The River King's Road

by Merciel, Liane

  “WE’LL BREAK FOR SEAWATCH TOMORROW,” BRYS said the next night, roasting spitted chunks of venison over the fire. He’d ranged away from the caravan to hunt that afternoon, and had returned with a skinned and quartered deer bundled in its own hide. Half the deer had been traded to the Vis Sestani for odds and ends from their wagons; the other half hissed over the flames. Rubbed with salt and dried rosemary, it was a simple but wondrous meal after a hard day’s walk.

  “I thought we were traveling with the Vis Sestani.”

  “We did. It’s been five days. No one’s following us. I think we’re safe to strike out alone.”

  “Seawatch is—it’s far away, isn’t it?” Unimaginably far, to her. The Realm of Purchased Princes was a name that Odosse had heard only in travelers’ tales; it was as foreign to her world as the Nightingale Courts of Kai Amur or foam-crowned Nebaioth, where the sun never set and pearls were common as stones by the sea.

  “It’s a fair journey. Easiest to go by ship, this time of year. We should make Karchel’s Tower in a few days. From there we can start down the sea road and send a bird to Wistan’s grandparents to say we have him.”

  “Aren’t you—don’t you have to take him to Bulls’ March?”

  “Why? Because of Galefrid? He’s dead.” Brys turned over the spits propped on their split-forked sticks. Fat crackled as it dripped into the fire; he watched it burn without blinking.

  “But you’re a knight.”

  “What of it? Any oaths I swore to Galefrid died when he did. Seawatch is better. The de Marsts have money enough to buy Bulls’ March down to the last stone, five times over, and still be richer than kings.”

  “But Bulls’ March would be safer, wouldn’t it?” Odosse picked Wistan up and rocked him worriedly in her arms. The baby had gotten much worse since they left Tarne Crossing. His eyes were unfocused, his hands unmoving; he barely seemed aware of his surroundings.

  “Closer. Maybe not safer. Albric led the massacre, and he’s always been Leferic’s man. I have a hard time believing he’d do that without his lord knowing. I have a hard time believing Weakshanks has it in him to deal with Thorns, for that matter, but I’m not about to bring Wistan into his reach either way. If he was involved with the killings, I’m not inclined to let him finish the job. If he wasn’t, I want him to deal with Albric before I go near that castle. Seawatch is safer for now.”

  “Maybe for us. Wistan’s so weak … he can’t last long on the road. The Vis Sestani might be able to help him, but … I don’t know if I can pay their price.”

  Brys raised an eyebrow. He stripped off a skewer of venison and handed it to her, along with a stick of spitted onion and apple halves that had roasted over the cooler edge of the fire. “What was that?”

  She told him about her meeting with Ghaziel and the offer the girl had made: a child for a child, to be claimed when the Starfolk were ready.

  “Can’t advise you on that,” Brys said when she was done.

  “How would they know where to find him?” Odosse wondered. She chewed a bit of venison to a pulp and finger-fed it to Aubry. He cooed and grabbed at her hands for more.

  “Sometimes they don’t. Not at first. But eventually they’ll find what’s theirs. Only a fool breaks that kind of bargain … but it can be hard to give up a child you’ve borne and had as your own for years. A child of your own blood. It can make people into fools.”

  “Is that what happened to the man who hired you?”

  “Something like that. It’s not a choice to make lightly.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Tried to cheat them. Wanted to keep the baby. He ran off, thinking they wouldn’t be able to find him, and hired us when they did. There’s no happy ending to that tale.” He gave her a flat look across the flames.

  “But they came. They found him.”

  “They did. Don’t strike a bargain with the Vis Sestani if you aren’t willing to pay their price, however hard it is when the day comes. That’s all I can tell you. Beyond that … it’s your flesh, your soul. You know how much you can endure. Not me.”

  Odosse nodded, and thought: Not that.

  There were things she wouldn’t—couldn’t—do. Not even to save a baby. Odosse knew that now. Perhaps she’d known it earlier, even before leaving Ghaziel’s wagon, but she hadn’t been certain of it until this moment, with Aubry in her lap and tugging at her hands. She could not give up a child of her own blood for a stranger’s.

