The Shamer's War

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  I darted across the deck to the cabin steps. And then I heard it: a snore. A heavy, clotted snoring from behind the drape. It didn’t sound like Nico. I couldn’t recall if I had ever heard Nico snore, but this was certainly not how I thought it should sound. To my ears, this had to be an older, heavier man. And then I noticed the soles of his feet. They poked out from beneath the drape along with ten dirty bare toes. Definitely not Nico’s, I thought. A lot of the sailors went barefooted, though, even this late in the year, because it let them climb the rigging more easily.

  Whoever it was did not seem to be on the point of waking. It sounded as if he was uncommonly soundly asleep even if he had found an odd spot to lie down in. Cautiously, I eased the drape aside and picked my way past him. He was lying on his stomach with his head on one arm, and he took up almost all the floor space in the cabin. It was one of the Crow’s helmsmen, a man the others called Gorgo. What was he doing here? If the flute had made him fall asleep, it had come upon him rather suddenly. He looked as if he had dropped where he stood.

  The lamp was lit, but the wick had been turned almost all the way down. Unfortunately it was hanging from a hook in the ceiling directly above him. But if I climbed into the bunk and stretched a bit—

  “Gorgo! Mats!”

  I was so startled I nearly spilled from the bunk. I made a wild snatch at the lamp, which tilted. Burning hot oil ran across my hand and splashed onto the back of Gorgo’s neck.

  “Whah,” he grunted thickly, “whah the devil?”

  I blew out the lamp. From the pier outside, the Crow’s voice sounded once more.

  “Damn it, Gorgo. Will you run out the damn gangway!”

  I didn’t know what Gorgo thought had happened. Possibly he wasn’t thinking much at all. He seemed a bit groggy. I cowered down in the bunk and tried to be invisible. Right then I didn’t even dare use the flute.

  He got to his feet, cursing like the sailor he was. Then he clambered up the ladder without taking any note of his surroundings.

  “Coming, Cap’n,” he called.

  There was a clatter and more curses.

  “Where is Mats?” asked the Crow.

  “Dunno, Cap’n.” Gorgo still sounded as if clear thinking was at a minimum. “Not here.”

  “What happened? Where’s the woman? And Liam? Damn you for a pack of useless dogs, can’t I turn my back for even one moment without—” and then he broke off. When he spoke again, his voice was different, cold and sharp as a blade. “Where is His Righteousness?”

  “In… in the hold. Wasn’t that what the Cap’n—”

  But the Crow interrupted him. “Why, then, is the hatch open?”

  Because I hadn’t closed it. I breathed a few of the words I had just heard Gorgo use.

  “Keo. Pass me that lantern.”

  Why hadn’t I searched better? Why had I wasted precious time on snores and lanterns and the like? Now it was too late. Now I would never be able to get Nico out of the hold without—

  “Cap’n. He’s gone!”

  “I can see that, Keo.”

  Gone?

  How?

  “Treacherous bitch,” said the Crow in the coldest voice ever. “When I catch her, she can wave her fine good looks good-bye.”

  For one brief moment I thought he meant me. But me he usually called the witchling or just “girl,” and I didn’t think he considered I had any good looks to lose. It wasn’t me he was cursing at. It was Carmian.

  Carmian. Who must have escaped with Nico—possibly even before the Crow dragged me off to sell to Azuan? Or while we were gone. Yes, that was probably more likely. While the Crow was gone from the ship.

  How could Nico do that? How could he run off and leave me behind? And run off with Carmian too. I would never forgive him for that. Never. I pressed my face against the rough cloth of the mattress, trying to smother the sniffles that I couldn’t quite stop. Right now it didn’t seem so important, though, if they found me or not. Maybe the serpent side of the family was where I really belonged. No one else seemed to want me.

  They didn’t search the ship. Why should they? Nico and Carmian were no doubt running as fast as they could away from the Sea Wolf. I realized that I was probably safer here in the Crow’s own nest than anywhere on land. The Crow had all his men out searching for Nico and Carmian, and the Dunbara dogs had a busy night, barking and howling at one intrusion after the other. For now, this was the best place. But for how long?

