Blood Ties (19 page)

“Look at me, love,” I’d say to him, and turn his eyes to me. I’d search his face over and over, holding him between my palms. I didn’t even know what I was looking for, and was sure I never found it.

How could I? I was looking for real love, for love that wasn’t called up by spells, for love that settled itself on me and not just on the girl who’d served him that cup of cha. Even if it had come, would I have seen it? Would it have been any different from the spell-wrought tenderness I’d seen on his face that first night? Surely it would be, I thought. Surely years of living together, loving together, would breed a truer kind of love than that.

But all I saw on his face was the same look he’d had that night in the stable loft.

We brought up the two young ones like true Travelers, to know the Road and love it, to walk uncomplainingly through cold winds and sweltering sun. Later, when times were good, we bought a cart and horse. It was a wild pony from the marshland, who’d been called unbreakable, but Gorham whispered him to sleep and gentled him awake until he was tame as a lovebird, and nibbled gently on Gorham’s ear while he was being harnessed.

I taught my young ones singing and juggling, and as much tumbling as I could manage in those days. Zel was the spit of me, dark hair and dark eyes with a strong mouth, and no nonsense about her. Flax was sweet as honey, with a voice like a meadowlark that earned us good takings by the time he was waist-high.

“Look at me, love,” I still said, from time to time, but I’d given up hope of ever finding what I was looking for.

Once, when we was back in Carlion, I tried to find the tanner again, to have the spell taken off. He was gone, the neighbors told me, murdered by a customer who hadn’t liked the consequences of his spell. I felt a sweet shaft of satisfaction mingle with my disappointment; I knew how the customer had felt.

When Zel was fifteen and Flax twelve, they took to the Road by themselves, wild to try their wings.

Gorham didn’t like it. “They’re not old enough,” he complained to me. “They’ll get into all manner of harm.”

“How old was you?”

“Fifteen —”

“And I was thirteen. They’ve traveled all their born days — they’ll be fine.”

He gave in, as he always did to me, but with a frown. I didn’t care: he was mine again, it was just the two of us, and without the young ones to feed and clothe, we were riding high.

The night after they went I lay in his arms. “You don’t look in my face no more,” he said suddenly. “You’ve given it up, haven’t you? Given up hoping you’ll find whatever it was you were looking for.”

My heart swelled and I kissed him and murmured, “No, don’t be silly.” But I had no real answer for him. He was right: I had given up hoping for real love.

That year we went to Pless for the horse fair. Our pony was getting old and we’d more than enough put away to buy a new one, perhaps, Gorham hoped, even a horse.

“No,” I said definitely, “just a pony. We can’t afford a horse.”

“You’ve got enough silver to buy a whole string of horses, woman,” Gorham shouted at me. It was a new thing, him shouting.

It stung me and I stung back. “We’d have no silver left at all if I let you spend what you liked when you liked! That silver’s against our old age, man, against the year we’d freeze to death if we didn’t have enough to pay our way.”

He quietened and shook his head. “It may be that year’ll come, and may be not, woman.”

He went out of the horse barn where a friend of his was letting us stay, and I didn’t see him again that night, though I stayed awake and waited all the night through, my heart knocking hard in me at every step, but it was never him. And that was new, too.

I went looking for him the next day, though I didn’t tell anyone that I’d lost him, and that way I got to talking to a score of townsfolk. I came back to the horse barn bubbling with excitement, and found him sluicing himself down at the trough. He straightened hurriedly, with an apology on his lips, but I waved him silent.

“The farrier’s dead and he’s got no child!” I blurted out.

“What?”

“The horse dealer, old Tinsley. He died last week.”

Gorham looked shocked. “I was planning to visit him this morning. He was only my da’s age. What happened?”

“Stroke. Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Wonderful? Woman!”

“Aye, I mean, of course, it’s bad that he’s dead. But he’s got no child. And his widow’s looking to sell the farm.”

Gorham stared at me blankly. “Sell —”

“Aye! We’ve got enough, Gorham. Only just, we’d have nothing behind us, but we could do it. Sure and certain, we could settle here and be set for the rest of our lives.”

I was ready with all the arguments but he didn’t argue. He went thoughtful like, and quiet. “Let me think on it,” he said. “A few days.”

At the end of the week the bargain was made and we moved into the cottage out by the farm. It was just a few acres then, with a rickety stable and a couple of yards for training the horses. Tinsley’s widow moved in with her sister, and the townsfolk nodded approval. Pless wasn’t a town we’d been in much over the years, and it was clear that most folk didn’t know that we’d been Travelers — with our good burghers’ clothes and our solid cart. Crafters we was taken for, and I was pleased, having no wish to see contempt in anyone’s eyes. For Travelers, there is no doubt, are scorned and mistrusted, and that’s not good for business. We already knew how to talk like townsfolk; we’d done it for fun, pretended, but now it was real. I kept at Gorham until he agreed to leave our Traveler talk behind us.

