Ammonite (40 page)

There were a few uneasy glances. She heard one clear “Aye” from the back of the crowd.

“Your ancestors learned. As I’ve learned.” General nods.

“You seem to be the only one, though,” Roth said. “According to the viajera Kuorra the rest of you are huddling in that Port and not coming out. For anything.”

“I don’t think I am the
only
one. But I’m one of the first. And when I tell you my story, you’ll understand why.”

“Tell the story, then,” Tillis called, in high good humor. She drank from an olla goblet. “I want to know what’s been going on since we left land.”

“And when was that?”

“Last Harvest Moon.”

“Well, last Harvest Moon, I was just landing here on this world for the first time…”

And Marghe told her story. She had learned a great deal from Thenike: in those places where the pain was still too raw she told her story in a ritual cadence that forbade interruption, but most of the time she just talked, and now and again a woman would ask her a question, or add something.

It was not just Marghe’s story, of course. Much of the tale was news that these people needed to know: that there was tribe feud between Echraidhe and Briogannon, and it was probably dangerous to cross Tehuantepec for a while; a reiteration of the fact that Marghe, a woman from the other world, had been able to deepsearch and make soestre in her belly and Thenike’s, which held all kinds of interesting implications for the future; that these foreigners from another place had struck trata with Cassil of Holme Valley—there was much thoughtful rubbing of chins at that news; that the harvest of Ollfoss would be very good this year, which meant good opportunities for traders.

The moons were up when Marghe paused in the middle of a sentence to sip at her water, only to find the cup empty. She looked into the empty cup, letting the pause lengthen. The evening was chill with night breezes.

“I’m tired,” she said at last, regretful, “and near the end of my story tonight.” She did not want the evening to end. “There will be more tomorrow.”

After Marghe and Thenike left the courtyard, they walked for, a while quietly, both wrapped under the same cloak. Marghe watched the stars, listening to the far-off hiss and drag of waves on the shore and slapping up against the wharf.

She was a viajera. For the rest of her life she would travel and tell stories and judge disputes. It would rarely be as easy as it had been today, she knew, but she found she did not mind. She had found what it was she had been looking for; she had a place in the world, a place she had made. She touched the suke resting against her breast. She was Marghe Amun. The complete one. She felt at peace.

She stopped and kissed Thenike softly, slowly, running her fingers up through her heavy hair. “Come to bed.”

«
^
»

THE DAYS GREW warmer, and the nights soft. Marghe took turns with Thenike to tell the news to the new faces and old that gathered in the courtyard of the inn. Roth and her sailors said good-bye on the fourth day and left to sail east, to the Necklace Islands. Marghe did not know what happened to Juomo.

One hot day, their ninth in North Haven, Marghe and Thenike were in the kitchen getting cool water before Marghe resumed her drumming practice. Zabett found them.

“There’s a kinswoman come to see you. She’s in the courtyard.”

When they stepped back out into the heat of the courtyard, Leifin was sitting with one hand in the fountain, her two large hip packs by her feet, looking about. She was wearing a thin-strapped tunic and Marghe was shocked to see how much weight she had lost in so few days; the tendons in her neck stood out like cables. Leifin watched them as they approached, examining them first from one eye then the other.

Like a bird of prey.

“Leifin, what’s happened?”

“I was hunting,” Leifin said dismissively.

“What brings you here?”

“I’ve brought some trade goods, and a message.” She wiped her hand dry on her trews and opened the pouch at her belt, took out a message cord.“For you. I don’t think it’s good news.”

Marghe took it.and read the knots one by one.

To Marghe Amun, and to the viajera Thenike, greetings. Danner, headwoman
of the Terrene, has refused trata aid to Cassil of Holme Valley and thereby places
herself in peril at a time when she most needs support against those who would
seek to harm her and the other Terrene. Holme Valley and Singing Pastures are
threatened: by the tribes Echraidhe and Briogannon, united under one they name
Uaithne, the Death Spirit. If you have any influence over Danner, use it. May your
children come into a peaceful world. By the hand of T’orre Na, viajera.

“What…” She read them again, carefully, feeling the knots one by one with her fingertips. Sweet gods. How could Danner be so stupid? And the news about Uaithne… Oh gods, please let it not be true.

