The Star Shard

by Frederic S. Durbin

  Some of Rombol's group bristled. Cymbril understood Brigit was reminding them that only Wildhair deserved their fear. If Brigit were a mere message-bearer for the Lady, what must the Huntress herself be like—she who ruled the deepest woods where the King's soldiers seldom passed?

  Rombol licked his lips. "'For one thing,' you said. What else can this boy do?"

  Brigit nudged her horse forward. When she was looming above the Rake's Master, she leaned closer with an elbow on her knee. "I think I need say no more except this: a thousand pieces of gold."

  Rombol's lip curled. "Seven hundred. He looks sickly."

  "A Sidhe child is worth a thousand and a half. I'm being generous."

  "You're never generous. Eight."

  The horse swished its tail. Brigit raised her eyebrows, using the power of her pale stare, her mounted height, and silence. Cymbril had never seen anyone bargain so impertinently with Rombol—and in the porch of the Rake itself, at night. She couldn't help admiring this woman for whom the city had stopped in its tracks.

  "I'll wait for a lower price," said Rombol. "Who else would you sell him to? Only the King himself could pay what you ask."

  Brigit blinked languidly. "I could find other buyers—less worthy of the purchase, but with gold just as good as yours. But you can afford nine hundred."

  Rombol looked around his group and then again at the boy, who stared back, his mouth getting even smaller.

  "Eight-fifty, fair and done," said Rombol. "But first, we see him walk and hear him talk." He sent his vault keeper for the gold.

  The man on the black horse lowered his light-haired charge to the deck. Cymbril thought the boy looked about her age—twelve, no more than thirteen—if the Sidhe aged like humans. His dust-colored trousers were torn and muddy, his long, rippling shirt bound at the waist with a silver rope. His boots seemed stitched of leaves and made no sound as he walked slowly toward Rombol. Shoulders square, he gazed up at the merchant. If the boy was afraid, he didn't show it.

  Brigit watched without expression, but Cymbril noticed one hand near her sword hilt.

  Cymbril held her breath. Did Brigit expect treachery from the Rake's merchants? No—the woman was focused on the boy. She's afraid of him, Cymbril thought. She doesn't like even letting him walk a few steps free.

  The boy looked so slight and fragile, especially standing before Rombol—a candlestick before a bear.

  "What are you called?" Rombol demanded.

  "I am Loric, New Master." The boy spoke with a lilting accent, as if the words of humans felt strange in his mouth.

  "'New Master'?" Rombol gripped the boy's shoulder and shook him jovially. "Well said, Loric. Remember that, and you'll do splendidly here. Forget it, and you'll be sorry."

  The money was brought and counted, piece by piece, from one bag to another. Loric's eyes followed the flash of each gold coin. When Rombol glared at him suspiciously, the boy returned his New Master's gaze with rapt attention. "Do not stare," growled Rombol. "Do not look me or anyone in the eye. And do not look at what is not yours."

  Loric closed his eyes tightly and stood still as a tree.

  "What are you doing, boy?"

  "Nothing around me is mine, New Master. I cannot look at anything."

  Rombol's thick hand twitched, and Cymbril was sure he was about to strike the boy for impertinence. But instead the Master leaned close to Loric's face. "Don't be a fool," he rumbled quietly. "Open your eyes."

  Loric did so, looking confused, and bowed from the neck. "I will try to learn your ways quickly," he said.

  "Hmm," said Rombol, gnawing his lip as he straightened to watch the Fey through squinted eyes.

  "In another day," said Brigit, wheeling her horse around, "you'll wonder how you managed without him." She lingered at the top of the ramp, surveying the group a final time. "Tread lightly in Wolfhome, in the lonely places. My Lady is watching. Until we meet again." She charged away, leading her party into the dark. Loric raised a hand in farewell, but none of the riders looked at him.

  Old Crenlaw peered down from the ramp's top. When the hoofbeats had faded, he made a show of coughing up phlegm and spitting it noisily after them.

  A merchant turned Loric around. "Do you sleep, Fey boy?"

  "Yes," said Loric. "I'm very tired now."

  They ushered him away, fingering his hair and shirt, exclaiming how rare he was. Soon the doors were shut, and silence returned to the hold.

  The Rake shuddered and began again to roll.