I expected to be as happy as sky is blue in that sturdy cottage, with my trivet and my cupboards, and my pots and pans hanging from the hooks above the fire. So far as fire and clean water and a soft bed could make me happy, I was. But Gorham was away from that fire entirely too much. I didn’t understand it at first; it’d seemed he wanted this move as much as me.

“Look at me, love,” I said to him one night when we was in bed, when he was home for once at a reasonable hour, but he turned his face away as if I’d see something shameful there. I let it drop, but cold crept up my spine and my heart started thudding like it would shake the bed. I lay awake too long that night, and he was gone again when I woke up.

In the morning light I went to watch him in the yard with a new two-year-old, and found him humming at his work. He grinned at me but ducked his head out of sight. Too late. That grin was different from any he’d ever given me.

Of course, it was a woman in the marketplace who told me, the thin fishmonger with the buckteeth, “for your own good,” she said, and “I think you ought to know.” Gorham had a fancy woman.

Her name was Maude and she was a seamstress for the clothier, one of Acton’s people, with fair hair and blue eyes, and not even younger than me — a year or two older. She’d been respectable up until this, the fishmonger said, but now it was all over Pless and no wonder, shameless as they both were about it, laughing in the inn together until after the late summer dark, walking back to her place bold as you please.

I believed it straightaway. Gorham would laugh and reach for what he wanted with no thought of consequences, just as he’d done with me. But I searched his face when he ate at my table, while he slept. He had changed toward me, no doubt. Had the spell worn off? Or worse — had the spell never worked at all? Had Gorham’s love been real all this time? Had I found a lie, even while he was showing me the truth? If I’d known, could I have kept his love, worked for it, instead of believing it was mine no matter what?

I was filled with rage . . . at the tanner, at the stonecaster who’d sent me there, at my own young self for being so foolish, so ready to believe, at Gorham, for not making me see — all these years — that I was really at the center of his heart, where Maude was now. I was murderous with rage, but I held it back. I was never no fool. Without Gorham, I had nothing: no house, no food, no fire. Without Gorham, it was back on the Road again, back into the desperate winters. I was too old for that.

Gorham never mentioned Maude’s name. Nor did I. I accepted his absence from my bed without a word. I even turned toward him in the night, when he occasionally reached for me, hesitantly, thinking that maybe the day would come when he’d tire of his fancy woman and come back home to stay. I wanted him to, wanted another chance to make him love me real and true.

But it was too late, even when we did well enough to buy more acres next to ours, even when we prospered enough that we could move into a big house in town and give up the farm cottage altogether. It was bitter for me, that day. Everything I’d worked for, saved for, had come true, and all it meant was that he’d now find it even easier to slip along to Maude’s and leave me alone.

When he was gone, in the dead of night, when he was sleeping warm and cozy with his fancy woman, I shook my bag of silver out onto my bed and counted the pieces, over and over, listening for his step. But all I heard was the clink and repeated clink of falling coins, and I wished the tanner was still alive so I could try his spell one more time.

Ash

A
SH WATCHED
Doronit carefully the few days after the Ghost Begone Festival, but she gave no sign that anything was amiss. She was quiet, but somehow pleased with herself. The whole city was quiet, recoiling from the shock of festival night.

Even the ghosts were quiet. They skulked in corners, and looked at passersby out of the corners of their white eyes, with half-smug, half-fearful smiles. Ash ignored them and they seemed happy to cooperate with him. No one suspected that he had set the ghosts loose to hag-ride the town.

Ash couldn’t stop thinking about the girl he had killed. He wouldn’t let himself think about the warning she had given, but he was ashamed that he hadn’t gone back to the alleyway three days after he had killed her, to help her ghost move on, as he had with the two men who had tried to kill Martine.

That had been his responsibility, and he had failed. He had acted as though her ghost wasn’t . . . wasn’t
worthy
of being helped, as though she were not really human, just a doll in a game of Doronit’s. He was black-burning ashamed of that, remembering her clear ghostly eyes and her wry mouth. He should have gone back to acknowledge his guilt in her death, paid the blood price and set her free. Instead, he was in her debt, no matter what Martine said. According to his mother, the debts he couldn’t pay in this life must be paid in the next. He and the girl would meet again — somewhere, somehow — in another life.

