51. Fifty-one
Chapter 51
I woke with my head on a pillow and a blanket draped over me. Run , my instincts screamed.
I resisted the desperate urge. If they, whoever they were, thought I was asleep, I had at least a few minutes to figure out what was going on. They’d attacked me, I remembered, with some sort of… sleep spell? But I wasn’t hurt, or even chilled. I wasn’t tied up, and I couldn’t feel any enchantments on me. I cracked one eye open.
In front of me, a row of horses stood tied on long lines to the branches of the trees. In every other direction I saw waxed linen tents pitched low to the ground, blocks of pale beige against the black tangle of the woods.
My bag sat to my side. From the heat and the light, I could tell a fire burned behind me. And there were people there, talking and laughing. It smelled like food and smoke. Slowly, trying to make the move casual, I closed my eyes and rolled over.
The fire was not fifteen feet away. Folk surrounded it, ranging in age from perhaps thirteen to forty. Nearly all were dressed as roughly as the woman Karema had been. Most had weapons, and they were all heavily adorned with amulets, pendants, bracelets, and rings.
I picked Oraik out in an instant, with his broad shoulders and his fine shirt. I couldn’t make out the conversation, but I heard his familiar laugh. Uneasily, I sat up and then stood. A few of the faces by the fire turned towards me. They all fell silent.
“So, she wakes,” said Karema. Bird perched behind her, on a fallen log the woman used as a backrest. Its head was tucked under the larger wing, one leg lifted. I wondered if my enchantment had chosen the spot, or if it was hostage. “Does she have an appetite?” Karema mused as she looked me over, her voice almost mocking.
“That depends.” I gave Oraik a wary look as I came to stand beside him. He smiled at me in reassurance and shifted to make room in the circle.
“Depends on?” Karema placed her hands on her cross-legged knees and raised an eyebrow at me across the fire. The rest of the circle was quiet, watching either her or me. She was clearly the leader of this band. I ducked away from a billow of wind-blown smoke.
“Do you attack every stranger you see?” I wanted to know.
“Says the woman who drew the first sigil.”
“You almost shot my friend.”
“Your friend, who is unharmed. As are you. Are you not?”
“Well, yes,” I murmured. Curiosity took over my defensive urge. “What was that you did, anyways? I didn’t even feel it coming. And who are you people?”
“One at a time,” Karema said with a smile. “Piri, get her some food. As for what…” Karema gripped her necklace and lifted it an inch. The braided twine loop held three circular amulets. I squinted across the smoke of the fire. The disks looked like smooth baked clay. No sigils were visible.
“What is that?” I asked at last.
“Protection. You warders don’t know anything, do you?”
“Protection from what? ”
“People like you. So don’t try casting again. I trust you’ll enjoy your meal and not make us humans regret inviting you, right?”
A wooden bowl of soup appeared in my vision, offered by a scrawny boy, one of the youngest of the group. I took it with a weak smile, and then the wooden spoon he offered next. Peas and squash floated in a fennel-scented broth.
“We’re just looking for Kalcedon,” I said. I took a sip of the soup. It was delicious.
“So Oraik said.”
“Have you seen him? He’s gray, tall—”
“Save your breath, warder. You’re the first strangers we’ve seen in weeks. But you won’t find your friend.” She sounded certain. But what did she know?
“Of course we will,” I said fiercely.
Oraik turned to me. There was an empty bowl in front of him, and he was sat cross-legged like the rest of them.
“I told them what happened, and Bird started pointing a new direction. They think they know where he is.”
“A place no one should go,” Karema said. “You can stay with us instead, if you’d like. At least to the next town.” She eyed me warily.
“Why? What’s wrong with where we’re headed?” I took a bite of squash, just as Karema snorted, as if I should have known better than to ask such a foolish question. She leaned over, shifting her weight and propping herself up on a fist.
“The lords of faerie don’t take kindly to us mortals knocking on their door,” Karema drawled. “What they call a palace, we’re as like to call a tomb. I don’t know what they want with your fae ‘friend,’ but you’d be wise to think twice, if you’d like to keep being you.”
I already knew I was doing something foolish and difficult. Did she expect we’d just turn around and wander home, after everything we’d been through already? Was I supposed to be surprised there was danger here?
“I’m not going to abandon him just because you think it’s a bad idea,” I snapped. “I don’t care how you do things here. So unless you’d like to be helpful—” Oraik put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. I quieted.
“We’re their guests,” he reminded me softly.
“No, by all means.” Karema rolled her eyes. “Let your little witch-woman speak her mind. The way we do things here, warder, is we fight tooth and nail for every scrap of survival. We don’t hide behind Wards and keep out those who need safety. But going after a lost cause?” She tilted her head to the side and gestured with her hand, like tossing dice. “That risk’s not bravery. It’s idiocy.”
