Heroes Adrift (26 page)

“You still are in my debt,” she said.

“And we will repay it.”

“However, many to whom you owe debt have slithered to the Glass Fair.”

“I see.” I hadn't been aware that our debt was shared by the others. I had to admire Atara for admitting it. She could have claimed the whole debt was hers, and I wouldn't have been the wiser.

“You have been good omens.”

I liked to think so. We were good everything.

“I will release you from any further obligation.”

That was it? I would have expected more of a fight out of her.

But perhaps, with the loss of her troupe, all of the fight had been leaked out of her.

“Get your man and bring him to me. I will release you from your bonds.”

Huh. Wasn't sure what that meant. Except we could take leave of the troupe without making anyone think we would be coming back in two weeks, which was a huge relief.

As she requested, I found Taro, and we went to Atara's tent. She had set up a small table and three croppers in the open air. She had a black candle burning on the table, three goblets, and a knife.

And what the hell was the knife for?

I really hoped it wasn't the same knife that had been used to kill Yesit.

“Please sit,” she said. And when we had done so, she took one of our hands in each of hers. “Friends have come and friends have parted,” she said. “May good fortune lighten their heels.” Then she let go of our hands, and picked up her goblet.

So we picked up ours. She sipped, so did we. Really sweet wine. I liked it. Taro probably hated it.

And after we had set our goblets down, Atara picked up the knife. That was just a little alarming. She put the blade to her left palm, and lightly drew it across her skin, leaving no mark. She took my left hand, and drew the knife across the palm, again, leaving no mark. No blood. She did the same with Taro.

Then she picked up her goblet again, lifting it in a toast to us. “May good fortune lighten your steps.”

That was it?

Atara smiled. “I know you have little patience for such things.”

I was so tired of being transparent to absolutely everyone I met.

Those who had chosen to stay with Atara's troupe left Golden Fields that morning. The Glass Fair remained behind, and we learned they planned to stay for one more night. We didn't want to look for the Bryants until the Glass Fair, and the remainder of those who knew us, left.

The oddest thing happened to me when I received word that Atara's troupe was definitely gone. My stomach suddenly tied into a knot, my heart picked up its pace, and my throat seemed to tighten. It was almost as though I were descending into some kind of panic. All because Taro and I were now cut off from our only means of making money, in a place that didn't care that we were a Pair. How uncharacteristic of me.

“We're moving into another bunker,” Taro announced.

“This one not fine enough for you?”

“The owner here knows we're from the troupe,” Taro said.

“So?”

“So we want to be somewhere where no one knows we're from the troupe.”

Really, my control over my temper was shockingly thin. There I was, getting so aggravated because Taro was deliberately drawing out this conversation for the sake of dramatic effect. That was Taro. Why was it annoying me so much? “Why?”

And he grinned. “I'm going to play some cards.”

He was going to gamble.

It made sense. Take what we had and turn it into more. Simple. I'd even suggested he do so.

But at that time, we knew more money would be coming in. If he lost it, it wouldn't have been too calamitous. We had the ability to replace any lost coin. In our new circumstances, all we had to get us through the search for the Empress's family and then get us back to the harbor was what was in my purse, everything that I'd managed to horde from my performances. Once the money was gone, it was gone, and there would be nothing to replace it.

Taro was a good gambler. I'd seen, once, the pile of slips from those who had lost to him, who had owed him money.

But it wasn't called gambling for nothing. And it had been a while since he'd played cards.

Taro was losing his grin, and a frown was imminent. He was starting to realize why I was hesitating.

“Sounds like an excellent idea,” I said. Because there was nothing else I could say, really.

So let's just wind up that panic one more notch.

We moved into another bunker, chosen for being the greatest distance from the original one. And that evening Taro went out hunting for a card game. I tried not to be nervous about the fact that he was playing a
game
with our money. I wanted to be not nervous in private, but Aryne had invited herself into our room and was sitting on the floor, mending one of her flimsy little skirts.

“He's going to get blanked,” Aryne commented without looking up from her work.

“He's going to get what?”

“With wine.”

Oh.

“And he'll lose all your coin.”

“No, he won't,” I snapped.

“Then he'll come home angry and slam us.”

“He definitely won't be doing that.” That, I could be sure of.

Aryne snorted. “All men do.”

There were questions there that should be asked. I just didn't know if I should be the one asking them. “I wouldn't know about all men.”

“All the men I've met.”

“I've seen Taro drunk. He gets silly, not violent.”

“Huh.”

I really didn't want to talk about Taro getting drunk while he was gambling with our money. “Have you ever heard of the Bryants?” Didn't hurt to ask.

“What are the Bryants?”

“A family.”

