Dragonfly

by Sylvia Kelso

  I actually meant me and the opponent. I had never been in mortal combat, but the last thing needed outside that is an ally who can over-damage from simple fright. Two had learnt that, once and for all, with my father Alkhes, when in human time I was three years old.

  “I see.” The philosopher, charmed by pure interest. “So Two can, uh, be still, at need?”

  “At need, yes.” Suddenly I was the one alarmed. Too close, too reminiscent of those moments by the qherrique, when we kissed and Two showed, told, wanted me to go on as men and women do, far too searingly reminiscent of the Tolla, that silken skin under my palm.

  The Mother sent me another boon: a two-horse wagonette was lurching down on us, haphazardly piled with hides, far too wide for the tortuous street. “Careful, let me near that horse.”

  * * * *

  Once discovered, the ships’ chandlers and haberdashers did well from us. My sober Iskardan shirt and leggings were

  durable as my cloak, but Therkon’s white shirt and noble’s coat had passed reclaim, and we both needed fresh extras from the skin out, not to mention travel necessities. And bags to carry them. Before the Tolla hove back in view it was past noon. I was hoping to re-view the succulently scented market cook-stalls, on the way to what had looked a decent inn, when I noticed the crowd on board.

  The whole family was clustered at the gangplank head. Colne blocked the way, Skappi and the next-largest son flanking him, Frotha craning past his elbow. Their body language alone would have alerted me, without the package Colne held.

  In both arms, as if it were a baby, or a scepter, or something too fragile yet too dangerous to release: a long narrow package, carefully wrapped in oil-cloth and trussed with twine. The central knot was clinched by a big red wax seal.

  Two and I understood together, on a dizzy blast of shock, wonder, disbelief. We might lose Nouip’s gifts. However impossibly, they would not lose us.

  Therkon had read the situation at least. His head came up in that wary-deer pose. Then, his first sign of troublecrew sense, he veered a little, bringing me up by him at the gangplank foot.

  Colne said, “This came for you.”

  Therkon’s face went imperially blank. In a moment he said, “From Grithsperry?”

  “From Grithsperry, aye.” In stress Colne would turn red himself. “Signed by the Yarl, sent by war galley. Two days and nights at sea. Right past us! Delivered with a poxy escort! All to get this—this—into someone else’s hair!”

  “I apologise,” Therkon said very softly, “if this has made trouble for you.”

  Colne’s cheeks swelled to explode, Two caught the whole sub-text and nearly made me laugh aloud. Skatir had turned the joke on his brother-in-law, avenged himself on the one who took us beyond Skatir’s reach, skipped the seed of trouble out of Grithsperry and back onto the troublemaker with an emphasis Colne’s own lords would not miss. And now his salvage, with that regal condescension, had also repaid those jibes about charity.

  Colne bit off a splutter of consonants. Turned almost purple, then gave the package a ferocious shake. “Come up and get this—thing.”

  “I will have my cloak as well,” Therkon said.

  The inflection implied not merely dishonesty but contempt: I will not leave you a second cause for fear. Colne did turn purple, but Frotha tapped the nearest son’s shoulder. Pushed past, revealing the cloak in her arms, and came down the gangplank, snapping, “Colne,” as she moved.

  “We’ve not the weight to ply among council-lords.” The tone added, And these things will make you lords’ business. She handed Therkon the cloak. “Colne.” She still did not look round, but he put the sword into her outstretched hand. She waited till Therkon had the cloak arranged before she held it out.

  “Ye know your plans, whatever ye intend. We cannot help ye further.” She stopped, then spoke with sudden intensity. “But if ye’re meaning to do with the Seabane, we—I—wish ye well.”

  * * * *

  The White Grebe was palatial, in Grithsperry terms. It had stables for lordly guests’ mounts, and hence a back-door as well as a separate guest entrance, with a courteous watch-keeper. Its bath-room water ran hot from a cistern-tap, and we found a room with alcoves for troublecrew, as well as a lord’s bed. The one thing it refused was to serve food or drink upstairs. The custom wrought too much havoc, the watch-keeper told us apologetically, with nautical guests.

