Full Circle (36 page)

“As if you cared!” Sorn shot back. “If you’d been a
man
and sired your own sons, you would never have allowed Masry’s get to have any part of your lands.”

He struck her across the face, a full back-handed blow that sent her sprawling on the floor. Gabra and Martine both moved
between them as he took a step towards her.

Sorn did not cry out. She fell in silence, as though she’d done it many times before, and climbed back to her feet in silence,
and faced him down. “I am my father’s daughter, and the true heir to his Domain,” she said softly. “I renounce you as husband.”

Thegan smiled. “I own you, wife.”

“I have had time to study my position, these last years,” Sorn continued, “since I have not had children to occupy me.” He
flinched, and her voice gained strength. “There are ancient laws, little used but still valid. Since the Domain passes through
my bloodline, if you are not able to give me heirs, I can renounce you for the sake of the Domain, and take another husband.”

“I’ll kill you first,” he said. “You know I will.”

“This is not Sendat. You are not ruler here. If you kill me without heirs, my cousin Coeuf’s son inherits.”

“He’d have to take it by blood.”

“It’s already been taken,” Martine said, annoyed. “Have you forgotten?”

Thegan nodded, still looking at Sorn. “She’s right. Truce, until the enchanter is defeated?” His voice was as soft as honey,
as reasonable as rain after drought.

Sorn stared heavily at him, red from his blow spreading across her cheek, and then nodded. “But I will not sleep where you
sleep,” she said.

“Stay with us,” Safred said immediately.

Thegan flicked a hand as if to say “Do what you like,” then walked out of the room. Gabra hesitated, but followed him.

Martine and Sorn and Safred looked at each other.

“Don’t trust him to keep this truce,” Safred said.

Sorn gave a half-smile. “I know him too well to trust him with anything,” she said. She sat, exhausted, on one of the chairs
and raised a hand to her face.

“That wasn’t the first time he’d done that,” Martine said.

“No, no, he’s never struck me before,” Sorn said.

“It wasn’t the first time you’ve been struck, though.”

Sorn bit her lip and shrugged. Safred laid a hand over the red cheek and sang softly under her breath. When she took the hand
away the skin was back to its normal pale glow.

Sorn looked up with awe. “A true prophet,” she said. “The gods are good, to have sent you to us.”

A flush swept up over Safred’s freckled face. “The gods love
you
,” she said. “They yearn for you.”

But Sorn only laughed, as though that were impossible. She dug inside her belt pouch and brought out a small scroll of paper.
“I don’t know who to give this to,” she said. “I made a list of the Travellers at Sendat. I’ve marked the ones who escaped
before the ghosts came. Most of the others were killed, although some may have survived. I thought someone, somewhere, would
want to know who they were…”

Safred took the list gravely, and looked over it. It was long. Halfway down, her expression lightened.

“Rowan and Swallow escaped,” she said to Martine. Martine knew that they were Ash’s parents. Ash had been going to find his
father…

“What about Ash?” she asked, in sudden fear.

“There is no Ash on the list,” Sorn replied.

Martine realised only then that her heart had stopped beating, when it resumed with a sudden thud. But there were tears on
Safred’s cheek.

“Who?” Martine asked. “Who is it?”

“Flax,” Safred said numbly.

Martine drew in a sharp breath. No, she prayed. No.

“A young man,” Sorn said. “A beautiful singer. I know he died, trying to lead the others to escape. I am sorry… you knew
him?”

Martine turned away. Zel. Gods of field and stream, what would Zel do?

“I should have known this had happened,” Safred said numbly. “
Why didn’t they tell me?
”

“Because,” Martine said bitterly, “human death doesn’t matter to them, remember?”

“I have to tell Zel,” Safred said.

Martine and Sorn went with her. Martine passed other stonecasters coming to the Moot Hall, but didn’t stop. Let them sort
out a strategy, she thought, and she would help. They knew as much about spell casting as she did. She had to be with Zel.

As soon as they came around the stable door, Zel realised something was wrong. “Are the ghosts here?” she asked, springing
up from a straw bale, bridle and cleaning cloth in her hands.

Safred just stood there. Martine didn’t know what to say, either.

