“I didn’t—”
“Do you suppose Aewyn’s seen twelve summers, Grim? Or fifteen? Or how about a thousand, like Celithrand himself?”
“She doesn’t say,” Grim sighed.
“Listen, friend,” said Alec, frowning. “These men and women—every one of them comes from across the Empire, no few of them from lands far beyond. Halgeir’s a Banlander like you. Robyn and Bram—she won’t talk of where they’re from, but I’ll wager it’s somewhere unfriendly.”
“It’s nobody’s business where those two are from,” said Grim sharply. “They’re from nowhere, far as I’m concerned. Bastards of Kyric, the both of them, born in some alehouse, or popped out of the ocean like the aerils themselves. Where all these folk are from, it’s got nothing to do with the trouble my girl is in.”
“But it does,” said Alec. “They come from all across Silvalis, and they’ve brought their stories with them—stories about creatures of magic, creatures like your girl, that live on after magic’s gone. Those are the stories they’re telling tonight, Grim. And they don’t end so well. An ordinary girl with hair that happens to change with the seasons like the fyltree leaves—they can turn a blind eye to a pretty thing like that. But if the Poe exists, if it’s really just a karach that survived the Clearances, those stories she tells are starting to come true. We can’t ignore them forever. Maybe she’s cursed. Maybe she’s got some terrible destiny, as magical children of miraculous birth always seem to have. You know how the sagas always go. And people come out in the thick to flee their destinies, not to face them. You of all people should know that.”
At Alec’s back, Grim could hear the crowd growing restless as Alec went on for longer than they would have liked.
“There’s no escaping this particular destiny, is there?” Grim said. “What do they want?”
“Justice,” said Alec. “But more than that, they want to go on believing there’s nothing special about this girl.”
“She is special,” said Grim. “She needs no fairy magic for that.”
Alec would not be moved. “Let her take the karach’s punishment. Let her get her hands dirty, like a real farmer. There’s plenty of women working the land here—plenty who will train her up, if you won’t. If she’s a communal child, let her do communal chores. Let her work off the debt to Darmod in the karach’s place, and I swear to you they’ll let the matter go.”
“Put the yoke on her?” Grim asked. “Are you mad? She can’t pull a plough. I’ve owned dogs that outweigh her.”
“Ah, but old Orin has birthed horses that weighed less,” countered Alec. “No one’s expecting her to pull a plough. They just want to see her stop being an ill omen, and start being a farmer’s daughter. No more fairy-folk and monsters, Grim. Just a girl in a field.”
“A girl in a field,” repeated Grim.
“That’s all they want. A normal village of normal people.”
Grim scowled at him. “Alec Steel, you are a mercenary, and a mercenary’s son.”
“Call me Alec Mercy,” Alec countered. “That’s what the moot decided, after you fled. They think the name suits me, after all I’ve said to quench their fires. A poor name for one who fought in the war, I think.” He leaned in close—his beard was close enough to Grim’s ear to scratch it. “Mercy or no,” he said then, “these people must see something real, something unpleasant, happen to the poor wretches tangled up in the fabric of this misfortune. They need to know, above all, that they do not live in a lawless society. Do not be fooled by the warm summers: we are frontier folk, here in Widowvale. We have no tribunals, no magistrates, no proper courts but what Marin gives us. And those things make justice more important, Grim...not less.”
For a rare and brief moment, Grim’s face softened. “Alec Mercy,” he breathed. “The name suits you, I think. A worthy name.”
“Let me come in and speak with you about your punishment,” said Alec. “Yours and the girl’s, in exacting detail. We’ll talk all night if we must, until the cold and the wind take the fire out of these people, and they stagger off home to their beds. And we’d better be damned sure we arrive at a suitable answer before they come back in the warmth of day.”
