Full Circle (6 page)

Ash began to shake, but he gripped the knife in his hand more surely and raised it, then brought his other hand off the brooch
and held it ready over the bones. It trembled slightly, although Bramble couldn’t tell if that was from fright or from the
passage of power through him.

Ash brought the knife down on his palm, and blood flicked out over the bones.

Bramble held her breath, feeling shaky. Ash’s voice climbed to a climax and stopped on a high note that brought the echoes
ringing and ringing after it. She was staring at the bones so hard her eyes started to burn.

Nothing happened.

The blood trickled down over the skull and dripped into the empty eye sockets. A small, slightly mad, part of Bramble’s mind
was concerned about getting blood stains on the scarf; she was thinking about anything, bloodstains, washing, the cold of
the stone floor through her thin boots, anything rather than face the possibility that everything they had done had been for
nothing. That she would never see him again.

Ash sighed and sat back, his face carefully blank.

There was a long silence.

“So,” Medric said, “is that it?”

“It was not complete,” Baluch said gently.

Bramble was reminded of Tern on the cliffs of Turvite, and her own sense that what was missing from Tern’s spell was feeling,
some emotion apart from the desire for revenge. “You have to really want him back,” she said, her voice trembling a little.
She breathed in deeply, controlling it. “And you don’t, do you?”

“Of course I do!” Ash said. “We need him.”

“But you hate him,” she said. Ash stared at her and Baluch stared at him, as though surprised at the idea.

“Of course I hate him,” Ash said impatiently. “He invaded my country and massacred my people.”

“No, no, that’s not how it happened!” Baluch protested.

“Yes it was,” Bramble said. She wasn’t minded to let Baluch paint Acton in rosy colours, no matter how much she loved him.

“You weren’t there —” Baluch started.

“Really?” Bramble said. “I have two words for you, Baluch son of Eric who never took part in massacres. River Bluff.”

Baluch fell silent, staring at her as if she were the Well of Secrets herself. Bramble felt a quick flash of sympathy for
Safred. That look made her feel not fully human.

“There
were
massacres,” Bramble said quietly. “Whole towns, killed or dispossessed. He wanted T’vit, didn’t he, and he did whatever it
took to get it. So don’t tell me Ash doesn’t have reason to hate him. Anyone with Traveller blood has reason to hate him.”

“Including you?” Baluch asked.

“I have reason,” Bramble said. “And none of that matters. What matters is how to get him back.”

“The problem is,” Ash said, “I think it needs a memory in the middle of it, or a true longing, and I don’t have either.”

“I could help,” Baluch said, “but it might upset the song to have two singers.”

“I’ll do it,” Bramble said.

“You?” Baluch gazed at her in astonishment. “You remember Acton?”

It was too much, suddenly. “Better than you,” she hissed. “You let him go off to that meeting with Asgarn while you went to
your precious Lake, didn’t you? You let him go off to be killed!”

“Asgarn…” Baluch breathed, his eyes hardening. “I knew. I
knew
it was him, but I could never prove it. Never even find the body.”

“Enough!” Ash said firmly. “We can discuss the past later. Right now we have a job to do.” He turned to Bramble. “Prepare
your memory,” he said gently. He had gained in authority, somehow, since she’d last seen him.

She knew it would need more than memory. It needed the longing he had spoken of. Gods knew she had that, but she would have
to share it with Ash for the spell to work. She turned aside for a moment, her face burning. How much was she prepared to
give to stop Saker? All her certainties were gone, all her defences were down. Now it seemed her privacy and dignity had to
be sacrificed too.

Maryrose, she thought. This is for you.

She turned back, her face calm again, and joined hands with Ash, her other hand resting on the familiar curve of the brooch,
Asa’s brooch, Acton’s brooch. Red’s, after he had thrust the knife into Acton’s back. That memory brought the rush of feeling
that she needed, they all needed, to bring him back: longing, regret… love. Ash felt it sweep through her and he gulped
in surprise, then started singing, a little faster, a little more urgently than before, the harsh notes rising and rising,
words a bit different, rhythm altered so that it matched her breathing as she thought of him, remembered him,
needed
him as the heart needs blood, as the loom needs thread, to be whole.

