A Turn of Light (3 page)

“The exchange was yesterday, wasn’t it?” The treaty that moved the border moved people as well. Ansnor would free any Rhothan prisoners; Vorkoun her Ansnan ones.

“The start of it, yes.” Tir gave him a somber look. “It’ll take a few weeks. No one wants blood on the streets.” The treaty said deeds on either side were forgiven, political prisoners and soldiers alike honorably discharged, to be left in peace.

Bannan thought it more likely his fat new ox would sprout wings. Of royal purple.

“How long before they compare notes?” He’d lost track of how many “they” were. The faces blurred; easier to remember the astonished anger, then fear. Every one who’d seemed innocent until he looked at them as they spoke, until he’d declared each a liar or spy. His gift, to see others for what they were, to know the truth when he heard it from their lips.

Truthseer.

They didn’t know his name. No one used a real name in the marches, not in a conflict with such deep roots on either side. Bannan had taken “Captain Ash” from the officer he’d replaced.

Those brought before him knew his face; by campfire, by torchlight, more rarely by the light of day. The Rhothan captain who was never wrong. The well-bearded Rhothan captain. Bannan fingered the novelty of a smooth chin and jaw, hoping road dust disguised the contrast between pale and well-tanned skin. All those years, the beard had hidden his relative youth; with luck, its absence would hide him now.

“They’ll figure out what I must be,” Bannan went on grimly.

“It’ll be talk, sir,” Tir objected. “Nothing more. Who’d believe?”

“Scourge does.” No coincidence that the creature chose as rider the Larmensu who saw him for what he was. “You do.”

“You can’t think I’d—”

“Peace, Tir.” Bannan sighed. This man, as all those in his company, would die for him without hesitation; he’d seen it in their faces. Had chosen them for that true loyalty.

How different from Vorkoun’s high society where he’d been so desperately unhappy as a child, hearing the lies, seeing through masks of flesh. As soon as he could pass for a man, he’d taken service at the border, where he faced an honest hate and finally found use for his gift.

He was what he was. The heritage of his line, to be a truthseer. Now his curse. A fair trade, if those he loved were safe.

“Lila gave me orders, too,” Bannan said, lightening his tone. He pulled out the precious letter that had been waiting in Endshere and made a show of reading it. “‘Little brother. Find a wife and raise some brats of your own. Surely there are women in the north.’”

“Wife? Here?” Tir shook his head vehemently, almost losing the straw hat. “Your sister can’t be serious. Sir. They’d be—farm maids.”

“What—you don’t think one would have me?”

Tir caught his mood and gave a low whistle. “Have you? You’ll have to fight them off, sir. And their mothers.”

“A battle worth the effort. I’ll share, by the way,” Bannan grinned. “You’ll need a wife, too.”

“I’ve had three,” Tir boasted. “Don’t be charmed by a pretty ankle. The trick’s to taste her cooking first—”

“So now you’re giving me advice.”

“Wife hunting is serious business . . .”

“Says the man who can’t keep one.”

“I’ve kept them all,” Tir said smugly. “Just not in the same city.”

They both laughed.

The wingless ox plodded forward, half asleep, each step putting distance between future and past.

Jenn lengthened her stride but didn’t run. Children ran, not dignified almost-nineteen adults who expected to be taken seriously; this according to her aunt, the most dignified person in Marrowdell. Also, running made her look late, and she wasn’t today, not quite.

As she passed the village fountain, Jenn dutifully, if absently and in haste, dipped a finger of thanks into its cool water. The practice was one her father’s generation insisted upon; like the rest born here, she saw nothing remarkable in the deep basin of gleaming blue tile, always full of sweet water that never froze or fouled. The basin was rimmed by huge blocks of weathered gray stone, so cunningly fitted that only the tiniest strands of emerald-green moss could grow between. The ground surrounding the blocks was paved in riverstone cobbles that stayed free of snow or ice.

Though she found precious little good about her brother’s family’s exile, Aunt Sybb declared Marrowdell’s fountain to have water finer than any in Avyo, and each summer brought bottles to fill and take home.

