“We brought no servant girl,” Father said. “The only woman on my ships is my daughter. Grom has his wife and girl child aboard his ship. Ranuldr has his wife and two daughters.”
Erki stood alongside Riga. They’d had the same lesson, that to stand firm was better than to cower. Here they were side by side, and would the guard know, or mention it if he did?
Erki had changed clothes, so he would not be apparent at once. Would the man recognize Riga, though? But no local man should look at a woman. He’d seen her earlier, but had he “seen” her? She was also in shipboard trews and tunic now, leaning on a rigging hook as if it were a spear. She stared back at him, trying to look quizzical and faintly bored. He studied her, but it was all pretense. He really hadn’t noticed the women. There’d been no real reason to at the time, and he wouldn’t admit so now. Riga didn’t blame him, knowing how the Amar might respond.
He looked hard at Erki, but without the cloak and in light, the boy looked more a man. He also didn’t show any expression at all, though she could sense the nervous shivers.
“She was with a young boy last night. What about your boys?”
“Only Erki here,” Father said. “He was on watch last night. I expect your own shore patrol will remember him. There are a number of other young men, though it depends on what you mean by ‘boy.’ ”
Was Father lying as a matter of course, to get this over with? Or did he know and was covering for them? His words were unbothered.
The watchman looked Erki over but didn’t finger him. Good so far.
The official asked, “Which girl was sick and stayed in town?”
“Not mine,” Father said. “I suppose it could have been Ranuld’s eldest girl. She’s fifteen. All ours are accounted for, though, we’re not missing any.”
Of course they weren’t missing any. Father was deliberately misunderstanding. My people are in order. Do you believe your own are not?
“All your women are as they should be?” They looked uncomfortable. The Kossaki ships had canvas weather shields at the rear, and little privacy. It was understood that one didn’t stare or annoy a woman even bathing or changing, but that was certainly not understood here. The very subject made them cringe and shy away. Inside, Riga grinned. They were going to back off, right now.
“There are few enough that I can count to six,” Father said with a grin. Riga twitched. Would he insist on seeing them all?
“I will inspect your cargo and your manifest then, as a courtesy.”
Riga grimaced as Father said, “If you wish.” Everyone knew something was up at this point. They were all just pretending it wasn’t.
He started at the bow, peering through the nets and checking the crates for stamps and seals. All were as they should be, and of course he knew that. He moved slowly back to a pile of barrels staked down, containing figs, tea, and spices. Past the mast and the bundles of sail lashed to the spar.
Father said, “I don’t wish to rush you, but we have five ships and tide to keep. We’ve always dealt in good faith.”
“I’ll just work my way back and be done, then,” the official said, with a false frown.
“Be quick about it. I feel sorry for the Amar, but I have my own dramas, and I don’t share mine with the help.”
Was Father trying to cause the man to search in detail? That comment flustered him, and he checked a barrel’s number very carefully.
“You might want to check under that tarp. It’s a prime place to stash an escaped servant girl. I don’t find my own daughter enough trouble, so I try to pick one up in every port.”
Clutching his tally board, the man strode forward again in a careful, dignified fashion, swung over into his boat, and indicated to the rowers to leave.
He turned back, looked at Father and said, “Thank you for your help.”
“You are most welcome. I hope the Amar finds this girl and that she hasn’t fallen among those who would shame her or him. I cherish his hospitality and trade.”
“I will tell him,” the official said, beckoning the guard to join him as he sat down on a thwart. “Good travels to you, and a blessing.”
“A blessing on you, and the Amar, and your king,” Father said.
As they rowed away, he turned and ordered, “Pick up the speed. We’re not earning money to row like a holiday ship.” He seemed quite relaxed and good natured.
Riga wanted to run back and check under the tarp. She knew Jesrin was alive, though, and silence was a good thing. It might be night before she could come out. It might even be five days and port before she admitted the girl’s presence. She had silly notions of sneaking her ashore with a few coins somewhere she could find good work, though she knew the girl, like any injured creature, would need support for a bit.