  I sneaked off the ship in the earliest hour of the dawn. It was still freezing cold, and the rigging was so rimed with frost that the ropes were thick as cats’ tails with it. My footprints showed clearly on the gangway and the pier, but I hoped no one would realize they were mine. Crouching behind a barrel, I peered up the nearest alley. I didn’t have a clear plan; I just didn’t want to be captured by the Crow, or by Azuan, or by Drakan’s men. That seemed enough to be going on with. More definite plans could wait.

  At the moment the alley was deserted, so I scuttled across the pier and dived into the narrow passage between the houses.

  Phew, what a stench. Puke and pee and unwashed clothing. Compared to that, my sweater’s fishy smell was the sweetest of perfumes, and I would have liked to turn back. But I could not afford such delicate sensibilities. Up through the alley, and then—

  “Dina.”

  The soft whisper made me leap like a startled cat. Who—

  “Sit down before someone sees you.”

  Leaning against the wall, half shielded by some rotten old planks and other rubbish, sat an old woman wrapped up in layers of filthy old shawls, with rags around her hands and feet. She was the source of the stench.

  But how did she know me?

  “Dina. Sit. Or do you want them to catch you again?”

  It was only then I realized. This was no old woman. This was Carmian.

  I was so taken aback that the sitting down happened almost without my doing it.

  “What—”

  “Be quiet. Wrap this around your head.”

  “This” was one of her disgusting filthy shawls.

  “It stinks.”

  “I certainly hope so. Now, do as I say!”

  There were footsteps and voices at the end of the alley. I quickly wrapped the stinking shawl around my head and huddled up next to Carmian.

  “… disappeared off the face of the earth,” said a man’s voice.

  “The Crow is spitting mad,” said the other.

  “No wonder. He reckoned on making a pretty penny on those deals. What with both golden geese gone in one night—God, what a stench. Did we search that alley?”

  “Yeah. Nothing. Just some drunken old hag smelling as if she’s been dead for three days.”

  They passed on. We sat very still for some time after they had gone. Then Carmian slowly got to her feet.

  “Come on,” she said. “Best we get out of here before the whole town wakes up.”

  “Carmian, what… where…” I could barely make head or tail of all the questions I wanted to ask her.

  “He wouldn’t come without you.” Her voice held no hint of friendliness. It seemed colder, in fact, than the frost that whitened the thatched roofs of the cottages around us. “First he doesn’t want you along, then suddenly he won’t leave without you. Men. Impossible to please!”

  “But how did you know that I would—”

  “That you would return to the Sea Wolf like one of its very own rats? I didn’t. But I heard them saying you had done a runner, and you are about as pitifully stuck to him as he is to you. It’s enough to make a thinking woman sick.”

  We walked in silence for a while. Suddenly Carmian hunkered down and signed for me to do the same thing. A moment later two men turned the corner with a handcart. They weren’t the Crow’s men, and they didn’t give us a second glance. As soon as they had disappeared around the next corner, Carmian got up again.

  “Why did we have to sit down?” I asked. My bottom was all wet now from the frost on t
he cobbles.

  “I’m a little tall for the poor-old-woman bit,” she said. “And your boots are too good. Pull the shawl forward so that it hides more of your face.”

  I did as she said, but I didn’t enjoy it.

  “Does it have to stink like this?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She threw me a cold glance. “Do you always gab so much when you have someone after you?”

  “I just want to know if—”

  “It keeps people at a distance. They don’t even want to look at something that smells like this. We’re practically invisible. And shut your face now. I think I hear someone.”

  I shut up. And I saw what she meant. The stench was almost as good as the flute, in a different way. But phew!

  We left Dunbara behind. But Carmian didn’t take the nice straight road to Dunark. Instead she turned west, following a twisted little path that wound its way through the marshes like a very long snake. It wasn’t always easy to spot, and sometimes we had to do a bit of tussock hopping like Keo and I had done earlier. Farther and farther into the marsh we went, until the mists closed around us like a hand.

