The Safe-Keeper's Secret (3 page)
Read The Safe-Keeper's Secret Online
Authors: Sharon Shinn
Chapter One
E
iona had assigned names to all her dolls, and she was arranging them by how much she loved each of the people those dolls represented.
Her mother, of course, was first, followed closely by her brother, Reed. Her aunt Angeline was next, then Elminstra, then Lacey and Isadora. Of all the people she knew, Thomas was the very last, the person she liked least, and she not only put him at the end of the long line of dolls, she tossed him across the room so that his head landed under the bed.
Unfortunately, Thomas was visiting her mother's house this week, and she would have to be polite to him even though she didn't want to.
She had always liked Thomas just fine, until the last time he had come to visit. He was a Truth-Teller, a wanderer who went from village to village answering such questions as were posed to him and volunteering information that people might not have wanted to hear. Fiona was not the only one who disliked him because he had told her something that she would rather have believed was not true.
But Truth-Tellers could not lie. Falsehoods could not cross their lips. Anything they said had to be believed.
“Fiona's growing into a fine young girl, isn't she?” he'd said to her mother last time he was here. They'd all been sitting around the table, eating sweet apples and enjoying the late light of a midsummer evening. All except Reed, who'd been off playing with one of Elminstra's grandsons. “How old are you now? Eight?”
“I'll be ten this fall,” she had replied.
“Ten! So old! A woman grown before you know it,” he had said. He had a way of laughing when he talked, even when he told unpleasant facts, which was one of the reasons people did not like him. They thought he mocked them with unpalatable truths. He was gaunt and weathered from so much travel, and his dark hair and his curly beard were both a little unkempt. His brown eyes were set back in deep hollows, as though he looked out from a place of shadow on all the verities of the world.
“She's going to apprentice with Elminstra in a few years,” her mother said in her quiet voice. “Learn about herbing. She's already better in the garden than I am.”
“Not that that would take much,” Thomas said with a snort.
Fiona was offended, but her mother grinned. “I do well enough with tomatoes and beets. But Fiona can make anything grow.”
“Maybe she'll be the village witch, then, after Elminstra's time is done,” Thomas said.
“No,” Fiona said. “I'm going to do my mother's work. I'll be a Safe-Keeper.”
Thomas had looked straight at her with those deep and knowing eyes. “No,” he said, “you won't.”
Fiona had cried out in quite a fit of anger, but he had merely shrugged and peeled another apple. “I will
so
be a Safe-Keeper if I want to be,” Fiona had said again, glancing at her mother for support. But her mother had merely given her that quiet smile, hiding all her thoughts.
“You'll be what you choose to be,” Damiana had said, refusing to get into an argument or contradict Thomas or even seem to worry about what he had said.
“I
hate
you,” Fiona had declared, stomping from the room. And no one had chided her for that and neither had Damiana mentioned the whole incident later that night when she came to tuck the children into bed.
But Fiona
did
hate him, and she wished he was not here at her birthday party. She would just as soon not turn ten with Thomas the Truth-Teller sitting there, watching her with his considering eyes.
Reed came to find her in her room a few minutes after she had rearranged her dolls, putting Isadora before Lacey after all. They shared the small upstairs loft, its sloped ceiling so low that Reed would not long be able to stand upright under its beams. A sturdy wall divided her neat half from his untidy one.
“Fiona! Where are you? What are you doing? It's almost time to eat.”
“I'm just playing,” she called out.
He bounded through the door and landed with a bounce on her bed. Almost instantly, he changed his mind, scrambled to his feet, and dropped to the floor beside her. He could never sit still, this brother of hers; he was always charging off in one direction or another.
“Well, aren't you done playing by now?” he asked, his voice carefully patient. He had learned a long time ago that it was very difficult to hurry Fiona. If she wanted to sit here till dawn of the next day, dressing and organizing her dolls, sit here she would, even if the whole town gathered downstairs for a feast in honor of her birthday.
“Almost. Who's here?” she asked.
“Elminstra and two of her daughters and three of her grandchildren, and Dirk and his wifeâoh, and their baby!âand his dad, and Josh and Nedâ”
“Is Angeline here?”
He jumped to his feet and began to circle the room, touching the curtain, the oak dresser, the nightstand, in turn. “Not yet. But she said she might be late. She said not to wait dinner for her.”
“But I don't want to eat without Angeline!”
“Well, everybody else does! It smells really good and everyone is
hungry.
”
“I don't want to have to sit by Thomas.”
“Fine. I'll sit with Thomas. Greg and I will trip him if he tries to come over and talk to you.”
Greg was Elminstra's grandson, three months older than Reed. “I didn't say I wanted you to do anything to himâ”
“Just come downstairs and eat,” Reed said impatiently, coming to a halt in the middle of her hierarchy of dolls. “It's your birthday! We can't have the feast without you!”
She glanced up at him and smiled. For children who were not related by blood, they looked surprisingly alike. Both had fair skin and silky blond hair, Fiona's hair finer and whiter than Reed's, and both had slim, wiry builds that concealed their true strength. Reed was inexhaustible, able to run or play or even work tirelessly throughout the day. Fiona was not so active, but she knew she could endure almost anything. She had nearly cut a finger off one morning, slicing sweetroot at Elminstra's, and she hadn't even cried out when the knife went in. She had suffered every childhood disease without the smallest protest, and once, when she had fallen off a broad stone fence that she had been climbing, she had cracked her head open on a rock buried in the ground. She had not complained about that, either, not the littlest bit.
“It's your birthday, too,” she said. “They can't have the feast without you either.”
“Yes, but
I'm
going downstairs right this minute,” he said. “Please come? Make it a special day?”
She put her hand out and he pulled her to her feet. Already he was an inch or two taller than she was; everyone predicted he would be a big, strapping boy, one of those fair, happy yeomen who could be found standing at the ale booth at every county fair.
“It
is
a special day,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek. “Happy birthday.”
She followed him downstairs to find everything ready for the feast and the thirty or so neighbors gathered there quite ready to begin eating. A little cheer sounded when she and Reed appeared, and they were pushed to the front of the line that had formed around the table. “Birthday children are the first to eat!” someone cried. Fiona loaded up her plate and took it outside to where a grand mismatch of tables and chairs had been arrayed on the lawn, and she and Reed both settled in. Soon enough everyone was gathered around them, Damiana sitting next to Fiona, Greg beside Reed, Elminstra on the other side of Damiana, and all the other neighbors falling in as they chose. The foodâpotluck supplied by all the visiting friendsâwas delicious, and there was so much of it that nobody felt too greedy going back for seconds, or even thirds.
Thomas, who could usually be found right by Damiana's side any time he was in town, spent most of his time in conversation with Dirk and his father, a fact that Fiona viewed with darkling satisfaction. He must have realized that he had offended her on his last visit and was making amends by keeping out of her way now. That pleased her very much, but not so much as it would if he took back his words altogether.
“Mmm! This cherry pie is heavenly! Who could have made it?” Elminstra exclaimed.
“Ned's wife, I think. She said she had a new recipe,” Damiana replied.
“Well, she came by to get cherries from me last week, but she didn't say she was going to make anything this good.”
“I liked the baked chicken,” Lacey put in. “What spices do you suppose she used? Mine never turns out quite like that.”
“Dill and thyme,” Elminstra and Fiona said in unison, because it was the sort of thing any herbalist would know, and Fiona was taking pride in her ability to recognize all sorts of plants by their smell and flavor.
Elminstra beamed at her. “That's my girl! I'll have to send you to my sister over in Merendon some day. She can grow a whole field of crops that won't take purchase here.”
“Yes, please,” Fiona said. “I'd like that.”
Her mother reached over and tugged one of Fiona's blond braids. “Not for a while yet,” she said. “You're so little and Merendon is so far away. I want you to stay with me a while longer yet.”
“Oh, of course I will,” Fiona said earnestly. “I'll stay as long as you need me.”
This caused the other women to laugh, which caused Fiona to scowl. But she didn't have long to pout, because from the front of the house came the sound of a wagon creaking and a horse whickering.
“Is this the party?” came a woman's voice, somewhat faint as it carried around the house.
“Angeline!” Fiona shrieked. Reed was on his feet even before she was. They raced around the vegetable garden at the back of the house, ducked under the branches of the kirrenberry tree, and leaped over the gate without bothering to unlatch it. Angeline was just then climbing down from the wagon, and she flung her arms out to offer them an embrace.
“Look at you two! Reed, have you grown
again?
Fiona, your hair's so long! It's only been three months since I've seen youâhow can you have changed so much?”
They hugged her and danced around her and swore that they hadn't changed, not on the
inside
, and look, didn't she want to come in and see Reed's new slingshot, Fiona's new dolls?
“In a bit, yes, indeed, I want to see everything,” Angeline said with a laugh. “But first I must get my bags from the cart and say good-bye to my friendsâ”
Damiana spoke up from behind them, having come around the house in a more leisurely fashion. “Well, hello there,” she said in her warm voice. “I didn't realize Angeline was coming to town with the two of you. Are you staying for dinner? There's so much food!”
Till now, Fiona had paid no attention to the couple sitting in the front of the wagon, but at her mother's words, she looked up to see if she recognized them. The man and the woman looked pleasant enough, but Fiona was sure she'd never met them before. The woman was fair-haired and fragile-looking, wearing a fashionable blue dress over her brittle frame. Her companion was more hearty and robust, a well-dressed, wealthy-looking man with a kind expression. Fiona thought he was probably a merchant, since he certainly didn't appear to be a laborer. She thought his wife looked boring.
“We can't stay,” the woman said in a faint voice, seeming to need all her energy to summon a smile. “I want to go to the inn and lie down.”