Authors: Jude Fisher
Katla experienced a momentary glimmer of recognition. ‘Jenna?’ she enquired cautiously.
The bucket went over with a crash and a stream of yellow liquid washed out across the ground and all over the figure’s kidskin-clad feet.
‘Sack’s tits!’
‘Jenna, such profanity from such a well-brought-up young maid: you shock me!’
The figure squeezed her long tail of hair into a spill of cloth and straightened up, eyes reddened and blinking.
‘What in Sur’s name are you doing?’ Katla stared at Jenna, then at the bucket, and back again. ‘You’ll never drown yourself like that, you know.’
Jenna Finnsen regarded her furiously. ‘What I’m doing is none of your business, Katla Aransen.’ She tossed her head imperiously, but the effect was somewhat lost as the turban slipped sideways and tumbled to the sand, releasing an acrid scent into the warm, close air of the latrine.
Katla began to laugh. ‘Oh, Jenna! Surely my brother’s not worth such an effort?’
‘Halli!’ Jenna retrieved her headscarf and wrapped it tightly over her sopping locks. ‘You think I’d go through this for your stupid brother?’
‘I’m not sure who’s the stupid one in this affair,’ Katla said cheerfully. ‘Do you really think that bleaching your hair in piss is going to win the heart of King Ravn Asharson, Stallion of the North?’
Jenna shot her a venomous look. Then her face began to crumple. ‘Oh, Katla. What am I to do? My father has said I may come to the Gathering, and even that he will introduce me – though he has not yet agreed to offer my hand: I am still working on that – but if Ravn chooses another . . . I think my heart will break.’
Katla could think of nothing to say. Jenna was a foolish girl, but she was quite fond of her all the same. Poor Halli: would he ever cope with her fanciful ways? She bent to retrieve the wooden bucket, her nose wrinkling as its fumes engulfed her. ‘By Sur, Jenna, you must be most determined.’
‘I am, truly.’
Katla shook her head. It seemed there was nothing to say. She watched the trickling liquid soak away into the dark sand.
‘Come on,’ she said, after a while. ‘Let’s get back before our families miss us. Perhaps if you wash your hair out now in clear water, you won’t attract flies.’
But when they got outside, there were many more folk up and about. Quite a throng were even now gathering on the strand, shading their eyes and gazing out to sea. Katla followed their example. Out on the horizon, silhouetted against the glittering waves and pale-blue bowl of sky, unmistakably, were a dozen great square sails of Eyran longships.
‘Oh!’
Jenna stared and stared. ‘King Ravn’s fleet! Oh, Katla: we shall see him arrive!’ She grabbed her friend about the waist. There were tears of excitement in her eyes. Then her expression changed abruptly. ‘My hair – oh, Katla: my hair – what shall I do?’
‘Silly goose: he won’t see you amongst all this crowd. Wrap it up in your cloth.’
With deft fingers, Katla twisted the headscarf up and around Jenna’s head and stood back to admire her handiwork. ‘There: it looks really quite exotic.’
‘Thank you, Katla,’ Jenna said. Then she looked quickly away, abashed. ‘I had meant to ask you about your own, you know, but I was too caught up with myself.’
‘My own what?’
‘Your hair, Katla. What has happened to it?’
Katla’s hands flew to her head. Then she grinned: a flash of white teeth in her thin, tanned face. ‘Oh, that! I’d entirely forgotten. My da cut it off yesterday, as a sort of punishment, and, in a way, for my own protection.’
‘For what?’
‘I climbed the Castle, and some Istrians saw me. They said they were on the Allfair’s Ruling Council and that it’s sacred ground. Men get fined for such a trespass; but for women it’s a capital offence.’ She laughed mirthlessly. ‘And there I was tossing my hair around as if in defiance of their dearest-held beliefs!’
Jenna gasped. ‘You mean, if they catch you they will have you executed?’
Katla’s brow creased. Until that moment she had given barely any thought to the matter. To climb a rock was such an innocent pleasure. And almost religious, in its fashion: for her, the touch of rock and metal was the closest she got to worship, even if it were worship of Elda, and not some specific deity. Though there were those who said the hand of Sur lay on her work. But who was to say which deity owned such a rock? It all seemed so ridiculous. ‘That’s the general idea, I suppose.’
Jenna was aghast. ‘But Katla, that’s terrible. You shouldn’t be out: you should be hiding.’