  And then the trail disappeared into a bog. Still black waters glittered among the weeds, and there seemed no end to it. The other bank, if there was one, was lost from sight in the fog.

  Carmian showed no signs of stopping. But I wasn’t having any.

  “Carmian—”

  “Walk right behind me,” she said. “Put your feet where I put mine.”

  And then she strolled right into the bog. I stood there gaping. Because she didn’t sink. The black waters barely reached her ankles.

  “We haven’t got all day,” she said, when she noticed I hadn’t followed. “Use your eyes—does it look as if I’m drowning?”

  I stared at the shiny dark water. If I hadn’t seen her standing there almost as if she could skim along the surface like a pond skater, I would have thought this was a bottomless hole. I took a cautious step forward. And then another. And then I realized why she wasn’t sinking. Someone had built a bridge here, but under the water, so that it would be invisible to anyone who didn’t know it.

  It was slippery, and you had to be careful, and I still couldn’t see how Carmian could tell precisely where it was. She seemed to be very sure of her way, though, and as long as I followed close on her heels, probably it was safe enough. But I still heaved a sigh of relief when we reached the other side and I could put my feet on more ordinary firm ground.

  The sun was rising above the marshlands, and the fog shimmered white and gold and pretty. I trembled with cold, though. The fishy sweater might be warm, but cold wet feet sucked the heat right out of you.

  “How far is it?” I asked, and then bit my lip, wishing I hadn’t said anything. I didn’t expect sympathy from Carmian.

  But actually she didn’t snarl at me this time.

  “Not far now,” she said, moving on.

  I was quite surprised to avoid some nasty comment along the lines of “Perhaps Her Ladyship is unused to walking on her own two feet.” But perhaps she was beginning to feel a little cold and a little tired herself.

  When the settlement appeared, it looked at first like a grove of willow and elm, like a sort of island in the middle of the marsh. But when we came closer, I could see that the trees grew on a mound of earth. It wasn’t until we climbed the mound and could look down on the houses it encircled that I could tell this was a place where people lived.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “A Geltertown.”

  “A… a what?”

  She gave me one of her razor looks. “Before the Magdans came, this was Gelterland. They are still here, the Gelts, living in the marshlands. They have no love for the Magdans, nor for the House of Ravens. But they like Drakan even less.”

  A young man was standing in front of us. I started, because I hadn’t seen him coming at all. It was almost as if he had shot up out of the marshy ground.

  “Is this the girl?” he said, pointing at me.

  “Yes.”

  “Then come. The Spinner wants to see her.”

  He was very slender and not very tall. If it hadn’t been for his long silky mustache, I might have thought him not much older than myself. The Spinner, he had said. Who was that?

  He led us into the settlement. It wasn’t very large, no more than fifteen houses all told, and some of those had to be for livestock rather than people. The houses crowded together in the narrow space behind the earthworks, but despite the lack of space, they kept both goats and chickens and pigs, I noticed. A young woman was milking a goat, having to push away a large kid that appeared to think the milk in those teats belonged exclusively to him.

  In the exact center of the settlement stood a large old ash. The leaves were long gone, but even in the summer I doubted it had sported very many. It looked more dead than alive. Why had no one cut it down? Perhaps to avoid damaging the cottage nestled next to it. The man with the mustache pointed at the doorway.

  “The Spinner’s house,” he said. “Please enter.”

  He himself was apparently planning to stay outside.

  “Isn’t he coming with us?” I whispered to Carmian.

  “He can’t,” she said curtly. “He’s a man.”

  And men couldn’t come here? What sort of creature was this Spinner?

  The room was rather gloomy after the brightness of the frosted landscape outside. And it wasn’t very big. One wall was strangely curved, unplanned, and full of strange growths that had been left untrimmed. And then I realized this wasn’t simply sloppy carpentry. The house didn’t just lean against the ash tree; the trunk of the tree was the gable of the Spinner’s cottage.

