I
si kept them in the wood past Saxmer, emerging from the trees to join a trade road leading from Saxmer to the Kelish village of Cathal.
“Cathal hugs the border, and trade with Bayern is common, so folk there should speak our language as well as Kelish. Let’s pass through Cathal and see what we can learn.”
The road to Cathal was battered and only one wagon wide, with swells of hard earth where mud had frozen during cold and rainy seasons. Enna tripped often, and cursed each time she tripped, until Dasha said, “Enna, you might watch your language.”
Enna grimaced. “I was. You should hear my thoughts.”
Cathal lay on the base of a gentle hill bright with yellow-green grass. Rin could count thirty wattle-and-daub houses. The older homes near the road were stone with thatched roofs that might keep out the rain of spring but not the cold of winter. But it was a summer night, warm as a breath on the cheek, and the fields were full of the slow movements of cattle. It was much simpler than the Bayern towns Rin had seen, with no visible inn or market, no lord’s house, no wall or town center or row of shops. But it seemed lovely to Rin’s eyes, surrounded by the hope of healthy animals and meat for winter. To build so many houses so near together seemed like an amiable thing to Rin, people who chose to live close as if they really did enjoy the company. So Rin was shocked when she was near enough to see their faces—depressed, full of gloom and heartache.
“What’s the plan, Isi?” Enna asked in a whisper. “Doesn’t seem likely we’ll find an inn hidden in this stack of shacks.”
“I don’t dare sleep here and make it a target for fire-speakers anyway,” Isi said. “But I’m hoping we can stop for dinner and learn whatever we can about this queen of Kel. It’s Kelish custom to offer hospitality to travelers by placing a lighted candle in the window.”
Dasha nodded. “Inns are rare in Kel, even in the cities. They consider it good luck to house travelers.” Her eyes scanned the town’s windows, shutters open to the humid night, windowsills lightless. “But perhaps not in Cathal . . .”
On they walked, no candles in sight. The villagers’ eyes flicked over the girls, taking note of their Bayern tunics, skirts, and leggings. The Kelish men wore long tunics in white, gray, or yellow, with sleeves that dangled from their forearms down to their knees. The women wore the same tunics with dangling sleeves, and over the tunics, sleeveless dresses laced at the bodice. Both men and women sported caps with thick bands across the top of their head, the women’s hats rounded in back, holding their hair in a sack at their necks.
“See the ladies’ hats?” Dasha whispered to Rin, smiling as if nothing was wrong in all the world. “Didn’t I tell you they were darling?”
An older woman swept out her little house, gray hair tucked into a yellow cap. She had a square face and a build that must have been daunting before age sloped her back. A man sat in a chair beside the door, sword strapped to his side, smoking a pipe into the summer evening. He coughed, but not from the pipe. Behind his back, the woman was deliberately sweeping dust in his direction, gusts of debris swirling up into his face. There was an honest look to the woman’s face, besides the glee she seemed to take at the man’s hacking. The man, on the other hand, had an expression of . . . Rin could not name it, but she was certain he deserved worse than a lungful of floor dirt.
So when Isi said, “Rin, keep an eye out for anyone who seems a trustworthy soul,” Rin gestured to the sweeping woman.
“She might tell us the truth.”
Isi asked the woman a question in a language Rin did not understand, though the sounds of it pleased her. The woman glared at the back of the man’s head before going inside her home and sticking a lighted candle on the windowsill. The man sprang to his feet and shouted at the woman, and the woman shouted back until he stalked off.
Isi spoke again in concerned tones, and the woman waved her hand dismissively.
“I know of the western tongue,” said the woman, her accent pinched and sweet, as if she spoke with her mouth squeezed together. “You are Bayern?”
Isi nodded. “We are. We don’t want to cause you trouble.”
“I am ready with the trouble.” The woman shook her broom in the air. “If someone was not coming now, I was for hitting him already.” She smiled to show she was teasing, though Rin could see she almost meant her words.
She gestured the travelers inside, where the smell of bread drenched the air. Rin spied the lumps of new loaves covered by a cloth, and her stomach gurgled, reminding her how many days it had been since she’d eaten bread. That was the smell of home, and her ma, and the warm cottage when rainstorms seethed outside. It was a hard, hard thing to lose a home full of bread and Ma.
