Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) (16 page)

The women embraced and promised to make contact as
soon as they were settled. The men, apparently seeing no need to break from
tradition, exchanged a silent handshake.

Aedan had chosen to walk much of the recent journey
to build his strength, but the walking now was unlike any he had yet done. Traffic
began to fill the roads, and he learned quickly that the road itself belonged
to those on hoof or wheel, while those on foot kept well to the side.

He had heard stories of Castath, but because it was
said to be smaller than the northern stronghold, Tullenroe, he had naturally
assumed it to be small, a kind of overgrown village. There was nothing village-like
about what he now approached. The number of people was overwhelming, dizzying.
But what surprised him more than the number was the diversity.

Nobles glided past in varnished carriages drawn by
horses that were groomed to dazzling perfection, while filthy ragged children
shouted and ran abreast, holding out their hands until the driver’s whip chased
them off. A farmer in a dirty woollen tunic trundled along, pushing a cart of
turnips and cabbages and singing a light ditty. Then he flung the handles down
and thrust his arms in the air to call down pestilence after being splashed by
the chaise of a wealthy silk merchant. The merchant’s clothes proclaimed him a
man of great class while his shouted reply revealed him a man of none. An open
wagon humming with flies and drawn by mangy oxen sloshed past, headed towards a
dump near the river. The smell of the wagon struck like a hammer. Aedan pulled
a face as he guessed what it contained. A little further along was a stall
filled with sweetmeats, and beyond that a gallows where raven-pecked criminals
performed their parting service to the city by delivering a warning to all.

The heavily defended gates of the city grew
sterner as the distance shrank. Soldiers of the guard were everywhere. Above
the gates, the battlements were lined with more soldiers, all fully armed and
threatening in their bold uniforms of yellow and red. Aedan was glancing from
side to side and he noticed more than one guard looking at him. More guards
stood at the gates. Their faces spoke no pleasant welcome and their eyes
drilled through the stream of people that flowed in. Some they stopped and
questioned. Of these, they sent a few back in the direction they had come from
with harsh words and sometimes blows. This was nothing like the oversized
cattle-gate at the Mistyvales where Beagan exchanged cheery greetings and quiet
jokes that brought loud laughter.

Aedan felt his pulse racing. The overwhelming
crush of people. The closeness of the air. The approaching hostility – he could
not even pretend to belong here. The soldiers would stop them …

The soldiers did stop them.

The senior guard looked from Aedan to Nessa to Clauman.

“Name and business?” he said in a strange,
flattened accent.

“Halbert son of Cian,” Clauman replied. “Tired of
the north. Hoping to start over. Our wagon was lost on the way.”

Aedan and Nessa had both glanced up at the use of
false names and an untrue story, but the guard failed to notice their
expressions.

“Northern accent, northern ignorance,” he said. “Castath
won’t be an easy landing for the likes of you.” His face softened as he glanced
at Nessa’s frightened eyes. “Go to South Lane by Miller’s Court. Cleanest
lodging you’ll get for copper. If you can pay with silver, there’s some fine
places in the north-east quarter.”

Clauman thanked him and they turned to leave.

Aedan had been so lost in dread, struggling with
wild fears of being sent away or being jailed for the breach of some strange
law, that the sudden relief was like the lifting of a physical weight. He felt
an immediate liking for this senior guard with the greying hair and
grandfatherly authority. He wanted to reach out and establish a form of kinship,
especially as he intended to be a soldier himself.

“May I ask your name?” he said.

The guard smiled. “In twenty years, there’s nobody
ever asked me that. You must be small-town folk.” He smiled at the adults and
dropped to a knee before Aedan. “Cameron is my name. What’s yours?”

“Aedan.”

“A good name, a brave name which looks to fit you
well. I hope you are able to settle down here, Aedan. As our south-side mayor
likes to say, may the winds of bounty reward your labour.”

“Thank you,” Aedan said, attempting to shake
Cameron’s hand.

“Ah,” said Cameron, stopping him. “In the south we
greet men by grasping the forearm, like this.” He gripped Aedan behind his
wrist and gave a firm squeeze. “Else you’ll be getting some strange looks. You
can take a woman’s hand, but the men won’t like it. Remember that.”

“I will. Thank you again.”

Cameron smiled, nodded to all three of them, and
returned to his post.

Aedan felt his heart swell. His face glowed.

Nessa smiled.

Clauman glared. As they walked away, he pinched
his son’s ear and muttered, “Next time you speak past me to a soldier I’ll nail
your tongue to the wall.”

