by K. J. Parker
Oh, Poldarn thought. And then he thought, Well, why not? True, according to Prince Tazencius, who had no real reason to lie to me about the subject, back in the Empire I’m married to his daughter, with at least one child. But this isn’t the Empire, and I won’t be going back there again. So, yes, why not? No strong views on the subject, one way or another.
‘So,’ Rannwey went on – far and away the longest speech he’d ever heard her make – ‘probably a good idea if you went over to the middle house after breakfast.’
‘That’s where they’ll be, is it?’
Rannwey nodded, bringing the dialogue to a definite end. Well, well, Poldarn thought. If it means I can skip another session in the forge, why not indeed?
Accordingly, as soon as breakfast was over, he stood up to leave. Rannwey stopped him with a firm pressure of her fingers on his wrist. He was surprised at how cold her hands were.
‘Better wait a bit longer,’ she said. ‘Probably still talking business.’
No point even wondering how she knew that; she was bound to be right. As to what the business was, Poldarn could probably guess if he wanted to, but he didn’t. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Maybe I should get a clean shirt.’
‘That would be a very good idea.’
At Haldersness, clothes were there for the taking; you went over to one of the big linen-presses at the far end of the hall, and poked about till you found something that looked like it’d fit. Clothes for the wash went in a big open-topped barrel in the opposite corner. Who washed them – and why – was just another of the mysteries of the place. Poldarn found a plain grey shirt, thick and comfortable, soft with age and washing but perfectly sound, clean and unfrayed. He put it on and carefully tied the neck-laces, taking his time; then he took a comb from the brush-and-rag box under the window and dragged it through his hair, using the blade of his knife as a mirror. Not that it mattered, of course – business was business – but he felt it showed willing.
The middle house was where things ended up when nobody had any immediate use for them. It had a high roof, half-boarded to form a gallery-come-loft, where the apples were spread out on racks and the onion-strings hung from hooks driven into the rafters. There wasn’t a middle-house crew as such – people only went there to dump something or collect something – which made it one of the more peaceful places on the farm, somewhere to lurk when you didn’t particularly want to be found. If only there was a bit more light in there, Poldarn thought, it’d be a good place to come and read a book, if only I had a book.
He couldn’t hear any voices as he walked in through the door into contrast-induced darkness, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything, given his people’s tendency to long, solemn silences. Sure enough, when he located them, they were standing in front of a neat pile of scrap metal – mostly brass, with some copper and lead – staring at it without moving or speaking. If they noticed him come in, they didn’t give any sign. He could only see their backs; Grandfather was easily identified, needless to say, and the older man would have to be Colsceg. Of the other two men, he took an arbitrary guess and assumed that the taller one was the middle son – name, name: Barn or Bran, something like that – which would make the shorter one Egil, the youngest. All Poldarn could see of the daughter was a hank of very long light brown hair, with a pair of heels poking out underneath. Still, he thought, at least she’s not bald.
For what seemed like an insufferably long time, nobody moved or spoke. Then the man who was presumably Colsceg dipped his head, meaning Yes, and held out his hand. Grandfather took it and shook it, the inference being that a deal had been struck.
‘Ciartan,’ Grandfather said without looking round. ‘Perhaps you’d like to come over here.’
Now they all turned to face Poldarn, though it wasn’t until he was much closer that he could make out any degree of detail in the dim light. Understandably, he looked at the daughter first, and was pleasantly surprised. She was young – half his age, quite likely – and pleasant enough to look at; an oval, slightly flat face with a solemn mouth and round blue eyes, and she wasn’t fat or bow-legged or anything. Colsceg was extremely broad, almost square, with a small nose and a stretched-looking white scar from his ear to his beardless chin, an affable-looking type. Barn or Bran was extremely tall, blank-faced, slightly gormless. Egil, if Poldarn had got them the right way round – Egil he recognised.
And Egil recognised him, because as soon as he came forward out of the shadows, Egil’s face twisted with sharp, instinctive panic. It only lasted a moment, but so does a sudden loud noise; Poldarn knew that all of them had felt it, and were choosing to ignore it.
