The Bitterbynde Trilogy (34 page)

“Ye're certain ye have not got the Sight?” he demanded suspiciously.

Vehemently she nodded.

A shang wind, not fierce, came and went one evening. Brief showers of rain also passed over. Cuinocco's Way eventually joined up with another flexuous stream, which later flowed into a yet wider waterway. This ran at last into a proper river, the Rysingspill, which would take them on the last lap of their journey, to the city-port at its mouth. Steep cliffs and mountain gullies had given way to hills that humped ever lower under a porcelain sky the color of Sianadh's eyes.

The river neared its destination.

“Now that we have gained the Rysingspill, 'tis likely we shall begin to see river-traffic,” the Ertishman warned. “Fur-trappers sometimes come this far upriver—savage
uraguhnes
who would risk other folk's lives—and their own—in eldritch haunts, for profitable trade. We could not outrun their fast boats if they took an interest in us, so we must keep an eye out and make ourselves scarce if we get wind of them. They would think nowt of scuttling a couple of gray drifters and making off with our goods.”

They kept the chests covered under Sianadh's spidersilk cloak.

Gilvaris Tarv, he told her, was a colorful sinkhole of a seaport city where riffraff and brigands walked the streets, mingling with the citizens and the nobility. It was a city with no walls or guarded gates or curfew; a festering, interesting venue where fortunes were made and lost; an ebullient, belligerent center of brisk trade. The very rich dwelt there, while the very poor hung on at the fringes and sometimes fell off. Being on the east coast of Eldaraigne, Gilvaris Tarv was a popular port of call for ships out of Namarre, whose stated business was not always genuine. Port officials turned a shuttered eye to shady dealings and thrived for it.

“No use our floating into Tarv Port on a craft we can barely steer. Some merchant would run us down. Besides, it would look suspicious, and I want no questions asked. If word got about that we carry treasure, even so much as a shilling piece, our lives would be forfeit. Nay—we shall go ashore before we reach the outskirts of town and traipse in on foot, like peddlers.”

They met no trappers' vessels. On the fifth day since the departure from Waterstair, the trees thinned. A low mist rose from the water. The river, now broad and lined with slate-green casuarinas, carried the raft into rolling lands. Here and there, thatched cottages squatted in groves of rowans and fruit-trees. Stone walls enclosed paddocks where a few animals grazed, or fields rippling with ripening oats and barley.

It was getting dark. The Ertishman appeared jittery.

“We are close now. 'Tis too risky—we might be seen by farmers or fishers along the shore. And what would two strange-looking folk be doing floating down out of the Lofty Mountains? To be sure, we should be taken for wights.”

Using their rough-bladed oars of whittled yew, the voyagers directed the raft to the west bank. It grated against the gravel of the shallows, and they came to land under a belt of casuarinas, whose skeins of long, drooping needles cascaded like unbound hair. After unloading the three caskets, the travelers untied the ropes holding the raft's logs together, pushed it away, and watched it drift downstream, slowly breaking up.

There was an indefinable sadness in this.

“Now,” Sianadh said briskly, rubbing his hands, “we be peddlers out of Tarv, come to try our luck in the countryside. And now, at last, we sleep dry!”

It was indeed pleasant to nestle in fragrant fallen needles but difficult to get used to the motionlessness of land. Imrhien lay awake in the darkness, listening to the river's sighs. She thought about the city and its probable horrors.

Come morning, Sianadh was no longer beside her.

Imrhien drank from the river, washing her face and hands. Magpies chortled their euphonic greetings. Beyond the trees, the sun's morning light lay long on fields of grain, weaving a pattern like tapestry. The caskets remained where Sianadh had stashed them, shoved far back under some myrtle bushes for concealment. The Ertishman would not be far away. She waited. When he returned, cackling with pride, he bore half a loaf under his arm.

“Tuck into that, Your Ladyship! Ye've got to keep your strength up—I cannot carry the
tambalai
treasure into the city all on my own!”

She tore the bread into two pieces and began to eat, offering him the larger chunk. He pushed her hand away. “Who d'ye think ate the other half?”

