Full Circle (52 page)

The crowd roared its approval and Sorn turned to the warlords with a smile. Thegan stepped forward to object, and Merroc waved
him away.

“You have no voice in this council, Thegan. Your
nephew
is Lord of Cliff Domain, Sorn is Lady of Central. You have nothing, and you will not be listened to.”

Ranny cleared her throat. “More than that, Lord Merroc. The officer Thegan is under charge of murder, of Horst the archer
and Zel the Traveller. As we all witnessed.”

Thegan smiled contemptuously at her. “Horst was my own man. You have no rights in his death.”

He’s going to get away with it, Ash thought. Again. Just like it’s always been since the warlords took over. But this was
not the same group of people who had climbed up the headland the day before.

“You will hang for Zel’s death,” Ranny said. “I promised that you would face justice, and I will not be forsworn.”

Garham looked at the Moot staff and pointed to Thegan. “Arrest the officer and take him to the Moot Hall cells.”

They surrounded Thegan and Boc held out his hand for Thegan’s sword, which he surrendered reluctantly.

Ash moved over to Merroc and said, “If you don’t support Turvite in his death, he’ll have the Domains at war within a year.”
Merroc stiffened and nodded, once.

“I heard the stories,” Merroc said. “If he has not been changed by them, he has the heart of a soul eater, and deserves to
die.”

“He carries three knives as well as his sword,” Sorn said. Thegan shot her a glance of pure hatred; but he handed over the
knives and went with Boc and his men, down the hill, head still high.

Eolbert offered his arm to Sorn, who took it after a brief look and smile to Leof. “Come, my lady. Let us go back to the Moot
Hall out of this sun and discuss the best way to run this council of ours.”

“Here is someone who can advise us,” Sorn said, stopping next to a fat old lady in dusty clothes. “Vi, the Voice of Baluchston,
is deep in the confidence of the Lake and wise in the ways of managing a free people.”

Vi smiled at her approvingly. “As to that, lass, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t mind a chance to put my feet up.”

Sorn laughed and offered Vi her other arm. They led the parley group and most of the Turviters down the hill towards the city.
Arvid glanced back to Martine before he left, and she waved him away with a reassuring smile.

Ash stared out over a landscape which was coming back to life. Farmers were harvesting, wagons were back on the roads, boats
on the river. Everywhere seemed alive but here; the plateau was enormous without the crowd. The trampled grass was already
turning yellow under the sun.

Safred was standing in a daze of fatigue. Ash hoped that was all it was. He put a hand under her elbow and guided her towards
the path, Martine taking her other arm. She moved slowly, as though she were wading through high water. His parents went ahead
of them down the hill.

“What about you?” Martine asked him. “What are you going to do now?”

Ash paused, then took a deep breath and sang, in Flax’s memory: “Up jumps the sun in the early, early morning…” His parents
whirled around, his mother’s face alight with a kind of joy he’d never seen there before. For a moment, he was full of regret
for the life that he’d thought he’d wanted. He could have it now, if he chose. But the River and the music twined together
in his mind, and he knew that Road was closed to him.

“I’m going to make music,” he said. He looked his father in the eyes. “New music. Make it up and write it down. Bramble’s
story first.”

His father seemed to understand but said nothing. His mother put a hand on his father’s arm, and they turned and walked on.

Ash and Martine paused, looking back at the place where Bramble had seemed, for a moment, to fly.

“That will be a good song,” Martine said.

Ash hoped so. He could hear it in his head, and feel the River listening with approval. They walked down to the city together
as the music played for him, flute and drum and oud, twining together around the sweet notes of a horn, crying out her beauty
and her courage. And her bloody-mindedness, too. He knew the refrain, already:

The road is long and the end is death

If we’re lucky
.

Alison Casey

P
AMELA
F
REEMAN
is an award-winning writer for young people. She has a doctorate of creative arts from the University of Technology, Sydney,
Australia, where she has also lectured in creative writing. She lives in Sydney with her husband and young son. To find out
more about the author, visit
www.castingstrilogy.com
.

If you enjoyed

FULL CIRCLE,

look out for

HAND OF ISIS

by Jo Graham

Set in ancient Egypt, Hand of Isis is the story of Charmian, a handmaiden, and her two sisters. It is a novel of lovers who
transcend death, of gods who meddle in mortal affairs, and of women who guide empires.

My mother was a Thracian slave girl who died when I was born, so I do not remember her. Doubtless I would have died too, as
unwanted children will, had Iras’ mother not intervened. Asetnefer was from Elephantine, where the Nile comes out of Nubia
at the great gorges, and enters Egypt. Her own daughter was five months old when I was born, and she took me to her breast
beside Iras, a pale scrap of a newborn beside my foster sister. She had attended at the birth, and took it hard when my mother
died.

I do not know if they were exactly friends. I heard it said later that Pharaoh had often called for them together, liking
the contrast between them, the beauty of my mother’s golden hair against Asetnefer’s ebony skin. Perhaps it was true, and
perhaps not. Not every story told at court is true.

