Furies of Calderon (9 page)

Isana spun to face Kord, meeting his eyes squarely. “Not in
my
courtyard you won’t.”

Bittan, behind Kord, let out a rough laugh and stepped forward, toward Isana. “Well, well,” he said. “What we got here? Another little hold whore standing up for whore Heddy?”

“Bittan,” Kord growled, in warning.

Isana narrowed her eyes at Bittan. The young man’s confidence, arrogance, and a sickening rush of his lust whirled over her like a foul, greasy smoke. She watched him approach, arrogantly smiling as he eyed her, from her bare feet to her long braid. The idiot evidently did not know her by sight.

“Going bad early,” Bittan commented. “But I bet you’d be good for a tumble.” He reached out a hand to touch Isana’s face.

Isana let him touch her for a moment, felt the desperate, arrogant need of the young man to prove himself in his own eyes. She reached up and seized his wrist and then said, voice cold, “Rill. Deal with this slive.”

Bittan abruptly convulsed and threw himself backward onto the ground. He let out a strangled scream that cut off halfway through, as clear, foaming water burst from his mouth. He thrashed on the courtyard stones in a frantic tangle of flailing limbs. His eyes bulged, and he tried to scream again, nothing but water flooding from his mouth and nose.

Kord’s other son rushed to his fallen brother, and Kord himself rolled forward a step with an angry snarl. “Bitch,” he growled. The earth bulged beneath him, as though preparing to lash forward.

“Go ahead, Kord,” Isana said, her voice icy. “But before you do, I should remind you that you are in Bernard-holt, now. And you may
not
challenge me to the
juris macto”
She smiled at him, as sweet and venomous as she could manage. “I’m not a Stead-holder.”

“In that case,” she said, “I hope you’re ready to kill everyone here. Because you won’t get away with cold murder, Stead-holder Kord. I don’t care how far we are from the First Lord’s justice—kill me, and there won’t be a place in the Realm where you can hide.”

Isana promptly turned to Warner and snapped, “Wipe that smile off your face, Stead-holder. What kind of behavior is this to show to my holders, and their
children
?” She stalked toward Warner with a scowl twisting her features. “I’ll have your word that you won’t engage in this idiocy again while you’re a guest in my home.”

“Isana,” Warner protested, he and his sons still staring at Kord and his own brood, “that animal on the ground is the one who raped my daughter.”

“Papa,” Heddy sobbed, tugging at Warner’s sleeve. “Papa, please.”

“Your
word
, Warner,” Isana snapped. “Or I’ll rule against you in the truth-find right here and now.”

Warner’s gaze snapped to Isana, and she felt his sudden shock and surprise. “But Isana—”

“I don’t
care
. You can’t behave this way in my home, Warner, and my brother isn’t here to knock sense into your fool head. Your word. No more of this duel nonsense. No more fighting in Bernard-holt.”

Warner stared at her for a moment. Isana felt the man’s dismay, his anger, his helpless frustration. His gaze wavered and went to his daughter, and he softened, almost visibly. “All right,” he said, quietly. “My word. For all of us. We’ll start nothing.”

Isana whirled back toward Kord, stalking toward the young man still choking on the ground, vomiting water. She brushed roughly passed the older of Kord’s sons (Aric was his name, she thought), and reached down to lay her hand on Bittan’s forehead. The boy had gone beyond thought in his animal panic. There was no arrogance there, now, only a fear so intense that it made Isana’s skin feel cold.

Kord sneered down at her. “I guess you’re going to want my word as well.”

“What would be the point,” Isana snapped, keeping her voice low. “You’re scum, Kord, and we both know it.” Louder, she said, “Rill. Out.” She stood away as Bittan spluttered and coughed, retching more water out, finally drawing in a gasping breath of air. She left him there, coughing on the ground, and turned to go.

The stone of the courtyard folded over one of her feet with a simple and almost delicate finality. Her heart fluttered with her own fear as she felt Kord’s cold anger on her back. She flicked her braid over her shoulder and shot him a look through narrowed eyes.

“This isn’t over, Isana,” Kord promised, his voice very quiet. “I won’t stand for this.”

Isana faced his dark stare, the cold and calculating hatred behind it, and borrowed from it, used it to steel herself against him, to return ice for ice. “You’d best hope it’s over, Kord,” she said. “Or you’re going to think what happened to Bittan was a kindness.” She flicked her eyes down to her foot and back up to him. “There’s a space for you in the barn. I’ll have some food sent down for lunch. We’ll call you at dinner.”

