Aloren (15 page)

“She don’t need to know,” said Haberclad.

“She knows more than any of us, and that boy will be the start of an ugly scour.” 

“Better do as he says,” said Martly, shrugging.

“Without even a beating?” said Shadd. 

Haberclad frowned and threw the boy into the street.  I was surprised he was able to get up so swiftly.  He didn’t glance back, but ran toward the harbor, still dripping whiskey. 

“This one, though.”  The woman grabbed my arm.  “She’ll do for a week of cleaning.”

“How will you keep her?” said Shadd.  “Lock her in the shed?  She’ll be drunker ’n Martly on Midsummer’s eve.”

“God, she smells,” said the woman.  “What’s this?”  She pulled a fish scale off my shoulder.

“The wasting sickness,” I said.

“Gah!”  She let go of me, fingers splayed, and Floy and I ran for it.  They ran after, and I darted from their hands and hid under a wagon until they went away.  I crawled out, and scratching the rest of the scales from my shoulder, looked up. The human boy must’ve lost his way: he was walking along the quayside.

I chewed my nails, twisted on my heels, and did something even more stupid than usual.

“You’re going to follow him?” said Floy.  “Reyna––”  I swatted at her, and she flew out of my reach.  “Reyna, he could have you hanged.”  I doubted it, and anyway, I didn’t much care.  He’d done me a world of ill-turns.  My legs stung from the thrashing, and I was going to bleed him for it.

I just didn’t know how, yet.

I hid behind corners and in doorways, and followed him across the Llenad canal––over the rickety bridge––and all the way to the belltower terrace, which must have been a meeting place.  The other two boys were there, scrawling dirty pictures on the steps with hunks of limestone.  They laughed, backs facing the street and glaring with the noon sun. 

The third stopped and stood behind them.  “What true, brave friends I have.” 

I made a wide circle around the terrace, and ran behind one of the far pillars. 

“We couldn’t find you anywhere.  But look at this one of Herist,” said the tall, dark-haired one without turning round.  “It’s absolutely masterful.  Max has a hand for it.”

“His chin’s not long enough.  And he’s gone all woody.”

“Because he’s looking at Natty.  I drew Natty.”

“Why would anyone go woody over something
you’ve
drawn?” 

The dark-haired boy looked over his shoulder.  His eyes widened.  “What happened to you?”  He wrinkled his nose and grinned.  “You stink.”

“I had a row with some Elden.”

“And?”

“Took care of myself.”

“And then you jumped into a tub of whiskey?”

“Don’t believe me?”  The two boys started laughing.  “That clout,” said the third boy, squeezing whiskey out of his hair, “was lucky.” 

“It
was
lucky.”  The dark boy climbed to his feet and flung away his chalk.  “Lucky you ended up with just a bloody lip.” 

“How d’ye explain that, Floy?” I said.  “Luck must be a doxy.  A mistress of many men.”

“Not very dependable, you mean?” she said.

“You think I’m
lucky
?” cried the boy to the other two.

“Come on, Andrei,” said Max.  “Let’s go find some roaches.  There’re always some beneath the paving stones at the end of Clabber.”

“You’d better wash up a bit, first,” said the dark boy.  “Before Mir catches you and thinks you’ve crawled through ten pubs.  Your mother’d give you such a thwack it’d break your nose.”  He looked up at the trees.  “Let’s meet back here at sunset.  Max can show us the place while it’s still light.” 

They separated, the first two chatting, and the third walking eastward with a morose look, and I suddenly realized how hungry I was.  It was about midday. 

A man was selling clams next to a deserted building.  This in mind, I walked along the quay and found a wooden bucket in a lugger. 

I filled the bucket with water and dragged it back to the clam-seller.  I entered the building and poured the water from an upper-story window until the clam-seller’s awning collapsed.  In the following confusion I ran outside and filled my skirt with clams.  Prying the shells open with a nail and eating them raw, I walked back to Skyfane Street to collect my saddlebag, and Floy yelled into my ear the whole way there.

