Authors: Jude Fisher
‘Oh!’
The gasp escaped Saro before he could draw it back. Out of the middle of the haze as from the heart of legend, or the gorgeously deceptive Fata Morganas reported by explorers in search of fabled Sanctuary, shimmering like a mirage and most eerily magnified by the waves of heat, a nomad caravan pulsed gradually into view – a weaving, many-legged millipede of a creature displacing clouds of dust as it travelled unerringly towards the fairground.
‘Wanderers!’
‘Aye, lad,’ Fabel said cheerfully. ‘The Lost People; the Footloose: here they come, ready to fleece the lot of us yet again!’
Three
Charms
J
enna Finnsen gazed into the polished metal mirror Halli Aranson had just brought to their booth as ‘a gift for a maid on her first visit to the Allfair’. She’d heard him announcing himself at the doorflap and had promptly disappeared behind the partition, leaving him shuffling his feet awkwardly in front of her father.
What a clod
, she thought. Just a great big farmboy with no courtly manners at all, even if he was desperately in love with her. She giggled, then watched with alarm as her large grey eyes disappeared into fat little folds of skin and lines etched themselves around her nose and mouth. ‘Oh no,’ she thought desperately. ‘Not at all alluring. You mustn’t smile like that when you meet Ravn. Solemn and intense, that’s the way to win his heart.’
She composed herself rapidly and returned to her favourite reverie.
Holding the mirror about a foot above her head, she gazed up under her fair lashes and addressed his invisible presence, mouthing softly:
Yes, sire, my name is Jenna Finnsen, daughter of Finn Larson of the Fairwater clan, who supplies your royal household with the finest seagoing vessels
.
To this the King always replied,
Had you not told me your name, I would have guessed it from the graceful curve of your neck, as noble as a swan’s, and surely your father’s inspiration for the prows of his lovely ships
.
And at this, Jenna would look modestly down, thus drawing the King’s eye to her rounded bosom, nestling like a pair of goose-eggs amid all the fine Galian lace, and he, overcome by her extraordinary beauty, would take her by the chin, and after murmuring even more wonderfully poetic compliments would address the assembled crowd (which would, of course, include all the so-called friends who told her such a thing could never happen, as well as all the young men from the local skerries, especially Tor Leeson who had once, when they were thirteen, told her she looked like his mother’s milch cow) and announce that he had chosen his bride – the exquisite Lady Jenna – and that they could all now leave, as quickly as possible, so that he could be alone with his love. Then he would sweep her up (she could imagine the hard-packed muscle of his arms, the ease with which he would crush her to his chest, the thump of his excited heart) and—
Lowering the mirror until it was level with her face, she closed her eyes and kissed it passionately. The cold tin misted like a blush.
‘You like your mirror, then?’
Guiltily, Jenna clutched it to her and whirled around to face the speaker.
‘I— I thought you’d gone.’
Halli grimaced. ‘I went outside with your father for a few moments to discuss some business.’
Jenna’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. She hoped it was not the business she thought it might be, for she chafed at becoming part of some inter-clan land transaction – the codex to a bargain struck between men. ‘What business?’ she asked rudely, going on the attack before he could pursue the matter with the mirror.
‘I am thinking to commission a ship from him.’
‘My father’s ships are the best in the world – they’re not for just anyone!’
Halli blinked. ‘Our money is as good as the next man’s,’ he said mildly. When she did not deign to answer, he went on: ‘King Ravn is calling for men with their own ships to pioneer a passage through the Ravenway with the Far West, and I thought to volunteer my services, and,’ he looked into her face intently, ‘to make a sufficient sum that I may buy a parcel of land and take me a wife . . .’
‘And you have someone in mind for this . . . honour?’
Halli met her gaze steadily. ‘I might.’
‘Pigs might fly.’
Halli had sparred too much with his impertinent little sister to allow such churlishness to throw him. ‘You know, at the midsummer fair at Sundey a couple of years back,’ he said, ‘I seem to remember there was a man who claimed to be able to make you see pigs fly – aye, and sheep, too.’
Jenna scoffed. ‘That’d just be some potion he’d be selling – made with spotted toadstool for the truly gullible.’
