Frostflower and Thorn

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “If she didn’t need help, you could have made it better alone, couldn’t you, warrior?”

  “Smart, merchant. I’d have gutted you if you said anything else. Just don’t tell me why you want to help a sorceress so much, or maybe I’ll peel and boil you.”

  He wiggled his fingers under her palms. “You’re the one who owes me a good milking, Thorn.”

  She glanced at Small Spider, who had the donkey untied and was letting it drink before leading it back to tether it someplace safer. The merchant and the warrior both deserved a good screwing. They would deserve it more, and maybe enjoy it more, after they had everyone safe, including themselves…but in a few days they might be dead, not safe. They had better take the chance while they had it; it would help keep the merchant’s courage up, and she could always give him another couple of goes if they made it through this mess with their guts still on the inside. “Wait until Spider’s asleep. We’ll bed her down in the wagon and spread a few blankets out here for us. Meanwhile, you get us a decent supper—I’m sick of poor workers’ slop—and I’m going to sleep until it’s cooked.”

  * * * *

  They left the following morning before light. Thorn let Spendwell keep himself awake on the driver’s seat, while she slept much of the way in the wagon. They reached Frog-in-the-Millstone very late in the afternoon. Thorn, Small Spider, and the dog remained in the wagon until almost midnight. It was a good thing Frog-in-the-Millstone was too small to have a wagon-field for traveling merchants; Brightweave had his own little pen for the donkeys, while the wagon waited between his house and the spinner’s next door. It was also a good thing that no one had looked inside Spendwell’s wagon between White Orchard and Frog-in-the-Millstone—they would have had a hard time explaining the presence of two charcoal burners and a muddy dog in the middle of Spendwell’s expensive cloth.

  For the ten days from the weavers’ home to the mountains they would have a better explanation. Thorn would be a laboring man (another change of disguise, this time to a landworker’s short tunic), Frostflower his wife, and the brat their son. They would all ride inside the wagon; and if nobody looked inside, fine. If somebody saw them, they were a family who had lost their work when their old priest’s farm in the south was raided by a neighbor who had too many workers for his own land. They had come as far as Glantfork without finding another place. Hearing that Elvannon was a bighearted priest with poor land that needed good, hard workers and that did not attract raids, they had paid Spendwell most of what remained of their savings for a ride to Elvannon’s Farm in the shadow of the northern mountains. To explain why the laboring man was riding inside instead of reducing the price of their ride by helping the merchant, Thorn, or “Pitchfast” (as she had renamed herself this time) would be recovering from a sudden fever. She would lie on the wagon floor with her sword and dagger hidden under her blanket. Nobody would question the presence of a baby with two parents in evidence; and, while they would not attempt to hide the dog, with luck Frostflower would be able to keep it quiet and unobtrusive, visible but not memorable.

  All of them helped devise the story, and by the time it was settled, Thorn was no longer completely sure which details had been hers originally, which Spendwell’s, and which the weavers’. Even Frostflower, who otherwise sat silent, testified to Elvannon’s character.

  Frostflower still had a slightly bleak expression in her face. It worried Thorn, but it would fit in with their story. The sorceress was strong enough to travel, anyway. She was almost as strong as when the swordswoman had first met her. Well, who would not look bleak, with a return to the gibbet constantly threatening her? Thorn probably looked pretty damn bleak herself.

  They put Frostflower into a landworker’s trousers and a nursing mother’s worktunic, almost as short as Thorn’s; they curled her hair in a braid around her head (Thorn thought it had been stupid of the weaver-woman not to cut it as short as she had cut Small Spider’s; but, now the sorceress was no longer taking Spider’s place, it was better to leave it long); they wrapped her head with a kerchief that Spendwell folded in the style of the southlands; and they took the warrior-red eyepatch Thorn had used earlier, dyed it dark brown, and adjusted it over Frostflower’s right eye.

  Only once did Frostflower demur. “This is lying, isn’t it?”

