Blood Ties (10 page)

“You can’t
do
that!” one yelled. “It’s impossible!”

“Well, he shagging did it!” another said. “Can’t be impossible!”

“Head for the bridge!” Beck shouted. “We can still get him. I want that horse!”

That got her moving, got her onto the roan’s back and riding. The world still felt distant, but the roan, once she was on his back, was as sharp and clear to her as ever, each hair in his coat distinct, each movement warm and vital beneath her. Around her the forest was like a dream, but he was real. The need to keep him safe drove her on.

She didn’t know this part of the forest quite as well, but well enough. She made her way as fast as they could go, cantering where the trees thinned out, walking quickly when they closed in. The roan was pleased with himself, she could tell; he cantered with his ears pricked up and almost pranced through the clearings. She showered lavish praises on him and he took it all in and pranced some more, until she almost laughed aloud.

She thought back to the leap. That moment in the air had been . . . magnificent. But once was enough. She wasn’t sure, now, if the gods had merely surrounded her to taste the moment, as they sometimes did, or if they had actually held her and the roan up in the air for one crucial heartbeat.

Whether they had or not, she felt an obscure certainty that she had been meant to die in that chasm — that her time had been up. She should be tumbling in the white water of the river right now, being swept to sea, the roan beside her. It was only because the roan had made that extraordinary midair shrug that she hadn’t fallen.

The fact that she was still alive felt wrong, out of balance. She didn’t feel special, or protected, or gods-bound. She thought that the gods had acted to protect the roan, and she had just been along for the ride. It was the roan who was special, not she.

I should be dead,
she thought. If she was dead, then it would all be settled. The warlord’s men would have been satisfied to see her body swept away, the roan would have been safe from Beck’s whip, the ghost of the man she had killed could have gone to his rest. There was a rounding off — a justice — in her death. But alive, no one was satisfied and no one was safe.

She looked ahead in her life and saw emptiness. If she should be dead, then there was no hole in the world she was destined to fill, no home, no place for her to find and claim. It was only now that she realized, when she had thought of the Road, her underlying assumption had been that she would travel until she found where she belonged. But if she belonged in the burial caves, then . . .

It seemed as though she was looking at the world through clouded glass. Noises were still muted in her ears. Was it shock? Maybe it meant something else. She didn’t know. The only thing she was sure of was that the roan had saved her life, and she was in his debt. She murmured thanks to him as they rode, gave thanks and endearments and pats and encouragement, and he took it all as his due.

She would think about this again once they were past the Second River and farther away from the South Domain. Beck and his men
might
make it to the bridge and cut across to intercept her, but they were well behind.

She came to the Second at sunset, hearing the hounds far behind them. It took her a little while to find a place to ford, but the noise of the hounds grew no louder. They were on a false scent. She sighed with relief as they crossed the river. Once she had forded the Second she was in Three Rivers Domain, and they couldn’t touch her or the roan without formal application to the Three Rivers warlord. Now it was an easy ride to Carlion, and Maryrose.

She knew that once she reached Carlion, she would be completely safe. There were arrangements for criminals to be sent back to the Domain they had come from but the free towns demanded a very high degree of proof before they would surrender anyone to a warlord’s punishment, and Beck just didn’t have any proof against her. In their own Domain, that wouldn’t matter: he could act with the warlord’s authority and no one could object. But the free towns were truly free, and because they were the centers of trade across the Eleven Domains, their councils were rich and powerful.

She rode through the night despite the lack of moon, trusting to the gods who had seen them safe thus far. The road was good, anyway, being the main road between the warlord’s fort near Wooding, and Carlion, the second biggest free town in the world. The city was set on a natural harbor, almost as big as Turvite’s, but the space between the harbor and the encircling hills was small and steep, so the buildings were crammed in tightly and the town huddled on the rim of the sea.

Bramble could smell the brine as she came down the hill to the first houses, and hear the rhythmic shushing of the waves against the rocks. But both smell and sound were muted by the fog in her head. The sharp salt smell only reached her nose, and didn’t lift her spirits as it had on her last visit. The sound of the waves was dull instead of soothing.

