Chapter Nine
Grenatte—the location of this mysterious stranger searching for Aeren—lay five leagues to the south, a long day’s walk. Both Aeren and Jacopo grumbled about my decision to go alone—Aeren by refusing to pay attention to anything I asked him to help with, such as watering my garden, Jaco by arguing me deaf before stomping off for the village. But neither man should be seen in my company. This second stranger could be Darzid’s trap.
Next morning at dawn, I followed a narrow track across the meadow that joined the south road well beyond the village boundaries. A surprise waited for me at the junction—a skinny, grimy figure perched on a pile of boulders.
“Paulo! What are you doing here?”
“Not my idea.”
Jaco. “How much did the meddling wetnurse pay you to dog my steps?”
“Secret. Promised.”
“And what are you supposed to do? Protect me from highwaymen?”
The boy straightened his back. “Might. I know a bit.”
“Certain you do, but it’s a very long way.” I didn’t want to shame him, but with that leg …
“Done it before. Faster’n you.”
His bravado made me grin. “Think so? Well, we’ll see then.”
Jaco was no fool. Having an extra hand, a pair of youthful eyes, or a trustworthy messenger was not at all a bad idea.
“So Paulo, does your gram know where you are?”
“She’s down drunk again.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Paulo’s father had been hanged for thievery before the boy was even born. His mother had disappeared only months after, leaving Paulo to be raised by his grandmother when she was sober and the rest of the village when she was drunk.
Despite distance and mounting heat, the boy seemed tireless. Surely it was exhausting to twist with each step. But after two hours of good progress, he halted abruptly.
“Horses. Wagon. Behind.” He cocked an eye at me. “Jaco says maybe you want to be private.”
“I do,” I said, “but I don’t hear anything.”
“Four or five of ’em; swear on mam’s ghost.” His solemnity was so convincing, I motioned him over behind the sprawling blackberry bushes that lined the roadway. He promptly began stuffing berries in his mouth, while I crouched, itching, sweating, and feeling foolish.
About the time I was convinced that his warning was only a ploy to get a rest, the jangle of harness signaled followers. Two heavily armed men rode, and two equally tough-looking women walked beside a wagon, driven by a hard-faced boy about Paulo’s age. Their cargo was sugar barrels—a valuable load. Highwaymen’s fodder.
I allowed the party to take a substantial lead before setting out on the road again.
“I’m glad you’re here, Paulo.” Certainly his hearing suffered no imperfection.
The boy grinned over his shoulder as he trotted ahead of me. “Best keep up!”
The road followed the river for a league, then we angled onto a narrower track that would take us southwest toward Grenatte through a trailing remnant of the great northern forests.
I disliked During Forest. The giant oaks and ashes grew together so thickly that they blocked the sunlight, leaving their lower branches bare and brittle. The forest floor was thick with rotting leaves and tangles of fallen trees. We had been walking beneath the grim canopy near an hour, when Paulo halted again and raised his hand for quiet.
“Riders,” he said softly after a moment. “Three close behind. And there’s folk in the trees up ahead. Quiet. Waiting.”
My skin creeping, Paulo and I quickly retreated into the shelter of a lightning split oak, settling carefully so that no breaking twig could betray our presence. Then we watched.
The three horsemen wore templars’ robes, two of them in gray, one in black with a heavy gold chain about his neck. Their horses were richly caparisoned with red and gold, blazoned with the rising sun of Annadis. Goldwork hung from the bridles, jingling softly as they passed.
I had little use for the templars of Leire, who taught that the Holy Twins had no interest in the daily trials of mortals, only in deeds of honor and glory that reflected their own. Evidently for the common folk, honor and glory meant dying cheerfully in the king’s everlasting wars or working themselves to exhaustion so they could pay exorbitant taxes and temple fees without complaint. Templars of Annadis had sanctioned what was done to Karon and my son. I had no interest in gods who found honor or glory in such doings. No surprise that village shrines all over Leire were neglected, and the great temples deserted except on high feast days when the templars doled out alms.
Just as the riders passed our position, five highwaymen slipped out of the trees and blocked the way of the hooded travelers.