Who would have thought that a simple cob could taste like joy, sweeter than a feast? Imrhien could have eaten twice as much. Her friend's weathered eyes followed the chunks of bread to her mouth like the eyes of a despairing lover. For all his protests, he could not hide the fact that half a loaf had not staved off his hunger. When the first piece was devoured she feigned satiety and watched him fall like a starving wolf on what was left.

He tossed a handful of coins into her lap. She examined them closely—they were small disks made of copper. One side bore a numerical inscription she could not read, while the other was stamped with a face seen in profile. On every coin the side depicting the face was worn and blurred, lacking in detail.

“Put them jinglers in yer pocket!” Sianadh trumpeted.

<>

“I took a silver florin from amongst the treasure. Gold or jewels would give us away, of course—a silver piece was the least thing of value I could find. Ha! The least thing of value—and to think it is more than I had in the world at one time! The loaf, I bought from a penny-pinching farmwife.”

Still hungry, but somewhat fortified, the travelers tied the caskets on their backs, beneath their cloaks, and set off like a pair of two-legged tortoises. Soon they struck a road leading south, a rutted track whose high banks were overgrown with hedges on each side. Ripe blackberries dotted the briars, and these they picked as they walked.

They passed several cottages. Now and then a horse-cart trundled by, bound in the other direction.

Imrhien kept her head down, pulling her battered taltry well over her face, while Sianadh greeted the drivers with a cheery wave.

“Keep your taltry tugged forward,” he murmured from the side of his mouth. “One look at ye,
chehrna
, would set the tongues of the whole countryside wagging. We must not draw attention.”

Her load seemed heavier by the minute. Lack of food had weakened her, and walking seemed like wading through mud. At midday they rested in a beech grove off the road. Sianadh used the pennies to purchase food and drink from a farmhouse. This time he was given richer fare. As soon as she had eaten, a strong desire for sleep surged over Imrhien, but she rose to her feet and they trudged on. Toward dusk they reached the outer sprawl of Gilvaris Tarv and passed through, into the city.

6

GILVARIS TARV

Pain and Perfidy

I am the Wand and the Wand is the Tree
.

The Tree seizes the Wind in its hair
,

Holds Fire within its bones, pumps Water through its veins
,

Grips soil and stone with its long toes
.

The Tree stands between sky and ground
.

The Tree is the Wand and the Wand is I
.

C
HANT OF THE
C
ARLINS

Silence is a spell
.

A
RYSK SAYING

A sparrow jumped along one of the warped black rafters, flicking its head from side to side as if searching. It paused, fluffed up its feathers smugly, and issued a small “cheep.” Then it took wing and flew a quick circuit of the room before darting out through the half-open shutters into sunshine. Dust motes and a downy feather slid soporifically down a chute of chartreuse light, in past the flowering chamomile springing from the window-box, and onto the foot of the bed, bringing with them the sounds and odors of the street below.

It was not a large room to waken to. The walls were built of timber, daubed with some hard, whitish substance like clay. Here and there they were covered with stretched sackcloth that had been nailed to the joists showing through. The bed, which was wide, took up most of the space—on a stand against one wall stood a chamber-stick with a candle-end stuck in it, an unmatched ewer and basin, a wooden hairbrush, and a long-handled looking-glass. Under the window squatted a stool of birch. Everywhere, the scent of lavender permeated. From behind a thin partition drifted the rumble of familiar snoring.

A real bed—a luxury beyond belief. Imrhien could not recall ever having slept in one. Lying back against creamy, lavender-scented linen, she visualized the events of the preceding night, turned them over, and examined them from all angles.

Of the city, all she recalled were impressions—squares of yellow light from mullioned casements, revealing a bewildering mixture of movement, smells, sounds; a forest drowning in its own undergrowth, whose trees were the stanchions, pillars, and roof beams of buildings, whose overflow was the boil and surge of humanity—fair flower and fetid fungus. Upper stories overhung crooked tunnels of streets. Lines of pegged washing flapped like ensigns, and gutters reeked. Like bulls in a distant field, hawkers bellowed, extolling their wares. The evening was noisy with the jingle of harness, the rumble of wheels, the smack of whips, shouts, dogs barking, snatches of music. Smoke from glowing braziers thickened the air, mingled with fragrances of pastries and perfume. Armor glittered in lamplight. Dominating all loomed the light-pierced Tower of the Tenth House of the Stormriders.