He had avoided that alleyway since the night he had killed her, but now he found himself passing by on that side of Acton Square, glancing down the narrow, winding lane as if he might see her there. It was stupid. It was worse than stupid, it was now a habit, the kind of predictable behavior that safeguarders should never set up, in case anyone was looking for a place to waylay them. But he did it anyway.

A couple of weeks after Ghost Begone Night, Ash and Aelred were set to guard the gates of a select and seemingly endless party in one of the restaurants in Acton Square. After the party guests had gone home, Aelred slapped him on the shoulder with a quick “see you in the morning” and made off downhill toward the boardinghouse behind the Sailor’s Rest, where he lived. Although the restaurant was on the other side of the square from the alleyway, Ash found himself drifting over there rather than setting out for Doronit’s.

There was no one about at this time of night. His boots rang out in the cool air and he changed his footfall so that he walked silently. It had been a long time since he’d heard silence. He was used to it, out on the Road, but it was a rare thing in Turvite. He slowed his steps, enjoying it, but was still, compulsively, making his way to the alleyway. He knew she wouldn’t be there. He knew there would be no clear-eyed ghost waiting for him near the wall where he’d killed her. But he was drawn there anyway; he would take one look, and go home.

He looked, and saw the girl’s death reenacted. There she was, up against the wall. There he was, knife in hand, blade glinting as he drew it back for the second strike, the kill strike.

“NO!” he yelled, and leaped forward, reaching for that hand. He realized his stupidity as he leaped: he couldn’t touch a ghost, couldn’t touch a haunting, he would go straight through . . .

And he cannoned, instead, into a solid, muscular body, much larger than his. His mind stopped thinking altogether, but his body knew what to do. The months of training had taught him reflexes he hadn’t known existed.
Keep the knife away, get rid of it
. In a single swift action, he grabbed the man’s hand and slammed it down on the cobbles. The knife skittered away and they both rolled to their feet, and were now facing each other, wary.

He was a big man, stronger, no doubt. But Ash’s first blow had done some damage: the man favored one leg, as though his ankle were twisted, and he winced as he put it to the ground. He saw Ash notice it and rushed forward, his big hands out for Ash’s throat.
Under and up
. Ash ducked under the attack and used his opponent’s momentum to throw him up into the air, across his back, so the big man landed heavily on the cobbles. Ash drew his boot knife. The knife in his hand, in this place, brought his mind back to life, put him in control of his reflexes. He didn’t want to kill anyone else.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he said. He heard the sincerity in his own voice, and the complete belief that he would be able to kill this much larger man. The man heard it too, and scrambled up from the cobbles and then backed away with one hand raised in surrender. He pulled himself around the corner and Ash could hear his footsteps echoing fast across the square.

It was only then that Ash turned to the girl.

Of course, it wasn’t the girl. Wasn’t even
a
girl. It was the little jeweler with the big mustache. As soon as Ash helped him up from where he had fallen, he began babbling with gratitude and shock.

“Oh, gods, if you hadn’t come, if you hadn’t come, he was going to
kill
me, actually
kill
me . . . He had a knife, did you see, he had a knife, he was going to k-k-
kill
me . . .”

“It’s a popular spot for that,” Ash said, and then realized the man was shaking. “It’s all right, it’s all right, he’s gone, he’s not coming back . . . You’re all right now.” His words seemed to also calm himself down: he was a safeguarder with a client now, not a fool reacting to a ghost who wasn’t even there.

After some time the jeweler finally swallowed hard, and seemed to pull himself back into something close to his normal cynical self-assurance. But his hands were still trembling. “I have to go back to my inn . . . It’s down near the docks . . .” He peered fearfully out of the alleyway at the empty square. “I don’t suppose you . . .”

“I’ll come with you,” Ash said resignedly. They walked together across the square, the jeweler looking over his shoulder at every second step. “What were you doing in that alleyway in the first place?” Ash asked. “It’s not the safest place in the city.”

“I wasn’t in the alleyway!” the jeweler said indignantly. “I was just walking back to my inn, through the square, after dinner at a client’s house and that . . . that
thug
grabbed me.”

“You should hire a safeguarder if you’re going to walk around the city at night,” Ash scolded.

“I’m going home tomorrow,” the jeweler said with obvious relief. “Back to Carlion. It’s a lot safer there.”

They walked in silence until they reached the Fifty Friends, a middlingly prosperous tavern with an extra house next door for guests.

The jeweler paused under the torch that helped guests climb the steps without falling over their drunk feet. “I’m in your debt,” he said.

Ash shook his head. “No, really, you’re not.”

“Yes, yes, I know I am. I pay my debts.” He scrabbled in his pouch and drew out a soft leather bag, about as big as his palm. “Here. You liked this the other day. Have it with my thanks.” Then he darted up the steps and into the door, closing it firmly behind him.

