The Gathering, page 10
part #1 of The Hundred Series
~
Having arranged to meet Guise at first light the next morning, Yvonne made her way back to The Tavern, to collect her horse and go home. The day was fast fading and her limbs were heavy. Lack of sleep was beginning to tell.
As she crossed down the side of the mayor’s building, she saw that the small group were still there, not sure what to do with themselves. Shocked by the brazenness of kidnappers in their town, relieved by the return of the girl.
She hoped to pass by unnoticed, simply wanting to get home and get some sleep before the journey began the next day.
As with so many things she wanted, this was not to be.
A couple detached themselves from the crowd and moved slowly across the square towards her. She stopped at the corner of the law keeper’s building and waited for them to join her. The parents. Both pale, eyes red-rimmed. Their daughter might be back with them, but they had spent horrible hours thinking the worst. They would be a handsome couple in normal circumstances, she thought, but she had never seen them in normal circumstances.
“Hunar,” the man said, coming to a halt nearby. He had his arm around his wife, and even as Yvonne watched, she tucked herself into her husband’s side. A strong couple.
“I am sorry for what happened. How is your daughter today?”
“She is sleeping a lot. The healers said it might be a few days before she’s back to normal. We wanted to stay with her,” the husband said, glancing down at his wife.
“Our neighbours chased us out. Said we needed some air,” his wife added, more tears in her eyes.
“We can never thank you enough,” the husband began.
“No thanks is required. I am glad she is safe home,” Yvonne said, preparing to move on.
“We do not have much to give you,” the wife said, voice shaking.
“Nothing is required.” Yvonne made her voice calm, firm, and as kind as she could. She had taken things from grieving parents in the past, and hated it. But gifts, freely offered, were difficult to turn down and Elinor had counselled her to accept them, however difficult. It helped the grieving, Elinor had said. And this couple, even with their daughter sleeping at home, were still grieving.
“But you found her. If you had not looked, we would have lost her, and may still be wondering,” the husband said, voice choked.
They were good people. She could only imagine the confusion and bewilderment. Someone had taken their little girl.
“I have a touch of sight,” the woman said, her bottom lip trembling. “I knew something was wrong. Badly wrong. Even before we knew she was missing.”
She would make an excellent witch, Yvonne thought. In other circumstances, this young, grieving mother and the herbalist might well have been friends. The gift of sight, the gift of medicine, the gift of using the powers of nature were all extraordinarily rare and, in Yvonne’s estimation, to be treasured. From the clasp of her husband’s arm around her, he felt the same.
“It is a difficult gift,” Yvonne said, remembering Viola’s words from the night before. He is coming. “It almost never shows you what you really need to know,” she added, more to herself than for their benefit.
“Grayling says that Viola will go to the Sisters in the Stone Walls. We’re glad there’s somewhere she can go,” the woman said.
“We’d like you to have this,” the wife said, holding her hands out. Yvonne felt the knot in her stomach return, hard and painful, but she put her hands out, palms up, and closed them around whatever the wife put in them, barely glancing at the offering. A small, leather pouch. It was heavier than she had expected, and clinked slightly as she drew it back towards her. Coins, she thought.
“The Hundred thank you. I am sorry for your trouble.” Partly ritual words, partly heartfelt.
They exchanged clumsy, silent bows and by some unspoken, mutual, consent, parted ways, Yvonne continuing on her way back to The Tavern, the couple returning to their friends and their odd vigil outside the law keeper’s offices.
She did not look in the pouch until she was safely back in the rented house, in the kitchen surrounded by Joel and Mariah’s good-natured bickering. Mariah had noticed Joel’s interest in Ella and was making a number of pointed comments about female wulfkin that had Joel blushing, and grinning like an idiot. It was a perfect antidote to the grim night before.
Before they set the table to eat, she put the leather pouch on the scarred surface and opened it. And froze. She had expected coins, but not this.
The purse was about half-full. She could imagine the parents measuring it out. The price of a returned life. Retaining some for their daughter’s future. Considering if it was payment enough for a Hunar’s service.
“Is that gold?” Mariah whispered, coming to look over Yvonne’s shoulder.
“Yes.” The tight feeling in her stomach intensified. She did not want this. She emphatically did not want this. She wanted to get up, go out into the night air, and throw the coins into the nearest river. A kidnapped child. The cold hand, too-still body, the bright coloured ribbon. And the surge of air into small lungs, heaving cough ejecting dark water onto the ground.
“It’s half a bride price, isn’t it? For the girl?” Joel said. “Fifteen pieces of gold.”
“Yes. I think so.”
“They could have kept it,” Mariah said. “It’s a fortune.”
“They are kind people. Honest. I don’t think they would have felt right keeping it all, knowing she nearly didn’t come back,” Yvonne said. She remembered the impressions of the young girl, the bright, mischievous soul. She could imagine the parents carefully hoarding their wealth, adding a coin now and then. It took most families longer to save up, and some never managed. This family was wealthy. A healthy daughter, a healthy son, and means enough to set aside a full bride price before the daughter’s tenth birthday.