She stood her post, and helped tighten the sail as they gained room to maneuver, and the five ships spread into a longer line for travel.
They cleared the headland and entered open ocean, the deeper swells swaying Sea Fox, twisting and torquing her. She was designed for that, though, and surged across the waves.
Father came past, checking the rigging. “How’s the servant girl?” he asked quite casually.
Riga knew better than to lie. “Alive and quiet,” she said at once.
“This is the same servant girl we discussed, I assume.”
“Yes, she is. Jesrin. Badly bruised in body and spirit.”
“Damn it, Daughter, this is worse than an injured goose. You can’t save every helpless creature in the world! Especially at a risk of war.”
“Of course not,” she said.
Then she smiled at him, a challenging smile that would yield a flogging in Mirr, and perhaps start a duel in Kossaki lands. It was the smile of a merchant and warrior among her peers.
“But I can save this one.”
Defending the Heart
By Kate Paulk
Kate Paulk pretends to be a mild mannered software quality analyst by day and allows her true evil author nature through for the short time between finishing with the day job and falling over. She lives in semirural Pennsylvania with her husband, two bossy cats, and her imagination. The last is the hardest to live with. Her latest short story sale, “Night Shifted,” is in DAW’s anthology, Better Off Undead.
“What are you doing to That Damn Kitten?” Jem asked from under the tree, his voice laced with laughter.
Ree lay stretched out on a tree branch almost too small to support his weight. With his toe claws dug in, he stretched his hand as far as he could toward a kitten maybe ten weeks old who, in the way of his kind, kept just out of reach and fluffed its white and gray fur into a big dandelion puff while emitting ceaseless, plangent meows.
Because Ree was a hobgoblin, changed in the magic storms into something with cat claws, cat eyes, and the brown fur and tail of a rat, he heard the kitten’s cries in a range humans couldn’t hear. Besides, the kitten’s mother, That Other Damn Cat, had been adding her own increased-range pleas to Ree to save her baby.
Damn kitten. Ree stretched his hand to the cowering furball, who, of course, retreated farther out of the way. There was only so far Ree could stretch and he’d be cursed if he was going any further on the frail end of the branch. He tried to make the peculiar chirping sound That Other Damn Cat used to call her kittens.
Beneath the tree, Jem laughed. He’d grown a lot over the last year—was now the height of a man and had blond fuzz on his upper lip. His voice was changing, too, to adult man ranges. Just thinking about it made Ree’s heart turn in him.
He’d been just a hobgoblin, like other hobgoblins. Sometimes he’d been more animal than human. He thought if he’d not found Jem, if Jem hadn’t been so convinced Ree was human, in time Ree might have forgotten he was human, himself. He might have become one of the wild hobgoblins—a beast and nothing more.
But he’d saved Jem’s life, and Jem . . . Ree liked to think it was love, or some form of it, and that they would be together their whole lives. But they’d
met really young. Though neither was that sure of his age—not exactly—they’d been thirteen or fourteen. That had been two summers ago, and now Jem was changing.
Ree knew, from when he’d been a human among humans, that when young men changed, a lot of things changed about them. Not just their appearance and their voices, but their manner, their ways, and sometimes their hearts too. As for Ree . . . who knew what happened to hobgoblins? He didn’t think he would change much.
Looking away from Jem, he turned back to concentrate on the kitten in a storm of flustered mother- catlike meowing. Or at least he hoped it was mother- cat like. I’m probably telling the poor thing I want to eat it, he thought.
Jem’s laughter wasn’t helping. Oh, Ree imagined he looked very funny, but all the same, if one of the green apples festooning the tree had been within range, he’d have flung it at Jem’s head.
Even so, the kitten didn’t seem put off by the laughter. It looked at Ree with big, rounded eyes, as Ree continued what he hoped were his reassurances of fish and milk for the kitten back at home. For a while it looked as though it would back up yet further, then suddenly it seemed to make up its mind and charged forward, needle-like claws extended. It ran lightning-fast along the branch and leaped atop Ree, bracing itself with claws in the space between Ree’s neck and his shoulders.