“A family of what?”

“Farmers. That's their name. Bryant.”

“Never heard of a name like that,” she said.

“Bryant?”

“Kai. Or the Bryants.”

Oh, I was an idiot. For I had never heard anyone on Flatwell using family names as we did at home. It was always personal name of personal name. Kahlia of Atara. Zenna of Panol. So either the Empress had gotten the name wrong or…or…the Empress had gotten the name wrong, damn it.

Just one more straw on this stack of idiocy.

How were we supposed to find these people when we didn't even know their name?

All right. Calm down. Aryne's grandmother had been brought to Golden Fields by someone acting as a governess. Golden Fields wasn't so very big. Surely people would have been aware of the arrival of a Northern fosterling. And surely some of such people would still be alive?

Taro arrived not too late that evening, with a grin and a lightness to his step that I hadn't seen in a good long time.

So he hadn't lost. Thank Zaire. “Have fun?”

“It's fascinating that a place so different from home in so many ways could have the same card games,” he said.

I really wanted to rip his purse from him and count the coins in it. It didn't look any heavier—or lighter—than it had earlier. “Really? They do?”

“Well, not all card games, but apparently everyone in the world plays slider.”

Really didn't care. “So you had a good time?”

His grin got even wider. “Kai.”

Aryne chuckled.

“And you didn't lose?”

Then, he hesitated. “No.”

And the panic was back. “That wasn't entirely convincing.”

“I did at first. It's been a while. But I recouped.”

“So you won?”

“No. I drew even. I left once I was back to where I'd started.”

Not bad news, but not good news, either. “I see.”

“I'll do better next time.”

Perhaps, but I wasn't sure that my nails could survive “next time.”

The next morning, we hid out in our bunker until we were sure the Glass Fair had left. Then it was time to begin our sure-to-be-futile hunt. But before Taro and I left, I said to Aryne, “I expect you to stay in your room until we get back.”

“Do ya, now?”

“Yes, I do. It's for your own safety.”

“Thought you were so sure I wasn't a slave.”

“I am. But the whole point for the slave story was to keep you out of Golden Fields. We don't know why Border thought that was necessary.” Though I suspected it was to keep Aryne away from the rest of her family, to keep her from being recognized.

“Can take care of myself.”

Aye, that was why she'd latched on to us, complete strangers that we were. “I'll buy you an entire fee-sish while I'm out.” Fee-sish was a bright pink, sweet, juicy fruit encased in a hard prickly shell. I suspected it was a favorite of Aryne's from the way she tried to snatch any that appeared on a plate in her vicinity, though she had never said as much to me. “If I come back and feel no suspicion that you've left the room, the whole fruit is yours.”

Aryne's eyebrows rose.

Yes, I was aware of the wiggle room I'd left her in that statement. I would have to give her the fruit if she managed to leave the room and return without my suspecting she had ever left in the first place.

But then, I'd given myself breathing room, too. All I had to do was suspect. I didn't have to prove anything.

I was able to outwit an eleven-year-old. Occasionally. I was proud of myself.

“Do we have an agreement?” I asked.

“Kai.”

“Good.”

So we left the bunker, and I had no real faith that she'd actually stay in her room. I just hoped her lust for the fruit might make her careful if she did go out.

“Where to first?” Taro asked.

“The record keeper.” Every settlement I'd ever been in or heard of had someone dedicated to keeping the history of that settlement. A place as small as Golden Fields would have at least a chance of recording the arrival of two Northerners in a time when Northerners never went to the Southern Islands.

At least it was a place to start.

I was turning into a cynic. Which was possibly nothing more than a euphemism for whiner. But I couldn't help feeling skeptical about our chances for success upon hearing that Golden Fields's record keeper was called a story holder.

Then we found the little bamboo hut in which the story holder worked. And, of course, lived. I was afraid my skepticism was justified, especially once we learned, during our initial conversation with the man, that he didn't use anything as simple and as sensible as paper, or parchment, or even stone, for the recording of historical events. Oh, no. He kept it all locked away in his mind.

He looked to be in his forties, and I could detect nothing in his braids, his leather skirt, or his tattoos which signified his position, which was usually one of some respect in most settlements. He sat in a cropper. An apprentice sat at his feet, listening to everything he said. That was the traditional manner of instructing an apprentice, I was told.

Oh, no. No chance of inaccuracies creeping in over the years. I believed it. Really.

Nothing to do but plunge in. “Do you have any stories about a farming family, one of the members called Bryant or something like it? They would have taken in a fosterling from the North, perhaps sixty years ago?”

No chance in hell.