Fifteen

My boots were gone.  I pried the stone loose, nervous about my saddlebag, but it was tucked away where I’d left it. 

I ran back to the belltower.  The sun was low in the sky, and the boys, Max and Andrei, were leaning against a pillar, talking.  I hid in a corner, behind a huckster and his chestnuts.  The sun crept down the tower and the dark-haired boy kept the others waiting. 

Andrei said, “Where the bloody hell is Trid?” right as Trid walked up the steps behind him.  Andrei turned around.  “Waxing the carrot?”

“Where’s your bonnet of lilies gone?”

“My head aches.  I’m not in a happy mood.”

“Can you believe that, Max?  He’s not in a happy mood.”

The three of them walked down a wide street beneath a canopy of elms.

“This is really incredibly stupid, Reyna,” Floy said.  I laughed at her and kept a safe distance behind them.

The boys passed through an arch set in a high, stone wall carved with rowan trees.  Beyond this was a big building of halls, wings, and round towers that stretched down a steep hill towards the sea.

“The rowan-gate,” I said, and I stopped.  “It’s the palace, Floy.”  I turned away, two fingers propping my mouth open. 

I couldn’t very well walk past the gatehouse, so I climbed a thick, gnarled wisteria and dropped over the wall.  I crept alongside buildings, sprinted across lawns, ducked below windows, and chased the boys into a shady garden.  I slithered through the whips of a forsythia to listen.

“Not that one,” whispered Max to Trid, waving away the ground window in front of them.  “That’s old Lady Grete.  She’ll skin you alive if she catches you digging through her panties.”

“Don’t ask him how he knows,” said Andrei.

“It’s the second story,” said Max. “You climb up that tree.” He pointed to a maple growing close to the wall.

“Really?” said Trid.  “How’ll we manage that with a jar full of roaches?”

“By pretending we’re monkeys,” said Andrei.  “Max does it all the time––he can go first.” 

“Let’s get on.”  Trid started walking away. “Take a half-hour to get back here.” 

The other two boys walked after him, arguing and shoving at each other. 

A half-hour
, I thought to myself. 

I found a stable just behind a thrust of the building.  The saddlery was locked, so I pulled my needle and chisel from the saddlebag and set them to work.  After a few seconds the door swung open. 

I unhooked a thick rope from the rafters, and looked for pitch or glue.  I found a pot of hide-paste behind the hoof salve, but Floy, who decided to put her anxiety to use, found a tin of glue made from the karaya shrubs of Virnraya.  It wouldn’t hurt to mix the two together, I thought, taking that as well.  Two sandbags came along, and a lighted lantern, and nervous about my time constraints, I lugged it all beneath the maple tree. 

I figured a twitch-up snare wasn’t going to work for a boy, so I tried something else.

I tied a noose in the rope, tossed it through a fork high in a sturdy limb, and tied the sandbags to the other end of the rope.  Then I huffed, growled and pulled on the noose until the sandbags were resting in the fork of the tree. 

The bags together weighed about ten stone, and the job would’ve been impossible but for the tree’s help.  She obviously felt, in her rotten heart, that my cause was a worthy one, because her roots snaked through the ground and fed me with a burst of strength when I asked. 

I climbed up the tree and wound the rope once around a big branch.  Then I dropped down and hid the noose beneath the loam, and dirtied the rope so that it blended in the dark with the trunk. 

The lantern had been sitting over the glue mixture, and I pinched some between my fingers.  Pleased with its quick-setting properties I painted Lady Grete’s windowsill thick with the stuff.  I attached the lantern to a string, climbed up to the fork with the sandbags, dangled the lantern over the glue to keep it from setting, and waited for the boys to return. 

They came soon after, very silently for three humans.  Andrei was holding a whiskey jar.  I yanked the lantern up and snuffed it out. 

Trid stopped.  “Did you see a light leap from the window?”

