The Larion Senators

by Rob Scott; Jay Gordon

  ‘Oh, right, sorry,’ she said, allowing it to close softly behind her. ‘Sorry.’ She turned to see a teenage girl in an apron carrying a tray loaded with dirty trenchers and goblets. The girl was rail-thin; her dirty-blonde hair was tied in a ponytail and tucked inside her tunic.

  ‘It’s just that you were letting in a draught,’ the girl explained. ‘My father complains all the time about how hard it is to keep this place warm. I thought—’

  ‘No, no,’ Hannah interrupted, holding up her hands in surrender. ‘You’re right; my mother says exactly the same thing back home.’

  The girl adjusted her tray, holding it now with two hands. ‘I’m Erynn. My father calls me Rinny.’ She scowled.

  Hannah smiled. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Erynn – but shouldn’t you be in school today?’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve got to work. My mother had to go to Treven – my grandda’s sick; he’s old. I’m only ninety-three Twinmoons, seven more to go before I’m done with school, but I think my father’s going to pay to send me back for another fifteen Twinmoons. But what’s the point? I mean, I’m just going to end up working here, right? What do I need all that schooling for, anyway?’ She glanced disdainfully at the dirty trenchers.

  ‘Erynn, you should go to school for as long as they’ll let you stay. If your father’s prepared to pay for you to stay on, then do, for as long as possible,’ Hannah said emphatically.

  ‘But why would I? All my friends—’

  Hannah interrupted again, saying, ‘Trust me, Erynn, this is absolutely the right thing to do.’

  Erynn had dull hazel eyes, and bags were forming beneath them; Twinmoons working in the smoky front room had not been kind. She tilted her head to one side, considering Hannah. ‘You’re not from Pellia, are you?’

  ‘No,’ Hannah said. ‘And, sorry, I’m rude. My name is Hannah Sorenson. I’m from Praga.’

  ‘What’s that language you speak?’

  Hannah hesitated. ‘Oh, that’s… well, that’s a dialect from— Well, from Southwest Praga, pretty far from here.’

  ‘I’d like to go there,’ Erynn said dreamily, ‘and to Rona, too, someplace warm – but I have to finish school first.’

  ‘That’s the really smart thing to do,’ Hannah repeated. ‘We’ve been travelling a long time to get here.’

  ‘I know,’ Erynn smiled, shifting the tray again, obviously wanting to stay and chat with the woman. She was attractive, even though she was old. ‘I heard you talking with that man over there. I didn’t mean to listen in; my father gets angry, but sometimes you can’t help overhearing things.’ She nodded to where Hoyt and Alen were sitting together, watching Milla finishing her meal. She whispered, ‘He’s cute; don’t you think so?’

  Hannah laughed. Erynn had to be talking about Hoyt. ‘Uh, I hadn’t really thought about it, but yes, I suppose he is cute.’

  ‘How old is he? You two haven’t stood the tides together, have you? Uh, I mean, he’s not—’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Hannah assured. Calculating quickly, she figured Erynn was about thirteen. She wasn’t surprised that Hoyt’s wiry frame and ruddy, unkempt good looks had captured the girl’s attention.

  ‘I want to stand the tides with someone someday. And I’ll wear a shorter dress. I’ve seen some of the women when they stand the tides and their dresses are all wet for the rest of the day. Lots of couples stand the tides over on the little beach across the inlet; we see them sometimes. The women wear long dresses, and the bottom bits get all soaked. I’m not going to do it that way.’

  Hannah guessed standing the tides was the Eldarni equivalent of marriage. She wasn’t surprised that a thirteen-year-old was preoccupied with the details; she recalled, with some embarrassment, paging through bridal magazines when she was that age – after all, it was never too early to find the perfect dress.

  ‘I need to get back to work,’ Erynn said, struggling with the tray. She blushed. ‘You won’t say anything to him, will you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Hannah promised. ‘I was thirteen once, too.’

  ‘Thirteen?’ The girl sounded aghast. ‘I’m ninety-three last Twin-moon!’

  ‘Right, sorry, ninety-three,’ Hannah said. ‘Don’t worry, Erynn, I won’t say a word.’

  ‘It has to be that bark,’ Hoyt said, scooping up a fingerful of potato.

  ‘Mine,’ Milla said, wrapping a protective arm around her trencher.

  ‘Then try to get more in your mouth, and less on your face, your tunic and, great lords, in your hair!’ Hoyt chided her with a laugh.