  Cymbril sat for a long time on the wagon's footboards, hugging her knees, restless. If only the red-scarfed woman long ago had sold her to Wildhair instead of Rombol, she could be galloping away now with the riders, the night wind in her hair. In her mind she wove a dream in which Brigit was her cousin, teaching her to shoot arrows from the saddle.

  Chapter 4

  The Peace Offering

  Cymbril usually awoke at the sound of Wiltwain's horn signaling the Armfolk—or if not then, nearly always when the Rake stopped moving. But the morning of the arrival in Highcircle, she sat up with a start at the shouting of merchants. The Rake sat motionless, and beyond the walls of her cramped bunk, she could hear people hauling sacks and wheeling carts in the wooden avenues. It must be nearly sunrise! Snatching her hairbrush, she scrambled from beneath her frayed cover and tumbled barefoot into the hall, the floorboards cool with early summer. A few of the other maidservants were still at the kettles, where coals burned in an iron pit and steam rose through the ceiling hatch into a rosy sky.

  Cymbril splashed warm water over her arms and face, scrubbed with the gritty gray soap, and pulled the brush through her hair. Then she dashed back to her chamber to wriggle into the blue dress. She hated its sleeves, puffy at the shoulders and so tight around the wrists that they were impossible to roll up. The sleeves also had brocaded points that came down the backs of her hands as if to show her where her fingers were. She straightened her hair again, dropped her treasures into her waist pocket, and hurried to line up in the ramp hold.

  On the first balcony above, her hiding place of the previous night was crowded with horses and drivers. Chickens clucked, goats bleated, and masters barked at slaves. Crafters, tailors, cooks, and peddlers waited to descend on Highcircle, where even fine lords and ladies attended the Rake's market.

  One of the seamstresses shoved a basket of pincushions into Cymbril's arms, muttering, "Make yourself useful." Cymbril stretched onto her toes, looking for Loric. In the typical morning bustle, she began to wonder if she'd only dreamed him.

  But there he was, dressed in the same water-gray shirt and a new pair of trousers. A heavy iron collar encircled his neck, half-hidden by his hair. A chain dangled behind him, its end fastened to another manacle locked around Rombol's belt. Loric turned this way and that, his attention captured by each new person or cartload he saw.

  "Stand still," grumbled Rombol.

  Studying the chain and collar, Cymbril frowned. She'd heard blacksmiths boast that all worked metal was poisonous to the Fey folk, that its very touch burned their skin like flame. Yet Loric seemed hardly to notice the shackling.

  When the block wardens had counted all the servants and reported to Wiltwain, Rombol marched to the ramp and lifted his arms. He wore a red velvet cape and a matching hat like a tea cozy, and he carried a cane with a silver goose's head. "A perfect day!" he bellowed. On the soaring balconies and the grand floor around him, his people cheered. Their shouts and applause startled birds from the rafters. Loric cringed and covered his ears. The gate crashed down. Then the carts' wheels turned, and Loric was nearly yanked off his feet. The merchants trooped after the silver goose head as if following the King's banner.

  Puffs of cloud hung in the mildest blue sky anyone might hope for. Clumps of violets and clover spread like vibrant quilts on both sides of the path. Sleepy cattle watched from the shadows of trees by a watering hole. The air was alive with fragrance and light. Cymbril drew a deep breath. It was wonderful to be outdoor
s, even with the basket in her arms.

  Highcircle's crowds were already waiting. Children and dogs ran alongside the merchants' wagons as they trundled from the meadow to the wide market ground. Women in white bonnets murmured and pointed. Servants in feathered caps came from the houses of the rich with long lists of supplies to buy. On the hilly road that led up to the castle, one of the Knights of the Fountains sat astride his charger and raised a gauntlet at Rombol's flourish of a bow. Always when she glimpsed a knight, Cymbril wondered if it might be the one she'd met before, in the summer when she was eight—the one and only time she'd been on a horse's back.

  Tent stakes sank into the mud; blocks again wedged the carts' wheels. Pavilions rose in the sun's early rays. Carpets and flags unfurled.

  Cymbril wandered absently after Rombol and the Sidhe boy as the throng she'd been with dispersed, each person having a place to be and a job to do. She was looking around for the seamstress when someone spoke beside her.

  "What have you got there?"