‘More than likely.’ He let a pause develop. ‘But when I had my two coppers’ worth it was a maid that I saw flying: set her heart on the moon, she had, and was leaping up and down with all her might, and making quite a show of herself into the bargain; but no matter how high she flew, she just couldn’t make that lofty old moon notice her.’
She stared at him in disbelief.
‘Wasted right away, she did, for want of what she could never have,’ he finished softly.
Comprehension dawned slowly. A hot and heavy red flushed up her neck, across her cheeks and into the very tips of her earlobes. Her hand tightened on the mirror.
‘Well, I was going to ask if you’d like to come with me to see the nomad peoples arrive, with their spotted toadstools and magic potions for the gullible and all; but as I can see such flightiness does not appeal to you, I’ll bid you farewell, for now, Jenna, till the Gathering, and perhaps we’ll speak again after that, eh?’ He dipped his head and ducked smartly out of the tent.
There were a few moments of silence, followed by a gale of amusement from outside the booth. Jenna recognised her father’s laughter, and that of her brother, Matt, and her cousins, Thord and Gar. Furious, she flung the mirror to the ground and stamped on it till its pretty surface was dulled and dented.
‘Ever ride a yeka, Joz?’
‘No.’
‘What about you, Knobber?’
‘No.’
‘’Ave you, Mam?’
‘Oh, go away, Dogo.’
‘I did, you know: I rode a yeka, when I was working for the Duke of Cera, commanding that troop that made the first crossing over the Skarn Pass. Did it stink? Man, it stunk.’
‘Oh, do shut up.’
Undeterred, Dogo turned to the companion on his left, a huge, lowering mountain of a man dressed from head to foot in stained leather and mail.
‘Doc, did you ever ride on one of them things?’
The big man regarded him solemnly. ‘Bugger off, Dogo.’
‘Right then, Doc. Sorry, Doc.’
For some seconds, silence resumed. The five mercenaries leaned on the stockade they had been hired to guard – one task among many at this Allfair, and an easy one, though as a result it wasn’t paying too well – and watched the Footloose roll in to the fairgrounds with their great shaggy yeka and their rumbling carts, their wagons and litters and outriders in eccentric and colourful garments.
‘Ever had yer palm read, Joz?’
‘No.’
‘Did you, Knobber?’
‘No.’
‘Mam?’
She gave him a hard stare.
‘What about you, Doc? ’Ave you ever bin to one of them nomad fortune tellers and ’ad yer palm done, ’ave yer?’
‘Let’s have a look at your hand, Dogo.’
‘Righto. What can you see?’
‘A bloody short lifeline if you don’t stop your yakking.’
‘Oh.’
A long string of goats trotted past with red tassels in their ears, herded by a pair of piebald dogs and a lad doing handsprings. A six-wheeled cart rumbled behind upon which several sunburned women and two furiously moustachioed men all in tangerine silk headwear and row upon row of ivory beads and not a great deal else reclined amongst a pile of cushions and blew fragrant smoke from a huge spouted pot. A chorus of whistling and catcalling marked the wagon’s progress.
‘Ever had a Footloose woman, Doc?’
‘Dogbreath—’
‘Yes, Doc?’
There was a thump and a yelp.
Aran Aranson watched the great caravan come in and felt his heart lift as if he had just heard the opening notes to a favourite song.
Seeing the Footloose always had this effect on him – it made him believe in the existence of infinite possibility. There was something otherworldly about the nomads and what they brought here with them – something magical, provocative; something chancy. It brought into sharp perspective the mundanity of trade and gossip and court politics; it lifted the Allfair to another plane of being. It might just be the waft of their cooking spices as they passed – complex and unfamiliar – or of their perfumes – elusive, subtle, teetering on the edge of recognition; or the incomprehensible babble of a foreign language; or just the knowledge that these were folk who had travelled the length and breadth of Elda and as a result had seen and known more than he would ever see or know. If he were to admit it to himself, Aran Aranson envied the nomad peoples. He envied their rootlessness, their lack of responsibilities, their undemanding sense of community. But most of all, he envied those ever-changing horizons, the thought that each day might bring new discoveries about the world and your life in it.
