Son of Avonar tbod-1

by Carol Berg

  I wasn’t sure what he meant, but could garner no clearer explanation. “What did he say?”

  “Tried to grab me, but I nipped off like you said.”

  “You should stay out of sight for a while. Have you anything to eat?”

  “Got a biscuit.” Paulo touched a limp cloth bag hanging from his belt. I was sure the boy never got enough to satisfy a growing appetite.

  I dug into my pack and pulled out a small cloth bundle. “Here’s jack and cheese. I’ll get a room and we’ll see what comes. Jacopo did me better service than he knew when he sent you along.”

  “I can do for myself. Innkeeper said I could sleep in the stables if I mucked out the stalls.” He hadn’t touched my offered bundle, though his eyes had not left it since I mentioned its contents.

  “Go on, take it. I brought enough for both of us.”

  Before I could blink, the boy grabbed the bundle and was gone. The light was fading as I shouldered my pack and made my way to the Green Lion. It seemed a decent enough place, with less grease and soot than most Leiran inns. A wide, flyspecked window looked out on the docks. I told the innkeeper that I was a widow, hoping to catch a skiff going south so I could return to my family in Deshiva.

  “We’ve lost ten local boys to the war already this year,” confided the stout, bearded proprietor, who introduced himself as Bartolome. “No one can hardly work the land no more, for lack of hands to hold the plows. More widows like you than children. Don’t know who they’ll take next for soldiering. I’ve a hope they’re not desperate enough for fat innkeepers!” His thick, hairy fingers traded a mug of ale for a copper coin, even as he talked. Fat or no, I had the sense that he would not even need to see the coin to know whether or not it was genuine. “Shall my wife send supper up to your room? Ladies often prefer it when traveling alone.”

  “No, I think I’ll sit in your common room. I’ve been alone too much and could use the sight of people.”

  “As you wish. Becky there will see to you.” He waved at a barmaid and was soon deep in conversation with another customer.

  Fifteen to twenty people sat in the smoky room: some lone travelers eating soup ladled from the common pot, a few laborers and tradesmen finishing the day with a tankard of the Green Lion’s ale, and a prosperous-looking couple with two small, neat children in stiff collars, casting surreptitious glances at the other guests. No one fit my quarry’s description.

  I settled myself at a small table in the dimmest corner of the room, where I would be able to see anyone who came in the door or down the stairs. The ruddy-faced barmaid brought me a bowl of hot broth, thick with barley and spiced with pepper. The inn was busy; customers flowed in and out like a noisy, thirsty tide. Laughter blared from tradesmen sharing a bawdy story, some tankards were spilled, causing tempers to erupt and two men to threaten fisticuffs. Bartolome shoved the drunkards out the door, and the prosperous-looking family fled up the stairs.

  As the light outside the window dulled, a man descended the stairs. I almost laughed. Paulo’s description had been so right. He didn’t “fit.” He had the look of a Kerotean— dark, almond-shaped eyes, straight black hair, and close-trimmed beard sculpted to a point—and he was dressed in the flowing trousers and colorful, brocaded vest of the Kerotean aristocracy. But his skin was the color of dried oak leaves, not milk. More significantly, his head would only reach my shoulder, and there lived no Kerotean aristocrat so diminutive in size, not even the women, who averaged a full head taller than me. Kerotean nobles killed any of their children that were defective in any way, including those born undersized.

  The fidgety little man whispered to the landlord, and when the portly Bartolome shook his head, took a seat at a table not too far from me. His dark eyes darted about the room, and I concentrated on my soup. When next I dared look up, the man was sipping from a tankard of ale. Another mistake. Keroteans drank no ale or spirits of any kind. I had thought to observe the man for a day or two, perhaps question the landlord and servants about him, but my plan suddenly seemed foolish. Paulo and I could wrestle this fellow into submission if he gave any trouble.

  But before I could make a move, everything fell apart. The stranger’s head jerked up and his eyes grew wide. My gaze followed his. Coming down the stairs were three robed priests, two in gray and one in black. When I glanced back at the table beside mine, it was empty, its occupant already halfway out the front door of the tavern. Judging by his wide-eyed terror, he wasn’t coming back.

