by J. V. Jones
“Manshae,” the Naysayer explained. “You would call it ghostmeal. It will help replenish your strength.” With that, he recorked the flask and left her to see to the camp.
Ash wiped a hand across her mouth; the ghostmeal had a bitter aftertaste. She looked around, and it took her a moment to realize that although it was still dark she could now see. They were in a shallow depression surrounded by low-lying rock walls and dragon pines. Living trees in the Want? She dropped a hand to the ground to touch the dry, scaly grass that lay beneath her. She couldn’t quite believe it was there.
“It is an ice oasis.”
Ark Veinsplitter laid a rug next to her and sat. “There are many such places in the Want if you know where to look for them, places where the frost and darkness are held back.”
By what? she wanted to ask but didn’t. She realized it was warmer here, as well as lighter, and she stretched her legs out in front of her and took a deep gulp of air. “Will we be able to get back?”
He nodded. “The Naysayer marked the path.”
She watched Mal brushing down her horse on the far side of the hollow. “There’ll be no fire tonight.”
“No.”
“They’ve found us, haven’t they?”
Ark looked at her for a long time without speaking. Finally he asked, “What did you see?”
Four words and Ash felt her understanding of the world change. Here it was, the reason these men had made her Sull. What did you see? How could she have been so stupid not to realize why they wanted her? They hadn’t hid it. They had told her she was needed and must fight. She just hadn’t understood what her role would be. She still didn’t . . . but she was learning.
What did you see?
Ark Veinsplitter was very still as he waited for her reply. His hands were bare, and she could see the tracework of letting scars around his fingernails.
“I didn’t see anything,” she said. “I heard something—a howl. It never came again.” She watched him relax visibly, and wondered if he knew he’d given himself away.
Perhaps he did, for he rose abruptly and told her to get some sleep—there were only a few hours left before dawn.
Ash smoothed one of the rugs into a sleeping mat and rolled a fox pelt into a pillow to support her head. She felt strange—weary, but abnormally alert. Her mind was racing with what she’d learned. They believe I can sense them, the shadow beasts, see them before they do. Is that what a Reach is, a finder of shadows? The thought unsettled her, and she tossed and turned, looking for answers that didn’t come. Time passed, and she drifted into an uneasy sleep.
Animal calls disturbed her dreams. Something howled to the south, and after the beat of a few seconds something else answered. Ash opened her eyes. Her skin was cold and tingling, and she could still hear the last traces of the answering howl ringing in her ears. Turning her head, she searched for the figure of Ark Veinsplitter. He was there, as always, crouching at the edge of the camp, facing out. His sword was sheathed. He was standing guard, but not on alert. If the calls had been real he had not heard them.
Telling herself it was just a dream, that they were safe here in the Want, Ash settled back in her blankets and tried to force herself to sleep. It didn’t work. Her heart was racing and the slightest noise unsettled her. When one of the horses whiffled she stiffened. Snorting softly at her own fright, she told herself she was a fool . . . but still she couldn’t sleep.
Through the dark night she lay awake, listening for maeraiths.
The hunt was on.
TWENTY-TWO
Treason
Raina held out the chunk of rock salt for the cow to lick on. The creature lipped at her palm in its eagerness, tickling her and slobbering her fingers with saliva. After checking to make sure that only she and Anwyn Bird were in the cattle shed she laughed out loud. Cows had no manners.
“Don’t you go upsetting my beauties, Raina Blackhail,” Anwyn warned. “There’s little enough butter in their milk as it is.”
Raina quieted herself and regarded Anwyn. The clan matron was looking old. The thick rope of hair pinned in a circle around her scalp was completely gray. When had the gold gone out of it? Raina could still remember her first sight of Anwyn Bird, that summer when she’d arrived at the Hailhouse from Dregg.