The girl had walked among all this noise and glitter and stench, staying as close to Sianadh as his shadow, keeping her taltry pulled well forward and her cloak drawn across the lower half of her face. She scarcely glanced up, except to avoid tripping over street detritus or losing sight of her mentor in the deepening shadows. Along twisting streets and lanes he led her, until she lost all sense of direction. Then with the words “Here it be—Bergamot Street,” they had turned the last corner into a narrow, dark thoroughfare. A few yards farther on, the Ertishman had knocked on a door. It opened. With the noise of a bell jangling, a heavy block of light fell out on the cobblestones.

Then Imrhien had shrunk back, turning her face away, but Sianadh took her arm in a firm grip, propelling her forward, and without knowing how, she was inside, in the house with the door shut at her back, surrounded by moving hands, exclamations of delight, shouts of welcome.

At this point, recollections became somewhat blurred. There had been three faces—the goodwife with the calm, searching gaze and, escaping from her wimple, a wisp of copper hair graying too much to match Sianadh's; on her forehead a painted blue disk. The broad-faced young man, perhaps twenty years of age, with the look that questioned and the ready smile, his hair rufescent as glowing embers. The lass, of a similar age to herself, with the coloring of her brother and the eyes that, when they alighted upon the newcomer, could not help revealing stark disgust and fear no matter how she endeavored to conceal it. Her smiles did not reach her blue eyes.

“How fare you?” they had asked Sianadh searchingly, between embraces.

“None of your business,” he had shot back, roaring with laughter the while, lifting the red-haired lass and whirling her around so that she shrieked with genuine delight.

Then Imrhien's burden had been taken from her, and she was too weary to care where it was set. She found herself seated at a table in front of a bowl of pottage. Sianadh was eating and talking with his mouth full on the other side of the table, waving his spoon in one hand and a hunch of bread in the other. There was firelight and candlelight and a tankard of some warm liquid thrust into her hands that, when sipped, coursed down her throat and through her veins like green fire, refreshing and soothing. Someone led her upstairs to this room, and as she fell, clothed, into bed, the last words that came drifting up from below were Sianadh's: “Nay, it
ain't
got fleas, and 'tis
a girl
.”

Downstairs in the morning, Sianadh's sister, Ethlinn, was drawing off water from a kettle over the fire and pouring it into a linen-draped wooden tub behind a curtain of heavy cloth in the corner. She wore shades of blue and gray—the colors of a carlin. Turning as the guest descended, she smiled, then placed the jug on the table and wiped her hands on her apron. The hands flew in intricate gestures. Imrhien shook her head. The handspeak was too fast, and there were signs she had not learned. Smiling as if she understood this, too. Ethlinn gestured toward the bath. Something about fleas rankled in the guest's mind, but she thought this goodwife had not been the one who had asked about them, and the bathwater, scented with apple-blossom, was inviting. Soon she was immersed in warm water behind the drapery, reflecting on the only other bath she could remember, feeling the long, burnished curls, once stubble, resting wet on her shoulders.

Surely this house was the best place in Erith, and if only she could find herself a face, an ordinary face at which nobody would look twice, she could live here forever, bathing in apple-blossom and slumbering in lavender.

A cure would cost dearly. Struck by sudden concern as to the security of the treasure caskets, she climbed out of the tub and dried herself, reaching for clothing Ethlinn had left folded on a stool. These were not her gray spidersilk garments but peasant garb, clean and patched, probably belonging to Ethlinn's daughter, Muirne of the disgusted eyes, who was similarly slight in build but not as tall as she. There was a linen kirtle, tight-fitting, with sleeves buttoned from wrist to elbow, a calico surcoat with a fuller sleeve reaching to the elbow, a plain girdle, a peplum for her hair, her old taltry with a newly stitched cover replacing the stained, worn one, a woollen cloak, her cracked old rooster tilhal. Girls' clothes. There was no choice, no option, but to face reality.