Dragonfly

by Sylvia Kelso

  Her eyes had got almost round, but she was shrewd, however ignorant. “Never thought ye were kin,” she said, with some

  satisfaction. “Ye talk different. An’,” she eyed me, and let that go. “Guards, is it? ‘Troublecrew?’ So ye’re thinkin’ to skirl down on Ve like a winter southerly, an’ spring Stokka’s trap?”

  “I don’t know what I’ll have to do. I only know I’ve got everything except his sword, and he—” I nearly did tear my hair—“he needs me back!”

  Doubtless she passed it all to Veenn, when the other three swept in halfway through the morning. Because Veenn paused long enough to examine my arm, listen to my pulse. Have me raise my arms, walk a few paces, try to lift a pack. At that result she sucked in her lips. Then she took a second look at my face.

  “Thursis,” she said to the matriarch. “He’ll be up with the flour, aye?”

  The grand-dam’s eyes snapped. “Aye!” She tapped her palm. “Lass, have ye a penny or so? Yon Thursis lives two hills across. He’ll take ye and y’r gear to Ve Pool the morn, he’s goin’ down for flour. But he’s mean as a half-starved billygoat. He’ll do naught open-handed, even for us.”

  “I have money.” I could have cried with relief. I scrabbled through my shirt’s inner pocket for the last of my Jurrick allowance. “Silver, if he takes me to an inn.” I would never walk far with both the packs. My fingers found coppers, something smaller. Brushed the gem pouch, and stopped.

  What these people had given us was beyond pennies: not merely help, and kindness, and a minimum of questions, but some of the farm’s most precious time.

  I worked a stone out. It was a hazian, red as fire on the horizon, even in the dim-lit house. “I have money for Thursis. I—we—would like you to have this.”

  “It came from Jurrick,” I said, in the hush. “We, uh, sold an heirloom. It’s,” I felt my face flame, “honestly come.”

  Veenn moved abruptly, cupping her palm. When I set the stone in it she glanced quickly, in something that might almost have been awe, into my face.

  “Ye,” she said softly, “ye’re highborn too. Are ye not?”

  “If I am, it’s no matter. Not for something like this.”

  “What’s y’r name?”

  “Girl,” she said, when I hesitated, “t’would be mannerly, for our givin’ thanks. In somethin’ like this.”

  So what could I say but, “I am called Chaeris”?

  “And whence do ye come?”

  “My, my home place. It’s called Iskarda.”

  Naturally enough, she did not know it, though even in Phaerea they might have heard of Amberlight. Her brows knit in another frown.

  “How old are ye, Chaeris?”

  “I’m”—twelve years old, and seven hundred. “I’ve trained since I was little. I’m old enough!”

  I gave her a stare, she gave me one back. After a moment, her look cracked in a rueful quarter-smile. “Aye,” she said, and tucked the hazian in her grandmother’s little hearthside kist. “For what ye’re ettlin’ to do, ye’re old enough.”

  * * * *

  What I was supposed to be “ettling” I did not ask. Thursis was as dour as he was mean, and his twin donkey-yoke slower than the sun itself. I did not grudge the apparently outrageous five pennies hire, but even Two could not get information out of him. Between impatience and the bumps that jarred my ribs to mutiny, I was almost screaming before Ve Pool came in sight.

  Amid grey boulders and scrubby treetops the last descent

  offered glimpses of a white, unnaturally perfect semi-circle of beach. The inland hillock blurred against the peninsula beyond, but a boulder-hump on its foreland had to be the brech. The town beneath fell from a huddle of market-crowd into a haze of smoke, blurring a further, untoward amount of white. A rudimentary quay shielded galleys, perhaps, moored inside. Fishing boats, like other small craft, were relegated to the beach.

  The farm-women had not cut me completely loose. “Put y’r hair up,” Veenn ordered, “an’ wear that cap. Ye’re a cousin.” She made me learn a genealogy obscure as it was intricate. “I’ve sent ye to Vithre for some belly gripe I’ve not the herbs to fix.” That would explain my hunch and slow movements, even the frequent curse. And get me, not merely past the gate-watch, but directly to the first place for questions. The healer’s house.