  “I could run back,” I offered, as Therkon at last relaxed the imperial affront that had borne him clear through the crowded streets and over the Grebe’s defenses, as if lordly strangers in sailors’ gear stalked round Jurrick with an armful of seal fur every day. “It’s not far to the market-stalls.”

  “Oh. Yes.” He had let the cloak slide onto the wide main bed, and subsided almost limply after it. His hands moved, perhaps meaning to seek the jeweler’s pouch inside his new, sober if fitting coat. He made an odd noise and went still.

  Then he said, “The brooch is gone.”

  “It can’t be—” I bit down on my tongue, hard enough to draw blood. I had wanted to trade the brooch from the start. He had steadfastly refused. More charity, I had guessed. It would be worse than his own cost, to lose Nouip’s second gift. And perhaps this, at least, he might, one day, have returned.

  “Colne?” I said.

  He made another noise that became a startled little laugh. “My lady. I always forget.”

  That I was Iskardan, trained as troublecrew. To draw inference from calamity, and act, rather than question and lament and blame.

  “I think . . . Skappi, perhaps.” His hands clenched in the fur, and released. “He wanted this. Wanted answers he never got. And he saw the family—his father—”

  Have a joke back-fire. End in trouble. Be shown afraid.

  “Do you think Frotha . . .?” I could understand why she cast us loose, but she had returned us the gifts. Had wished us well: even nodded to me, there on the quay, and I had sketched her a troublecrew salute in return.

  “No.” He had been feeling that abandonment too. But his voice was quiet, with conviction rather than grief. “She would not have known. Put her people first, yes. Steal, no.”

  It made me feel a little better, though losing Frotha had been a small version of losing Verrith and Azo. Dogging Therkon down the wharf, I had felt outright panicky. The heart of the Archipelago, a town of lords unknown if not outright hostile, and here was I, left alone to ward Dhasdein’s heir as well as myself.

  “Well.” I carefully removed my hand from Verrith’s wrist-knife. “I can go to the market, anyhow. With,” I gave him a meaningful eye, “the money I already have.”

  And alone, I meant. They would stare, but knowledge that you carry weapons can change a woman’s bearing more effectively than any escort.

  “Frotha said, you have to eat.”

  But when I came back he was asleep where he had sat on the bed, the cloak under one arm, the other hand shut, firm as a clamp, over Hvestang’s sheath.

  * * * *

  I ate at least one of the pies. Scouted the inn. Dispatched our borrowed clothes back to the Tolla with a pot-boy for messenger. The supper smells from downstairs had me ready to rouse Therkon when he finally stirred of himself.

  This time we took all our valuables, including Hvestang: my tentative question about raising trouble made Therkon buckle the sword-belt with a positive snap. Trouble, the sound retorted, might get more return than it sought.

  It was raining outside, lightly but persistently. As we ducked into the taproom I wished for a candle to light at the Mother’s feet, but when Therkon headed for the shrine corner, I hung back.

  “That’s the winter corner.” Frotha had answered some questions, at least. “For people who don’t want to be sociable. In grief, or trouble or—”

  Or expecting worse, like a blood feud’s return strike. Therkon gave me an eye-corne
r as if I were Deoren. Are we not in trouble, that look demanded? If not trouble made flesh?

  When we walked over, with Hvestang’s sheath catching the lamp-light at every stride, the half-full, convivial room went

  suddenly hushed. But I judged us lucky. In a minute or two the patrons turned to their own business, and the server was hurrying over, a waft of fresh-cooked chowder at his back.

  Next morning we both woke early, in my case after a restless night. Another strange bed, no ship motion, sufficient rest, for once, and too many concerns to drop off again. When Therkon’s voice asked from behind the far alcove’s discreet screen, “Shall we look for breakfast?” I was glad to slip into my clothes in what felt like the first full morning light.

  So we came down the Grebe’s guest stairs in time to catch the street-crier in full voice.

