Full Circle (18 page)

Linde glared at me, but she came. That was the bargain — we would not disagree, even in front of a stranger. Freite invited
us to come again, “Anytime,” she said, “I am always here.”

Linde smiled and said she would be back soon, sweet as honey, but two minutes out the door and she was berating me for being
rude, for being stupid, for not seeing that we should be learning all we could from Freite.

“I don’t want to learn what she could teach,” I said, and shivered. It was true. Out of the house I felt clean, and that made
me realise that inside it had felt dirty, filthy, though the floors had been spotless and the glass gleaming. It was Freite
who had felt filthy, a grime on her soul spreading over everything. I said so.

No doubt the fight that followed would have lasted until we got home, but as we walked down between the towering yews a boy
stepped out in front of us. Auburn hair, hazel eyes, younger than us, but not bad looking and well dressed. Linde took all
that in with a blink and smiled and bowed, but he was looking at me, and I was looking at his pale cheeks and tired eyes.

“Don’t go back,” he said to me. “She wants your power.”

“What power?” Linde asked sharply. “Brea hasn’t got any power.”

“
You
know,” he said, still looking at me. “Stay away from her.”

I nodded and he stepped back into the trees. Linde surged forward to see where he had gone, but there was no sign of him.

“What was all that about?” she demanded. “Do you know him?”

I shook my head.

“What power?”

And there it was, the underlayer that I had never shared with anyone, not even Linde. The shameful secret sleeping inside
me. The power that only Travellers had, only the people with tainted blood, whose family line was not pure. I looked my blonde
cousin in the eye and lied.

“I don’t know what he was talking about,” I said. “All I know is that she’s a creepy old woman who kept trying to touch me.
And you know what grandmother told us about women like her.”

It was enough to distract her: a girl-fancier, or a girler looking for a blonde to ship to the Wind Cities’ brothels, either
option fuelled her speculation. Her vanity told her that Freite would want
her
, not me, and that she was in most danger. That gave her a pleasant thrill, but she was no fool, my cousin. The danger was
real, and it kept her away from Freite. Fear of being used by her, of being
tainted
by her, kept me away too.

Then Linde got married, and I did miss her. Not she herself, but the time and space her companionship had bought me. I was
drafted into the everyday work of the households, and trained intensively in the duties of a wife, the duties of an officer’s
woman.

But it was as though Freite’s eyes and the young man’s words had woken the power in me, from where I had buried it as deep
as I could. I began to know things before they were told to me, to read people’s eyes and see their thoughts showing as clear
as speech. That was when I blessed Linde. Our life of dissimulation was a perfect preparation for this. For not showing what
I truly was.

If I wanted a husband, I had to conceal myself. No one would want a wife with Traveller blood in her; it would shame the entire
family, spoil the marriage chances of my brothers and sisters, possibly even get my father’s lands taken away from him. Warlords
don’t trust Travellers.

Nor should they, because I found in myself layers and layers of deceit. Everything about me was a lie. My looks, my speech,
my smiles, everything but my desire for my father to find me a husband so I could have my own place and my own family.

He found me one, all right, and the irony was he thought he was doing me a favour when he betrothed me to Linde’s husband’s
cousin. He was an even better match than Aden, my father said, with a bigger estate and more silver. Moreover, he lived at
the warlord’s fort just as Linde did, and had his land, up near the mountains, managed for him by a kinsman.

“You’ll be glad to see her, no doubt,” he said to me, beaming with satisfaction at having given me so great a boon. I thanked
him properly, almost swooning with delight, it seemed, but my spirit darkened with fear. Linde knew me better than anyone.
If she were to see the power which had awakened in me…

But then I reasoned with myself. She would not dare to speak out, because it would taint her family as well as mine. She would
not dare take that risk. I was safer with her than with anyone. As I realised that, tears came to my eyes and my father hugged
me, a thing he rarely did.

My husband Calin came to collect me soon after.

What is there to say? He is dead, after all. He was a boor and a bully but not an evil man. He was merely used to getting
his own way, and Cenred’s fort was a place of drunkenness and licence. Calin had lived like that for years, since he was a
very young man, and it had shaped him to fit.

