The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  Frost had set in early this year, so there wasn’t even a stray patch of wild onions to scrounge through. The only good thing, to Wil’s mind, about the fast-approaching winter was that it meant the nights were longer and he could cover more distance. Which wasn’t going to be a whole lot of help if he didn’t find at least some water soon.

  A rivulet—even a puddle, for that matter—would be a blessing, but he judged an inn the more preferable alternative, if he could find one. His lips were cracked and dry, his gums were sore, and he’d stopped pissing two days ago. He was starting to really worry, and almost ready to chance a city center, should he happen upon one, though that was hardly likely, out in the middle of nowhere as he apparently was. A small village would do, and an inn would do better. Head down, eyes to the ground, gold between his fingers. If he wasn’t forced to actually speak to anyone, and he didn’t linger, he might slip through unnoticed.

  He dug into his trouser pocket, fingered the few gilders and billets he had left. Shook his head on a snarl. Damn it, two more days, and that pocket would’ve been much more encouraging, two more days. The timing of it all nearly broke his heart.

  “Fuck you, Constable Brayden,” he muttered, teeth clenched. And fuck you, Palmer and Orman, too, while he was at it.

  He reached up, ran his fingers along his right cheekbone and up over his temple; it was still tender to the touch, but he guessed the bruise was at least yellowing and fading by now. One less remarkable oddity to notice about the skinny, dark-haired stranger passing through, he hoped, and the less remarkable he could make himself, the better. He didn’t suppose Brayden would be coming after him—the man had no idea what he was, so why should he?—and Wil hadn’t actually done anything, after all, or at least nothing anyone could prove, regardless of whatever suspicions he’d aroused. The Constabulary would probably be too busy trying to figure out who ‘Palmer’ was, and once they got ‘Orman’s’ real identity out of him, they’d be so caught up in the political fallout that they wouldn’t even remember timid little Wilfred Calder. Still, it would be better to cover his tracks and keep low for a while, at least until he was well out of Putnam’s reach.

  The loss of his papers was going to be a serious problem, but he’d managed before. It was an unbelievably lucky stroke of chance that he’d come away from his encounter with the Coimirceoir still alive—so incredibly lucky that he still almost couldn’t believe it had been as easy as it had been, even for the terror—so the loss of the papers was a small thing, comparatively speaking.

  Even so, if the Dominion’s spies had found him in Putnam, it wasn’t too far of a stretch to think they’d follow whatever trail he inadvertently left behind, so it was best he try not to leave one at all. Best that Wilfred Calder should wink out of existence as quickly and quietly as he’d winked in.

  Anyway, he hadn’t known he was purportedly from Lind until the constable had caught him out with the information, so perhaps it was just as well. He knew all about Lind and the giants it bred; a little too well, in fact, and the portentous irony made his spine prickle. Of all of the places in all the Commonwealth, the papers that had—he thought—so fortuitously fallen into his lap two years ago had been on the corpse of a man from Lind. Funny that no one had questioned his supposed birthplace before, considering. But then he couldn’t recall many who even asked for papers, let alone gave them more than a cursory glance when they did. Strange, he’d thought, for a land so long at sporadic war with its greedy neighbor, but unless he was unlucky enough to find himself press-ganged into the military, it didn’t concern him much.

  Still, the loss of the name was a blow. It was the first one he’d ever had, and he’d let himself get attached to it, in the few years he’d borrowed it. It was the one thing he could read, that name, and he’d liked the look of it on those papers, the clean black strokes on the cream-colored parchment, once he’d learned what those strokes said. Peaceful river, or something like that, that’s what the name meant, and he’d often let himself imagine that he’d end up there one day—whatever quiet place Wilfred Calder’s parents had named him for—staring down into slow-churning water and not having to listen for the sound of footsteps behind him, not having to look over his shoulder every ten seconds. Not running.