  “Hear ye, hear ye, all Jurrick folk! The council cries wolfs-head! Be ware, be ware! Yield no help or house, aid or ask, for any or both of these: a man hight Therkon, claiming to be Outsea trader. Six feet and two fingerwidths tall, black hair. Bearing the blade hight Hvestang, garbed in a seal-fur cloak. A woman hight

  Chaeris, claiming herself his sister, six-feet less three fingerwidths tall, Outsea accent, black eyes and hair . . .”

  I missed the rest. Shock and alarm-fire coursed through me, over-ridden clear as life by Azo’s voice.

  I grabbed Therkon’s sleeve and hissed in his ear. “Walk out. Don’t stop!”

  He gave one jerk and moved. In emergencies at least, Deoren had trained him well.

  We had Hvestang and the money but not our cloaks. The tap-room was almost empty. Long odds that anyone here last night would be back so soon, or would know us at a glance. We were past the door. I hissed, “Stables!” and tweaked Therkon right.

  “Back stair. Get our things and go.” I shot Azo’s latest order at him as I leapt the first two steps. The stair was narrow and odorous but it went right to the guest floor, doubtless for servants’ use, and thank the Mother for Azo’s lessons, I had scouted it yesterday.

  We shoveled gear into bags and hurled on our cloaks. Risk upon risk to walk out garbed precisely as described, but good chances multiplied, if we could only reach the street.

  Therkon was shuffling money. Jurrick coinage was mongrel, Dhasdeini silver or gold, coppers of all ages from a dozen mints. He dropped a jingle of coins on the big bed and swept me out.

  The Mother had emptied the short upper hall. We shot down the stair: the street, I was thinking desperately, then a bolt-hole, or better, the quay, a ship, any ship . . . Therkon grabbed my arm and Two half sparked as he swung me about and muttered, “Wait.”

  The stable-yard was narrow as a well amid high building backs, age-grimy cobbles scattered with straw. Six stalls at the rear. And in three of them, a horse.

  “Can you ride, Chaeris?”

  “I, uh—I’ve been on a mule. You want—you mean—!”

  “They’ve cried us outlaw. We’ll never get out of town in these clothes. Not on foot.”

  “Oh, Mother!” One thing to stow away, or leave an unpaid inn reckoning. Another to steal, to actually lift a horse.

  “We can’t reach the quay. Or a ship.” He slung his new canvas back-bag on a handy hook and the cloak after it. He was down the stall line, pulling at the adjacent door. “Only one way—one place—to go.”

  South. Two fired it at me in a lightning bolt. We were supposed to go south, by whosever’s choice, and south here need not mean the sea. It could be inland, overland. The hills, up there we might escape. Wolfs-head, that might just mean outlaw but the lords might try to trap us, pursue us. Our best chance of escape, again, was the unexpected direction, the most unlikely means.

  “Chaeris!” I just caught the flying pouch. “Count six

  imperials.” Dhasdein’s major gold coin. “Guess a match if there aren’t. Put them in the manger here.”

  He vanished. Reappeared with a bridle, a saddle over one shoulder. The look added plainly: Come on.

  For a moment the world went blank, and then it opened on a blaze of enlightenment and a jet of sheer relief as Two clarified at last: we were troublecrew. Therkon was the strategist. Just so, in Grithsperry, he had seen the bigger patterns, far faster than we. His role was to shape the plans. We had only to make them work.

  I started shuffling furiously through the clutch of alien coins.

  Chapter X

  We walked our horses out of the stable yard, then trotted through the streets. Both of us had bundled our hair up

  under yesterday’s last belated purchase, a pair of the usual

  knitted caps. Therkon was wearing my cloak, half-concealing Hvestang’s sheath, I was wearing a sulky expression and my shirt. The seal-fur was crammed with our other impedimenta in Therkon’s saddlebags. He had, by chance or skill, picked the livelier horse. Mine, which he claimed had acted like its friend in the stable-yard, was the slug content to trail along.

  It was so early that the crier might have just begun his rounds, and in any case few people were abroad. Errand boys, housewives sweeping steps, lambs or pigs coming to market, the occasional wood or vegetable cart. Therkon wove expeditiously among them, I bumped along behind. The glances we caught were at best briefly curious. Lords’ men, they said, on some errand. Better left alone.

