by D. K. Fields
The lack of traffic in the streets meant fewer people to see Ruth make her way to the coach station, but it meant fewer people to hide among too. So often in this election, crowds had helped Cora, and she’d told plenty of stories to the Commoner in thanks. But this morning, it seemed he’d stopped listening.
The Poet’s bells chimed. All three of them picked up their pace.
Nullan was wearing Ruth’s riding habit and had covered her head to help the disguise, replacing her usual cowl with the kind of hat Cora had seen some Wayward wear. With the hat pulled low and her cloak collar turned up to cover the inkings on her neck, and with her piercings removed, Nullan was a good likeness. To anyone who would be watching the Wayward storyteller make their way to the red tent to meet Chambers Arrani, there should be no reason to believe this wasn’t Ruth.
Ruth herself was back in her Fenestiran clothes, like Cora. She’d been so quiet on the journey to Easterton, Cora half wondered if Ruth had gone back to doing that tanketting even while walking, checking she knew every word she needed. Every word that would have been said by Nicholas Ento: the man who should have been telling this story. If he was on Cora’s mind now, he was surely on Ruth’s too, and Nullan’s. But thinking of a dead storyteller was no help to anyone, not when the job at hand was to keep one alive.
To take her mind from dead storytellers, Cora decided to go over the plan with Ruth and Nullan again as they headed to the coach station. She didn’t care if they were sick of it, sick of her. This was too important to get wrong.
‘Remember, we all three go into the coach station together. Being with a storyteller, we should have fewer problems getting in. Once we’re inside, Nullan, you head straight for the red tent to meet Arrani. Don’t look back at me and Ruth. Pretend you don’t know us.’
‘That doesn’t sound too hard,’ Nullan muttered.
‘Ruth, you and I will—’
‘I know, Cora, I know,’ Ruth said. ‘While Nullan goes to meet Arrani, you and I head to the other side of the storyteller’s coach.’
‘And we need to hide ourselves as best we can,’ Cora said. ‘Purple tunics will be all over the site, as usual, and if any of them think we’re in the wrong place, we’ll be chucked out of the venue. We need to use the coaches parked around the edge of the station for cover. And then—’
‘Then we wait for the Master of Ceremonies to appear,’ Ruth said. ‘Once he’s said his part, Nullan will head for the coach in plain sight, while I make my way there from the other side of the station.’
‘Staying hidden for as long as possible,’ Cora added. ‘We can’t risk making the switch until the last possible moment.’
The idea was, to those watching in the Commission box and the public gallery, and the robed voters themselves, it would look as if the Wayward storyteller was making her way to her rightful place, and all eyes would surely be on her. No one should notice the woman dressed in Fenestiran clothes who was also drawing close to the coach. At the last minute, Nullan would duck sideways, and Ruth would climb up onto the coach. Once she was in place, standing before the great and the good of Fenest, including half the police constables of the capital, she would be safe.
‘What am I meant to say to Chambers Arrani when he realises it’s me?’ Nullan said.
‘You’re a storyteller,’ Cora said. ‘I’m sure you’ll think of something.’
‘Tell him my sister made me do it,’ Ruth said.
They rounded a bend and the alley began to widen. Noise drifted in: voices, for the first time that morning. And one particularly loud voice. It was a pennysheet girl, calling her headlines. Not a voice Cora knew, not that one, not as loud, but she couldn’t help thinking of Marcus. Cora could only make out one word, shouted over and over: Wayward. Wayward. Wayward.
‘Sounds like Marcus has a new rival for loudest pennysheet seller.’
Cora felt Ruth’s gaze on her and realised her mistake, but it was too late.
‘Has?’ Ruth said, coming to a halt. The rain dripped from her cherry-red soft hat. Her velvet coat glittered with water. ‘Has, Cora? Why would you be talking about that child that way?’
‘I…’
‘Marcus is meant to be at the bottom of the River Tun, not round the next corner, ready to stick a knife into my side.’