“If you’re human and you don’t like it, just cross the Ward,” I said, after a long moment of struggling to compose myself. “Enough with this ‘warder’ nonsense.”
“And die when you realize you’ve got a drop of faerie blood,” she said. “How far back does your family line go? Would you gamble your life on getting it right? And say you knew you could cross—would you leave your home? Your people?”
In the Protectorate it was easy to tell who did and didn’t have fae blood. Here, where heat filled the air, the faintest types of witch might never know. Especially if they had no knack for casting and couldn’t get the sigils quite right. She was right about tracing a family line, too. It had caused me no shortage of frustration that even my great-grandmother couldn’t tell me any details about our fae bloodline, or how many generations back it could be found.
Kalcedon’s mother must have been even more desperate than I’d thought, to risk the Ward.
“There must be a way to tell,” I said. “If I do a big casting and drain the area, I could let you know—”
“We aren’t looking for your help,” Karema said. “Enough of this. Eat. Tomorrow we head to the town of Erris.”
“I’m going to rescue Kalcedon,” I said stubbornly. “I’ll find a way.”
Karema’s eyes narrowed.
“Your Ward’s made you an idiot.”
“I’ve been called that plenty of times before. Might as well live up to it,” I said with a pained smile.
“All the sense of a rock-troll,” she added.
Oraik cleared his throat.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” he said. “It’s useful advice, I’m sure. I wasn’t expecting to find food and friendship here. Think what you like of us, but to me that is a cheering thought.”
“As is your loyalty: as cheering as it is wasted.” She shook her head. “Tonen, fetch your fiddle. And somebody get the burned wine. The night’s too quiet.” A fellow with a scruffy beard stood and dusted off his pants. He vanished from the circle, then returned with a four-stringed golden fiddle and a ceramic jug. He passed the wine to Karema.
“What would you hear?” Tonen asked, as he elicited a mournful sigh from the instrument with a sweep of the bow across the string.
“My mother’s song.”
“Samira’s Fall?” he said softly, pulling the bow away. “I’d rather play something with a little cheer.”
“They should hear it. Before they throw their own lives away.”
“Samira?” Oraik asked.
“Karema’s own mother,” Tonen said. “She chanced the Ward nearly forty years back.”
“Why’d she risk it, if it’s such a terrible thing?” I asked bluntly.
Tonen was silent, staring at Karema. Karema was silent a moment too, staring into the fire. The others shifted uneasily around the circle. One of the other women added wood to the flames; one of the men got up to check the horses.
“Sorry,” I muttered, realizing from their reaction that my question might have been rude. Karema shook her head.
“The year after my birth she was called to work in the silver palace, like many of us are.” Karema said. “The very place you wish to visit. Work is a kindness. She was ‘chanted, like all their human servants are. Just as your witch friend like as not is.” Karema gestured for the ceramic bottle, which had made it three seats away from her, to be passed back. There was a dissatisfied grumble from those who’d been awaiting it, but hand by hand it was sent back to her. She took a deep drink and held onto it. Her story continued.
“It’s said the Sorrowing Lord fell in love with her and wed her, never mind she was still married to my fa. All the time she was ‘chanted. But once he’d gotten a child in her belly? In his vanity he believed she’d love him. As if anyone could love a man who’d stolen her from her family and chained her to his will. So he lifted the spell.”
“…and?” I asked.
Oraik frowned at the ground, his arms around his knees.
“And she awoke to find years of her life vanished, an unwanted child in her belly, and a cruel lord for a husband. She fled. Ran straight for the Ward. We never saw her again. By the time my father went looking, there wasn’t a trace of her left.”
“She died?”
“She was pregnant with a faerie’s spawn. Of course she died. There was magic in her, whether she had her own or not. Wolves must’ve dragged the body off.”
“She could have made it through,” I said.
“And how would you know?” Karema snapped. She took another swig of the drink and at last passed it around the circle again. “You’re quite confident for a warder, aren’t you?”
“Because a pregnant woman did pass through the Ward, a few decades back,” I said. My mouth felt dry. “Thirty-eight years ago. With a faerie child in her. She didn’t die. Neither did the baby. He was too unformed to have magic yet.”
Nobody spoke. The only sound was the crackling fire, hissing and popping as the flames licked around the logs and turned them to embers. I shielded my eyes for a moment as the smoke blew towards me. Then it moved away again.
“That’s impossible,” Karema breathed at last. “What was her name? What did she look like? It couldn’t have been her.”
Tonen settled back to the ground, his fiddle across his lap. He put a hand on Karema’s back. She shrugged him off, staring at me intently with a bright, fire-licked hunger.
“I never met her. But it’s true, beyond any doubt,” I said.
“I don’t know why you’d lie about that, but…”
“I wouldn’t,” I said. “Her child was Kalcedon. The one we’re following. Please, I need to know everything you can tell us about the Sorrowing Lord and his palace.”