Silvermay

by James Moloney

  And what did those seven days bring for Lucien? He could sit up now without any help from me. He knew me and he knew I wasn’t Nerigold. His little round face seemed to ask where she was. I burst into tears more than once when I saw him looking about for her. He made little noises now, not just complaints or cries to be fed; the natural sounds a baby makes as he discovers his own voice. Like everything else Lucien did far too early, he was learning to speak. What if his first word was ‘mumma’? He would say it to me and it wouldn’t be right.

  This thought disturbed me so much, I began to say my name to him while we played. ‘How’s my little Smiler?’ I’d ask as I tickled him and drew circles on his fleshy palms until he giggled in delight. ‘I’m not your mummy, I’m Silvermay.’ It seemed such a mouthful for his tongue. ‘Maymay,’ I said, making it easier. ‘Maymay will get you to Erebis Felan.’

  By the end of that week, he’d stopped looking for Nerigold and that tempted me to weep all the more, but I stopped myself, saying such girlish weakness was behind me now.

  ‘Your mother lives in Maymay’s head, little one,’ I said. ‘I only hope I live long enough to tell you about her.’

  We camped the seventh night with the lights of Ledaris flickering in the distance. Ryall had trapped two woodpigeons, which he spitted to roast over the coals. They would be a while yet, and Lucien was content after feeding from the nanny goat. We were exhausted, after another day’s walking. But thanks to Ryall’s devotion, we would enter Ledaris in the morning. Would Tamlyn be waiting for us as he’d teased that he might? I daydreamed, far too often, of the kiss I’d promised him.

  Superstition made me afraid that if I dwelt on such delights any more, I would snuff out their chances of ever taking place; and I did have a companion, after all, one who no longer irritated me simply by being here.

  ‘Have you been able to forget about your … er … your lapse of a few nights ago?’ I asked Ryall.

  He was staring into the fire and didn’t turn to face me, but not because he was still consumed by guilt. He was thinking deeply, as his answered showed.

  ‘No, I haven’t forgotten. I haven’t even tried. What Tamlyn said was rather wise, when you think about it. It’s because I can remember the fear that made me run that I’ll be able to stay and fight next time. He was right about the other thing too: a coward’s shame feels even worse.’

  I hadn’t expected to hear Tamlyn described as wise and Ryall’s words lifted my spirits. There was plenty of cleverness and guile among the Wyrdborn, which helped them trick and cheat to get their own way. That wasn’t wisdom, though. Wisdom was the preserve of commonfolk, who lacked Wyrdborn magic, so what Ryall had said was another sign of how Tamlyn had overcome his Wyrdborn blood.

  I was impatient for the dawn, so we could walk the last two miles and perhaps, yes, find Tamlyn waiting for my kiss. Thank you, Ryall, I said silently, and, encouraged by what he’d said, I was suddenly eager to keep him talking.

  ‘Do you miss your parents?’ I asked.

  ‘My mother, mostly,’ he answered quickly. ‘At least I have a memory of her. My father died before I was a year old.’ He sank deep into thought again and I waited, sensing he needed the comfort of words as much as I did. ‘But it’s not my memory, really. I was still very young when she died. It’s one I built out of stories your aunt told me about her. So they’re her memories, not mine.’

  His words reminded me of what I’d said to Lucien. ‘You sound cheated,’ I said, wondering if my little Smiler would feel the same.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, looking across at me now, as though I’d found the perfect word for what he felt. ‘Yes, cheated of what the world gives other people, even though your aunt did take good care of me. But I don’t think she ever loved me like her own, not the way you do with Lucien. I’ve heard you calling yourself Maymay. He’ll grow up thinking that’s the name for mother.’

  I didn’t want our talk to be about me and tried to steer it back towards Ryall. ‘You still must be looking forward to seeing my aunt again when you go home?’

  ‘Back to Nan Tocha, to the mountains and the mines? I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about my life there, without a real family, a family like yours, Silvermay. I don’t want to die in a mine like my father and my grandfather. I’m starting to think I won’t go back at all.’