  When we reached the market in mid-afternoon, most people had already left. The donkeys plodded through scattered booths up to the ditched rampart and palisade, with the outer gate’s single leaf of heavy tree-trunks set in the midst. A lackadaisical watch, all leather jerkins and quarter-staves, waved Thursis through unchecked. And Vithre was at home.

  He came at Thursis’ hail, a slender man almost as brisk as Veenn, dark of hair and skin, with the eyelid fold I had last seen in a Sea fort, silver flecks in his hair and a chased silver bracelet on one wrist. “Veenn’s kin, is it? A gripe-pain?” He nodded me down from the cart. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The amount of baggage did raise his eyebrows, but he heaved it up unquestioningly. Thursis grunted and poked the donkeys. Ill-mannered to the end. I followed Vithre and the packs inside.

  The “street to the brech” had been barely wide enough for the cart. The houses were stone, I thought, as usual. But these had been whitewashed to a dazzle, and the side-ways opened on a warren of passages and alleys under a dome-bubbled stretch of common roof.

  Domes, I realised, blinking at Vithre’s heels, because the

  actual houses were round, rooms and roofing both. And whitewashed inside as well, almost blinding white. Vithre led me past a central hearth in a space crowded with household gear, into one in a cloverleaf of subsidiary rooms, each with its own dome, each lacking more than a curtain for door. He dropped my packs beside the cunningly curved wall cupboard, its pots and clay bottles reeking of assorted herbs, pushed a pestle and mortar along a slab of stone work-counter, and said, “Where does it hurt?”

  Then he took a second look and said, “You’re no kin of Veenn’s.” A third. “You’re a girl.”

  “Yes, sir, not kin, sir, no. Veenn thought this best. I only want to ask about my brother, sir—”

  “But you are hurt.”

  “Just cracked ribs but he thought it was bad, Skeag and Dath sent him here—”

  He pulled the mortar back up the counter and reached for a pot on the nearby hanging shelf. “Your ribs,” he said, “first.”

  “But my brother, sir—!”

  He turned from the mortar, the refracted light limning his face, with its healer’s reserve, and something more.

  “I’ve seen no stranger,” he said, “but you.”

  * * * *

  It was willowbark again: I knew by the smell. When he nodded to the three-legged stool by what was clearly his bed, I sat numbly till he fetched a steaming pot from the hearth. He had set the mash to steep before I managed, “But—where can he be?”

  If Therkon had not reached Vithre, he must have run afoul the gate-watch. Who must have taken him to Stokka, and neither Two nor I could bear to extrapolate what might come next. Oh, Mother, I was screaming silently, why did you take Azo and Verrith and even Deoren away from him, why did you leave him no recourse but me?

  Vithre had heard the panic behind the words, the tears almost out of control. But he was a healer, who thought methodically as Azo herself.

  “When did your brother set out?”

  “Three days,” he repeated when I had told him. “You’re Outsea.” It was not a question. “I’ve heard naught of outland

  travellers in Ve. Not these last three days.”

  “But, sir?” I could not find the diplomacy to point out he was a healer, not Stokka’s right hand. How would he know?

  His eyes flickered with a brief, almost boyish smile. “I think I might hear.” He was inwardly, deeply amused by a private jest.

 
“Yes, sir.” I had no time for superfluous enigmas. The next steps loomed ahead, a vista that crushed me into the stool. Veenn and the grand-dam could get me in the gate and through to Vithre, but to confront Stokka? Trace a possible prisoner? Take on the assembled force of Ve Pool to get him out?

  I had known better than to ask. Two had the memory of trouble­crew and Trouble-heads, back through centuries of Amberlight. But they had been fit, healthy, groups of fighters. What could I do, a single, still almost immobilised girl?

  Azo’s voice said, Start at the beginning, like anyone else.

  And the beginning, here, was the gate.

  If Therkon had ever reached the gate. If he had not fallen, injured, immobilised himself tearing helter-skelter down those hills that first night, if he had not lain invisible by the cart-track this very day, starving, mute, savaged by passing wolves, already dead?

  I don’t believe it, I told myself. I won’t believe it. He’s alive. He has to be alive.