  His hands clenched into fists on the straps of his pack and his jaw tightened again. Damn them. Damn them all. Tears of rage crowded his eyes, burned beneath his brow, and he stubbornly blinked them back.

  The rage was what kept him going sometimes, he thought. The injustice, the unfairness, and his seeming inability to buckle to either. Mutinous little badger, that’s what Siofra used to call him, a mix of disgust and that repulsive greed in his narrow, pointy face, and Wil supposed the name probably fit well enough. It explained the black joy that moved through him when Siofra had snarled those words from between bloody teeth, clots and rivulets of scarlet sliding from a broken nose. He’d paid for that one, a price that still set him shuddering when he let himself remember, but he’d laughed through the agony until it sounded too much like screaming, so he’d stopped. Anyway, mutinous little badger was probably a more accurate name than peaceful river, but he liked the sound of the latter better. In the end, neither name was his to keep, so he supposed it didn’t matter. Though, until he found a new one, he’d hang on to Wil, at least. It was, after all, the only way he knew how to refer to himself.

  “Myself.” He snorted a little, sardonic. “I wonder what that is?”

  ***

  It was another two days before he came upon a village—nothing more than a hamlet, really: small wooden cottages with waxed parchment tacked to the windows to keep out the approaching winter winds; the occasional sod-roofed hut, grubby children drudging about the dirt courtyards in weary semblance of play. They stared at him as he approached, goodwives’ brooms stopping in mid-sweep, hard stares from thin, weathered men, faces set wary and hard, careworn features in sharp relief beneath the weak autumn sun. Almost all of them were armed—daggers and short swords at their belts.

  Wil kept his head down, only darting quick, sideways glances from beneath his fringe. Hunch in, make yourself small and unthreatening, keep your head down, and keep walking. The state of his clothes and hair probably spoke his poverty—no point in robbing him—and the lack of any obvious weapon, he hoped, spoke his lack of threat. No one need know about the little dirk in his boot; at least, not if they left him alone. Wil wondered diffidently if any of the blades hanging from the hips of the various gawking locals were as dinged, rusted, and stolen as his own.

  He passed an old woman, stirring something fragrant and spicy in a small cauldron in her kitchen dooryard. The smell made his belly growl, flop about a bit in his empty gut, and he couldn’t help the desperate glance he gave the steaming pot. The woman merely gave him a guarded perusal, frowned, opened her mouth like she meant to say something; she caught herself just in time and closed her eyes with a slight shudder, then turned her head and deliberately looked away. Wil looked down at his boots and kept walking.

  The unmistakable ring of mallet to metal, butting up against the smudgy, gray stillness of morning, had announced a forge less than a mile distant, and he’d followed the sound without much thought. The chime and gruff chatter from the smithy’s that had first attracted him was now deafeningly absent, as grimy, besweated and leather-aproned men gathered at the open doors of the dilapidated building and watched him shuffle past.

  He’d spotted the grange hall as he’d spied from the ridge brimming the outskirts of the tiny village, and he headed there, risking daylight for want of an alternative. It wouldn’t do to come strolling down after dark, not in this sort of forgotten, misbegotten hollow, and he no longer had a choice. It was either take his chances here, or give up and starve to death in the woods.

  No store to speak of, not here, but the grange looked like the most prosperous and promising place to try his luck, and they’d likely sell him some bread, at least. If he was lucky, they had some vegetables laid u
p they might be willing to part with; harvest was only a month over, after all. Barter would do better in a place like this, but he had nothing with which he could part. He’d have to hope that the grange wardens did enough trade with the outside world that the few coins he had in his pocket would be worth something to them. The presence of the smithy added to that hope.