Ree’s involuntary shriek only caused the claws to dig in further, and Jem said, now sounding concerned, “Come on down. That branch is too thin for you.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Ree said, shuffling back uncertainly. What did Jem think, exactly? That he wanted to set up a treehouse up here?
Just at that moment there was a crack like thunder, and the branch moved beneath him. On the ground, Jem jumped out of the way and yelled, “Ree, be careful.”
But it was too late for Ree to do anything short of growing wings, and that he’d missed when the changes had come.
The branch didn’t break, it just peeled off the tree, Ree and all. His world tilted down, and then he was holding onto the branch and there were other branches flying past him as he fell. He tried to grab onto the passing branches with hands and feet, all the while trying to secure the kitten with yet another hand.
Even as That Damn Kitten dug its claws hard into the securing hand, it occurred to Ree that it might have been a good idea to have been caught near an octopus when the changes came. Failing wings, he could have used another complement of limbs.
He landed on the ground, still atop the branch. The force of impact jarred his brain and made him dizzy. Jem was there, trying to help him up. Jem was taller than Ree by a full head now, but the look in his eyes was the same as it had been two years ago, when he’d decided to cast his lot in with Ree and that they’d stay together come what may. “Are you all right?”
Jem’s gaze was balm to Ree’s heart. He brought the screaming kitten down off his shoulders and put up a hand to prevent Jem reaching for it. “Don’t touch it. That Damn Kitten is full of needles.” He put it carefully on the ground, where it ran to rub on That Other Damn Cat, who hovered nearby and who gave Ree a reproachful glance.
Ree sucked on the claw wounds on his fingers. “Gee, I rescue her baby and she glares at me. You’d think she’d treat me like a hero.”
Jem sidled close, smiling but only half joking. “I think you’re a hero. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“Well . . . it just might be, if only—” He stopped. He stopped because having raised his head, he’d caught sight of something against the sky. But it was a good thing he stopped, because what could he tell Jem? If only I weren’t sure you’d grow past and away from me and forget all that lay between us?
“What is it?” Ree never could hide anything from Jem: the younger boy caught his expressions before anyone else would.
Ree pointed. “See smoke, up there? It’s not cooking fires. It’s darker, and it doesn’t look right. I think it’s a house burning. And look, there’s another one farther off. That means soldiers.” His chest and stomach tightened. Soldiers meant trouble. He didn’t know if it was the Empire coming back to make sure everyone paid their taxes and to take away the boys who were old enough to be in the army, or if it was one of the bandit lords they’d heard about.
It didn’t matter. Either would kill him, just as they’d kill the wild hobgoblins that haunted the forest. That was the law, and maybe it was right. After all, who knew what would happen to Ree when Jem grew up and moved into the world of men and left Ree behind, alone with the beasts?
If there were soldiers coming, Garrad had to know. He was the farmer here—an irritable old man whose temper protected a heart big enough to take in a city waif and a hobgoblin when Ree and Jem had arrived two winters ago.
If they hadn’t found Garrad just in time and if he hadn’t been willing to shelter them on his farm, Jem would have died of a horrible persistent cough he’d caught after they’d left Jacona. To be sure, Garrad would probably have died too, as he’d injured himself in a fall and been unable to get up and look after himself. But all the same, even in that situation, Ree knew most humans would have turned him out. Garrad taking to Jem was easy. Jem looked enough like him he might have been his grandson. Taking to Ree, though . . . what human in his right mind would want to offer shelter to a creature part rat, part cat and part human?
Now Ree and Jem ran to find him. Jem had the advantage over Ree, his legs having gotten much longer, loping over a cluck of chicks pecking at the dirt and barely avoiding a head on collision with one of the goats. Ree followed behind, his claws digging into the dirt, the farm animals scampering away from his path.