Here we go again, Poldarn thought.
Yes, he recognised the face (and it was a very nondescript sort of face, the kind you couldn’t begin to describe, if you were asking someone if they’d seen him); but he couldn’t remember him at all. There was just a picture in his mind – the same face, twenty years younger, little more than a boy, but staring at him in bleak horror. That was all. No backdrop, no words or movements or associations, nothing but a portrait, Young Man Horrified.
‘Ciartan,’ said Colsceg. ‘Haven’t seen you for a while.’
(If he tells me I’ve grown, Poldarn thought, so help me, I’ll strangle him. And as he thought that, Colsceg’s lips tweaked into a tiny smile.)
‘I’m very sorry,’ Poldarn replied, ‘but—’
‘You don’t recognise me.’ Colsceg nodded a couple of times. ‘Halder’s told me about all that. These are my sons, Barn and Egil; and my daughter, Elja.’
At least Poldarn had got the brothers the right way round. Egil’s face was completely expressionless now, like plaster after you’ve smoothed away a blemish. They’re all five of them as nervous as cats, Poldarn realised. Curiously enough, that made him feel a whole lot easier. Watching someone else getting twitchy made a pleasant change. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, thinking sincere as he said it.
Elja smiled at him. She had a nice smile. That was good.
‘Thirty years ago,’ Halder said abruptly, ‘Colsceg and I agreed that, as and when he had a daughter, it would make good sense for you to marry her.’ He hesitated. It would be nice, Poldarn reckoned, if he’d paused because he wished he’d put that another way, but he felt sure that wasn’t the real reason. ‘But you left before Elja was born, and to be straight with you, nobody knew when or if you’d be coming back. Naturally, we both reckoned the deal had lapsed. As it turns out, though, Colsceg hasn’t made any other arrangements, so there doesn’t seem to be any reason why the original deal shouldn’t go through.’
He’s leaving something out, Poldarn thought. More than that, he’s hiding something, and whatever it is, it’s important enough that hiding it is almost the same thing as telling a lie; and Grandfather doesn’t really know how to do that. They all know it’s a lie.
‘That’s wonderful,’ he heard himself say. ‘And of course I’m deeply honoured. Assuming Elja will have me, of course.’
Now I’m talking gibberish, as far as they’re concerned. Might as well ask the plough’s permission before sticking its nose in the dirt. But they’re going to be polite and pretend I didn’t say anything. Elja’s still smiling, though it’s a reasonable bet her jaw’s going to start aching if she has to keep it up much longer. Poor kid, he thought; in her shoes, I’d be dead with embarrassment by now.
Anyway, that seemed to conclude the meeting. Colsceg and Halder nodded to each other and walked out of the building, Barn and Elja following as if there was a string tied to their collars. Egil went with them as far as the door, then hesitated.
(I definitely know him from somewhere, Poldarn thought. Question is, do I really want to know the details? Probably not—)
‘Ciartan,’ Egil said; then he glanced nervously over his shoulder.
‘Hello,’ Poldarn replied.
The invisible string was pulling Egil hard; he staggered, slightly but perceptibly. ‘You’re back, then.’
‘
Yes,’ Poldarn replied. ‘Obviously we know each other, but I’m afraid I just don’t remember you—’
Egil stared at him; curious expression, as if they were fighting and Poldarn had passed up an easy opportunity for a finishing cut, leaving himself wide open. ‘Is that right?’ Egil said.
Poldarn shrugged. ‘Afraid so,’ he said. ‘Bits and pieces of my memories about this place drift back from time to time, but that’s all.’
There was a scar on the back of Egil’s hand; Poldarn knew that, though he was sure he hadn’t seen it. Only a little one, a patch of smooth white about a thumbnail’s width long. No big deal.
‘I see,’ Egil said. ‘And none of these bits and pieces have got me in them.’
‘That’s right. Not so far, anyway.’
‘Good,’ Egil said. ‘You’ve changed since you’ve been away.’
Almost impossible to figure out what he meant by that. ‘Have I?’