  To be this close… I could not lose him. Jumping up from the table, I dodged tables and benches, patrons and barmaids to follow the hurrying man. But when I pulled open the door, ready to dash into the night, I stood face to face with Graeme Rowan, Sheriff of Dunfarrie.

  CHAPTER 9

  Year 4 in the reign of King Evard —summer

  “Are you sure you won’t go with us, little girl? Don’t like to leave you here alone.”

  “I won’t starve, Jonah. Anne’s left me more than I could eat in the space of a week. I won’t set the house afire or ruin your garden or break anything. And the weather’s fine, so I won’t freeze, even if I can’t get a fire going.”

  “You’ll learn the touch of flint, little girl,” said Anne as her dry kiss brushed my cheek. “Just as you’ve learned so much already.” She climbed up to the wagon seat. “You know the way down village if aught frights you. Jacopo will take you in.”

  Five months with the old couple had taught me one thing for certain: No one had ever been so inept, so useless, as I. Fires were lit by servants, not coaxed grudging from bits of metal and chaff. Food was brought on trays from warm kitchens, not grubbed from the dirt with raw and bleeding hands. I had only played at gardening. I knew nothing of rocky soil, wire-like weeds, or cartloads of stinking manure hauled from the pigsties in the village to feed the impoverished earth. Clothes were always clean and never had to be mended in candlelight with dull needles that tormented raw fingers. And there was always plenty to eat, even in spring when winter stores were depleted, so your stomach never gnawed at you until you were ready to eat sticks and weeds. Indeed I had learned a great deal in five months. Now it was time for me to learn to be alone.

  “Be safe,” I said and got on with my lesson.

  Just past dawn on the third morning after Anne and Jonah’s departure, I lay abed, deciding whether a hot breakfast was worth the hour’s struggle with the fire, when I heard a hail from outside the door. “Jonah? Are you in?”

  No one but Jacopo had visited the cottage since I’d come to live there, and the unusual stillness had the power to unnerve me. I pulled up the rag quilt and prayed the visitor would go away.

  “Goodwife Anne? A word, if you would. And I’ve brought some oranges from Jaco. Washed up from the barge that wrecked upriver last week.”

  I shoved back the quilt with a silent curse. If the man was a friend of Anne and Jonah, it wasn’t right to refuse him their hospitality. Hurriedly I pulled on the ill-fitting black dress Anne had given me, smoothed my ragged hair, and opened the door.

  The man holding a splintered crate on his shoulder had sand-colored hair and green eyes and looked to be a few years older than me, perhaps as much as thirty. His face was serious, with regular features, a broad forehead, and the network of thin lines at the corners of his eyes that came from spending long hours in the sun. Unremarkable in height, dress, or manner. A ragged scar creased one side of his face from cheekbone to unshaven jaw.

  He set the crate on the bench by the door. A dark blue jacket lay crumpled on the top of it, likely shed on the warm journey up the path. “Good morrow, miss.” He did not seem surprised to see me. “I’ve come to speak with Jonah if I may. Or Goodwife Anne.”

  “They’ve gone to Montevial and won’t return for several days more.” Surely he would go now. “May I offer you ale or tea? I’m sure they’d wish it.”

  “Ale, then, and I’d thank you for it. The day’s gone warm already.” He retrieved the jacket, straightened it a bit, and flo
pped it over one shoulder.

  I snatched a mug from the shelf, filled it from Jonah’s little barrel, and shoved it into the man’s hand, remaining standing in the doorway lest he decide to stay a while.

  He raised the mug slightly and nodded as if answering a question I’d not heard. “I’d be Graeme Rowan from Dunfarrie.” I couldn’t remember any mention of that name, but his provincial inflections were much thicker than Jonah’s or Anne’s, so I couldn’t be sure. He downed the ale quickly, but, to my distress, seemed in no hurry to go. “Perhaps I ought tell you why I’m here,” he said, propping one foot on the bench beside the sand-crusted crate. The rotting, fishy scent of river-wrack overpowered any smell from the battered green and yellow fruits. “Aye, it’s probably better I speak with you.”