“What’s wrong?” Zel asked.

Sorn moved forward, her face full of compasssion. “I am sorry, but we have bad news. You have a brother named Flax? A singer?”

Zel nodded slowly.

“He is dead.”

Her head moved from side to side in denial. Sorn took her hands, pressing them in sympathy.

“He was very brave,” she said. “He was trying to free his people when he was cut down.”

“Free them?” Zel whispered. “From the ghosts?”

“No.” Sorn’s voice was even gentler. “The warlord at Sendat held Travellers for hostage against the ghosts. But the enchanter
attacked anyway, and the hostages… Some managed to escape, but your brother…”

“The warlord killed him,” Zel said flatly. “What about Ash? Is he dead, too?”

Sorn looked at Martine for help.

“We don’t know what’s happened to Ash,” Martine said. “Oh, Zel, I’m sorry.”

“He promised he’d keep Flax safe,” Zel explained to Sorn, as if it were very important that she understood. “He
promised
. He’s a safeguarder, see, and he said he’d look after Flax like he were his little brer.” Her voice cracked on the word and
she drew in a long, sobbing breath.

“So he’s still alive? Right? He’s alive and my brer dead?” She turned to Safred. “That right?”

Safred nodded. “I think so. But we don’t know why —”

“Don’t matter
why!”
Zel said. “Don’t matter. He’s alive and my boy’s dead and he promised.” She threw the bridle and cloth on the floor. “Where’s
the enchanter now?”

“On his way to Turvite,” Safred said. “Zel —”

“Warlords gatherin” to fight, eh? Kill more people? Seems to me this enchanter are the only one stayed honest.” She walked
out the door.

Sorn went to follow her, but Safred stopped her. “Let her go.”

“Is this part of the pattern, too?” Martine asked with bitterness.

“I pray so,” Safred said.

S
AKER LOOKED
across the plain to the rising hills in the distance. Turvite, and beyond that, the sea.

It had been fifteen years since he had been here, the year that Freite had come to barter with the trader from the Wind Cities
for some special herbs for a particular spell against plague.

The trader had refused to sell them to her, and she had been furious. Saker found himself thankful for that, now that he thought
about it. Had she been planning to loose a plague on her enemies, and refrained only because she could not guarantee her own
safety? It seemed likely, looking back.

He had been only a boy, then, cowed and obedient. He had gawked at the high hill with its golden houses, flinched at the noises
that clamoured in every street, slept lightly on a pallet at the end of Freite’s bed, and slept heavily on the nights after
she drew strength from him. She’d had customers: a woman with eyes the colour of sapphire, a man with a raddled nose, an old
man in rich clothes who ordered her about like a lackey. She hadn’t liked that, but after he was gone she turned to Saker
and said with satisfaction, “He’s got a canker and he’ll be dead in a year, no matter how high his mark is!”

There had been some significance to that, which he hadn’t understood, some complex bit of politics or social interaction that
she had never bothered to teach him. Now, he realised with a jolt of surprise, none of that mattered. The old ways were about
to end: old families would die, old wealth would be shared among his people. Social standing would vanish; equality would
stand. Evenness. All the things he had never quite understood would be unimportant.

They would work their way through Turvite street by street, and no one, this time, would escape.

A
SH STEPPED
onto the riverbank.

The smooth curve of bank was dotted with small jetties, and here and there clumps of willows and alders grew down to the water.
He and Baluch used the branches of one to swing up the steep bank, the sky bright above them, mackerel clouds a coverlet of
rose and gold. Ash’s safeguarder instincts made him assess their position immediately. There was no one in sight.

A light wind seemed to blow them dry in the instant that they stepped ashore. That moment, leaving Her, was full of sorrow
and loss.

He saw his pain reflected in Baluch’s face.

“It’s always so,” Baluch said gently. “To leave Her is to break your heart. Every time.”

Ash nodded. It was the same as human love, then, like the songs said. A mixture of joy and pain, desire and longing, delight
and misery.

He accepted it with some relief. If his bond with the River had been unalloyed happiness, it would have felt false to him,
like the happiness poppy juice bought. Temporary.