All the clanwives had come out onto the greatcourt to inspect her. Raina’s uncle had arranged the fosterage, her second in under three years, and although he was a genial and well-meaning man he had a weakness for red malt. And when he was drunk he was prone to boast. He must have gotten drunk the day he visited Blackhail to purchase her fosterage, for later that evening he’d told a chamber full of clansmen that his niece was not only beautiful, but more graceful than Weeping Moira herself and as smart as Hoggie Dhoone. Raina still flushed at the thought of it. Naturally, when she’d arrived the clanwives were inclined to dislike her. Thirteen, she was, and already in possession of her full height and a woman’s fullness. The fact that she wasn’t as graceful as Weeping Moira became quickly apparent when she dismounted her little gray pony and slipped in the mud. But still. Her uncle’s words had done their damage and Lally Horn, the woman who’d accepted a milk cow and its calf in payment for Raina’s keep, turned around and refused to take her. The Dregg girl was a temptress, she said, who’d woo suitors away from her daughters. Lally Horn had been deceived! And though she might very well return the cow, she’d keep the calf for her trouble.
That was when Anwyn had stepped in.
Only Raina hadn’t known her name then. She saw a stout-built woman with aggressively plain features and a curtain of golden hair falling thick and heavy past her waist. Anwyn had been about to braid it when she’d heard the commotion on the court. The clan matron had quickly taken charge of the situation, telling Raina she could stay in the kitchen with her, and informing Lally Horn that she was off to feed the wee visitor, and when she returned she’d expect to see a cow and a calf on the greatcourt, or so help her gods she’d break Lally’s nose and lock Laida Moon in a wet cell so the healer couldn’t set it for a week.
The strategy worked. Lally was known to be proud of her short, perfect nose, and Anwyn Bird was a genius with threats.
Raina dropped the rock salt into a pouch in her apron. “Remember Lally Horn?” she said to Anwyn, suddenly needing to talk about the past.
Anwyn was in the process of greasing a sick cow’s shrunken teats, yet something in Raina’s voice caused her to halt her doctoring and look up. She studied Raina’s face for a moment. “Aye. It’s a shame. No one in the clan could set soap quite like her. Used to grind strawberry blossoms in that little pestle of hers and add the oils to the ashes. All the maids would beg for a wedge whenever they went courting. Made them smell like summer fruit.”
Raina nodded, feeling small and mean. Trust Anwyn to remember the good over the bad. Lally had been dead these nine years, taken in childbirth at an age when most women had long withdrawn from their husband’s beds. Yet her husband had wanted a son, and Lally had been so desperate to give him one she’d risked her life . . . and given him another daughter instead.
So many deaths. When will it end? Crossing over to Anwyn’s milk stool, Raina laid a kiss on the clan matron’s head, right in the middle of the gray.
“While you’re handing out kisses, Raina Blackhail, how about saving one for me?”
Raina looked up to see Angus Lok standing in the entrance to the tunnelway, the deep black passage that ran from the cattle sheds down to the fold. She had not heard him come. The ranger was dressed in layered buckskins the color of wheat. Water stains ringed the hem and cuffs of his coat, and his soft riding boots were spattered with mud. Sliding back his otter-fur-trimmed hood, he bowed to her as if she were a great city lady, and then bowed again to Anwyn.
“Mistress Bird. I see you’re expecting me. Got your hands all nice and greasy to salve my chin.” The ranger ran a hand along his jaw. “Well, get moving, woman. Wind’s near chapped it to the bone.”
&nbs
p; Anwyn frowned with force. “The only thing about you that needs curing, Angus Lok, is your tongue. Anything that stricken needs pulling out.”
Angus laughed heartily, surprising Anwyn by leaping over to her and catching her up in a huge bear hug. The clan matron protested, throwing her hands wide to avoid smearing the ranger with grease, all the while shuffling backward with her feet.
Angus winked at the sick cow before releasing Anwyn. “Sorry, Daisy. I tried, but I couldna keep her off you a minute longer.”
“Her name’s not Daisy,” Anwyn said, awkwardly brushing hair from her face with her forearm. “It’s Birchwood. And I’ll thank you to leave us both in peace.”
Angus stepped back in mock obedience, but not before slipping a small, slim package beneath Anwyn’s belt. Anwyn ignored it and settled herself down on the stool to finish her doctoring.