“Light only leaps from the fire,” said Andrei.  “Go on, Max, she could walk in any minute.” 

Max jumped into the middle of the buried snare and scurried up the trunk.  He disappeared into the dark of the upper window. 

“Brilliant,” said Trid.  He climbed up next, and I thanked my stars for it.  He grabbed the jar from Andrei and gave it into Max’s arms.  He passed so close beneath me I caught the clean smell of his sweat. “There’s a rope up here.”  I caught my breath.  “Is there supposed to be a rope?”

“Keep going,” said Andrei.  “She’s got an absurd number of nightgowns.”

“How d’you know?”

“Move,” he said, and Trid crawled through the window. 

Now Andrei stood beneath the first limb, and I kicked the sandbags from the fork. 

They hit the ground with a dry thump.  The rope tore up, and a shriek caught in Andrei’s throat.  The noose grabbed him around the knees, flipped him over, and he jumped upside down in the air, right next to the first-story windowsill.  He gripped it.

“Ugh.”  He tried to pull away, but the glue thickened between his fingers. 

More than a little pleased with myself, I swung from the tree into the forsythia. “Quick wit, ain’t ye?” I said.

He twisted to face me.  “You––”

I pressed my finger to his mouth.  “Can’t have your friends hearing.  Or Lady Grete.”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Apologize.”

“Why?”

“Do it.”

“No.” 

“You could say thank you,” I said, “if sorry’s a bit much.”

“Why do you smell so
bad?”  He eyed my saddlebag.  “Do you shit in that and carry it around?”

I ground the bag into his face.  “Apologize.”

“I wouldn’t lower myself so, you rancid little fart.”

“You couldn’t lower your stupid, fat arse iffen y’tried, human.” 

I shouldered my saddlebag and turned to the window, and he said, “You stop this at once, or I’ll flay your hide to bits and cut off your sneaking feet and break your knees and––”

“Lady Grete,” I yelled.  “Lady Grete, there’s a thief breakin in through your window, ma’am!  A big’n.  And damn ugly.  He may mean ye harm, ma’am.” 

I heard a commotion inside the building.  Eager to be elsewhere when they cut him down, I ran away.

***

The first half of summer passed quickly.  I danced for meals, and when I grew tired of that, stole, until I grew frightened of the guard and went back to dancing, though both activities resulted in running from someone, whether a vexed soldier or jealous piper.

Nefer, Wille, and Padlimaird had opened shop in the smiths’ quarter of the quay. It wasn’t easy for Nefer to let go of bad habits.  He split and sandwiched coins, fashioned fake seals, and stole the emblems of the more famous artisans, warming all the more to dishonesty when he found his left arm wasn’t going to help with the casting of his buckles, goblets and tureens.  Despite, or because of, Calragen’s administrations, the break hadn’t joined smoothly. 

I steered clear of the workshop at first, but became lonely, and crept closer and closer until I was running into the boys on purpose. 

They walked around with new purpose in their eyes and shiny burns spattered up their forearms.  Their arms and shoulders became big and hard, and I burned with envy––I could’ve been hammering at the forge every day but wouldn’t have grown bigger for it. 

I mulled over ways to surmount this.  For a while I tried to be cunning, slitting purses and selling scarves and hairpins to the folk I had stolen them from, until Floy told me I was being even less cunning than usual.

I always went back to dancing. It was easy money: Fiddle music was always pouring from some public house, and I would spread out my horse blanket for coins, and caper around it only as exuberantly as I felt my stomach growling, and people crowded round––until the tavern owner ran outside to beat me away with a broom or poker.

***

The maples were sprouting seedpods, and I was dancing a galliard, when Wille gave me a peculiar assignment.  It was early evening.  The square opened from the back of a pub called Tuley’s, known for its cream whiskey; and tucked into a corner beneath a beech tree was a jumble of wooden tables filled with people.  The fiddlers looked well fed, their clothes clean and intact; they were obviously playing the square for gratification, and I set up a couple of feet to the side and was left alone. 