Garrad was in the barn with the cows. When the boys had come, there had been two cows and an old horse and not much else. But Ree and Jem had had to kill some of the wild hobgoblins to defend the farm. It wasn’t something they talked about. They just did it. They patrolled the forest and kept the bad or stupid hobgoblins away and killed the ones who wouldn’t obey.
The hobgoblin furs fetched handsome prices, as did the herbs and mushrooms they gathered in the forest where villagers from the nearby hamlet of Three Rivers were afraid to go. Now they had four milk cows, an unruly herd of goats, and a donkey. The donkey had come straying in from the forest, arrived from who knew where. She was a yearling, wounded and weak. Perhaps Jem had thought she was like him, because he’d nursed her to health, and now he harnessed her to the cart he took down to the village once a week to sell milk and cheese and herbs.
Garrad looked like a prosperous farmer, in clothes they’d had made from bought cloth and not homespun. And they looked like a prosperous farmer’s grandsons. In all except Ree’s unfortunate modifications.
“Granddad,” Jem shouted as he came into the dim, cooler barn, which smelled of clean animals and fresh milk.
Garrad was sitting on the milking stool, milking one of the cows. White liquid splashed into a tin bucket. He looked up and frowned at them. He always frowned, but Ree had learned to read the expressions, and this one was alarm. “What is it?” His hand reached for the stick that rested near him. Jem had carved it to help Garrad walk when they’d arrived, but now it was used mostly as a pointing tool and a weapon. “What happened?”
They told him. The smoke. Soldiers. Garrad’s thin, hawkish face grew grim. “Well, then,” he said. “If they’re coming they will come. There ain’t much we can do, is there? Not like we can pack up the farm, the animals, and those damn cats and all and hide out of their way.”
“I can go to the forest,” Ree said. He’d deliberately hung back, in the shadows of the barn, behind Jem a bit and out of Garrad’s line of sight. “And stay there, you know? It might make it easier for you.” Easier surely, if the soldiers didn’t think they were harboring a wild hobgoblin, which was as much a capital crime as being a hobgoblin. Not that Ree had ever quite understood how it could be a crime when he’d had no control over it.
Garrad snorted and turned back to his milking, his movement so jerky that the cow shifted her bac
k leg and gave a low, surprised moo. “You cutting out on your family, boy?” Garrad said, as he gentled the cow. “Yeah, you might have to hide when the soldiers come, but not in the forest. Stay nearby, boy, we might need you. Or don’t you care?”
There were no words to say how much Ree cared, so he simply said, “All right,” and went to muck out the goats.
Peering through the narrow air slits high up in the barn let Ree see Garrad leaning on his walking stick so he looked as helpless and inoffensive as a cranky old man could, and Jem pretended to support him all the way across the field. Ree didn’t think it would help.
It had taken the soldiers three days to get to the farm, and each day smoke pillars had risen up from the valley bringing with them a smell of unclean smoke. When he climbed the trees near the farm, Ree knew the soldiers were burning out places. And the column in which they moved grew, with long lines of people tied up behind the soldiers. Slaves or prisoners, didn’t matter which. Even children were tied up and dragged along, little ones, barely able to walk.
Garrad snapped at Ree when Ree couldn’t eat and said they would be all right. But it seemed to Ree no better than a magic incantation, and everyone knew magic wasn’t much good anymore.
Jem and Garrad approached the soldiers—Garrad doing his best to limp, Jem supporting him solicitously. The leader of the soldiers didn’t dismount. He stayed atop his big gray mare, glaring down at them like a man who knows a put-on when he sees it.
He looked like one of those big mean bastards, built solid, like Garrad’s outhouse, and he sized up Jem and Garrad like a trader checking furs. Or—and the older memory made Ree swallow and wipe his hands on his pants—like some of Ree’s mother’s customers when they looked at him, back when he’d still been human. Before she’d shooed him away to avoid his being sold to some of those that preferred boys.
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