“What will you do, sister?”

“I don’t know.” She handed the cord to Thenike. “Does that say what I think it says?”

Thenike read the message out loud. It did.

“Why’s Danner doing this, and what does T’orre Na mean by ‘at a time when she most need support against those who would seek to harm her’?” She paced. “I think Danner’s in trouble.”

“She will be, if she disregards trata,” Leifin said.

Marghe ignored her and continued pacing. “I think something must have happened to make Company react at last.” What, exactly, was relatively unimportant.

What mattered was that Danner was in trouble, and about to make it ten times worse for herself if she refused Cassil’s request. And Uaithne… Why didn’t the others, Aoife or the Levarch, stop her? She wiped her forehead. Damn this heat.

She had thought that, maybe, Aoife would see reason before Uaithne’s madness swallowed them all. She had hoped that her words had made sense to the fierce, dark tribeswoman, that Aoife would do something to control her soestre. Instead, it seemed the violence within Uaithne had ignited into a flame that was now sweeping across the northern continent.

“I have to go back to Port Central.”

Thenike looked troubled. “The journey’s long, and not easy.”

“Some of this is my fault: I made the trata agreement in the first place. It’s my fault that I didn’t make the importance of it sufficiently clear to Danner.”

“Perhaps.”

Marghe did not listen. “And it may well be that Uaithne’s madness might not have… That my presence there, feeding into that stupid, stupid myth… Thenike, I have to go. I might be able to do something.” She did not know what, but she had to try. She felt involved.

Thenike put her arm around Marghe’s shoulders. “Perhaps we could talk later,”

she said to Leifin.

“Of course.” Leifin stood up. “When you’ve recovered from this bad news.”

“Speak to Zabett about a room. We’ll find you later, talk about how things go with the family, about your trade goods.”

“Yes.” Leifin shouldered her bag, turned to go.

Marghe forced herself to speak. “Leifin?” Leifin turned back, surprised. “I’m glad to see you.” And she was. Unfathomable motives or not, Leifin was kin.

Leifin nodded, and strode away.

They went back into the kitchen. It was too warm inside, but Marghe felt safer, more secure, indoors. Scathac was nowhere to be seen. They took their water to the table and sipped for a while without saying anything.

“I have to go, Thenike. Even if the family expects me to remain at Ollfoss. I’m responsible for what I set in motion.”

“Responsible, too, to your kin.”

”I know. But I have to do this.”

“If you feel you must, then you must. I’ll come with you.”

Marghe reached for Thenike’s hand. They were quiet for a moment.

“So,” Thenike said eventually. “How will you go to them? As Marguerite Taishan, the one who should have ‘done something,’ or as the viajera Marghe Amun, offering advice and mediation on a trata matter?”

Choose, Thenike was saying: choose who you are and where your loyalties lie.

Marghe held the suke that bumped gently against her chest. “How will we get there?”

Thenike seemed to accept the change of mood. “Find out who has a ship going south and is willing to go through the Mouth of the Grave, to High Beaches or Pebble Fleet.”

A picture of the Ollfoss map appeared in Marghe’s head, clear and sharp. She could remember every detail.
We remember
.

Thenike had said,
viajeras remember
. Marghe wondered if she would ever grow tired of this new memory.

“Which would be best?”

”A ship to Pebble Fleet would have to travel around the Horn, which would add time to the journey, but then it’s a comparatively short distance overland to Port Central. If we ship to High Beaches, then we can go up the Glass River part of the way… About twenty days’ travel, either way.“

Twenty days. And they would have to wait for a ship. Say a month. What might Danner do in a month?

Thenike was down at the docks, asking after ships south. Marghe stepped out into the sunshine of late morning. There was no breeze and it was already hot. Leifin and two other women were in the fountain courtyard, laughing, talking, drinking wine. Leifin was showing the two women her carvings. She had not noticed Marghe.

The carvings were beautiful. A set of three bowls that fitted together, one inside the other, so perfectly that they appeared to be one bowl instead of three. The wood gleamed softly; Marghe recognized it as the same block Leifin had been carving that morning in the great room when they had discussed her petition to join the family.