  A woman—the Spinner?—sat weaving. How she could see what she was doing in the gloom was beyond me, but the shuttle flew busily from one end of the weft to the other, and she didn’t even pause in her work as we entered.

  “Sit down,” she said. “And, Carmian, please leave those rags outside.”

  There was only one place to sit—a low bench next to the door. There was no fireplace, I suddenly noticed. And yet it seemed much warmer than outside. I returned my borrowed shawl to Carmian, who was obediently unwrapping herself from the smelly old rags she had worn.

  The Spinner was my mother’s age, just about. Neither young nor old. And what you noticed first was the eyes. Or rather, what was around the eyes. It looked as if she was wearing a mask, but when I looked more closely I could see that it was her skin that was blackened, dyed, or even tattooed, in a wide strip from ear to ear, across the bridge of her nose.

  “Your mother is a Shamer,” she said. “And so were you, once.”

  I nodded. I supposed Nico must have told her. The last bit stung. She made it sound so final, as if I would never get back the gift my mother had given me.

  “You are something else as well,” she continued. “You have the dreamer’s gift.”

  The dreamer’s gift? I had never heard anyone call it that, but it wasn’t such a bad name, so I nodded once more.

  The shuttle darted this way and that. There was a strange whispery music to it, as if she was playing a harp with very muted strings.

  Carmian had rid herself of her rags. She tossed them out the open door and came to sit beside me.

  “At this time you do not know what you are,” said the Spinner suddenly. “And neither does Carmian—she knows her own heart so poorly.”

  Carmian snorted. “I have no heart. You know that.”

  The Spinner paid no attention to the interruption. But her words struck me to my soul. You do not know what you are. Not who—what. Like I was some creature that was barely human. I shuddered, and it wasn’t because of cold.

  “You. Shamer’s daughter with the dreamer’s gift. You face a choice. The thread has twained, but you cannot be two. Choose—before both threads are severed.”

  All the little hairs at the back of my neck stood up. It wasn�
�t just the words, it was the way she said it. Like she was certain. Like she could see things that weren’t visible to the rest of us. A little like my mother and yet… not at all.

  “Are you a fortune-teller?” I whispered.

  The white in her eyes showed very pale against the black strip across her face. She shook her head. “No. I am the Spinner.”

  Carmian stirred uneasily. “Not to be rude,” she said. “But we do have quite a lot to do—”

  The black-and-white gaze of the Spinner left me and grabbed Carmian instead. “You are too much in haste,” she said. “You always were.”

  I felt a tingling of childish glee, as if I were five years old and Davin was being told off and not me. And the Spinner seemed to note that too.

  “You really don’t like each other very much, do you?” she said with a smile that looked suddenly very human.

  Carmian shrugged. “She’s no favorite of mine,” she said, as if I wasn’t in the room at all. “Spoiled and stuck-up little Miss Know-It-All.”

  I didn’t think I was spoiled or stuck-up. And the charming words did not make me like Carmian any better. I could have returned her compliments—calculating, cold, and… well, not shameless, not quite, but near enough. But though I didn’t say any of it out loud, I had the same see-through sensation I sometimes got when my mother looked at me. I was very certain that the Spinner could tell, almost word for word, what I was thinking.

  “Nevertheless, your threads run together in the weave,” said the Spinner. “And you will do each other much harm and much good. And now you may go, seeing that you are in such a hurry.”

  Carmian immediately rose. I took a bit longer.

  “What is a Spinner?” I asked. She was no Shamer, though there was a likeness. Nor was she a Blackmaster.

  The Spinner shook her head. “At the moment, just a woman who weaves. And sometimes catches a glimpse of a greater pattern.”

  My stomach prickled. Was it human destinies she wove? Right here in this hut?

  “What do you weave?” I asked, and could not keep my voice from trembling.

  She turned her black-and-white gaze on me again, as if she could see straight into my head.