A short nod. ‘You’ve changed a lot,’ Egil said.
‘For the better, by the sound of it.’
‘Maybe. I’m in no position to judge.’
Poldarn couldn’t help grinning. ‘That makes two of us,’ he said. ‘You know, since I’ve been back, everybody’s been trying to make me feel like I was only away for a week or so, not twenty years. But it stands to reason I’ll have changed, people do.’ He paused, trying to make a decision, then went on: ‘Were we friends, then?’
Egil’s face had gone dead. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Very good friends.’
‘We used to knock around together? Do things?’
‘At one stage.’
A picture formed in Poldarn’s mind. ‘I think we went crow’s-nesting once,’ he said. ‘I’ve got this image of us walking across a meadow towards a wood; you were about ten, eleven years old. We’re carrying long, thin poles, for pushing the nests out of the trees with.’
‘Fancy you remembering that.’
It’s not what they say, these people, it’s the way they say it. ‘It happened, then?’
Egil nodded. ‘It was Grather’s wood,’ he said. ‘You know, for his house. A big mob of crows had built in it, and they were flighting in on our spring wheat. Grather was supposed to come with us, but he couldn’t make it. You remember Grather?’
Poldarn shook his head. ‘Another friend of ours?’ he said.
‘My cousin.’
Well, that wasn’t much help. ‘And what happened?’
Egil didn’t answer straight away. ‘We did a good job,’ he said. ‘At least,’ he went on, ‘you did most of it. You and crows, it was like you couldn’t bear to see the buggers. Every time one flew past you’d scowl at it, or throw a stone.’
‘Grandfather’s told me that, too,’ Poldarn replied. ‘Sounds like I had a real thing about them.’
‘Meaning you don’t, any more.’
Poldarn shrugged his shoulders. ‘They don’t seem to bother me particularly,’ he said. ‘I can see they’re a major pest, after planting or when the corn’s starting to sprout.’
‘Well,’ Egil said, ‘I’d best be getting along – they’ll want to know where I’ve been. Are you back for good now, then?’
For good, Poldarn thought; it’s just an expression. ‘Can’t see why not,’ he said. ‘I’ve got no idea what sort of a life I had back over there, but it’s no use to me if I can’t remember it. Like buried treasure, if you’ve lost the map.’
‘Buried treasure,’ Egil repeated. ‘Anyway, I’d better go. Expect I’ll be seeing you around, now you’re marrying Elja.’ He laughed. ‘Welcome to the family.’
‘Thank you.’
‘That’s quite all right,’ Egil said, and walked quickly away into the light.
Poldarn didn’t follow. It was quiet and peaceful in the middle house, now that everybody had gone. He sat down on a broken sawhorse and rested his chin in his hands.
Whatever it was, he thought, it can’t have been too bad; not if I’m going to marry his sister. If it was something dreadful, he’d tell his father and stop the wedding from happening. Could be anything; something trivial from when he was a kid. If I’d done something dreadful here, everybody wouldn’t be so annoyingly glad to see me all the time.
Poldarn pushed the thought out of his mind, like a host at daybreak shooing away the last overstaying guests. More important stuff to mull over: the future, rather than the past. Yes, on balance she seemed a perfectly nice girl—
And perfectly nice wasn’t the sort of thing lovesick poets crooned under balconies. It wasn’t so long ago that he’d arrived at the conclusion that he was in love with Copis, the lady con artist who’d saved his life, given him his name and briefly made him into a god. She hadn’t been perfectly nice; she’d turned out to be a spy working for the monks of Deymeson, and hadn’t she tried to kill him at one point? But that didn’t necessarily change anything; and Poldarn had thought about her more than once since he’d been here, wondering if she was all right, what she was doing, whether their child had been born yet . . . Well, that was one relationship he did know about. There was also this wife of his, Tazencius’s daughter, who’d married him for love, against her father’s express wishes – probably not your ‘perfectly nice’ type either, by the sound of it. Bloody hell, he reflected, I’m old enough to be her father; what kind of life is that for a perfectly nice young girl? But she doesn’t seem to mind the idea.
