The Lyre Dancers

by Mandy Haggith

  ‘No. I told him I’m not her father and it’s up to you. He looked disappointed.’ Manigan took a breath. ‘I offered to ask you for him. Apparently Soyea thinks you don’t want her to be free.’

  ‘I don’t know what I want. I want none of this to have happened.’

  ‘You know, he’s grown on me. There’s something about him makes me think he could be the Mutterer. I always thought I’d know the man by the way he hunted. But it’s not that at all. I think I’ve found him by how he loves, not by how he kills. Perhaps that’s just another kind of hunting.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘He has a grin that lad, it’d melt the heart of a polar bear. Do you know where he’s sleeping?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s outside Soyea’s cubby hole, at the top of the stairs, him and his monkey guarding her like a pair of dogs.’

  STENCH

  The next morning, no one said much, except for Buia who was chuntering incoherently, swaying on a stool, her eyes barely straying from the corpse. Earlier she had brought black dung beetles and dropped them on the body. Rian was becoming scared of her.

  There was banging from above them. Rona was awake and clearly not happy to be locked up. Rian still didn’t like the idea of her daughter being imprisoned but Manigan was probably right that it was the only way, for the time being, to stop her doing something stupid. It was an unbearable situation. She poked at the fire and prodded one of the oatcakes baking on the stone beside it.

  Eventually, from her spot on the staircase, Donnag spoke up. ‘We should fetch The Wren.’

  As soon as she spoke, Rian knew it was right. They needed someone powerful to help them deal with this evil turn of events.

  Donnag came down and faced Manigan across the hearth. ‘Would the wind let a boat cross to the Long Island and back?’

  He tilted his head in assent. ‘It’s a southerly. I reckon we could make it over by dusk. And after a southerly it’ll usually go westerly later, so if that’s not too soon, it might be possible.’

  ‘And good for getting back,’ Kino said.

  Donnag stared, as if only registering his presence for the first time, and said to him. ‘Who do you think might be willing to go?’

  Manigan and Rian exchanged glances, and she knew he was thinking what she was; that if Ussa was intent on following Rian north from the Winged Isle then she might arrive at any time. A southerly wind was perfect for her.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Manigan said eventually. ‘It’ll be easier to cross over with Bradan than try to find someone else to make the trip. Alasdair’ll look after everyone here.’

  Rian knew he’d said that to try to reassure her.

  ‘Are you up for it Badger?’

  Not surprisingly Badger and Kino were both keen to get away from the stifling atmosphere of the broch. They set off almost immediately, taking Donnag with them, aiming to head straight back the next day if they could. Only Fin showed any reluctance, but he went too. At the last minute Manigan suggested they take Rona with them and Rian agreed. Rona made no sign of wanting to stay or go and mutely followed her father, perhaps on the basis that escape from the boat could be no harder than from the broch.

  Rian watched Bradan shrink away over the horizon and dragged her feet back into the broch. The corpse stank.

  Only she, Soyea and Buia remained. Buia had retreated to her hut and Soyea was sleeping in there with her. Since Fin had left, she was unwilling to enter the broch because of the corpse. Most of the time she would not, or could not, get out of bed, where she lay with her face to the wall.

  So Rian was left alone to tend the fire. It was so quiet that even its crackle seemed to intrude on her thoughts. By evening, she was surprisingly drowsy. She couldn’t bear to climb the staircase to the top floor where she and Manigan had put together a makeshift bed. Instead she slept a dark and dreamless sleep in Danuta’s room.

  It was already fully light by the time she woke and the first thing she was conscious of was the stink from the cadaver in the main room. Danuta’s presence seemed to hover beside her as she brought the embers back to life and greeted the morning fire. Feeling sick, she began the process of making bread, setting the yeast stick in warmed water and measuring flour from the sack that had appeared down in the cellar since the last time she had been there, one of several signs that care had been taken and that life was being lived a little better in the broch. Until this cataclysm.

  There was a cow now, she remembered. She had seen it the last time she had been here, when they had fired the kiln. Later she would go and find Buia and ask if she could milk it. But for now, she sat sifting the flour, her fingers idly loosening lumps and picking out stray pieces of chaff.

