Full Circle (31 page)

“To the smith,” she said proudly.

“Congratulations. He’s a good man.”

Astonishingly, Forli blushed. A love match? Amazing. Anything was possible, if Forli was in love.

Ash gave Forli some coppers and she went off to the market to buy them bread and milk and cheese. “And some pasties!” Bramble
called after her. “Some of Sigi’s ale would be good, too.”

As soon as she’d left, Acton and Baluch came out from behind the shed and with his sword Acton prised off the board nailing
the door shut.

Bramble stood for a moment in the doorway before going in. This house was full of memories of Maryrose, and hatred of Saker
surged back, stronger than ever. He would pay for his murders. She set her mouth and walked in, dropping her saddlebags in
the corner; she took the bucket and fetched water from their well.

She sat down, finally, on her stool. Her own stool, at their own table. Although her parents had gone to Carlion to live with
Maryrose and Merrick, it was clear the house was well kept. Her grandfather must have stayed here, or come back for frequent
visits. That made sense. He’d never liked towns anymore than she did. She blinked back tears. Time to get on with the job.

“How do you say ‘new beginning’ in their language?” Acton asked Baluch, catching her thought.

She left them repeating words like “peace” and “justice,” and went into the room she and Maryrose had shared. Her mother had
kept it as it was, except that there was a new cover on Maryrose’s old bed. Her mother had woven it — she recognised the pattern
as one her mother had been working on in the year Bramble left home.

That made her want to cry, suddenly, but she forced the tears back and fed her anger instead. Saker would suffer. She would
turn the knife in the wound, herself, and make sure.

W
ITH A
good following wind, they came to Turvite faster than Martine had dared to hope for, and found other ships heading the same
way. Safred was still keeping to her bed; she shook every time she tried to stand up, and Cael spent most of his time sitting
on a stool next to her, keeping watch. He seemed a little stronger after days on the water, and Martine hoped against hope
that his wound would heal after all.

“That’s Eni’s colours,” Arvid said, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun so he could sight the two-master a league or
two ahead of them. It was just about to make the tack into the narrow entrance to Turvite harbour. He turned to look astern,
where a three-masted galley rowed. “And those are Coeuf’s.”

“You haven’t displayed your colours,” Martine said.

Arvid grinned. “I didn’t bring them with me. Didn’t think of it, to tell truth. I was just going on a trading trip to Mitchen,
remember?” He ran a hand through his brown hair and frowned. “Someone must have sent out the muster for the warlords’ council.
It’s always held in Turvite.”

There was a note in his voice she hadn’t heard before, a mixture of wariness and distaste. “You don’t like the council?”

It was a daring thing for a commoner to ask a warlord, but he didn’t seem to notice that. He seemed to view her as his equal.
She found herself testing him like this all the time, trying to find out, once for all, if he really believed in Valuing or
was just mouthing the words. He hadn’t failed, even a little bit, not once. She should stop doing it.

He sidestepped the question. “I wasn’t brought up to politics. It’s different in the Last Domain. We’re so isolated that we’re
all in it together. There are very few officers’ families, and most of them have intermarried with merchants and farmers and
even crafters. We don’t stand on ceremony much.”

Martine imagined what it was like, going from that to a warlords’ council, with its rigid and exacting etiquette, its precise
gradings of status and worth… And he was so young, much younger than the other warlords she knew of.

She slipped a hand through his arm and hugged it to her, the most spontaneous show of affection she’d given him in public.
“You’d better not be seen with me,” she said. “I’d destroy your standing completely.”

He went still, avoiding her eyes, and she realised that this was something he’d thought about, had already made a decision
on. Her mouth went dry. This was the moment when he would say, “I’m sorry, but you’re right…” Because the truth was that
warlord and Traveller just couldn’t be together, and this time on the ship was stolen time, honeyed time, like childhood summer
days that seemed to stretch on forever but had to end in darkness.

He picked up a short length of rope from a barrel in front of them, and started twisting it in his hands, as though he wanted
a reason not to look at her.

