Raven's Ladder (7 page)

“No.” She heard the resentment in her own voice. “He told me nothing. But he’ll do what he thinks is best.”

“Then what about Wynn? What if those things that killed the grudgers—”

“No,” Lesyl answered forcefully. “We’ve lost seven to that monster. No one else.”

“Madi thinks he ran way.” Luci folded her arms like a disgruntled schoolteacher. “We hate boys.”

Lesyl gathered the girl into her arms. The bones behind Luci’s shoulders were so small, like the bones of a bird before its wings find feathers.

“Wynn shouldn’t have run away,” said the girl. “What good is he to the rest of us if he heads out into the wild without telling us where he’s going?”

Lesyl realized she was squeezing the air right out of the girl and released her. “Here. I’ve wrapped my string-weave in cloth. Take it. But, Luci, it’s my most precious instrument. Not a scratch or a broken string. Do you understand? Go to your sisters. Stay close to the grownups. And don’t step on any cracks.”

As Luci ran off, Lesyl stood and strapped a heavy pack over her shoulders—a bundle of musical instruments. Then she tucked the roll of reedcloth beneath her arm and lifted a bag of Auralia’s sculptures, garments, and inventions.

Cal-raven would thank her. “Her colors will gleam like jewels in a crown, from the gates of New Abascar right up to the palace,” he had said, lying beside her. For one fleeting night they had watched Auralia’s colors cast dancing light across the ceiling. He had touched her left hand with his right. At first she thought it was accidental. But then his fingertips traced her knuckles, drew a circle on the back of her hand and another on her wrist, his touch as gentle as a first kiss.
He’s tracing a marriage tattoo
, she had realized.
He’s pondering the question
.

Stifling the memory, she departed the chamber, troubled by new cracks that had spread on the walls behind the gallery. She wanted to remember what they had made of this place, not how it had gone wrong. She would
carry the details close and weave them into music for a day when the people were ready to lift these heavy memories again.

Shouts racked the corridor. Defenders repeated Tabor Jan’s commands. Wear boots, not shoes, if you have them. Bring flasks of water from Barnashum’s reservoir. Keep families together. List the names of those who shared your caves, and give every name to the counters who wait on the tiers. Get outside the caves as quickly as possible, for we’ll descend to Barnashum’s threshold at the sounding of the Midmorning Verse.

Parents hauled children along by the collars of their jerkins. Old men and women hobbled, bracing themselves on crutches, walls, or each other. Lesyl watched one shove away a swordsman who offered to help with her overloaded wheelbarrow. “I’m not some Gatherer weakling!”

Gatherers wore nervous smiles. Danger, sudden death, flight, the wilderness—this was the life they’d once known. But for Housefolk, what semblance of security they’d constructed here in Barnashum now lay in pieces. Creases crossed every brow.

Tabor Jan approached like a charging bull—shoulders hunched, teeth bared through his ragged beard.

Lesyl grabbed his arm as he passed. “This isn’t the departure he envisioned,” she said.

“No. We had plans. So many nights. So many maps.”

“Where has he gone?” The question leapt past her better judgment. “Why didn’t he tell me he…” She pressed her eyes shut, but it was too late to hide her emotion.

She felt his hand on her shoulder, an awkward press of comfort. “He doesn’t like to worry you.”

“He doesn’t
trust
me.”

Tabor Jan pulled at his beard. “He trusts you. He trusts us both. But I did hear him say that soon he would need to shut out other voices and listen for something deeper.”

“That sounds like him.”

“I’d probably lose my temper if I heard what Scharr ben Fray has stirred into Cal-raven’s soup. But who am I to question our king’s decisions? His
plot to defend us from the Cent Regus attack was like fighting fangbears with fishing nets. And yet it worked.”

Somewhere up the corridor there was a clamor of clattering metal, followed by outbursts of anger and blame.

“I should go.” Tabor Jan leaned forward as if pulled by an invisible tether. But Lesyl still had hold of his sleeve. “Stuff your questions, songbird!” he grunted. “We’ve lost too many already to that blasted creature. And I don’t think last night’s struggle convinced it to leave. We’ll talk about Cal-raven later.” He jerked his arm away and marched up the corridor.