  Milla giggled. ‘Like p’tatoes.’

  ‘I can see that, Pepperweed.’ Hoyt brushed the girl’s hair away from her face. He turned to Alen and asked, ‘What else, in your experience, could turn an ordinary soldier, or even one of those Seron things, into whatever that was we saw outside Welstar Palace? Can you think of anything? Alen, those were monsters! Blind, horrible creatures, able to ignore obvious pain – they were diseased, they had open sores, pox, fever – rutters, I saw evidence of four or five serious pandemics eating away at that group. Normal solders don’t just stand around and fester like that, no matter how disciplined. It has to be the bark.’

  Alen looked around the front room. The young girl who had been serving them was talking with Hannah. ‘I think you’re right, Hoyt. Why else would Nerak need so much of it? But given the dreams or visions that we experienced, I don’t know how he’s controlling them. With you the bark responded a bit differently, didn’t it… you were able to take orders, and you appeared to hear what we were asking you to do.’

  Hoyt remembered waking from his dream of Ramella, the sexy thief from Landry and finding that he had stacked several days’ worth of firewood. ‘That’s right, but with the rest of you, in the forest of ghosts, you were inconsolable, certainly uncontrollable. It was all I could do to get you moving. The army outside Welstar Palace is different; they’re staring into space, waiting. They don’t appear to be hungry or thirsty. Gods, I’d wager some of them die right there on their feet.’

  ‘And the others eat the cadavers,’ Alen interjected, watching Milla devour a mountain of potatoes covered in gravy. ‘There must be more to it,’ he said finally. ‘The spell must harness the raw power of that bark, or …’ He drifted off.

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or he’s mixing it with something else. Either way, I think you’re right. He’s harvesting so much of the bark and leaves that it must be for that army.’

  ‘We can’t just sit here knowing this. We have to do something,’ Hoyt said.

  ‘What we have to do is to take Milla home,’ Alen countered.

  ‘Hurray!’ Milla shouted, a bit of potato falling from her lips. ‘On a boat?’

  ‘On a big boat, Pepperweed.’ Hoyt smiled and wiped her face with a cloth, then checked over his shoulder to make sure they were still alone. He whispered, ‘Think about it, Alen. We haven’t heard anything from Gilmour in how long? Almost a Moon? He was on his way to the Blackstones to find the spell table – well, where is he? What if he failed and Nerak killed him and everyone with him? He told you himself that Nerak was in the Eastlands.’ He didn’t want to upset Hannah with talk of Steven’s death, but that possibility remained very real. Perhaps surprisingly, there had been no awkwardness between them since their morning together, but Hoyt worried she would misunderstand or get angry if she heard him talking about Steven being lost.

  Alen said, ‘I should try to contact him again, but if Fantus is dead, I will have to return to Falkan.’

  ‘Why? We’re here. Think of what we can do here.’

  ‘And think of what we cannot do,’ Alen said. ‘The city is overrun with Palace Guardsmen, all of them looking to retrieve our little friend, and you saw that army. What are we going to do? Shoot arrows at them? Call them nasty names? No, if Gilmour is dead, we’ll have to find the spell table and Lessek’s key. It’s the only way. Gods, but I wish Pikan was here; she knew how to operate that thing.’

  Hoy
t smiled. ‘You’ve come a long way from the man who wanted to march into Welstar Palace and commit suicide.’

  Alen elbowed Milla playfully in the ribs. ‘Well, I’ve been entrusted with something important. I’ve waited a long time for this charge; now the least I can do is see it through.’

  ‘I’ll offer you a deal, my friend.’ Hoyt leaned back in his chair. ‘You attempt to contact Gilmour, and I will find us passage to Orindale. The Twinmoon is coming and everything that floats will be making a run for the Northeast Channel. If he has the spell table, we’ll take young Milla home, or to Sandcliff, or wherever it is you plan to take her, and I will come along quietly. If he doesn’t have the spell table, we’ll stay here and pick off a few of the Guard, or maybe disrupt the shipping industry a bit. Churn and I were top-notch at disrupting the shipping industry. I got good marks in school for disrupting things.’

  ‘You still don’t understand, Hoyt,’ Alen said, ‘without the spell table, we’re lost, and with the spell table, there’s no need for us to be here.’

  ‘But you said yourself, the Palace Home Guard have come into the city and the prince’s army is stationed up there along the river. Why would we be anyplace else?’ Hoyt argued.

