The Bitterbynde Trilogy (40 page)

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Her eyes searched the rough landscape of his face. The very intensity of her gaze was a fine chain linking the two of them together.

“Imrhien—it be the Ertish word for butterfly.”

Without another word, Sianadh turned abruptly. The chain snapped. He swung himself up into his saddle and rode off with the young Sulibhain. Liam, having taken his leave, followed.

Tears glistened on Muirne's face. “Mother, shall we see them again?”

Ethlinn stood with her hands pressed together, gazing down the street.

Stormriders on 'tween-city runs reported that an incoming road-caravan—many of whose members were to join up with Serrure's—had been delayed by harassment from large numbers of road-haunters. Not only was it late, but once the convoy arrived, time would be needed for repairs. This put back the departure date of Serrure's Caravan. It would not, now, leave for another week or perhaps two. From time to time other, smaller convoys were leaving—however, these being less reputable and less well guarded, Ethlinn deemed them unsuitable for her children and Imrhien.

Meanwhile, the move from Bergamot Street to Clove Street had to be made quickly—to this purpose, everything had been boxed in advance. The cart arrived late on the same night of Sianadh's departure, its wheels muffled with straw. Quickly and quietly they loaded their belongings. Ethlinn locked the door, and they drove away with a minimum of fuss. All seemed to be going well, but as the cart turned the corner out of Bergamot Street, Muirne abruptly jerked bolt upright.

“The brooch!”

<> her mother asked.

“The gold brooch Uncle Bear gave me for my marksmanship—I have left it behind, hidden for safekeeping behind the wall-linings!”

<> Ethlinn insisted, <>

“But it is a prize for my skill at archery! It is special. And he gave it to me. I would trade all my gold for it.”

<>

Muirne shuttered her face like a window.

Welcoming lamps shone softly from Roisin Tuillimh's large, comfortable abode. Efficiently, swiftly, the cart was unloaded and driven away.

“Weariness sits heavy on you all,” said gray-haired Roisin. “Come rest awhile, partake of milk and honey to refresh, before your heads meet pillows. Some commotion I heard just now, perhaps your seelie helper the bruney. From your luggage it unloaded itself, methinks. If it stays, 'twill find 'tis never idle within these walls, I trow—my servants' hands were erst full enough with but one mistress to wait upon—oh, and of course the lynxes, my pampered pets. The maids shall be told to leave your wight unmolested and not to spy, lest it should take offense and depart. And, dear Eth, a grounding-place for your Wand has been prepared beside the rose that grows in the front court.”

That night, when all were abed, Imrhien heard the soft sounds of Muirne moving about in the next room. She lighted a candle and stole in like some pale haunter of the marshes. Muirne, fully gowned in her emerald velvet, was about to descend the stair. She started guiltily, one hand on the banister, a dark-lantern in the other. Shadows enfolded her face like a mask.

“Go back to bed,” she whispered.

Imrhien fixed her candle in the socket of an empty holder. <>

“I cannot go in daylight. People would see. I might be followed.”

Muirne started to go down the stairs. Imrhien grabbed her elbow.

<>

Muirne hesitated, then nodded, relief flashing across her features. She waited while Imrhien dressed herself hurriedly in her magenta brocade, throwing across her shoulders a cloak the color of the evening ocean. Together the two damsels went silently out of the front door, crossed the tiny courtyard, and passed through the gate into the obscurity of the street.

At night, the city seemed to be another world. Angled roofs pitched and seesawed, black cutouts against the smoky veil obscuring the moon. Soft-footed the girls went, with covered lanterns, hugging the pools of inky shadow that flowed under walls. Straw blew down the street in dry wisps. A tame lynx ran along a wall and dropped down on the other side. In the distance someone screamed. A dog yapped, several streets away. Rowan tilhals hung over every door as a traditional precaution, even though wights seldom roamed in cities. Bruneys and such seelie domestic solitaries habitually remained indoors—their natural abodes were human shelters.

