Full Circle (10 page)

Now there’s lots of stories about the fishing women, about what they get up to on those ships, alone for months without men
except for a few of the sailors. I notice those stories are always told by men.

Oh, there were a couple of teams shared more than their bed space, but mostly fishers are too tired to even think about shagging
— sleep is precious and hard won when the fish are biting, and when they’re not the fishers are more likely to snipe at each
other than throw kisses. And put a lot of women together in one place, you get them all having their monthlies at the same
time — that’s a recipe for arguments and tears and friendships broken and made up again; oh, Rumer and me, we stayed way up
in the rigging those days.

We’ve always liked sweet young men, Rumer and I, and on the
Flying Spray
we learnt to like sweet older men, too. There was always a few men sailors ’cause there are things that need pure strength
on any ship and men are best for that, no question. Takes three women to hold the steerboard against a current, and one strong
man does a better job. So we had some men to choose from.

Unlike most of the women, we didn’t have men to go home to, so we were popular. No complications, see? We didn’t have to give
up any pleasures, except food. You can get good and tired of fish stew.

But for all that, it was a fine life and we loved it. Mam too. And Da seemed happy enough with his men friends, working and
looking after the childer in the winter. He started making comments about needing grandchildren to look after, but we was
in no hurry, Rumer and me. It would mean a full year on land, and we was still in the early stages of the passion, where even
a day away seems too long.

And then… You can’t trust the gods. Not for long.

We was on the
Cormorant
three days out from Foreverfroze, when the storm come up out of a clear sky.

The sea were on a nice even swell, we had a good following wind — but not so much to make her dig her nose in, which that
ship was prone to do, like many two-masters that came out of Mitchen’s yards. The sun were shining. The gulls that was following
us didn’t even notice anything, though usually they’re more weather-wise than we humans.

Then,
whoomp
! A huge clap of wind, like a hand sweeping across the surface of the sea and hitting us broadside. The ship reeled and staggered,
but thank the gods we hadn’t caught much in those three days so she were still riding light. She righted herself with an effort
we could all feel.

There was a pause. We was all shouting. The ship owner were also the steersman, and she went dead pale and called to bring
down the sheets, but it were too late. The wind hit us before the riggers had cleared the first crossbar.

And the sky stayed clear. Clear as poverty soup, that sky, but wind screeching down on us and tearing the rigging apart, pushing
every hand that wasn’t lashed to her post right across the deck to the steerboard side. Me and my twin clung to a bollard
and each other and the wind whipped tears up in our eyes like we was mourning each other already.

Wind wraiths, I thought. Can’t be nothing else.

And I worked my mouth, trying to bring up spit, because the story goes that if you’re of Traveller blood whistling will tame
them, but you can’t whistle with a mouth dust dry with fear, so most folks never get to test if it’s true.

Then they came.

They’re hard to describe, and I can’t do it, but they was only half in the world, it seemed, and half somewhere else. And
they laughed.

The wind dropped as they hovered, just above the poop deck, and the master came to meet them. She passed us as she went and
avoided our eyes, and that was bad, I knew.

They hailed her in screeching voices. “Master!” they said. “We have found you.”

She worked her mouth for enough spit to form an answer. She didn’t want to say anything, it looked like, but she had to. “You
have found us.”

The spirits sent up a triumphant laugh, a howl more like, that sent cold down into my marrow bones.

“Present your sacrifice,” one of the spirits said.

And the master turned her head and looked at us.

Pity in her eyes.

We looked around, wildly, but the others was turning away from us, ashamed, crying or stony-faced, and we knew we was dead
as we stood.

We’d heard the stories. In the dead watch, by a crescent moon, sailors love to tell the wind wraith stories. About the compact,
made no one knows how long ago, where the wind wraiths and the humans made a deal — if the spirits found a ship in the wide
wastes of the ocean, they could take a single soul but the ship and the rest of the crew had to be left safe.

It was a good deal for the shipowner, for the sailors, for the fishers. For everyone except the one they threw to the spirits.
The newest sailor on board.

