Winterbirth (64 page)

One less disciplined than the Chancellor might have let some hint of his dismay show. The Bloodheir was the last person he desired more time alone with. And scurrying around trying to temper the edge of his ill judgement would be wearying. The Chancellor's mind sifted the options in a moment. There were only two, and his every instinct said the first - trying to change the High Thane's decision — would not work.

So, he reasoned with a heavy heart, it must be the second.

'Very well,' he said. 'I will offer the Bloodheir whatever assistance I can.'

'Good.' The Thane of Thanes seemed genuinely pleased, perhaps even pleasantly surprised, at Mordyn's acquiescence. 'I know, Mordyn, you have your differences with Aewult. I do not blame you. He can be impulsive, careless. A little harsh, perhaps. But he will be Thane after me, as sure as fawns follow the rut.

He has much to learn, and I can think of no better teacher than you.'

'I will need a little time to put matters in order,' the Shadowhand said, with the slightest of bows, 'and to placate my wife.'

Tarawould not be pleased, and her displeasure could be fearsome. She would not accompany him - she was too fond of her comforts to exchange them for wintry Kolkyre - yet his absences pained her more with each passing year. They hurt him as well. When he had been young he might have scoffed at the prospect, for the marriage had been at least partly driven by self-interest on both their parts, but virtually without their noticing it, powerful bonds had grown between the two of them. She had almost died in losing, for the second time, a child of his before its birthing time. The fear he had felt then, as he glimpsed a future without her, had been enough to drive the desire for a son out of his mind. He would never again risk the loss of that which was most precious to him.

The High Thane brushed the bars of the birdcage with a finger. The prisoner hopped a little closer on its perch and leaned forwards, half-spreading its wings. When it realised no food was being offered it began to sing again.

'Stupid, these birds,' Gryvan murmured, then smiled and shrugged his shoulders. 'My wife likes them.

What can I do? We are all slaves to those we love.'

It was on the eve of his departure that a young manservant came to find Mordyn. He was in his reading chamber, perusing reports from his informants at Ranal oc Ayth-Haig's court in Dun Aygll.

'What is it?' Mordyn demanded irritably.

'There is a messenger here, my lord,' the youth said as he bowed. 'Not an official one: someone we've never seen before. She insists on speaking only with you, and will not leave. We have her in the guardroom. She is . . . unclean.'

'I am not in the mood for messages. Send her away.'

'Yes, lord. She did say . . . she did say you would hear her out. She said she brought word for the supplicant.'

Mordyn hung his head in thought for a moment.

'You said unclean. How so?'

'The King's Rot, my lord. Foul…'

'Very well. Has she been searched?'

'The guards say she is unarmed, lord.'

Mordyn went to the guardroom as much out of curiosity as anything. For Torquentine to send his precious doorkeeper in person, the message must be of some import.

When he reached the guardroom, he sent everyone away and sat before Magrayn alone.

'I never thought to welcome you to my home, doorkeeper,' he said.

She wore her hood pulled far forwards, keeping much of her face in shadow. How the guards must have cursed when they pulled that hood back, Mordyn thought.

'I will not linger,' she rasped. 'I think your men find my presence unsettling.'

'I imagine you're right. Let me hear your master's message, then.'

'His exact words: I hear you are bound for Kolkyre, noble Chancellor. There is a man I have heard of, in Lheanor's city. A wretch; worse than that, a leech. Ochan by name, a usurer by nature. And a dealer in stolen goods, a smuggler, a blackguard of the vilest ilk. It would be to the good of the Bloods and all honest traders if he were brought to justice, yet it seems he is under the wing of some protector. There would be no debts between us, should your presence in Kolkyre coincide with this Ochan's fall.'

Mordyn laughed. 'So I am to be the long arm of Torquentine's revenge upon some minor rival, am I?'

Magrayn remained quite still and quite silent.

'Well, go back and tell your master I will consider it. But make him no promises; be clear on that, Magrayn. No promises. And compliment him on the skills of his eavesdroppers. It's only a day since I decided to go to Kolkyre, after all.'