  “We can’t stroll up Straight Road North as ourselves,” Thorn replied.

  “You said, once, that my people live lies, that we would not know how to tell the truth.”

  “When the Hellbog did I ever say that?”

  “In Burningloaf’s upper room.”

  “I was a damn stupid bitch. Anyway, it’s different when you’re fighting for your life.”

  Frostflower played with the lacings of her tunic. “Yes,” she said.

  Yes, scorch my guts, thought Thorn. The sorceri know all about dissimulating to save their lives—except that they have to do it somehow without downright lying. “Look, Frost,” she said aloud, “I know what the bloody priests do to you if they catch you wearing anything besides those damn black robes, but you don’t have your own rules about it, too, do you? I mean, your God doesn’t make it a sin for you to wear anything else?”

  Frostflower looked up with something like her old smile. “In our retreats, we wear bright colors, embroideries, the loveliest clothes we can make.”

  The warrior had not expected quite that revelation. The thought of sorceri walking around their retreats dressed like butterflies was irreconcilable with the gloom-ridden, menacing places of the tales she had always believed. But so was Frostflower irreconcilable with everything she had always believed of the sorceri. Thorn grinned. “All right. You’re not lying, you’re just wearing the clothes your friends have given you. Sorry they’re not brighter. All you have to do, if anyone asks, is just sit quiet—don’t say yes, don’t say no, don’t say anything—if they think you’re dumb, fine, you don’t even have to open your mouth to deny it. Leave all the lying to the merchant and me.”

  “Thank you, Thorn.” Frostflower looked down again. “It is good of you. But it does not matter so much, now, whether I help you to lie or not.” She began to play with her lacings once more. They went down to her waist, the tunic being made so that a mother could undo the front and pop her breasts out quickly and easily when feeding time came for the brat. After a moment she smiled again. “How will you say I lost my blue eye?”

  “The bloody brat poked it with his little finger.”

  The sorceress chuckled. “Would anyone believe it?”

  “Of course they’ll believe it. That’s a damn strong grub and he’ll poke their own eyes out if they don’t believe it. All right, you got hit by a flying chip of wood one day when your father was chopping logs for the fire.”

  Spendwell and Brightweave spent much of the afternoon putting still more of the weavers’ cloth into the merchant’s wagon. A couple of townsfolk, visiting to ask about Small Spider’s health and seeing such a prosperous young merchant as Spendwell back again so soon for more of Yarn and Brightweave’s cloth, congratulated them on their success and asked how they could keep up with the demand for their weaving. Brightweave pointed to the length presently on Yarn’s loom and remarked that she had to finish it before morning, since Spendwell wanted it, too.

  Late that night, Thorn and Frostflower came up from the cellar where they had spent the day hiding and adjusting their disguises, and Small Spider came down from the supposed sickbed on which she had taken her own place. Frostflower climbed alone, with the baby and Dowl, to the uppermost floor to make whatever prayers sorceri made to their God. The rest gathered all the household’s statues into Brightweave’s bedchamber.

  It was a very simple ceremony. They could not chant, both because they had no priest and because they could not risk being overheard. Brightweave, Spendwell, and Yarn took turns muttering prayers as nearly as they could remember the priestly words, pausing sometimes to leave out phrases they had forgotten, rather than missay them too badly or risk ma
king up their own words. Very few priests would have sanctioned such a ceremony at all; many would have said the petitioners were worsening instead of bettering their chances. A private, wordless sacrifice of praise or gratitude was one thing—a gathering of petition was another. Less than a hen’s-hatching ago, Thorn would have considered such a gathering, without priest or chant, blasphemous. We’ve all been corrupted, the swordswoman thought as she stood in the back with fist to lips, wishing the weavers had a statue of the Warriors’ God. We’re all getting sloppy, even the damn merchant. Frostflower’s making us all irreligious, and she’s not even down here with the rest of us bastards!

