Aloren (26 page)

Head buzzing, I whacked my way past a silver-black cuirass and one more of the grey garrison, and then the shovel slipped from my sweaty hands.

Wood smashed against my mouth.  I tasted blood, and the soldier swung back his club; and Sal appeared behind him, looking wild with her hair unwrapped and her arms bare.  She clapped him on the side of the head with a skillet. 

He fell over me, and Sal leaned forward.  She got hold of my ear to make certain it was me.  “Nefer’s sent me with a message and a safety procedure.”

“Where’s Wille?”  I wiped my bloody mouth.

“The other armory, or maybe the quay by now, but don’t you fret.  Drebald’ll bring him back with the others, and we’ll have
this sorted by the time you’ve woken.” 

“Woken?” 

The last thing I saw was the back of the skillet.

Though it was a sleep of Nefer’s craftsmanship the corners corroded some.

After someone knocked down some of the arcade to block the barracks bridge, I was thrust beneath the collapsed roof, where the sound echoed:  Many boots walking, unnoticed, over the old Llenad Bridge.  The snap and rip of a knife under the dark lamps into the neck of a man named Drebald.  Soldiers moving through the arches, a hard voice in the courtyard, the whine of the bows.  Nefer’s laugh; Max’s small protest when his hood slipped from his head.  Bequen singing.

***

My clothes were wet when light came, and my hair caught on a rafter.  I ripped my head loose and slipped on my belly under the fallen eve.  Fog curled over the pavement.  There was a notched cutlass on the ground.  I looked up and saw a man hanging from a lamppost.  The fog cleared some, driven into the corners by a few needles of rain, and I knew him by his skin: dark as harbor water. 

Bequen was there, too, spread out on another lamppost.  And Sal, eyes wild, arms out and ready to fly.  I couldn’t see Padlimaird.  Somewhere Floy was chipping.

The streets loomed and thickened, blurred by water, water creeping through the paving stones and swilling round my ankles, filling my ears with slapping and dripping and wailing.  The ground felt as though it were crumbling under my feet, and I fled.

The lower streets flowed with water, just as they had three summers back when Andrei opened the sluice.  I ran south along the rushing canal to the old Llenad Bridge, where the rotten planks were certain to fall away beneath my feet.  I had failed.  I had failed everyone; everyone was dead, and I wanted nothing more than to join them.

Trid was already on the bridge, sitting where I’d last seen him. 

He stood up.  “You’re not dead?”  He walked off the bridge and stopped a few steps from me.  His eyes were red-rimmed.  “Max is.  His brother didn’t know who he was.  Had his hood up, the idiot.” 

“Who cares?”  I was scarcely aware of talking.  “Everyone’s dead.”

“What?”  He seemed to come to himself. 

I scratched blood from my shoulder.  “Move.”

He stepped in front of me.  “Aloren, you’re not right in the head––”

“Get out of the way.  Go on,
move
.”  I tried to push past him, but he stood like a wall.  I knocked him aside and ran for the canal’s edge. 

But before I could reach it, something sliced through my brain, burned down my spine and neck so that I felt half-gone. 

I collapsed, head between my knees, feeling as miserable as when I’d first pulled the Marione.  I wanted so badly to die.  Trid raised me up; he was warm under my face, and I shook with sobs and dirtied his shirtfront.  He dragged me from the edge, scraping my feet on the pavement. 

“You are without a doubt the craziest piece of work I’ve ever––”  He looked past me and pried me loose.  His hands were hot and sticky. 

Five of the garrison stood behind us, and Herist.

“My lord Natridom has proven hard to find this past week,” Herist said.  “And the gutter rat.  She was playing in the streets last night.”  His voice was dangerously gentle.  “She gave Kalka quite a bruise.  Is she fraternizing with a fellow insurgent?  A member of Caveira’s espionage outfit?  Surely the Elden didn’t organize this all by themselves. As I recall, my lord Natridom, your father, before his untimely death, fostered you out to a foreign court because his brother had become very interested in Lorila’s line of succession, and your safety was in some jeopardy.  Do you suppose Caveira has forgotten about his nephew?  Would a hostage of your name fail to slip past his thick skull?  Gershom, assist me––!” 

This because I had run up and bitten his arm. 

Gershom grabbed me from behind, and Herist took my arm and slashed it four times with his knife.  The pitchfork figure that stood for treason. 

I snarled, scraping at skin where I could find it; and Herist, spent in patience, grabbed hold of my ankle, pulled me from Gershom’s grip, and swung me out over the canal. 

The man was a godsend, eager to do what I couldn’t.  The wind caught my hair and slapped it across my face.