‘She’s not in Fenest,’ Cora blurted. Nullan wisely stepped away to leave them to it. ‘Or she shouldn’t be. The people who took her, they said—’
‘You’re too soft, Cora. Staying in Fenest all these years.’ Ruth shook her head. ‘I knew you wouldn’t be able to do it.’
‘Then why tell me that I had to?’ To Cora’s own ears, her voice was too loud.
‘Because I had no other choice,’ Ruth said. ‘The girl had betrayed me. She not only put the Wayward story at risk, she also risked the rest of the Union. People died on the river because of her, and more would have done so in the years to come if they’d stopped me telling my son’s story.’
‘But you didn’t want me to kill the girl, did you?’ Cora said. ‘Not truly. You wanted me to rid you of the bind Marcus had placed you in, and it didn’t really matter how that was done.’
Ruth started walking again, and that was answer enough for Cora.
‘I knew you were up to something that night before we left the herd,’ Nullan said. ‘When Serus was there, asking me for a drink. I could tell he didn’t really want one, that he was covering for you.’
‘But you didn’t stop me,’ Cora said.
‘Because I’m as soft as you are. Come on.’ Nullan wiped the rain from her face as they headed after Ruth. ‘What are the chances Electoral Affairs have rigged up some shelter for a storyteller?’
‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up, but it sounds like there might be some good news.’
The voice of the pennysheet seller was getting louder, and clearer. By the time Cora and Nullan reached the end of the alley where Ruth was waiting, the girl was in sight. Her words were sharp: Wayward story odds on favourite to win. Landslide expected.
*
The alley led onto a main street, and on the other side was the coach station wall. There were more people now, all streaming down the street towards Easterton’s entrance. From beyond the coach station wall, a hum of noise rose over the persistent sound of the rain. Cora caught sight of the banners that flanked the Commission box below, snagging in the wind. The spoked wheel plus the realm symbols were a furious mess of fabric.
They joined the crowd, keeping close together to reach the main gateway. Usually this was a dangerous place to be on foot, with carts, coaches and gigs racing in and out of the station. But today, the traffic was all people – rained-on people, keen to hear an election story, but their tempers soured by the weather and the mud.
The purple tunics, too, were harried, struggling to keep order, and that was helpful. As soon as Nullan presented herself at the gate, claiming to be the Wayward storyteller, she was rushed over to a senior staff member, identifiable by the deeper purple of their uniform. Cora couldn’t hear their exchange over the noise of the rain and the crowd, but whatever Nullan said, it worked, and she was being escorted into the coach station by a pair of tunics. Her two Fenestiran companions went overlooked, just as Cora had hoped, and all three of them were safely inside.
At once, the tunics melted away from Nullan – shouting suggested a crisis about the voting chest entering the site. The other tunics in sight were struggling to direct those seeking a seat in the public gallery.
‘Time for me to go,’ Nullan said.
She and Ruth embraced, then Nullan pulled away. Her eyes were wet. The Casker squeezed Cora’s shoulder before heading for the red tent without a backwards glance. She soon disappeared in the heaving mass of people and the gusting rain. Ruth seemed to have forgotten where she was and simply stared at the point Nullan had vanished. Cora grabbed her sister and pulled her in the other direction, close to the wall of the site where the coaches and gigs had been moved. There was no order to it, the
vehicles all jammed together this way and that. It would be a nightmare to free them, but it did give the cover Cora was hoping for as she and Ruth picked their way towards the storyteller’s coach.
The rain was even heavier now, limiting visibility – it was an each-way bet as to whether that was good or bad for Ruth’s safety. But there was no time to think about it. The coach station was chaos. As best she could in the weather, Cora scanned the muddy square that made up the site. The business of the election was in full swing – the white expanse of the garbing pavilion bright and strange against the mud of the coach station. Rough matting looked to have been put down for the Commission box and the voters’ seats, but in the public gallery, already full, people had to make do with the puddles at their feet.
‘They did put up some shelter,’ Cora said, nodding to the canvas sails that even now teams of purple tunics were securing with ropes.