That was when she realised that she
did
love him, because instead of being angry about it, she wanted to make it easier for him, even if her heart felt that it was
splitting in two.

“It’s all right,” she said, letting go of his arm. “I understand. You have a job to do. The council is more important —”

He turned to face her, grabbing at her hand, his mouth set stubbornly.

“I will not deny you,” he said furiously. “If what we are building in the north means anything, then I
must
not deny you. Let them say whatever they want — I am the warlord, I will do as I choose!”

She stared at him for a moment, astonished, and then laughed, helplessly laughed until she sank down on the deck, gasping.
He stared at her in bewilderment.

“Meet arrogance with more arrogance?” she managed to say. “Protect equality by demanding respect for your rank?”

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth and he raised his head in a parody of a proud officer. “Ex-actly,” he said, exaggerating
each sound. “Pre-cisely.”

“Let’s hope it works,” she said.

He stared at her, as if suddenly uncertain, running the length of rope through his hands. “So… you will stand with me?”

It wasn’t ex-actly, pre-cisely a marriage proposal, which was good because she wasn’t ready for one yet. But it was a big
thing, a large question. It would change her life forever. She should think it over sensibly before she gave him her answer.

“Of course I will,” she said.

L
EOF RAISED
the alarm well enough for some of the people of Sendat to run. But not all. Not even most.

The ghosts didn’t chase the ones who ran. Perhaps they thought they’d have time later to track and slaughter them. Perhaps
they were right. If no one could stand against them, nowhere was safe.

Leof stopped running, and stood in the middle of an open field of hay, hay that should be harvested, and let the sweat cool
on his back and neck.

He had nothing. Was nothing.

He sank to the ground and sat cross legged, his head hanging. No longer an officer. Forsworn. A traitor. Without allegiance,
or family, because his family was cut off from him now, for their own safety. Without home, or goods, or even a horse. He
had a sword he was no longer permitted to use, a small pouch of silver, and a woven ring of reeds.

Should he go to the Lake? The Lake, alone, could keep her people safe from the ghosts, he was sure. He thought he would be
welcomed there, but what would he do? Learn to fish?

With everything else taken away, there was only one place he wanted to be — within sight of Sorn.

Sorn was on her way to Turvite.

A free town, where traitors were protected.

He might catch a glimpse of her there, make sure she was safe. Make sure she was still alive.

He picked up a handful of dirt and let it run through his fingers. It was good soil, in Central Domain. Full of life. He didn’t
want to see it become a wasteland peopled only by ghosts. He could offer his services to the Turvite Council, to other warlords
even. He could still fight.

Leof dusted off his hands and stood up, his head swimming a little. He hadn’t eaten for a while, or drunk… There was
a stream nearby. He went to it and drank, then took the reed ring from around his neck and held it in his hand. “Lady?” he
said, not expecting a reply.

He remembered her last answer:
If you will not go home to your mother, you must take the consequences
. Going home to his mother was no longer possible, not if he wanted to keep her safe.

“I can’t go home to my mother now, Lady,” he said. “I am a traitor. Should I go to Turvite?” But this time there was no answer.
Perhaps he had exhausted her patience, or maybe the answer was so obvious she didn’t need to give it.

It was a long way to Turvite, so he stole a horse, one of Thegan’s breeding stock from a farm across the valley. It was a
good mare, by Acton out of Dancing Shoes. Not as good as Arrow, but fresh. He took a spare mount, a chestnut gelding, so he
would lose as little time as possible. He wished he could have taken Arrow, but he knew she would have been taken by Thegan’s
party.

He stole saddle and tack as well, from the empty stable block. The farm workers were holed up in the strongest part of the
farmhouse, behind shutters and bars. He saddled the horse and rode up to the door. He could at least give them a warning.

“Take the horses and go to Turvite,” he yelled. “My lord Thegan will meet you there.”

An eye peered out from a crack in the shutters. “My lord Leof?”

“The ghosts have taken the fort,” he said. “Make your escape while you can. Take the horses to Turvite and my lord will be
pleased.”