  In that case, I knew where to start.

  “Sir, is there a, a tavern? An inn? Where the gate-watch might go?” Impossible to walk up to the gate and ask outright. As crazy as to enquire at the brech’s own door.

  “Not the brech?” Vithre asked.

  The cock of his eyebrows, my answering look, was all he needed. He handed me the posset. “Bide a spell. Later, someone might bring news.”

  I sat till the posset took effect, managing to keep my shirt on, if lifted, while he checked the rib straps. There was an anxious moment when he caught the bulk of dressing in my right sleeve and wanted the shirt right off, but I pleaded modesty and only slid the arm free, thanking the Mother I was right-handed: the knife-sheaths were on my other arm.

  Sight of the gash made him add a poultice of comfrey and

  mutter under his breath. That done, he asked after Veenn and the farm, and pointedly, not about me. I suppressed Two’s fountain of questions about him and the house and Ve Pool and Stokka, and did my mannerly best to reply, but once the ribs settled I could bear no more.

  “Sir, if I could ask a favor. May I leave my, our, packs here? And look about the town?”

  He gave me a piercing healer’s look. He did not say it was no place for a solitary girl. He did say, “You’ll not be asking much.”

  Meaning, my accent would betray me, beyond a question or two. “No, sir, but I might see something. Maybe overhear . . .” And I could scout, if nothing else.

  He flicked his brows up, but he was as sharp as Veenn. He saved his breath and let me go.

  * * * *

  Supplies and livestock, I guessed, were traded in the market-place. In what seemed more a fortified village than a town like Jurrick, I had little hope of craft shops. The irregular, tunnel-like house-connections would have lost me anywhere bigger, but I

  processed haphazardly up the short central street, sallying briefly to right or left. My gear and cap made me almost invisible, though the traffic was all pedestrian, and light. Mostly men, with Vithre’s dark skin and eyelid fold, a good number armed. They had the indefinable air of a place lacking law, where streetgoers allowed for trouble, and expected to handle it themselves.

  Down one alley an entrance-smell announced, Liquor, but the room was empty beyond. One doorway brought a clacking rattle Two identified as a loom. Another door, shut, the usual solid unpainted timber anomalous among the whitewash, had carven over its lintel a crossed pair of oars. Ahead the hill rose, and over me loomed the oddly amorphous hummock of the brech itself.

  It was not whitewashed: the outside was worked grey local stone. It went up, Two and Azo’s estimates told me, perhaps three storeys. A cat-walk circled the top, round a roof that might be slate, from the great patches of lichen splashed across. The grand-dam’s words echoed in Two’s recall.

  “Round, aye, what brech’s not? An’ they have double walls. For strength, aye? Inside? There’s the hearth, an’ livin’ rooms round the wall, an’ the lord’s quarters upstairs. How many floors? I’d not know that!”

  The door’s great stone lintel would have trebled Nouip’s. Metal glinted below it in the afternoon sun. Helmets, perhaps, or sword-hilts. It was closer than bow-shot, in a moment I would either have to go right up, or retreat. And I was not going to walk straight in on Stokka, however anxiety ate at me.

  The opposite street-side did have an opening. Near its corner, a smaller door gave out clinking, clanking noises, and more than a single voice.

  The doorway had no insignia, but the sounds told me before I reached the jamb and peeked around. Metal on metal, whetstone, hammer. Ve Pool had a swordsmith’s shop.

  The actual workers must have been in a side room. Instead of a hearth, the main room had a cleared space between a pair of thick but battered wooden posts, and a rampart of long, solid, narrow chests, backing the counter where the smith showed his wares.

  He stood behind it, a burly fellow with his trade’s cropped hair if not the apron, a blade in his hands. Its sheath glinted atop the counter, through the chancy indoor light. The customer, half-

  facing the door, had a hip against the counter in an indolent sprawl. A tall, thin to gangling, fairly young man with short hair and a neat cock of black beard, in a fur-trimmed half-coat and calf-high, gold-buckled boots. The clothes spoke louder than the smith’s stance. I had run on Stokka himself.

