Dresbourn
As you are by now aware, I am a Lekran slave trader. Though that makes us enemies, there is a certain respect that is possible even between enemies. I write this partly from that respect and partly from anger, an anger that you will understand shortly. It appears that we have both been betrayed and I believe it would give us both comfort to have the treachery punished.
You may have wondered how I obtained such good information on the lay of the farm and the approach my men used. Two months before our invasion I was able to bribe a young boy into divulging every detail of the farm and its occupants. He was to keep clear of the place during a specified time – the time of our arrival.
Have you not wondered how Aedan was able to work things out from those ridiculous clues? The little turncoat was only pretending to work out what he already knew. It is to your credit that you were not taken in by his invented stories.
I paid him well to keep his mouth shut, paid him very well. First he betrayed you, then he betrayed me. I leave it to you to decide what to do with him. In my land, however, the punishment for this kind of treachery is most severe.
It is true I acted deceptively while with you, but I hope that you can see I have nothing to gain from being deceptive now.
Aedan had barely listened to the words. “Did he say anything about Kalry?” he asked when his father was finished.
“First answer my questions,” Clauman said. “Did you accept money in exchange for that information?”
“No.”
“Did you ever see Quin before he arrived at Badgerfields?”
“No.”
“Is anything in the letter about you true?”
“I – I don’t think so … No.”
Clauman’s eyes were hard. “Then tell me what happened, and mind you don’t stretch or bend it. I want straight answers. Don’t think that your injuries will keep me from getting them.”
Nessa stepped into the room. “Clauman,” she pleaded, “you can’t do this now. He’s barely able to draw breath.”
“This is a matter that could spell our doom, woman! Have you forgotten that Lanor is dead? Do you know who the acting sheriff is? Dresbourn himself!”
She opened her mouth to speak, but the deep intelligence of her eyes withered to a girlish timidity as her husband pointed at the door. With a last look at Aedan, she shrank from the room.
“How is Lanor dead?” Aedan asked his father.
“It is currently under inquest. Now tell me what happened to you.”
Aedan, discomposed even further, tried to collect himself and see the events again as they had unfolded. Beginning with the supposed Lieutenant Quin, he pieced those two days together as best he could. It was disjointed, and some parts he covered without detail, like his humiliation before Dresbourn. His father’s sharp eyes bored into him at that point and Aedan moved on quickly. When he finished, Clauman looked at him with judge-like detachment. There had been no emotion in his face, not even when Aedan told of the cliff and the jump.
“Yes,” he said, “I think that is the truth. You have not the wits about you to put together such a complex lie, and it agrees in many details with that ramshackle storekeeper’s account. Quin wrote this to avenge himself on you.”
Aedan should have known there would be no word of approval, of fatherly pride. Clauman was a man who never praised anyone directly. Sometimes he would use glowing words about someone, but never in front of them. Though Aedan was familiar with this cold reserve, the emptiness of his father’s response still cut him. Clauman continued, partly talking to Aedan, partly airing his own thoughts,
“Dresbourn then, was blinded by Quin’s flattery on the day of his arrival. He declared you a fool in front of his entire staff and a few dozen townsmen, and while his words were still drifting to ground, he was shown to be the fool. He is rightly shamed. But he can salvage his reputation if he shows that you were in with Quin from the beginning.
“Emroy, that pimple-ravaged, insolent upstart has claimed full credit for the plan you put together, saying the reason he sent you ahead was because he knew you were familiar with the forest. It was a cleverly calculated detail and this is where the next problem comes in. The men you outran have now begun to tell stories, saying that you moved through Nymliss like something unnatural, that twigs don’t break under your feet and thorns don’t cut you.” He cast his eye over the web of scratches covering Aedan’s arms and face and the torn feet still grooved with scabbed wounds.
“Some in this town are almost religiously superstitious of that forest. They say your trespassings there brought this tragedy on us, that we are being punished for your crime of entering forbidden regions. As a former king’s forester, I care nothing for such idiocy, but people are beginning to talk of a purge. With Lanor around, no such nonsense would have spread. But the sheriff is gone and the town now looks to the high houses for order, leaving Dresbourn in a very powerful position. He is deliberately letting the talk grow wild. He even started a rumour of his own, suggesting the sheriff discovered your treachery and you killed him for it, pushed him off the cliff.”
“But Nulty was there. Why didn’t he say what happened?”
“He did. He said he made part of the jump and fished you and the sheriff out of the water. I was there at the hearing. When he was finished, Dresbourn said that such a story would require either a powerful swimmer or a powerful liar and that the fat storekeeper did not look like much of a swimmer. Nobody listened to your witness after that. It is starting to look like charges of treason and murder could be laid. I think you are too young for the gibbet, but I can’t be sure that Dresbourn feels the same, and he is now the law. I fear we will soon be in great danger.”
“But I did nothing wrong!” Aedan cried.
“I don’t think Dresbourn cares. He loves his pride more than his own daughter. You took that pride from him and he wants it back. Wants it at any cost.”
“Will you tell me about Kalry now?” Aedan asked.