“I have dinner. You are hungry?” The woman sat the four girls on various stools and perches around her one-roomed home, handing out carved wooden bowls heaped with well-cooked beans and meat. The food was thick and well salted, but Rin’s attention kept straying to the bread.
Isi introduced them all and explained they were travelers with business in Kel. “Mistress . . .”
“Mistress Mor,” said the woman.
“Mistress Mor, if I may ask, who was that man? Your son?”
Mistress Mor cackled, and Rin could not help smiling at the lively sound. “Not my son! My son is skinny and nice. That was”—she leaned out the door to spit—“soldier. How you say, soldier for no loyalty, soldier is paid?”
“Mercenary,” said Dasha.
Mistress Mor nodded. “Like ants they are crawling all in houses. We are ordered for putting them in homes and giving them to eat. And they are no nice boys.”
“King Scandlan ordered you to take in mercenaries?” Dasha asked.
“Maybe he. The order coming from Castle Daire. Daire is home to Lord Forannan and Lady Giles, but lord and lady now are gone. They were for being good to us. Now Castle Daire is home of queen.”
There was a shout in Kelish, and they all stood, Dasha dropping her bowl in alarm. The soldier had returned with another, this one wearing a chain-mail vest and iron helmet. He pointed at Mistress Mor when he spoke. She met him at the threshold and spoke back, her voice taut and angry.
“What’ll it be, Isi,” Enna asked, glancing at Dasha. “Diplomacy or action?”
Isi stood between Mistress Mor and the soldier, placing a gentle hand on the soldier’s chest, and spoke in Kelish.
The new soldier spoke back, and now the language did not seem so sweet to Rin. His eyes roved over the girls, taking in their clothes.
“You do not belong here,” he said in a hard accent.
Isi, still calm, said, “Neither do you.”
The soldier shoved Isi aside and threw a chair at Mistress Mor. She cried out as the chair struck her. Before she’d even fallen to the ground, his sword flamed red hot, and he screamed as he dropped it.
Rin rushed to Mistress Mor’s side. The old woman clutched at her ankle, muttering something in Kelish.
The soldier yelled, and more soldiers came. But the villagers were gathering too, in the square opposite Mistress Mor’s house.
“Rin, stay with her,” Isi said, pulling Dasha and Enna out into the road.
Villagers with their draping sleeves hefted rakes and shovels, brooms and sticks. Soldiers in leather or chain-mail vests eyed the villagers. The soldier who lost his sword was still hollering in Kelish, pointing at Mistress Mor’s house. The three girls stood like guards before her threshold.
“You’re hurt?” Rin asked.
Mistress Mor winced, shaking her head. “Just . . . the ankle. Just the ankle.” Then she said something in Kelish. Rin felt pretty certain it was a curse. She helped Mistress Mor to her feet, supporting her as the woman hopped back into the house and lay on her bed. Rin placed a rolled-up blanket under her calf to support the leg.
The noise outside continued. Rin’s middle felt like a winter pond. Isi had told her to stay back. It was exhausting, this wishing to be Isi but being trapped in useless Rin.
A sudden shout made her run to the door. Perhaps two dozen mercenaries stood facing the girls, their swords waving. The villagers huddled together, some yelling back.
“Tell me what happens,” said Mistress Mor from the bed.
With anxiety clawing at her chest, Rin could barely think, let alone speak. She took a deep breath. “The mercenaries and villagers are shouting at one another. But my friends will take care of it. Don’t worry.”
Rin worried.
“How many soldiers? How many you seeing?”
Rin counted. “Twenty-one.”
The old woman shook her head. “There are more in Cathal, and they are not for liking this.”
A cry pierced the silence, as fierce and desperate as a starving crow. Enna’s eyes flashed toward the far side of the village. Rin could hear her say, “Isi, there’s fire.”
Enna ran off, leaving Dasha with Isi. When the mercenaries moved forward, the ground under their boots was suddenly muddy. Wind raged around them, the mud slippery beneath their feet. When they fell down, the hilts of their swords burning, Isi and Dasha ran after Enna.
Rin crossed the room to peer through a shutter on the back wall. She could see smoke and hear shouts and the sounds of metal striking metal.
Here I am,
she thought,
watching again.
A sensation like a dark sludge pouring moved inside her and made her want to be sick.
