Tempi pointed at a lower branch. He wore his plain grey homespun today, and without his mercenary reds, he looked even less imposing.
I looked where Tempi was pointing and saw the branch had been snapped, but not badly enough to break off.
“So someone has been through here?” I asked
Marten shrugged his bow higher up on his shoulder. “I was. I did this last night.” He looked at us. “See how even the leaves that aren’t hanging strange are starting to wilt?
I nodded.
“That means someone has been by this way within a day or so. If it’s been two or three days, the leaves will brown out and die. You see both close to each other . . .” He looked at me.
“It means you have someone moving through the area more than once, days apart.”
He nodded. “Since I’m scouting and keeping an eye out for bandits, you’ll be the ones with your noses to the ground. When you find something like this, call me.”
“Call?” Tempi cupped his hands around his mouth and turned his head in different directions. He made a wide gesture to the surrounding trees and put his hand to his ear, pretending to listen.
Marten frowned. “You’re right. You can’t just go shouting for me.” He rubbed the back of his neck in frustration. “Damn, we didn’t think this all the way through.”
I smiled at him. “I thought it through,” I said, and brought out a rough wooden whistle I’d carved last night. It only had two notes, but that was all we needed. I put it to my mouth and blew. Ta-ta DEE. Ta-ta DEE.
Marten grinned. “That’s a Will’s Widow, isn’t it? The pitch is dead on.”
I nodded. “That’s what I do.”
He cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, Will’s Widow is also called a night-jar.” He grimaced apologetically. “Night-jar, mind you. That’ll catch at the ear of any experienced woodsman like a fishhook if you go blowing it every time you want me to come take a look at something.”
I looked down at the whistle. “Black hands,” I swore. “I should have thought of that.”
“It’s a good idea,” he said. “We just need one for a daytime bird. Maybe a gold piper.” He whistled two notes. “That should be simple enough.”
“I’ll carve a different one tonight,” I said, then reached down for a twig. I snapped it and handed half to Marten. “This will do if I need to signal you today.”
He looked at the stick oddly. “How exactly will this help?”
“When we need your opinion on something we’ve found, I’ll do this.” I concentrated, muttered a binding, and moved my half of the stick.
Marten jumped two feet up and five feet back, dropping the stick. To his credit, he didn’t shout. “What in ten hells was that?” he hissed, wringing his hand.
His reaction had startled me, and my own heart was racing. “Marten, I’m sorry. It’s just a little sympathy.” I saw a wrinkle in between his eyebrows and changed my tack. “Just a small magic. It’s like a bit of magic string I use to tie two things together.”
I imagined Elxa Dal swallowing his tongue at this description, but pressed ahead. “I can tie these things together, so when I tug on mine . . .” I moved to stand over where his half of the twig lay on the ground. I raised my half, and the half on the ground lifted into the air.
My display had the desired effect. Moving together, the two twigs looked like the crudest, saddest string puppet in the world. Nothing to be frightened of. “It’s just like invisible string, except it won’t get tangled or caught on anything.”
“How hard will it pull at me?” he asked warily. “I don’t want it yanking me out of a tree when I’m scouting.”
“It’s just me on the other end of the string,” I said. “I’ll just jiggle it a bit. Like the float on a fishing line.”
Marten stopped wringing his hand and relaxed a little. “Startled me is all,” he said.
“That’s my fault,” I said. “I should have warned you.” I picked up the stick, handling it with a deliberate casualness. As if it were nothing more than an ordinary stick. Of course it was nothing more than an ordinary stick, but Marten needed to be reassured as to that point. It’s like Teccam said, nothing in the world is harder than convincing someone of an unfamiliar truth.
Marten showed us how to see when leaves or needles had been disturbed, how to spot when stones had been walked across, how to tell if moss or lichen had been damaged by someone’s passing.