Cenred’s wife was an invalid who wanted only solitude, and his son had not married, so there was no one to keep a check on
the officers’ young wives. For Linde and me it was a continuation of our old life, except that we avoided the hall, where
the officers drank and whored and gambled.

Linde was besotted with her husband, Aden. A nice enough boy and with eyes only for her. I dealt with mine as best I could,
and cursed my parents for filling my head with romantic ideas. But it was Calin who taught me my true power, a power I learnt
in pain and dread, night after night in our bed. Night after night I wished him dead.

And day by day he died.

A wasting disease, the healer called it. He looked furtive when he said it, so I stopped him as he went out the door, pretending
to want to thank him, and I asked, “What is wrong?”

He looked down at his hands, as though weighing his words. “Does your husband have any enemies, lady?”

I stiffened. “He is an officer. There are many who hate all officers.” I paused, but I had to ask. “Why?”

“There is a feel about this… It’s come on very fast for such a young man. It may be… wished upon him.”

The blood rushed from my head to my feet and I swayed. No doubt he thought he’d frightened me, because he took my arm to steady
me, and began to babble, “No, no, no reason to be frighted, lady, it was just a shadow on my mind, but it does happen so quickly
sometimes, out of the deep sea and nowhere as they say…”

I forced my voice to be calm. “If this got out, there would be reprisals on innocent people.”

He nodded, and never spoke of it again.

Calin was too frail now to come to our bed with any thought but sleep, but that night I caressed his head and wished him well
because, although I dreaded his touch, I had never meant to harm him. Never meant to kill. I wished with all my heart, and
I wished night and day, but it made no difference. I had no power to heal, only to curse.

He died only four months after our wedding day, and I thanked the gods that I was not carrying his child.

I went through the patterns of grief. I laid him out in proper form, cried at the funeral, Swith knows I looked pale enough.
And on the third day I shut myself up in our room, the room where he had died, saying I wanted no one but myself at his quickening,
if quickening there was.

I even hired musicians, saying that music often helps the spirit find rest. A flautist, a drummer and a singer, it was — typical
Travellers, but the woman had a voice that would charm the soul out of your body. I set them to play outside the door, hoping
that if I had to acknowledge my guilt the music would cover my words.

I was ready. Ready with the knife, ready to take the blame and offer reparation. Ready for Calin to accuse me silently.

He had died, as men often do, just before dawn. I sat up the night waiting, for it isn’t always three days to the minute.
I sat and listened to the flute and drum, listened to the woman sing songs about peace and love and the winds of dawn. I could
hear nothing else, and even now I cannot close my eyes without hearing her voice again. I waited while the candle guttered,
and the grey dawn slid in through the shutters, while the smooth bed seemed to grow bigger and brighter moment by moment,
so that I strained my eyes time and again, thinking the white sheet was his ghost forming, thinking the pillow was his head,
the bolster his body. The knife grew slick and I had to change hands and wipe the sweat on my dress. I felt sick with shame,
feverish with guilt. As the first yellow rays cut through the gap at the window, I tensed. Surely now, surely this was when
he would come, accusing and angry.

I waited until noon, until dusk, but he did not come. The healer had prepared him well for death, and even in the grave, it
seemed, he did not realise I had killed him.

As I unbolted the door and came out into the corridor, the woman singer rose to greet me. They had played unstinting the whole
time, taking turns towards the end so that it would be flute, or drum, or singer, to eke out their energy until it was over.

I gave the woman the purse I had ready.

“I hope all went well,” she said, which was an impertinence from a Traveller, but she was pale and weary-looking and I felt
grateful to them.

“He did not come,” I said.

“That is good,” she said gently. “He is at rest.”

My eyes filled with tears, and they were real, because I hoped against hope that she was right, that my curse had not poisoned
his afterlife as well.

Then her eyes narrowed a little and her head tilted to one side.

“If you try to deny who you are,” she said, very quietly, “the power will overwhelm you.”