  As my belly melted and I shrank by pure reflex a second voice cut the smith’s rumble of, “good work, aye, old, indeed, but well-balanced.” Sharp yet soft, the other voice demanded, “Who’s there?”

  My shadow must have intruded just far enough, motion had caught his eye, I could not flee or even retreat and I could not answer or he would hear what I was. As vision whited at the edges I screamed at Two, Fry it, don’t burn things, be some USE!

  “Who’s there?”

  He had straightened. Tautened, hand dropping by instinct to his dagger-hilt. In a moment he would be on me and everything would fail.

  Two said in a gruff octave-higher version of Deag’s voice, “Only m-me, m’lord.”

  I am quite sure my heart stopped. I know my breath did, for the endless instant before Stokka’s elbow relaxed. The smith’s head turned, both stances saying: A boy. Nothing to worry about.

  And Stokka said, “Come here.”

  Oh, Mother, I had time to pray, as I slunk round the door jamb. Help me. Help us both.

  I kept my head down. I could not look up. Nor did I think. I waited on Two.

  “Who are you?” said that light, too light voice.

  “’M kin o’ Veenn’s, m’lord. Up to Fell Farm.” The acme of half-grown yokels, Two mumbled it at the floor. Stone-paven, dark-edged flags. I could trace the shape of each one now.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I, ah, we come in for flour, m’lord. Finished loadin’. An’ I heard . . . I heard . . .”

  The sword-sounds in the workshop, still heedlessly going on. She had the embarrassment, the inarticulate, adolescent male longing perfectly. I did not think I would ever breathe again.

  “Ah.”

  A world of grown male, lordly male comprehension, condescension and pitying amusement at once. “So, boy. Look here.”

  A gesture. The smith, astounded, disapproving, masking it all behind that suppressed apprehension, set the blade down beside its sheath.

  “D’ye know what that is?”

  Silver on the black-dark scabbard, in an interlace of gripping beasts. A darkened-ivory hilt, above an armslength of dark grey, serpent-patterned steel.

  Lungs, heart, my every muscle locked. I know what it is, yes, something screamed silently. I know far better than you!

  “Well, boy?”

  The first hint of impatience, wind-breath before a lethal, habitual squall. Two cringed my shoulders as the smith’s had and gulped into the floor, “Ah, ah, m’lord—a sword . . .?”


  “A sword, aye.” The smile was back, fragile and deadly as a predator’s calm. “Never seen such before?”

  Two let my eyes slide over it, linger over it, longingly, despairingly, while the grief and fear choked us both. The blade was here, however lost. It had found me, Nouip’s deadly returning gift. But where was its owner now?

  “N-no, m’lord.”

  Artful deceiver. She got in far more than rustic awkwardness. Recognition, transmitted knowledge, transmuted longing. Desire. The yearning of a farm-boy for a blade whose status he might guess from song and story, but could never hope to possess.

  Stokka laughed suddenly and swept Hvestang from the bench. With a scissoring Shhh! it went home in the sheath. He held the scabbard out by the middle and said, “Here.”

  Neither of us had to dissemble. We gaped by reflex, my eyes, I should think, almost falling down my cheeks.

  “M-m’lord?”

  He was smiling: a light, casual, blood-chilling smile, fey and perverse as the act. “A fine blade, Starrin says. Fit for a young champion. Take it, boy. It’s a gift.”

  He did not say that he himself had it unjustly, perhaps by force, certainly not by law, that its mere possession ought to be a curse. Even if he did not know its reputation or its name. But to outward appearance it was precious, an heirloom. Anything less fit, more deadly for a farm-boy, could not be dreamt.

  And he would pass it on, like poison, whether or not it threatened his town as it had Grithsperry, and smile over the gift.

  “D’ye not want it, boy?”

  The smith’s jaw clicked up almost as fast as mine. Odd humours the lord of Ve Pool might have, to say the least. But we could hear the wind rise, both of us.

  Two was wordless in sincere earnest, but she got my hands out. Reverently as in genuine awe and gratitude, closing round the sheath.

  “M’lord—”

  “Eh, boy. One day, I’ll claim the toll.”

  Still light, still smiling, that threat fit to rob a court lord of words. He left the counter. Gave a nod, as if they had merely