She might have said anything. She might have insulted him and the litter into which he was born, but nothing would have disturbed the rumbling cat’s sleep.
“Wish I was a wildspeaker. So much I’d ask you about. But that’s just not my twist, is it?” She peered down through the trees at the rain-slicked grass and rippling mud. And then she opened her shoulder bag, taking a quick inventory.
She counted stockings for Lezeeka; a kite for Urchin; red reins for the vawn trainer; a shaving stone for Haggard’s beard; and a pillow she had woven tight enough to repel water, a pillow for Radegan who never slept under a roof. “Those youngsters will have roused anybody left in the camp. It’ll be tricky to sneak around and leave surprises if they’re expecting me.”
Something like a touch of wind gave her sudden pause, and she turned to glance over her shoulder. “Don’t let no madweed keep you from watchin’ out for hunters, Dukas. You hear me?”
She pulled the dark fur collar of her grey green cloak tighter around her neck against the rainy chill. A rainhound barked in the distance, and the sound drew her to the slope. She ducked behind a husktree and looked down past the orchard to the shelters. “When I go into House Abascar and make my pledge at the Rites, will they ever let me visit the Gatherers, Dukas?” She tilted her head. “That’s odd. Something’s missing down there.”
As she headed toward the orchard, Auralia came upon a band of orphans. Some were swinging on rope swings or taking turns on a pair of crooked tree-branch stilts. A few had painted their faces with mud, and their eyes were white as teeth. But most were crawling on all fours and collecting stones before a line of scarecrows. A rainhound was scampering back and forth and barking at the handmade figures. When the children saw Auralia, all but the oldest boy dropped their stones and ran to gather in a dancing circle around her and to beg her to open her shoulder bag. They tugged at the edge of the leafy cape so that it fanned out around her.
“Show us what you brung!”
“No, no. It’s for the Gatherers.”
“Stop and play with us!”
“What’s the game?”
“King’s Lesson!” said Owen-mark, the scruffy boy who clearly believed he was in charge.
The scarecrows were as large as men, silhouettes in the evening light. Made from bundles of sticks, they stood with arms outstretched. The children had hollowed out heads of yellow squash and carved eyeholes and grins, then stuffed them with smoldering scraps of damp bark. Light and smoke emanated from their freakish features.
Auralia stepped closer and wrinkled her nose. “Howdaya play King’s Lesson?”
“Simple.” Owen-mark took a few steps back from the scarecrows and lifted a stone. “Ya take a rock, and ya throw it at this one. He’s the king, ya see. And ya teach him a lesson.” He clapped the stone into his palm. “First one to knock him down or break his head is called King of the Day. That’s it. King’s Lesson.”
“So that one’s the king?” Auralia walked toward the scarecrow in the center. It seemed to leer down at her. “Why does it have to be the king?”
“’Cause the king’s a fool.”
“Who are the rest of them?”
“Cal-raven, ’cause…well…he’s the next king. And Ark-robin, ’cause he enforces the rules. And that one’s a duty guard.”
“Umm.” Auralia fidgeted with the buttons on her shoulder bag. “I’m gonna suggest a different game.”
The boy’s face crumpled in disapproval, but the girls were intrigued.
“Sure, the king’s got problems. But he guards us from beastmen. And he collects the harvest, so to feed us all. It don’t do nobody any good to stand around throwin’ rocks. How about you decorate ’em instead?”
The swings slowed. A boy climbed down from the stilts.
“Whaddaya mean?” Owen-mark put his hands on his hips.
Auralia unwound a purple scarf from her neck and flung it up and over the king-scarecrow’s shoulder, then wandered around behind him, took the end, and tossed it back over the other shoulder. “You’re all gonna make crowns. I’ll be gone for just a while. But I’ll come back through real soon. The best crown I see goes on the king’s head. And I’ll reward you with a surprise.” A cheer went up from the girls, and she wiped the mud from a young orphan’s face before kissing it.
The boy was not ready to surrender. “That’s a stupid game,” he growled. “I don’t want to show no thanks to somebody who conspired against us.”