And this time, it was her hand that Ash slashed, her blood that spilled over his pale, pale bones. She welcomed the pain because
it was easier to bear than the loss of him, easier to think about than the emptiness which he had filled. Memories of his
life flooded her, and it was as though she were him as well as Baluch, as well as Asa, seeing the world through his eyes briefly
as she had seen it through theirs: climbing the mountain to find Friede, she was both Baluch and Acton; guiding the boat down
the river to Turvite, she was both steersman and prowman, both exulting; fighting the people of River Bluff, she wielded two
swords, and both killed… Standing on the mountain, watching him climb to his death, she was him, too, looking at a dark-haired
wild-looking girl, feeling his heart leap…

Come back from beyond death, she willed into the darkness. We have need of you. Come back.
I
have need of you.

She could feel something happening, and hear something, too, a whisper without body, a bodiless chant without words, a high
whine. It made her feel sick, and suddenly she thought, this is unnatural. Wrong. The gods had deserted her, as though they
wanted nothing to do with it, although they had sent her here for just this moment.

She heard Medric gasp suddenly and Baluch’s breath hissed out, but she could not look up from the bones where gently, hesitantly,
a mist was gathering.

Her breath was hard to find. At the edge of her vision shapes twisted, pale shadows of writhing bodies. She willed herself
not to look at them and concentrated on Acton, Acton. Come, I have need of you.

Ash pulled her back, still singing, but she kept hold of the brooch as he guided her to her feet so she could see more, back
a few steps until their legs knocked against a rock pillar and they stood and stared at the ghost standing before them, white
and clear as a sculpture in ice. There were no shapes in the darkness now, no twisting forms, no sense of wrongness. Just
him.

T
RINE WAS
housed in a small hold that opened up directly to the deck.

“Fish hold,” the shipmaster had said, and it smelled like it. Trine hadn’t settled easily, but it was much better than trying
to get her below decks. Half of the hold was covered over to give her shelter from rain and sun, but she could get her nose
up into the open air and move around on her tether a little.

“Look. That’s my Aunty Rumer,” Zel said blankly, staring up at the rigging where a dark-haired woman flipped open a sail and
let it drop free. “Or maybe Rawnie.” She blinked, as if trying to make her eyes see better. “They’re twins.”

Trine snorted and tried to shy as the sail bellowed, but Zel held her firmly and patted her, taking the excuse to look away
from the rigging and attend to the horse.

“Don’t give her too much freedom,” the shipmaster told her. “If the swell gets up, we’ll have to lash her down and she won’t
like that, so keep her close tied.”

Zel had frowned but seen the sense to it, and they’d loaded Trine first and let her get used to her quarters well before they
set sail. Martine and Zel had kept her company. She was beginning, Martine thought, to accept them as inadequate substitutes
for Bramble. As the ship left the dock, Zel began rebinding Trine’s forefoot with a padded bandage, designed to stop her being
bruised in bad weather, and she was carefully not looking up.

“Nice for you, to meet family,” Martine said lightly, but she wondered. Zel’s face was bemused, as though she wasn’t quite
sure what she should be feeling. She certainly wasn’t feeling anything uncomplicated like pleasure at meeting family.

Then, when was family ever uncomplicated? Martine mused on her own four aunties, all dead, who were as fine a mixture of love,
interference, exasperation and pride as any niece could have had. She wondered how she’d feel if she’d encountered them unexpectedly,
in those years she’d been on the Road before they’d all been killed by the Ice King’s men. Somehow she thought there was more
in Zel’s eyes than the ambivalence an independent girl might feel about kin.

“Your mam’s sisters?” Martine asked politely. “Or your da’s?”

“Mam’s,” Zel said, her lips tucking back as soon as she said the word, as if she wanted to unsay it.

Yes, there it was. Something about Zel’s mam. Martine’s Sight nudged her, but she didn’t need it to know that Zel and her
mam had had a difficult time of it together. Perhaps seeing these aunties brought back bad memories. But later she saw Zel
eating her supper with two women as alike as two hen’s eggs, and the three of them were laughing.

They sailed into Mitchen in the early morning, on a grey day with a chill wind. Unlike Turvite, the Mitchenites had built
right up to the edge of their headlands, so coming into harbour meant passing below houses and shops, aware of people out
early in the streets pointing to them, calling out, running down to the docks, clutching their money pouches.