‘It’s the least the Commission could do,’ Ruth said. ‘There’s the coach.’ She pointed across the site at a lone, large coach that had been left directly in front of the voters’ seats, a ladder leaning against it. This was where Ruth would tell her story. As long as she could reach it safely.
‘What the…’
Ruth spun round. ‘What? What is it?’
Cora swallowed her words away, shook her head. She couldn’t tell Ruth what she’d just realised.
The coach – it was familiar.
The size of it, the black paint and the spoked wheel picked out in white: it was one of the old Commission coaches. One of those too large to pass through the streets of Fenest and so rarely used, grown shabby. Nicholas Ento had been killed in such a coach, strangled with a curtain cord before being dumped in another part of the city. The choice of an old Commission coach had to be deliberate. They weren’t even stored at Easterton anymore. Cora’s investigation had shown her that. So someone had brought this one here, to challenge Ruth and Cora, to show their power, and to make them quail before it.
Lowlander Chambers Morton.
Cora glanced at the Commission box. It was full. Cora could see the brown robes, and what looked like the uniform of Chief Inspector Sillian. The voters’ seats were still empty, but from the hush growing over the coach station, the Master of Ceremonies would soon appear.
When they drew level with the coach, twenty feet or so of open space lay ahead of them. Cora said they should stop and wait, keeping hidden behind a Clotham’s gig that needed a wash – even the rain couldn’t dislodge the mud that caked its paint-peeling sides. Cora looked back at the tents and seating areas.
‘It all looks calm. No sign of any trouble so far.’
‘Can you see Nullan?’ Ruth said.
Cora squinted across the open space. ‘There are too many people. The rain. I’m sure she’s fine.’
Cora wasn’t sure at all, but there was nothing she could do now. Nullan had agreed to take the risk. Cora just hoped the Widow wouldn’t be hearing any stories about the Casker today.
A bell rang.
The voters began leaving the garbing pavilion. To see the Audience there, in Easterton Coach Station, making their way through the mud, the gigs and coaches lining the walls around them, was one of the strangest sights Cora had ever seen. And she had seen some things, working the streets of Fenest.
The fifty voters, wearing their over-sized coloured masks, took their seats. Silence fell over the coach station. Even the rain seemed to grow quiet. A single figure had climbed onto the coach facing the Audience: the Master of Ceremonies.
‘Audience, welcome.’ His voice was just audible, carried on the wind. ‘In this, the two hundred and ninth election of our realms…’
Cora looked towards the red tent. There was no sign of Nullan.
‘She should be coming out now,’ Ruth said, voicing Cora’s thoughts.
‘She’s probably waiting until the last minute,’ Cora said, ‘keeping hidden as long as possible.’ But she wasn’t sure she believed this.
Ruth was straining to see, looking out over the site. ‘What if she didn’t even make it to the tent? What if something happened on the way? Anyone could—’
‘There she is!’ Cora almost shouted the words as, on the other side of the coach station, a figure in a Wayward riding habit was heading for the coach. For a heartbeat, Cora thought she was seeing Ruth, but her sister was still beside her, safe. For these last moments, safe.
Nullan.
She was heading for the coach. The Master of Ceremonies was extending an arm to her, believing this was the real Wayward storyteller.
‘Time I was going,’ Ruth said.
Cora felt the ground pitch. She had to fight herself not to reach out and grab her sister, hold her back, keep her safe. But she couldn’t. This was what it had all been leading to. Whatever happened next, Ruth had to get to that coach. The Audience was waiting.
Ruth kissed Cora’s cheek. ‘I’ll see you afterwards.’
‘See that you do,’ Cora muttered, though ‘afterwards’ was the thing they’d never settled on. There was only the story.
Ruth was walking away, heading for the lone Commission coach. Her path took her between the scattered gigs and coaches, giving her cover until the last moment.
Nullan’s pace had slowed: she was giving Ruth time to appear. From Cora’s angle, she caught glimpses of Ruth weaving between the gigs.
There was a flash of movement from the public gallery, and then someone was running towards Nullan. Gasps went up from those watching, even as Cora felt the air drain from her lungs.
