end of the ox. He regarded his companion with fond exasperation. Easier to leave behind an arm than shed the man who’d guarded his back since he’d come new and foolish to the border, and been his truest friend since.

A short wiry beard, brown with traces of gray, sprouted below the mask; above, bright blue eyes returned his regard. What tanned skin showed was scarred and puckered, his ears were ringed in metal, and, on his bald head, Tir wore the straw hat he’d bought in Endshere. To blend in, he’d professed, tossing his helm into the wagon to rattle loose. Blending, Bannan noticed, hadn’t extended to removing the throwing axes from his belt.

He’d removed his weapons. Removed them. Dropped them. Walked away from them without a second glance or regret. As he’d done with his life. The settler’s garb was too new for comfort, but the leather and woven flax would fit better after sweat and rain. And work.

He needed work.

“When will we arrive—at a place, sir?”

Good question; a shame he hadn’t an answer. “I’m in no hurry,” Bannan replied, then added with a straight face, “By the map, the Northward goes beyond Upper Rhoth. We could take it to the barrens.”

“We couldn’t, sir, and that’s the truth. Ancestors Frozen and Forgotten.” Tir took a deep breath and spoke as though reasoning with the feebleminded. “No one survives winter in that wasteland. A winter, might I say, sir, coming closer by the day.”

“I promise we’ll stop before it snows.”

“‘Snows?!’” A moment’s aghast pause, during which Bannan enjoyed the unopinionated sounds of creaking wood and the breathing of the ox, but a sly look warned him Tir wasn’t done. Sure enough. “Could be, sir, we should have stopped already. They say the best land was that before Endshere. Behind us. They say there haven’t been settlers this far north since those Naalish squatters were kicked out of Avyo.”

Bannan grunted something noncommittal. Debate the twisted politics of the Fair Lease law with Tir? He’d rather clean up after the ox. Before their time, anyway. What had it been . . . fifteen? Twenty years? Those settler land grants, to his advantage now, had been the prince’s sop to the newly poor.

Being poor was another topic not to broach with Tir, or he’d not hear the end of it all day.

“They say, sir,” Tir needed no prompting to continue, “that the locals call this the Doubtful Road. Seems no one who takes it past Endshere can trust their future.”

“‘They say. They say.’ Heart’s Blood. When did you take stock in gossip? There are valleys. Settlements.” Bannan shifted listlessly. “The place doesn’t matter.” A dirty brown shadow strutted up to the wagon and blew a noisy response to this. Without a change to his plodding walk, the ox tipped his horned head nervously at the sound. The two animals weren’t friends; the ox, being wiser than he’d looked, had to be hobbled at night to keep him close. “Scourge agrees with me.” Bannan stretched to slap the horse’s dusty shoulder. “Don’t you, boy?”

Tir’s forehead wrinkled. “Bloody beast.”

Thus addressed, Scourge flung up his huge head and rolled his eyes till the red showed. At least he didn’t show teeth. This time. “Peace, Tir. I couldn’t leave him behind; he’d eat my nephews. What would my sister say then?”

Stiffly. “I would never presume to speak for the baroness.”

“‘Baroness,’ is it?” Bannan chuckled. “Lila’d box your ears for that, after all the times we got drunk together.” In the worst part of the city, too: the slum beneath the high bridge where no one would expect a Larmensu, let alone both heirs. His mood soured. They’d left Vorkoun as if for another patrol, pretending nothing had changed, that the farewells weren’t forever. Lila had hugged him more fiercely than usual, that was all. “You could have stayed in her household. You didn’t have—”

“And risk the baron’s jealousy, sir?” Tir protested. He laid a hand over his heart. “I’ll have you know Lila wrote of her undying love, sir. Heartbroken, she was, seeing me leave. Sent me with you to protect her marriage vows. Such a brave woman, she is.”

Bannan half smiled and shook his head.

The brows came down to scowl over the mask. “Not in so many words.”

Bannan waited.

“Heart’s Blood!” Tir threw up his hands. “All right. Sir. Being every bit as mad as you are, sir, your dear sister wrote if I let you turn around she’d take off my ears herself. I’m allowed to hit you on the head, but no unnecessary maiming. Ancestors Witness—” with vast admiration, “—I believe she means it.”

The truth at last. “I’m sure she does,” Bannan replied mildly. “Right, Scourge?”

The big horse snorted his disdain, then sidestepped into the shadows where he preferred to travel, moving his bulk between the trees and over twigs without sound. He could do it with a rider, too, and carry that rider into battle. Not any rider. Not Scourge. Bannan’s was the only hand he tolerated; he didn’t doubt his mount would, in truth, try to eat the sons of his sister’s unsoldierly husband, given provocation.

The foul-tempered warhorse wasn’t the only threat to Lila’s household Bannan took away with him on this road, nor the worst.