  Afterward they had a small supper, hushed but groundlessly cheerful. Yarn finished her length of cloth and Brightweave loaded it into the wagon at the same time Thorn and Frostflower, with the baby and the dog, slipped out to it. Thorn slept the rest of the night on the wagon’s floor, not waking until it jerked and she heard Spendwell explaining to some early riser that Brightweave had loaded the last length of cloth during the night, before he went to bed.

  Frostflower could not have slept so uninterruptedly as Thorn. She had to keep the brat dry, fed, and quiet the whole time until they were well out of Frog-in-the-Millstone.

  CHAPTER 11

  “The cloth merchant has passed our Farm,” said Maldron, “driving north.”

  “You are sure it was the same merchant?”

  “Snaste saw his wagon from the gate.”

  “Snaste.” Despite herself, Inmara felt her cheeks tighten, narrowing her eyes slightly. Why could it not have been Snaste, rather than the limping, jolly Clopmule, to find Thorn in the tunnel and be left almost dead? Was it only six nights ago? Why could it not have been Snaste, rather than Wasp, to be killed six days before that, in Beldrise Wood near the New Altar? No, the priestess realized; Snaste could not have been killed that day, because they would never have permitted such a woman to guard the grove where she and her husband were trying, with Aeronu’s help, to join fruitfully at last.

  “Whatever you think of her,” said Maldron, “she is no muddlehead. She saw a green wagon with my own safe-passage symbol painted on it. She would have recognized the wagon even without the symbol. She was the scout who first suggested using Spendwell.”

  Inmara glanced at the book she had laid down when Maldron came to join her in the herb garden. She had neglected to mark her place by moving the applewood chip, and the parchment had rolled up again. It hardly mattered. Esimir’s sayings did not give the comfort folk pretended they gave. “The merchant has your safe-passage. Why should he not travel where he wishes?”

  “He turned south after leaving us. Cloth merchants do not often sell their stock within half a hen’s-hatching after they leave us here. And if they do, they fill their wagons again at Five Roads Crossing.”

  “Or at Three Bridges.”

  “Or at Three Bridges. But they do not drive north again to restock at Elderbarren or All Roads South. And they continue south from Three Bridges or Five Roads. They do not return to sell more northern cloth to folk they have just left.”

  Inmara sighed and rubbed her hands over her upper arms. It was no longer right between her husband and herself. He tried to trust in her as always; had he not come to her instead of to Enneald with this latest news? She tried in all matters except one to share her thoughts with him. But the untruth…no, not even untruth, merely a few matters left untold—that the babe had been sorcered from the womb, and that at the last she herself had given it into Thorn’s arms—lay between their minds and bodies like a new, perverse maidenhead that would not be broken.

  “There is something more,” said Maldron. “Quickeye returned this morning from White Orchard.”

  Quickeye. Which of their warriors was Quickeye? Ah, yes—Maldron had given her leave a hen’s-hatching or longer ago to visit her father…or perhaps it was her brother. Strange that Inmara had not noticed the absence of her face. The gods knew she had been constantly aware of the absence of a cradle from her own chamber. “What of Quickeye?”

  “While in White Orchard, she earned a few extra coppers by sitting guard at the wagon-field for a sick townwarrior. Three days ago a pair of strange charcoal burners came to the wagon-field. One was tall, the other short, to appearances a dark-haired boy. They sat outside at a little distance, watching the gate as if waiting for someone in particular; they let at least one merchant come out without approaching him. When Spendwell arrived, the taller workman went to him at once, asking to buy a donkey. At first, Spendwell claimed to have an old animal to sell; but when the burner came out, he had bought an evil-tempered beast, not an old one.”

  Quickeye would have been in White Orchard since long before they had hunted the sorceress. “And Quickeye knew the merchant to be Spendwell?”

  “Quickeye chose her name for a quality she would like to have if she could develop it without effort. Her companion at the wagon-field, a certain Wiltleather, apparently makes it her practice to know the names and wagons of all merchants using the field. Wiltleather also noticed that the supposedly evil-tempered donkey turned gentle enough when the smaller of the two charcoal burners took charge of it. And that they turned south with the animal.”