  Footsteps alerted her to someone outside. The shadow of a person loomed in the entrance and Rian watched, as if from a great height, observing evil personified.

  With a perfunctory knock on the open door, Ussa stepped into the building. The walk up from the shore had clearly been an exertion for her; her breath rasped, heaving in and out of her chest. Her face contorted into a grimace of disgust. ‘What the hell is that stench?’

  Rian felt only calm. Perhaps this was a new form of fear, or maybe she had no capacity left for negative emotion. Yet she tasted blood in her mouth as if someone had punched her. She had bitten her lip. She unclenched her jaw. ‘Bael’s corpse,’ she murmured, watching as Ussa took in that she was alone.

  ‘I’ve caught you in the cuckoo’s nest, haven’t I? Little bird.’ She spoke the affectionate phrase with acid, but this reminder of Danuta only gave Rian strength.

  She picked up her blow-tube and fed the fire with breath until the embers flamed, then laid three more sticks across them and sat back as they crackled. ‘Take the weight off your feet, Ussa.’ She pointed to a bench. ‘Are you thirsty? Hungry?’

  Ussa ignored Rian, her attention riveted on the dead body on the floor, the chain of feathers, the beetles crawling about. Then she switched her interest to the chest of bronze. She bent over it, picked up a necklace, fingered it, then let it drop.

  She took a step towards Rian and thumped down onto the wooden seat. She had brought a new smell into the place, the stale sweat of a long journey.

  ‘I met a boy at the shore. I hear your brat is the murderer.’ Her breath still came in rasps.

  ‘He was raping her. She defended herself.’

  ‘So you’ve a lie in place already to cover it up. It won’t work. He had a lot of friends, me included. People much more powerful than slave scum and their bastard spawn. Which is, after all, all that you and she are. I’m not sure I still want her, by the way, now she has done this. I’d been thinking she was the one in the prophecy, but now that looks unlikely. But you’re different. Our old score still needs to be settled.’

  Rian poured the yeasty water into her bowl of flour and began mixing it with one hand. She was determined to show no fear, letting only a slight frown line her forehead. She wondered what sort of prophecy Ussa might mean but wasn’t willing to flatter her with curiosity so merely said, ‘I’m not a slave, Ussa.’

  ‘You are mine.’

  Ussa leaned forward on her seat, hands on knees like a man, in the wide-legged stance so familiar to Rian from all those years ago. Whatever it was that had frightened her about it was gone. Now it was just the ugly pose of an old woman.

  ‘I’m not a possession.’ Rian’s hands kneaded rhythmically in the bowl. ‘I’m a mother. But even my daughters don’t possess me, just as I don’t possess them, although I am theirs and they are mine. I am Manigan’s also. If I belong to anyone, I belong to them. It’s a belonging made of love, but maybe you don’t understand that.’ It felt like the longest speech she had ever made and part of her was amazed to see that Ussa seemed to be listening.

  Words came out of the trader’s mouth, but her eyes were uncertain as she said them. ‘There’s no such thing. Home, love, happiness, these are all lies we tell children. Did you never grow out of believing in them?’
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  Rian put the bowl down, pulled a board onto her lap, sprinkled flour on it then scooped up the dough and began to knead it with both hands, squeezing and stretching and rolling. ‘Saying you can’t see the yeast won’t stop the bread from rising.’

  ‘Don’t try to be clever.’

  ‘I’m just being me.’

  There was silence as Rian pummelled the dough.

  Ussa’s eyes returned to the corpse. ‘He was a real man.’

  ‘He was a monster,’ Rian said. ‘He was a thief and respected no one. Have you seen what he stole?’ She pointed at the pile of bronze beside the body.

  Ussa scoffed. ‘He just liked pretty things and he was clever at getting them.’

  ‘Is that how you see yourself?’

  Ussa lifted her chin as if trying to look coquettish. ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Why on earth are you still chasing me? Why can’t you just give it up? A slave is just a slave, any old slave will do, I heard you say it so many times. So why me?’

  Ussa shrieked with laughter. ‘You’ll never understand.’

  Rian stretched out the dough and folded it in on itself. Then an idea struck her. ‘Am I one of your debts?’

