6. Now Pilgrimage
NOW: PILGRIMAGE
Tessa and I both swore. Fox began to blink and shake her head.
Thane held up a hand. “They are paying—some people in gold—and they also are providing a large wagon per household. There will be a caravan both of our settlement and of Carver’s leaving from here in two moon’s time.
They are hiring my whole outfit to help carry supplies.
There’ll be an increase in Perpatanian troops to help escort citizens to Skow. ”
“What is Skow?” I asked. “Their capital?”
“No, King Pollux resides in Apollon. Skow is their second biggest city. They have that watchtower just inside the city—a tall thing, I hear. They are offering it as sanctuary to border settlements until the war is over.”
“The City of the Tower.”
Like the fortuneteller’s card? asked Fox.
Tessa snickered. “Yes, girl. And they hate that they are painted in such a pagan thing as the deck of fortunetellers’.”
“The City of the Tower,” I mused. “And so Sheridan will be entirely occupied by troops. They’ll use this place as a stronghold, a fastness. Even your father’s castle keep and all his sharecropper farms? He agrees to be replaced by a garrison?”
Thane had the grace to look chagrined. “I think my father and my brother have been offered an estate in Perpatane and share in a gold mine. I don’t think they intend to return here.”
“Your father abandons the settlement that bears his name? The lands settled by his forefathers?” I scoffed. “I knew the priest had his hooks in, but not that far. What about you?”
He shrugged. “I’m a bastard. I own no land, only my wagons and horses. I think they know they can pay me a grand wage for this transport business and I’ll take it. But most importantly, Adelaide lives in Skow.”
Tessa closed her eyes tightly, likely thinking of her stepdaughter’s marriage to a Perpatanian soldier and quick exodus to the cold, strict country of the west.
None of us had wanted her to marry him. But she had just lost her mother—we a sister, a lover, a friend.
We protested such a hasty match and move, but it was useless.
Thane and Rowena had already indulged Adelaide, and when Tessa came to Sheridan she fell into the habit too.
My niece would not listen to a word that went against her own wants.
And her father missed and worried for her.
Thane continued. “My men will want to earn a fair bit before they have to hunker down for a war. I do not know that I can continue myself. We may find work transporting goods for the Perpatanian army. We may not.”
“What do you advise?” Tessa asked him, respect in her voice.
I had always been surprised at their relationship.
My sister had taken one look at the big woman from Eccleston and fallen in love.
Her husband had let Tessa move into his house and thanked her for being a protective presence as his work caused him to be gone so much.
Then he and Rowena had dissolved their marriage in spirit, and the three of them had carried on as a sort of patchwork family, all parenting Adelaide.
“Sell,” he said, eyes on me. “They may try and cheat you. You’re the last woman to own property in these parts. But they should give you something and a wagon. And you’ll have to sign a list.”
“A list?” Tessa asked.
Thane wrinkled his mouth and hesitated. Then he said, “Ah, both of you will hate this part.”
Tessa and I looked at each other, confused.
“You have to sign a penitents’ list,” he explained. “They want you to repent, confess to your sins, admit you need the teachings of the saint, and then you will be offered coin for your property and the wagon.”
“Oh it is always this kind of nonsense with them,” Tessa groaned.
I began to laugh, but it was bitter. “Do you think Starling will believe I truly seek atonement via a pilgrimage to a country I absolutely loathe?”
Thane shrugged. “You have to try.”
“I’m not going to Perpatane,” I said. “They’ll burn me alive.”