Kord remained still for a moment. Then he spat to one side, and nodded toward his sons. Aric collected the gasping Bittan, hauling him to his feet, and the three of them walked toward the wide doors of the roomy stone barn. Only as they left did the ground quiver beneath Isana’s bare foot and let her go.

She closed her eyes, and the terror she’d been holding back, her own, flooded out and over her. She started shaking, but she shook her head to herself, firmly. Not in front of everyone. She opened her eyes and looked around at the courtyard full of people. “Well?” she asked them. “There is a lot of work to do before the feast come sundown. I can’t do
everything
around here by myself. Get to it.”

People moved, at her words, started talking again amongst themselves. Some of them shot her looks of mixed respect, admiration, and fear. Isana felt that last, like frozen cockleburs rolling over her skin. Her own folk, people she’d lived and worked with for years, afraid of her.

She lifted a hand as tears blurred at her eyes—but that was one of the first tricks a water-crafter learned. She willed them away from her eyes, and they simply did not fall. The confrontation, with its rampant tension and potential for murderous violence, had shaken her more than anything in years.

Isana drew in a careful breath and walked toward the kitchens. Her legs kept her steady, at least, though the weariness now crawling over her was nearly too much to bear. Her head ached with the efforts of the morning, with the pressure of all that water-crafting.

Fade came shuffling out of the smithy as she passed it. He moved with an odd little drag of one foot. Not a large man, he had been badly burned when he had been branded with a coward’s mark, disfiguring the left half of his face—though that had been years ago. His hair, nearly black, had grown out long and curling to partially conceal it, and the scar tracing over his scalp, presumably a head wound also suffered in battle. The slave offered her a witless smile and a tin cup of water, holding it up to her along with a fairly clean cloth, far different from his own sweaty rags and burn-scarred leather apron. “Thank you, Fade,” Isana said. She accepted both and took a drink. “I need you to keep an eye on Kord. I want you to let me know if he or his sons leave the barn. All right?”

Fade nodded rapidly, his hair flopping. A bit of drool flicked off his half-open mouth. “Eye on Kord,” he repeated. “Barn.” He frowned, staring into space for a long moment and then pointed a finger at her. “Watch better.”

Isana put Old Bitte in charge of the kitchens and returned to her room. She sat down on her bed, her hands folded on her lap. Her stomach fluttered nervously, but she forced herself to take deep breaths to stay calm. She had headed off the most immediate trouble, and Fade, despite his lack of skilled speech and his simple manner, was reliable. He would warn her if something else came up in the meantime.

She worried about Tavi—now more than any time she could remember. He was safe enough with Bernard to look after him, but her instincts would not relent. The pine hollows were the most dangerous stretch of land in the valley, but to her weary senses, the danger seemed deeper than that, and more threatening. There was something heavy and foreboding in the air of the valley, a gathering of forces that made the storm brewing over Garados look weak and tiny by comparison.

Isana laid down on her bed. “Please,” she whispered, exhausted. “Great furies please keep him safe.”

Chapter 5

Tavi picked up Dodger’s trail within an hour, but from there it wasn’t so easy. Tavi tailed the flock throughout the morning and into the early afternoon, stopping only to drink from an icy brook and to eat some cheese and salt mutton his uncle had brought with him. By then, Tavi knew that Dodger was living up to his name and leading them on a merry chase, looping back and forth through the barrens.

Though gloomy Garados grew ever taller and darker with storm clouds, Tavi ignored the glowering presence of the mountain and kept his focus on his work. Noon was well past when he finally caught up to the wily ram and his flock.

He heard the sheep before he saw them; one of the ewes let out plaintive bleats. He looked back over his shoulder, to where his uncle followed several dozen strides behind him, and waved a hand to let Bernard know he’d found them. He couldn’t keep the grin off his face, and his uncle answered Tavi’s smile with his own.

Dodger had led the flock into a dense thicket of brambles and thorns nearly as tall as Tavi himself and a hundred feet deep. Tavi spotted Dodger’s curling horns and approached the old ram carefully, talking as he always did. Dodger snorted and pawed at the earth with his front hooves, shaking his curling horns threateningly. Tavi frowned at the ram and approached him more slowly. Dodger himself weighed better than a quarter ton, and the tough breed of mountain sheep the frontier folk of Alera favored, sheep big enough and strong enough to defend themselves against thanadents and worse, could become aggressive when threatened. Careless shepherds had been killed by their overexcited charges.

A sharp, sweet smell made Tavi stop in his tracks. He recognized the scent of slaughtered sheep, of offal and blood.

Something was very wrong.

Tavi approached more slowly, eyes carefully sweeping around. He found the first dead sheep, one of the lambs, several yards short of the brambles. He knelt down and studied the remains, searching for clues as to what had killed the animal.