  ‘With the spell table, we can bring a firestorm down on them. Rutters, Hoyt, with the spell table, we could tear open the foundation of the hillside and drop the lot of them into an abyss.’

  Hoyt nodded. ‘All right, then. Sign me up for that.’

  Hannah rejoined them, sliding into her chair. ‘Holy shit, boys— Um, sorry Milla, that’s not a nice word, I shouldn’t use such words. But have you two been sleeping?’

  ‘What?’ Alen raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Look at her; she’s a mess.’ She picked bits of potato from Milla’s hair and head. Hannah couldn’t imagine how she managed to get potato behind her ear.

  ‘Pepperweed?’ Hoyt shrugged and tweaked the girl’s nose. ‘It’s just a bit of potato.’

  ‘Love p’tatoes!’ Milla shrieked.

  ‘See? She loves potatoes.’

  Erynn appeared with an empty tray, cleared the trenchers and wiped down the table. ‘Can I get you anything else?’ she asked, trying not to stare at Hoyt.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Erynn,’ Hannah said. ‘This one needs a bath.’

  ‘It’s three Mareks,’ she said. ‘There’s a big tub at the back of the scullery. You can pull the curtain across. I’ll let my father know he needs to heat the water for you.’

  ‘Three Mareks?’ Hoyt was incredulous. ‘For three Mareks, I’m getting in, too.’

  ‘Age before beauty,’ Alen said, ‘and I want the warm water.’

  ‘Not fair,’ Hoyt said, ‘you could heat it your—’ He cut himself off, suddenly aware that Erynn was still at the table. Hoyt didn’t notice that the girl was blushing too furiously to make sense of anything she might have overheard. He smiled at her and said, ‘Thanks. Please do ask your father to fill the tub for us. We’ll be down shortly.’

  Almost ready to expire from embarrassment, Erynn croaked a weak, ‘Yes, sir,’ and hurried back to the kitchen.

  The Wayfarer’s scullery didn’t have a stone foundation like the rest of the building; it had been added onto the back of the kitchen, a long rectangular room with a sloped ceiling. The flagstone floor was littered with stacks of firewood, rusty serving trays and stewpots, even a rickety wheelbarrow laden with old tools. There were several massive tubs, two of which were affixed to the wall on either side of the kitchen door. One, Hannah guessed, would be filled with hot soapy water – a hole had been cut in the kitchen wall big enough to accommodate buckets. The second tub was for clean water, after every trencher, bowl and goblet had at least a token dunking before returning to general circulation. A third tub, easily as large as the other two combined, rested against the back wall, doubling as laundry and bath; one hot bucketful for every two cold buckets, and the water would stay warm long enough for dirty travellers to dive in, scrub briefly, and then dash, shivering and swaddled in blankets, to the fireplace in the front room.

  Two empty braziers meant the scullery was clear of smoke, but freezing cold. The tub, filled for three Mareks by the innkeeper, steamed like a volcanic fissure.

  ‘Holy gods, but it’s cold in here,’ Hannah said, shivering as she helped Milla out of her tunic. ‘Come on, sweetie, we’ll be really fast.’

  ‘But I want to swim,’ Milla said, ignoring the cold and climbing over the side of the washtub. ‘Oooh,’ she said, crouching low in the water, ‘it’s warm.’

  ‘Grand,’ Hannah said, ‘but when you come out, you’re going to freeze solid. So let’s get you clean and out of here.’

  Milla sighed impatiently and glanced at the twin braziers. In an instant, both burst into cheery, crackling flame.

  ‘Yikes!’ Hannah said, smiling. ‘That’s a good one.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ Milla dunked her head beneath the water, ‘but wait until you see me swim.’ She backed to one side of the trough, curled like a spring and then kicked hard for the other side, paddling her hands and kicking her feet all the way. The entire journey took less than two seconds, but for Milla, the washtub was a snake-infested jungle pool and the journey took hours. “Did you see that, Hannah?’ she cried excitedly, ‘did you see me swim?’

  ‘I did, sweetie.’ Hannah was trying to wash whatever parts of the little girl would stay still for more than a moment at a time. ‘What do you call that?’

  ‘Mama calls it the scramble; she taught me before I went to live with Rabeth and Prince Nerak.’ Milla kicked off the wall again, splashing water over the side of the tub.

  ‘Whoa, easy there!’ Hannah laughed. ‘You know, my mom taught me that one too, but we call it the doggie paddle. And it works better if you cup your hands.’