Aewyn’s hands were small and thin, with clever fingers, and her eyesight was strangely keen even in the dark. They were made, Grim said, for the planting of carrot seeds. Romaunt was a bleak month in the mildest of climes; in Haveïl, it was meant for carrot seeds and not much else. The bold favoured cabbage, but the largest fields were unprotected, and the weather of late winter and early spring was unpredictable at best, unforgiving at worst. Carrots were dependable, Grim said, like a good mace. Unlike a sword, he said, a good mace never needed sharpening or oiling. The little seeds were flanged like tiny mace-heads, which he explained was the source of their hardiness in the early season.
Aewyn’s childhood had ended suddenly over that winter, and she knew Grim’s lies now when she heard them. What did a vintner know of carrots, after all? He would tell her any and all stories he could to keep her tired legs moving, her chilled hands placing seed after seed in his grunting, sweating wake. Three seeds to a hole and a full step. Three seeds to a hole. Even for the hardy carrot, life in this land was uncertain.
A few paces ahead of her, Grim leaned hard against the push-plough, moiling against the strain of the barely-thawed soil. “Keep up,” he scolded.
For two weeks, now, they had risen in the night to till and sow their way across the fields of Widowvale, leaving as much pregnant soil behind them as they could manage before the sun rose to announce the start of Grim’s own workday. The old push-plough, a narrow-wheeled wooden frame with a scrap of bellmetal for a share, cut hardly more than a harrow’s depth in the cold soil. But it was as much as Grim could manage by hand—and so here they were at sowing time, crossing fields already turned and furrowed to lay seeds of carrots, collards, and peas in shallow tracks. A night of planting, from the small hours to sunrise, was counted half a day; and a day of planting was counted half a day again of ploughing. So it was that Grim and Aewyn together began to serve the karach’s sentence with conviction and patience, for his two seasons at the plough would cost them eight.
The tense silence of winter and the unquenched anger of the town itself had faded now; but gone, too, were Aewyn’s days under the trees, taking shelter with the great karach for warmth, taking what delightful food and drink the forest was pleased to give her. There were no karach left in the land west of the Capital, now, and none really knew how much work could be done by one karach in two seasons. It was certainly more, however, than one portly vintner and a whelp of a girl could account for. Grim never told her (it was part of her punishment) how long the work was to last. Perhaps forever, she thought. Perhaps they would forget, in time, the life of freedom they had lived before the Reeve had accepted Grim’s settlement. Grim himself seemed to have forgotten his former life already, just as he had forgotten the one before that, before he left the inhospitable Banlands for a life no less friendly.
“You’re not counting stars, Princess,” Grim barked again. “Three seeds to a hole, take a step. Come on.”
Aewyn sourly doubled her speed, but pushing her resentment out of mind only seemed to bring it to her mouth. “Why the hurry?” she said. “We’ll be here for a whole season, even if we could plant the whole Empire in a night.”
“I’m not about to waste my breath explaining justice,” he said. “This field will teach you justice soon enough. I’d expect that kind of yowling if you were big enough to push the plough. But your work, sprinkling seeds and patting the earth, that’s nothing-work. That’s child-work. If we’re at this a whole season, maybe you’ll get big enough to push for a while, maybe find out what real work is.”
“It’s real enough work, this many hours for a small bag of seeds,” said Aewyn. “That’s hardly more than a stick in the ground. They mean to insult you, else they’d have given you a real plough.”
“It’s every bit as much as I
can handle,” he said. “And a fair sight more than you can. You need beasts to pull the heavy plough, Aewyn. Oxen, big horses. Or maybe a karach, like that pet of yours.”
“Poe,” she said softly. “My friend has a name.”
“Poe,” Grim repeated with stoic acceptance. “Well, your ‘friend’ certainly left you—left us, I venture—to handle his debt for him.”
“I’ll be leaving too, someday,” she said suddenly. “I’m a child of destiny. Celithrand told me so, once. Someday the druids will take me away and I’ll become a great warrior, like—like in the songs.”