“No ships in port,” Arvid said, looking worried.

By the time the sailors were tying up at the big dock, a crowd was pushing its way to the ship. Mostly men, but some women
carrying babies or leading children by the hand. There were no dark heads among them, or none Martine could see. She wondered
if all the Travellers of Mitchen had taken shelter somewhere. She hoped so — with news of the massacre at Carlion clearly
spreading across the country, it wouldn’t be long before someone decided all Travellers were somehow responsible.

The shipmaster called, “Don’t put the gangplank out!”

Rumer and Rawnie, who were holding it, laid it down. The sailors on the mooring ropes let out a little slack, so that the
people on the dock couldn’t touch the ship.

“Captain! Captain! I can pay, all the way to the Wind Cities!”

“Take my children if you won’t take me!”

They shouted and pleaded with her, becoming more agitated, until the shipmaster held up her hands for quiet. Gradually, they
fell silent, their upturned faces a mixture of anxiety and hope.

“We are not going to the Wind Cities,” she shouted. “We’re going to Turvite.”

They started shouting again: “You’re mad! You’re fools! The ghost’ll go there, sure as fire burns! They love ghosts in Turvite!”

The shipmaster just stood there and gradually, one by one, the crowd dispersed, turning back home with heavy treads and slumped
shoulders.

The only one who stayed was an old, grizzled sailor who said, “I’d rather be where they know how to deal with ghosts,” and
spat over the side of the dock to mark his words.

“Fair enough,” the shipmaster said, and threw him a rope to climb up. “We might need an extra steersman,” she added to Arvid.
“The waters around Turvite are liable to be rough, this time of year, when the current changes.”

The harbour master emerged from his house and organised the unloading of the cargo and the restocking of the boat’s larders
and water barrels.

Safred was first off the gangplank, sitting down thankfully on a crate. “When my stomach settles down, I might even be able
to eat something,” she said, half-laughing.

Apple and the other two merchants started heading for town. “Don’t know what kind of bargain we’re going to make,” she called
back to Arvid from the deck. “Frightened people hold on hard to their purses.”

But she seemed cheerful enough, her blond hair swinging in its single long plait. She looked younger than she had at the Plantation,
Martine thought. Probably comes of not having to look after anyone, or cook any meals. Or wear the big, heavy jackets you
needed in the Last Domain. Martine herself felt much freer now they were far enough south that she could pack away her felt
coat.

Arvid came up behind Martine and put his hands on her waist. A squirm of pleasure went right through her. She bit back a smile.

“Not going into town?” he asked.

“I’m thinking about it,” she replied. “Times of trouble, a stonecaster can make good money. But by the same stone, a stonecaster
can get into a lot of trouble if the answers aren’t to everyone’s liking.”

“So stay with me,” he breathed. “I have no duties here at all. It’s Apple and her friends who do the bargaining. I just turn
up for the celebration meal afterwards, so our customers can brag about having dinner with the warlord.”

Martine sniffed. “Not much to brag about.”

“Not from where I sit,” he agreed, nuzzling her ear. The hot breath melted her.

“Oh, all right,” she said, feigning reluctance. “I suppose I don’t have anything else to do right now.”

Laughing, he pulled her by the hand down the companionway and into his cabin. As they tumbled onto the bunk, she could hear
Trine’s hooves clunking down the gangplank, with Zel’s footfalls in between. So they were all right, and she could concentrate
on Arvid.

They didn’t come out until it was night.

On deck, Safred and Cael were having a late supper: “Just something light,” Safred said. “My stomach isn’t quite settled yet.”
There were more sailors on board than she had expected — didn’t sailors just disappear off to the inns and brothels when a
ship was in port?

Rumer and Rawnie were having a cha with Zel in Trine’s hold while she curried the mare down. Martine asked them.

“Everything’s locked up,” they said. “Brothel’s open, but the inn’s not letting strangers drink. Only place we could get an
ale was a Traveller’s hut, out on the edges, and that wasn’t the best place to drink for two women. Lot of young’uns, full
of beer and piss and thinking they’re cock of the dunghill. And
they
wouldn’t serve blondies, so most of the crew can’t get a drink anywhere. Might as well be here.”