He grunts. ‘Still.’
‘Fine, fine. Once we’re done in Thell. A holiday in the soft embrace of the forests, then I’ll teach you a few choice phrases to make my mother swoon and pluck your cheeks. I promise.’
He grins. ‘Thanks. I love you.’
She tips the dregs of her cup onto the half-frozen grass. ‘I love you too, grub. Let’s get moving.’
An hour later, they’re through the outskirts of the Barrowlands, in the low fertile stretch of country that swings east towards the Burners’ forests, and west towards the coast, and the ruins of Luss. The Cut, she’d seen it called on maps, but it had other names too. The Furrows. The Lows.
Land that was sparsely populated, but richly farmed. Small clusters of homesteads gathered like gossips around deep wells and fields that seemed bare now, but that would grow lush as the earth turned, thick with the brown and black grain that gave the region its names. The Cut turned out bread as soft and warm as a baker’s thumb, and ale that tasted like it had slept in the hollow of a malt mill for years, until it was casked and poured.
She realises she’s hungry, takes some dried fruit from her pocket and chews unhappily.
There’s more buzz than normal in the sleepy villages of the Cut this morning. The streets that lead from steading to steading strung with bright flags, orange and red and white. Gaggles of young teens, jostling each other for position on the verge, some clutching baskets of petals, some clutching each other, snatching kisses on the edge of the grainfields, running fingers up thighs and necking like swans.
The older villagers gather too, their brown skin baked darker by a life tilling the earth, leaning on sticks or perched on stools. Swapping jugs that still sweated cold beads of water from their time in the root-cellars.
Shipwright nudges Shroudweaver. ‘What do you make of all this?’
He shrugs. ‘A local festival?’ He squints at the lines drawn up either side of the dusty road. ‘A race maybe?’
She watches him closely. He never could resist a gamble, but he likes to pretend he can, ‘Do you want to stay and watch?’
The smile that lights his face is all the answer she needs.
They hitch their horse outside a fenced field and shoulder their way through the growing crowd, ending up next to an elderly man who nods at them with a grin more gum than tooth.
‘Youse are new. Staying for the race?’
‘Yes,’ the Shroudweaver says, quick as a breath.
He grins wider. ‘You betting?’
Shroudweaver shoots at glance at Shipwright and she shrugs. ‘Like I could stop you. It’s your money to lose.’
Shroudweaver smiles beatifically, turns to the old man. ‘How does it work?’
The man waves a thick-nailed hand down the eastern road, past where it bends towards the south.
‘All the young ’uns goin’ to be seen on that yer road soon. Each one’s got a colour from their ’stead, fixed on their pennant. And the lead un’ll have the singing skull. Clutched in his sweaty mitts. Yis follow?’
Shroudweaver nods. ‘I think so.’
The old man grins. ‘So yis can bet on colour – who’s goin’ to be in the lead when they hit t’village line. Or’ – he winks – ‘Yis can bet on the skull. Who’s goin’ to take it over village line.’
Another minute of arcanity passes in a whirl of odds and tips and palmed coins, and Shroudweaver eventually walks away with a marked scrip and a vague sense of satisfaction. Shipwright rolls her eyes and slips some coin to a bright young girl for a crisp roll drenched in warm honey.
‘Are we going to get rich then?’ she asks.
Shroudweaver turns the scrip every which way, frowning at the illegible marks. ‘Maybe?’
Shipwright sucks sugar off her fingers. ‘Don’t lie to me. You never win.Never.’
He smiles, waves the scrip. ‘There’s always a first time.’
They hear the shouts before they see the horses, a rolling wave of cheers and applause that pours out of the south and crashes against the homestead walls like a wave. The livestock in the pens bleat in shock and fear.
And who knew the people of the Cut could make such a noise? These dour, soft farmers suddenly fitted with lungs made of brass, raising cattle-calling voices that fill the air with looping whoops and trills. The shrieks of the girls blend together and fall like asquall of birds as the air rains rice and petals and blossoms ahead of the horses. Shipwright joins in, whooping and hollering. There’s something infectious in it, a bright joy that lifts her heart and sends it questing for the first hint of the riders.