  This was a surprise. I wondered, a little selfishly, if he was angling for an invitation to Haywode, to live with my family, with me! Did he still harbour dreams of hitching himself to Silvermay Hawker in one way or another? Despite the change in him, I wasn’t about to suggest it. I said nothing and waited to see where his thoughts were leading. And, again, he surprised me.

  ‘I’ve seen a lot of new things these last few days. I had no idea there was so much … space. I’m starting to see that this is just the beginning. How much more is there to the world?’

  It could have been me speaking to Hespa before Tamlyn and Nerigold walked wearily into my life.

  ‘You feel restless; you want something different from the life that seemed laid down for you,’ I said.

  He looked at me, a long, intense stare hinting at the briefest fear that I’d read his mind.

  ‘Don’t worry, Ryall, I’m no witch who can peek inside your head. It seems we have a common spirit, you and I, more than either of us realised.’

  It was time to say something else, too.

  ‘Ryall,’ I started hesitantly, ‘I’m very grateful for what you’ve done for Lucien and me. We couldn’t have made it to Ledaris without you, yet I haven’t always treated you fairly, have I? I regret that now.’

  Poor Ryall. He blushed bright enough to outglow the coals that roasted our dinner.

  ‘We need more firewood,’ he said, jumping quickly to his feet. And off he went into the moon-touched darkness, even though there was already a stack close by that would easily do us until morning.

  That morning came with a watery autumn light and we were quickly on our way. Every step closer to Ledaris brought greater amazement to Ryall’s face and the boyish excitement he’d shed in recent days reappeared. At Quickwater, he’d discovered his first river; here was his first city, and mine too. Ledaris rose up the slopes of a steep hillside, the houses white and the palest pink in the strengthening sun and fringed around by the green of hardy grasses and shrubs. On the crown of the hill, the religo’s keep squatted squarely like a stone giant proclaiming its dominance over everything in the streets below and the fields beyond the walls.

  We approached those walls, using the road now, since there was no other way to enter but through the city gates.

  ‘There’ll be no game to trap in the city,’ I told Ryall.

  ‘Unless you fancy rat for dinner,’ he replied with a quick chuckle and a nod towards some vermin that rummaged through a pile of refuse tossed over the wall.

  ‘Ew …’ I gasped. Two rats stood on top of a filthy mound eyeing us as though our bones would soon be theirs to gnaw. I shivered and hurried on at Ryall’s side. The rats weren’t the only foretaste of the city we were about to enter. Dangling from a pole above the gates, something large and dark turned slow circles in the breeze.

  ‘It’s some kind of cage,’ said Ryall when he saw me looking.

  Then he fell silent for he’d realised what was inside it at the same moment I did. The bones hadn’t started to appear through the flesh yet, but the eyes were gone from the face — a prized morsel for the crows, most likely — and the skin was dry and leathery, like any carcass left out in the weather. Except this was a human being, or at least it had been.

  A strip of cloth was draped across one side of the cage, daubed with blood-red marks that I knew were letters, even if I couldn’t name them.

  ‘What does it say?’ I asked Ryall.

  ‘Don’t ask me. Miners don’t learn to read any more than farmers do,’ he replied without embarrassment.

  A man was about to pass through the archway of the gates. ‘What does that sign say?’ I called quickly
before he was gone.

  He looked up without surprise, as though the cage and its sign were nothing unusual. ‘It says “Thief”,’ he replied, and, looking at the pair of us, intoned solemnly, ‘We don’t take much to thieves in Ledaris.’ Then, for no reason that I could see, he broke into a throaty laugh.

  Ryall didn’t join in any more than I did, and when the stranger noticed this he shut off the laughter as quickly as it had begun. In fact, he looked rather bemused. ‘Not laughing?’ he asked. ‘Surely you know I’ve made a joke.’

  I glanced nervously at Ryall who could only shrug his shoulders.

  With a sigh, the man leaned in close and said, ‘It’s a joke because half the inhabitants of this town are thieves. That one’s mistake,’ he pointed towards the dead man, ‘was to steal from the religo.’