“Pointless savagery has resulted in your death a full day ahead of schedule, you stupid girl.”  He sounded bored.  “Think your last thoughts quickly.”  My whole body pounded, screamed for him to end it.  I was certain my thigh would tear from my hip.

Trid, upside-down, said, ”Put her down.  Andrei won’t like it.”

Herist loosened his grip on my ankle.  “Andrei’s opinion has no place here.  Valiant though he is, he hasn’t the experience to deal with a crisis of this magnitude.”

“Where’ve you put him?” said Trid, and rain streamed down my nostrils, making the pain in my head nigh unbearable.  “I haven’t seen him.” 

“He would’ve done something desperate.”

“And so would you.  Don’t drop her.”  His voice became suddenly conciliatory.  “Put her down.  There’s something you should know.”

I knew right away what it was. “Just let it be.”  The blood thumped in my head.  “Trid––”

“You want to die?” he said.  “I don’t give a whit for what you want.”  He said to Herist, “Her father was Daonac Lauriad.  I’m sure there’re people can vouch for it, and she’ll come in useful.  The Girelden would do anything for their last Lauriad.”

Trid waited until Herist had set me on my feet.  Keeping his eyes down, he turned and walked up the canal, shirttails dripping.

Herist scarcely noticed.  “The waif with the thing in her fist.”  He stared at me, twisting a button on his jacket.  The movement of his fingers near drove me mad.  “The thing lost in the harbor.  Gershom, search her.”  He pushed me amid his soldiers.  “And not a word of this to anyone.”

I squeezed myself tight as they shoved hands under my tunic.  A man found Father’s ring when he pushed it against my breast, and in their excitement they never found the broach and letter alongside my knee.  Someone yanked the ring from its patch of cloth, and they tied my wrists and ankles.  Then they threw me over a shoulder and traveled a minute, or an hour.

Twenty-Seven

It looked as though I’d been dumped into a ship’s hold.  But I felt stone at my back, and looking up, saw it was an oubliette.  The grate in the ceiling dropped a shaft of light across my legs.  Herist must have thought me precious.  There was new straw at my back and a wooden bowl of water. 

I was obviously in the barracks or palace prison; I didn’t know which and I didn’t much care.  But I must have cared some, because my eyes ticked with weeping, and Floy, who had followed me in, was heavy with my sadness.  Her cheek warmed mine, and my head fit into the curve of her neck. 

Finding me awake, she blinked back into a bird.

“We must get you out!  This is terrible––If only Mordan were here.  I’m too small to lift a keychain, and Reyna, what the hell were you thinking?”

I shifted my feet––my ankles were shackled.  The chain stretched to a bolt high in the wall.  “Wasn’t thinking.  Thinking don’t do anything.  Let me be.  You get out.”

“Are you mad?”  She tore into the skin on my wrist.  “We know where they are, where the asters are.”

“So go get them.”

“You
are
mad.” 

“Is this country worth a damn, really?” I asked myself. 

Floy didn’t hear me.  “Think of your country, Reyna.”

“Why should I think of them?  Never gave thought a chance, did they?  Killing’s cleaner than talking, I guess.  Smarter to keep your mouth shut. We’ve got only ourselves to look after––leastways, that’s the only person the smart ones are looking after.” 

Floy grew round with indignation.  “If you want a big, bloody mess––”

“Why’re you lecturing
me
about bloody messes?”  I threw her off my arm.  “I tried.”  I tasted blood on my lip.  “They didn’t listen. I hate them, every one!  I’m not thinking about them no more, nor talking to them neither––it’s no use.  I’m keeping my mouth shut.”

“You’re going to stop talking?” she said.  “For five seconds?” 

But I was pigheaded, and Gralde too, and just like my mother I sang my last words: 

“
No ear does she have nor a mouth that can scream to fill suffering’s silent appeal.
”

***

When I woke next the light was blocked.  Someone was bending quite close, golden eyes staring full at my face.  Andrei.  Springing up, I ripped at his cheek. 

He leapt away, and I leapt after, but the chain prevented it, yanking my legs beneath me.  I fell on my stomach.

“They shackled your ankles?” he said.  “Were your wrists too small?” 

He bent and I spat on the front of his shirt. He’d come to torment me, I was certain.

But he pinned my arms down, and proceeded to explain I’d better not wear myself out before climbing the ladder, because he couldn’t haul us up both at the same time.

“Trid let me out,” he said.  My breathing slowed.  “He heard me thrashing around the solar.  Didn’t come with, obviously.  Some men stopped him, said Herist had business with him, and I told them Herist was going to burn for this.  But they aren’t listening to me, and he’s probably bought all of them, but even so, they daren’t touch me.”