Next were two hand mirrors, the reflecting surface made of olla. The carving was breathtaking: natural-looking flowers twined around the glass, turned into grasses around the handle. The two women handled the wood carefully, but wistfully; it seemed Leifin was out of luck. They shook their heads and handed the bowls and mirror back. Leifin did not seem dismayed but fished out a large white hip pouch with beautifully worked and braided thongs. She handed it to the nearest woman.

Marghe edged closer to listen. Leifin, with her back turned, would not see her.

“It’s very soft. What is it?”

The other woman took it, fingered it. Leifin studied her with that bird-of-prey gaze, one eye then the other, “The bag of a male goth I trapped.”

Maighe went still. The scrotal sac of a goth. She remembered Thenike’s song, the stones that had been raised so many years ago. Leifin had been there for Thenike’s song. She knew what she had done.

Leifin took back the pouch, tipped some small white bones into her palm. “Goth knucklebones. Those big ones there are its thumbs. Two on each hand. Looks like they’d be strong creatures, doesn’t it? Like they’d be fearsome to hunt. But they’re not. Just like big taars. Docile. But cunning.” She glanced up, saw Marghe, and said, in explanation, “I’d heard how white their fur is, I wanted it. I really wanted that fur.

You can do a lot with good fur. You’ve seen what I can do. So I said to myself, how can I get the animal without damaging its fur? A trap, that’s how. A pit. It took me three days to dig it—I’d judged by their tracks that they were big, so the pit had to be good and deep. Then I had to make it invisible. I used stuff from the forest floor so after a while I couldn’t even tell where the pit was myself. Then I hid and waited. You have to be very patient when you’re trapping. It’s like carving.” She gestured to the bowls sitting on the edge of the fountain. “I waited for days, more days than I can remember. I ran out of food after three.”

That helped to explain the weight loss.

“It was dark when it finally came along the trail. It was big, big as a tree, and its eyes glowed in the dark. I think if it hadn’t been for its eyes, I wouldn’t have known it was there. It moved quietly as the coming of spring, pulling barkweed off the trees with enormous hands and stuffing it right in its mouth like it was feast bread.” Leifin nodded to herself, remembering. “Yes, it was very quiet, but I was quieter.”

Marghe imagined Leifin waiting, silent and still, patient. Methodical. She watched the women weigh the knuckles in their hands, roll the pale bones between their fingers. Only a few days ago, they had been part of a living, breathing being.

“It walked along the trail, unsuspecting, and fell right down the hole. It hooted and hooted. I’ve never heard anything like it. I don’t mind telling you, I got scared. I thought all its cousins and sisters and mothers and aunts were going to come running and snatch me up with their big hands and stuff me in their big, horny mouths, like barkweed. After a while, though, when nothing happened, it just shut up, so I crawled to the edge of the pit and looked down. It saw me, and hooted, softly, like it was asking a question. I just shook my head and tried to explain that I would take care of its fur better than he could, that I’d make it beautiful, that hundreds of women would admire it.” She looked at Marghe. “I told it that perhaps its fur would buy many useful things for my family. It didn’t understand, of course.”

Leifin broke off, watching the nearest woman hefting the bones thoughtfully.

“This is the first goth I know of that’s been trapped.”
Killed
, Marghe wanted to correct,
killed
, and wondered why she was still listening. But she felt compelled: she was a viajera, she had to bear witness to this. “Those bones are very rare. They might even have special healing properties.” But the woman just nodded, and did not yet seem disposed to bargain.

“So, I sat there by the pit and watched the goth die. They’re tough. It had no food and no water, but it took ten days to die. Ten days. After three or four days it started scrabbling around. It tried sucking the dirt at one point. Thirst drove it mad, I suppose. I wondered about helping it along a bit, killing it with my spear, but that would’ve put a hole in the pelt and put blood all over it. That would have been a waste. So I just watched. After a while, it seemed to give up. It just sat in a corner of the pit and sort of hooted to itself.” She stopped. “Perhaps it was singing. Anyway, it sounded terrible, so I threw things at it, nothing that would damage it, of course, soft stuff mostly.”