“Hold!” commanded a short, sturdy woman. She wore a yellow rag tied around her head and carried a long knife. Her four cohorts were variously armed with a cudgel, a spear, a dagger, and a crossbow, cocked and ready. “Dismount.”
The templars obeyed in silence. Two of the outlaws caught the reins of the horses, while their companions stood guard on the hooded templars. The outlaw leader examined the horses carefully, running her hand down the withers of a well-formed bay.
“Such fine beasts are not the usual for traveling holy men. And such trappings!” She jingled the gold linkwork dangling from the bridle, and then strolled up to the three riders and raked hard eyes up and down the still figures. “Turned out quite grand for templars, are we not?”
With a swift movement of her knife, she snatched the gold chain about the neck of the templar in black and deftly twisted it about the long knife blade, leaving the point of her blade at the man’s throat. The three templars stood perfectly still and perfectly silent.
“Quiet lot, you are. Never met a holy man could keep from telling me how wicked are my ways, and how the Twins want my blood, my sons, and my coin. Tiresome. Perhaps you’re not born to it.” She took another twist in the gold chain. “But you’ve prospered, nonetheless. Mayhap it’s time you shared a bit with the poor.”
I was prepared to see murder done. Highwaymen had naught to lose, being already condemned. But nothing went down in the way I expected. With breathtaking suddenness, the three horses screamed and reared, crushing one of the outlaws and entangling another in hooves and reins. In the ensuing confusion, the two gray-robed templars whirled about with blinding precision, overpowering their guards.
The templar in black pinned the outlaw woman to the ground under the point of his own knife. “A female abomination.”
Without hesitation, he drove the knife home and jumped up to join the larger fray.
In moments, two outlaws lay unmoving. The two gray-clad templars held the two remaining highwaymen, pinning their arms behind them so cruelly that I expected to hear a bone snap in the sudden quiet.
The templar in black approached the captives—hardened men, their scarred faces defiant. His own hood had fallen back to reveal thin, light-colored hair and an angular face with a straight jutting nose and wide brow.
“You should have been more selective as to your prey, little wolves,” he said evenly, his voice the more unsettling for its complete lack of emotion. Before the outlaws had a chance to spit at him, his knife whipped across each throat. The two bloodied bodies slumped to the ground.
The templar in black jerked his head around and stared into the trees, exactly in our direction. I gripped Paulo’s arm and dared not breathe until he pulled up his hood and clucked at his horse.
A fallen highwaymen moaned. The black-robed templar snapped his fingers. One of his fellows picked up the dropped spear and plunged it through the injured man, pinning him to the road. The spear shaft was still quivering when the templars disappeared down the road south. We waited until Paulo signaled he could not hear them anymore.
“Filthy, bloody damn.” Paulo never had a lot of words.
“What, in the name of all gods, was that?” I said, shivering. My mouth tasted of ashes.
We crept out onto the road. Paulo waited while I stepped cautiously to each of the five lying on the hard-packed dirt.
“Are you loony?” said Paulo. “We need to be away!”
“I need to make sure they’re dead.”
“’Tis only thieves.”
“They’re men and women.”
Well, they had been. Now they were all quite dead. Outlaws, yes, murderers themselves, no doubt. Yet I found myself with an odd sense of sympathy. They had been so thoroughly overmatched. I had never imagined such cold efficiency in killing. If I had been empowered to choose the victors in that battle and entangle my fortune with theirs, I would have, quite irrationally, preferred to take my chances with the highwaymen.
As a child I had adored our winter stays in the city. The crush of people and society in the city, the music, torchlight, and carriages, even the spine-chilling sight of evildoers hung up in cages or locked in pillories had been a thrilling change from our dull castle in the country. But that afternoon the stench and din of even so small a town as Grenatte made my head throb.
Woodcarts and haywagons rumbled noisily through the cobbled streets, and the walls of a blacksmith shop bulged with deafening clatter. A leather-aproned tradesman stood in the door of his shop, arguing loudly with a driver over a wagonload of hides, while a slack-mouthed girl drove a herd of bleating sheep through the square and yelled lewd insults at a man locked in the stocks. The prisoner emitted a thready moan. He had evidently borne false witness; flies crawled on the bloody void where his nose had once been.