  Then he looked at us more closely, me with Lucien strapped to my back and Ryall leading the goat by its halter, neither of us yet fully grown. Easy prey, that’s what he was thinking.

  We followed the man through the gates and into the narrow streets of Ledaris, which snaked their way up the slope or else turned off left and right into dingy alleyways barely wide enough for two people to pass.

  Was Tamlyn walking these streets looking for us?

  ‘Hello there, lass. Like the look of me, do you? I certainly like the look of you,’ said a man I’d watched approaching along the street.

  He changed direction suddenly and blocked my path, thinking the load on my back would anchor me to the spot. But I was more agile than he gave me credit for and ducked round him with ease. He turned sharply, but, instead of following, blew a mocking kiss, which sent a shudder through me.

  ‘Disgusting lout,’ I snapped, though he was too far off by then to hear me.

  ‘Yes, but you should be more careful, Silvermay,’ Ryall cautioned. ‘You’re staring at every man we pass.’

  Was I? I guessed it was true. I’d been searching for Tamlyn’s face.

  Ryall knew as much, too. ‘Be patient. If Tamlyn’s in Ledaris, he’ll find us.’

  The street widened into a square, which bustled with the morning market. Deep in the pocket of my dress I could feel Arnou Dessar’s coins that Tamlyn had given me before we parted.

  ‘How much are those apples?’ I asked a boy standing by his family’s barrow. ‘Half a royal for a dozen,’ he said. I’d see if we could do better before buying.

  A baker had his wares spread out invitingly on a trestle table, the first bread I’d seen since leaving Haywode. My mouth watered just taking in the aroma.

  ‘How much for your goat,’ a passing man asked.

  ‘He’s not for sale,’ I said.

  ‘Why’d you bring it to market then?’

  I shrugged, feeling stupid. ‘The goat’s all I have to feed this baby.’ I turned a little to let him see Lucien.

  ‘That one looks a bit big to be living on milk alone,’ said a woman older than my mother. She had a baby perched on her own hip, but it was a grandchild, I’d say. She saw my confusion and tried to explain. ‘You said you needed the goat to feed your baby. He should be eating food off a spoon by now. Believe me, I’ve raised five of my own and I’m grandmother to five more,’ she told me, bouncing the little one up and down.

  ‘Here,’ she went on, and from nowhere she produced a spoon crammed with a dollop of something soft which she pushed beyond my shoulder.

  I craned my neck to see Lucien close his mouth over the spoon. His eyes widened in delight and in a gulp it was down his throat and he was eager for more.

  ‘There, I was right,’ the woman said in delight. ‘Keep the goat, but he needs more now if he’s to grow big and strong.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no doubt he’s growing big,’ I said with a groan.

  ‘Your first one’s always the hardest.’

  There was no point explaining that Lucien wasn’t mine and I didn’t waste my breath, but the hint of sympathy in her eye was the first I’d seen in Ledaris. This woman might be able to give me more than lessons in motherhood.

  I called Ryall back to join me, then said to the woman, ‘My … er … friend and I are looking for someone. A family, really, because the only name we have is for someone who died quite a while ago.’

  She looked intrigued. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Haylan Redwing,’ I said, watching closely for her reaction.

  Nothing. She shook her head in disappointment that she couldn’t help us and I knew she was telling the truth.

  ‘Never heard of anyone by that name,’ she said, ‘and I’ve lived in Ledaris since I married.’

  ‘How long ago was that?’ Ryall asked, a little more bluntly than I would have done.

  The woman shifted the grandchild on her hip and answered with a sigh, ‘Thirty long years.’

  Thirty years! And she was just the type to revel in the city’s gossip, too. Could the story in Arnou Dessar’s book be a legend after all?

  This question was still in my mind when we bought bread from the baker, who, I realised with a sudden pang of homesickness, reminded me of my elder sister’s husband: similar age, the same dark complexion and a tongue ready for talking. Since that faraway brother-in-law had always been good to me, I took a chance. ‘Have you heard the name Redwing?’ I asked, dropping half a royal into his palm in exchange for the bread.