As the two girls drew near their destination, a knot of drunken revelers passed across the end of a street and caroused off down some lane, flinging back aberrant echoes of their incoherence. There were no nightwatchmen in this part of Tarv, to swing glaring lanterns into the faces of late loiterers and ask questions.

Bergamot Street seemed empty. There was no sign of movement. Soundlessly Muirne turned the key in the door of the deserted house. The irritating bell failed to ring, having been removed. All was quiet. Uneasily Imrhien wondered whether it was too quiet—she could remember no night stillness as profound as this, not in this street. Usually one could detect someone coughing in an upstairs window, the susurration of voices from a back room, the thin wail of an infant. The back of her neck tingled, as at the approach of the unstorm. She listened for a footfall, for any sound to crack the hard silence, but a numbness pressed on her ears like wads of wool.

The interior of the house felt unfamiliar in its emptiness. It seemed sad and somehow eerie, like an abandoned ship found drifting on the tide. With the lanterns partially uncovered, the intruders ascended the creaking stairs. The bare room above still held the lingering scent of lavender and something more, undefinable. Muirne groped behind the sackcloth on the walls.

“Here it be.”

She fastened the brooch to her gown, beneath her mantle.

They took up their lanterns again, making their way down to the front door. Shadows fled before their feet. The back window of the lower room stared: a blank eye.

The oppressive feeling grew stronger when they entered the street. It felt like a warning. Imrhien wished Muirne would hurry—she was fumbling with the lock, having trouble with the key.

Then the key clattered to the cobbles with a sudden noise like the riving of a muted bell. Cold on the stones, it lay alone, and no hand reached to retrieve it. The abductors had sprung from behind, clapping one hand across the mouths of their victims, twisting an arm behind their backs and dragging them to a cart waiting around the corner. In vain the girls struggled. A whip cracked twice, and the cart clattered away.

On the street, the key floated in a pool of shadow.

The house sprouted like a toadstool down by the river, in a dilapidated section of the city. Oily water glinted between ramshackle edifices bereft of paint and tiles. The area stank of mold and rising damp.

Little did the captives glimpse of their new surroundings before they were thrust roughly through the door, divested of their jewelry, dragged to a small, cheerless room, and locked in, alone. For a long time, Muirne sobbed quietly. Her companion prowled the room. It was furnished only with a straw pallet, a couple of rough woollen blankets, and two buckets, one empty and the other full of water. In the gloom, none of these objects was easy to discern. Weak illumination was provided by pale moonlight through a barred window, high in one wall. From beyond the window came the lapping and gurgling of the river. An eldritch tingle raked Imrhien's spine—the faint sounds of scuttling overlaid the water's music. The room was also furnished with rats. The cellars of Isse Tower had harbored such rodents—she hated them with a vehemence far out of proportion to their few transgressions against her.

The rats stayed out of sight. Eventually Imrhien curled up at one end of the pallet and fell asleep.

She woke, stiff and cold, with Muirne lying red-eyed beside her. Daylight the color of gruel was leaking in between the window-bars.

“Ye,” Muirne said scornfully, lifting her tearstained face, “how could ye sleep? Have ye no mind as to what has happened, to what shall happen?”

Imrhien shook her head. This she had pondered, as slumber overcame her. It seemed obvious that the wizard's minions were carrying out their threat to harm Sianadh's kin if he damaged Korguth's reputation. But if so, why had they imprisoned herself and Muirne and not simply thrown them into the river? And if the abductors were indeed the wizard's henchmen, why had they not made their move as soon as Sianadh had threatened their master? Why had they waited until Ethlinn's house was empty? It made no sense.

Muirne said, “They were after
ye
, the
uraguhne
wizard's roustabouts, and they took
me
by mistake. I heard one of them say, ‘Which one is it?' to which another replied, ‘I know not. Take them both.' Now we shall both suffer the same fate, which, most likely, is to be taken to Namarre and sold as slaves. Ah, my poor mother!” She began again to weep.

A key rattled in the lock, and the door banged open. A burly man with a pockmarked face stood beyond it. Another, clad in servant's drab, lugged in a second straw pallet and threw it on the floor, followed by a couple of blankets and a dirty loaf of bread.