It was Tannir, running straight for Nullan, nothing to lose now.
Nullan had realised something was wrong from the noise of those watching, and was turning, but too slowly. Tannir leapt upon her, and Cora saw the glint of metal in his hand before the two bodies became a tumbling heap of cloth and arms, mud and shouts. Two purple tunics were sprinting over, and on their heels were constables. Cora was running herself now, but not to save Nullan.
She was running to Ruth.
She caught Ruth just as her sister was emerging into the open next to the coach she was to tell her story from, wrapping her in her arms and not letting go.
‘What’s happening?’ Ruth cried, her eyes wide, straining to see over Cora’s shoulder, to fight her way free.
‘It’s Nullan. Tannir attacked her.’
Ruth went limp. ‘Is she—’
‘She’s fine,’ Cora said.
But there was no way of knowing, given the churning crowd that had formed around Nullan. Too many people, too much movement. Ruth buried her face in Cora’s shoulder.
They stayed like that until order was restored, with Cora telling Ruth a story of what she could see, Ruth keeping her face pressed into Cora’s shoulder.
The Audience had been swept back into the garbing pavilion by purple tunics as soon as Tannir had struck. Now the purple tunics worked to quieten the public gallery and make everyone return to their seats. A line of constables formed a protective ring around the Commission box. Inside it, Lowlander Chambers Morton would no doubt be expressing shock and sadness to the dignitaries around her, even as she believed she’d finally silenced this Wayward story.
But Tannir would have no chance to tell his story, Cora thought, watching a handful more constables leading the Wayward away, his hands cuffed. The bruise on his cheek was visible even from a distance. Who did Morton have waiting? Who was her back-up ’teller, now that Tannir had over-played his hand? The head herders were likely to have helped with that – without a Wayward story, the whole election was void, and the Commission would assume control of the Assembly until a new election could be held. All this, Cora murmured to Ruth. Except one last part, as a constable scooped up a limp figure from the ground, her head fallen back over his arm.
Cora changed the story. In the tale she told Ruth, Nullan was on her feet, shaken, but walking. The plan had worked. All was well. Ruth gave no cry of joy. She must have known it wasn’t true, but they would keep the fiction f
or now. It had to be done: the Audience were returning to their seats.
‘The Master of Ceremonies is climbing back onto the coach,’ Cora said.
At this, Ruth finally looked up. Her eyes were red raw from crying and her chest heaved.
‘This has been a most… irregular occurrence,’ the Master said. ‘I thank the Audience for their forbearance and ask that the Commission rule the election—’
‘Suspension or delays will not be necessary,’ Chambers Arrani shouted. He climbed onto the coach beside the Master of Ceremonies who bowed his head in deference. ‘The Wayward storyteller is here,’ Arrani called to all in the coach station, ‘and she is safe.’
The crowd gasped. Cora wished she could see the face of Lowlander Chambers Morton in that moment, and Sillian beside her. Their plan had failed.
Ruth stepped into view. Cora had hold of her hand. To let go, it was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. Ruth squeezed it, then she was gone.
‘This is the rightful storyteller,’ Arrani boomed. ‘Let no one in the Union say otherwise!’
The Master of Ceremonies was so shocked, he froze atop the coach. Arrani gave him a firm push towards the ladder, and all at once, he remembered himself and scuttled out of the way. Arrani’s leave-taking was more dignified. Evidently, a Chambers was always self-controlled, no matter the crisis.
Ruth took a deep breath then climbed onto the roof of the coach. Would she be able to tell her story, after all that had happened? Cora wasn’t sure, but then Ruth opened her mouth, and her words came, strong and clear.
‘This is my son’s story.’
The Wayward story
This is my son’s story. It is his story. Although he didn’t always know it.
The Wayward have many traditions and rituals that other realms deem… unusual. One such tradition concerns those wishing to marry for the first time in their lives. The reasoning behind this particular tradition is to give any two people a chance to gather memories and stories, together, before taking their vows.