  It wasn’t as if giving a child to the Vis Sestani was the same as setting it out for the crows. The Starfolk were a beautiful people, touched by magic and possessed of a grace she could only admire. They were nothing like the monsters of her village’s tales. A life among the Vis Sestani might be better than any baby of hers would have in a village—especially if, like Aubry, her next child was born of an unblessed bed. Odosse had no husband, and few prospects of finding one with another man’s bastard already on her back. She couldn’t lie to herself about the life her children faced.

  No, her refusal wasn’t for her child’s sake. It was for her own.

  Odosse couldn’t imagine bearing a child, raising it, loving it—and that was not a choice; she’d loved Aubry helplessly from the first time she saw his squalling prune face, and she couldn’t fathom feeling less for any baby she might bear—and then giving it up to strangers who might come the day it was weaned, or a year later, or ten.

  Maybe—maybe—if the Vis Sestani claimed the babe the instant it came into the world, so that she never had a chance to see its face or hold it in her arms and feel the tiny heart beat next to hers … maybe then she could have paid their price. But not after knowing the child. Not after loving it. Aubry wasn’t yet a year old and he was already her world; Odosse couldn’t possibly give up a child she’d held for five years. The parting would break her heart.

  She couldn’t do it. Even if it meant Wistan’s life.

  Odosse fed Aubry another piece of chewed venison, a finger-smudge at a time, and mixed more into warm water for Wistan. She cleaned and changed both babies as carefully as if they were made of Pelossan crystal, and bundled them up in soft rabbit skins for sleep, but the nightly rituals did nothing to soften the ache of guilt in her throat. Every mouthful of food she coaxed into Wistan, every wisp of fur she wrapped around him, was a reminder that she’d had the power to do more for him, and that she had refused.

  Sleep was a long time coming that night.

  In the morning they came to a fork in the road and parted ways with the Vis Sestani. There wasn’t any formal farewell. Odosse didn’t want to face them, knowing that she’d be bidding Wistan’s last hope goodbye, and Brys had never been friendly. The wagons simply rolled on, leaving them behind. Brys and Odosse set their course southward, for Karchel’s Tower and thence to distant Seawatch, and the Starfolk rode off to the east. Within an hour the belled wagons were out of sight and they were alone on the road once again.

  By midday snow was falling. The first scattered flakes soon thickened into a windblown curtain that whitened the horse’s mane and clung to Odosse’s eyelashes. Small drifts piled up on Brys’ shoulders; the road vanished beneath a blanket of snow. Odosse put her head down and trudged half-blindly behind Brys, following the shape of the big man’s back as her only guide through the storm.

  Snowclouds blotted out the sun and cast a pall over the wooded hills, bringing dusk down early. Odosse set up their tent under a cluster of trees whose limbs knotted thickly overhead, while Brys spent nearly an hour chopping branches and weaving them into bent saplings to make a windbreak for the horse. He tied a wool blanket over the animal’s back, sliding a hand under the ropes to see that they didn’t chafe, and shook a generous measure of oats into its feed bag.

  “We need those for porridge,” Odosse protested when she saw how much Brys was giving the horse.

  “In this weather he needs them more than we do. We don’t have a horse, we don’t get to town. You can do without porridge for a while. We should r
each Karchel’s Tower in three days, four or five if the snow keeps coming. I’ll buy you more oats then.”

  They couldn’t make a fire with snow falling so heavily around them, so Brys boiled water over their cooking-lantern and made hot tea and a weak soup instead. The night seemed colder without the comfort of flames to brighten their camp.

  The snowstorm might have been beautiful if she’d been watching it from a glassed window. Since Odosse had to sleep under thin cloth beneath it, the luminous fall, radiant with the light of moon and stars caught behind its white cloak, was menacing rather than lovely. Aubry was restless and cried all through their scant meal, batting at the snowmelt that dripped onto his face, and Wistan felt dangerously chill. Odosse was glad to set them to sleep; the warmth of her body quieted them a little, and somewhere in the snow-silenced night, she drifted off herself.

  Morning brought a fragile gray light and a slow sense of wrongness. It took her a moment to understand why. The tent was quiet, a small haven of silence broken only by the low creak of snow-laden trees outside and Brys’ snoring inside. Aubry was a fur-bundled pocket of warmth by her breast, and Wistan …

  Wistan was cold and stiff beside him.