The onlookers smoked and laughed, flicking coins at me.  My feet bounced up and reached backwards,
touch-kick-tap, touch-kick-tap, snap-kick-and-spin-kick-tap…

“Let’s have her dance on a table,” shouted someone.  I stopped my legs, wrapped the coins up in the blanket, and heard Wille’s voice calling through the talk: 

“Oy, Aloren.  I found some players who really missed ye.” 

I threw the saddlebag over my shoulder and crawled beneath the tables until I reached his.  He sat pipeless next to Sal (from the tavern), and looked longingly at the other side of the table where ex-brigands Begley, Tom, and Peach were smoking.

“Here’s our girl.”  Begley gave me a clap on the back.  “Surprised her feet hain’t fallen off.”

“Kind of you to leave like that.”  But I smiled and sat down next to Wille, because I had got along with harmless, morbid Begley tolerably enough.  “Where’d all them fiddles go?  Need firewood?”

“Down, girlie,” he said.  “Me singer’s snug at home––I prefers me whistle.  Tom has his own, though, and we’re goin to play a snatch when these feller’s are done.  We hain’t had no drummer since Miggon went to sea, and Peach can’t harbor a beat any more than she can a baby, but she’s a right good fiddler.”

“Miggon took up sailin?” said Wille.  “Well, blow me diddle all––”  Sal grabbed his ear and joggled his head.

“Blow you inter next week, keep up with that kind of talk.”

“Me mam’s come up out of the grave.  Anyways, Al”––Wille lowered his voice and pulled me aside––“I got a favor to ask.  Been lookin fer ye all over the bloody map, and I’m glad I found you because, you see, this fellow and I got into a little quarrel about rabble-nabbing.” 

I became uneasy.  Rabble nabbing was a nasty game that had been forcibly introduced to me by the brigands. “You told him you knew a girl could beat him at a rabble-nab?”

“Weren’t like that.  He got to talking about how unbeatable he were at it, boasting, really, and I felt he needed a knock at his ego, so I goes and mentions you.”

“Why?” I said angrily.

“And I placed a bet on you.”

“You––what?”  I knocked my elbow on the table.

“A bet,” he said miserably.  “When I tried takin me word back, he said he’d just as soon take me life when you lost and I didn’t pay up.”

“How much?”

“I don’t want to say.  Give ye the jitters.”

“Wille!”

“Hush––I know. He wants to do it tonight,” he said, and I rubbed my elbow.  “He’s the skinny one in the corner beneath the tree.  See his legs?  Looks a bit like a salamander.  Please, Lally, please do it for yer old friend Wille.  I don’t like the prospect of death any more’n I like the prospect of givin the dirty rascal fifty celms.”

“Wille!”

“I know,” he wailed.  “Ain’t I wretched? But you can help an old friend, right?  You can help the less-fortunate?”

“You ain’t the only less-fortunate person in these parts.”

I crawled away and dropped my saddlebag beneath an empty table. 

Begley and his troop climbed atop their table to play a lively rendition of a song called The Firebird’s Hearts, and Wille, already cured of anxiety, got up to dance with Sal, while Begley sang in his bright, grainy voice.

“My fearless lass, when off abroad,

Was bringing me back an egg of gold,

When upon the slip of a horse ill-shod,

She dropped and cracked its shining mould.

From the pieces flew a flaming bird

With silver eyes and a frowning beak.

Quoth he to her: ‘I’ll grant one wish

In exchange for the heart of the lad you seek.”

I made for the man sitting alone beneath the beech tree.  He was young and thin with a grey face ravaged by the pox, and a grey wool tunic pulled together with a grey leather belt.  He polished a small iron dagger with a grey handkerchief, and I stood watching him a while before he looked up.

“What do you want, ducky?”  He spat to the side.

“What’s the rules, grease-nose?”  I watched his dagger.  He stood up, wiping his nose with the kerchief.

“And take care,’ he said.  ‘If you choose no wish,