  I didn’t like the way he looked at me so intently, his expression revealing so little. And his slow speech, as if he weren’t quite sure he wanted to say anything, left my jaw tight with impatience.

  “I’ve heard Anne and Jonah had a visitor these few months. Some in the village say it’s their granddaughter Jenny, come home after so many years lost.” The moment stretched. His gaze picked at my face. “Last night, three men come to the village. They’re the sort who look as if they’ll burn their shoes when they leave your town and think no one in a place the size of Dunfarrie can understand words of more than one syllable.”

  The long pauses and his unreadable expression goaded me to speak. “And what did these men want?” The planed edge of the doorframe dug into my back.

  “They were looking for someone, someone they badly want to find, though they vow they wish her no harm. Told me only that the one they hunted ran away from her family five months ago, that she’s five-and-twenty, tall for a woman, and has brown eyes and red-brown hair, cut shorter than the usual. They claim it be a matter of law. The time was the same as when Jonah and Anne came back from Montevial in the spring, so I thought to come up and ask what knowledge they might have of the question.”

  As if an executioner’s hood had been dropped over my head, the brightness went out of the day. “What did you tell these men?” My voice came out no more than a whisper.

  His gaze did not waver. “Naught as yet. But they didn’t know who I was. They’ll find that out this morning.”

  “And who are you?”

  “I’d be the Sheriff of Dunfarrie.”

  Bile rose in my throat. No matter what claims were made about maintaining order or protecting the citizenry from theft and murder, a sheriff’s first duty, the very reason for his existence, was to exterminate sorcerers. And though he was appointed by his lord, a sheriff’s first allegiance was to his king. Evard’s man. Evard’s anointed killer.

  Coldly, no longer in a whisper, I said, “So you’ll tell them about Anne and Jonah’s guest.”

  “I’m god-sworn and king-sworn to uphold the law.”

  I spat at his feet. “That for Evard’s law!”

  The slight hardening of his mouth and eyes reflected his judgment of me. “You’ve no business here, madam.”

  No matter that he was a damnable villain, he was right, of course. I couldn’t hide behind the old couple’s kindness, and I didn’t think I could run. Karon had told me about that kind of life, and I had neither the determination nor the skill for it. Survival was not that important to me. But Anne and Jonah were. “So you’ll hand me over?”

  One might have thought I was some kind of dungworm. “I ought. But they’ve given me no warrant, no grounds, not even a name. For all I know this is just a game for ones like you and them—causing trouble for ordinary folk. But unless you give me some reason not, I’ll tell these men what I’m required to tell them, and they’ll have no such scruples.”

  I stood mute. I would not tell a stranger—a sheriff—of my life. He snorted, slung his jacket over his shoulder, and started down the path.

  The world was already cold and shadowed even before I stepped out of the sun. I straightened the quilt on the pallet that Jonah had crowded into the corner by the hearth, put away the cup I had used the previous night, and folded the mended towel I used for washing. When all was tidy, I sat on Jonah’s bench and stared at the sundrenched meadow long enough for the sheriff to be well on his way. Then I rose and walked down the path toward the village, expecting never to come back.

  The common room of the Wild Heron was dim after the glare of summer morning, so it took me a moment to see the four men seated at a corner table: the sheriff, two soldiers in red livery, and a dark-haired man in black, who had his back to me.

  Rowan noticed me first. His expression did not change. One of his companions touched the arm of the dark-haired man, who whipped his head around. Darzid. I thought I might vomit.

  He remained seated, his shiny boots resting on the table, as he inspected me. “Well now, my lady, you’ve come up in the world, I see. From sorcerers to pig farmers. What next? Gravediggers? Cutpurses?”

  “What do you want of me, Captain?” I said, forcing my voice even.

  “Only word of your safety and health to carry back to your friends and family. Your brother grieves for your company.”

  “Rubbish.”

  “Also, you have something that belongs to your king.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Ah, dear lady, only by his sufferance do you live.”

  “I’m sure I’m very grateful.” What kind of game was this?

  “Gratitude is not enough. There’s a price for the king’s parole.”