  Ussa had been fixated on the Death Stone, despite claiming that every object was interchangeable for something else and nothing was sacred, not even people. But the stone had been different because she owed it to her father, Donnal Sevenheads, the son of a legendary warlord, the first Donnal Sevenheads, so called because he had murdered seven of his rivals for power and put their heads on stakes outside his house. Her father had a way of holding her to her promises. Theirs was no normal father-daughter relationship. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of likelihood that Ussa’s obsession with capturing her had something to do with all of this.

  Ussa frowned, ‘What do you know about my debts, you little witch?’

  ‘Is it your father?’ Rian pursued, and seeing an involuntary flinch in Ussa’s face, she went on, ‘Why are you frightened of him?’

  Ussa’s knees were together now and she was staring at Rian as if her words were hurting her. ‘I’m not frightened of him.’ But this was a different voice from before, more like that of a fearful child.

  ‘Ach, be free of him, Ussa.’

  ‘What do you know about it?’ The big woman’s mouth drooped. ‘Are you on his side too?’

  Rian stopped kneading the bread for a moment, made a guess and took the plunge. ‘If you took me to him, he’d just tangle you up in something else. Better to accept that I’m free. And then you’re free too.’

  Ussa’s mouth was slack with incomprehension.

  ‘He must be ancient. When he dies, you’ll be free. Why wait until then? The fear’s in here.’ Rian tapped her head. ‘Just let it go.’

  The child in the eyes before her stared as if she was offering something wonderful, but then snapped out of sight as men’s voices and footsteps sounded outside.

  Alasdair stomped in, followed by two men Rian recognised as Ussa’s heavies. Her composure began to dissolve. Physical fear of the big men set her shoulders back. She tried to continue kneading as though she was calmer than she felt.

  Buia sidled into the broch after the men. Seeing Ussa, she pointed at her. ‘What’s she doing in here?’

  Alasdair faced Ussa. ‘I met these guys at the shore, said you were here.’

  ‘I’ll not be long.’ Ussa stood and smiled graciously at Alasdair. ‘You two know what to do.’ She waved towards Rian.

  The two big men started for her, one around the left side of the central hearth, the other around the right side. The first took her by the arm. The kneading board started to topple. He grabbed it from her and dropped it on the floor. ‘This way, then.’ He pulled her to her feet.

  The other man found his way blocked by Alasdair. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Get off me.’ Rian was trying to shake the man’s hold from her upper arm.

  ‘I’m just taking back what’s mine,’ Ussa said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Her. She’s my slave.’ She pushed the second man towards Rian, around Alasdair.

  ‘She is one of us.’ Alasdair stepped in front of the man.

  ‘No. You only need to look at the brands on her arm.’ She reached over and pulled down the top of Rian’s dress to reveal her shoulder. ‘There’s the same on her thigh. You see? She’s mine. I bought her from Drost years ago. I did him a favour.’

  Rian pulled her dress back up with her free arm.

  Ussa turned to Alasdair. ‘I’ve been waiting a long time for her to move away from Ictis, away from the Keepers who have been harbouring her. But there’s no asylum here, is there? I respect the rules on Ictis, I may not necessarily agree with them, but I’ll abide by them while I’m there, but here? This is a free land, and I can take back what’s mine, even if I did buy lamb and now all I’m getting is mutton.’

  Rian writhed away from the man holding her. Jabbing him with her elbow and stepping forwards towards Ussa, she threw him off. ‘You don’t understand, do you?’

  ‘What don’t I understand, my cross little slave?’ Ussa sounded confident but she took a step back as Rian approached, eyes blazing.

  ‘I am a free woman and you could be too, any time you choose.’

  Alasdair stood tall against the doorway and gave a grunt that sounded like solidarity.

  Rian gave him a little nod to acknowledge his support.

  ‘Well if someone’s wanting to buy you back, that could possibly be arranged.’ Ussa grimaced pointedly at Alasdair and gestured to the heap of bronze lying beside the body. ‘Some of that will do as payment. After all, I bought her with bronze in this very room.’

  Buia had been shuffling around the side of the room and suddenly she leapt at Ussa, tugging at the long gold chain around her neck.