I stared at her in shock, not believing that she could have said it, half-believing that I had imagined the words out of my
own guilt and confusion. She turned away to help her colleagues pack their instruments, as though she had said nothing. What
had she seen? How had I betrayed myself?

I took her by the arm and she turned to look at me, and saw my fear. “You are not the only one with power,” she said reassuringly.
“Others will see nothing.”

But how could I be sure ? Worse — how could I be sure that I would not curse someone again, unthinking?

So I came to my husband’s lands, and to his house, which was mine now until I died, and I became, like Freite, a woman free
of men, as widows mostly are. And I became, like her, a woman who lived alone, and saw no one unless they knocked at the door,
and in the time honoured way I made sure that no one knocked, by being rude and parsimonious and meagre. They thought me a
mad miser, down in the village.

So I protected others from a stray thought, a moment’s anger, by becoming solitary. I protected myself from the guilt of their
deaths, as well, and closed my eyes each night to the memory of the singer, of her songs about love and the winds of dawn,
though I found no peace there. The only peace I found was walking in the mountains, and how could I know that my lonely explorations
would lead so deep and to so much pain?

For one thing I was sure, and still am. Loneliness is better than murder.

W
E NEED
to be out of sight by dawn,” Swallow said. She didn’t like the idea of hiding, it was clear, but she accepted it. They had
stopped at a stream to let the horses have a breather.

“This is mostly flat country,” Rowan said, pulling at his ear in a way that Flax had seen Ash do when he was thinking. “Farm
land. Not much shelter.”

“There are coppices,” Flax suggested and they nodded.

“The next one we see, then,” Swallow said. She cast a worried look at the sky, which was now filling with clouds as a cool
north wind picked up.

The moon would soon be covered, Flax thought, and they would be in pitch black — no riding then, they’d have to lead the horses.
He touched his heels to Cam’s flanks and they set off again with him in the lead. But there were no coppices on this stretch
of road. It was all fields, mostly vegetables, from what they could see in the moonlight: cabbages, beanpoles, some hay fields
and pasture. The hay hadn’t been mown here; there weren’t even any hayricks to hide behind and the hedgerows weren’t high
enough to offer shelter.

Not much further on, they came to a junction with a much wider track, a real road marked by wagons and horse traffic.

“Baluchston or Sendat?” Rowan asked the world in general.

To their left, the main route to Baluchston ran straight. To the right, the road led to Sendat.

“We’ve missed the turn, then,” Swallow said.

Rowan nodded. “We could turn around and try to find it — I think maybe it was that little track about three miles back.”

Somehow, that seemed like a bad idea. Flax felt a real urgency to keep moving, to get as far away from Baluchston as they
could.

The sky was growing lighter.

“There are coppices on this road,” Swallow said. “All the way down to Sendat. And there’s another road about ten miles on
that would take us east, to the Hidden River and North Domain. We could get a boat down to Mitchen and then one to Turvite
from there.”

She had the ordering of the family group usually, that was clear, just like his mam.

“We’d better get under cover then, before dawn,” Rowan said.

The lightening sky was like a threat, like a deep dark chord sounded on that Wind Cities instrument with the big belly. He
desperately wanted to sing, something cheerful to keep his spirits up, but it was too dangerous. The farmhouses were close
to the road here, and villages too frequent.

They came to a village before they found a coppice, but they had no time to go around it. “Straight through,” Swallow said,
and they went on at a gentle canter, hoping the inhabitants wouldn’t wake, or would think it were warlord’s messengers coming
back to the fort.

Flax, in the lead, came up on the first house, his heart beating fast, ears straining to hear anything, anyone, any sign that
they were noticed. The village was revealed in flickers of moonlight as the clouds raced across the sky. All the houses were
shuttered and barred. There was none of the usual clutter around: no handcarts or barrels outside the inn, no washing left
out, no toys forgotten when it had been time to go inside. The tidiness gave the village an unnatural air, as though the townsfolk
were already dead. That wasn’t a comfortable thought. The dead were as dangerous as the living, now. It took only a minute
to ride through the small collection of houses, but by the time they were on the other side he was drenched in sweat, and
he wondered how Ash managed to live this kind of life all the time.