Full Circle (25 page)

He couldn’t set the ghosts to batter down door after door if the axes they needed were locked up in chests and cellars. They
could get them, eventually, but the effort… Increasingly, he was looking to the fort for the weapons they needed.

It wasn’t hard to find the tree Lefric wanted. The coppice was small enough, and useless for his needs during the day, being
frequented by other crafters who shared Lefric’s rights here: trug makers, wattlers, carvers. But at night… He looked
around speculatively as he sawed at the ash tree.

Perhaps not right here, but behind the coppice looked promising. He put down his saw and wiped his brow as if tired, then
walked towards the stream beyond the trees, in the little valley. At the stream’s edge, he scooped water in his hand and drank,
honestly relishing it. He poked at his hand, where a blister was already forming. No, he really wasn’t suited to this kind
of work.

By the stream was no good for his needs, either, at least not here. But a little way along there was a spreading pool under
a large tree — a cedar? Its branches hung low, almost sweeping the ground in places. Under there he would be private, safe
from interference. If he could get out here; if the guards were not too vigilant; if Lefric slept soundly enough.

He knew what his father would say to that — “Kill the old man. He’s no kin of ours.” But he was reluctant to repay Lefric’s
kindness with murder. “Weak!” He heard his father’s voice again, and felt sweat break out on his brow. If he couldn’t get
out of the town, he’d need to stay at Lefric’s until he could. He needed to keep him alive.

It was enough of a reason to still the accusing voice.

Tonight, Saker thought. I’ll call them up tonight, and then tomorrow it won’t matter what happens to Lefric.

The thought brought a mixture of excitement and terror.

T
HE STRAGGLE
of youths behind them grew larger as they passed each farm. They were starting to resemble a parade, like harvest time in
the northern towns, Ash thought sourly. And they were all so
young
. He knew, objectively, that some of the gawking youths were his own age, but somehow they seemed more like childer. They
certainly acted like childer, larking about and making jokes. They didn’t seem to realise the magnitude of the problem.

Acton, of course, just laughed at them.

“We need horses,” Bramble said as they approached the next village.

Ash groaned inwardly at the thought of riding, but he knew she was right. It would take them weeks to get to Wooding at this
pace.

“Will one carry me, d’you think, sweetheart?” Acton asked.

She shook her head. “Not a chance. But you’re dead — there should be no limit to how fast you can run.”

It had taken courage to say that out loud, Ash thought, remembering the searing longing that had flowed from Bramble when
he and she had raised Acton.

Acton grinned at her. “I never was very fast on my own legs. Might be fun as long as I don’t spook the horses.”

In the village, Acton and Baluch went through their performance again. Ash had to resist the urge to give them a low, regular
drumbeat as a background, because it
was
a performance. This time, there were a few wary Travellers hailed out of their houses — or hauled out, Ash suspected. They
arrived in the town square with frightened or defiant or deliberately blank faces, and gazed at Acton as though he were Lady
Death herself. Ash was glad to see that gave Acton pause.

“Without you,” Acton said to them as gently as his death voice would let him, “these people are all lost.”

One dark-haired woman at the back of the crowd, her arm around a young boy protectively, seemed to think that would be a good
idea, and Ash wondered how badly she’d been treated in the past. He felt pushed to speak to her, so he slipped around the
side of the crowd. She took in his dark hair and looked less suspicious.

“The ghosts slaughter,” he said. “Children, women, old people, they don’t care. They just kill.”

She looked quickly at a group of very young children who, bored by the adult talk, had started a game of chasings around the
village well. One of them had dark hair.

“That’s what we’re working for,” Ash said quietly. “So they can play and work and live together without fear.”

“A few hearts and minds’ll have to change for that to happen,” she said, and touched a scar on her arm. A warlord’s brand,
the punishment for insolence in these parts.

“Aye,” Ash said. “They will.”

She flicked her eyes at Acton. “That really him?”

“Yes.”

“Shame he’s dead already. I’d of killed him where he stood, otherwise.”

“We need to stand together against this enchanter.”

She sniffed. “And after that? When they don’t need us any more?”