Depending on where the parents were from, this was either the price of her admission into her husband’s family, or a gift from loving parents. A secret treasure for the bride, that she could take with her, enough to buy her independence in future, if she wanted. If the man she ended up with was not quite who she thought he was. From the secret way it had been passed over to her, Yvonne thought it was the latter. And she could not imagine, from the little she had seen of the house, that they would sell their daughter, unwillingly, into marriage. So this was a parent’s gift, a wish of joy for the future. And their gift to the Hunar, now, for returning that joy to them.
“The Sisters would like to have it, I am sure,” Joel said. “I know we need money,” he added, seeing her surprise. “But, there’s work here. The farrier is always looking for labour. And the docks. Honest work.” Shifting heavy loads around. Something that Joel, with his wulf-gifted strength, would find much easier than humans.
“The dressmaker has offered me work,” Mariah added, voice high and excited, eyes shining. “I wasn’t going to mention it, not just yet.”
“Only if you both want to,” Yvonne said, feeling her throat close. None of them were strangers to struggles with money.
She remembered, vividly, the summer that Mariah had turned thirteen and had decided to sell her hair. It had been sleek, thick, black, hanging down to her hips. She had walked out of the house in the morning with it curled in a thick plait under a headscarf, and returned later that day with the same headscarf on, settled oddly around her head, pulling the headscarf off with her chin tipped up and jaw set, a light in her eyes Yvonne knew well. There had been barely a finger’s width of hair left all around her head. The coins from Mariah’s hair had kept them all fed and housed for a full three months. Mariah had been completely unrepentant, as well.
Yvonne’s stomach tightened again and she repeated, in the quiet of her mind, that it had been Mariah’s choice. One that had been made freely. They had not been starving, not by a long way. No one had forced Mariah to sell her hair, or have it cut off her head. A free choice, Yvonne reminded herself for the hundredth time. One that Mariah had never regretted.
“We could forage if we needed to,” she heard her voice saying. “There’s enough land about.” The itching sensation over her skin faded. Money was short. It usually was. But they had clothes. And food in the pantry. And open land around them that hadn’t been available in the towns they’d lived in. They would not starve.
“Good,” Mariah said now, the reality of here and now sending Yvonne’s memories back where they belonged. “We’ll manage, Kalla.”
“I know you will.” Yvonne gathered the coins up and tied off the pouch with a slightly lighter heart, the traces of the two missing children settled inside her. “But, please be careful.”
“Always,” Joel promised, quiet and serious.
“Always,” Mariah said, eyes dancing with mischief.
She could only hope that the house would be in one piece when she got back.
CHAPTER TEN
Yvonne didn’t know quite how Guise had managed it, or what promises he had made, but he had managed to get them, and their horses, places on a barge going upriver the next day, and persuaded the barge master to put in at Silverton to drop them off, to start the search for Guise’s associate and the Cressins’ child.
Which meant, rather than a day or more riding through the country, skirting around the vast marshland, they were less than half a day on the river, travelling at a soothing, sedate pace.
And, in another miracle, Grayling, or Guise, had managed to procure spaces for two of the law keeper’s deputies and Viola on the same barge. The barge would keep going upriver until it reached Hogsmarthen, the nearest town to the Sisters in the Stone Walls.
Grayling had accepted the heavy, tied off pouch without question or comment, and passed it into the keeping of one of the deputies on the barge along with Yvonne’s hastily-written letter of introduction for Viola. The herbalist herself still seemed shaken, barely speaking, staying huddled in her cloak. The deputies were concerned about her, but Yvonne thought that a few days’ working behind the Stone Walls, with the Sisters’ briskness, would draw the woman out of herself more. And then the tears would start again. The old grief of her lost child. The fright of nearly losing another.
Yvonne knew it was selfish, but she felt her step lighten as they left the barge at Silverton. The weight of another’s grief stayed on the barge, and she was moving forward to a new challenge.
Lothar snorted in disgust when he saw the narrow, flimsy, pier that he needed to jump onto. He did jump, though, with little fuss, and picked up his heels to move briskly onto dry land, tail twitching.
Unlike Guise’s horse, who took one look at the pier and jumped off the barge into the river, swimming downstream for a distance before finding a spot where he could wade onto solid ground.
The deputies were openly grinning as the horse, dripping with river water, came back to his rider, the saddle and Guise’s luggage not only wet but coated with leaves from the plants choking the river banks.
Guise just shook his head slightly, picked up the nearest rein, and lifted an eyebrow to Yvonne.
“Shall we go?”
Yvonne bade farewell to the deputies, and Viola, and followed Guise along the packed earth road from the small pier to the town itself.
The ground here, near the river and with its own marshland, was fairly flat, giving them a good view of the town. More of a village. From a quick look around, perhaps half a hundred houses in total.
And it was a prosperous village. Every one of the houses that she could see had glass in the windows and a neatly maintained roof. There were no loose shutters, no boarded-up windows, no doors hanging by one hinge. Everything was well-maintained. She remembered the impressions she had got from the Cressins. Everyone knew each other. That did not mean that they liked each other. There would be strong rivalries and resentments running under the surface. On the face of it, it would be a pleasant place, somewhere peaceful to settle and live. Too small an environment for her, and her children. She would bet money that everyone in the town was fully human.
