He holds her hands for a moment longer, feeling her pulse flicker against her wrists. Tears come behind his eyes like unwelcome guests, and he kisses her callused fingertips gently.
‘It’s OK to be happy, love.’
The wail that leaves her is a brutal and ragged thing, spiralling upwards. The cry of a night-bird. A gaunt, cold thing on the edge of the marshes. She falls against him, the whole of her shaking with sorrow.
After that, time passes in a series of remembered movements – a pot of hot water on the small brazier, herbs that scent of dreams and slow, warm nights, a bed, blankets, furs.
Her head rests on his chest, the ghost of her breath against his neck, slipping and steadying to a sweeter rhythm as the panic and fear leave her. His hand moves softly through her hair, drawing the blankets tighter as cold slides down from the hills.
The coals sink low. Even the loudest and most raucous refugees fall silent as the cool of a late summer night on the edge of the Burning woods sets in. The occasional slink of quiet laughter, of illicit trysts amid the trees. The comforting weight of his daughter’s body, and his senses sharpened to something more by the tiredness around him.
The tick of cooling metal, the sough of branches, the irregular slap of wind against the hides. The little songs of the dark. To begin with, Shroudweaver watches the shadows anxiously, but they move as shadows should. The world slips in and out on his eyelids. Smoke twists the ceiling and his thoughts shrink inwards to the song of breath and dream and rest.
He stirs again in the hollow of the night, some sudden thrill jerking him awake. Shipwright is armoured and dozing at the foot of the bed. His world is tilted softly on the horizontal, a muddle of pressures and tastes. Crowkisser’s ribs moving against him and the stolen tang of alcohol on his lips, old scars aching beneath the covers. He tries to flex his legs without disturbing her, tries to relax, but it’s not just his old wounds keeping him awake tonight. A strange tension presses on his chest, a sense in his head like a chime, an urgent bell. A premonition of something wrong, something watching. For a second, he feels it above them, a weight on the skin of the world, the wing of a bat drawn across an open eyelid, the soft choke of a stifled mouth. It passes as quickly as breathing, leaving him wet with a sweat which has crawled its way under the covers and left his skin alive and itching.
His free hand frets at red thread, but then Crowkisser moves in her sleep, fingers flexing in dreams, and the love that lights inside him washes him clean. A soft glow pushes past his tired bones and frightened skin, sleep comes, and he doesn’t wake again until the fingers of dawn.
When he stumbles groggily to his feet, his daughter is nowhereto be seen, though the warmth of her is still in the bed. Shipwright’s space at its foot is vacant, a plate of meat and eggs is set conspicuously in her place. He smiles, and reaches for it, staggering slightly. The pain draws tentative fingers along his legs, where the silvered lines of scars ache like spiteful tongues – a little gift from the south. He spends a few moments rubbing life into them, into gaps filled by the memory of tendons.
He eats slowly, enjoying the peace, and the slow reconstitution of the day from the warming morning, as fires are lit and the animals wake to their feeding. The basic joy of eating. Fuel for the body. He brews something dark and strong and sips, the edges of the cup rattling his teeth.
He has no idea what to do next.
Beyond the tent, voices are raised – the burred and clipped accents of Astic mixing with Thell’s hammered tones. His daughter’s voice threads between them, high and clear, a crystal scalpel. He knows that sound. It’s the sound of trouble.
The pieces of the morning shudder as Shroudweaver leaves at speed.
Outside, Crowkisser stands at the centre of an angry crowd who, despite their numbers, don’t yet have the guts to turn their tongues on her. He’s unexpectedly proud. Around her, a few of the gaunt Astic folk that he recognises as her long men, their confident fingers on slim, flat blades that wave menacingly, like chastened sharks.
Beyond those blades are the injured of Thell, muttering the sort of dire threats which are only valid up to the point of a knife. In front of them, Shipwright, her arms spread. She sees Shroudweaver and rolls her eyes in relief. Crowkisser catches him too, raises a finger to her back. The meaning is clear. He waits.
When she speaks to the mob again her voice is steadier. ‘Leave me be if you love her.’
Somehow, grudgingly, they do. As the crowd drift back, he watches the knot of long men part to expose the grass below Crowkisser’s legs. There is a coughing at her feet, a sprawled, twitching shape that is retching like a dog with its throat stuck ona bone. Somehow, Icecaller’s body is moving, stiff and awkward with the chill of death, but moving, still.
Crowkisser stoops to watch her like she’s an exhibit, a specimen. No, Shroudweaver knows this look, she has some trick up her sleeve. His daughter’s eyes dart like a craftsman admiring a tricky piece of work, whispers of magic blossoming in the mud. His heart lurches and he starts forwards, but it’s too late.
Icecaller’s body groans, vomits, and reaches a hand up blindly. Crowkisser takes it by the wrist and pulls her up; not just up, but into her arms. Icecaller hugs her back reflexively. Slowly, deliberately, Crowkisser turns, displaying her to the crowd. The cheer they raise startles birds from the branches. Shroudweaver watches the witch of the south holding the body of the north’s treasured daughter, and realises what a beautiful con she’s pulled. And as if she senses his gaze, Crowkisser tucks her chin into the returned woman’s neck and winks at her father over Icecaller’s shoulder, a smile lingering on her lips.
82
hush the babe and crack the branch
send out sound to shore and sea
if the forest was my home
happy I would ever be
—Marriage song, the Cut
A day later, and the sun is haloed like a smudged nail in butter. The refugees are squabbling among themselves as tempers fray in the pollen-hung heat. Divisions are appearing, alliances and fault lines. Crowkisser is at the forefront of the march, the wind driving her cloak back against her shins and shoulders, her thin legs. They forge inexorably southwards in her shadow. The soft turned rocks of the Barrowlands give way to richer Midlands soil, and the rooted edges of the Burners’ forests linger to the east, their broad branches soughing in the breeze, the creak and tick of old growth.
No sign of the Burners themselves, but the refugees still clot together in huddles, scanning the treeline with slitted eyes. Wary and weary, but not broken. Stitching each other’s wounds, changing bandages, boiling run-off water from the forest’s brooks until it sings pure and healthy. They’re talking more as the days pass and the numbness of death slowly falls from their lips. Low conversations held in closed huddles, backs to the campfires, eyes off into the treeline, scanning the forest, imagining the mountain behind and the cities beyond.
It’s a mixed blessing. Talk was a healer, but tales were a worry. Shipwright caught fragments on the smoke-stained wind. A stew of comfort and questions. Who did this, what happened, who’s responsible? If anyone looked to the head of the column whereShroudweaver’s daughter stalked like a hunting dog, she didn’t mark it. The bulk of the worrying is confined to cook-fire gossip, cosseted around embers and picking over fish-bones.
Shipwright’s not a welcome guest at these campfire meetings. She was a stranger before, and she’s a problem now. Both Shipwright and Crowkisser had come to the mountain a moment before it all came down, but Shipwright hadn’t had the nous to resurrect the first daughter of the Republic in front of her grieving people. It wasn’t surprising that the refugees had a little trouble deciding who to love and who to lynch. Shipwright couldn’t bring herself to abandon them though, and Shroudweaver wouldn’t abandon his daughter. So, she kept busy each evening, moving from fire to fire, stoking and tending, stirring pots, her mind still ghosted with memories of a ladle rocking back and forth against a copper rim.