I slumped on the stone steps that encircled the public well in the center of the town square. I had bidden the still-lively Paulo visit every inn in town. He was to tell the taverner that he’d been paid to deliver a message to the person seeking a stolen white horse. The message said to meet the sender, a dark-bearded man wearing red, in the Green Lion common room at sunset.
I had no intention of actually confronting the stranger right away, only getting a look at him. At the end of such a day, my motives were far less clear than when I’d set out.
The crippled remnants of Evard’s Kerotean war groped at passersby on the peripheries of the square. The Keroteans were a fiercely independent, religious people, sturdy warriors who believed their mountains were the fortresses of their god. Only the sheer numbers of bodies Evard had flung against the heavily fortified Kerotean cities had conquered them. Rumor had it that twenty-five thousand Leirans had died in that murderous campaign. The city of golden domed temples, where butter lamps burned to the Kerotean god every hour of every day, perched so high in the mountains that men could not even breathe the air. Evard had told his men there were chests of gold in every house in Kallamat, but no common soldier had ever seen a single coin of it. And the people of Leire had seen only these armless, legless, or eyeless veterans, if they saw any result at all of twelve bloody years.
In less than half an hour, Paulo came streaking back through the late afternoon crowds, narrowly avoiding tumbling into the well. “Found him.”
“Found—you didn’t speak to him, did you?”
Paulo’s horrified look shamed me. “You said not! But he was sitting close by when I passed your message to the tapgirl.”
“So, what was he like?”
“Dark. Small. Dressed fine like Jaco said.” The boy screwed up his face thoughtfully. “He don’t fit.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but he couldn’t explain. “Did he hear you give the message?”
“Aye! Tried to grab me, but I nipped off like you said.”
“You should stay out of sight for a while. Have you anything to eat?”
“Still got half a biscuit.” Paulo touched a limp cloth bag hanging from his belt. I was sure the boy never got enough to eat.
I dug into my pack and pulled out a small bundle. “I’ve jack and cheese in here. I’ll find us a room. Jaco did me better service than he knew when he sent you along.”
“I can do for myself. Innkeeper said I could sleep in the stables if I mucked out the stalls.” He shrugged, but his eyes had not left the food bundle since I mentioned its contents.
“Then you take this. I’ll get something at the Green Lion.”
Before I could blink, the boy grabbed the bundle and was gone.
The light was fading as I shouldered my pack and found the Green Lion. It seemed a decent enough place, less soot and stink than most Leiran inns. A wide, fly-specked window looked out on the courtyard. I told the landlord that I was a widow, hoping to catch a pack train going south so I could return to my family in Deshiva.
“We’ve lost ten local boys to the Isker war already this year,” confided the white-bearded proprietor, Bartolome by name. “None can hardly work the land no more for lack of hands to plow. More widows like you than children. Don’t know who they’ll take next for soldiering. I’ve a hope they’re not desperate enough for innkeepers old as Jerrat’s dog!”
His hairy fingers traded a bed, a mug of ale, and a bowl of pottage for two coppers, even as he talked. “Should we send the supper up to your room? Ladies often prefer it when traveling alone.”
“No, I think I’ll sit in your common room. I’ve been so alone; I could use the sight of people.”
“As you wish. Becky there will see to you.” He waved at a tapgirl and was soon deep in conversation with another customer.
Fifteen to twenty people sat in the smoky room: some lone travelers eating the pottage ladled from the common kettle, a few laborers and tradesmen finishing the day with a tankard of the Green Lion’s ale, and a prosperous looking couple with two small, neat children in stiff collars, casting surreptitious glances at the other guests. No one fit my quarry’s description.
I settled myself at a small table in the dimmest corner of the room, where I could see anyone who came in the door or down the stairs. The ruddy-faced barmaid brought me the pottage, thick with carrots and barley and spiced with pepper. The common room was busy, customers flowing in and out like a noisy, thirsty tide. Laughter blared from tradesmen sharing a bawdy story; some tankards were spilled, causing tempers to erupt. Bartolome shoved the drunkards out the door, and the prosperous looking family fled upstairs.