  Inmara watched a sticklike insect digging a hole in the nearest patch of herbs, between the thyme and the parsley. “Why should they not turn south?”

  “They had come from the north, through the town; and they claimed to have traveled far from their usual rounds in searching for a cheap donkey. That means their usual rounds should have been north of White Orchard. Then why did they not return north? And when Spendwell left, later in the afternoon, he also turned south. Why has he turned and come north?”

  The afternoon was quiet, here in the garden near the Truth Grove. The sky had only a few white clouds, and the wind was soft and tentative. Yet the priestess remained ever conscious that such weather could turn to storm within half a day. “The merchant was driving north when you found him, was he not?”

  “And he drove south afterwards, when he left us.”

  “Perhaps he has only now remembered someone he had meant to visit to the north of us.”

  “Inmara, the man is behaving like an ant that has forgotten the way to its hill! He could not have prospered as he has if he were such a blunderer.”

  “I doubt he is hired many times a year to strip a sorceress.” Inmara was surprised that the phrase come so smoothly out of her mouth.

  Maldron rose and walked several paces to the plum tree. Inmara saw its branches shake; and when her husband turned and came back, he was crushing a few leaves in his hands. “Inmara, several persons can ride unseen in a merchant’s wagon. All the more safely if a priest’s safe-passage symbol is painted on the wagon-tent.”

  She could no longer pretend to herself that she had not guessed where his conversation was tending. But perhaps she could pretend for a while longer to him. “Will you hire spies, now, to keep watch on all whom we have ever paid to do our work?”

  “Shall I send messages to all our neighboring farmers and townmasters that they are no longer to watch for the swordswoman who mauled you and stole our child?”

  “Why should farmers and townmasters watch? All the news we have yet gotten comes from a wagon-field guard—and it seems she did not consider it sufficiently important to report to her own townmaster.”

  “No, not to Easylife of White Orchard, not when the merchant was bearing my own safe-passage. She could have known that Easylife would do nothing. But she glimpsed the same merchant, or a wagon like his, traveling north early the following morning, back into my own territory; and she knew Quickeye would soon return here, and could bring me the news. It seems that Wiltleather was able to impress Quickeye with the possible importance of the matter.

  “Perhaps you should hire this Wiltleather away from Easylife.”

  “Perhaps I will. A pair of eyes that absorbent are worth something, even in a wrinkled head.”

  Inmara shook the parsley, an
d the sticklike insect scurried away, leaving its hole unfinished. She had dissembled again, pretended not to understand Maldron’s drift; and it was leading them to another quarrel. Already his voice was growing harsh, even more harsh than his penetrations had been these last nights…he had never been harsh before. “Maldron,” she said, “I… Husband, someone may have hired him to go to Elderbarren for some of old Tatterpenda’s lace.”

  “Anyone who could afford to pay Spendwell for so much of his time could more easily have paid a small wagoner to do the errand. And what of those two charcoal burners?”

  She could use sarcasm again; she could ask whether now they were to set spies on all common laborers whose faces some townwarrior did not instantly recognize. She could tell him that she herself had difficulty in remembering Quickeye’s face. And then? How long did she have remaining before he left her and went to Enneald? “Maldron,” said Inmara, “husband…let them go.”

  He sat down next to her, with only the book between them. Dropping his crushed leaves, he picked up the sayings of Esimir and began to roll the parchment more and more tightly. “Let them go, Inmara?”

  “Let them go. Have we not done all that Justice requires to the sorceress? Maldron, she has suffered everything but death itself—she must have suffered even that in her mind. To hang her a second time…would be too much.”

  “Too much by far. We have more than satisfied Jehandru, or He would not have let her be rescued from the gibbet; and the common folk still believe her dead and taken by demons. We will make an arbor for her between the Truth Grove and the wall, with a small chamber in the tunnel for winter and foul weather. We will not hurt her again, even if she still refuses to name the babe’s parents.”