She rode between the high, narrow brick houses, and the stones of the street were dark and slippery with sea spray. She clopped her way down Maryrose’s street and into her yard before even the starlings were stirring.

She had first come to Carlion when Maryrose had married Merrick, who was a carpenter, like their da and Maryrose. Merrick’s mother was the town clerk and he was well established, so Maryrose’s new house was substantial, with a yard and stable, although they kept no horses yet. Quietly, Bramble let herself and the roan into the stable. She rubbed him down, fetched him water, then rolled herself in her blanket and slept until the town noises became too loud to be ignored.

Outside the kitchen door she hesitated. What if Maryrose looked at her and saw a walking corpse instead of a living sister? What if she really was dead and just didn’t know it? It occurred to her for the first time that perhaps her body
was
lying in the bottom of the chasm, and the men had been chasing the roan, not her. What if she was a ghost who had quickened too soon? There was only one way to find out.

She popped her head around Maryrose’s back door. “Any breakfast for a starving sister?”

Maryrose dropped the ladle into the porridge pot with a splash. She swept across the kitchen and enfolded Bramble in a hug. She smelled of woodsmoke and wool and wood, with a hint of lavender underneath, as she always did. Bramble was glad marriage hadn’t changed that, at least. But even Maryrose’s familiar scent seemed lost to her, somehow distant. A smell remembered rather than lived. But she definitely had a solid body that Maryrose could see and touch. Bramble returned the hug, her heart lifting and settling all at once, so that she was calmer than she had been since she killed the warlord’s man. It was foolish, because it had been years since Maryrose could do anything for her that she couldn’t do for herself. Come to think of it, she thought, there were a score of things Maryrose could do that she couldn’t — weave, carpenter and cook in a hearth among them.

“How did you get here? Where are Mam and Da and Granda? What are you doing here?”

“Can I eat first and talk later?” Bramble said. “I’m starving.”

It was true that she hadn’t eaten since the day before, but the sensation of emptiness that filled her was stronger than hunger. She sat at the table and took the bowl of porridge that Maryrose handed her. It smelled nutty and sweet, but very faintly, as though she were smelling it from another room. She sprinkled on a bit of salt from the salt pig on the table and took a good mouthful. The taste was also muted. Like a damped-down fire, she thought, or sun behind clouds. She ate anyway. Maybe if she kept acting as though she were alive, the fog would burn off and she would be normal again. She didn’t really believe that, but what else could she do? Lie down and die for real and true? Who would look after the roan then? She took another mouthful of porridge.

“Mam and Da and Granda are at home. I came on a horse overnight — he’s in your stable. I’m —” Bramble hesitated.

She had come to Maryrose instinctively, but now she was here, she knew she couldn’t stay. Already, after less than an hour, the solid walls of the town seemed to lean in on her, with a much more unpleasant pressure than when the local gods were present. She couldn’t live in this comfortable, secure house. She’d go mad. It was time to put her original plan into action, and head for the Great Forest.

“I’m Traveling,” she said at last.

Maryrose quieted immediately, served herself a bowl and sat opposite Bramble, gazing at her as though she could search her mind, or at least her emotions. Bramble endured it patiently. Maryrose had looked at her like that often enough before.

Maryrose was opening her mouth to speak when Merrick came in. He was as surprised as Maryrose had been, but a lot quieter about it.

“
Hullo.
Come to visit?”

She’d always liked Merrick, and this quiet welcome, complete with smile and pat on her shoulder, confirmed that regard.

She nodded. “Just a couple of days.”

Maryrose was eating her porridge thoughtfully. She went, as she always did, to the heart of things.

“Where did you get a horse?” she asked.

So Bramble told them the whole story, nothing left out, although she found it difficult to explain the way she felt about the roan, about riding. It was a relief to tell Maryrose what had happened. If her sister had been at home Bramble would have shared it with her long ago. The only thing she kept back from them was her conviction that she had been meant to die. They listened with growing concern and astonishment.

“You jumped the
chasm?
” Maryrose kept saying.

“The roan jumped the chasm,” Bramble corrected her drily. “I just hung on.”

