The White Tree

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Can you run?"

  "Let's do this thing."

  They cut right down the shallow slope of the grassy band and then the steep rocky banks until their boots touched water. The house lay straight ahead. It was a small thing, clearly no more than a couple rooms, and as they got closer Dante grew afraid they'd found the one fisherman in the wide world who didn't own a boat. They drew to a quick walk at a couple hundred yards off, ears sharp for footsteps, for shouts, any sign of its owners other than the white wisps of smoke. At a hundred yards he could smell it strongly, the sweet smoky scent of dry heat and crisp winter. His eyes locked to the hut as they fell into its shadow. The bank stretched out in a tiny spit right before the hut and as they crested the moist earth he heard the hollow slap of water on a hull.

  "Nice deduction, Sage Pratus," Blays muttered, regarding the rowboat moored in the miniature bay beneath the house. A light wind blew in from the north. It smelled like the weather were turning.

  "Think it's safe?"

  "Does it matter?" Blays said, tromping down to the two-person skiff. Its timbers were bleached with the wear of water and sunshine, and above the waterline the wood was fuzzy to the touch. Blays knocked near the top of its hull and one of the beams actually rattled. "What's holding it together? The power of prayer?"

  "They take this thing out?" Dante hissed, glancing at the river. "I wouldn't trust it in a puddle."

  "River looks okay," Blays said, grabbing hold of the unraveling rope at its fore and following it to a stake a few feet up the bank. "Get in."

  "Lyle's balls," he swore, then edged up through the water and rolled himself inside. It was decently broad and didn't threaten to show its belly at the addition of his weight, but he didn't like the way it rolled on the current. Blays freed the rope and swung the boat up sidelong to the shore, then wiggled his rear like a cat before it makes a leap and hurled himself in behind Dante. The boat flapped around like a man who's just stubbed his toe and Dante threw himself flat against its bottom. "You ass!"

  "I'm no sailor," Blays said. "Now I'm the captain here. Grab a damn oar."

  "Are you sure you wouldn't rather finish drowning me?"

  "I think I hear someone coming," Blays said, cocking his ear and shoving them off.

  "Where?" Dante whispered, ducking down and taking up an oar. He dipped it smoothly into the water.

  "Well, that got you rowing." He smiled at himself and picked up the other oar. Dante glared at him over his shoulder, then pressed his fingers to his temples.

  "Row on the other side, you idiot."

  "I said I'm not a sailor," Blays spat back. "Doesn't sound really carry on the water?"

  "One reason among many you should shut the hell up."

  Blays muttered to himself. They pointed the nose downstream and paddled out into the current. From forty or fifty feet off, the bank rushed by like they were running on the water. The blade of Dante's oar spun whirlpools and clouds of bubbles into the light chop of the gray waters. Each time he lifted it clear a stream of water spattered away from the oar. Blacks and blues shimmered beneath the silvery surface, a hint at the vastness of its depths.

  "Whose idea was this?" Blays asked. In five minutes of travel the hut was already little more than a dark blot upstream, further than the opposite shore. "It was a good one."

  "You sound surprised," Dante said. He let his paddle skim the surface for a moment, arching his back to flex the kinks from his shoulders. He thought about calling to the nether, soothing his muscles, but let it be. Rowing wouldn't kill him.

  The breeze was very faint, buffering him around the ears with only the occasional gust, but back in the woods the heads of the trees were swaying. Brown leaves tore loose and fluttered south, hanging nearly motionless with regards to the boat. For perhaps the first time in his life Dante wished he knew more about mathematics.

  Waves beat gently on the sides of the boat in glorps and burbles. The two paddles swished rhythmically. The trees on the banks fell away, replaced by fields of black-brown dirt and old yellow wheat stalks shorn of their heads. Now and then a house stood up alone in the farmland. After a while Dante's knees cramped under him and he squirmed into a cross-legged stance. When he grew hot he shed his cloak. A few miles down, the Chanset bent to their left. Following its curve, they saw it widen further yet, and beyond the broad gray bulge of waters, no more than three miles away—twenty minutes, he figured, if they kept to their strokes—the welcome smoke and low-slung spires of what had to be Whetton. Dante looked back and laughed at Blays.