His breath was very hot.  “And you.  I told you to get out.  I bet you tried especially hard to get locked up, just to spite me.  But here?  Gods, Aloren––you must have done something incredibly stupid to end up down here.” 

I bared my teeth, and he changed subjects.  “I don’t know all of what happened last night, but judging by your welcome, I deserve death.  Before you kill me, though,” he said, sounding more arrogant than ever, “I have to hide it.”  He moved closer, and the chain slipped out from under his shirt and the dragonfly’s middle swung next to my mouth. 

“I may have made a mistake, but Herist made one, too.  I have yet to give the thing up.”  He sat upright, and I did too, watching him warily. “But I don’t know what to do.  Nothing I do’ll be able to keep them in check.  You were right––it’s too large a mess.  You were completely right, and I hope you’re happy about it, because I’m sure as fuck not. I’m so
stupid––”  He took the thing in his hand.  “A light in a silver cup.  I won’t give it up, not like you want me to, not to the Ombenelva, nor to some other country, even, because it’ll end up in the South’s clutches some way or another, and it’s not supposed to end up there.  Clearly it’s not supposed to, clearly––”  He rolled it back and forth between his hands.  Then he flung it away, and looked toward the grate in the ceiling, and yelled, “I wish it was clear!”  I jumped. 

He scrubbed his face with his cloak.  “Sorry.  The firebird was a Simargh. A halo of light on the wall and a thought in my head, and I didn’t take her seriously. 

“She told me I should hide it so it was safe. I don’t know what from.  And she said––I’ll tell you the rest––she said my guide was to be a person.  She said”––he wrinkled up his forehead––“his feet were to have been cut from the earth’s trammels for long enough to lead me along some sort of path.  And at the end I was to find my hiding place, my other world.

“It was the stuff of lunatics.  Saebels.  I thought it was nonsense.  And what’s ridiculous is”––he swallowed––“what’s ridiculous is you’ve been floating right under my nose for three years.  With a broken spirit.” 

Andrei stuffed his hand deep into his pocket, and pulled out a circle of keys.  “Cut from the earth’s trammels, right?  I got rid of the jail-men.  Sent them some specially made caudle. They’ll be sleeping it off somewhere.”  He scowled.  “They wouldn’t have stopped me, they’re still scared of my mother, but Trid––”  He glanced at me and switched words.  “I can’t help what’s gone before.”  He found a small key, and I crouched, heart thumping, while he folded the iron from my ankles.  “This is your choice.”  He stood, dropping the keychain back into his pocket.  “I’m certain it’s what she––the Simargh would’ve wanted.  So please come with, but don’t ask me where we’re going.  I’m following you.”

For a moment I thought he had made a mistake. 

Then the River Cheldony stretched before me, shining like moon through a fog.  I would find the ice asters at her head.  I could save my brothers and Floy, at least.  Whether Andrei would find his other world––I didn’t know, didn’t care.  What Herist would do, whether the Ombenelva would leave or stay and work mischief if Andrei and I ran away with the
Aebelavadar
––I didn’t know, didn’t care.  I got up and climbed out just above him. 

***

After we’d slid the grate back across the hole, Floy gave a significant chirp, and I put my hand into Andrei’s pocket.  Ignoring his frantic signals, clasping the keychain in both hands to muffle the noise, I ran along a corridor, peering through the half-moons in the doors.  Floy led me farther along, until I saw smoke wafting between the bars in a door.  It had a cedar smell. 

It came from Begley’s pipe.  There were about thirty other folk locked in with him––those, I was to learn later, who’d knelt before the executioners in the courtyard last night.  Begley looked up at me.  “Have ye brought me whistle?” 

A man sitting beside him said, “Already got his weed, hasn’t he?  What about the Tuley’s I asked for?”

“She’s brought you the
keys
,” said Andrei, who had come up behind me.

“Oh.”  Begley puffed sadly away.  “I was dearly hopin for one more snatch on me whistle.”

“It’s Aloren.” Padlimaird looked through the bars. “Come to let us out.”  His face collapsed and he pulled away.  “It was good of you to come but I wish you hadn’t.”

“You gone mad?” said someone behind him.

“No,” said Padlimaird.  “I’d rather’ve been hanged tomorrow.”

“You’re all sentenced to hang?” said Andrei.

“Yes,” said someone at the back.  “They lied to us.  Said we’d be granted clemency.” 

“Clemency from a lifetime of shame,” said a woman, and she laughed.  I put the first key in the lock to try it out, but Andrei pried the keychain away. 

“Not yet.”  He dropped the keys through the bars in the door, and a lanky boy took them.  He found a likely key and made to use it, and Andrei pushed his arm back into the cell. 