His father snapped out of his thoughtful manner. “The storekeeper said he would be here later. He will be able to tell you. There are pressing matters that need my attention if I’m to keep our house from burning around our ears. He walked to the door, but then paused and turned, looking at his son lying broken on the straw pallet. His eyes softened just a little and he opened his mouth as if to speak. Aedan looked at him, hopeful. They held each other’s gaze, his father tottering on an edge, but then his jaw clamped and he turned and strode from the room, while Aedan remained with heaving chest, staring at the empty doorway.
The window-shaped frame of sunlight had travelled across his floor and was climbing the dried-clay wall, reflecting, washing the little room with a deep red ochre. His father had left the house after their conversation, and his mother, despite her constant hovering about him, would answer none of his questions. When he heard Nulty arrive, he almost shouted for him. The portly man barrelled into his room and his eyes shone.
“Oh bless me, boy! I never thought to see you awake again.”
Aedan smiled. Nulty carried his arm in a sling and walked with a heavy limp.
“What happened, Nulty?” he asked. “The last thing I can remember is throwing the hammer. Nobody will tell me anything except that I’ve been named a traitor and a lot more.”
“Yes. I’m very much afraid this is true. We must hope, though, that the madness passes and reason prevails. But don’t you worry about that now,” Nulty said, settling himself onto a low stool and stretching the injured leg before him. He looked at Aedan and began,
“He managed to dive away from the hammer, but the wave from your landing almost toppled the canoe. I think you must have landed closer than you intended – I actually thought you clipped the edge. We saw Quin lose his balance and fall into the river. If it had been only him, it would have worked. But there was a second canoe. The second man pulled Quin out of the water and they caught up with Kalry before she could untie herself.”
Aedan
’s colour drained.
“When we saw the second canoe, Lanor followed you off the cliff. Whether it was the water or a rock, I don’t know, but he did not survive. I think you survived by sheer luck. With the two of you either unconscious or dead I thought it would be unwise to try the same, so I slipped and bumped my way along the crag until I found an overhang about half way down. It was still the most awful jump.
I pulled you both out the water. Lanor was dead. I thought you were dead too, but once the water drained from your lungs, you coughed and I began to hope, and here you are now.” Nulty’s soft eyes shimmered.
“You carried me back?”
“Only until the first river where the others had built a raft. Two men returned for Lanor’s body. A sheriff should be buried in his town.”
“I owe you my life,” Aedan said.
“Nonsense. You and Lanor both offered your lives for Kalry, and you seem to have been given yours back again. You need to spend it wisely.”
“I’ll find her, Nulty. I will.”
Nulty was quiet, apparently considering whether or not to give voice to what was in his mind. “Aedan,” he said at length, “there’s something you need to know about the slave trade.” He paused, collecting himself. “The highest prices of all are paid on Ulnoi, the northernmost of the Lekran Isles, for young girls of noble descent – easily a hundred times more than for any other strong, young slave. To Quin, Kalry was worth more than the rest of the farm put together. She was probably the reason for the attack. Dresbourn was never quiet about his noble line and it seems that the knowledge reached the ears of an informant who probably takes a cut.”
Nulty shuffled in his seat. His eyes lifted to Aedan’s and darted away again, dropping to the floor, before he continued. “On Ulnoi, every year, a family is required to sacrifice a daughter to the gods of the island. Substitute slaves are permitted if they are of high blood. A few weeks back, Dresbourn stormed into my shop demanding to know if I had anything to do with the disappearance of his prized ancestral scroll. When I asked him if what you had noticed was true, that Quin had read the document, he admitted that the slaver had taken a strong interest in it. Quin must have taken it to get his price.
“Last week …” Nulty closed his eyes and pressed them tight.
“Tell me!” Aedan blurted, raising himself up in spite of the pain, peering into Nulty’s face for just a glimmer of hope.
Nulty dropped his head and spoke at the floor. “A parcel arrived. It contained a note. Quin said the sacrifice and burial would take place on the middle day of summer, and in order to give closure, he had sent a pouch containing her hair which he shaved off before setting sail. According to the Lekran calendar, the first of Horth was a week ago, the middle day of summer. I checked my compendium of foreign cultures, and it seems that for once Quin was telling the truth – that is the day when the rituals are known to take place. The ship would have made it to Ulnoi by then with weeks to spare. Of what followed there can be no doubt. This morning the pouch was buried in a grave beside her mother’s. I am sorry, Aedan. I am so sorry.”
Aedan could say no more. He turned his head away and sobbed, deaf to Nulty’s quiet departure.
When his eyes were dry, the sorrow deepened into a hollow, voiceless pain beside which his physical wounds were pale things. The night brought no sleep. Exhaustion finally overwhelmed him at daybreak.
During the afternoon, Thomas and Dara came to visit. He had to clear the gunge from his eyes before he could make them out. Dara burst into tears when she saw how his withered frame was trussed to splints and cut to shreds. Thomas was clearly struggling with a lump that interfered with his voice. Wordlessly, he placed a small leather case in Aedan’s free hand. Aedan held it up and looked at the design on the cover – a little oak sapling growing beside a large toadstool. He realised what it was and his eyes grew large.