‘That would look guiltier than anything. Besides,’ Katla laughed, ‘look at me: how could they possibly think it was me now?’
‘I know, but . . .’ She scanned Katla’s face anxiously. ‘But, oh, Katla, your poor hair: what will you do for the Gathering?’
‘It’s only hair, Jenna,’ Katla said quickly. She did miss it, whatever she might say aloud. ‘Better that than lose my head.’
‘For myself, I’m not so sure.’
‘Jenna: you are a vain and silly woman!’
‘I am: it’s true, and I cannot help it.’ Jenna took Katla by the hand. ‘Let’s go to the nomads later and see what ribbons and braids we can find to bind into what’s left of your hair.’ She paused. ‘And perhaps I can find something that will make the King notice me.’ She dropped her voice. ‘They do magic, you know, the Footloose – they make charms and potions and the like. Marin Edelsen went to them yesterday with Erno, you know, and she told Kitten Soronsen there was all sorts you could get.’
Katla felt a little chill go through her. Erno and Marin? She had thought he held an interest in his heart for her, not for scrawny little Marin Edelsen. The chill became a shudder. Was this what they called jealousy? Surely not, for she had no interest in Erno herself, did she?
‘Oh, look,’ she said quickly, turning the conversation away from such uncomfortable thoughts. ‘See the raven on the leading sail—’
And there it was indeed, the great black bird spreadeagled across the striped sail of the first ship – the raven: bearer of tidings and guardian of wisdom; the mythical lord of the air and the pathways of the lost, who sat on Sur’s left shoulder and croaked its thoughts into his good ear, and was the symbol and the name of their King.
‘It’s his ship,’ Jenna breathed. ‘It really is.’
‘Good morning, sister. Very fetching headwear, Jenna: very Jetran.’
Fent grinned insincerely at the blonde girl, then ruffled Katla’s uncombed mop. Behind him, Katla spied her father and Halli, deep in conversation, and behind them, Erno. She shook her brother’s hand away.
‘Must you always treat me like your mutt?’ she asked fiercely, flattening her hair down again.
‘You always had the heart of a mongrel, sister; and now you have the head of one as well.’
‘See that I don’t bite you for that remark, brother.’
‘And make me foam at the mouth and scared of water?’
‘You wash so little, I think you already own that fear.’
‘Little wolfhound bitch—’
‘’Tis not just for your red hair that they call you the Fox, brother.’
‘Katla!’ Jenna was scandalised. ‘Fent, you should apologise to your sister; Katla, you too.’
Katla grinned at both of them, unrepentant. ‘I have no sister to apologise to, Jenna dear; but I am sorry if our banter has offended you. Still, you’ll get used to it if you’re to become a part of our family.’
At this, Fent grinned broadly, and Jenna looked furious. Then a shadow fell across them.
‘Good day, Jenna. I’m glad to find you keeping an eye on my errant daughter.’
‘She was giving me a hand with the washing of my hair, sir,’ Jenna said, meeting Aran Aranson’s stern eye fleetingly, then glancing away to catch Katla’s alarmed expression.
Aran, watching the exchange, smiled cruelly. ‘Aye, well she has precious little of her own to care for now, so I doubt she’d be foolish enough to go wandering alone again at this Fair, for fear of a higher price to pay.’
Fent said quickly: ‘You know that if they took Katla, every Eyran man here would fight for her, do you not, Father?’
Aran regarded him briefly. ‘I had rather my witless daughter were not the cause of violent confrontation, Fent. And I forbid such talk. Especially with the Gathering ahead of us. King Ravn has enough matters of state to put his mind to, without our Katla adding to his problems.’
‘You mean the choice of his bride?’ Jenna piped up eagerly.
‘Aye; amongst other considerations.’
‘And will you introduce Katla to him at the Gathering, sir?’
Aran barked a laugh. ‘In current circumstances, I think not.’
‘And you, Jenna,’ came Halli’s deep voice. ‘Will your father be putting you to the King?’
Jenna’s cheeks reddened. ‘I – I’m not yet sure.’
‘Aye, well he’s here to make a useful political alliance, I’ve heard, so it’ll most likely be an Istrian woman he’ll choose. Lord Prionan’s daughter maybe, or one of the girls from the Altan Plain.’
At this, Jenna gave a wordless cry and took to her heels. In a moment, she was lost from sight, swallowed by the mass of folk who had arrived to watch the Eyran ships come in.