“The taverns here are small,” Guise told her. “They don’t cater well for overnight guests.”
“There’s a larger tavern about a half day’s ride away,” Yvonne answered, although she was quite sure he knew that already.
Half a day’s ride, a short distance along the King’s Highway, which was not far from here. On the road that led, eventually, to Hogsmarthen and the Sisters. She would like to see the Sisters again, but had a feeling that their trail would not go that way. Hogsmarthen was an orderly, law-abiding city. The kidnapping of children, and whatever had happened to Guise’s associate, seemed lawless.
“The larger tavern here is also the marketplace,” Guise added. He was extremely well-informed, which no longer had the power to surprise her. Either the missing Ubel, or someone else he did business with, had kept him advised. It was unlikely that he had been through this town himself. Purely human towns tended to have very long memories and a goblin lord, travelling alone, would draw a lot of attention.
As luck would have it, the first people that she saw when they arrived at the main street, were the Cressins. They were walking, slowly, towards the largest building in the village, which Yvonne assumed was the main tavern. They checked in their strides when they saw her, and she could see the tension in their bodies, even from the distance. Torn between hope for news, and fear of what that news might be.
She held up a hand in a brief greeting and excused herself from Guise’s company, leading Lothar ahead to meet the couple even as Guise made his way to the tavern.
“I have no news for you yet,” she told them at once. “Good, or bad. We’ve business here as well as looking for your son.”
“Hunar,” the man said, and stopped, expression blank.
“We … well, we have a message for you. There was an old woman. Herbalist. Lived on the edge of the town. Died a day after we got back. She was rambling toward the end.”
“Not now, the Hunar won’t want to be bothered,” the man said, shushing his wife, face turning red.
“No, now. When else are we going to see her? And it might be important.”
“A herbalist,” Yvonne repeated, stomach tightening for a moment. “Did she have the sight?”
“How did you know?” the wife asked, astonished.
“Never mind that,” the man shook his head. He had aged since they had come to visit her in Fir Tree Crossing. They both had. Worry had that effect.
“Oh, right. You know all sorts of things. Where was I?”
“The old woman was dying, and she gave you a message for me?” Yvonne prompted.
“He is coming. That’s what she said. Over and over. Like it was important. Gave me the chills, I can tell you.”
Yvonne did not blame her. Her skin was crawling with ice spiders. He is coming. She remembered Viola’s sightless gaze and the harsh voice in the dark of a long and grim night. He. Is. Coming.
Her mind spun for a moment on the possibilities. He. There were any number of war-hungry rulers anxious for more land, more conquest, and more bloodshed. There was a particularly savage warlord who claimed to be a descendant of a darkin mother and goblin father, which was an unlikely but lethal combination. There were legends and stories and half-truths and self-proclaimed prophets whose entire purpose seemed to be to stir up trouble. And, in the far distant past, there was the first enemy of the Hundred, the first Hunar’s brother. They had almost torn the world apart in their battles. Both long dead.
She shook her head. He is coming. It could be any one of a dozen or so people.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said.
“Is it important?”
“It might be. The sight is a difficult burden to carry, and the messages not always clear.”
The man nodded, in complete agreement, his embarrassment fading.
“Do you need to see his room?” his wife asked, in an abrupt change of subject.
The son had not gone missing from her house, or from his room, and Yvonne had a very clear impression of the boy from his parents’ description. Sometimes it helped the parents if she came into their house, looked in the child’s room. In this case, the subtle tension between them suggested that they did not want strangers in their house. They were used to living here, where everyone was familiar.
“It is not necessary, thank you,” she said. “But, can you tell me if there is a regular stop for the barges here? For correspondence and the like?” Now that she had seen the town, she realised how isolated it was. Not on the King’s Highway. Extensive marshland blocking it from its nearest neighbour, Fir Tree Crossing. And although it was on the main river, the pier was not used to heavy traffic, and not built to withstand it.
Isolated. Everyone familiar with each other. Which made her wonder just how the boy had gone missing.
“Usually a couple of times a week. The trade guilds have offices in Hogsmarthen, and the clerks there send messages on when they can. When there’s a barge.” The husband had straightened slightly, become more focused, answering a simple question about how he got his post.
“It can take a few days to reach us,” the wife added.
Isolated, Yvonne thought again. Although even as she thought that she realised just how spoilt she had become. Living in bigger cities and bigger towns she had become used to hearing the major news of the lands almost as soon as it happened. Nearly all of the ruling cities had message towers, and relay towers, set up to make sure that they heard about significant events as soon as possible. Humans with skill in magic could make a decent living relaying messages. And where that was not possible, the King’s riders were never delayed, no matter how busy the road was or who else wanted to use it.
“We won’t be here for long,” she told them, “and then moving on, following any trail. I will have a look around the town just now, see if I can find anything.”
“We couldn’t find anything,” the husband said, colour rising in his face.