“Thomas!” he gasped. “How did you get this?”
“Don’t you worry about that. You just hold onto it.”
There was no need for this last suggestion – Aedan was clutching it so that his nails were white. When he was able to peel his eyes away, he held it against his chest, his fingers as tight as the knots on a barge rope.
When Thomas was able to speak more easily, he said, “We knew it was all lies, all that filth about you working with Quin and killing the sheriff. We heard Nulty’s side of the story, and though Dresbourn told us not to spread it at the farm, me and Dara know it’s the truth.”
“I knew you would,” Aedan said quietly.
“Nulty says you ran with bare feet till they were a bloody pulp and then you jumped off a cliff seven times higher than our bridge to try save her.”
“None of that matters. I never should have left her alone at the clearing. Nulty told me to stay with her and I didn’t. If I hadn’t gone to fetch my shoes, she’d still be here. Shoes! I put my shoes ahead of her. I failed her.”
“You did not!” Dara snapped. She fixed Aedan with a look of such fire that it quelled all argument. “Her father was the one that failed her and failed all of us just because he didn’t want people thinking you are cleverer than him. You gave everything you could for her. Kalry always loved you, and now she knows how much you loved her back. We all know.” She dropped onto the stool and covered her face.
“Dara’s right,” Thomas said, massaging his throat. “You couldn’t have given more to save her. What you tried was so terrifying that almost nobody believes it.”
“But we do,” said the little girl, lifting her head, big dark eyes blinking. “And we are going to tell all the people we can, no matter what Dresbourn says.”
Aedan offered a grateful smile, but he knew the weight of the nobleman’s word. Facts would not be determined by truth but by power. Without the sheriff, Dresbourn had more of that than children could hope to oppose.
There was something that Thomas wasn’t saying though. Aedan knew the way his friend looked when holding something back.
“What are you not telling me?” he asked.
Thomas glanced at Dara. He sighed and looked out the window. “There’s a lot of bad talk, talk of burning your home and banishing your family, even talk of hanging. Tulia and our parents are getting worried for you. We’ve seen people snooping around here like crows. They talk about law and justice, but they are all the ones that used to slip around the corner when the sheriff came their way, like one-eye Kennan and his two friends that were always in the stocks for thieving.”
“Does my father know?”
“Yes. It’s because of him that we heard about it. He came to Badgerfields to tell Dresbourn what was happening, and ask for men to help keep the law. Dresbourn said …” Thomas trailed off.
“What did he say?” Aedan asked.
“I – I don’t want to repeat it.”
“I want to know.”
Thomas looked out the window again before speaking. “He said he would let nature do its worst – or something like that – to this low-blood and his coward-fool of a son. Your father looked like he was going to hit him and Dresbourn looked like Emroy that time he teased William’s dog and then realised its rope was untied. But your father didn’t hit. He just walked up to him and said something that was loud enough for us all to hear. Dara liked it so much she wrote it down. Tulia helped us remember some of the difficult bits. Thomas didn’t bother trying to read it and simply handed Aedan the page, but Aedan’s free arm was too weak to hold it up for long enough.
“Dara,” he asked. “Would you read it to me?”
The little girl rubbed her face and took the page with a shy smile. Her voice was small, but it trembled with strong emotion as she read:
“I’ll respect that you were man enough to accuse me to my face, but if you think my son either a coward or a fool then your wits are beyond the reach of the thrashing you deserve. The only man in this town to match my son for courage was Lanor, and the only folly Aedan knew was to love your daughter more than his own life.”
/>
She handed the note back to Aedan and added, “People on the farm have been talking about it ever since.”
Long after they had gone, Aedan pressed the note to his chest, remembering his father’s words. When it came to honouring or complimenting, Clauman was usually silent while his wife spoke. Anything that even approached sentimentality usually locked his jaw like a trap. Aedan had begun to suspect that his father was simply embarrassed by such things.
He also suspected that if he had been there, his father would not have spoken as he had, but there was no doubt in his mind that all of it had been sincere. The words had come indirectly, but they were his to treasure.
Aedan awoke to a strange sensation. It was almost as if he were floating, or rather, as if his bed were floating. He opened sleepy eyes and looked around. The dim, candle-lit walls were drifting past him. There seemed to be someone walking in front of his bed and he could hear breathing from behind him. As he glided into the chill darkness of the night his head cleared. A sudden fear seized him and he tensed.
“Easy, Aedan,” his mother’s voice soothed. “You just lie still.”
He relaxed, recognising the tall, nimble form of his father carrying the other end, walking with the long, steady strides of a forester. They lifted him up onto the fully loaded wagon and tied his pallet down.
“That’s everything.” It was his father’s voice. “Open the doors to the goose and chicken houses. I’ll untether the cow and mules. Let’s not have them dying in their pens when the water runs out.” Rough as he could be with his own, Clauman often demonstrated the most peculiar tenderness with animals.
In the darkness, Aedan waited, listening to the stamp of hooves, the creak of gates, the rustling of wind through the poplars.
Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) Page 10