Grim shrugged with his eyebrows, since his shoulders were hard at use.
“Warriors need muscles,” he said, “and you’ve clearly got no interest in growing yourself any. There’s a thousand songs of heroes in the Hanes of the North, and not one about a sickly runt who whines at the touch of steel. If the druids are coming to take you away to their magic kingdom, well, then get your arms and legs moving, and give ’em something worth taking. Otherwise, you can ask Robyn when she comes back to the village what it really means to be a warrior-woman. Feel the muscles in her bow-arm some time, and ask her if it’s a nice break from farm work to go do something easy like soldiering.”
Aewyn had a retort, but dared not utter it.
“Go ask your friend the karach, while you’re at it,” he added, “what kind of work a warrior gets up to. He’s no doubt seen plenty of their work with his own eyes.”
“He won’t come back,” she said. “I won’t see him again, after what’s been done to him.”
Grim snorted at that. “What’s been done? It’s been done to you in his stead,” he reminded her. “And I’d call no one ‘friend’ who left me holding the honey when the bees came home. If that’s what passes for a friend in these lands, ye princess of the druids… I suppose I should be glad he’s seen to it I’ve no friends left in Widowvale, either.” The remark stung her almost as much as the long silence that followed.
All that season and into the next, they talked little and laughed less. It was not all planting, of course. Some of it was harder work still—but as time passed and forgiveness began to take root, some of it was hardly work at all. A few of the year’s more fortunate townsfolk, their purses overflowing with silver or their carts too heavily laden with foodstuffs, bought days of their field-labour from Darmod Pick, then bade them sit in the shade with a cup of Grim’s wine and a few of his tall tales, as long as he was generous with both. Despite her growing renown as the town’s youngest criminal mad-woman (to be touched by the wood folk was not, after all, universally smiled upon), Aewyn was a likeable girl. She had been fostered in many homes, and made many friends, and while they would not give public voice to their hearts, it pained them to see her toil without end.
That year was later remembered as the Year of Twins, for Alec Mercy’s mares foaled very late in the spring, but no less than three of them foaled healthy twins. Even Orin, the old groom who was called upon to attend the births, could remember no such occurrence. He had seen only four sets of twins in all his travels between Travalaith and Widowvale; always with horses one twin was too weak, he said, and had to be slain. But this season the birthing was easy, if long, and they were of good stock and grew mightily. The foals were a fair sight in Alec’s fields, and he knew that in time he would prosper well beyond his expectations, for the Mages’ Uprising left the Iron City in great need of horses, and pure hot-blood breeds were high in demand. It was an implausible, even miraculous windfall, with some saying that the gods had seen fit to reward Alec for his kindness.
One of the six twins he gave to Darmod Pick, when it was hale enough—a black-maned filly with a coat of burnished gold, the larger of the twins from her mother. This was considered far too generous a trade for the several days of Aewyn’s labour he took in barter. Many of the townsfolk were still wroth with Alec for his easy judgment of the karach at Darmod’s expense, but in the hearts of many, the foal settled those accounts. Darmod was a hard man, but his anger grieved him, and when he named the young filly Shimble, or “gold-thorn,” after a plant used in the healing of old wounds, it gladdened the hearts of many. For many seasons thereafter, it was said—though never too loudly—that Darmod in secret was a kind man. Even more quietly, it was said that Alec Mercy was wise.
By this shrewd gift of his good fortune, Alec bought many days of relief for Aewyn and Grim over the hottest crest of the summer. He was well off and growing wealthier with no need of their labour, and so they would sit in back of his house, which was large and had a loft, and drink Grim’s wine, and tell stories until there was no light to work by. Alec, too, was a fine storyteller, with tales from the city that seemed inexhaustible. But the stories that interested him most were not his own, nor even Grim’s, but Aewyn’s; and for the relief it afforded his toil-weary back and hands, Grim learned to suffer her fairy-stories gladly.