When Torquentine's doorkeeper had departed, Mordyn remained for a minute or two alone in the guardroom, a faint smile playing across his lips. One had to admire Torquentine's presumption. It took a considerable amount of self-confidence to seek to use the Chancellor of the Haig Bloods thus. Still, Mordyn would think on it. There might be some merit in exerting a little of the High Thane's authority in Kolkyre; bringing down someone Lheanor's own people had allowed to prosper would be an elegant demonstration of the Haig Blood's primacy.

KOLDIHRVE, ORISIAN COULD not help but think, stank. Of fish and freshly butchered meat, of smoke and stagnant pools, of filth: smells he knew well enough from Kolglas, but here they had a different intensity. It was noisy, too. The muddy, puddled streets were filled with shouting and cries.

Ear-grating singing assaulted them when they passed by a half-derelict tavern.

There were wild-looking men leading mules laden with furs and carcasses and baskets of turnips; old, crumpled women talking animatedly in doorways or through windows. Scrawny dogs loped up and down, noses to the ground and eyes darting nervously this way and that as if haunted by a lifetime of stonings. The houses were rough and ready, many of them little more than wooden shacks thrown up with whatever timber had come to hand.

Varryn and Ess'yr had parted from them before they entered the town, making for the
vo'an
on the other side of the river. Ess'yr had promised to find them later. Orisian noted the curiosity with which the town's inhabitants watched them pass, even without Kyrinin walking alongside them. There were many frowns, and words muttered behind hands.

'Old Hammarn lives down by the water,' said Yvane. She proceeded down Koldihrve's streets utterly oblivious of the unpleasant distractions that assailed them, and the questioning, unfriendly looks cast their way.

They passed by the rotting corpse of a dog half-hidden beneath a wooden boardwalk. A small group of children, their clothes ragged and their faces smudged with dirt, yelled abuse at them, and fled in a squall of laughter when Rothe cast them a black glare.

Even the sea, when they came to it, was a grey and leaden thing compared to the ever-shifting expanse that washed the edge of Orisian's homeland. The water slapped disconsolately upon the muddy shore.

There were small boats lying at strange angles here and there, hauled up out of the water and tied down.

Koldihrve stood at the highest reach of a long and snaking estuary that protected it from the storms of the open oceans, so there was no need for the protective breakwaters of Kolglas and Glasbridge. There was only a handful of crude wooden jetties. The huts that lined the top of the beach were rickety affairs, half of them made of drift-wood.

What caught Orisian's attention more than all this, however, was the ship rocking gently at anchor two or three hundred paces offshore. It was, he was immediately certain, one he had seen before: the Tal Dyreen trading vessel that had been berthed at Glasbridge before Winterbirth. It looked absurdly out of place in this miserable backwater.

Old Hammarn's house was one of the more respectable ones running along the shore. A wattle and daub fence protected it from sea breezes and spray, and the building itself was a solid-looking construction of heavy, if weathered, timbers.

Hammarn himself was a dishevelled, almost shrivelled, man with straggly hair of the purest white. His face had aged in a way that must surely be his Huanin blood coming to the fore: it was deeply lined and pock-marked. For all his evident years, he bobbed about with the nervous energy of a youth.

He welcomed them in to his little house with cheerful enthusiasm, and almost before they had crammed themselves into its single, chaotically full room he was rooting around in a pile of odd sticks and driftwood. With a flourish he emerged clutching a short, thick piece of wood and thrust it upon Anyara.

'Woodtwine,' he exclaimed in a crackling voice. 'Finished last week. One of my best, I think, I think.'

Anyara, a little taken aback, turned it slowly in her hands. Orisian peered at it, and could see delicate carved figures spiralling around the shaft.

'Saolin, you see,' Hammarn said as he jabbed unnervingly at the object with a crooked finger. 'The change runs around the wood. Starts with the seal, ends with the horse.'

I ... I see,' said Anyara.

'Old craft, woodtwining. Much practised by fishermen in these parts in the Kingtimes. Saolin a common theme, but this is a piece twine, not a story twine. Need more wood for a story twine, 'less you have a fine touch. Good one this, though, I think. The best came from Kolkyre, of course. In the old days, that is.'

'Hammarn,' said Yvane softly. The old man looked from face to face, as if unsure who had spoken. He grinned expectantly at them all, baring uneven teeth blotched with brown. He had the look of a child courting congratulation.