  Three voices came from inside the hall, two deep-timbered and one somewhat higher, younger, and all with the thick country accent that made everything they said sound lilting and musical. Wil had loved the sound of the language first, when he’d come to this country, and he’d never got tired of listening to people speak it, regardless of whether they were welcoming him to a village, or running him out of it. He’d had more experience with the latter, he supposed. He’d learned very quickly that if you didn’t want to be found, you stuck to those places no one wanted to be. Except the poor who occupied those places generally had little trust for outsiders, no matter how meek and harmless they tried to make themselves. Old Bridge had nearly been the end of him, in more ways than only the one, but even as he’d half-run/half-dragged himself away from the place, shouts and snarls following too close on his hastily-covered tracks, still he couldn’t help but appreciate the lilting flow of the ugly words. Putnam—an actual city, thriving due to its proximity to the capital—had been a risk, but Wil had thought it worth it at the time.

  He brushed it away, made his careful way past the public well and up the two steps that led into the grange.

  Strange, how even something so simple as a wooden floor beneath his feet could make his throat go tight and those idiotic tears rise to the backs of his eyes. Wil stepped through the open door of the hall, slid his back to the frame and dipped his head lower, waiting to be noticed.

  It didn’t take long. The talk of scarce game and a lucky harvest tapered quickly into expectant silence. Wil could feel three sets of eyes on him, boring through his thin coat and dirty tunic, and right through his skin. He shivered a little.

  “You’ll pardon,” he said quietly, gave a respectful tug to his fringe and bobbed his head. “I’ve had a difficult road and more to go. I’d hoped I might replenish my supplies here, and p’raps get directions to an inn.”

  Silence greeted this; Wil chanced a quick glance up. Father, son and grandson, he guessed, for three identical sets of hard blue eyes stared warily from faces aged by seasons that sat harsh on their weathered brows. Brown hair, curling at the collars of coats almost as threadbare as his own, and great, callused hands, palms rough and red and knuckles gnarled too soon. Like looking at the same man, caught frozen in three different stages of his life, and none of them easy.

  The din from the forge resumed outside. Wil had no idea why it relieved him so, but he nearly sagged with it.

  “What kind of supplies are ye lookin’ for?” the eldest asked slowly, the rough brace of his voice in contrast to the almost friendly tilt of the tone.

  “Meat, if you have it,” Wil answered, paused at the resigned snorts, then pressed, “Bread if you don’t, and potatoes.” It was just as well that meat seemed unlikely; he hadn’t dared a fire yet, and potatoes were just as filling raw as cooked. “And water. An extra skin, if you’ve got one.”

  Silence again. Wil kept his eyes to the rough grain of the wood floor, but he could almost see the three men looking at each other, speaking silently through raised eyebrows and facial twitches—a language that only three men who shared blood and years could know—then the youngest turned and made his way across the wide hall and into what Wil guessed was the larder.

  “No fresh meat ‘til the slaughter,” the middle one said, his thick voice still cautious but a little less wary about the edges. “There’s a handful of deer jerky I could part with. Bread and potatoes we can do with ease, and we can likely scrounge up a water skin, but I’ll want to know how ye plan on paying first.”

  Fair enough. Wil dug three billets from his pocket, held them out in the palm of his hand. “Two for the food,” he said, “the other for the water skin, and I’d like to fill both at your well.”

  This was where it would go wrong, if it was going to, and he could never tell until he was in the moment which way it would go. Either they were honest men and would take fair payment and let him buy his goods and go, or the sight of the coins would make them wonder how much more he had in that pocket. Head down, eyes to the ground, gold between his fingers. He waited, ears sharp, listening for the telltale intake of breath, warning of a decision made. His gaze remained downcast, but he watched every move from beneath his lashes, waiting for a start or sudden step, his body tense and ready to rabbit through the open door at his back if he had to.

  But there was only a shrug from the eldest, and a wave of a big hand toward the yard. “Water’s free, son,” the man said. “For three billets, I can give you the water skin, the jerky, two loaves of black bread, and as many potatoes as you can carry.”

  Wil’s heart gave a relieved little lurch; he could probably carry at least a score comfortably.