  Parole . I caught my breath. “He wouldn’t dare!”

  “Oh, yes. The first day of autumn is only three weeks away. This exemplary sheriff has been charged with the responsibility to see that you fulfill your duty on Sufferance Day in this and every year of your life.” I started to speak, but Darzid raised his finger. “You’d best not compound your past offenses with treasonable words. Such an example it would be. And from a duke’s daughter, one whom rumor claimed was to be our queen! Do the good people of this place realize the honor to which they are privy, having such an exalted personage in their midst?”

  One of his companions nudged him and said, “Not from her dress, would they, Captain?”

  Darzid chortled merrily. “Perhaps not. But her manners are so fine. I’m sure she curtsies to the swine, or perhaps she discusses fine points of law with the sheriff here.” He waved Rowan and the men in livery toward the door. Then he stood and straightened his dark purple tunic and vest. “Have you any message for your brother, my lady?”

  As I was awash in the bitter implications of his news, it took me a moment to realize I was not to accompany him.

  He propped one boot on a chair and used the hem of his cloak to flick away imaginary dust. “Quickly, madam. If we stay here too long, we’ll begin to stink. A message for the duke?”

  A message? For Tomas the executioner? Even in the moment’s relief, my hatred boiled over. “Tell my brother he cannot wash them enough.”

  Darzid crinkled his eyebrows in puzzlement and shrugged. “As you wish. Don’t think to run away again.” With mock solemnity, he wagged a finger first at the sheriff and then at me. “It would go hard with anyone who’s given you aid. And the first day of autumn—on your life and the lives of everyone in this charming sty, do not forget.” Darzid and his soldiers left the tavern without closing the door behind them.

  * * *

  The autumn equinox—the Day of the King’s Sufferance. The law stated that on the first day of autumn all those who lived by the king’s sufferance must appear before him and swear they had not trespassed on his favor during the past year. The event was a favorite of those who enjoyed displaying moral superiority without fear of rebuttal or retribution. Observers could question the petitioner about anything, whether related to the past crime or no, and the penalties were severe if one answered untruthfully. A horrid custom. Humiliating.

  At dawn on the last day of summer, I met Graeme Rowan at the Dunfarrie Bridge to make the daylong trek to Montevial. He wa
ited on the seat of a rickety farm cart. A lantern gleamed from the seat beside him, revealing, among other things, a gray smudge in the center of his forehead. No surprise to discover he was a pious man, one who would pray at the shrine of Annadis before a journey, marking himself with earth to remind the god of earth and sky that he was his servant no matter where he traveled.

  I climbed into the seat without a greeting, and the sheriff put out the lantern and slapped the mule. Only after half a league of the bone-jarring ride did Rowan first break the silence. “I’m sorry this isn’t the kind of carriage you’re accustomed to,” he said after a particularly hard jolt.

  “You have no idea to what I’m accustomed.”

  “Those men told me of your crimes.” His eyes were fixed on the road ahead—or perhaps the mule’s rump.

  “And are you properly appalled at the affront I am to lawful society? Afraid of my arcane connections? Afraid Jerrat will send a lightning bolt to strike me while I’m sitting next to you?”

  “I thought it right you should know.”

  “You have a highly developed sense of honor—for a sheriff.” For a man with so much blood on his hands.

  Jacopo had told me how the sheriff had come by his office. Rowan had saved our local lord’s life while serving in Evard’s first Vallorean campaign back in King Gevron’s time. That campaign, of course, had included the slaughter at Avonar. I glanced at Rowan’s hands that gripped the mule’s reins—short, work-hardened fingers, wide backs with a layer of wiry, reddish hair. Ordinary enough. But I could not look at them without imagining those hands binding women, men, and children to the hastily erected stakes, throwing piles of sticks at their feet, waving the blazing torches close…

  Rowan slapped the reins hard. I didn’t think the beast could go any faster. “It’s true I have no rank, neither dukes nor earls nor even a lowly knight in my pedigree, but I manage to keep some sense of right and wrong about me.”

  “Do you think that’s why I’m allowed to live? Because of my rank? Does that offend your belief in the law?”