by JA Andrews
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 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.
He wanted to take a step forward, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. His entire body thrummed with a sort of terror. He was desperate for her to look at him, but terrified that she would.
Killien stepped between them to the front of the balcony. Will pulled his gaze away from the slave woman. The world spun and Will put his hand on the railing to steady himself. Killien raised his hand for silence, and within moments the square obeyed.
“Tomorrow the main caravan will leave at dawn,” Killien announced. “By nightfall we’ll be out of view of Porreen and surrounded by the grasses.”
The audience broke out into a loud cheer.
“What about the frost goblins?” A voice called out and the cheers died off.
“We don’t know if the stories are true or not,” Killien answered. “But it is time to move north. The hay is gone, the herds need the grasses.” He paused. “And we need the grasses around us again. The dusting grass has come and the green of the Sweep is waking up. These city walls are starting to feel like a cage.”
They roared in approval.
Will risked a glance toward the slave, but Killien’s wife blocked his view.
“We have heatstones.” Killien continued. Lukas stepped forward, his limp barely noticeable and handed Killien one of the swirling stones. “If there are frost goblins, we will fight them off as our ancestors did, with these burning stones and our swords.” There were rumblings of agreement. “But let us hope the tales of goblins prove only to be rumors.
“Speaking of tales, tonight I bring you something different. A storyman from Gulfind has found our clan.”
The response to this was more curious chatter than applause. Will bowed toward the crowd. The urge to look at the woman who might be Ilsa was almost overpowering, but he could feel every eye in the square fixed on him.
“Will knows stories from many lands,” Killien said. “Tonight he’s offered to tell us a tale from Queensland. I know it’s easy to think of Queensland as the enemy, as the people who hundreds of years ago took the good land, with rich soil and mild seasons, and left us to the harsher world of the Sweep.”
The words cut through the turmoil in Will’s mind and caught his attention. Stern faces nodded in the crowd. The Roven thought they’d been forced them out of the Queensland? He’d never heard that. Although it would explain the animosity.
“But it is always important to remember,” Killien said, “that those we consider enemies are more like us than we think. They have homes and families and worries.”
Will held his face neutral as he listened. That was the most humanizing thing he’d heard said about Queensland since he’d come to the Sweep. Was this man actually Roven?
“We must remember our enemies are human,” Killien continued, “if we ever hope to defeat them.”
Yes. He was Roven.
Thousands of eyes were fixed on the porch. A cool breeze brushed past Will and he breathed it in, gathering the chaos of thoughts and emotions swirling inside him, and breathing them out. The need to follow Borto blew away. That might not be Ilsa, but everything about her was right. The idea of being left in Porreen tomorrow while the clan and this woman went north made his stomach drop.
He threw away all his ideas of how to make his story weaker. What he needed tonight was the best telling of Tomkin and the Dragon that anyone had ever heard. Something so good that Killien couldn’t bear to let Will leave.
He resisted the urge to look back, and focused on the tale. It had been a long time since he’d told it. He pulled the beginning of Tomkin to his mind gingerly, hoping it was still intact. This was the right story to tell. Everyone loved Tomkin.
Would the Roven? A little dagger of ice shot into his stomach. How could they not?
“Much can be learned about a people from their stories.” Killien’s voice rolled over the whole square. “Tonight, he has agreed to tell us one of Queensland’s most beloved tales. A story about a young man and a dragon.”
Killien turned and motioned Will to the front of the porch. Something scraped behind him and Will turned too quickly to pretend it hadn’t startled him.
Sora dragged a thin stool over. “Nervous?” she said softly enough that only he and Killien heard. “No one is stupid enough to tell stories from Queensland on the Sweep.”
Killien studied Sora for a moment, then turned to Will with an unreadable expression.
“Maybe they don’t know the good ones,” Will answered quietly, taking the stool. “Get comfortable, Sora. Even you might like this.”