Ash touched the pouch at his side.

“There’s a new stone in the bag — evenness. Who knows what that means?”

“A new stone?” she asked, her eyes alight. “Then the world
is
changing.”

“Aye,” he said. “And how it changes will depend on us.”

Ash realised that this was his task — as Acton raised the countryside, he would spread the news about Evenness. Everyone knew
the adage: change the stones, change the world. If hearts and minds had to shift, thinking about the new stone might be the
first step. He felt better, having a task, instead of just trailing behind Acton.

The Voice found them horses. Not good ones, by Bramble’s expression, but saddle horses nonetheless. Bramble claimed the best
of them, a lumpy bay, Medric was given a piebald, which looked half-carthorse but could carry him and the feed bags, and Ash
and Baluch got shaggy dappled geldings, clearly brothers. Baluch simply paid for them, and for food.

“Where did you get that much silver?” Bramble asked him.

He smiled, looking older than ever. “Singing,” he said, and for some reason that made Bramble laugh.

The horses didn’t like Acton at first, but Bramble took them, one by one, and whispered to them and made them smell him until
they stopped skittering away with wild eyes at his approach.

“But don’t touch them,” she warned him, “and don’t talk to them.”

He made a face, but obeyed in silence. Baluch, standing next to Ash, chuckled, and Ash wondered if Acton had ever obeyed anyone
before.

The horses let them leave their escort of youths behind, which was a great relief. The boys were planning to mass at the borders
of their Domain, Travellers and blonds alike. Acton wished them well and waved goodbye.

“Run!” Bramble called, turning the head of her ungainly mare to the north-east. “Run, little rabbit!”

Acton laughed and they surged off together, Bramble pushing the mare to a canter, Acton seeming to will himself to go faster,
and faster, until he was keeping pace easily. His feet weren’t quite touching the ground, Ash noticed.

Ash and Baluch enticed their horses to keep pace, but their slow start meant that Bramble and Acton remained some way ahead
of them. Medric lumbered along behind, but the carthorse was faster than it looked.

“She loves him,” Baluch said, glancing across at Ash.

“He’s dead,” Ash replied.

“Aye, but —” Baluch watched the two flying figures jump a low wall, Bramble’s hair escaping from its tie and streaming out
on the wind. “He may have met his match in her.”

“And what’s
she
met in him?” Ash asked, and wished he hadn’t because no matter what the answer was, it couldn’t be good for Bramble.

T
HEY WERE
rounding the cape between Mitchen and Carlion, and the captain was looking worried.

“Bad water around here,” one of Zel’s aunties said. Martine could never tell them apart they were so alike — sun-browned,
wiry, greying. “Things happen,” she explained grimly.

Zel cast her a cynical look as she filled Trine’s hay net. Trine butted her on the shoulder, but not unkindly. They had come
to a closer understanding in the last few days. “Sailors’ stories, Rawnie,” Zel said.

Rawnie shrugged. “Believe what you like. But we’ll be saying our prayers till we’re past Carlion, Rumer and me.”

“And keep a lookout for sea serpents?” Martine asked. She was sitting on the side of Trine’s enclosure. She wanted to swing
her legs like a child, she was so happy whenever she thought about Arvid. He was doing his accounts nearby, sorting out how
much each Last Domain farmer and crafter had to be paid from the cargo they had sold in Mitchen. He glanced up briefly and
gave her a look that recalled the night before, when he had stared into her eyes and said her name as he made love to her.

Her mood over the past days had veered from happiness so great she had felt drunk, to pessimism and gloom. The weather matched
her: the clouds flitted across the sun, sending them from glare to shadow moment by moment.

She turned back to Rawnie and Zel, who were staring at her knowingly. She flushed.

“Well, sea serpents?” she prodded, embarrassed.

“No,” Rawnie said seriously. “They swim further south, past the Wind Cities. Stranger than them.”

The captain whistled. Rawnie jumped out of the hold to run to the mast. She seemed to skip up it, moving from rope to cross-mast
to belaying pin.