  ‘You’re a crow. Mad bird. Bad bird.’ Her voice was high, almost a shriek. ‘Bad bird. Craw. Craw. Craw.’ She was hopping like a great crow, foot to foot. ‘Craw. Craw. Mad bird. Bad bird.’ She flapped her arms like a bird landing. ‘People say I’m mad but it’s you that’s crazy. They say I’m mad to gather up the good things our Mother makes – feathers, flowers, bones – but you, you gather only dead things – metal and polished stones. You’re like a big bird. A big mad crow.’

  Rian stepped aside in amazement.

  Buia’s words poured out, tumbling over each other. ‘You come here looking for a slave but what are you? You’re a slave. Look at your chains.’ She tugged the necklace again. ‘Slave to gold, slave to silver, slave to the shiny stones, slave to your own greed.’ She poked her in the chest. ‘Slave to yourself. Chain around your neck, brand on your face.’ She poked again, this time at Ussa’s eye patch.

  Ussa staggered back, then tried to push Buia away, but she skipped out of reach. ‘You’ve still got one eye, can’t you see at all? Look at your hands. Look at your fat feet. Slave feet, bird in a cage feet.’ She pretended to be a crow again. ‘Craw. Craw. Craw.’ She turned, lifted her elbows and hopped away out of the broch, head bent, arms flapping. ‘Craw. Craw.’

  Everyone, including Ussa, stared after her.

  Ussa’s two men were smirking at each other. She faced them, clicking her fingers. ‘You take those grins off your faces.’ She lowered herself down onto the bench with her back to the hearth, facing the corpse and the pile of bronze. ‘I can wait,’ she said, primly, although it was not at all clear what for.

  ‘It’s not looking to me as if you’re welcome here, Ussa,’ Alasdair said.

  ‘This man was my friend.’ She flicked her hand towards Bael.

  Rian and Alasdair exchanged bemused glances. He gestured at the two men with a thumb, jabbed it towards the door, and they slouched out after a curt nod from Ussa, who clearly intended to stay exactly where she was.

  Breathing out slowly, Rian looked at Ussa’s back. Then she returned to her seat by the hearth and tried to dust the muck off the dough.

  Alasdair pulled a stool across
to the middle of the space between the door and the hearth and sat down. ‘Is that bread you were making?’

  She squashed the gritty dough. The floor was filthy. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but it looks like it’s ruined.’ She nudged it into the fire and put some sticks over it.

  She remembered what she had said before in response to Ussa’s denial of love and home and happiness. She needed to believe in love. Perhaps that was what had always enabled her to rise above Ussa. And then there were those five words of Alasdair’s: ‘She is one of us.’

  She looked at the big, kind man. ‘I can start again,’ she said.

  She took the bowl of sourdough down from a shelf, and fetched some more grain, the knocking stick and quern from the cellar. While she thumped the barley in the knocking stone, beating out her fury at Ussa, her grief about her daughters, the smell of baking bread briefly overwhelmed the stench of the corpse, then the dough in the fire was just a charred lump. She emptied the husked grain into a bowl and for a while she hummed as the quern turned. Alasdair’s head nodded. Ussa sat with her back to Rian, her head bowed, a hand over her face. Her only movement was the occasional twitch, the odd silent shudder.

  When the new dough was kneaded Alasdair roused himself. ‘Come on, let’s go and get some fresh air.’

  SOYEA

  PROPHECY

  I come into the broch with more trepidation than I’ve ever felt anywhere. The corpse on the floor, stinking, is enough to keep me outside and knowing Ussa is in there makes it feel like I am entering a viper’s den or putting my hand into a hole in a tree trunk with hornets inside. But Buia drags me in, insistent that I must ‘deal with the mad bird’. She shook me out of my bed saying it and when she had said, ‘Please, please, Soyea,’ for the twentieth time I relented. So I am here, feeling as if I’m wading through mud, my whole soul splattered by Bael’s blood.

  Buia grips me by the hand. ‘Rian’s away. Alasdair’s gone,’ she says. ‘The mad bird will play. You have to stop her. Come on.’ She tugs me over the threshold into the broch.