Ash stared at the bag knowing, from the size and the weight, what he would find inside. He drew it out slowly. It glinted warmly in the torchlight, intricate and beautiful. It couldn’t possibly be Acton’s cloak brooch. Not truly. But something in its heaviness, its undoubted age, told him differently.

To get back to Doronit’s house he had only to climb the hill. But his feet took him south from the docks, around the older part of the city, as he thumbed the pattern on the brooch. He walked past the black stone altar and heard, deep in his mind, the susurration of the local gods calling his name. They called whenever he came to this part of town, whenever he passed the altar. He tried hard to ignore them, but the brooch seemed to grow cold in his hands. He walked more quickly.

It was late. It didn’t matter if it was Acton’s brooch. But he had to know, beyond doubt. Martine would probably be asleep. It would do no harm to go and see. Stonecasters often worked late, their clients preferring the privacy of darkness.

There was a light on in the main room of Martine’s house. He hesitated outside. Tonight there were no ghosts waiting for entrance, just the door, plain oiled wood. It was anything but portentous, that door, but it felt like the entrance to somewhere else. It was like the magic circle the Ice People believed in, which takes you to the world of the gods. The local gods whispered his name more loudly, and he raised his hand to knock on the door.

Martine opened it and greeted him without surprise. “Come in.”

He sat down on the new fleece rug and she sat opposite him with her bag of stones in her lap. He spat on his palm and held it out. She spat on hers and they clapped and grasped hands. With his other hand he held out the brooch.

“Was this Acton’s?” he asked.

She blinked in surprise, and looked at the brooch. Then she smiled, a strange, sideways smile, and reached into the bag.

Only one of the five stones she scattered was faceup. “Certainly,” she said softly. “It was his.” She turned the others over. “Betrayal. Blood. Murder. Guilt.”

“Acton’s all right,” Ash tried to joke. His insides were churning; he was half nauseous, half excited. He dropped the brooch beside the stones. The fire flickered light over its intricate design.

“There is a story here,” Martine said. Her eyes were unfocused while she listened to the stones. “But it is not our story to hear. Nor to tell.” She shook her head and let his hand go. “That is all the stones have to say.”

They both looked at the brooch.
Acton’s
.

A visible shiver went through Martine. “This has seen its share of blood.”

“He slaughtered thousands,” Ash said slowly, “but I don’t get any sense of evil from it. Do you?”

Martine shrugged. “It is just a thing that has passed through many hands since he last touched it. Maybe they have wiped it clean.”

“Maybe.”

They stared at it until Martine suddenly laughed. “Look at us! Entranced by a bauble! Come, sit up and I will make us some cha.”

Ash smiled shamefacedly and sprang up to help her swing the kettle over the fire. They sat companionably in silence until the kettle boiled, and then drank the cha together.

“What am I supposed to do with it?” Ash said suddenly.

“You could sell it. I will give you a warranty that it’s genuine. There are many among the old families who would pay well to have a thing of Acton’s.”

Deep in his mind the local gods whispered,
Keep it
. Martine’s face changed, and he knew that she heard them too. It made him feel better.

“Or maybe I’d better not,” he said drily.

She laughed. “There
is
some advice it is wiser to take.”

“Will you keep it here for me?”

He was reluctant, very reluctant, to take it back to Doronit’s, where he would have to conceal it. She would only see profit in it, and he knew she took no account of the local gods. He suspected she even took no account of the powers beyond them.

“That’s a great trust,” Martine said slowly.

He was surprised; he had taken it for granted that he could trust her, but he had no reason for that, after all, except that she had heard the gods speak to him. Or maybe there was something in her that was the opposite of Doronit — a lack of interest in profit beyond what was necessary to live — which he had recognized because he shared it.

“It’s just a brooch,” he said.

She smiled that sideways smile that told him she saw right through him. He couldn’t help but smile back.

“All right,” she said. She picked up the brooch and rose to place it on her mantelpiece. “It will be waiting here for you when you come back.” Her words seemed to echo, as though they were part of a prophecy.

“When I come back,” he confirmed.

In the silence that followed, the ease between them vanished and he became too aware of his feet and his hands. He reddened and got up.

“I . . . I’d better —”

“Yes,” Martine said. “Go, but be careful of who you trust.”

Ash blinked. “I’ll try.”

She closed the door behind him with a definite thud, as though she was glad to see the back of him, but when he looked at her window she was standing there, watching him, and she raised a hand in farewell as he turned the corner.

He felt lighter, walking home, and not just because he had left Acton’s brooch behind him. Martine was the first friend he had found on his own, outside Doronit’s control. Perhaps he could craft a life for himself in this city after all.