The Dowry Blade (45 page)

‘I am at your disposal, once I’ve had a few words with Ashe.’ Dismissing
them.
They gathered their skirts, and went. Brede wondered why they wore their clothing so long, since they were forever having to hold it out of the way. She wished she had her breeches back; she didn’t care for the heaviness of the skirted robe about her legs. She felt entangled in it, even though the hem came above her ankles. She turned to Ashe, and saw the paper on the bed beside her. So, no longer needed. Brede folded her hands away under her elbows.

‘And what are you to be doing this morning, whilst I spill my guts for your sisters?’ Her voice trembled.

Ashe’s eyes narrowed. She did not, as she might have done, merely point to the paper. She held out one hand as though it was the paper, and used a finger of the other hand to be her pen. She did it with deliberation, sarcasm almost. She tilted her head towards Brede, patiently waiting for the attempt at signing to be corrected. She was no longer angry with Brede. There were still possibilities to be explored with her.

Brede’s hands moved from her elbows, she hesitated, never having written, she had no idea what the sign for writing should be. She copied Ashe’s sign, nodded and followed up with a thank-you. Ashe smiled. She was not sure where they stood, the two of them, but there was still something there to work with.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Brede hunted out her tormentors, but found only Saraid waiting for her in an alcove off the hall they had used the day before. She was glad: it would be hard enough as it was, to say the things she had stored in her heart. Impossible to say to more than one person. She would have preferred to tell it to Ashe, but what would be the use of that? Failing Ashe, Saraid had at least been civil, unlike the rest of them.

Saraid was tired; the shock had worn off, now there was only depression and grief and she didn’t seek information, she dreaded it. So, she was kinder than she might have been. She had found a comfortable seat for Brede, she had brought food and wine: Saraid believed she was ready for every eventuality, but she was not.

Brede sank into the chair, and realised that she hadn’t prepared herself for this confrontation. She hadn’t marshalled her thoughts, couldn’t give a rational account. She didn’t even know where to begin. She couldn’t remember her first meeting with Sorcha. She had always been there, hadn’t she? All she had ever needed to do was turn, to find her; but there had been a time before Sorcha, she knew it, even though she no longer recognised it.

So Brede described Sorcha: the way she looked, the way she moved, and the way she spoke. She couldn’t describe her singing; she had no words for it. Saraid was drawn into her vision, seeing, hearing, feeling Sorcha through Brede. It was a strange sensation, she saw someone she knew distorted through another’s perceptions, yet recognised her. She agreed, saying
Yes, she was so, that is how she would be.

Brede heard her acknowledgement, but didn’t register it, losing herself in her memories. She spun the tale on her fingers, making the space between her hands encompass her vision of the past. She pulled Saraid in with her, unwilling, unaware.

Brede didn’t try to tell her story in a logical way. She started where she felt there was a beginning, said only what she wanted to say,
So it was, so it went, and now it is gone.

Incoherent, a flow of impressions, confused with her feelings, with sideways glances at things too painful to remember, or too precious to tell.

Saraid forgot that she had asked for this telling, forgot that she wasn’t a part of these happenings. She was hypnotised by the unsteady flow of words, the constant movement of the hands, as though Brede held the world captive between her fingers, weaving her reality from the fragments of memory.

At last the telling came to an end. Brede felt empty, all her resources exhausted. She wrapped herself in the silence between them, grateful for it.

Saraid stumbled from the hall. She needed time to assimilate what she had heard, to make it bearable, to confine it within something she could bring herself to think about. She needed, more than anything, to be alone.

Brede, sitting abandoned in the hall, poured herself a glass of the red wine that had sat untouched throughout her telling. She tried to convince herself that she had done what she had come for, that this episode in her life was ended and that she could start anew. She failed. She had only let go of a small part of the ghost that haunted her. She was not entirely sure that she wanted her gone, and that too must be overcome, somehow.

Ashe, sitting alone in her self-imposed silence, struggled to remember the tune that Sorcha trapped her with, to write down the notes, so that her sisters would understand. It was elusive, slipping away, disguising itself behind similar songs that deceived her, tangling in the faded markings that already stained Islean’s used papers.

Saraid barred her door, and sat in turmoil. Her certainties seemed threadbare to her now. She was afraid to think too closely about what Sorcha had done, what she had died for. She was at once humbled by it and angry with Sorcha for this last supreme arrogance, and again she was angry with Brede, because it was she who had forced Sorcha into a position where those choices had become possible. How could Sorcha have loved someone so – uncouth, so brutal, so – ?