  Cymbril blinked, peering at a large-boned girl with a bonnet pulled oddly down around her face and tied beneath her chin. The girl was a few years older than Cymbril, and there was something strange about her complexion. Her cheeks and chin looked shadowy, as if the bright sunlight somehow couldn't reach her.

  With a start, Cymbril recognized her, and realized that the girl's skin was blue. Moonpine blue—Gerta. And on Cymbril's other side was Berta, wearing no bonnet, but hobbling slightly.

  A rush of apologies tangled in Cymbril's mind. She opened her mouth, looking from sister to sister.

  "Pincushions," said Berta, snatching one out of the basket. "Did you make them?"

  "Bet it took you a long time," said Gerta.

  "No, I—" Cymbril began.

  "Going to sell them?" demanded Gerta, raising purplish eyebrows. "Didn't know you could sew."

  "She can't," said Berta with a sniff. "These aren't very good. But we can fix that, can't we, Gert?"

  Gerta, before Cymbril could get a word in edgewise, pulled a bottle from her pocket and tugged out the stopper.

  Cymbril yelped and turned away her face, but the girl was aiming at the basket. Gerta dumped the bottle's contents over the pincushions. Moonpine dye spurted. Cymbril jumped backwards, but Berta seized the basket, yanking it out of Cymbal's grasp. Both sisters danced, emptying the bottle, their laughter like the braying of donkeys.

  At a safe distance, Cymbril could only gape—as much at the sisters' choice of location as at their cruelty. This wasn't revenge in some dark hallway. It was the middle of a market, under the sun. They truly had no sense at all.

  The seamstress, having seen the whole encounter, pounced on the Curdlebree twins. Inarticulate with rage, she seemed unsure whether to box the girls' ears or use them as handles to drag them away to justice—so she inflicted a pummeling.

  Gerta and Berta howled, pointing uselessly at Cymbril as they dodged blows and began to shove each other.

  When the three had whirled away, the seamstress now having a firm grip on the sisters' wrists, Cymbril stood gasping for breath, the blue-dyed pincushions scattered around her feet like a harvest of strange fruit. She felt as if she'd narrowly missed being run over by a wagon.

  Using a weed's broad leaf to keep the dye off her fingers, she refilled the basket. She'd just finished when Wilt wain tapped her shoulder. He frowned at the basket but was too busy to ask. "There," the Overseer said, pointing. "Stand on that wagon bed. Sing us 'The Skylark' and then 'The Bells of Avernon.'"

  Cymbril pointed at the basket. "What should I—?"

  "Is it your basket?"

  Vehemently, Cymbril shook her head no.

  Wiltwain rolled his eyes. "Then leave it there." He clapped his hands for haste. "The sun doesn't wait."

  Cymbril didn't feel the least bit like singing. Taking care not to drag her hem, she circled the worst of the mud and climbed into the now-empty wagon. Even before she opened her mouth, a crowd was gathering. Wiltwain was announcing her, and the folk of Highcircle remembered her. "The Thrush!" someone shouted. "The Thrush of the Thunder Rake!"

  She filled her lungs with the fresh field-scented breeze and sang. Her voice spread like the growing light, and even people at the ground's far end stopped their bargaining and turned to listen. Her eyes strayed to Rombol and Loric, over near the bakers' tents, where a woman and two girls were running their fingers through Loric's hair. Twice Cymbril sang the wrong words, and she saw Wiltwain give her a scowl. Then she'd finished "The Skylark," and the crowd was whistling and shouting requests. She shut her eyes, curled her hands into fists beneath the blue dress's wretched sleeve points, and sang.

  For all the discomfort of being forced to sing on demand, once she'd started, Cymbril loved to make music with her voice. She found delight in the deep breathing, in shaping the words and tones. Sometimes it was like painting pictures in the air with a soft brush; other times it was like throwing lightning bolts that dazzled and crashed. When she sang, she was not a slave—she could be anyone: a queen, a soldier, a forlorn lover. She could be no one at all but the timeless voice of music, integral to everything.

  Yet she could never stay long in that place beyond markets and masters. When she was allowed to rest, Highcircle's women swarmed around her as they always did, cupping her chin and declaring how pretty she was. Cymbril imagined herself spitting at them and scratching their warty cheeks.

  Amid the babble and the blur of faces, the smudging of hands and the stink of breath, Cymbril shut her ears, retreating into the silence of her mind as if hiding in a well. But a child's high-pitched voice pulled her back. "Mama! She looks like the elf boy! Is she his sister?"