“Conspired?” laughed Auralia. “Who’s conspiring?”
“Haven’t ya heard?” the boy mumbled. “They came and took away everything you gave us. Search all of our shelters—you’ll find there’s nothing left.”
Auralia clutched her bag the way she had clung to the cat’s fur, to keep from falling down as the world tipped and shook.
The gravity of the Gatherers’ shelters took hold, and she turned to run into their trouble.
Like cartloads of crates that had tumbled from colliding wagons, the Gatherers’ settlement seemed a scattering of half-wrecked structures. Passages ran between, under, and over them as erratic as threads of thought in a madman’s mind. Patched together with pitch, tar, spikes, and curtains, the shelters had spread like wild mushrooms across this damp ground. The roofs were crooked as if they had been pelted with boulders by those who walked atop Abascar’s looming walls.
Down the grass in skating steps, Auralia descended into welcome memories. How she’d savored the last summer painting walls and weaving welcome mats.
She glanced at the volunteer guards, Gatherers with bows and arrows who earned favor by marching along the perimeter and surveying the woods for predators and beastmen. As she ran in, they failed to respond with effusive enthusiasm and instead turned their eyes away.
“Greetings, Middle and Lop-head, Sam-jon, Lully, and Wil,” she said in forced cheerfulness, skipping into the zigzagging avenue across rugged stones where the rainwater trickled into gutters.
The avenue was empty, as it should be. It was afternoon, and the Gatherers would not have returned yet from their tasks. No one would be around but the occasional wandering orphan or a few who remained behind to prepare simple meals for the returning laborers.
The structures leaned into one another, or backward and forward, like slouching drunkards and weary workers. An air of cold exhaustion hung stagnant in the air. And she did not see the flags…the banners she had crafted and distributed to so many, which they had displayed above their tents on all but the duty officers’ inspection days. Nor did she see the colorful kites she had made for the corners of the pathways, kites that remained aloft even in the slightest wind. And while patches of the summertime paint resisted the rain, the curtains she had made were missing.
She went first, as always, to the black canvas tent where Krawg and Warney stayed. The tent shivered in the cold behind Yawny’s cook-hut, leaning against the sturdy wooden wall of a storage shack. She was surprised to find smoke puffing up through the chimney shaft, and she ducked in through the back entry to surprise whoever was inside.
What she found quickly spoiled her playful ploy. Standing in the dim grey light, Warney was fussing over a firebox. In one hand he held the iron stoker, pushing the embers together to keep the flames rising, and with the other he cast herbs into the steam rising from the pot that rested atop the box. His good eye spied her, and he smiled sadly. He did not catch her up in his usual embrace.
Then she saw the reason for his busyness. Beneath a mountain of blankets, Krawg lay struggling for breath. His stone grey head lay heavy on a stuffed toy fangbear—a plaything she had crafted for an orphan who, at Krawg’s surprising insistence, had traded it to him for a feathered hat. The old Gatherer lay there, head on the bear’s belly, and blinked at her as if she had gone blurry.
“Wretched, his breathing,” said Warney. “Since the burglary, Krawg’s been ruined.”
“Burglary?”
“Last night. Took everything. Everything you made.”
“We didn’t see or hear a thing,” said Warney. “None of us.”
“But you were thieves once,” said Auralia. “Surely you should have heard them lurkin’ about.”
“These were trained and careful,” said Warney. “Weasels and scurry-rats.”
“They took the blue shoot-stalk curtain?” She went to the window they had cut in the canvas. “It was your favorite.”
“Took Krawg’s yellow scarf, they did. That’s why he can’t breathe.” Warney spooned the herb soup into a half shell of a tree-melon.
“Oh, bother,” said Auralia. “It was only a scarf. He can breathe just fine without it.”
Krawg opened his mouth to disagree but was seized with a fit of coughing.
Warney put the bowl on an overturned apple crate beside the bed and then opened his hand to scatter shelled nuts and grapes alongside it. “He insists, Auralia. He insists your makings are more than color and heat. They fix what’s broken.”