The old huntsman was a surprisingly good teacher. He didn’t belabor his points, didn’t talk down to us, and didn’t mind questions. Even Tempi’s trouble with the language didn’t frustrate him.
Even so, it took hours. A full half day. Then, when I thought we were finally finished, Marten turned us around and started leading us back toward the camp.
“We’ve already been that way,” I said. “If we’re going to practice, let’s practice in the right direction.”
Marten ignored me and kept walking. “Tell me what you see.”
Twenty paces later, Tempi pointed. “Moss,” he said. “My foot. I walked.”
Realization dawned, and I began to see all the marks Tempi and I had made. For the next three hours, Marten walked us step by humiliating step back through the trees, showing us everything we had done to betray our presence there: a scuff against the lichen on a tree trunk, a piece of freshly broken rock, the discoloration of overturned pine needles.
Worst of all were a half-dozen bright green leaves that lay shredded on the ground in a tidy semicircle. Marten raised an eyebrow, and I blushed. I had plucked them from a nearby bush, idly shredding them while listening to Marten.
“Think twice and step carefully,” Marten said. “And keep an eye on each other.” He looked back and forth between Tempi and me. “We’re playing a dangerous game here.”
Then Marten showed us how to cover our tracks. It quickly became clear that a poorly concealed sign was often more obvious than one simply left alone. So over the next two hours we learned how to hide our mistakes and spot mistakes that others had tried to hide.
Only then, as afternoon was turning to evening, did Tempi and I begin searching this swath of forest bigger than most baronies. We walked close together, zigzagging back and forth, looking for any sign of the bandits’ trail.
I thought about the long days stretching out ahead of us. I’d thought searching the Archives had been tedious. But looking for a broken twig in this much forest made hunting for the gram seem like going to the baker for a bun.
In the Archives I had the chance to make accidental discoveries. In the Archives I’d had my friends: conversation, jokes, affection. Looking sideways at Tempi, I realized I could count the words he had said today: twenty-four, and the number of times he had met my eye: three.
How long would this take? Ten days? Twenty? Merciful Tehlu, could I spend a month out here without going mad?
With thoughts like this, when I saw some bark chipped off a tree and a tuft of grass bent the wrong way, I was flooded with relief.
Not wanting to get my hopes up, I motioned to Tempi. “Do you see anything here?” He nodded, fidgeting with the collar of his shirt, then pointed to the grass I’d spotted. Then he pointed to a scuffed bit of exposed root I hadn’t noticed.
Almost light-headed with excitement, I pulled out the oak twig and signaled Marten. I twitched it very gently, not wanting to send him into another panic.
It was only two minutes before Marten came out of the trees, but in that time, I had already formed three plans as to how to track and kill the bandits, composed five apologetic soliloquies to Denna, and decided that when I got back to Severen, I would donate money to the Tehlin church as thanks for this tangible miracle.
I expected Marten to be irritated that we’d called him back so soon. But his expression was purely matter-of-fact as he came to stand next to us.
I pointed out the grass, the bark, and the root. “Tempi spotted the last.” I said, giving credit where credit is due.
“Goo
d,” he said seriously. “Good job. There’s also a bent branch over there.” He gestured a few paces off to the right.
I turned to face the direction the trail seemed to indicate. “Odds are they’re going to be north of here,” I said. “Farther from the road. Do you think it would be better to scout things out a bit now, or wait until tomorrow when we’re fresh?”
Marten squinted at me. “Good lord, boy. These aren’t real trail signs. So obvious, all so close together.” He gave me a long look.“I left them. I needed to make sure you weren’t going to glaze over after a few minutes of looking.”
My elation fell from some place in my chest and landed around my feet, shattering like a glass jar tipped from a high shelf. My expression must have been pitiful, as Marten gave me an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. I should have told you. I’ll be doing it off and on every day. It’s the only chance we have to stay alert. This isn’t my first time hunting through haystacks, you know.”
The third time we called Martin back, he suggested we make a standing wager. Tempi and I would win a ha’penny for every sign we found, and he’d win a silver bit for every one we missed. I jumped at the offer. Not only would it help keep us on our toes, but five-to-one odds seemed rather generous.
This made the rest of the day pass quickly. Tempi and I missed a few signs: a log shifted out of place, some scattered leaves, and a broken spiderweb. I thought this last one was a bit unfair, but even so, by the time we headed back to camp that evening, Tempi and I were two pennies ahead.
Over supper, Marten told a story about a young widow’s son who left home to make his fortune. A tinker sold him a pair of magic boots that helped him rescue a princess from a tower high in the mountains.
Dedan nodded along while he ate, smiling as if he’d heard it before. Hespe laughed in places, gasped in others, the perfect audience. Tempi sat perfectly still with his hands folded in his lap, showing none of the nervous restlessness I’d come to expect from him. He stayed that way through the entire story, listening while his dinner grew cold.
The story was a good one. There was a hungry giant and a riddle game. But the widow’s son was clever, and in the end he brought the princess back and married her. It was a familiar story, and listening to it reminded me of days long gone, back when I had a home, a family.
CHAPTER EIGHTY
Tone
THE NEXT DAY MARTEN left with Hespe and Dedan while Tempi and I remained behind to keep an eye on the camp.
With nothing else to occupy my time, I started gathering extra firewood. Then I searched for useful herbs in the undergrowth and brought water from the nearby spring. Then I busied myself by unpacking, sorting, and rearranging everything in my travelsack.
Tempi disassembled his sword, meticulously cleaning and oiling all the pieces. He didn’t look bored, but then again, he never looked like anything.
By midday I was nearly mad with boredom. I would have read, but I hadn’t brought a book. I would have sewn pockets into my threadbare cloak, but I didn’t have any spare cloth. I would have played my lute, but a trouper’s lute is designed to carry music through a noisy taproom. Out here, the sound of it could carry for miles.
I would have chatted with Tempi, but trying to have a conversation with him was like playing catch with a well.
Still, it seemed to be my only option. I walked over to where Tempi sat. He had finished cleaning his sword and was making small adjustments to the leather grip. “Tempi?”
Tempi lay aside his sword and came to his feet. He stood uncomfortably close to me, with barely more than eight inches of space between us. Then he hesitated and frowned. It wasn’t much of a frown, barely a thinning of the lips and a slight line between his eyebrows, but on Tempi’s blank sheet of a face, it stood out like a word written in red ink.
He backed away from me by two good paces, then eyed the ground between us and stepped forward slightly.
Understanding dawned on me. “Tempi, how close do Adem stand?”
Tempi looked at me blankly for a second, then burst out laughing. A shy smile flickered onto his face, making him look very young. It left his mouth quickly, but lingered around his eyes. “Smart. Yes. Different in Adem. For you, close.” He stepped uncomfortably close, then backed away.
“For me?” I asked. “Is it different for different people?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“How close for Dedan?”
He fidgeted. “Complicated.”
I felt a familiar curiosity flicker up inside me. “Tempi,” I asked. “Would you teach me these things? Teach me your language?”
“Yes,” he said. And though his face betrayed none of it, I could hear a great weight of relief in his voice. “Yes. Please. Yes.”
By the end of the afternoon, I had learned a wild, useless scattering of Ademic words. The grammar was still a mystery, but that is how it always begins. Luckily, languages are like musical instruments: the more you know, the easier it is to pick up new ones. Ademic was my fourth.
Our major problem was that Tempi’s Aturan was not very good, which gave us little common ground. So we drew in the dirt, pointed, and waved our hands quite a bit. Several times, when mere gestures were not enough, we ended up performing something close to pantomime or little mummer’s plays in order to get our meaning across. It was more entertaining than I had expected.
There was one stumbling block the first day. I had learned a dozen words and thought of another that would be useful. I made a fist and pretended to throw a punch at Tempi.