Night was night and water was the same everywhere, Jenn assured herself. She passed the Emms’ house and glanced toward the mill. No sign of her father heading home yet. She walked faster. She wouldn’t be so much as tardy if she got home first.

Shoes. She mustn’t forget to put on shoes for supper. She’d do whatever it took to convince her aunt she was a person who should live in the great city.

Which Marrowdell was not. The village consisted of the commons, the fountain, the mill, and eight homes linked by its meandering road and footpaths. Its buildings were simple structures, made from stacked, ax-hewn logs with any chinks between filled with red clay from the riverbank. Their slanted roofs were protected by shakes of cedar wood, themselves coated in moss, bright green after a rain. Repairs left bare patches, especially in summer. Doors, never locked, hung open on their wooden hinges in this pleasant mild weather. Precious hand-sized panes of glass, carefully framed in wood, were set into wide windows, with shutters ready to protect them from wind or weather. Some had curtains, some did not.

Each home had its privy set conveniently between garden and woodpile, so return trips weren’t empty-handed, as well as a larder dug deep into the cool earth, with sturdy doors that did lock. A spring-famished bear might break through, but not quietly. More likely thieves had clever paws and snuck about on moonless nights. Three homes had barns towering behind them, with room to store feed and provide warm quarters for all the village livestock come the cold.

Cities were grander, Jenn thought as she walked. Warmer, too. For one thing, Aunt Sybb said city people didn’t go outside to the larder or privy, trips that, come winter, were made only when desperate, followed by thawing numbed flesh by the stove.

Cities had oil lamps and furnaces and water indoors. They had crowded, busy roads, with pavements to keep shoes free of mud. The largest, like Avyo, had trolleys that ran along metal rails, though Aunt Sybb pronounced those noisy and abrupt. Every building was a lofty edifice of marble and brick and glass, with new ones built all the time.

Nothing new was built in Marrowdell. When the settlers arrived, twenty-three years ago come fall, the homes and barns had been here, empty and waiting. The fountain had been here too, though it hadn’t filled until Zehr Emms touched its stones, the water having waited to be needed. The rust-red road and hedges had been here, gates open, and the fields of grain. The gardens had been ready to plant with vegetables. Though they’d found berry bushes, the apple orchard arrived with the settlers, Kydd Uhthoff having filled his portion of the family wagon with saplings from their home in Avyo.

From then on, all had stayed the same. The house picked by the Nalynns stood by the tall gristmill and overlooked where the river’s slow meander quickened into the first rapids and the bank became steep. The Emms took one nearer the fountain; old Jupp and the Uhthoffs lived across the garden and road, next to the orchard. The Treffs, Morrills, and Ropps lived near the common pasture.

The mill was Marrowdell’s largest structure, half again the height of a barn. Traced by dust, golden sunbeams slipped between its weathered outer boards into its open heart. Whole logs, stripped of their bark, rose through the floors to the roof high overhead, their girth wider than the arms of three children could hold. At each level, support beams met them like dancers who gripped one another against the strain.

The floors were of thick planking, gray and polished by use. The main floor, reached through sliding doors wide enough for a wagon, housed the great wheel that hung over the river. In summer, the wheel was still, its pulleys and wooden gears loose and patient, the hopper tipped up. The millstones lay beside their open case, being dressed for the coming harvest. Jenn could draw their elegant pattern in her sleep, having spent the last few years as miller’s apprentice. This season, she’d been trusted to deepen the grooves on her own, her father doing the final sharpening. The hard stone was reluctant, which also described Aunt Sybb’s feelings about one of her nieces wielding a chisel. But no one else in the village had the talent.

Below, in the basement, was the stone-lined raceway, dry for now. Once its gate lifted in invitation, the river would run through to turn the great wheel. Gears would engage, leather belts take the strain, and everything would move. Jenn loved it all, from the millstones and their dancing shoe, to the conveyor that caught the millings and took them up to the loft to be cooled, screened, and bagged. She’d run errands up and down the wide open stairs that went up alongside the hopper, stairs in winter the villagers decorated with pine boughs and ribbon for the Midwinter Beholding, when the loft would be transformed with light and music.