The ranger turned to Raina. “Will you walk with me a while?” he asked.
Raina lifted her eyebrows in mild surprise, but nodded her agreement. As she stepped toward the shed’s double doors, he spoke to halt her. “It’s a mite cold on the greatcourt for a thin-blood like me. What say we take the low road instead?”
It was midday and unseasonably mild out, but she didn’t contradict him, and let herself be led across the cattle shed to the tunnelway. The cows bellowed as she passed them, sensing the retreat of the salt. The giant stone trough that ran the length of all seven cattle sheds and tapped into the Leak south of the roundhouse was brimming with icy water. Raina spied the speckly froth of frogspawn floating upon it, and thought, I must tell Effie; we’re rearing frogs in the cattle shed! And then remembered Effie was no longer here.
The tunnelway was dark and unpleasant-smelling. It had been dug to evacuate livestock from the vulnerable timber-roofed outbuildings to the safety of the underground fold in the event of sudden attack. Some ancient clan chief or other had commissioned it. Obviously a man who cared more about cows than the people who tended them, Raina thought hotly, for the incline was sharp and she stumbled several times. Angus offered her his arm, but she refused it. She couldn’t afford to be seen holding a man who wasn’t her husband. Little mice with weasels’ tails.
Shivering, she put a hand on the wall to steady herself. When had she begun to let Mace Blackhail rule her life?
The air soured as they descended. Thawing mud oozed through cracks in the masonry, and entire sections of tunnel wall had buckled inward from the pressure of moving earth. Black-shelled beetles battled in the rubble, their mandibles clicking as they fought over the putrefied remains of a drowned mouse. Raina increased her pace. She hated the dark, rotting underspaces of the roundhouse. They had stood empty and unrepaired for decades, waiting for war.
The Blackhail fold was the largest standing hall in the clanholds, capable of holding five thousand head of livestock in times of siege. Giant bloodwood stangs with girths so wide it would take three men to circle them rose from floor to ceiling like a forest of charred trees. The ceiling was deeply groined and barrel vaulted, cantilevered in part by the foundation wall that braced the perimeter, and by a huge central stone shaft. The entire weight of the roundhouse rested upon the walls and stangs of the fold, and every craftsman who had ever hammered a nail in the clanholds held nothing but awe for the men who had raised it.
It had been several weeks since Raina had last been down here, and she was shocked to see that it had become a campground for tied clansmen and their meager stocks. Makeshift tents were pitched against the stangs, and rickety cattle corrals of wicker and woven bark held lone calves and ribby sows. Dung fires smoked heavily, giving off the sickly-sweet odor of partially digested grass. The air was so thick with soot it made Raina’s throat itch to breathe it, and her first instinct was to rush to the nearest shutters and throw them open. But there were no windows this far belowground, and little ventilation to be had. What were these people doing here? Surely there was space enough above?
“Not a Scarpe amongst them.”
Raina turned her head sharply as Angus spoke. She had almost forgotten he was beside her. Why had he come? Tem was dead, Raif and Effie were gone, and Drey had been sent south to Ganmiddich. The ranger had no kin left here. So why make Blackhail business his own?
“What’s it to you who’s down here, Angus Lok?” she challenged him. “Last I heard, you live in a city, not a clan.”
The ranger stopped to look at her. His face was deeply tanned and lined, and the blood vessels in his eyes were feathered with fatigue. He was a fine-looking man, she had always thought so, but she did not envy his wife. Angus Lok reminded her of a treader fly, one of those spindly brown insects that settled on the surface of the stew ponds around Dregg. You wondered how they could stand on water, until you looked very closely and saw their legs: ten times as long as their bodies, thinner than threads of silk, probing wide in all directions, their tiny hairs bristling in response to the slightest change in current.
What change in current had brought him here? Raina wondered. I must be cautious, she counseled herself, speak little and listen much.
Angus watched her a moment longer—his copper eyes taking in such depth of detail that she had to suppress the urge to smooth back her hair and straighten her dress—before turning his attention to the campground.