‘So do you think Lord Tycho will accept your renewed offer, Father? Will he take our price?’
Favio smiled fondly upon his favourite son. ‘How could he not, Tanto? How could he not? We can offer him the one thing he cannot buy: our good family name and all that goes with it. And, for his daughter, the prize of Istrian manhood, the lad who will win the Allfair Games and carry all hearts before him.’
‘Have you seen her, though, Father? I would not want an ugly girl, or worse, a cripple.’ Tanto scowled at the very thought.
‘Rest assured, my boy: I have heard she is a very rose among women. But you shall see her later on when we go to make our suit in earnest, and if you do not like what you see, we shall talk more about the alliance before making any settlement. How does that suit you, son?’
‘Admirably, Father. I follow your judgement in this, as in all things.’
Such a hypocrite
, Saro thought bitterly.
He will say all the right things and go his own sweet way, as he always does
. He watched his father give Tanto the cloying smile with which he only ever gifted his eldest child, and then looked away to stare instead out over the heads of the crowd at the fleet of longships drawing smoothly into the bay, the dip of the serried oars barely stirring the surface in their disciplined rhythm.
How elegant were these Eyran vessels
, he thought,
with their high prows and low, sweeping hulls
. It was no wonder the Eyrans had travelled so far and wide across the turbulent oceans: they looked at home in their element, like a flock of great sea-eagles biding the time for their strike. Little surprise, either, that so many of the southern lords might be thinking to ally their fortunes to these raiders and explorers by trading their daughters to the northern King, for who knew what treasures might be held in the Far West? He was certain that if he and Tanto had a sister their father would not have the slightest qualm at putting her case at the coming gathering, whether or not others might consider it an insult to the Goddess. He had been looking forward to seeing something of the barbarian court, though the ordinary Eyrans he had so far seen coming and going around the Fair were a considerable disappointment to him, seeming as they did very little different to the Istrians he knew. They wore their hair long, and Falla alone knew what was meant by those complicated knots and braids; but all in all, they seemed as self-interested and as hard-drinking, as grasping and as argumentative as any merchant or lord in Elda.
Except, of course, for their women. He had seen few enough of these around the Fair so far, except for the nomads – though the women of the Footloose were so entirely outlandish to him with their piercings and tattoos, their shaved heads, their freakish paint and scraps of wild clothing that he could barely even regard such beings as human; but he was still haunted by the sight of the girl he had seen on Falla’s Rock yesterday: all bare golden legs and arms and that magnificent banner of hair. He had walked the Fair all the previous evening, in and out of the half-constructed stalls, down to the shore, slowly past the women’s tents, even as far as the beginning of the nomad quarter, but there had been no sign of her at all. And small wonder at that, with the edict given out by the Dystras.
And there they were of course, Greving and Hesto, just in front of the Vingo family at the edge of the shoreline, ready to greet King Ravn Asharson as soon as he set foot on the sand of the Moonfell Plain, as if it were but the garden to their great hall, and they welcoming him in as their honoured guest. What was it they wanted? he wondered. Would they press their granddaughter, the Swan of Jetra, upon him at the gathering? Would they bargain for ships and sardonyx, for the advantage they sought that would raise them above their neighbours and enable them to annex more land? Was this all there was to the world any more: fair words and gestures, transactions made and alliances forged; all principles forgotten except where pride and power came into the equation, with double-dealing and treachery done out of sight?
‘I do not think much of their ships,’ Tanto was saying. ‘See how open to the weather they are, and so shallow-draughted. I swear one big wave would have them over.’ He laughed.
Saro stared at him, but Tanto was into his stride now, his hand on their father’s arm, pointing out the defects of the Eyran fleet.
‘See – they have no shelter on board at all; and why, it looks as if they have no slaves to row for them! What a primitive people they must be indeed to make even their king journey in such a fashion!’
Privately, Saro was thinking what hard men they looked, these northerners, with their big arm muscles flexing with the movement of the oars and their long hair bound back from sharply-featured faces and beards that accentuated the powerful jut of their chins. Hard and warlike and afraid of neither ocean nor storm. He had perhaps misjudged their countrymen, men who kept their muscles under their sleeves and spoke politely in the Old Tongue.
‘Is that their king?’ Tanto was asking now. ‘That tall man in the dark tunic standing in the stern?’