Otherwise, until harvest, the mill was an empty, peaceful place, redolent of grain, dust, and the river, a useful spot to house Aunt Sybb’s fancy Avyo coach, carefully tarped against the damp in a back corner of the main floor.

On the far side of the mill, closest of all to the outside world, stood the solitary building Uncle Horst called home. He wasn’t really her uncle. He’d come to Marrowdell without family, so the Nalynns added him to theirs. Horst wasn’t really his name, but once a very small Jenn pronounced it that way, he’d kept it as his. Uncle Horst helped Radd in the mill, when he wasn’t hunting, and at all times he watched the road, though for what Jenn couldn’t imagine. He avoided the tinkers’ tents, other than to have his knives sharpened or boots resoled, and, though he escorted her from Endshere and back each year, likewise avoided Radd’s sister. Which might have had something to do with relinquishing his place at the Nalynn table during her visits, except that Uncle Horst wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t begrudge family their rightful place. He respected Aunt Sybb, that was all, and was shy.

The Nalynn home wasn’t full of noisy small children and bags of dripping cheese, like the Ropps’. It wasn’t austere like the Uhthoffs’, with Master Dusom’s shelves of books, or full of industry like the Treffs’. It might not contain the fine cabinetry of the Emms’ or the musty secrets of old Wagler Jupp—and lacked bear teeth—but it was, Jenn nodded to herself, as she always did walking up her sloping path, the best home of all.

Stripped of other wealth, Melusine Nalynn had nonetheless brought treasures to start her new life: a baby daughter in her arms and a cutting from her favorite rose. Both had grown strong and beautiful. Peggs, with her black flowing hair, glad smile, and doe-soft brown eyes, had no equal in Marrowdell—an opinion that whenever expressed drew a flustered blush to her fine white cheeks and a quick denial to her lips. Which made it no less true.

The rose climbed the river side of their home, covering its logs with a blaze of red blossom all summer, reaching around to frame the girls’ bedroom window and nod over the roof, filling the breeze with heady fragrance. Bees and butterflies loved it. Each summer, bluebirds nested within its thorns. Each spring, Radd pretended he didn’t check the bare woody stems every morning until the first buds appeared. The tender plant shouldn’t have been able to survive the winter, let alone thrive.

But this was Marrowdell.

Jenn couldn’t make herself scowl at her mother’s rose. She’d ask it for a cutting herself, when she left. And return, often, to visit.

Feeling better, she went around back. Aunt Sybb didn’t approve of bare feet in the parlor, which was what the front half of their house became during her visits, even though it was also Radd’s bedroom, the dining room, and where the entire family sewed or read or talked during winter, when not at the mill. Separated by a curtain, the kitchen, with its fireplace, oven, and cookstove, filled the back half. A ladder beside the fireplace led to the loft and the warm cozy room Jenn shared with Peggs; a little too warm, admittedly, some midsummer nights, but perfect in winter.

Jenn stuck her head through the open kitchen door, too sunblind to more than guess at her sister’s shape, and whispered urgently. “Did she notice I was gone?” Their aunt also didn’t approve of “traipsing off,” her term for the myriad earnest excuses, some of them real, Jenn produced for having been outside in nice weather instead of inside. Inside being lectured. “Am I late for supper?”

“Not to eat it,” came the tart reply.

Jenn winced. She’d promised to help with the preparations, hadn’t she. Time flew in the meadow. “Sorry, Peggs.”

A basket was thrust at her. “Run this to Uncle, Good Heart, and all’s forgiven.”

Jenn slipped her arm through the handle and lifted one edge of the covering cloth. The aroma wafting upward with the steam made her mouth water. It wasn’t as if Peggs needed help anyway. Until the dishes. “I won’t be long.”