“Wait,” he called, “hear me out.  You all must’ve given Herist a nasty shock, because he’s put a big troop of guardsmen just outside this place.  If you attempt a jailbreak now it’ll mean tremendous bloodletting.  Look to the window and wait until dawn to let yourselves out.  By that point I’ve a feeling he’ll need most of them for something else.”

“He’s lyin,” said the boy with the keys.  “Making fun for hisself.  He’ll tell and rake up some profit.  We’ll just be hanged earlier.”  Andrei didn’t say anything.  Begley rapped his pipe on the boy’s head, took the keys, and sat on them in his spot against the wall.

“If he’s wrong it’ll be just as bad now as later,” he said.  “And Aloren’s wid ’im.”

“Maybe her tongue’s been cut out,” said a young girl. 

“We’re waitin till later.” Begley folded his arms and sucked at his pipe. 

“But perhaps we’re needed out there now,” said an old man.  “What about the gang at the west armory?  Did the same happen to them?  I haven’t heard them in here––Haberclad, or Gwat, or young Illinla?  Should’ve heard
him
.” 

“You’re not needed anywhere,” said Andrei.  “Elden hold the harbor and the warehouses––they’re armed.  They got weapons from the other armory.  The garrison had just finished with you, my friend told me, but they came up the bottom of Dewing, and got flushed out by an opened sluice.  The lake’s just beginning to sink.”

I stared at him.  He looked puzzled.  “I thought you’d opened it.  Maybe Trid––” 

“Lally.” Padlimaird had stuck his nose through the bars.  “Sal
stood
back there in the courtyard.”  Sweat rolled away from his temples.  “And I don’t know about Wille––I fear he’s dead.  Is he dead?  Why don’t you talk?  Do you think I’m a coward?”

A chill crept over me.  Sal’s old friend Goody kept her home on Dewing.  Goody Mabble the pawnbroker.

I thought of Trid sitting on the bridge above a roaring canal––I had taught him to pick locks.  I thought of Sal clobbering noggins with her hambone, her baby screaming at Goody’s house.

I turned and walked away.  I climbed a stair, and Andrei grabbed my arm.  He explained frankly that we had no other alternative than that he carry me out. 

So he picked me up, hid me beneath his cloak, and walked straight through the forty-some guards gathered around the doorway.  His shirt was damp under me and I held my breath.  Finally the cloak pulled back, and he put me on the ground.

It was cold and the sky was full of stars.  My breath swam before me.  I held my arms close under my tunic, and walked toward the stables.  When we reached the one I’d lived in for a winter, my heart grew heavy and I stopped.  Andrei by now knew what we were about.  He pushed me inside, asking that I calm myself for the horses’ sakes.

Once inside, we filled two nosebags with grain.  Andrei ran for coins and I oiled the tack.  He came back with a sagging belt, found me outfitting Liskara, and questioned her suitability.  He questioned little more after my grimace, and we led the horses from the stable and set off through a back gate. 

The questions began anew when I turned Liskara down Crewald Street.  I slipped from her back at the edge of Trid’s lake.  Andrei made to copy my motions, but I threw him my leads, gesturing for him to remain with the horses. 

I waded through the inky water to a wall.  I pulled myself up the thatch and picked my way over the roofs till I’d reached the half-submerged houses at the bottom of the street. It was dead silent; the water hardly stirred, and there was little light except what came from the moon. 

I stepped onto the pawnbroker’s steep roof.  The water lapped through the attic window.  There was a mattress floating just inside, and I lowered my feet to the windowsill and waited for my eyes to adjust.  Then I stepped onto the mattress.  The bundle of bedclothes moved and began to squall.  I heaved a sigh of relief, and wondered when anything had ever been that easy.

“Who’s there?” Wille called, his voice rough.

The bed hangings moved, and I pulled the mattress and baby toward the voice, using the wall to steer.  Floy pleaded with me, but I held my tongue and my oath.  I couldn’t see much of him––he was on the bed, head barely raised above the water. 

“Sal?” He touched my face, the scar on my cheek.  “Aloren.  Has it been raining?”  A slip of moonlight fell across his face. 

There was something wrong.  He didn’t look at me even when I touched his eyelid. 

“They threw lye in my eyes,” he said.  “They was crashing through the houses like a herd of––what d’ye call em?––elephants, looking for us with the weapons.  The ones who broke in here stuck Goody through like a dry ham, and I killed one or two––don’t tell Sal––but not before they did what they wanted with me.  The lye was for good measure.  Goody’d been scrubbing the floor.  But they left when the water came, and I looked and looked and finally found her in a drawer.  It was all I could do to carry her up here, and I lay down for a while, and lost her. I couldn’t see––thought she’d floated out the window.  Thank God for her gusty lungs.  Just like her dad’s.”  He laughed once more, and shook.