“Last on, first off,” the master said. I will say she was sorrowing as she said it, but she meant it, nonetheless. “Which
of you was last on?”

“Me,” Rumer said.

“Me,” I said in the same moment.

The master were taken fair aback. Even the spirits looked confused. I didn’t look at Rumer, and she didn’t look at me. Nothing
to say. But we gripped hands tight, like just before a performance, or afterwards, when we was taking our bows.

“Both…” the wind wraith said in a voice half venom and half hiss.

“No! I was last on.” The voice had come from the hooking deck below us. We spun around and there was Mam, laying down her
rod like it were made of ruby, nodding to her partner and the other fishers, climbing up the companionway from the hooking
deck to stand beside us.

“Not true,” Rumer and I said together, with one voice.

“True enough,” Mam said. She didn’t look at us, after one quick glance that were full of warning, like she used to look at
us when we was half-grown, after she’d told us to do something we didn’t want to. We knew that look, right enough. It meant,
“Do as you’re told or suffer the consequences.”

My guts was churning and I were sweating like a smith. I didn’t know what to want. What to hope for. Seemed to me it would
be easier to die than see either Rumer or Mam taken, but maybe they felt the same.

The master looked helplessly from Mam to us, and we all looked stonily back at her.

“We have to give one,” she said. “But only one.”

“
Three
have volunteered,” the spirit said, swooping closer, mouth agape.

That seemed to strengthen the master. “
One
was agreed to. Do you break the compact?”

It seemed disturbed by that idea, and slid away from her, higher up, and hung next to its companions. “No,” it wailed. “One.
One is enough.”

“Well, then,” Mam said. “Here I am.”

“No!” we shouted, but the master and Mam locked gazes for a moment, and the master nodded.

The spirits stooped at Mam, and dragged her from the deck. I felt them swipe by me, their flesh like cold cloth dragging on
my skin, and then they launched into the sky, dragging Mam with them, screeching and shrieking with triumph. We tried to pull
her back, Rumer and me, grabbing onto her feet, but they was too strong, strong like the sea, unstoppable, and they ripped
her away from us and left us sprawling on the deck.

She turned her head back to see us, but by then she were too far up for us to see into her eyes. But she didn’t scream, our
mam. She didn’t give them any fear to play with. She didn’t give them anything except herself.

And in a heartbeat, two, three, they were gone across the wide, level sea, and we was left fallen on the deck under a calm
blue sky, with a steady following wind bringing us the sound of gulls.

We just sailed on and all we was left with was questions, and too much imagining about where they took her to, and what they
did when they got there.

We had nightmares every night, after.

And yet, it’s like she answered a question for us that we’d never of dared to ask, and that’s left a sweetness as well as
a pain behind.

For Rumer to offer to die instead of me, well, that’s easy to understand. She’s my twin. Of course we’d die for each other.
And maybe others would say, well, she were your mother, of course she’d die for you. But I tell you, it came as a shock to
both of us. It weren’t something I’d have ever predicted. Tell the truth, I don’t think even a stonecaster could’ve predicted
it.

What I want to know is, what did the master see in Mam’s eyes that made her nod? ’Cause I don’t think we ever seen it, and
when I wish, that’s what I wish for: to see those eyes and see if it were love that made her a sacrifice. Or something else.

T
HEY LEFT
the farmyard and quartered as much ground as they could, but it was useless. The gods only knew where the wraiths had flown
to with their enchanter. And at dusk, if things went as they had in Spritford and Carlion, the ghosts themselves would fade.

An hour before sunset, Leof ordered his men to turn around and head for Sendat. Wearily, they turned the horses’ heads towards
home. It was a measure of the quality of these three men, Leof thought, that even after all the unsettling events of the day,
they unerringly turned towards the fort at Sendat. It was one of the first things his own father had taught him — always know
where you are, always know where you can retreat to if necessary, so that in the heat of battle you are not disoriented, so
that if you need to run you don’t run the wrong way.