His steps slowed, and he paused. “Forgive me,” he called back over his shoulder. “It’s…it’s a terrible day. I’m so tired I can hardly tell left from right.” His eyes met hers. “The king will return. Then…”

“Then.” She nodded.

As she took up her burdens again and moved on toward the open air, they seemed heavier than before.

A plan. Oh, for a plan
.

Like an ache after a recent wound, shame burned at the edges of Tabor Jan’s concentration. He had not intended to hurt Lesyl.

He stepped into every cave along the corridor, calling out for stragglers.

He had not seen Brevolo this morning. She had disappeared after the ordeal in the armor cave the night before, refusing comfort. It was her way in everything—self-reliance. She would never seek from him, nor he from her, the kind of sad, consoling whispers Cal-raven shared with Lesyl.

He could not fathom why those two would complicate their troubles by staying up all night in search of words to describe them. Brevolo was complete and content, even if she snarled about everyone else. He hungered for the rough sparring of their conversation.

The corridor ahead sloped into steps that ascended into darkness. He ran the full stair. Each chamber he passed was silent and empty until he reached the top. Hushed voices haunted the last cave.

Inside, a small, silver glowstone illuminated the features of a stout old woman hovering over her frail, bedridden husband and dabbing at the tears dripping off her nose. “Vyrna,” he said, but then swallowed his reprimand.

Vyrna had come to be known for her quiet compliance and service among Abascar’s elderly. These days she rarely left her crippled husband’s side, passing the hours by braiding intricate patterns into her long silver hair.

“They said to leave Jak where he lies,” she rasped in a voice that had been frail since the dust and ash of Abascar’s fall. “They said he’d slow everyone down.”

“Jak will slow everyone down, and many will thank him for it.” As Tabor Jan raised the old man from the stone bed, he was surprised to find him as weightless as a child. “The world’s changing out there, and our maps can tell us only so much. We need our elders.”

“I’m no use,” Jak protested in a squawk like an angry gander. “I’m a heavy load.”

As the foul air blasted through the gaps in Jak’s remaining teeth, Tabor Jan turned his head and choked. “We’re a body,” he answered, grabbing hold of a speech he had heard Cal-raven give many times. “Don’t let muscle tell bone its work is done.”

“Bone?” That brought on a cackle and wheeze. “Zat what I am?”

“He means you’re tough, Jakky,” said Vyrna like a schoolteacher to a child.

“Brittle ’n’ rotten. That’s what he means.” Digging his fingers into Tabor Jan’s arm, the old man whispered, “Just put the pillow over worthless Jak’s face. It would take you no trouble at all.”

Tabor Jan heard a faint crumbling of stone somewhere in the dark. There was no time for discussion. He began carrying Jak to the stairway. “Anyone who’d pass you by has got no gratitude. You’re Abascar’s experience, a memory as deep as a well.”

“Well’s gone dry, Captain,” Jak sneered. “Can’t even remember breakfast.”

“Seeds,” muttered Vyrna, hobbling alongside. “Seeds and knuckle-nuts.”

“If we left you behind”—Tabor Jan felt his grumbling cargo grow heavier as he thudded down the crooked stair—“our strength might carry us a fair distance, and fast. But how would we be any better than beastmen? If we
measure everyone’s worth by brains or brawn, well, why not leave all the children behind?”

Jak scoffed something unintelligible.

“What begins in love,” said Vyrna, “should end in love as well.”

“What’s that?” Jak barked.

“Somethin’ my mum used to say. Babies to oldies. Loved in the womb, loved still until the tomb.”

“Take a look at your dear Vyrna, Jak.” Tabor Jan leaned against the wall of the stairway, catching his breath. He swung Jak’s head around so the man could stare into his wife’s mole-spotted face. “She’s a treasure. Would you insult her generosity and tell her she’s not worth seeing every morning?”

Jak muttered something about intolerable noises that Vyrna made in her sleep.

Vyrna lowered her already failing voice and said, “’Twas that scurrilous boy, Vorcin’s son. He’s the one who told me to leave Jak in his bed.”

“Dignet?” Tabor Jan winced, wishing he hadn’t heard. Now he’d have to live with the knowledge, and he knew that someday he would find young Dignet and act on it.

