They sit, choosing a place where they can see right through the gates and up to the door of the longhouse. They watch. He becomes fascinated by the to and fro of people, the rhythm of a life totally alien to him. He and his master never stop. They are wanderers and when they camp they camp away from people for fear of being found. When they are in towns he is kept close for fear of giving her away. When she strikes they are quick—in and out. He waits outside dark buildings or towering walls with Xus, and then they are fleeing, finding places to hide, usually unpleasant places and often they are there for weeks—in stinking hovels or swamps or worse, the sourlands.
But today he watches people. It would be easy for him to forget this is not his life, easy to fall into the backwards and forwards of these tired people who, even though they are dressed in rags and filth, sometimes laugh. They sometimes smile. They sometimes hold one another. Children play, seemingly careless of the misery that waits for them as adults.
With the strangeness of a dream comes foreknowledge. He can feel what is coming as surely as the children running and giggling through puddles must realise the harshness of the life awaiting them. Unlike them he cannot look away. When he looks up, the clouds make no pretence of reality; they become giant grey daggers reaching down from the sky to rip at the tops of trees tinged with the red of failing day.
Wake me.
“There is a sadness that is more than a harsh life here, Master,” he says.
“Yes. Blessed Ryneal uses them cruelly.”
“Uses them for what, Master?”
“Whatever he wishes.” She stands as if some signal has been given. “Her.” His master points as a woman, as stooped as the rest and with a heavy swelling belly, leaves the longhouse and walks towards the well.
“Her?” he says. “What about her?”
“She is what is needed. Come with me, Girton.” There is something about his master’s manner that sends a chill through him despite the humidity of the day. “When I speak to her hang back. Keep your face covered and say nothing.”
Please wake me.
His master walks up to the woman. Now he is nearer he can see she is a girl, though her flesh is grey with tiredness and, curiously, her front teeth are also missing. The girl struggles with the handle of the well. No one offers to help her.
“Let me,” says his master. “You look like you have worked hard. You must need a drink.”
I want to wake up.
Wake me now.
Please wake me now.
The girl looks up, frightened. So obviously and clearly frightened.
It is Blue-Eyes.
How can it be?
The last time he saw her was before the slave market the day his master bought him. She was crying. She was screaming his name as she was dragged off to a wagon and he did nothing to help her. He wants to step forward but he is unable to move and his master has told him he must not.
“The water is not for me; it is for the guards,” says Blue-Eyes. “But thank you.”
“I am glad to help. Maybe you can help me? I am a player and I was looking for work, but life here seems hard. Is your blessed poor?”
“No.” Blue-Eyes’ words are hardly audible and her lip has been split recently. The damaged skin clings to her remaining teeth when she speaks. “He has plenty.”
“Then I should introduce myself.” She hands the bucket to Blue-Eyes and the girl looks over her shoulder. She leans forward and melds into the silhouette of the well so Girton can no longer see her, only hear her low voice. She is close to tears.
“You have done me a kindness, so let me do one for you in return. Do not enter the longhouse. Take your apprentice, turn away from this place and never come back.”
“Thank you for that warning,” says my master. “May good fortune come to you.”
“I doubt it will,” says Blue-Eyes as she walks away with the heavy bucket. Her shadow elongates in the setting sun until it touches his feet and he feels like it is entreating him for help.
His master takes his arm.
“Come, Girton. In an hour the guards will be asleep and you must be ready.”
“That was Blue-Eyes,” he says. “She was my friend in the slave pens. She was always good to me. She was always smiling.”
“She is no longer Blue-Eyes,” says his master sadly, and it is as if she shares his pain. “Blessed Ryneal took her happiness with his fists and his appetites. Who you knew is gone.” She shakes him. “Blue Eyes is gone, do you understand? But you can free her from this man.”
“She begged for my help when they took her,” he says. The words are dry in his mouth.
“You were six, untrained and unable to do anything. You were a helpless child.” She stares into his eyes. “Now you are not. You cannot change what was but tonight you may at least give her a chance for a future.” She places a parchment in his hand together with his stabswords. On the parchment is a truncated circle with the top left quarter missing, the sign of the assassins. Beneath is written, “… and the Lords shall care for their people.”
“What is this?”
“It is part of the high king’s law. We will leave it to remind this blessed’s heir that to be blessed is not to be untouchable.”
He holds the blades in his hands, and though the calluses on his palms have long ago moulded themselves to the hilts tonight the blades feel alien, like he has never seen them before.
“How will I know who it is?”
“He will reveal himself.”
An hour later they slip in past drunk guards slumped at the gates. He is shaking and has built Blessed Ryneal into a monster in his mind—a huge man and a despoiler of all he touches. A creature who shrugs off blade wounds like insect bites.
Time passes too quickly.
His master quietens a group of children huddled in the lee of the wall as they stalk purposefully past. Inside the hall it is almost pitch black and the flickering candles barely light their way, so they squat and concentrate on the exercise of the False Lantern. At the back of the hall is an area curtained off with animal skins. His master points at it.
“Breathe out, Girton,” she whispers. “You are the instrument.”
He breathes in the words drilled into him. “No room for fear.” Breathe out. Breathe in. “I am the weapon.” He pushes the curtain aside. He walks from one world to another.
Blessed Ryneal is not a monster, only a man, heavily muscled and with a network of scars from battle decorating his naked body. A bed fills the back of the room and he can see figures moving, pulling covers over themselves.
He is shaking with fear as he reaches for the hilts of his blades.
“A boy,” says Ryneal. He is gently spoken. “I don’t remember asking for another boy.” Ryneal walks over to Girton and stares into his face. “Still got your teeth. Guidran knows he’s meant to take them out. He’s getting either soft or lazy. Still, I can’t risk a biter.”
Shaking with anger, his hands tighten on the hilts of his blades.
Blue-Eyes.
Ryneal takes the front of his tunic in one hand and starts to draw back his fist.
Everything happens so slowly. It is like the time he got tangled up in pondweed when he was learning to swim and thought Blue Watta had come to take him. It is like drowning.
The tunic bunching around his neck.
The fist reaches full draw.
His clothes are loose.
It is easy to shrug out of them.