Whatever her reasons, Asetnefer nursed me as though I were a second child of her own, and she is the mother I remember, and
Iras my twin. She had borne a son some years before Iras, but he had drowned when he was three years old, before my sister
and I were born. It is this tragedy that colored our young lives more than anything else, I believe, though we did not mourn
for him, having never known him. Asetnefer was careful with us. We should not play out of sight of people; we should not stray
from her while she worked. She carried us both, one on each hip in a sling of cloth, Iras to the left and me to the right,
until we grew too heavy and had to go on our feet like big children. She was freeborn, and there was doubtless some story
of how she had come to be a slave in Alexandria by the sea, but I in my innocence never asked what it was.

And so the first thing I remember is this, the courtyards of the great palace at Alexandria, the slave quarters and the kitchens,
the harbor and the market, and the Court of Birds where I was born. In the palace, as in all civilized places, the language
of choice was Koine Greek, which educated people speak from one end of the world to the other, but in the slave quarters they
spoke Egyptian. My eyes were the color of lapis, and my hair might glow bronze in the sun, but the amulet I wore about my
neck was not that of Artemis, but a blue faience cat of Bastet.

In truth, that was not odd. There were golden-haired slaves from Epirus and the Black Sea, sharp Numidians and Sardinians,
men from Greece fallen on hard times, mercenaries from Parthia and Italy. All the world met in Alexandria, and every language
that is spoken was heard in the streets and in her slave quarters. A quarter of the people of the city were Jews, and it was
said that there were more Jews in Alexandria than in Jerusalem. They had their own neighborhood, with shops and theaters and
their own temples, but one could not even count the Jews who studied at the Museum and Library, or who taught there. A man
might have a Greek name and blond hair, and yet keep the Jewish sabbath if it suited him. So it was of little importance that
I looked Greek and acted Egyptian.

Iras, on the other hand, looked as Egyptian as possible and had the mind of a skeptic philosopher. From her earliest days
she never ceased asking why. Why does the sea pile against the harbor mole? Why do the stars shine? What keeps us from flying
off the ground? Her black hair lay smooth in the heavy braids that mine always escaped, and her skin was honey to my milk.
We were as alike as night and day, parts of one thing, sides of the same coin.

The seas pile against the harbor mole because Isis set them to, and the stars are the distant fires of people camping in the
sky. We could not fly because like young birds we had not learned yet, and when we did we should put off our bodies and our
winged souls should cavort through the air, chasing and playing like swifts. The world was enchantment, and there should be
no end it its magic, just as there was no end to the things that might hold Iras’ curiosity. And that is who we were when
we first met the Princess Cleopatra.

Knowing all that she became, it is often assumed that at that age she must have been willful and imperious. Nothing is further
from the truth. To begin with, she was the fifth child and third daughter, and not reckoned of much account. Her mother was
dead as well, and the new queen had already produced a fourth princess. There was little reason for anyone to take note of
her, another Cleopatra in a dynasty full of them. I only noticed her because she was my age.

In fact, she was exactly between me and Iras in age, born under the stars of winter in the same year, and when I met her I
did not know who she was.

Iras and I were five years old, and enjoying a rare moment of freedom. Someone had called Asetnefer away with some question
or another, and Iras and I were left to play under the eyes of half the other slave women of the household in the Court of
Birds. There was a fountain there, with worn mosaics of birds around the base, and we were playing a splashing game, in which
one of us would leap in to throw water on the other, who would try to avoid being soaked, waiting her turn to splash the other.
Running from a handful of cold water, I noticed a girl watching us with something of a wistful expression on her face. She
had soft brown hair falling down her back, wide brown eyes that seemed almost round, smudged with sooty lashes. She was wearing
a plain white chiton and girdle, and she was my height precisely. I smiled at her.

At that she came out from the shadow of the balcony above and asked if she could play.

“If you can run fast enough,” Iras said.

“I can run,” she said, her chin coming up. Faster than a snake, she dipped in a full handful of water and dashed it on Iras.

Iras squealed, and the game was off again, a three-way game of soaking with no rules.

It lasted until Asetnefer returned. She called us to task immediately, upbraiding us for having our clothes wet, and then
she saw the other girl and her face changed.

“Princess,” she said gravely, “you should not be here rather than in the Royal Nursery. They will be searching for you and
worrying if you have come to harm.”

Cleopatra shrugged. “They never notice if I’m gone,” she said. “There is Arsinoe and the new baby, and no one cares what becomes
of me.” She met Asetnefer’s eyes squarely, like a grown-up, and there was no self-pity in her voice. “Why can’t I stay here
and play? Nothing bad will happen to me here.”

“Pharaoh your father will care if something happens to you,” Asetnefer said. “Though it’s true you are safe enough here.”
A frown came between her eyes, and she glanced from the princess to Iras, who stood taller by half a head, then to me with
my head to the side.

A princess, I thought with some surprise. She doesn’t seem like a goddess on earth. At least not like what I think a goddess
should be.

“Has he not arranged for tutors for you?” Asetnefer asked. “You are too old for the nursery.”

She shrugged again. “I guess he forgot,” she said.

“Perhaps he will remember,” Asetnefer said. “I will take you back to the nursery now, before anyone worries. Girls! Iras!
Charmian! Put dry clothes on and behave until I get back.”