“What’s it to me if tied Hailsmen raise their tents belowground, whilst sworn Scarpemen sit in the comfort of stone chambers above? You know what it is, Raina Blackhail. It’s imbalance. Even a Hailsman without oath should be given precedence over an outsider in his home clan.”
She could not disagree with him. She thought the same thing every day, when she came across Scarpe women using the dyeing vats to blacken their husbands’ fronts, Scarpe children sneaking into the cold stores to raid the apple barrels, and Scarpe men eyeing her with insolence whenever she entered the Great Hearth. She said, “And is that why you’re here, Angus, to address that imbalance?”
He smiled at her then, a genuine showing of warmth mellowed by weariness. “Come now, Raina. When a man asks you to dance do you stride into the middle of the floor and place his hands upon you? Or do you at least allow him the pleasure of leading you forward? We’re sensitive fellows, we men, and though we know very well we’re not in charge of much we like it when you pretend that we are.”
Raina had to smile. He’d pinned her precisely. She was mistaking defensiveness for caution. Spreading her arm before her, she invited him to walk a circuit of the fold. Angus Lok was a man who liked to be courted, and at one time long she had been good at courting. Dagro used to tease her about it, but Dagro was gone now. And she could barely remember the woman she used to be. With an effort, she put her smile into her voice and inquired about his wife.
“Darra.” Need darkened his eyes for an instant and then he blinked and it was gone. “She’s well, I hope. I haven’t been home since midwinter. I’ve been, as they say, unavoidably detained. The Dog Lord took a fancy to me and decided to keep me in his cellars along with his favorite malt and cheese. I wouldna have minded normally, but the cheese tasted like foot fungus and the malt ran out after a week.”
So the rumors were true: the Bludd chief had held the ranger prisoner. “Longhead says the weather will break any day now. You should head home while you can.”
Angus shook his head. “Not to be. I’ve fallen a wee bit behind in my affairs.”
Raina knew better than to ask what those affairs were. Angus Lok would doubtless give a charming answer that hid more than it revealed. Play his game, she reminded herself. We’re two old friends chewing the cud. “How did you find the clanholds on your journey west?”
“Troubled. Gnash is slaughtering its breeding stock, and the black rot has spoiled the grain stores at Dregg.”
“You’ve been at Dregg?”
“Ten days back. They were burning the meal on the court; great hills of it, giving off the blackest smoke. Xander had to mount a guard to stop the tied clansmen from rioting.”
Raina kept her
face impassive; she was getting good at that, she’d noticed. “Does Xander expect more trouble?”
“Don’t all the chiefs?”
Hope was like breath, she thought: when it left your body it made you slump. Dregg was her birth clan; its future was part of her own. When her work and duties at Blackhail were done, when she was an old widow with wispy hair and no teeth, she’d pay one of the tied clansmen to take her to the Dregghold in a cart. She’d be an elder at Dregg, cousin to the chief, and the clan maids would rush to bring her hot apple possets and the inner loins of meat. Someone would offer a shawl for her shoulders, spun with as much air as wool. And she’d sit in the finest painted hall in the clanholds and watch the young ones dance.
“Here, chief’s wife. Wet your lips with this.”
Raina turned her head to see a tiny, hard-faced clanwife holding out a horn of ale. The woman had the look of the wild clan from Blackhail’s far west, and Raina did not know her by sight or name. Still, she took the cup and drank. A chief’s wife learned early never to refuse humble courtesies—you could never be sure when an insult might be taken. The ale was mead thinned with pond water and tasted brackish and flat, but she finished it down to the skim. The clanwife watched her swallow, and when Raina offered back the cup she shook her head.
“Nay. Keep it, chief’s wife. Give it to your husband—save him seizing it for hisself.”
The thin voice carried far across the stone vault, and dozens of heads turned toward it. The woman straightened her spine, waiting until silence had passed from man to man, then spat at Raina’s feet. With a hard, satisfied nod of her jaw, she turned to make her way back to her camp. Small dark-skinned men, her sons by the look of them, made space for her around the fire.
Raina felt the blood rise to her face. Spittle trickled from her skirt hem to her boot, and she scraped it away awkwardly against the floor.