  Cymbril focused her gaze.

  "No, Haddie." A woman grasped Cymbril's hair and shoved her curly-headed child so close that Cymbril put up her arms to avoid a collision. "See? She's a girl like your sister. See? Her skin isn't as white as the elf's, and her eyes don't shine like his."

  Elf boy. Sister. Why would the child say that? She peered through the crowd toward Loric, who was standing patiently in a tangle of admirers. Cymbril's heart leaped strangely when she saw that his brown eyes were fixed on her.

  Not sure what to do, she smiled.

  With a serious expression, he bowed from the neck. How polite he was. Couldn't he tell Cymbril was a slave like himself? Because of her expensive dress, did he think she was a merchant's daughter? The idea that he might think so bothered her. She would have to set him straight.

  Cymbril had forgotten just how endless market days felt. Back on the Thunder Rake at last, she was given time to take a full bath, and the laundresses whisked away the pale blue dress. Cymbril was thankful to have escaped Gerta's dousing of Moonpine blue, but she wouldn't have minded a bit if that dress got ruined. Maybe the laundresses would have an accident with lye.

  Profits had exceeded Rombol's expectations, and it was decided that the Rake would stay another day in Highcircle. That meant the Armfolk had a night and a full day off. They all made a slow trek into the forests to splash in the streams, doze on the moss, and learn new parts for their songs. That in turn meant Cymbril couldn't talk to Urrt or any of the others, for she was never permitted off the Rake alone.

  As she was helping to wash the supper dishes and thinking she was too tired to do her nightly skulk-about, someone called her name. Drying her hands, she saw the seamstress—the one who had given her the pincushions to carry.

  Cymbril braced herself for a scolding, but the weary-looking woman only wanted to hear her version of what Gerta and Berta had against Cymbril. The seamstress listened, ringleted gray head cocked to one side, hands on her ample waist, as Cymbril related the story of her scream—though, in her telling, the scream had been one of terror when Hysthia Giltfeather had cornered her in the drain channel and reached for her with long, clawed fingers. If the seamstress wanted a completely factual account of the crime, Cymbril reasoned, she shouldn't be asking the culprit.

  "So that's wh
ere the dyed face and the burned feet came from," said the seamstress. "You didn't attack them in their workshop."

  Cymbril widened her eyes. "Is that what they said?"

  The woman sighed and tapped a finger on Cymbril's forehead. "Give thanks on your knees, girl, that you're sound up here. Those poor twins aren't right upstairs, and no one will give them the time of day. Sad thing is, they weren't always like that."

  "What do you mean?" Cymbril asked. "What happened to them?"

  The seamstress shook her head. "No one can say. They're healthy as oxen, never had the fever or the pox. But when they were small, they were bright as new buttons. It's as if their minds are just withering away. I swear they're worse now than they were last year!"

  When she'd gone, Cymbril wandered slowly back toward her bunk, deep in thought. The notion of clever girls becoming as dull and strange as the Curdlebree twins disturbed her. At times when she was troubled, it helped to remember things she'd learned from the Urrmsh. They were creatures of endless patience and peace. Whenever Cymbril sang, she thought she understood their calm spirits and their joy at being alive. But that morning, looking into the eyes of the Curdlebree sisters, she'd seen such unhappiness. No one gives them the time of day, Cymbril told herself. If they have some illness of the mind, life has been unfair to them. They're lonely. They're angry at me for dyeing and burning them.

  The reason for that anger had been Cymbril's fault. She couldn't deny the fact that her mischievous impulse to scare Hysthia Giltfeather had injured the twins. The rankling unease she felt in her chest was guilt. Even after their act of hatred, ruining the pincushions—even then, watching the seamstress box them, Cymbril had felt guilty.

  She stopped walking and folded her arms. All at once, she remembered the words from the Monk's Door.

  WISE IS THE ONE, AND TRULY FREE,

  WHO MAKES A FRIEND OF AN ENEMY.

  She didn't exactly want friendship from the Curdlebrees. Nothing she'd ever heard them say appealed to her in the least, and she must be equally uninteresting to them. But Cymbril resolved to make amends if she could. She didn't want Gerta and Berta as enemies, and if possible, she would find a way to bring them a little of the peace that the Urrmsh felt.