  Odosse sat up with a suddenness that woke Aubry squalling, but for once she was deaf to her son’s cries. With trembling fingers she unwrapped the rabbit pelts that had cradled Wistan through the night. The child didn’t stir, didn’t make the weak hiccuping sobs that had become so familiar.

  His face was pale and peaceful. The sunken eyes and dry lined lips gave Wistan the look of a very old man who had died very young, but there was no sign of suffering in him now. He was still as an ice carving in her hands, and just as cold.

  Odosse laid him on her blankets with a heavy gentleness, and then she took the single step that brought her to Brys’ side.

  “Brys,” she whispered, shaking his shoulder. “Brys. Wistan’s dead.”

  17

  He wasn’t surprised.

  Ever after, when Odosse remembered that terrible morning after the storm, and all that was wrought on that day, the image that came to her first and strongest was the glint of Brys’ cat-green eyes as he woke to the early gray light of a snow-bound dawn. And his utter lack of surprise.

  “Wistan’s dead,” she repeated, thinking he hadn’t heard.

  Brys nodded. A moment later he got up, muttering a halfhearted curse against the chill, and started a low fire burning in their cooking-lantern. His coal-black hair stood up on one side where he’d been sleeping, and he raked his fingers through it to push it back down.

  “Then we’ve a choice,” he said, splashing water from a skin into the lantern’s kettle, “or you do, anyway.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whether it was Wistan who died last night, or Aubry.”

  Odosse blinked in confusion. She glanced nervously at her bed, where Aubry was still squalling with scarcely a pause for breath between wails. Beside his red-faced vigor the dead child looked like a wax doll. “Wistan, of course.”

  “You miss my point. You know that. I know that. But no one else does. Everyone who knew and loved Wistan in this world is dead. So ask yourself: Is it better for you, and for him, if the child who survives this morning is Wistan, or Aubry?”

  It took a moment for his meaning to sink in. Odosse’s eyes widened when it did. “That’s monstrous.”

  She wasn’t sure whether she meant Brys’ suggestion or her own temptation to take it. Wistan was dead because she had refused the price to heal him; how could she think of using that death for her gain? Wouldn’t that make her … Odosse floundered for the right word. Not a murderer, no, but not much better. A profiteer from pain.

  Wasn’t that what she would be? Deeply unsettled, Odosse moved back to her bed and took Aubry into her lap, rocking her son to quiet his cries.

  “It’s practical,” Brys replied. The kettle was whistling; he dropped a hinged metal sachet into the top and left it to simmer. The gentle fragrance of rose hips and oranges rose into the air, soothing Odosse’s nerves. “The boy was sick long enough. I’m surprised you didn’t think of it yourself.”

  “It isn’t right,” she insisted, although she wasn’t sure why.

  “Think on it,” Brys urged. He handed her a cup. She expected tea, but instead it held a splash of some amber spirit so raw it burned her nostrils. Odosse sipped hesitantly, and coughed as liquid fire seared down her throat. But she drank the rest, determined to find what comfort she could in its heat.

  She didn’t feel any more enlightened when she reached the dregs, nor when they broke camp after a light meal of tea and stale, slightly crushed raisin cakes, the last of the things she’d taken from Mathas’ bakery. It was with a sense of vague relief that she watched Brys collapse the tent and pack the tight-rolled canvas back on his horse; walking was a strain she understood, and it would give her time alone with her thoughts.

  Odosse understood, or thought she did, why Brys wanted her to make the switch. A dead baby was far less valuable to him than a live one. Delivering the de Marsts’ grandson and the heir to Bulls’ March would make him a fortune; delivering a small corpse would only make him a fool. Wistan’s body was worthless, even to his grandparents, unless they could deliver it with proof of who had killed the others and why. She didn’t think Brys had that yet. His only hope of profit was coming up with a live child and painting himself as the baby’s savior.

  All guesswork, that, but she didn’t think she was too far wrong. What puzzled her was why Brys wanted her cooperation—surely any infant of the right age would do as well; it didn’t have to be Aubry—and, more than that, why she was so hesitant to give it.