A third man strode in, his face almost invisible beneath a bushy brown beard. He wore merchant's yellow.

“Stand up and give us a look at you.”

Then he swore a violent oath as the prisoners obeyed.

“So, Weasel—this is what you fetch for me out of the gutters—a henna'd queen and a bleached hag.” He studied Imrhien from head to toe.

“A form a man could worship and a face from out of his worst nightmares.”

Imrhien shivered. The man had Mortier's stench.

“This could be better than I had hoped. Two for the price of one! 'Twill make for a fine show and a fine bidding after. Make sure you keep the little dancers well fed, Weasel—they shall need to be light on their feet.”

As though this were a clever joke, the man outside the room laughed.

“Aye, Scalzo,” grunted Weasel, the drab servant. The bearded man stamped out of the room, followed by Weasel, who slammed the door.

<>

Ignoring the impassioned signals, Muirne turned her face away.

Like all caged animals and incarcerated mortals, they took to pacing up and down. Their footsteps marked the passage of seconds, minutes, days. Seven short strides were the measure of their prison; that, they learned well. Once a day Weasel came bringing food that varied little—bread, pickled fish, and sometimes apples. He would stare at them with blank eyes, offering no conversation—completely devoid of compassion and fellow-feeling. Each morning Imrhien scratched the tally of the passing days on the wall with a piece of broken brick. As the row of marks lengthened, Muirne's silences became shorter and her antipathy crumbled.

To pass the time they played games—Cloth-Scissors-Rock, guessing games, charades. They planned escapes. Muirne extended Imrhien's knowledge of handspeak, and in return Imrhien related, as well as she could, her adventures with Sianadh among the mountains. Muirne wanted to know why she had been traveling there, but Imrhien avoided the subject, having promised Sianadh not to reveal the truth of the treasure at Waterstair. Nevertheless, out of the seed of the Ertish girl's interest, sympathy grew.

Except for the passing of a mild shang wind that raised hazy specters of mist, there was scant distinction of one day from the next.

“Why do they keep us here for so long?” mused Muirne. She answered herself: “Likely they wait for a Seaship to arrive in Tarv Port—a slaver to take us to Namarre. We have missed our place in Serrure's Caravan. It will have departed by now. Yet why should I be concerned about caravans? We shall be lucky enough to stay alive.”

On the fourteenth day, bickering voices arose beyond their door like angry wasps.

“We can wait no longer. Each day that passes brings more danger of discovery.”

“Soon it will come! It might well be today. Why waste what we have?”

“We have delayed far too long already.”

“What are you afraid of? The blue-faced crones? Poor Weasel, frightened of the grannies!”

“I say, get them out of here.”

“No. A good strong ghost-maker will come this night. I feel it.”

The voices faded as the men moved away, still arguing.

“Oh,” said Muirne in a small voice, “how
hreorig
. No doubt this be an unshielded house, and we are to be used as
gilfs
before we are sold.”

<> Imrhien's hands demanded.

“
Gilfs
—performers in shang. Folk who choose, or who are forced, to bare their heads in the unstorm and become part of some act or event that, during later unstorms, be shown to a paying audience. These shows, these unshielded houses, be illegal. The black-hearted
skeerda
criminals who run them charge a high fee for viewing and be always on the lookout for some new act to draw back old customers—new
gilfs
, more exciting stunts.”

<>

“I know not, but I dread to imagine. I have heard these things spoken of in quiet corners when older folk believed I could not overhear. The
gilf-
shows in these illegal houses—men are made to fight one another to the death or to wrestle wild animals. Sometimes they must jump through fiery hoops or walk upon hot coals, barefoot. Always they must perform acts of great daring. Through their fear, their images burn brighter on the shang.”

<>

“Oh, aye—great joy burns brightly, too, but it is easier for such
uraguhnes
as these to inspire fear than joy. And not the kind of gray, sweating fear that turns folk to stone, but the full-blooded terror that pushes them to deeds they could not normally do—that makes for better entertainment. It seems we are to be used for this, when the next shang wind comes, Ceileinh save us. There be worse things than death.”