As the light outside the window dulled, a man descended the stairs. I almost laughed. Paulo’s description had been so right. He didn’t fit at all. He had the look of a Kerotean—dark, almond-shaped eyes, straight black hair, and close-trimmed beard sculpted to a point. His flowing trousers, cape, and colorful, brocaded vest marked him a Kerotean merchant. But his skin was the color of dried oak leaves, not milk. More significantly, his head would only reach my shoulder, and there lived no Kerotean male so diminutive in size, not even the women, who averaged a full head taller than me. Keroteans killed any of their children that were defective in any way, including those born undersized.
The fidgety little man whispered to the landlord, and when Bartolome scratched his beard and shook his head, took a seat at a table not too far from me. His dark eyes darted about the room, and I concentrated on my supper.
When next I dared look up, the man was sipping from a tankard of ale. Another mistake. Keroteans drank no ale or spirits of any kind. My plan to observe the man for a day or two, perhaps question the landlord and servants about him, seemed suddenly foolish. Paulo and I could wrestle this little imposter into submission if he gave us any trouble.
But before I could make a move, the imposter’s head jerked up and his eyes grew wide. My gaze followed his. Descending the stairs were three robed templars, two in gray and one in black.
The table next to mine was already empty, its occupant halfway out the front door of the tavern. Judging by his wide-eyed terror, he wasn’t coming back.
I could not lose him. Jumping up from the table, I dodged tables and benches, patrons and barmaids to follow the hurrying man. But when I pulled open the door, ready to dash into the night, I stood face to face with Graeme Rowan, the Sheriff of Dunfarrie.
Year 4 in the reign of King Evard—Summer
Graeme Rowan had first blighted my life some three months after Anne and Jonah had brought me to Dunfarrie. Not only had the dear old couple nursed, fed, clothed, and comforted me, they had provided me useful work and the beginnings of a new education—the harsh truths of how people without gardeners, cooks, and laundresses had to live.
In early summer they needed to take their early crops to market in Montevial, a journey I, the fugitive, dared not make. For the first time since Karon’s death and my child’s murder, I was left alone. I’d plenty to keep me from brooding overmuch. Even a beginner could haul water and dig weeds from the garden. Mornings were difficult, though. After hours of nightmares, I would huddle under the rag quilt, deciding whether a hot breakfast was worth the hour’s struggle with flint and steel—a skill I had not yet mastered.
On my third morning alone, a man’s voice hailed from the yard. “Jonah? Are you in?”
No one but Jacopo had visited the cottage since I’d come to live there. I stayed quiet and prayed the visitor would go away.
“Goodwife Anne? A word, if you would. And I’ve brought some oranges from Jaco. Washed up from the barge wrecked upriver last week.”
If the man was a friend of Anne, Jonah, and Jacopo it wasn’t right to refuse him their hospitality. I pulled on the ill-fitting black dress Anne had given me, smoothed my ragged hair, and opened the door.
The man holding a splintered crate on his shoulder had sand-colored hair, clear eyes, and looked to be a few years older than me. His features were unremarkable save for the network of thin lines at about his eyes that came from spending long hours in the sun and a ragged scar that creased one side of his face from cheekbone to unshaven jaw.
“Good morrow, miss.”
He set the crate on the bench by the door and threw a crumpled dark blue jacket on the top of it. The morning was already warm. He did not seem surprised to see me.
“I’ve come to speak with Jonah if I may. Or Goodwife Anne.”
“They’ve gone to Montevial market. Won’t return for several days.”
Surely he would go now. But he didn’t.
Manners, Seri. “I’m sure they’d wish I offer you refreshment. I’ve no tea. Nothing hot. But there’s ale.”
“Ale, then, and I’d thank you for it.” He retrieved the jacket, straightened it a bit, and flopped it over one shoulder.
“A moment, then.” I left him waiting on the porch.
I filled a clean mug from Jonah’s little barrel, and shoved it into the man’s hand, remaining in the doorway to make clear he was not invited inside.
He raised the mug slightly and nodded as if answering a question I’d not heard. “I’d be Graeme Rowan from Dunfarrie.”
I couldn’t remember any mention of that name, but his provincial inflections were much thicker than Jonah’s or Anne’s, so I couldn’t be sure. He downed the ale quickly, but, to my distress, seemed in no hurry to go.