“My work’s just to brighten things,” she protested, “and to show you all how to make stuff from nothin’.” She went to the window and pushed Warney’s words away. She did not want to know if her work did more than she intended. She did not want to think about all that could mean. “Now tell me,” she said in a tease, “are ya sure you two didn’t take it all when no one was lookin’? You sure this isn’t some kinda trick? And you—”
Krawg surged upward, the blankets falling away, so that his frail old torso was grey and naked in the light. “Impudent girl!” he wheezed. “We done no such thing! We don’t do us no thievin’, and you know it right well.”
Warney narrowed his eye. “Gotta ’gree with him there, ’Ralia.”
Stunned, back against the wall, she was speechless, and her eyes spilled tears. Then she ran to embrace Krawg, and he spread his bony arms high and wide in surprise. She had never known him to be fond of embraces, but that would not stop her now. He awkwardly patted her head.
“Krawg isn’t the only one, ’Ralia,” said Warney. “Lotsa folk are stuck to their blankets today, sick from the loss of their treasures. It’s like Abascar’s robbed them all over again. With all your colors missin’, well, the heart’s gone outta the place.”
And so he knelt beside her, his eye wet with the memory, and unfolded for her like a tapestry how the morning had dawned to outrage, how Gatherers emerged with tales of disappeared belongings, how panic and dismay had spread. The wind propeller. The name flags. The welcome mats.
By the time Krawg and Warney had finished telling their tale, a crowd had gathered at the door. Word had spread of Auralia’s arrival, and they whispered in eager frustration, hoping she had brought them something new, some token to assure them that all they had lost would be restored.
Radegan, a clutch of arrows in his hand, stood red faced, fierce eyed, his jaw thrust forward. “We searched, we did,” he seethed. “All up and through the settlement. All through the surrounding wood. But the rain washed out the tracks. Don’t know which way they went.”
Looming behind him as always, Haggard the giant blustered through his yellow beard, “When we find them that’s done it, we’ll knock their heads off their shoulders and set ’em on fire.”
“’Twas a conspiracy,” said Radegan. “Came in from all sides. The colors are too precious in Abascar. Could be Housefolk got word of Auralia’s doings and hired thieves to smuggle them inside the walls. Or it could be Ark-robin’s thugs or duty officers who hope to win rewards. Or maybe they were sold to merchants.”
“What’ll you do, Auralia?” whined Lezeeka. “I want my leggings back. And Wenjee’s got requests as well, but she got so upset about losin’ her purple-gem slippers that she ate a whole basket of figs, and now she’s…um…she’s not too comfortable.”
And so began the cry, the Gatherers appealing to the frightened girl to replace what they had lost. They had prepared a list and began to read it to her.
Auralia felt as if she were shrinking.
She pushed her way through the crowd and into the rain. “I can’t replace them. They’re not made by recipes and plans. They’re each their own thing, come together in surprise and accident. There won’t be no replacing.” She glanced back down the lonely avenue and then up at the forest. “It’s almost time for the Rites of the Privilege. I gotta go inside the walls and try to show them a thing or two.”
Krawg had staggered out on a crutch, the blankets heaped over his shoulders, Warney propping him up. “You can’t mean it,” he coughed. “You can’t mean you’ll really go there.”
“Don’t tell me what I can’t mean,” she barked. “With all I’ve shown you, all you see are gifts. You don’t get the how or the why of them. If you did, you might find them for yourselves. When will you try? You say the colors heal you? I don’t see nothin’ of the sort.”
While their mouths opened and closed, while they looked around for someone to come to their rescue, Auralia hugged her shoulder bag. “And as for conspiracy…I can see colors on the fingers of the one who took it all. I see a thread from Krawg’s yellow scarf snagged on a jacket. I know who took the curtains and rugs. Somebody’s trying to make themselves a bargain. And that’s just a shame, ’cause I made something particular for that one. And now it’ll never see the light.”
And then she turned and fled.
They scrambled after her, renewing their pleas. But she was through a narrow gap between two shacks, under a porch, through an empty tent, and gone.