The eye stared at him, and he was suddenly conscious of his short hair, blowing across his face.

“The fort’s gone?” The man’s tone was incredulous, as though he couldn’t imagine it.

“Aye,” Leof said. “And the ghosts have tools, now, axes.” The eye disappeared and he heard a flurry of activity start inside.
“Be safe!” he yelled, and he kicked the mare into a canter, down the wide grassy ride to the back road which led south. The
main road would be choked with those who were fleeing Sendat. He hoped enough people had got out for that to be true. Or else
there was no good that had come from his betrayal of his lord.

H
IS NAME
was Oak. He was a man about Saker’s age, dark haired and thick-shouldered, with grey eyes that burned.

“I want to join you,” he said. “It shouldn’t be like this.”

Saker nodded. Oak was talking about the bodies around them — bodies with dark hair like his, who had been slaughtered by Thegan’s
men, cut down by arrows, most of them. They were being collected and reverently prepared for burying by some of the ghosts.
The rosemary bushes in the kitchen garden were almost stripped bare; and they’d had to send a party to the coppice to collect
enough pine sprigs.

“We all want to fight. Take back what was ours.”

A group stood behind Oak — about thirty people. All that they could save of the Travellers in the barn, although Oak had told
him that some had escaped before the ghosts stormed the walls.

Saker was filled with elation. This was what he had hoped for, dreamt of: his people, joining him in the fight. Living comrades,
fighting for justice.

Tears came to his eyes. “You are welcome,” he said. He clasped arms with Oak and then turned to the others, a mixed group
of men and women, all ages from fifteen to sixty. “We’ve taken over the warlord’s hall. Go find yourselves food and drink.
Tomorrow we bury our dead and then we march.”

They stood together in the muster yard in the red, dying light of dusk and used one of the warlord’s men, a young officer
named Wil, to get the blood they needed. Oak had found him hiding in the barn loft.

“Blood and memory,” Saker said as he wielded the knife, trying not to remember Freite with her knife, trying to convince himself
that this was no different to killing in battle. It was the first time he had killed a human with his own hands. The man was
his own age and some quirk had also given him hazel eyes. He was on his knees, not pleading, his head up. But his eyes showed
white as Saker raised the knife.

“Gods of field and stream,” he began, “gods of sky and wind, gods of earth and stone —”

His father, impatient, seized the knife from Saker’s hand and slashed it across the boy’s arm. The blood welled up, not pulsing,
but streaming steadily. It would last long enough for each ghost to taste, or touch, or whatever they pleased.

Saker heard again, at the edge of his hearing, the thin, high keening he had heard as he had called up the ghosts in the coppice.
No one else, not even his father, seemed to hear it. There were others, he thought, whose bones he’d not found, who watched
them and wanted to join their fight. It was their grief he heard when the spell was loosed.

Alder dipped a finger in the man’s blood and drew a line across his forehead. It stood out startlingly dark against his pale
skin. Owl followed suit.

Saker swallowed. His father should have left the knife stroke to him. But he said nothing and turned to the ghosts, who were
queuing for their share of blood.

“Blood
and
memory,” he said to them as they walked past. Most chose to mark their faces, like Alder, but some bent and licked at the
blood. The officer shuddered at each touch.

There were hundreds, and by the end, when the sun was almost gone, the last of them were hustling to claim their share, so
that the man was pulled this way and that, his blood smeared uselessly on the ground. He fainted, moaning, his face as pale
as theirs.

And then the sun disappeared.

For a moment, only a moment, Saker found part of himself hoping that it hadn’t worked, that they wouldn’t have to go on, day
after day, finding blood, sacrificing.

Saker waited a heartbeat, two, three. The ghosts stopped moving, turned their faces to the west. But they did not fade.

His father slapped Saker on the back, smiling, and Owl nodded at both of them, his face intense with satisfaction.

Alder indicated the land below them, spreading his arm wide, and Saker grinned.

“Yes,” he said, “we take back all of it. Starting with Turvite.”