“Good day, then,” I said. “I’m sure they’d thank you for bringing the fruit.”
“Perhaps I ought tell you why I’m here,” he said, propping one foot on the bench beside the sand-crusted crate. The rotting, fishy scent of river-wrack overpowered any smell from the battered green and yellow fruits. “Aye, it’s probably better I speak with you anyways.”
I didn’t like the way he looked at me so intently, his expression revealing so little. And his slow speech, as if he weren’t quite sure he wanted to say anything, left my whole body tight with impatience.
“I’ve heard Anne and Jonah had a visitor these few months. Some in the village say it’s their granddaughter Jenny, come home after so many years lost.”
The moment stretched. The planed edge of the door frame dug into my back. His unreadable gaze picked at my face.
“Last night, three men come to the village. They’re the sort who look as if they’ll burn their shoes when they leave your town and think no one in a place the size of Dunfarrie can understand words of more than one syllable.”
Another lengthy pause goaded me to speak. “And what did these men want?”
“They were looking for someone they badly want to find, though they vow they wish her no harm. Said the one they hunted ran away from her family five months ago, that she’s twenty-five, tall for a woman, and has brown eyes and red-brown hair, cut shorter than the usual. They claim it be a matter of law. The time was the same as when Jonah and Anne came back from Montevial in the spring, so I thought to come up and ask what knowledge they might have of the woman.”
As if an executioner’s hood had been dropped over my head, the brightness went out of the day. My question came out a croaking whisper. “What did you tell these men?”
His gaze did not waver. “Naught as yet. But they didn’t know who I was as yet.”
“And who are you?”
“I’d be the Sheriff of Dunfarrie.”
Bile rose in my throat. No matter the claims of protecting the citizenry from thieves and murderers, a sheriff’s first duty, the very reason for his existence, was to exterminate sorcerers. And his first allegiance was to his king. This was Evard’s man. Evard’s anointed killer.
Jacopo had mentioned that Dunfarrie’s sheriff had come by his office by saving our local baronet’s life while serving in King Evard’s great victory in Valleor back in King Gevron’s day—the campaign, of course, that had included the slaughter at Avonar.
Outrage banished anxiety and fear. “So you’ll tell them about Anne and Jonah’s guest.”
“I’m god-sworn and king-sworn to uphold the law.”
I spat at his feet. “That for Evard’s law!”
A hardening of his mouth and eyes told me when his judgment settled against me. “You’ve no business here, mistress, endangering good people. Those men told me of your crimes.”
“Are you afraid of my arcane connections? Afraid Jerrat will send a lightning bolt to strike you while I’m standing here?”
“Just thought it right you should know.”
“You have a highly developed sense of honor—for a sheriff.”
Rowan set the mug onto the bench next the crate. “It’s true I have no rank, neither dukes nor earls nor even a lowly knight in my pedigree, but I manage to keep some sense of right and wrong about me.”
“Do you think that’s why I’m allowed to live? Because of my rank?”
“I’m not your judge—”
“I think I’m glad of that.”
“—but I tired long ago of those who take or leave the law at their will.”
“Rest easy, sir. I would not think of challenging your sense of right and wrong while in your charge. Any man who burned the children of Avonar would surely have no mercy on a depraved soul such as my own.”
Rowan’s hands—short, work-hardened fingers, wide backs with a layer of wiry, reddish hair—were ordinary enough. But I could not look at them without imagining those hands binding women, men, and children to the hastily erected stakes, throwing piles of sticks at their feet, waving the blazing torches close.
His features might have been carved from the oaken planks of Jonah’s house.
No matter that he was a damnable villain, he was right, of course. I couldn’t hide behind the old couple’s kindness, and I knew I couldn’t run. Karon had told me about the fugitive’s life, and I’d neither the determination nor the skill for it. Survival was not that important to me. But Anne and Jonah were.
“So you’ll hand me over?”
His lip curled. “I ought. But they’ve given me no warrant, not even a name. For all I know this is just a game for ones like you and them—causing trouble for ordinary folk. But unless you give me some reason not, I’ll tell these men what I’m required to tell them, and they’ll have no such scruples.”