Rin sat beside Mistress Mor on a low stool. She stared at a chip in the daub and listened to the cries, running, curses, and sometimes gaps of silence. One altercation seemed to be nearby—a woman’s voice shouting, a man’s voice answering, a strike like wood on metal, and a scream. High and soft, the call of a small child. Then silence. Rin’s blood chilled.
Someone began speaking in a whisper so stiff and urgent it quivered like a tent rope. It was a woman’s voice. Rin looked at Mistress Mor. Her face was white with pain.
“Did you hear that?” Rin asked.
Mistress Mor nodded. “My neighbor, Aileann, I think. She is saying, ‘Please, please.’ Aileann has little girl.”
Rin half-stood, hesitated. “Will you be all right?”
“Yes, yes, I am fine enough. You are going. Go.”
Rin nodded and fled through the door. She followed the sound, sidling between two houses and stopping in a shadow.
There was a wild-haired woman facedown on the ground, one hand pressed palm to dirt, the other reached out and up, pleading toward a mercenary. Her face was streaked with dirt, clean lines where tears ran, and a bruise was swelling the side of her face. Beside her lay the pieces of a shovel, its wooden shaft broken in two. The mercenary was short and thick like a big toe, his wide nose wrinkled in a sneer, and his eyes were crazed. His arm squeezed the neck of a child of about four years. She squirmed and cried, flinching away from the short sword he held across her belly.
The mercenary’s eyes flashed, half-mad with fierce amusement, and the way he spoke to Aileann, Rin guessed he knew her well, perhaps had been housed with her. The little girl was surely Aileann’s daughter—they had the same stormy hair that stuck up and around, half-covering her face. Rin could not see the girl’s eyes, but she could see the worried mouth, the chin that trembled.
Aileann repeated that same word over and over,
please,
please, please.
It seemed to be all she could say between terrified sobs.
That little girl. She was about the same age as Rin’s niece Genna, she had the same hair color as her nephew Incher, the same round, simple face as Tusken. Little Tusken. No one should hurt a child. And yet there was someone with a sword, someone who did not care about another’s pain, someone who might kill. Rin looked around, desperate for help, but the girls were nowhere near.
Ma would never allow a bully like that mercenary to hurt a child. But she was so far away, Rin could not think what her mother would do. Isi would use her fire to burn the sword out of his hand and the wind to blow him off. Rin held no weapon. All she could do was speak. The idea sent waves of nausea pulsing through her, but there was no time to worry.
Rin stepped out of the shadow and into moonlight. The mercenary’s eyes found her at once.
He began to speak in Kelish, but Rin interrupted.
“Do you understand me?” He did not answer, but she could see he did. “Please don’t hurt the girl. Listen to me first.” Her teeth were chattering, she was so angry and so scared, and so unsure what to say. Since the age of seven, she’d trained herself never to tell anyone what to do. Doing it on purpose felt like trying to forget how to walk.
“If you hurt her, you’ll regret it powerfully, you’ll wish you’d just slit your own throat. So don’t. Just don’t.”
His eyes were wild, open and darting from Rin to Aileann to the houses around them. His sword trembled. “Are you to stop me? Ha!”
The little girl moaned, soft and tired now, as if she had no more voice to cry. Her mother wailed with new terror, her hand still reaching in hopeless desperation.
“Shh,” Rin hissed at her. The man was so twitchy, she was afraid a loud noise could set him off. Anger boiled her bones and made her feel hot and dangerous, though her teeth were chattering so hard now that her slamming jaw shook her vision.
She studied his face, remembered the way he had looked at the little girl, as if she were a mangy cat, barely worth notice and good for nothing but casting aside.
Rin moved toward him, as slow as a shadow inching with the sun. She opened her hands, showing she had no weapon.
“I can’t hurt you,” she said.
“You are for hurting me?” His voice boiled. “She was putting milk in my boots this morning. She is trouble every day I am on this village. She is no girl, she is demon. You keep closer and I am eating her for supper!”
“Not yet,” Rin said, her voice shaking, her throat nearly closing off. But somehow the words vibrated with ease and confidence. “First I want to tell you a story. About her. About the little girl. She loves to run so fast she imagines her hair turns into wind. And she loves to climb trees and eat pine nuts out of the cones. When she’s six years, and ten, and twelve, sometimes her mother will let her curl up on her lap like she still does now, and they’ll rock by the fire, humming together. She loves her ma so much.”