The man sat and thought about this. At a gesture, his apprentice handed him a thin square slate and a small sack, the size of his palm. He shook what looked like ordinary white sand onto the black surface, and with his index finger he drew nonsense designs into the white sand.

It looked pretty.

“Ah, yes,” he said.

Ah, sure. Ritual and superstition.

“White lines and fire,” he said.

Kai, that made sense.

“Three years into the Speaking of Relan of Dalia,” he continued. “The farmers of brown rye on the northeast concession had visitors from the North.”

I opened my mouth to ask when exactly three years into the Speaking of Relan was, but was kicked by the apprentice before I could speak. She ignored my glare with the insulting ease of her people.

“A child, named Ara, and her mother, Laura of Secord.”

Oh my gods. He got that from white sand on slate?

“Nine years into the Speaking of Relan of Dalia, Laura of Secord married Apol of Ranter, and within the year they left the farmers and left Golden Fields, leaving Ara behind. There is no further record of Laura. Ara of Laura was apprenticed to the dye maker at age seven. She was very plain, and was old before she bore her daughter, Nevress, and died in childbirth. Nevress…” The story holder hesitated there, dribbling more sand from the bag onto the slate. He added, “Nevress of Ara had no family and no letters. She bartered herself, and lifted. Shortly after giving birth to a daughter, she was hanged, for thieving.”

I repressed a shudder. Hanging as a form of execution. How brutal. I'd prefer to be stabbed.

Taro cleared his throat. “What was the daughter's name?”

The story holder stared at the slate, added some more sand, and then shook his head. “That is not known. She was left at the circle. They have not added her sand here.”

I wasn't going to ask what that meant. I didn't really care. Except for, “The circle? What does that mean?”

The apprentice piped up then. “Where the stringless are left.”

“The stringless?”

“Kinless.”

“Orphans,” I said.

“Kai,” said the record keeper.

“Does it say when this child was left?”

The holder shrugged. “It is unclear. Nevress died less than twenty years ago.”

Damn it. No one was going to remember anything from twenty years before. “Where is this circle?”

The apprentice gave us directions. She also held out her hand and cleared her throat when we started to leave without paying.

I had honestly forgotten about it, but really, did we have to pay for
everything
? For less than a quarter of an hour of a person's time? And what happened if we learned the story keeper was wrong? Could we return and get our money back?

The circle was an actual circle. A single-story structure of bamboo and wood, constructed into a circle around a circle of bare, sandy land. Through one of the wide windows I could see very young children playing with balls and hoops and the other useless things children played with. They were concentrated in the center of the circle. Around the perimeter, older children were sitting in croppers hunched over a variety of tools, most of which I couldn't recognize. Adults wandered about, watching them, sometimes stopping to give instruction.

I wondered whether they were learning, or working. I hoped for the former, couldn't do anything about the latter.

We were waiting for the person a child had told us was called the Watcher, the person in charge of the circle. I was expecting to meet someone matronly, a settled woman of wisdom and years who would remember every child placed in her care with affection and clarity.

What we got was some twenty something lad of broad shoulders and a scandalously short skirt, and wouldn't you know it, he was the first person on the whole damned island to look at Taro with any interest. I could tell by the way his eyes barely hesitated on me before taking just a little too long to travel over my Source's form.

It was the ache in my jaw that alerted me to the fact that I was clenching my teeth.

“I am Zilran of Zonfar,” he said with a smile, revealing those ridiculously straight teeth all the islanders seemed to have. “I am Watcher here.”

“I am Dunleavy Mallorough, and this is Shintaro Karish.”

Zilran was polite enough, looking at me as I spoke, but he kept glancing at Taro.

I wanted to glance at Taro myself, to see how he was reacting to this attention. I wouldn't let myself. Because I really didn't want to see how he was reacting to this attention, which he had been used to before we came to Flatwell, but had to have been starving for ever since.

“We are looking for some family we think may have some connection to the circle,” I said. “A child was left here. Her mother, I understand, was called Nevress of Ara.”

Zilran frowned as he thought about it. “That doesn't sound familiar.”

“The child would be twenty years old, or less. I don't know when it might have lived here, but the story holder seems to feel it was placed here after Nevress died.”

“I have been here only two years,” he said. He poked his head out the nearest window. “Saya!” he shouted out. “Please join us! She has been here over thirty years,” he told us.

Finally, someone old enough to be of use.

And then, Zilran turned his full attention on my Source. “You are from the North?”

Obviously.

Taro smiled back at him, and I looked out the window. “We are from High Scape,” I heard him say. “Have you heard of it?”

“No, but it must be an exciting place.”

And there was that tone. Playful, not flirtatious, yet an invitation that could be easily rejected without causing offense.