Doesn’t seem to mind wasn’t a standard phrase in love poetry, either. Maybe they didn’t have love over here, or at least not that variety of the stuff. Thinking about it, Poldarn couldn’t call to mind any examples of it that he’d observed (and you’d have thought you’d have come across at least one pair of starry-eyed young idiots while you’d been here; they weren’t hard to spot when they were in that condition, after all). Maybe they made do with the sort of absent-minded affection he’d noticed between his grandfather and grandmother, for example, or Terwald and his wife, or whatever his name was who looked after the ewes, the one who was married to the fat woman. In a set-up as profoundly organised as this was, he could see where something as unruly and messy as genuine love wouldn’t really fit in: it’d cause all sorts of problems with people missing shifts or even dodging off work altogether. Then there’d be quarrels and jealousies and fights, adulteries and girls kicking up a fuss about being married off to the wrong man, general disorder and disruption of agriculture. The likeliest explanation was that it was just one more of those charcoal things; they knew about it but had made a decision not to use it, probably for some good commonsense reason that everybody else on the island knew about but him.
Not that it mattered, since Poldarn couldn’t remember ever having been really in love – Copis didn’t count as that; for the short time they’d been together, their relationship had been more of a military and diplomatic alliance, offensive and defensive, against a mutual enemy consisting of the whole world. More than that, it was the next best thing to impossible to imagine being in love at Haldersness. In these parts, perfectly nice and doesn’t seem to mind were probably about as ardent as it ever got.
Anyway; it could all be far worse. He could easily have been slated to marry someone twice his weight, with no teeth. He wasn’t sure he’d have chosen those particular in-laws, but it was a safe bet that there was some kind of worthwhile property transaction in the background, and it was high time he started thinking like an heir apparent and giving such considerations their proper degree of weight. Mind you, that wasn’t easy when nobody was prepared to tell him what was going on.
Which reminded him; at some stage this morning, Grandfather was supposed to be taking Poldarn to see the wood, the one they’d be building his house out of (like Grather, whoever he was). When the time came, Grandfather would expect to find him in the forge, getting on with his lessons. He sighed; but he knew perfectly well that hiding in the middle house wasn’t going to solve anything.
By the time he reached the forge, Asburn had finished drawing down the scythe blade on his own,
and shaping it was very much a one-man job, for which Poldarn wasn’t the right one man. So he found the nail sett, fished a strip of wire out of the scrap and set to making nails – couldn’t have too many nails, after all, and it was so easy even he could do it. True, Asburn could turn out a bucketful in the time it took him to make one, and the nails Asburn made were straight. So what; it was the thought that counted.
But the fire was hotter than usual, for welding the iron to the steel, and Poldarn contrived to burn more wire than he shaped; his mind wasn’t on his work, which wouldn’t do at all in a forge. Egil, he thought, and killing crows. Why had he hated them so much, he wondered? It was hard to imagine himself feeling that strongly about anything, let alone slow-moving black birds. It seemed likely that, at some point, he and Egil had got up to some kind of mischief, and Egil was warily delighted to find that Poldarn had forgotten all about it. For the reasons he’d already considered, he was fairly sure that it hadn’t been anything too bad, and whatever it was, they’d never been found out. So that was probably all right, too.
Poldarn pulled his strip of wire out of the forge and dropped it into the sett. Before he could start peening over the head, the door scraped open, and a face he recognised but couldn’t put a name to appeared round it.
‘You two,’ said the newcomer, ‘you want to come and take a look at this.’
Asburn was just about to take a weld on a complicated joint; the metal was glassy white and sparkling, it’d be a devil of a job to get it right again if he let it cool. But the newcomer’s tone of voice was enough to make him lay the piece down on the anvil and hurry to the door. What the hell, Poldarn thought, and followed him.
Outside in the yard, most of the farm people were gathered in a tight group. They were staring up towards the mountain, and it didn’t take Poldarn long to figure out why.
A column of crow-black smoke was rising out of a red gash in the mountainside, just to the right of the rather crooked summit.