“Freaht,” he said.
“Freaht,” I repeated.
He shook his head. “No. Freaht.”
“Freaht,” I said carefully.
“No,” he said firmly. “Freaht is . . .” He bared his teeth and worked his jaw as if he were biting something. “Freaht.” He punched his fist into his palm.
“Freaht,” I said.
“No.” I was amazed at the weight of condescension in his voice. “Freaht.”
My face got hot. “That’s what I’m saying. Freaht! Freaht! Fre—”
Tempi reached out and smacked me in the side of the head with the flat of his hand. It was the same way he had struck Dedan last night, the way my father had cuffed me when I was being troublesome in public. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt, it was just startling. No one had done that to me in years.
Even more startling was that I hardly saw it. The motion was smooth and lazy and faster than snapping your fingers. He didn’t seem to mean anything insulting by it. He was merely getting my attention.
He lifted his sandy hair and pointed to his ear. “Hear,” he said firmly. “Freaht.” He bared his teeth again, making a biting motion. “Freaht.” Raised fist. “Freaht. Freaht.”
And I did hear it. It wasn’t the sound of the word itself, it was the cadence of the word. “Freaht?” I said.
He favored me with a small, rare smile. “Yes. Good.”
Then I had to go back and relearn all the words, making note of their rhythm. I hadn’t really heard it before, just mimicked it. Slowly, I discovered each word could have several different meanings depending on cadence of the sound that composed them.
I learned the all-important phrases “What does that mean?” and “Explain that more slowly,” in addition to a couple dozen words: Fight. Look. Sword. Hand. Dance. The dumbshow I had to perform to get him to understand the last of these left both of us laughing.
It was fascinating. The differing cadences of each word meant the language itself had a sort of music to it. I couldn’t help but wonder . . .
“Tempi?” I asked. “What are your songs like?” He looked at me blankly for a moment, and I thought he might not understand the abstract question. “Could you sing me an Adem song?”
“What is song?” he asked. In the last hour, Tempi had learned twice as many words as I had.
I cleared my throat and sang:Little Jenny no-shoes went a-walking with the wind.
She was looking for a bonny boy to laugh
and make her grin.
Upon her head a feather cap, upon her lips a whistle.
Her lips were wet and honey sweet. Her tongue was sharp as thistle.
Tempi’s eyes went wide as I sang. He practically gaped.
“You?” I prompted, pointing to his chest. “Can you sing an Adem song?”
His face flushed a burning red, and a dozen emotions ran wild and undisguised over his face: astonishment, horror, embarrassment, shock, disgust. He got to his feet, turning away and chattering something in Ademic far too quickly for me to follow. He looked for all the world as if I’d just asked him to strip naked and dance for me.
“No,” he said, managing to collect himself somewhat. His face was composed again, but his fair skin was still flushed a violent red. “No.” Looking down at the ground, he touched his chest, shaking his head. “No song. No Adem song.”
I got to my feet as well, not knowing what I’d done wrong. “Tempi. I’m sorry.”
Tempi shook his head. “No. Nothing sorry.” He drew a deep breath and shook his head as he turned and started to walk away. “Complicated.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
The Jealous Moon
THAT EVENING MARTEN SHOT a trio of fat rabbits. I dug roots and picked a few herbs, and before the sun was down the five of us sat down to a meal made perfect by the addition of two large loaves of fresh bread, butter, and a crumbly cheese too local to have any specific name.
Spirits were high after a day of good weather, and so with dinner came more stories.
Hespe told a surprisingly romantic tale of a queen who loved a serving boy. She told her story with a gentle passion. And if her telling didn’t show a tender heart, the looks she gave Dedan as she spoke of the queen’s love did.
Dedan, however, failed to see the marks of love on her. And with a folly I have rarely seen equaled, he began to tell a story he’d heard at the Pennysworth Inn. A tale of Felurian.
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