Saraid no longer wanted to think. Whether she wished it or not, the thoughts kept welling up. She tried to order her mind, tried to rationalise the whirl of potential delight and disaster that threatened to swallow her. She didn’t know how to begin what should be done to resolve the tangle of Sorcha’s ending; Sorcha’s
not
ending. She understood now that this was what she was dealing with; she had listened between the breaths of Brede’s story and rooted out the truth, unspoken by the teller. She couldn’t quite encompass the idea of it.

Aneira would find it impossible to believe. She expected the world to bend to her will, to conform to her beliefs, and this would not fit into her narrow understanding of existence; but how did it fit into Sorcha’s understanding? Again Saraid balked. What to do? How to stabilise it all? Saraid didn’t believe it to be beyond her, but she didn’t yet hold the key to the puzzle.

Brede, alone in the hall, drank herself into a state where she no longer cared what would become of her. It didn’t last as long as she would have liked.

Islean came to Ashe for her written explanation. She found her one-time lover asleep in an exhausted huddle, pen still loosely held, ink still open, sheaves of paper fallen to the floor. Islean collected the papers, sealed the ink, and removed the pen from between Ashe’s ink-stained fingers. She glanced at the closely written pages. No wonder she slept. She must have written without ceasing for the whole of the day. Islean held the pages to the light, and examined the music that Ashe had inscribed. Automatically, she played the tune in her head. Her blood stilled, and the faintest stirring of pity broke through her anger at Ashe. She leafed back through the pages to the start of the music.

This is the tune that summoned Sorcha, as nearly as I remember it
– Ashe’s cramped script told her.
Summoned Sorcha?
Islean stretched an unsteady hand to Ashe’s tousled hair.
What has been going on?
She did not touch her. She needed to speak to Saraid, who knew Sorcha the best of them. She needed to ask her if this thing was possible. She needed to ask her now. There was no time to regret that she could no longer love Ashe.

Saraid saw the greyness of Islean’s face, the strain in her eyes, and opened her door wider, allowing her in. Islean handed her the music, unable to think of a fitting explanation. Saraid read Ashe’s heading, then skimmed the music. She reached behind her for a chair, and lowered herself into it, without taking her eyes off the sheet of paper.

Islean’s urgency overruled her patience and she laid her hand on Saraid’s.

‘Do you understand it?’

Saraid nodded, still looking bewildered.

‘I understand it, but I do not understand how it was possible, how she dared, why it worked, nor do I understand how to undo it.’

‘Should we speak to Aneira?’

‘No. Not yet. This is – dangerous. I want to study all that Ashe has to tell us, there may be further clues.’

Islean nodded reluctantly and left. Saraid didn’t notice that she had gone. She turned back to the start of Ashe’s account.

A servant of the King came to me –

Melva discovered the no-voice in a drunken stupor in the hall. Hesitating between revulsion and pity, she sighed and called to a passing youngling. With the younger woman’s help, Melva managed to get Brede to the guest chamber. Their entrance, stumbling and crowding, woke Ashe, and she helped to get Brede onto the bed. Melva squeezed Ashe’s hand in passing. Ashe caught at her hand, snatched paper and almost dry pen and scratched

I owe Brede, and I cannot help her. Will you help her, for me?

Melva glanced at the unconscious no-voice. Her stupor had relaxed the pain lines on her face, the frown was less deep. She almost looked human. Melva’s heart twisted. Aneira and Saraid wouldn’t approve, would think her wasting her time, if they even thought about this no-voice at all. She sang a soft catch-all for pain and healing, not knowing what she was dealing with, really. Brede sighed and relaxed further. Melva nodded at Ashe.

‘Between us?’ she asked, embarrassed that it felt necessary to do so. Ashe nodded and gave her a quick hug.

With Melva gone, Ashe frowned. Brede had deliberately shut her out with her unconscious state. Laboriously, she undressed her, accompanied by an occasional groan from Brede. Her hand kept catching on something in Brede’s hair – something that had not been there when she unbound it in the bathhouse. Ashe felt carefully, and a sudden certainty sent her to the wall bracket to reach down one of the candles. Holding the candle carefully, she let the light play on the small stones threaded on a narrow braid of hair, woven into Brede’s own, but couple of shades lighter. Four small blue stones. Sorcha’s: no question. Ashe stared at the stones, feeling the loss of her voice anew, a piercing fire of longing. Once she might have had hopes of inheriting the Singer stones – Brede should not hold them; they weren’t trinkets, not something for a no-voice to play with. Ashe quelled that thought. She was a no-voice herself now. She need not tell anyone that the Singer stones had survived. What did it matter? They were only a symbol. Let Brede keep them.