'Be calm for a moment, Hammarn,' Yvane said. 'Your guests have come a long way'

'Ah,' said Hammarn, cowed. 'Yes, yes. Not often I have visitors here. Much too exciting.' He shuffled his feet and looked more hesitantly at Anyara.

'No harm done,' she said. She smiled as she held the wood carving out to him. He took it back with a courteous nod.

Orisian glanced around. The hut's interior was filled with wood and clothing, stones and all manner of odds and ends scavenged from the beach. A lathe rested against one wall, almost hidden beneath a pile of dirty sailcloth. A weary-looking fishing net, apparently unused in years, was draped across another wall. He could hardly imagine that there was room here for all of them to bed down, if that was what Yvane had in mind.

After a deal of searching, Hammarn found them some bread. It was only a little stale. They chewed it in silence for a while. Hammarn ate nothing himself, but watched them, his jaw moving soundlessly in imitation. Orisian cast a more careful eye over his surroundings as he worked at breaking down the bread's stubborn resistance. Hidden here and there amongst the chaos were things that stirred his memory and gave the place an unexpectedly familiar feel. A sack of netting hung in one corner, filled with clay jars and pots, all tightly sealed: the same strange herbs and powders that Inurian had so assiduously collected? Behind the lathe was a pile of thick, leather-bound books so musty and mouldy-looking that they could not have been opened in years. The place was almost a decayed, disintegrating version of Inurian's room back in Kolglas. Perhaps Hammarn had once had that same sharp curiosity Inurian possessed. The signs of such a past were here, as if Hammarn had brought with him into the final years of his life all the baggage of another person entirely.

Yvane was watching the track of Orisian's eyes.

'Age brings wisdom to some; for others it bears different fruit,' she said. The words were gently spoken, and the older
na'kyrim
only chuckled at them.

'Old Hammarn, yes. Or Hammarn the Quiet.' He winked at Orisian. 'Quiet, you see, I am. I can smell the Shared, but never touch it, never. Five quiet in the Shared, five waking. In Koldihrve, that is. And old I surely am; really quite old.' The last words he spoke faded into silence as he was overtaken by some stray thought.

'I thought there were eleven here?' Yvane said, and her voice brought Hammarn back to himself.

'Ah, indeed,' he said sadly. 'Brenna fell asleep in the very hour of Winterbirth, two years gone. No waking from such an ill-omened slumber.'

Yvane nodded. 'It is a long time since I was here. Who is First Watchman, Hammarn? We should speak with him, I suppose. Strangers always cause a stir.'

'Oh, still Tomas,' said Hammarn, and distaste was apparent in his tone. 'Vile Tomas,' he whispered conspiratorially, 'but tell not I said it.'

He looked earnestly at them, and Orisian found himself nodding in assent.

'He'll know you're here well enough,' Hammarn mused.

Yvane grunted and glanced at Orisian and Anyara. 'Unless Tomas is a changed man, it would probably be better if you kept out of his way. Koldihrve is a rough place, and unlikely to be any gentler if they know they have the ruling line of Lannis-Haig in their midst.'

'Not changed a whit,' Hammarn was saying. 'Always vile. No friend of the Glas valley, that's for certain.'

He cast a nervous glance at Yvane, and hesitated before continuing. 'A fool, but not a great friend of yours either, sweet lady. Not sure he'd be best pleased to see you.'

Yvane frowned, but realisation quickly followed. 'Still angry? It's been, what, four years?'

Hammarn shrugged and grinned.

'I had a disagreement with this Tomas the last time I was here,' Yvane explained. 'One of the fisherwomen bore a
na'kyrim
baby, and he was making a lot of noise about wanting to know who the father was. He was, and no doubt still is, drunk on his little scent of power, and I told him so. He didn't take it kindly. Well, makes no odds to me if I never see the loathsome man again.'

She looked pointedly from Orisian to Anyara with an almost mischievous smile. 'And if you should run into him, you can always just pretend to be the children of a woodsman from Anlane or somewhere similar. Shouldn't be a difficult lie: you've collected enough dirt and scratches to pass for beggars.'

Anyara and Orisian looked down at their hands and garments. It was true enough, of course. Grime covered their skin; their clothes were filthy and full of rents. Their travels since Winterbirth had left marks outside just as they had within.