“But … but I only meant to be friendly.”

“You meant to be noticed, and that is something
that could destroy us here.”

Aedan was not sure what his father meant. Surely Dresbourn
would not attempt to find them here. But it was clear that now was not the time
for questions.

As they walked through the gates, they passed a
building on their left that had soldiers all around it – obviously a small
guard barracks. Aedan assumed the main barracks and military headquarters would
be further in, probably near the keep.

He followed his parents into a broad cobbled
street marked as King’s Lane, which appeared to serve as the central artery for
the city. The road was lined with stalls and booths of every description –
cutlers, tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, fishmongers and many more. Scattered
here and there were stands where farmers displayed the produce of their soil. All
around, chickens clucked from their cages, girls trilled as they moved through
the crowd with trays of delicacies, buyers haggled, and children shouted and
jostled, pursuing their games. The town crier, backed by a trio of jolly
musicians, cast his voice over the din with the day’s news including royal
decrees, notorious criminals’ sentences, and the weather prophets’ lies.

Though much of the arrangement was haphazard, it
became clear as they continued that the buildings were growing larger and the
clientele better-dressed – feathers, capes, furs, and rare cloth of blue and
purple. Eventually they came to the emporium of the ill-mannered silk merchant.

Aedan saw his mother looking across the road with
a hint of nostalgia at the office of a scrivener. He remembered that her father
had owned three such enterprises and had taught her the skills that she had
since passed on to him.

Clauman stopped to ask an elderly man of
respectable appearance for directions. The man frowned at the mention of
Miller’s Court. He pointed across the road without a word, turned, and walked
away.

They pursued the road indicated, stopping and
asking for directions several more times. Streets became narrower, and dirtier.
Here people moved more quickly. Few lingered where the shadows fell heavily and
the smells rose thick as soup – a soup gone horribly wrong.

It was in one of these alleyways that Clauman asked
a group of older, very seedy boys for directions. Their cocksure disrespect was
barely concealed behind a thin coating of servility. They would be trouble. Aedan
could sense it. One came up and started to explain. Two others approached and
tousled behind the first boy, knocking him onto Clauman. Aedan caught just a glimpse
of a hand slipping from his father’s pocket, grasping the little pouch of coins
that Borr had counted out. He was about to yell to his father when he noticed
everyone had stopped moving. The first boy was frozen where he stood and his
hand slowly found its way back to the pocket, returning the pouch. It was then
that Aedan saw the dagger that his father held under the boy’s chin. He must
have had it ready before asking assistance. Clauman whispered something and the
boy nodded as much as the dagger would allow.

“We have a guide,” Clauman said, allowing his
prisoner to step away.

“This way, sir,” the boy said, as he walked past his
companions, shaking his head at them.

Aedan’s desire to be out of this tightening, hostile
place was growing to a panic. He shrank from the glares of the boys, now
undisguised, as he hurried between them. The only thing that kept him from
running was the narrowness of the alley that was clogged ahead of him.

Miller’s Court might once have had space for a court,
but it was hardly possible to imagine a more densely populated spot of land.
Houses pushed up like weeds competing for any shaft of light. South Lane
breathed a little more, being opposite the southern wall of the city.

Before dismissing him with a coin, Clauman took the
boy aside and spoke to him. Aedan saw the youngster nod with more than a trace
of deference before he spun and slipped away into his warren of shadowy lanes.

After speaking to a few landlords, Clauman began
to haggle with a thin, oily-looking man who was clearly more interested in Nessa
than in him. Clauman appeared not to notice this and complained about the price
which shifted downward with each glance the landlord made over Clauman’s
shoulder. Finally they struck an agreement and the family was led up four storeys
to an apartment that consisted of a single room and a window. Nothing else. It
was dry, in places, and the mildew had not quite completed its conquest of the
floor. Other than that, it was acceptable to a man of low means and perfectly
horrible to a woman of any means. Aedan knew his mother’s childhood had been a
comfortable one. He saw her wince, but she voiced no complaint.

The landlord scurried to the window and pushed it
open. It made a crunching sound and he couldn’t get it closed again, so he
pretended to be setting the right angle and left it.

“There,” he said, with a weaselly smile. “Best
view in South Lane.” His eyes wandered to Nessa.

“It will do,” said Clauman, who held the door for
the landlord and closed it after him. He walked to the window, busy with his
own thoughts, while his wife and son looked on.

“Borrow some rags and a bucket and have it clean
before I get back,” he said, stepping out the door and closing it behind him
with a thud.