“The matter of the karach is still unsettled,” Alec warned them, “and I am unsettled as well. I would like to hear everything I can about how this has all come to pass. And this time I promise to believe you, Aewyn, no less than a little—and more, if I can.”
FOUR
Sing, Spirit, of companies, seasoned
campaigners of yore
Who brandished bright weapons and banners
in service of war,
Who warred not for glory, though glory
by weapons they won,
Sing out of the sign of the Owl,
of the worm-liquor spun,
Of the Four of the North, unchained from
the fetters of fear,
Who strove with their strength, who struggled
with knife against spear
In the long siege at Travost; sing true of
the travails and trials
Of the four allied forces, who fighting
won fame for their styles
And peace for their families, proud of
the price that they paid:
By craft they were mighty; by might the
false Craftsman unmade.
Sing, Spirit, of Celithrand’s sacrifice!
Sing of the Gift
That he rendered, rejecting his fate, and
by rending a rift
Between a life lasting for ever
beloved by the Fei
Who were family to him, for forsaking
their undying way
On the waves, he who would not on water
be merged with his folk
At their yearly return—how unyielding
he took up the yoke
Of the young, of the Ox, who by effort
and suffering strove
To contend with the terror of Men. Thus
he tarried for love
With great strength and a steely resolve on
the steps of the dawn,
And was tied to the Earth, and was hailed, but
would never sail on.
ALEC MERCY HAD GROWN UP the son of a soldier, and the soldiers of Travalaith knew a very particular family of songs. The Ballad of the Bannered Owl, as it was known, was a pompous and ponderous song, winding on some forty or fifty verses from beginning to end. Most soldiers knew five or ten verses—the ones most directly concerned with battle and valour—but Alec was wiser than most, and could sing the first half or so from memory. This he did only reluctantly, after Aewyn had asked him every day for a week; but when he unlocked the singing-voice long chained up in his throat, it was melodious and deep, like the voice of a grandfather or distant uncle in his fiery prime. In song his voice belied his origins east of the Iron City, and it rang with the proud wonder of a child raised on heroic stories of war, tempered only slightly by the uneasy sadness of a man who had grown to see such grisly times firsthand.
From Alec, Aewyn heard of Celithrand’s efforts in the war—how he had fought with the Company of the Owl to end the Siege of Shadow, how he had come to the Northlands from the long-lived aerils, and forsaken the
natural fate of his people to continue to serve as the Imperator’s chief counsel and spiritual advisor. Such grandiose stories, told in sweeping lines of bloated court poetry, seemed passing strange to her: the Celithrand she knew was a kindly old man who came to Haveïl in the springtime, regular as the moons, and brought her trinkets and treasures from distant lands, and taught her the words and ways of his people as she grew.
In the height of summer, Grim walked her as far as the old shelter—Poe was nowhere to be found—where she gathered these few possessions and brought them to show Alec Mercy with a sense of pride utterly detached from their worth. A black-bladed knife, cut from a single block of obsidian, was to Grim’s eyes the jewel of the collection: the stone was mined in far-off Shadowsand and in Seythe across the sea, and trace amounts of it had been found in the deadlands north of North. The rest of her little treasures—a crude game-piece carved of petrified wood from Estellone, bright seashells from the Rahastan coast, tumbled stones of streaked amber—were curiosities of far less worth, but she spoke of them with no less wonder.
The karach himself had been one of these seasonal gifts—a companion and playmate brought to the child one spring for reasons then unknown to her. He was a cub then, young even by the measure of his short-lived kind: in those days he was smaller than Aewyn, and he never forgot this even in the years he towered over her. His strange speech, when he tried it upon her, was halting and came with a yelp and a high-pitched whine he was slow to shed. His name was something close to Poe—a sound in his own tongue that even Celithrand could pronounce only with difficulty. It was not a natural human sound, and “Poe” was the closest she could come to it.
The Season of the Plough Page 8