Although he’d always followed that advice, today was the first time he had really needed it. Today was the first time Thegan
had ever retreated. Leof considered how livid his lord was going to be when they returned empty-handed. They made the trip
in silence, and he suspected that the others were considering the same thing, and wondering how Thegan would greet them. Leof
was heart-sick that he wasn’t returning with the enchanter — Thegan had risked his own life to save his, back at Bonhill,
and the only way he could repay that was to deal with the enchanter. He had failed, and it weighed on him as nothing ever
had. His lord would be angry, and rightfully so.

But when he walked into the hall at Sendat just after the evening meal had ended, Thegan took one look at his face and, although
his mouth tightened, he waved Leof into his workroom calmly. At Thegan’s signal, Sorn rose and followed them. Leof felt his
heart lift and clench at the same time. Seeing her was a blessing from the gods, but also a danger, with Thegan watching.

“No luck?” his lord asked.

“We found him, followed him. Tried to take him down by bow, but the wraiths intervened. Then we found him and the ghosts in
a farm — they’d killed the people there — and I rode in to grab him, almost had him, but the wraiths dragged him up into the
sky and we don’t know where they took him. We searched, but they could be anywhere. Out of the Domain, maybe.” He shrugged,
suddenly bone weary.

Thegan listened closely, and Leof knew that later, tomorrow maybe, his commander would take him through it all again, in detail,
looking for any weakness they could exploit.

“Enough, now,” he said. “Eat and rest. Tomorrow we take action.”

It was comforting to realise that Thegan had already devised a strategy; but alarming, too. Any action they took was likely
to be desperate.

“There is food,” Sorn said, her voice soft. “Come and eat.”

In a dream he followed her back into the noise and movement of the hall. He really was very tired. It seemed impossible that
it was only two days ago that he had left her here to go to Carlion. With a shock, he remembered the white-haired man, the
Lake’s ambassador. His warnings had made the trip to Carlion necessary. The Lake seemed the least of their problems, now,
and with a surge of relief Leof realised that it was, indeed, the least of their problems. Thegan was unlikely to move against
Baluchston anytime soon. That was one thing he could stop worrying about. He wondered when he had started being someone who
worried.

Sorn signalled to a maid and as if by enchantment food appeared in front of him. Good, solid food: soup, sausages, bread.
Comforting food. He set to, relying on Sorn to make sure that Alston and the others would also be fed. He could always rely
on her. For a moment his gaze rested on her as she spoke to one of the serving maids, her head bent to listen to the girl’s
answer. She was as calm as always, and watching her he could almost believe that the world outside was safe. Then he realised
he was staring and looked down at his plate.

He slept like the dead. Better than he deserved. Better than the dead were sleeping, around here.

The next morning Thegan called him to his office.

“Take Alston and fortify the old barn,” he said. “Use our own masons, not the Travellers. Make sure it’s secure.” He paused,
weighing his words. “We are building a prison. I want it watertight.”

Leof was speechless for a moment, looking at Thegan from across the warlord’s desk. “You think the ghosts can be imprisoned?”
It was an intriguing idea.

“No, no. How would we get them here? No.” He seemed to come to some decision, and moved around his desk, resting his thigh
against it so that he looked casual. Leof could tell that he was anything but relaxed.

“To save Sendat, we will need hostages,” Thegan said. Leof had no idea what he meant.

Thegan nodded at the papers on his desk. “I compiled reports while I was in Carlion. The ghosts ignored some people and killed
others. Not a single Traveller was killed. Not one. And when I questioned the survivors, it was the same story. A Traveller
grandmother, a Traveller great-grandfather. Some of them had never heard of Travellers in the family, but that’s not surprising.
Families hush it up. But most knew it was somewhere in their bloodline. Far back at times, but there.”

Leof slowly absorbed the information. He felt as though his head were full of horsehair, like a cushion. It had always been
likely that the enchanter was a Traveller — like the first enchanter who tried to make ghosts solid, in Turvite. But this
was proof. “He’s making the ghosts kill — for Travellers, you think?”