Bursting through bracken and back to the scarecrows, she took off her shoulder bag, draped it over the prong of a broken branch, and marched up to the smoke-headed specters. The orphans, thunderstruck to see her again and in such a transformed state, stepped away.
Without hesitation, she scooped a handful of stones from the pile they had made and pitched them at the scarecrow in the middle. They rained down around its head, and one stuck neatly into an eye socket. Then she charged at the scarecrow, reached up to grab both ends of the purple scarf she had draped around its neck, and pulled the ends in opposite ways, tightening it until the stick neck snapped and the yellow sphere tumbled free and broke into clean halves on the ground. Spitting, smoldering bark sent tendrils of black smoke up into the rain.
“Why did you do that?” shrieked one of the girls, who held a bundle of flowers. “We was gonna dress him up like you said!”
Auralia, fire in her own eyes now, teeth clenched, did not say a word. She just knelt down to gather more stones.
A shrill cry rang out far away, falling like a bird call from the woods high above. No one flinched or bothered to wonder, save Auralia, who fell forward onto her knees as if struck from behind.
And then she stood, grabbed her shoulder bag, and was off again up the hillside.
As she returned to the patch of madweed, knees dripping with mud from her stumbles up the saturated slope, she fell forward, her hands touching ribbons of cold, bright red blood.
Dukas had been arrow-shot. Here the spray of the impact, and there…splashes of red trailing off into the trees…the signs of a desperate escape. He would be miles away now, if he survived. And he would never return, not even with Auralia’s persuasion.
Trembling, she began to follow the bloody line. It was not long before the crimson spots vanished and her feet sank into deep bootprints. Most likely a merchant scouting the edge of Abascar in hopes of bringing back something valuable for trade. She wiped her nose and dabbed her eyes. She uttered words she had heard angry Gatherers swear in frustration, until at last she shaped a solemn vow.
She declared to the air that she would not visit the Gatherer settlement again, for her gifts had only made them selfish. And then she vowed never to consent to the Rites of the Privilege. She would take her things and go far away, to a place where she could do her work alone.
There was a scent, not of fern or mushroom, not of bear piles or gre
en needles or rain. Fish. She smelled fish suddenly, here and far from any pond. And then she smelled leather, like the sort used for bootmaking. Someone was near. Near and still. But beastmen did not bother much with fish or leather.
She glanced back into the approaching darkness beyond the shoulder-high ferns, where the trees guarded their secrets. “Keeper,” she whispered quietly. “Keeper.”
There was a commotion behind her, a swift approach. She saw the two figures in green hooded cloaks, the branches stripped bare in their hands, the decision—devoid of hate, devoid of feeling—in their eyes. She was halfway to her feet when the first one lifted his club and let it fall in a swift and easy swing. All colors vanished at once.
11
PROMONTORY
A growl rumbled like a drum in the belly of the hound-man while he paced in the wooden cage, sometimes stalking on all fours, sometimes striding upright.
From her vantage point high on the trunk of a tree that bowed out over the clearing, Auralia watched him, fascinated. She had run for hours to catch the thieves, delirious with pain and outrage. But now that she had caught up to them, she found herself stunned by the spectacle. She had never seen a beastman in captivity.
The rest of the scene was familiar. A family of Abascar merchants were hard at work bargaining with Bel Amican traders, offering a mix of items they had purchased, stolen, or won at gambling. As so often happened in a conference of dishonest bargainers, things were going sour.
Auralia surveyed the menagerie displayed on the merchants’ table. She recognized this family from her travels around House Abascar—the children, Wynn and Cortie, the parents, Joss and Juney. But she did not recognize anything they offered to sell. She did not see her stolen bag or any sign of its precious cargo—the unfinished cloak she had run all night to recapture. These were probably stashed in the saddlebags on the merchants’ vawns…that is, if Joss and Juney were the guilty thieves. It had been a long night of pursuit through the wilderness, a throbbing headache of a night, and Auralia began to wonder if she had made a wrong turn following rain-blurred tracks.
Auralia's Colors Page 12