At the base of the stairs, he sat down, exhausted, with Jak lying across him like an old hound.

Vyrna finger-combed her husband’s circle of sparse hair. “It’s all right, Jak. We’ll take you out into the sun. It’ll do you good.”

Merya’s husband, Corvah, lumbered past, a hulk of a man, cradling his infant. It was still a startling sight—Corvah, whom so many had determined to be dead on account of daily drinking, now up and purposeful and carrying his pink and mewling son.

“You see?” Tabor Jan turned Jak’s head, as if it were a doll’s on a pivot, so the old man could witness Corvah’s passage. “You see? New Abascar’s strength is in its heart as much as its head and its arms. We’ll show the world what can be made from broken pieces.”

As Meddles the Weaver came into view shoving a cart full of folded blankets, Tabor Jan thrust out his leg to block his path. “Ballyworms, Cap’n!” the Gatherer shouted. “I coulda smashed your shin to splinters!”

Tabor Jan brought Jak to the cart, set him down there, and leaned in
close to Meddles’s ear, which stuck out from the Gatherer’s wild explosion of hair like a mushroom. “Push carefully. He’s fragile. And when you have time, find the old fool some freshweed to chew. If his breath gets any worse, the leaves of the Cragavar will curl up and fall.”

Adryen and Stasi, Abascar’s cooks since Yawny’s passing, approached. “What about food?” asked Stasi. “You know how the king loves bramblebug honey.”

“And I’ve made bundles of bean sticks,” said Adryen.

“Some we’ll have to find on the way. The Gatherers’ll help. Shame to leave those cavefish drying on the racks, though. Bring what you can carry. And remember—anything you lift now will feel ten times heavier by the time…”

His voice failed, for there was Brevolo, drawing a sledge through the corridor’s dust. Lying on its wooden bed, pale in the cocoon of a thistleleaf quilt, Say-ressa might have been a statue of white chalk. “Our healer’s not fit to sleep in the open, Captain.” The swordswoman’s face was expressionless. “She’s fallen so far that we could lose her to something as slight as a fly-spider bite or a scratch from a venom thorn.”

Brevolo had not called him captain in a long time. It was a retreat. “We’ll sift the Gatherers’ wisdom to see what other help we might find in the wild until Cal-raven brings the chillseed.”

“It’s not just the sickness, Captain. It’s the loss of her husband and daughter. Say-ressa’s been dreaming of Abascar’s fall.”

“Try singing to her of the Keeper.” Scharr ben Fray had appeared so quietly, Tabor Jan wondered if the mage had walked right through the wall. “She might find comfort.”

Brevolo’s eyes blazed, and Tabor Jan could read her thoughts.
So it’s true. This is the one who made Cal-raven mad
. But she kept her mouth shut, too bruised to muster the strength for an argument, and she dragged Say-ressa’s sled away without giving Tabor Jan so much as a glance.

“What a burden Brevolo must carry,” the mage quietly mused. “Having lost her sister, she’ll be afraid to let anyone else be close to her for a while. I’m sure you remember that feeling.”

Tabor Jan did not reply, but he was stunned by Scharr ben Fray’s knowledge
of his older brother’s death. It had happened so long ago. Lejor Jan had been prone to illness all through his childhood, and then a winter plague proved too fierce and took him.
How dare you trouble me now with such a memory!

But then he saw Scharr ben Fray raise his hand to address an invisible audience. “I’ll raise an image of Bryndei in stone on the wall of New Abascar, with her torch lifted high as it was when she was taken from us. For she was one of Abascar’s bravest.”

“What are they?” whispered Tabor Jan. “What monsters are driving us from our home?”

“The Blackstone Caves have never been your home, Captain. Barnashum belongs to the wild. We’re meant for a far better home than this.”

“Where do we belong, then?”

Scharr ben Fray fixed him with fierce attention, dark eyes gleaming beneath the cowl. “That, Captain, is the secret your king is chasing.”

“Is there an answer?”

“We know, somehow, that we are out of place. I’ve made it my life’s work to understand why that is so. And I’m close, Captain. Closer than ever to the answer.”