  "Let's pull up before we hit town," Blays said. "It'll look weird, paddling right up to the docks in this thing."

  "I'm sure we could come up with something," Dante said, but a mile upstream they angled it into shore on a sandy beach and disembarked into the shallows. He picked up the rope from inside the bow (as far as the rowboat could be said to have one) and carried it to shore. "There's nowhere to tie it up."

  "Who cares?"

  "We should at least drag it aground," he said, holding the rope in both hands. "Maybe it will treat someone else as well."

  "Fine," Blays said, and blew air past his lips. They grabbed hold of its slippery sides and leaned forward, pulling it up the sand until it was clear of the waves lapping up the beach. "Good enough, master?"

  "It'll have to do," Dante said, looking away.

  "Well. Forward ho?" Blays took the lead. The land north of the city had been cleared for farms and firewood, coverless, so they took to the road. The hard, rutted dirt felt odd beneath Dante's boots. It had been weeks and many miles since he'd walked on anything but forest floors and the beds of creeks. He looked down on himself, at the mud stuck to the bottom of his cloak, the knots in his bootlaces where they'd snapped and been retied, the grime coating his hands, the black crescents of his fingernails. He looked filthy even by city standards. He realized, with a small shock that made him feel old, he wanted a bath.

  The north wind kept Whetton's stink of smoke and sewage and tanneries and manure and sweat from their noses until they were within a bowshot of its gates. It hit them all at once and they looked at each other, noses wrinkled, then laughed quietly.

  "Haven't missed that," Blays said.

  "We're probably no better," Dante said, nudging his nose against his shoulder. He was right.

  "At least we came by it honest." The boy stopped before the gates and put his hand on his sword. "Um."

  "Whetton's a free city," Dante said, then frowned. "I think."

  Blays glanced among the modest traffic passing through the crossroads behind the gate. Men and women on foot, a lot of ox- and mule-teams bearing wagons filled with the harvest of corn and wheat and potatoes and beans. A good number were armed. Not all, not even a majority, but in a minute's watching they saw more men (and a couple women!) with swords at their belt than anywhere in Bressel but the arms yards and the barracks of the town watch.

  "I'm thinking it's okay," Blays said.

  "I suppose we could just act natural."

  "I don't know about that. For you, 'natural' seems to involve getting wrapped up in death cults and murderous intrigue."

  "They're not a death cult," Dante said, falling in behind. Among other minor miracles he'd learned to walk without knocking his sheath against his knee, and he allowed himself a small swagger as they rejoined civilization. The shadow of the gate swallowed them up and spat them back into the sunshine of the interior crossroads. A few blocks passed without purpose, lost in the vision of houses of timber and stone, the pillowy white smoke of smithies, the simple presence of other people. Dante found himself watching every man who walked their way. Sometimes, sensing his gaze, their faces darkened with the half-felt emotion of troubled dreams. Sometimes he thought he saw fear.

  The shadows grew long and longer yet. Size-wise, Whetton was no contest to Bressel, but it was large enough to hide them, if they wished, and it soon became clear it was far too big for them to keep watch on every road.

  "We shoul
d get the nearest inn to that north gate," Dante said, stopping at an intersection. He stepped back from an oncoming carriage. Horse sweat ruffled his nostrils and he tasted bile.

  "I was thinking about that. They might cut through the forest. We should hire a beggar to watch the western gate, too."

  "Make it a kid," Dante said. "That way we can threaten to beat him up."

  "The docks, then. That's where the scum always floats up."

  Dante nodded, deciding not to remind Blays where he'd first found him. They made a left for the river and descended into the noise and clutter of trade, the stink of old fish and things rotting in the water, the tall blank walls of wares-houses. Down near the docks swarms of mudders and the kind of boy who's always bumping over bread stands tore through the streets like skinny, reeking flies. None of them looked older than ten. One such group shrieked past and Blays hauled one in by the collar.

  "What's your name, kid?"

  "Whatever you want it to be," the boy said, eyes held fast on their belted swords. He looked about seven, but his clothes flapped loose around his body and his arms were straight and thin, knobby at the elbows and hands.

  "Smart," Blays said. "We've a job for you. Come on."

  "Can't I stay here?" The boy's round eyes stood out from his cinder-smudged face.