Zel watched her thoughtfully. “Useful on ship, being a tumbler,” she said, as if she’d never realised her physical skills
might have any other application than performing.

“Your aunties seem happy,” Martine said. It would be good for both Zel and Flax, she thought, if Zel took some time on board
a ship.

“But what would Flax do?” Zel muttered as she shovelled Trine’s dung into a bucket. She washed down the deck before spreading
a fresh layer of straw.

Martine enjoyed the sun on her back as she watched Zel complete her chores. But slowly, subtly, she became aware that something
was wrong. The sun was on her back, all right, but she wasn’t growing any warmer. It wasn’t the breeze — she was in a protected
corner here. The sun’s rays were growing weaker instead of stronger, although it was approaching noon.

“Something’s wrong,” she said. “Call Safred.”

They didn’t have to. As they came out of the hold Safred emerged from below deck, followed by Cael. The captain was at the
steering arm, conferring with the steersman, and they both looked unhappy. Arvid came from the stern to join them as Martine
and the others approached.

“What’s happening?” Arvid asked.

The captain pointed off the starboard bow. Between them and the coast was a long, low bank of fog, rolling silently over the
water towards them. It was a pure, cold white, and it should have reflected the sun brilliantly, but instead it seemed to
drink the light in.

Martine found it terrifying. “Can we outrun it?” she asked.

The captain shook her head. “Normal fog, maybe. Not it. That’s peril fog, that is. No escaping. All we can do is batten down
until it gets what it came for.”

“What is it coming for?” Cael asked.

“Memories,” the captain said, in the same way she might have said “murder.” The fog was coming faster. “Keep hold!” she called,
bracing herself against the steering board, the steersman on the other side equally braced.

Martine moved back to the mast and grabbed a stay. She saw Arvid vaulting over a crate to get to her and then the fog reached
them.

It blanked out not only sight but also every other sense. Martine couldn’t hear, or speak, or feel her hands or feet. As though
she had been imprisoned in fleece, but she couldn’t even struggle against it. She tried stamping her feet on the deck, but
it made no noise.

Then she heard, finally, and wished she hadn’t. Someone was weeping. The steersman, she thought. The voice was a man’s, close
by, but he was crying like a child. Martine moved, without thought, to go to him, but without any sense of her body she had
no idea how or which way she was moving, and she froze in fear. She could walk straight off the side of the ship unwittingly.

Then another voice — Safred’s — cried out, “No!”

Martine sensed power in that rejection: the fog seemed to thin in that direction. Having a direction at all was so great a
relief that Martine wanted to sink down and collapse, but she moved towards Safred as fast as she could.

Safred was muttering, “I will not…” over and over, and Martine used the words as a home line, like the ones they strung
between houses in the Last Domain in winter, so that someone caught out in a blizzard could grab on and follow it to safety.
She followed the words and found the white nothingness dissipating, so much that she could finally see Safred, in a column
of clear air.

Others were coming, too: Arvid was next to her, Cael sprawled on the deck at Safred’s feet — had he been weeping? A small
whirlwind of fog lingered above Safred’s head, seeming to be drilling down. Martine’s Sight struck her and she almost fainted.
She could feel the hunger in the fog, a hunger that could not be satisified. The hunger of the dark for the light, the hunger
of the dead for life, the hunger of emptiness.

“I will not. I will not…” Safred’s face was set but she kept repeating the words.

The captain stumbled into the clear air. “Let them have it!” she pleaded. “It’ll go if you let it have the memory. It only
ever takes from one or two.”

“No!” Safred cried out. “They want all of them. They’re not mine to give!”

Martine understood. Safred had not only her own memories, but the memories of all the people she had helped over the years.
All those secrets, the deepest part of herself, were not hers to give. She had a hunger for secrets equal to the fog’s, which
meant that to it she was a feast. The fog would not let her go.

“We’ll be stuck here forever!” the captain said. “I beg you, Well of Secrets.”

Cael dragged himself up and put his hand on her shoulder. “Niece, I think you must.”

“They trusted me,” she said, eyes fixed on nothing.

He pressed her shoulder. “They are only secrets. You are more than the secrets you hold.”