Taro was supposed to ask why this gorgeous young fellow assumed High Scape must be an exciting place. And Zilran would then say, because someone as—pick the adjective—as Taro could only come from an exciting place. And they would take it from there.

Taro said, “It is disturbed by a great many natural events. But we have seven Pairs in total, so we are able to keep it calm.”

I looked at Zilran then, wondering what he was going to do with that.

From the expression on his face, he was wondering the same.

The woman I presumed was Saya walked in, and this was the lady I had been expecting. A heavily lined face, dark hair graying, her shoulders stooped with age.

She still wore the scanty clothes and tattoos everyone else wore, though.

“Watcher?” she said, and though her tone was respectful, something about her stance, her gaze, made me feel she didn't like him.

I wouldn't like him, either. Not just because he was trying to flirt with my Source, but he seemed awfully young for his position. I wouldn't like to be told what to do by someone a third my age.

“We are looking for a child who was placed here within the last twenty years,” I said, and I felt really stupid asking the question. How the hell would she remember? “The mother was named Nevress of Ara, and she was hanged as a thief. The mother would have had some Northern blood.” Well, so would the child, but it might have been more evident in the mother.

“Brought in during the last twenty years,” the older woman clarified, just to make sure I was really feeling stupid.

“Kai,” I admitted.

“Come with me,” Saya said, moving down a hall without waiting to be dismissed by Zilran. I wondered if that offended him. I hurriedly thanked the Watcher and Taro and I followed Saya. She led us along the curve of the building and then down a rickety set of stairs that took us down to a dank dark room below ground. She had us wait at the entrance while she lit a series of candles that lined the long walls of the room.

The room was filled with stones. Truly. Black stones, flat and rounded, polished and each about the size of my palm. They'd had holes bored into them and had been strung onto some kind of slim rope. The strings of stones were hung from the ceiling and were left to dangle over the floor. A single touch had the stones clattering against each other. Perhaps out in the open air the sound would have been pretty, but down in the dark it was disquieting.

“Every child who enters our circle has a stone,” Saya said, and her voice seemed to echo in the room. “We mark on the stone all the circumstances of the child's life. Origins, why they came to be here, age, name and when and why they left. If the child was here within the last twenty years, then we may restrict our search to this portion of the room.” She gestured at a couple dozen strings, each with several dozen stones. Not an insurmountable amount, but more than I liked. There had to be a better way to do this.

“The child may have had a tattoo,” I said. Then again, it might not. It didn't make sense for the tradition to have been carried down that far. Would Nevress have had it done? Would she have known the significance of it? It would seem hard to believe, that she would willingly take the life of a criminal without crying out that she was descended from royalty.

Then again, if the child didn't have the tattoo, we wouldn't be able to recognize it anyway, and that part of the family would be truly lost.

“That is not unusual,” Saya said.

“Putting tattoos on very young children?” I asked in surprise.

“Kai.”

“I haven't seen any tattoos on children.”

“I don't know of the children you know,” said Saya. “But many people have their children marked at birth, so that their family is known should the child be lost. The mark is not usually made in a place commonly bared to view.”

“Why not?” What would the point of it be, then, to keep it in a private place?

“Some marks are well known. Their families are wealthy or strong. Children can be the prey of those who seek power. You steal a family's child and seek advantage in exchange for return.”

“I have been all over this island and I haven't heard of anything like this,” I objected.

“You are an offlander.” Saya shrugged. “Why would you know this?”

Suddenly, I felt that I hadn't learned anything about these people, in all the time I'd been on Flatwell. And that was sad.

Saya picked out a stone and had Taro and I peer at it. It was a
v
shape with a horizontal bar through it. She told us it was the symbol for a female parent who had been hanged, and it was the only symbol she bothered to show us. When we found it on a stone, we were to call her, and she would interpret the rest of the symbols.

There really wasn't enough light to be doing such work, even though what light there was really seemed to bounce off the polished stones and reflect about the room. Fortunately, the symbols were deeply etched into the stones, and it didn't take long for my fingers to become accustomed to the shapes of the grooves. But I really had to concentrate on what I was doing. If I let my thoughts wander, my fingers would glide over the surface of the stones without really feeling anything.

It took hours. A distressingly large number of the orphans had had mothers who had been hanged. But only one had a mother whose name had been Nevress. Apparently, it wasn't that common a name on Flatwell, thank Zaire. I'd already started imagining what it might be like to try to track down multiple possibilities.

“A girl,” Saya announced. “Brought here in the second year of Avol of Rikin. Around ten years ago,” she translated. “But the name of the child is not written.”

“What does that mean?” Taro asked.

“That she had no known name when she was left here, perhaps,” said Saya. “Or that it was forgotten by the time the stone was carved.”