  "There's money in it," Dante said, bouncing a chuck off his chest. The kid seemed to rematerialize at ground level to snatch it up, then stood and stared up at them, head cocked.

  "George," he said. "What's yours?"

  "We need you to watch the west gate," Blays said.

  "Don't the guards do that?"

  "The guards would want more money," Blays said, smiling tightly. "Come with us or cough it up."

  "Let me go get Barnes," George said. "That way he can watch if I fall asleep."

  He darted away before they could object. They hustled behind, tight on the heels of their investment.

  "He'll betray us in a second," Dante said.

  "We'll promise him more if he doesn't. And a thrashing if he does."

  "You'd make a good magistrate," Dante snorted. George pried another dirty-haired youth from the crowd around an impromptu wrestling match and they padded back to the older two.

  "He's my brother," George said.

  "We need you to watch the west gate," Dante said, bending down to put his face level with theirs. "We're looking for two riders. They look like—" He stopped. They'd never seen the men, other than the one they'd killed by the river. Doubtlessly pairs of riders filtered into the city a score an hour. "What do they look like, Blays?"

  "How the hell should I know? One sounded nasty and one sounded like a princess."

  "One's going to look weak and the other will look strong," Dante said. He rubbed his face. How could he have made an oversight like that? How had they planned to ambush them when they had no idea what they looked like? "The weak one should look like a priest. Wearing a robe or something."

  Blays scratched his neck. "At least the nasty one will have a sword."

  "And they'll be on horseback," Dante added lamely. "Only two of them."

  "Okay," George said. "What do we do when we see them?"

  "What's the closest inn to the north gate?" Dante asked.

  "The Foaming Keg," Barnes put in. He was a few inches shorter than his brother, bore the same moppish dark-brown hair, a year or two younger. "It's the one with the picture of the foamy keg over the door."

  "Right," Dante said, squeezing his eyes shut. "If you see them, one of you comes and tells us right away. The other one follows them and sees where they go. Another chuck's in it for you if you do."

  "And the fist if you run off," Blays put in, shaking his under their noses.

  "Ask the innkeep for Dante."

  "Or Blays."

  "Okay," George said. "When do we start?"

  "Now," Blays said. The brothers looked at each other and trotted off toward the west. They weren't wearing shoes. "That may have been very stupid."

  They made haste for the Foaming Keg and spent ten minutes arguing with the keeper about the vacancy of windowed rooms on the second or third story facing the north gate. Back in Bressel, Dante would have given in at the keeper's first sob story or breakdown of expenses, but after the last few weeks, facing limited silver and an uncertain future, he accepted no terms until he was paying only half again what he thought fair. Both parties left angry, which struck him as the mark of true sophistication in the intercourse of society.

  Blays installed himself in the window to watch the streets. His tanned face grew murky in the twilight. Dante lit a candle and holed up in the corner, spreading the Cycle over his knees.

  "There's a couple riders," Blays said, leaning forward. "No, wait, that one's a woman. A woman riding outside a carriage? What kind of a town is this?"

  "Couldn't say."

  "There's a couple...but that guy looks like he's a billion years old. He looks like he died about five miles back." Blays laughed and clapped his knee. Dante scowled at his pages. "And those two look like they've bathed in the last month. Can't be them." A couple minutes dragged by. "Oh, there's a—"

  "Enough," Dante said.

  "Hey, at least I'm doing something here."

  "Do it quietly."

  "There's a couple," he stage-whispered, then laughed at Dante's glare. "All right. Fine. Read your damn book."

  "I will."

  "Good."

  "It is good," Dante said, and found he'd lost his place. The skies grew dark. With fading frequency Blays would crane his face out the window to meet the clatter of hooves. Dante lost himself in the book, flipping between sections to make certain he was matching names to lineage and king to kingdom. A knock banged against the door and he bit his tongue.

  Blays pointed at him, mouthed "You." He lowered himself from the sill and stepped to the side of the thin door. Noiselessly, he drew his blade.

  "Uh, who is it?" Dante called, giving Blays the eye.

  "Barnes, sir," a small voice said from the other side. Blays let out his breath and Dante unbarred the door.

  "Did you see them?"

  "George says to say we saw the two people you wanted us to see," Barnes said.