  Unlike Grithsperry, Jurrick has an inland wall, and of stone, if low. With a gate. It was open, but I saw with a bump of the heart that it also had guards.

  Women did not seem to bear arms in the Isles. Two men, in leather vests and some sort of steel and leather warcap, with at least a sword apiece, were lounging in the little roofed shelter just beyond the gate’s iron-shod right leaf.

  I sought desperately for a diversion, a shield of some sort, any sort, even another sounder of pigs. Therkon gathered his horse up with a kick and made straight for the guards.

  “Clettri farm,” he called, at the limit of hearing range. His shoulders had sunk a little and his chin jutted. He sounded dour, sullen, thoroughly Outland, and exasperated to the point of wrath. “Which way?”

  They both came out of the guard-house, half-surprised but not alarmed. Two understood in another lightning flash that they knew the horses. As Therkon had gambled that they would.

  “Attric got you exercising his ‘charger’?” The first sounded mild, but he had a suspiciously straight face. I did not know enough about horses to gauge if he was jesting, but whatever Therkon did with his own face, both men laughed.

  “New, are you?” The second one asked.

  “Hired yesterday.” Therkon had dropped his voice three or four notes and turned his accent to something Two claimed was broad Delta. “The lord said, Clettri farm. A message. Take the horse.” In one brief twist his shoulders conveyed resignation, irritation, a professional verging on insult at the quality of his mount. “Where in Dhe’s name do I go?”

  Dhe? My heart hit the roof of my mouth, but to my complete shock both men nodded. “Outland, eh?” the second said. “This far south?”

  “The Empire.” Therkon said through his teeth. “No wars. Less troops. No pay.”

  The outrage reached even to me. The men nodded again, somehow eager, in a way Two at least recognised. Provincials identifying a sophisticate. Amateurs encountering something that might be a professional. And a simmeringly irate professional. Not a safe man to tease, let alone balk.

  “Your lad there?” the first one did ask, the tone making it mere formality. “He along for the ride?”

  Therkon glanced once over his shoulder. The look said, from a more than professional scorn: If he lasts so long.

  They both laughed again. I deepened my sulk. The first man stepped to Therkon’s stirrup and began pointing beyond the gate.

  * * * *

  The first part followed the rutted track that passed as Jurrick’s main inland road, and by the Mother’s grace, it toppe
d a ridge within the first half mile. Halfway down the dip beyond, Therkon glanced back. Then he let his horse drop to a walk, and let out a great, shaky sigh.

  “How,” I breathed, kicking my own horse in speaking-range, “did you know to do that?”

  “I didn’t.” He actually wiped his forehead. “I’ve never had to.” He tried to laugh, or something like it. “Sheer terror? It just—came.”

  Sheer terror? Pure invention, at the very least. Of course he had never had to go under-cover, even in training. Deoren would never dream he might have to do it without help. “Clettri farm? Where did that come from?”

  “People talking. Last night.”

  So he had listened in the taproom, again. “But. The lord’s name.” In retrospect, my hair had begun standing up. “If they hadn’t said it, what on earth would we have done?”

  “Found something else.” He scraped up a half smile, though his hand trembled on the reins.

  Small wonder, there was still a trip in my own pulse.

  Daring, inventive, but beyond reckless, to try such a ploy without warning, untrained. Nevertheless. “To claim yourself Outland, a soldier. And the accent. That was smart. Where on earth did you get that?”

  “Harvis. The army commander, when I was a boy. He was Delta bred. For the rest.” A jerky little laugh. “I just reversed Skatir.”

  A discharged veteran, but Dhasdeini rather than Archipelago. I nearly laughed too. I came near patting his back, more in wonder than congratulation. Strategist, Two called him. I had never expected a tactical stroke like this.

  “Well, it worked.” I did not add, despite being past dangerous. I glanced up the road. Grey gravel and pot-holes, rushes in the ditch, a low skyline ahead. “How far is this farm, do you think?”

  “Ten miles? Maybe more? And westward.” He pulled a face.

  “We’d best try for supplies, then.” As he gathered his reins I kicked my slug again. “Pretty soon.”