  ‘Redwing? Can’t say that I have,’ he replied. There wasn’t the least hint of deception in his face.

  Lucien soon demanded another feed and, while I settled him and the goat as comfortably as I could in a quiet alley, Ryall went off to explore more of the streets. We’d been there long enough for Lucien to fill his belly and burp his pleasure all over my shoulder when a voice called to me. ‘Oi, miss. That boy you were with’s been hurt. You better come quick.’

  I barely bothered to see who’d come to warn me. Snatching up Lucien, I hurried out of the alley into the wider street. ‘Which way?’ I asked, expecting the messenger to be close behind me.

  No answer. I turned to find no one there.

  ‘Oh no!’

  I raced back into the alleyway but it was too late. The goat was gone.

  A town full of villains, Tamlyn had called this place. Half the people here were thieves, according to the man at the city gates. And I’d fallen for a simple trick. Damned fool, Silvermay! I told myself. How are you going to feed Lucien now?

  Ryall returned with a long face, which quickly became longer when I explained about the goat.

  ‘I don’t like cities as much as I was expecting to,’ he muttered as he flopped down beside me in the alley. ‘This one’s so dirty, and the people don’t want to help you, not like in the mountains. There are Wyrdborn, too. Ledaris is full of them. Maybe that’s why it’s so awful here. It seems it’s not only the religo who keeps them to enforce his power, many of the merchants pay them, too.’

  ‘That’s what Haylan Redwing did for a living,’ I remembered. ‘He guarded warehouses here in Ledaris.’

  My lifted spirits dipped again when Ryall said, ‘I must have asked a dozen people if they knew the name Redwing and all of them shook their heads.’

  ‘I hope that Wyrdborn wasn’t just playing tricks with the king’s scholar,’ I said. ‘A Wyrdborn would be mean-spirited enough to do it. He’d think it a great joke to invent the whole story, even a place called Erebis Felan.’

  I was working myself into a desolate funk, and broke off deliberately before it became any worse. With Lucien’s sleeping head pressed against my shoulderblade once more, we headed back into the streets, now busier than ever. Carts pushed their way along, laden with hay for the stables; women padded by with baskets balanced expertly on their heads, some looked as large as the body that carried them. Despite the grime of the city, the lunchtime smells delighted my nose. I took in the teasing bouquets and forgot for a moment that we were searching for a name that didn’t seem to exist.

  I snapped out of this reverie quick-smart when a commotion further along the street sent anxious
whispers rippling through the throng of bodies. People began to duck into alleys and the doorways of shops, turning their backs as though this might make them invisible. Those who couldn’t find a convenient nook pressed themselves against the walls, eyes lowered.

  It wasn’t long before I spotted the cause. Two men sauntered along the street, in no particular hurry and making a great show of ignoring the bodies that cowered at their approach, yet I could tell they enjoyed the effect their presence had on everyone they passed. Wyrdborn; no doubt about it.

  ‘Do like the others,’ Ryall hissed as they drew closer. His head was already bowed, eyes only for his shoes.

  Every bone in my body resisted, but we couldn’t afford any trouble when even the commonfolk of Ledaris thought us easy marks. The Wyrdborn would like nothing more than to find someone staring at them defiantly instead of huddled in this demeaning show of respect. Then they’d really have some Wyrdborn fun. I complied, hating myself and hating the men even more.

  A shadow passed at the edge of my vision. As a small measure of victory, I raised my head dangerously early, but they were gone. Other heads bobbed up and the first smiles I’d seen in Ledaris graced the street, uniting the inhabitants in relief.

  It even prompted a show of good humour when one man, so drunk he could hardly stand, began to sing:

  He walked the streets of cities proud

  Spreading fear and singing loud

  We drank his health and hoped he’d die

  We loved his face, but that’s a lie

  I had no reason to listen to alehouse ballads and the man could barely hold a tune. I fell into stride beside Ryall, but the next lines of the song made me spin round mid-step: