by JA Andrews
Killien nodded and clapped Lukas on the shoulder. “Well done. Divide them into three bags. Make one light enough for Sini, and give Rett the other.”
Lukas gave the Torch a quick bow and left, taking the vitalle with him. The energy of the stones faded away.
Will turned back to his food, letting his heart slow. The amount of power held in that bag was astonishing.
“What were those?” he asked Hal quietly.
“Heatstones,” Hal answered. “For our trip north. I didn’t think the stonesteep would deliver.”
“I’ve never met a stonesteep.” Will paused, wondering how much Hal would talk about. “I’ve heard some stories, though. I know a bit about Mallon since he invaded Queensland. He’s called Mallon the Rivor there, instead of Mallon the Undying.”
“He didn’t earn the Undying until after the war.”
Will turned in surprise. “But the war ended because of his death.”
“No one knows if he’s dead. They never found his body.”
Hal was unconcerned, but a chill passed through Will at the sentiment. Mallon wasn’t dead. At least he hadn’t been dead a year ago when the elf Ayda, had showed him Mallon, still alive, but trapped inside his own body, held prisoner by the elves.
Of course it’d been ages since he left the message for Alaric at the palace. The Keepers must have found a way to kill him by now.
“The other stonesteep that comes up often,” Will continued, “is Kachig the Bloodless.”
Hal raised an eyebrow.
“He’s a stonesteep right? I can’t get anyone to actually tell me about him.”
Hal let out a short laugh. “He’s the one who trained Mallon. No one knows which was more powerful, but Kachig was more vicious. He’s been dead for ten years, and we still don’t speak his name if we can help it.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re not stupid.”
“Hal,” Killien interrupted, heading into the house, his voice sharp. “Get to work.”
Hal finished his saso in one long drink. “Every year.” He pushed himself up and left.
Will watched him go, torn between curiosity and irritation. Why would people not talk about a dead man?
He finished his fish quickly and headed back inside to Killien’s bookshelf.
Children ran in the front door, jostling past Will, grabbing baskets of books and lugging them out to the wagon.
“I’ve got Sightings of Dragons,” one called out.
Another peered into his basket and grimaced. “All I’ve got is barley recipes.”
Will stared after them as Killien walked up.
“The children can read?” Will watched them haul the baskets outside. “I’ve barely met any adults on the Sweep who can.”
“Most of the Morrow can read. I like my people to be free. But we’re the smallest clan on the Sweep, so we’re always in danger. The more we learn, the more we understand the past, the easier it is to decipher the present. And the easier it is to remain free.”
Will took these words and let them sink in. “I couldn’t agree more.”
The Torch raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize the people of Gulfind valued reading so highly.”
Will paused, thinking of the massive amounts of ignorance among the people of Gulfind. The hills of Gulfind were full of gold, all of life was spent on entertainment and paying for guards to protect their wealth.
“I wish the people of Gulfind would value things like history,” Will answered. “But it’s not entertaining enough for most of them.”
Killien straightened the books on the shelf. “How long have you been away from home?”
Will dropped into his usual story. “Almost a year. I spent last summer traveling among some of the northern cities. Last winter I came south to Bermea, Tun and any other cities I could find. Then all the Roven headed north, and I was on my way home. I had reached Porreen yesterday and since you were still here, I stayed the night.”
“And why did a storyman from Gulfind come to the Sweep in the first place?”
“I like to travel.” Will shrugged. “I didn’t intend to get as far as I did, honestly. I started traveling, ended up on the edge of the Sweep, and just kept going.”
Killien gave him a slight smile. “That’s what the grasses do, they call to you, pulling you on over the next rise, through the next valley.”
It hadn’t been the grasses pulling him, but Will nodded anyway.
“Have you learned many Roven stories while you’ve been here?”
“A good number.”
“Which is your favorite?”
None. The Roven stories all felt…foreign. Like they had the wrong pacing. Or the wrong ending. There were endless tales of battles between clans, most of which were only told in the victors’ clans. He hadn’t heard a single one that named the Morrow Clan as the winner. In fact, the Morrow Clan was so small and insignificant, it barely made it into any tales at all.
“Roven tales have a strong sense of…location.” Will tried to think of a diplomatic answer. “For instance I heard a tale in Bermea about besting the Tun in a battle. Then I heard the same story in Tun, except with the Tun winning.” Will paused. “So I guess I don’t know about a favorite story. Every time I find one I like, I discover that it’s told differently in the next town.”
Killien grinned. “That’s the rule of the grassland. The truth changes between hilltops.”
“It does seem to.” Will paused and glanced around the room. “Lately I’ve heard a lot of stories about frost goblins.”
Killien’s smile faded.
“I wasn’t sure they were real,” Will said, “or that if they were, that they ever came out of the northern mountains, but the Roven I’ve met in the past weeks seem to believe that the frost goblins could be responsible for raids in the north.”
“They haven’t come out of the northern ice since my father was a child. That year they came in the fall, killed entire hunting parties and decimated herds. They’re more like a hive than like individual creatures. They’re not big, no taller than your waist, but they swarm over whatever they’re attacking. Often they don’t have weapons. They overrun with teeth and claws.”
The Torch’s voice had a dreadfulness to it that chilled Will, despite the bright morning around him. “That’s…unsettling.”
“It is,” Killien agreed. “They burrow in the ground. They can dig tunnels into deep snow or under the grass almost as fast as you can walk. If they’ve come onto the prairies this spring…” He glanced around at the people in the room. “So far it’s just rumors from clans farther to the west. But the rumors have the ring of truth to them.”
“How long will it take the clan to reach the rifts?”
“A fortnight. Maybe a couple days faster, if there’s perfect weather. If we encounter any rain storms or, stars help us, a heavy spring snow, it’ll slow us down.”
Killien caught sight of Flibbet’s book on the shelf and turned to Will with an impressed look. “Finished with the book already?”
Will nodded slowly. “Flibbet always manages to both ramble and be concise at the same time.”
“I’ve always thought the same.” Killien stepped up next to Will and ran his fingers along the spine of Flibbet’s book. “I can’t decide if he’s brilliant, or a little touched in the head.”
“Or just old.” Will laughed. “Old enough to know that most things are a waste of time. And that wasting time can be a beautiful thing.”
Killien raised an eyebrow.
“He wrote that about himself.” Will could still picture the small library in Marshwell where he’d found the skinny volume. “In a book titled Flibbet’s Rules for Life.”
“That is something I would like to read.”
“I can write it out for you.” The book had been thin, but the pages had been crammed with numbered rules written in a chaos of colors, the words sideways or upside down or spiraling into tiny print.
Killien’s other
eyebrow rose. “You memorized it?”
Will paused. “I don’t memorize it exactly.” He was oddly reluctant to explain. “Once I read a book, if I can remember the beginning, the rest of the book just sort of…follows.”
Killien studied him. “A useful skill for a storyman.”
Will bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment.
“No wonder you’re good at your job. Could you tell me everything you read this morning?”
Will glanced back at Flibbet. “Flibbet’s always been easy for me. The better written a book is, the easier it is for me to remember. The peddler, even though his books seem disjointed and capricious, somehow has this…thread that winds through his words. They lead to each other. And that makes them easy to remember.”
Killien looked at Will for a long, searching moment. “I would very much like a copy of Flibbet’s Rules.”
Something in Killien’s eyes made Will feel exposed. He pulled the edges of his mouth up into what hopefully looked like a smile. “If you have some paper, I’ll work on it this morning.”
Killien’s gaze pinned Will where he stood. “A day may not be long enough to enjoy your company, Will.”
Chapter Ten
Settled with a stack of paper and a new reed pen, Will began writing out Flibbet’s rules.
There were simple rules: Be more generous than you feel.
There were practical rules: Never poke a mountain bear. Or Never eat blue tunnel beetles. This one was followed by an adamant, Never.
There were ridiculous rules: Don’t dip your cuffs in the washing water. Or Keep an eye on the moon. She’ll cause no end of trouble if you don’t.
And tucked amid all these were the ones that Will had read the book for.
Everyone is clear-minded in their own mind.
Too much time alone traps a man in his own mind. Not enough time alone traps him in other’s.
It is a terrifying thing to be truly seen—but it is infinitely worse not to be.
There were 213 rules altogether.
When he finished, he had four blank pages left, so he wrote out a short, funny tale from Napon about a serving girl who’d run off to be a pirate.
Then, leaving the papers on the bookshelf, he picked out several history books about the Sweep and sat down to read.
He skimmed dull accounts of obscure Roven battles until the bustle made him feel useless. He offered to help a passing Roven. Everyone in Killien’s house seemed to know who he was. Whatever Killien had told them, if he wasn’t greeted with friendliness, they were at least polite, which was refreshing.
It occurred to him that he’d never spent so much time with Roven and not been called fetter bait. He spent the next several hours loading wagons with rugs, food, weapons, and leathers, which turned out to be far more educational than the books had been.
He learned that the furniture was left here to wait for their return in the fall. He learned that the wooden wagons had come mostly from merchants who’d brought their wares to the Sweep. Wood was in such high demand, it was more profitable to sell their wagon and buy a new one when they got home. There were enough in Porreen for every four or five families to share one. Unless they were wealthy like Killien, whose household filled three. And he learned that even helping someone with something like packing didn’t really earn you trust. Just mild goodwill.
He thought of Borto often, moving ever farther away with whatever knowledge he had of Ilsa, but, as Killien continued to shout at everyone, the clan was leaving at dawn tomorrow. Will would be on his way by then too. He checked on Shadow and found him well cared for and fed, and repeated to himself often that Borto would be easy to catch on the long, lonesome Sea Road.
Killien’s slaves and the Roven worked side by side. Will caught sight of Lukas several times, limping along with a pile of books in his arms or patiently directing some children on how to pack them into baskets.
In the end, he found Hal. The enormous man was in charge of the herds of the clan and his afternoon was spent directing people and animals in preparation for the journey north. For the first time in a year, Will began to feel at ease. Hal laughed and joked and complained with utter disregard to Will’s foreignness, his voice rumbling over the Roven accent like a wagon crunching along over hard clay.
Hours later Will leaned against the railing at the end of a long porch stretching across the largest building on the main square. He spun his ring, watching the crowd gather.
High, thin clouds reached across the sky like flame-colored fingers. He searched the sky, wondering where Talen had gone. Maybe the little hawk had finally flown off to another part of the Sweep. Feeling surprisingly disappointed at the idea, Will let his eyes follow the trails of light from the setting sun, wishing it was sunrise instead. It would be good to be on his way out of Porreen and off the Sweep, following Borto.
Killien’s words from this morning haunted him. A day may not be long enough. But this day had been more than enough. Tonight Will needed to tell a story that wouldn’t disappoint the Torch, but also wouldn’t be good enough for Killien to want him to stay.
He dropped his gaze back down to the square, mentally trimming out parts of the story, making it weaker.
Lukas limped up onto the far corner of the porch, followed by two more slaves. Their grey tunics were as well-made and clean as Lukas’s. The first was a large man who towered over Lukas and most of the Roven nearby. He was probably almost forty, with a receding hairline but a full unruly beard of dusty brown hair didn’t quite cover his pleasantly distant expression.
The other was maybe fifteen years old, still more of a willowy girl than a woman. The top of her blond head didn’t even come up to the larger slave’s shoulder. She stood against the railing, talking quietly, but animatedly while both men listened to her with a sort of brotherly patience.
The orange of the sky had tinged the square with a flamelike glow. The clay houses were a dull amber, the packed ground of the square was the color of trampled honey, and the head of every single person was flaming red. An enormous fire of dung patties flared to life in front of the balcony with a smoky, grassy smell, casting a flickering red light into any existing shadows.
Hal leaned against the wall of the house beside Will, peppering him with questions about dwarves.
“Is it true they have a treasure room filled with jewels?”
“I didn’t see any, but I imagine they do.” Will looked out over the crowd, hoping this would get started soon. “Probably more than one. Any jewels in Duncave belong to all the dwarves and are taken to the High Dwarf. But every dwarf I’ve seen has jewels on their weapons, on their tools, on thick rings. One had twelve rubies set in the handle of her favorite pitcher. She told me it was a family heirloom. These, for some reason, don’t need to be given to the High Dwarf, so you can imagine how many family heirlooms there are.”
“Are the walls decorated with gold and gems that sparkle in the torchlight?”
“You’re not fascinated with dwarves, Hal.” Sora came up onto the porch. “You’re fascinated with treasure.”
Hal ignored her.
“Actually,” Will answered him, “the tunnel walls are mostly earth and stone. And the dwarves don’t carry torches. Which makes sense when you think what it would be like to live in caves filled with smoke. They have a moss that puts off an orange glow. It gets brighter if they put water on it, so they carry lanterns made from shallow bowls with moss and water in them. They don’t make as much light as a torch, but maybe as much as a candle. And once you’ve been in the tunnels for several minutes, it’s more than enough.”
Hal shook his head. “I’ve never been so envious of any man. You should come north with us and entertain us on the long, boring journey.”
Will’s fingers tensed on his ring.
Sora raised an eyebrow. “I bet he would love that.”
Even without the need to hurry after Borto, the idea of spending weeks traveling with the Roven sounded tortuous. He was spared the
pressure of a polite answer by Killien striding up onto the porch. Will hadn’t seen the Torch for hours and he gave the man a slight bow. Behind Killien a small Roven woman climbed the steps. She was in the end stages of pregnancy and a slave woman held her elbow cautiously. Will’s eyes caught on the slave’s dark curls. She bent over, arranging some cushions on a chair for the Roven woman and helped her sit. Then she sat on the porch behind the woman’s chair.
She sat forward and something painful clamped down on Will’s heart.
The slave was the spitting image of Will’s mother. It was his mother’s face from years ago. Before Will had left to join the Keepers. Before his father had been killed. Before Ilsa had been taken.
The Roven woman leaned forward, blocking Will’s view of the slave and fixed Will with a look that pierced through him. “Fett,” she hissed.
Will tore his eyes away from them, his heart pounding so loud he almost didn’t hear Hal.
“Pick someone else to stare at.” Hal’s voice was pitched low but urgent. “That’s Lilit, Killien’s wife. She doesn’t share his…interest in foreigners.”
Killien’s wife? Will shot a quick glance over. Lilit had turned away dismissively. She was younger than Killien, in her mid-twenties to his thirties. An intricate weave of braids held back mahogany hair that seemed to glow red under the ruddy sky. She wore a dress dyed a vibrant green and stitched with yellow runes along every seam.
Beside her the slave woman, dressed in a simple grey dress, brushed her own loose hair back with a motion that was achingly like Will’s mother’s.
It couldn’t be Ilsa, could it? He tried to match up this face to the last time he’d seen her, terrified, disappearing into the night, his mind grabbing for similarities.
The slave woman smiled at something Lilit said and the image of Ilsa’s terrified face blew away like a puff of mist. A different memory surfaced. One he hadn’t thought of for so long it had turned brittle, like old paper. His baby sister, smiling and chasing that stupid goat through the grass. That was the face he was looking at. That was the smile.