  ‘Like this?’ Milla held up one hand, fingers splayed.

  ‘No, sweetie, like this.’ Hannah demonstrated. ‘You see how I can pull the water along? That makes you go faster, with less effort.’

  ‘I’m already fast.’

  ‘And I’m cold, so we need to hustle a bit if we—’ Hannah took advantage of Milla’s momentary stillness to scrub her face and neck.

  ‘I’ll fix it,’ Milla said and gestured again at the braziers. The flames in both leaped a bit higher, growing more intense. ‘That should make it warmer.’

  Bemused, Hannah shook her head. ‘Where did you learn that?’

  ‘Rabeth thinks he taught me, but I could just do it for ever. I used to make fires for Mama all the time.’ Milla returned to her laps. ‘Watch this.’

  ‘That’s better!’ Hannah said. ‘Good, just like I showed you, the scramble.’

  ‘I like doggie paddle better.’ Milla kicked her way across the washtub. ‘I like dogs.’

  Thinking back on how surprised she was to discover that Branag’s poor wolfhound had tracked her – on Milla’s orders – all the way from Southport, Hannah sighed. ‘I remember, sweetie.’

  Later, all clean and dry, her bare feet dancing on the scullery flagstones, Milla shivered. ‘It’s cold now.’

  ‘Let’s get you out to the front room and you can get warm by the fire while I get your dry clothes.’

  ‘Should I heat the water for Hoyt?’ Milla asked. ‘He’s been sad since Churn fell. Maybe the bath will be fun for him, too.’

  Hannah swallowed hard. ‘I’m sure he’d like that.’

  Staring down at the washtub, Milla pressed her lips together and knitted her brow. She looked like a child who was angry with her doll and was about to give it a thorough scolding.

  Hannah watched in mute amazement as the water started bubbling, then cried, ‘Oh, Milla, sweetie, stop now – you don’t want to cook him, do you?’ She hugged the enchanting little magician close.

  ‘Do you think it’s too hot?’

  ‘Nah,’ Hannah laughed. ‘Hoyt will figure it out.’

  ‘Someone call my name?’ Hoyt appeared through the kitchen door; like Milla, he started dancing as soon as his bare fe
et hit the flagstones. ‘Yeow! It’s cold in here. At least you lit the braziers – thanks for that.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ Hannah said, collecting Milla and her blankets. ‘Enjoy your bath.’

  The two women were barely through the kitchen doorway, smiling conspiratorially, when they heard Hoyt cry, ‘Gods of the Northern Forest, that’s hot!’ And then a moment later, ‘Hannah!’

  That night, Hannah lay in bed, waiting for Hoyt. A candle burned by the bedside; she watched its shadow flicker and dance on the ceiling.

  Alen had found the Wayfarer and paid for two rooms, one for him and Milla and one for Hoyt and Hannah. They hadn’t told Alen about their lovemaking; neither wanted it to be a source of discomfort between them, nor did they feel the cathartic encounter merited mentioning to the Larion Senator. Yet Hannah was beginning to worry. When alone, Hoyt avoided making eye contact with her, and their conversations had grown strained. Hannah wanted to say something, to clear the air. It might be weeks before they reached Orindale, weeks before she was reunited with Steven, and she didn’t want to spend her last few weeks in Eldarn enduring awkward moments of strained silence with Hoyt, someone she thought of as a true friend.

  Hannah waited, trying out different icebreakers in her mind, but when Hoyt finally joined her, she was so surprised to find the young thief dressed, still in his boots, and carrying a small canvas pack that she forgot all her prepared speeches and blurted, ‘Well, I know things have been a bit awkward between us, but a pack? You aren’t moving out on me, are you?’

  Hoyt grinned. ‘Awkward? Between us? Since when?’ He set the pack on the edge of the bed. ‘You mean since you fell off that cliff, and I had to put your busted head back together?’

  ‘No,’ Hannah giggled, then, embarrassed, pulled her blankets up to hide her face. ‘And it wasn’t my head; it was my shoulder.’

  ‘Oh, yes, right. Well, then, you must mean it’s been awkward since I taught you that song about the sailor’s wife with the wooden leg, and you sang it until that barman told you to be quiet.’

  Hannah pointed at him defiantly, but, still grinning, said, ‘Hey, I taught you that song, cousin. And as for that night, well, I blame Malakasian beer. Good lord, but what do they put in that stuff? Seaweed?’