  "Where's George now?" Dante asked.

  "Following them."

  "Where'd they go?" Blays said.

  "I dunno," Barnes shrugged.

  Dante looked at Blays over Barnes' greasy head. "Shit."

  "It's okay," Blays said, eyes darting. "Uh. We should have at least a couple hours until they'd go to sleep. Barnes, do you think you can find George before midnight?"

  "Yeah. He's my brother!"

  "Then go find him. You two keep following until they go inside an inn. Then George stays there while you come back here. You got that?"

  "I think," Barnes said, twisting his hips and swinging his arms.

  "What'd I say?"

  "You said go find George, then when they go to sleep come tell you."

  "That is what I said," Blays said, giving Dante an impressed look. "Well, go do it, damn it!"

  The boy disappeared without a word. Dante stared through the open doorway, wondering how many of them died before they reached his own age. His older brother'd been among them. Sending Barnes and his brother to spy on killers for a chuck apiece. But they were willing to take it. To them it must feel like the wealth of dragons.

  He rebarred the door and yawned. The dawn in the woods felt like ages ago. He slumped back in the corner, massaging the back of his head. The rears of his eyes felt like someone were pressing against them with a thumb.

  "I'm going to nap," he told Blays.

  "Switch you in a couple hours."

  He settled down on the pallet, wrapping up in his cloak. Some time later a knock stirred him from sleep and he drew a deep breath. There was the tick of a lock, a muted conversation, but in his half sleep he couldn't make out a word.

  "Get up, dummy," Blays said. "Barnes is back."

  Dante sat up strai
ght. His brain felt like it had been left in the thoroughfare for a season. He blinked at Blays' wiry height, at the squirming Barnes who didn't rise past his rib cage.

  "Hello," Dante said, scratchy.

  "Hi," Barnes waved. "The two men went to their room a while ago."

  "How'd you find George?"

  "I asked the other boys if they'd seen him until one of them said yes."

  "Oh." Dante got up. He emptied his pack of everything but the book and a knife and relooped his sword belt around his waist. He had no idea what time it was. He felt worse than when he'd gone to sleep. "What's everybody standing around for?"

  "Lead on," Blays said, shoving Barnes lightly between the shoulders. They tramped down the streets. The night was cold. Wind channeled down the empty streets. Overhead the stars watched with blank eyes. For ten minutes Barnes led them through an impossible tangle of alleys, stopping briefly to greet other small boys who looked up at Dante and his sword with round and gleaming eyes. Barnes stopped in the mouth of a sidestreet and pointed across an avenue to a wooden building with a painting of a frog's head above the door.

  "They're the third room on the second story," said a voice behind them. They whirled, swords out, and saw George. "Don't hurt me!"

  "Sorry," Dante said. "Get up already."

  "Do we get our other chuck now?" George said, scooting toward them, ignoring the fresh dust on his breeches.

  "How long ago did they go to their room?" Blays said.

  "A while," George said. "First they had some drinks. I got thrown out but I sneaked back in."

  Dante handed him a blackened piece of silver. "Go buy yourself some bread."

  "Don't tell me what to do," George said. He jogged into the depths of the alley. Barnes waved at them and ran to catch up to his brother.

  "Did you hear what he said to me?"

  "You'll get over it," Blays said. He put away his sword. "Sounds like they're drunk. Couldn't ask for more."

  "You ready?"

  "Are you?"

  "It's the only way to get them off our backs," Dante said.

  The common room was stifling, rank with smoke and the sweat of men and the vinegary odor of vomited wine. The innkeep glanced up and they kept their eyes front and beelined for the stairs. At the second floor Blays brought out his blade and Dante followed suit. Blays counted off the doors, pointed to the third. Dante nodded. Blays squared himself in front of it, paced back. He waited till loud laughter pealed up from the first floor, then barreled forward, leveling his shoulder against the wood. It splintered to chunks and he hurled right through into the darkness. Dante yelped and leaped over the wreckage of the door, whacking at the first figure that wasn't Blays, who was busy extricating his sword from the chest of the same man Dante'd just stabbed. The dying man gurgled and a candle flared from the far end of the room. They paused, wrists flexing when the dying man slumped forward on their blades.