Nessa’s expression was as bleak as the room; she
stood in shock. It took her some time before she was able to process the
experiences of the day sufficiently to break down and cry. But after a little
while, she brushed her tears aside, buried her embarrassment and summoned the
courage to request what she needed from the eager landlord. Then she got
scrubbing. Aedan decided he would not add to her misery, so he put his back
into the labour.

Clauman returned with blankets, candles, and a
loaf of hard, dark bread that had not recently emerged from the oven. They ate
their first meal by candlelight on the floor. Little was said; nobody had the
energy to talk, though Clauman’s eyes held a flicker of something like
keenness. Before lying down for the night, he said something that kept Aedan awake
as effectively as one of his roots,

“Your time of idling has come to an end. For once
your small size makes you useful. The forest is gone, but I have a new forest
to teach you, new eggs for you to fetch.”

The words unsettled him more than the thin drizzle
slanting in from the open window. When he finally slept, the dreams were dark. That
velvet pouch bulging with coins began to take on a new meaning, an impossible
meaning, but one that would not be banished. He remembered having once seen
such a pouch on Dresbourn’s desk and could imagine no context in which Dresbourn
would have willingly handed it across. Then he remembered his father’s panic
when he had seen smoke near Borr and Harriet’s home, and constant watching
behind them on the trail, the false name given at the gate. Confusion grew into
an awful suspicion. What kind of man was his father? Did he know him at all?

Aedan awoke with his throat on fire and the
drizzle still running out his nose. When Clauman heard him cough that morning,
he swore and made him stand at the window facing out.

“Don’t you splutter over me before tonight! Would
you ruin our fortunes again?” With that, he dressed and stormed from the room. He
did not return for the next two days.

They were not comfortable days. The room sizzled and
steamed during waking hours, the heat unlocking rotten vapours in the soggy
boards; and the evening rain continued to spit through the window, replenishing
the damp. The landlord knocked several times a day, calling through the flimsy
boards to check if they needed anything and if Aedan wanted to go and explore
some exciting places he could recommend. Nessa froze at such moments and the
look in her eye caused Aedan to grip the handle of his knife and to keep the
door bolted, though the bolt would have popped off the frame with the slightest
shove. By the end of the first day they were worried. By the second night Nessa
was pacing.

“Do you think we can send a message to Borr and Harriet
tomorrow?” she asked.

Aedan was gratified that she should ask him. He
pointed out the difficulty of finding a messenger when they had no money. They
could not both go, because one had to remain in case Clauman returned. She
proposed, weakly, that she should go, but even Aedan knew that a foreign woman
alone was more likely to draw attention than a boy.

So a little before first light on the following
day, he traced his way through the maze of buildings, getting lost and nosing
his way back on track. It was unlike pushing through the dense confusion of a
forest, but he was soon depending on the same feel for direction he had always
used, mostly without thinking – sun, slope of the ground, sounds, smells,
temperature, movement of the air, and the general character of spaces. The
detours helped him place a few more landmarks on his internal map and he was
sure he could find a better way back to South Lane than the one they had first
taken.

As soon as he was through the gates, he began to
worry about his mother. He had left quietly, but the landlord had a sharp eye. The
mounting worry urged him on. Soon he was running. It was early morning when he
reached the area where their company had parted. It was Snore’s crowing that
put him on the right path, and with a few questions, he was able to locate the
deep-slumbering couple. Harriet’s sleepy face grew distraught and Borr’s grim
as they listened. Soon they were bustling out the door and headed for Miller’s
Court.

Aedan made only one wrong turn on the way back and
recovered quickly. They could hear raised voices by the time they were half way
up the stairs. Aedan heard his mother scream and raced ahead. He threw the door
open and ran into the room. His mother crouched against the wall and his father
stood over her, his hand raised. He spun on Aedan.

“Where have you been?”

“I – I … We thought that it was dangerous here … I
went to …”

“
I
chose this place,” Clauman said. “Is your
judgement now better than mine? It seems you also need another lesson in
respect and obedience.” Aedan cringed and fell back against the wall as his
father advanced on him, anger rippling his face. But the blow never fell.

After an extended silence, Aedan opened his eyes
and looked up to see Borr and Harriet standing across from his father. There
was no friendly recognition.

“So this is how you manage your family,” Harriet
said. “When your anger boils up, you tip it out on them. I thought I glimpsed
fear in their eyes before. Thought I saw them flinching when you made sudden
moves.”