  She shouldered her pack and tucked Aubry under her cloak. It felt strange to have Wistan missing on the other side; oddly unbalanced, and yet easier, too, to walk without that burden and that worry. No sooner did the thought occur than Odosse felt guilty for having it.

  She carried Wistan, wrapped in a shroud of blankets, in her arms. It wouldn’t be long. Only until they found a good place for his pyre. That his face was bared to the cold didn’t matter anymore. Nothing could hurt him now.

  The storm had spent its wrath overnight. By midday there were only a few lonely flakes blowing on the wind; by twilight the sky was gray but clear. All around them the world was a frozen marvel of snow-cloaked hills and bent, leafless trees caught in crystal. White-bellied bluecrests and black-capped chickadees huddled in the branches, and by that Odosse knew the cold would continue. When they felt warmth coming, those birds scattered and sang; when the freeze was hard on them, they flocked silent in the trees. The storm was quiet but not past.

  They saw no other travelers, and Brys kept his bow strung and close to hand, for no one but the desperate would be abroad so far from any town.

  Brys refused to let her build a pyre. Burning the body was proper to honor the dead child and see his soul safely to Celestia’s realm—it was what any anointed soul deserved—but the sellsword would hear nothing of it. They were out of Bayarn Wood, and gathering enough wood would have meant taking an axe to one of the gnarled, ice-sheathed trees that grew on the hills by the road. Building even a child-sized pyre would be an afternoon’s work, and Brys was adamant that sentimentality was no excuse for delay.

  “He’s dead,” he told her flatly when she asked. “Nothing you do is going to change that, and he’s not likely to care about anything else.”

  “Then what do you want me to do? Just throw him by the side of the road?”

  “Might as well. Less work for the foxes to find him that way.”

  “How can you be so callous?” Odosse demanded, near tears. She’d fed this child, nurtured him, held him close while he slept. His death was … not her fault, perhaps, but her failure. Wistan had been loved, once; he’d been anointed to the sun and lived under Celestia’s light. He deserved a decent funeral.

  But her companion remained unmoved. “It’s better for him, and better for us, than burying him und
er a pile of rocks. No Thorn ever made a puppet of a corpse that was in a fox’s belly.” Brys stopped and looked at her, his face stone-hard through the white mist of his breath. “Sentiments are wasted on the dead. The sooner you learn that, the better. Do what’s practical, not what some mawkish solaros told you was nice. Nice means nothing. Nice is a waste of effort, and wasted effort means you’re dead. Let go of it and move on.”

  “It’s not nothing. It’s what keeps us human,” Odosse mumbled, but he had already turned away and did not hear.

  In the end she left Wistan under a tree near the road, although she did it with what small ceremony she could muster. She bundled him in rabbit furs so that he might be warmer in the next world than he’d been in this one, and tucked a coin into his mouth to pay the Last Bridge’s toll. Finally she drew out the tiny blue vial that she’d bought from the charm-crafter’s cottage, a lifetime ago, and pried it open to anoint the cold wispy-haired head with fragrant oil.

  “As we are born in light, so we return to light,” Odosse whispered as the oil trickled down over Wistan’s eyelids like slow dark tears. She couldn’t remember the rest of the Pyre Prayer. There hadn’t been many funerals in her life. Not many deaths, until Willowfield’s, and then there was no one to say prayers for them all.

  The scent of the oil was spicy and sweet, not quite right for a pyre but not right for perfume, either. It made her think of flowers blooming over a crypt, somewhere far to the east where they laid their dead in catacombs instead of giving them the purity of fire. There was a foulness under the fragrance, and yet it did not seem a contradiction but a necessary counterpoint. Odosse shivered, in part from the cold, and closed Wistan’s tiny stiff hand around the empty bottle.

  Once she had paid a handful of pennies, and dreamed of being beautiful, so that Aubry might have a chance of becoming a great man. The real price for that was higher. Much higher. She understood that now.

  Still shivering, Odosse packed snow over Wistan’s body to shield him from passing eyes. She cut a stub of candle no taller than her thumb and set that in the snow mound to guide him to the Bright Lady’s ever-golden lands.