Killien let out a little laugh and sat down next to a disapproving Lilit. Will caught a glimpse of the slave’s shoulder, but turned away. A distracted storyteller was poor entertainment.
Facing the crowd, he pushed everything but the story out of his head. Will did a poor job of many things, but telling stories wasn’t one of them. And though there was probably no way to get Sora to like him, but by the end of the evening, the crowd would. And hopefully the Torch.
But the faces in the audience were unenthused. This was not a crowd ready for a story.
“I have spent all winter in the Roven cities along the sea.” Will stepped to the railing, speaking loud enough that the entire square could hear him, searching for common ground. “But now, when I look north, the land isn’t white with snow. I see hints of new green grass growing out of last year’s brown.”
A few heads nodded.
“Across the Scale Mountains, the seasons change gradually. The snows melt slowly, it takes from one full moon to the next for green to return to the land. But only days ago the grasses here were pale with snow. And then yesterday I saw a hint of green.”
The mood of the square rose. “And this afternoon, it wasn’t a hint.” Will paused. “It was…a flood of it.” At the edge of the square, movement caught his eye. Sitting on a porch railing with her skinny legs dangling down, sat Rass, beaming at him. Will bowed his head slightly in her direction. “And I was reminded that the Sweep is enormous and powerful. That everything is born there and everything goes there when it is too old to move.” Rass’s face split into an even wider grin. “There was a thrumming of life on the hills.”
Will let his eyes pass over the crowd, feeling their approval.
Hoping he remembered it right, he took a breath. “Life has returned!”
“We will return!” thundered the crowd in the traditional response, erupting into cheers.
When that faded, Will sat on the stool. “In Queensland, there are men called Keepers who protect stories of the past. I have heard one tell a tale in the hall of the Queen herself.” The crowd muttered and Will let the complicatedness of the response grow. “This is one of their favorite stories. It is an old tale, not a sweeping epic. Only a small story meant to entertain.” He could feel the crowd’s skepticism. He gave them a shrug. “Let’s see if it’s as entertaining as the people of Queensland seem to think.” When the spattering of laughter died, he looked down, not moving or speaking while
he waited for the square to quiet.
Once it was still, he began.
“Along the southern border, a company of soldiers surged forward, like the waters of the Great River, battling a deadly foe and performing acts of heroism.
“At his desk, Tomkin Thornhewn sat still, like the waters of a small puddle, shuffling through a pile of paper and only dreaming of such renown.”
Thousands of eyes fixed on Will, and he opened himself up to them. The words continued on, building a scene, a question, a dragon. The power of the story drew out the minds of the listeners and unified them into something more.
But this wasn’t Queensland. The crowd felt too negative toward Tomkin. It had been a mistake to tell them this was a foreign tale, it separated them too much from it. Will shifted his descriptions of Tomkin slightly, less insecurity, more misplaced determinedness. Less fanciful daydreaming, more shock and indignation at his insultingly poor marriage arrangement. The moment when Tomkin picked duty and adventure over complacently, the crowd stopped feeling foreign. That was the point when they stopped comparing themselves to the story, stopped even being aware of themselves. They fell together into a single entity, amused, leery, fatalistic or hopeful in turn as Tomkin dug himself deeper into trouble.
The wide, empty, open feeling of the Sweep receded. Will felt only the ruins as Tomkin explored the castle, saw only the orange-red scales of the dragon, imagined himself huddled bruised and cold in the rain.
Stars glittered in a black sky by the time the story drew to its close.
Almost reluctantly, Will spoke the final words, feeling the crowd before him settle into a satisfied pleasure. “I cannot say that Tomkin and the Dragon lived happily to the end of their days, because happiness is trickier than that. They had plenty of hard days, and plenty of sad days, but they did try to be kind to each other. And kindness takes you a long way on the path to happiness. So I think it is safe to say that Tomkin and the Dragon lived, on the balance, happy-ish to the end of their days.”