  “Unless you’d rather half potatoes and half apples,” the man went on. “The Mother was generous, bless Her.”

  Relieved almost beyond sense, Wil let a low sigh loose from a chest gone far too tight. “I would,” he said, chanced a quick glance up and a smile. “Thank you.”

  It was a mistake. The kindness evidenced in the man’s rough voice melted from his face as his stare caught on Wil’s, and his eyes went wide. Wil quickly looked down again, held his breath. The too-abrupt turn from watery relief to the startling immersion inside the confused, nebulous fear of a stranger; the bewildering slide of his own guarded hope into someone else’s blurry panic—it was too much, caught him in the chest like a hammer-blow. The sudden tension curled around him like a static charge—the younger man felt it, too, Wil could tell by the stiff stillness. And beneath it all, that want crept out from the men, that greed they didn’t even know they possessed for something they didn’t even know they wanted, skulking like a spider on a sticky thread from their hearts and into his. A nauseating throb of the soul, pulsing with the rhythmic strike of metal-on-metal from the smithy’s, now more distant in his ears than it had been when he’d stood a mile away this morning and wondered if it was worth the risk. And then a grinding scrape and a grating curse, and that stopped, too.

  Silence.

  Like a splinter in his brain. Unformed thoughts that weren’t his own, brilliant colors melting like wax and dripping through his soul, hardening like pebbles then pelting over his senses in scattershot patterns that bruised the mind.

  “Do I know you, boy?” the older man asked slowly.

  Do I know you?

  Do you know me?

  How many times had that same question been put to him in different forms?

  I won’t hurt you.

  He would. He’d try not to, but he would.

  Give it to me.

  He couldn’t. He didn’t even know how.

  Let me take it.

  No. He didn’t even know what it was, but he knew he couldn’t allow it to be taken.

  I want it, you have it, give it to me, giveitgiveitgiveit—

  He clenched his teeth, tried to breathe deeply, but his chest was too tight.

  “No, you don’t know me,” he managed.

  No one knows me, stop wanting to, stop trying to see me, don’t look at me, because I can’t help it, I’m too tired, and I can’t make it stop…

  Wil didn’t trust himself to speak again, only hunched down, shook his head, slowly leaned on his right leg, readying for a sprint. It was the hunger and the exhaustion doing it, he knew, breaking his concentration, weakening the barriers. A decent night’s sleep and a full belly, that was all he needed, and then he’d have the strength to beat it all back, lock it away. Last time it had been the fear, roiling in a black cloud about his senses, reaching out all around him, choking him as Orman had closed in, and by the time Palmer had snuck up behind him, it had been too late—he’d already l
ost his grip on it. All he could do was weave the thread between the two of them, step back.

  They meant to kill him, he’d told himself, or at least one of them had, and what Palmer wanted didn’t bear thinking about. They were not good men, there hadn’t been a good intention between them, and it was their own natures that had been their undoing

  And yet, what was he supposed to do now? These were good men, he could feel it, he could see it, and they were kin. What was he supposed to do if father turned on son? How was he going to tell himself—

  “Found it, Da!”

  Wil jumped, only just kept himself from screaming and bolting through the door as the other two jumped as well. But they made no move toward him, only turned and peered at the youngest man, identical blank, confused expressions as they watched him cross the hall from the back room. Wil had assumed it a larder, but it must have actually been a storeroom, for the young man held up a dusty water skin, jiggled it above his head.

  “‘Twas under the empty feed-sacks on the back shelf.” The young man paused, tilted his head. Wil wouldn’t look up, wouldn’t chance another accidental glance, so he didn’t know what the young man saw, but he stared for a moment before he frowned, cast a wary glance toward Wil. “Everything all right?” he asked his father.

  The quiet had a physical weight to it, pushing down on Wil’s shoulders, constricting his chest. Fight-or-flight—he couldn’t tell which, wished someone would move, speak, do something so the heaviness would either crush him or let him go.