I stood mute. I would not tell a sheriff of my life.
He snorted, slung his jacket over his shoulder and strode down the path.
The world was already cold and shadowed even before I stepped out of the sun. I straightened the quilt on my pallet, crowded into the corner by the hearth, washed and put away Rowan’s mug, and folded the mended towel I used for washing.
When all was tidy, I sat outside on Jonah’s bench and stared at the sun-drenched meadow long enough for the sheriff to be well on his way. Then I rose and walked down the path toward the village, expecting never to come back.
The common room of the Wild Heron was dim after the glare of summer morning, so it took me a moment to see the four men seated at a corner table: the sheriff, two soldiers in red livery, and a dark-haired man in black with his back to me.
Rowan noticed me first. His expression did not change. One of his companions touched the arm of the dark-haired man, who whipped his head around. Darzid.
My empty stomach threatened to heave.
He remained seated, his shiny boots resting on the table, as he inspected me.
“Well now, my lady, you’ve come up in the world, I see. From sorcerers to pig farmers. What next? Gravediggers? Cutpurses? Who shelters you here?”
“Peasants. No one of importance.”
“Do these peasants know of your crimes?”
“They know of what I have been accused. I acknowledge no crimes.”
The onlookers gabbled in disbelief.
“Why are you here, Captain?” I said, forcing my voice even.
“Only to ensure your safety and health and carry word of it back to your friends and family.”
“Rubbish.”
“Also, you have something that belongs to your king.”
“Impossible.” They’d left me nothing.
“Ah, dear lady, only by His Majesty’s sufferance do you live.”
“I’m sure I’m very grateful.” What kind of game was this?
“Gratitude is not enough. There’s a price for the king’s parole.”
Parole. I caught my breath. “He wouldn’t dare!”
“Oh, yes. The first day of autumn is only two months hence. This exemplary sheriff has been charged with the responsibility to see that you fulfill your duty on Sufferance Day in this and every year of your life.”
The law stated that on the first day of autumn—the Day of the King’s Sufferance—all those who lived by the king’s word must appear before him and swear they had not trespassed on his favor during the past year. Observers could question the petitioner about anything, whether related to the past crime or no, and the penalties were severe if one answered untruthfully. A horrid custom. Humiliating.
A curse rose to my tongue, but Darzid raised his finger. “Best not compound your past offenses with treasonable words. Such an example it would be. And from a duke’s daughter! Do the good people of this place realize the honor to which they are privy, having such an exalted personage in their midst?”
One of the liveried soldiers nudged him and said, “Not from her dress, would they, Captain?”
Darzid chortled merrily. “Perhaps not. But her manners are so fine. I’m sure she curtsies to the swine, or perhaps she discusses fine points of law with the sheriff here.”
Darzid waved Rowan and the men in livery toward the door, then rose and straightened his dark purple tunic and vest. “Have you any message for your brother, my lady?”
Awash in the bitter implications of his news, it took me a moment to realize I was not to accompany him.
Darzid propped one boot on a chair and used the hem of his cloak to flick away imaginary dust. “Quickly, mistress. If we stay here too long, we’ll begin to stink. A message for Duke Tomas?”
A message for Tomas the executioner? Even in the moment’s relief, my hatred boiled over. “Tell my brother he cannot wash them enough.”
Darzid crinkled his eyebrows in puzzlement and shrugged. “As you wish. Don’t think to run away again.”
With mock solemnity, he wagged a finger first at the sheriff who remained just inside the common room and then at me. “The first day of autumn—on your life and the lives of everyone in this charming village, do not forget. It would go hard with anyone who’s given you aid.”
Darzid and his soldiers left the tavern without closing the door behind them.
For one day each year for ten years, Graeme Rowan had ensured that I fulfilled the obligations of my parole. He drove me to Montevial in a cart, a gray smudge in the center of his forehead. He was a pious man, one who would pray at the shrine of Annadis before a journey, marking himself with the earth of his home to remind the god of earth and sky that he was his servant no matter where he traveled, even if that service left a beautiful city a forest of charred stakes where he had helped King Evard burn sorcerers.