When Brede woke, thirst drove her from the bed. She fumbled for the borrowed robes at the end of the bed, and found her bare toes grazing a pair of strange boots, left where she could tangle the blankets about them and trip. She pulled the blankets free, and considered the boots, paired, and with toes facing out from the bed, inviting her feet. Soft, low-topped things, not much use on a horse, but better than barefoot on the cold stone floors. She pushed an experimental foot into the soft leather. Not a bad fit. She lined up the other boot, and worked her injured foot gently into the folds of leather. Not bad at all, the softness of this leather did not force her foot straight, simply holding it gently secure, like a hand against the outer length of her foot, like Ashe’s hand. She wondered briefly where Ashe was, and frowned. She shrugged her way into the robe, and found the water pitcher on a shelf. Thirst quenched, Brede made her way out into the courtyard, and across to the stables.

She found her stolen black gelding, and her stolen saddle, and her stolen saddlebags, and pondered. The bags were undisturbed, and full. She tipped the contents out and ran her fingers over them. A nearly empty water sack, a silk shirt, of very fine quality – too fine for her, and too short in the sleeves. Some money, not a great deal, but a few silver coins in amongst the copper. Trail food, a better belt. She hauled that twice round her waist and fastened it. Then she put the coins into a knot in her undershirt, and the food back into the saddlebag. She saddled the horse, and walked him out into the courtyard, to a mounting block. She got astride with relative ease, and settled her weight carefully, and secured her feet in the stirrups. He sidled, then stood biddable and alert. Brede shifted her weight forward slightly and he understood her. They took each other out of the gate and for a careful exploration of the citadel and its hilltop, and the surrounding streets and market squares.

Brede thought carefully as she rode: about the furtive looks, and the frankly curious stares she got from the people of this city; about the lie of the land; measuring defences, checking through routes and alleyways, mapping enemy territory; and about the manners of the horse who strode with dignity and unconcern through those narrow paved streets. He seemed to like her better this time, more willing to pay her attention, she had almost decided he needed a name by the time she had found somewhere to barter the shirt for something of lower quality, and some breeches. She flung off the blue robe, and dressed, and the woman she had traded with laughed at her evident relief.

‘You’re the one brought our Ashe home,’ she said, folding the robe neatly and handing it back, ‘and brought the news of the Songspinner.’

Brede nodded warily.

‘Thank you.’ The woman said softly. Brede nodded to her then forced the robe into her saddle bag and went in search of someone to barter the saddle for leather and leather working tools to make a Plains saddle, so that she could tell more precisely what her horse was about. The saddler was a man of few words, but he had an apprentice, scarce more than a child, who kept up a steady commentary, on Brede, the saddle, and the horse. Brede grinned at her, as she moved on to her opinion of Plains saddles; and how Brede would ride a horse with no saddle, and no name.

‘You can tell he has no name?’ Brede asked, curious. The child nodded.

‘He keeps looking at you, he’s waiting for you to name him.’

Brede laughed, and took the horse away to ride him bareback and with care, back to the citadel. She had him back to the stable an hour later, an hour better acquainted. As she brushed him down, he watched her constantly, turning his head to keep her in view.

‘What?’ she asked him softly, as she laid the brush a final time across his shoulder. She stepped back and returned his gaze until he lowered his head and pretended an itchy fetlock. Brede allowed herself a small smile. She glanced down at herself, muddy, and covered in horsehair, and set off for the bathhouse, for another session in the heat that almost comforted her aching muscles and tendons and bones. On the way back to the guest quarters, she passed Melva, who glanced boot-wards, and smiled. Brede inclined her head, gratitude for a thoughtful act, and Melva, walked on pleased at how simple a gift had the Plains woman walking straight and tall, as she ought. She was brought up sharply by that, and stopped to watch Brede go, wondering where that
as she ought
had come from.

Brede, feeling more at home, swerved from her planned route and followed her nose towards the kitchens. She hovered uncertainly in the doorway, until a sharp-faced woman glanced up and beckoned her in.

‘You’ll be this Brede,’ she said confidently.

Brede nodded.

‘I’m Morna.’ She gave Brede a careful look up and down, and sucked her teeth. ‘You need feeding. Can’t fix hunger and malnutrition with song, I know that; you need my kind of magic. Sit.’

Brede sat. Morna chattered and mixed and put small bowls in front of her: water, soup, poached eggs and vegetables. Brede ate everything. She almost choked on the spoonful of honeycomb, Westgate Inn and Sorcha forever tied to the flavour. Morna gave her another sharp glance.