“They thought you were a boy . . . ?”

“Yes, but they might start asking questions . . . So it’s a good thing Mam and Dad and Granda are coming here to live with you. Just in case.”

“They’re coming? Good.” Maryrose spoke absently, turning the story over in her mind. “Yes, it’s reassuring to live in a free town. One good thing Acton did, anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Merrick asked.

Maryrose lifted an eyebrow at him. “Acton established the free towns so that people would have a place to go where no warlord could follow them or have power over them. I love the fact that within the walls of Carlion we’re out of their control! It was Acton’s idea to make the main towns of the Domains subject only to their town councils.”

“Well, I know
that,
” Merrick said. “It was a stroke of genius — trade between the free towns keeps the Domains linked as they would never be if the warlords controlled everything. But why was that ‘one good thing’? You talk as though Acton didn’t do anything else good.”

They both stared at him. Bramble saw, as if for the first time, his brown hair and hazel eyes, a legacy of the second wave of Acton’s people who had come over the mountains after Acton’s death. They had hoped to take land while the first tribe of invaders were leaderless, but Acton’s son had dealt with them — done deals, traded, apportioned out land to the west and south. But even though a thousand years ago Acton would have been an enemy of his ancestors, Merrick still hero-worshipped him. That was plain in his indignation. Bramble looked at Merrick and Maryrose, sitting side by side but now with an indefinable distance between them. She hoped it wouldn’t last.

“Our granda was a Traveler,” Maryrose said slowly, as if thinking it through for the first time. “I suppose we were raised to . . . to think of Acton differently. As the man who had headed an invasion force that killed off almost all of this land’s people.”

“And forced the rest onto the roads as Travelers,” Bramble added. “Except for the Lake People, of course, and he tried with them, but the Lake stopped him. A stone-cold, bullying murderer, that was Acton.”

“No . . .” Merrick paused and looked from one to the other, from dark Bramble to red-haired Maryrose.

People often looked from one of them to the other, wondering how they could be sisters. But Merrick’s eyes weren’t suspicious or harsh when he looked at her. Merrick was a logical man, as well as kindly —
almost
good enough for Maryrose.

“Well . . . of course a lot of people were killed,” he continued. “But he established our civilization, our whole way of life. And you — you’re both three-quarters Acton’s blood.”

Bramble laughed. “Not me — not according to anyone who’s ever met me. They take one look and think ‘Traveler’ and that’s how they treat me.”

“You can’t reject your heritage because of a bit of prejudice.”

“Be sure I can,” Bramble said. “I’m taking to the Road, where I belong.”

Merrick turned to Maryrose. “What about you, love?”

She smiled tenderly at him, kissed his cheek and twined her hand in his. “I’m no Traveler, Ric. I’m a crafter, through and through. But I can’t just sing Acton’s praises when I know how much pain he caused — and all for greed.”

“Greed?” Merrick protested again. “His people were being attacked from the north, squeezed back into uninhabitable lands. They would have starved.”

“So they attacked other innocent people in turn. And they’d been raiding over the mountains for years,” Maryrose said, a little exhausted.

Bramble waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, it doesn’t matter, Maryrose. We have to live in the present. It’s ridiculous, anyway — what happened a thousand years ago can’t touch us now.”

She was glad to see both Merrick’s and Maryrose’s faces lighten and their shoulders lean together to touch again. But she had shivered as she said those last words, the same kind of shiver that she felt when she sat by the black rock and opened her mind to the local gods. It was the first strong feeling she had experienced since she landed on the other side of the abyss, and she welcomed it even while it frightened her.

“Will you stay?” Maryrose asked, hesitantly.

Bramble shook her head. She could see her parents being happy enough here, but she knew she couldn’t stay. She needed open air — field or forest or mountain. And underneath her breastbone, in that hollow place, there still lurked a fear that she was dead, was in some way just a ghost moving a body around, and that she should avoid all the people she loved, for their sakes. Even talking to Maryrose, a cloudy glass was between them, an insuperable barrier between life and death, and she was lucky to have been granted this chance to say her goodbyes before death caught up with her.