He watched a nomad woman stride past in her voluminous silver-threaded robes of yeka wool; a man with his face tattooed from crown to chin; young lads laughing and running with a crew of mangy dogs. Little black goats and exotically feathered chickens. Whole tribes of children – all brown and gold skin and hair and flashing white teeth. A mule swayed past, burdened with saddlebags bulging with candles in every imaginable hue and shape, accompanied by a sharp-faced man carrying a dozen yard-high paper lanterns. However he had managed to keep them intact in the high winds of the Skarn Mountains, Aran could not imagine. He stared and stared and after a while became aware that something about his face felt stiff and odd. It took him a moment or two to realise that all this time he had been grinning from ear to ear.
‘You look to be enjoying yourself, Da.’
He spun around. It was Katla, with butchered hair and a filthy tunic.
‘What will your mother say when she sees you?’ He looked her up and down in dismay. ‘It was all I could think to do.’
Katla ran her fingers through the sweat-streaked crop. ‘I quite like it, actually. It doesn’t get in my eyes when I’m running.’ She grabbed his arm. ‘Aren’t they fine, the nomads, I mean? I saw them arrive from the top of that hill back there – they came down over a mountain pass!’
‘Aye.’ Aran scanned the passing procession. ‘They’re remarkable people, the Footloose. True explorers. Nothing can stand in their way once they’ve decided on their route, not mountains, nor forests, nor deserts.’
Katla watched as his eyes went misty with longing. He was a frustrated nomad himself, she thought then, remembering the tales he had told of his ancestors’ travel into the wild parts of the world as they sat around a winter fire, and seeing his yearning burn so clearly, she felt as close to him as she had ever done in her life. ‘Imagine – crossing a desert, on the back of a yeka, with the sun on your face and the hot wind at your back,’ she said. ‘Or climbing up into the mountains where the snows never melt and you can see across all the continents of Elda.’
But her father was not to be drawn. He hunched his shoulders as if he felt the burdens of his life pressing down on him. ‘You’re a lass,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘You’re not for exploring.’
Distracted by the unfairness of this, his daughter bridled. ‘Why not? There are many women among the nomads: riding yeka, driving carts and wagons; and up there—’ she indicated the stockades ‘—I saw a woman in leather armour who looked as tough as any man. Why cannot I choose such a life? I can run faster than a man; and climb and swim and break a horse; aye, and fight, too.’
‘The nomads are different to us, Katla. They live by different rules. And as for sell-swords: they live by no rule at all.’
Katla’s eyes flashed. ‘That sounds like freedom, to me.’
Aran turned to face his daughter. ‘Eyran women run farms and houses and raise families. What greater power is there than to make a haven for others, to cultivate the land and bring new life into the world?’
‘Power?’ Katla sneered. ‘Eyran women get traded by their menfolk to the most convenient partner and put a good face on it; they bear child after child, only to lose them to the cold, or the fever, or to evil spirits – and if they grow to men they’ll only lose them to blood-feuds or the oceans! Women drudge from dawn to dusk and then till midnight, and have never a moment to themselves. That’s not the sort of power I ever wish to claim.’
‘Brave words, little sister!’
Fent threw an arm around her shoulders. ‘Perhaps you’d rather marry an Istrian lord, like the fellow who just caused our da to cut all your hair off?’
‘Fent!’ Aran’s voice was sharp, but his younger son took no notice.
‘Darling sister, I can just imagine you with your head all veiled and your body all trussed up in fine silks (pink? – purple? no, that would only clash with your hair, or what’s left of it; scarlet, then; or green) and allowed only the company of other women by day and your husband by night. If King Ravn’s going to choose himself an Istrian wife to take back to the Isles with him, I think the least we can do in exchange is to trade our Katla to one of their lords. She’d talk him to death! That, or wrestle him into submission. Just think, she could be Eyra’s greatest weapon! No Istrian is going to get a chance to wage war against us with Katla as his wife: not unless he gags her and shuts her in a cellar!’
‘Fent, be silent!’ This time, Aran’s voice held a dangerous note. ‘I’ll have no talk of war. There has been peace now for over twenty years, and I for one thank Sur for it.’
‘Peace!’ Fent said contemptuously. ‘Our true homeland of a thousand years and more lies within spitting distance of these mountains, and the sons of the sons of the sons of the bastards who took it from us walk this fairground with not a quiver of fear in their hearts; rather they treat us as barbarian fools – they ridicule our customs, insult our sister and demand we open our stalls early so they may buy our weapons – but, no, we must not speak of war!’