“The heart of love is the dagger, the soul of love is the lance,” he quoted. It was a song from the north, a couple of hundred
years old. His mother liked it.

Baluch smiled with quiet satisfaction. “That was one of my good ones,” he said.

Ash stared for a moment, then burst out laughing in a kind of shock. Had Baluch written every song he liked from the last
thousand years? He sobered, thinking about that song, “The Warrior’s Love.” A life of fighting and music, that was Baluch,
and that song brought both of them together. He wondered if Acton were as complex, if that were the reason Bramble loved him.

There were voices, beyond the curtain of trees. Many voices, talking in a low contented buzz. They paused to listen. Occasionally
a voice was raised in a shout or a laugh.

“Sounds like an inn,” Baluch said.

Ash nodded, and now he brought his attention to it, he could smell beer, and piss, and sausages cooking. “I think it’s the
Dancing Bear, at Sanctuary,” he said. “I’ve been here before.” Several times, he remembered, on jobs for Doronit. The innkeeper
was one of her customers. His stomach growled. It had been a long time since the last of the cheese. “I could do with some
food.”

“An inn is the best place to get news,” Baluch said.

They moved to the edge of the green willow curtain and paused, listening still. It felt dangerous to Ash, to push aside that
curtain and walk back out into the world. He had a deep conviction — almost Sight — that the world had changed since he entered
the River. That he would walk into the inn in another time, another place, another country, even.

He put his hand out and pulled the trailing willow withies aside, and walked into the inn yard.

There were tables set out on the river bank, full of people drinking, and the inn behind them was busy. It
was
the Dancing Bear, the largest inn on the river outside Turvite, so large that he couldn’t see beyond it to the town. As he
stood there, assessing, someone inside lit candles and the night suddenly seemed darker.

He and Baluch took a couple of steps towards the drinkers, and the people at the nearest table turned around to look.

Dung and pissmire!
Ash thought. It was Aylmer, Doronit’s right-hand man. Aylmer, and Hildie, and tall blond Elfrida, and two of the Dung Brothers.
The third Dung Brother walked out of the inn, carefully carrying three tankards. He stopped dead when he saw Ash.

There was a moment when everyone froze. Then the others looked at Aylmer — even Hildie.

“You’ve got a hide thick as an ox, coming back,” Aylmer said. “She’ll take you apart, and she’ll do it slow.”

For a moment Ash’s memory played for him a recent song: the speech he had made about the world changing, there on the steps
of the warlord’s house, in the stronghold of the enemy. He had taken the crowd with him, lifted them up with the image of
a better world, a greater world where justice was the same for everyone, officer or commoner, Traveller or Acton’s folk. It
had been a great and wonderful feeling, while it lasted, while they listened, and then afterwards as they worked together
for the first time. He had felt like a different person, as though nothing was beyond him.

But the eyes that looked at him now saw just Ash, the Traveller boy whom Doronit had employed, trained, been betrayed by.
A nothing. A cipher. Ash felt his confidence drain away with the memory of Wooding. This was Sanctuary, Turvite, the real
world, and here he was just a safeguarder.

Baluch was still behind him. Ash motioned with his hands behind his back: go, stay hidden. Baluch melted back into the willow
fronds.

This situation, he realised, wasn’t about his task, it was simply about his own survival. Perhaps this meeting was why the
stones had sent him here. He only had one chance to get Doronit’s people on his side. What would do it? All he had was the
truth.

“She wanted me to murder Martine, on Ranny’s orders. I don’t do murder for hire.”

The two Dung Brothers scratched the backs of their necks as if in puzzlement. The third moved to do the same and spilt some
beer, then put the tankards down on the table and stared at him. They weren’t hostile, but they weren’t important. It was
Aylmer and Hildie who would decide. Ash kept his eyes on them. Hildie looked scornful and somehow satisfied, as if she’d always
known he was weak and was glad to have it confirmed. Aylmer pressed his lips together, but he seemed — wistful? As though
he wished he’d made the same choice.

“She’ll take
us
apart if we doesn’t turn him over to her,” Hildie said.

“Aye,” Aylmer said slowly. “That she will.” He sounded regretful, but there was no hesitation in the way he got up and came
to Ash’s side.