“Praise be to Elysia and her saints,” Pasevalles said as he approached. His face was pale and his hair was wet, as if he had been called directly from his bath. “I’m glad to see you are well, Lord Tiamak. The king and queen were most concerned when we could not find you.”
“I have been at the docks, saying goodbye to one friend and discovering, quite to my surprise, that another has arrived. Lord Pasevalles, this is Aengas, former Viscount of Carpilbin, now First Factor of Abaingeat.”
“I have heard of you, my lord.”
“Forgive me for not bowing,” Aengas replied.
“But what is going on here?” Tiamak asked. “You said the king and queen—they are both well?”
“In fact,” said Pasevalles, “everybody is well, except for the poor fool who tried to kill Count Eolair. And even he is not too badly hurt.” His expression belied his casual words. Tiamak had never seen the stolid Lord Chancellor so upset: his anger was obvious, fierce, and also new to Tiamak. He was glad he was not its target.
“What?” Tiamak could only stare. Suddenly Pasevalles’ pale features and disheveled appearance made sense. “Was Eolair harmed?”
“A stab wound near his shoulder that struck bone or it would have been worse. Some cuts to his hands,” said the Lord Chancellor. “We are fortunate his attacker was no soldier. He seems to have been a madman—he has worked here in the castle for more than a year. A Hernystirman.”
It sank in after a moment, and seemed to settle in Tiamak’s guts. “A Hernystirman? Did he work in the kitchen? Is his name . . . oh, what was it? Is his name Riggan?”
“Yes, I think that’s what someone said. Do you know him?”
“I know of him. My wife tended him once.” He was in no hurry to tell the rest of the story, of the man babbling about the Morriga, the Mother of Crows.
“Has he been questioned?”
“Yes, but he speaks no sense,” said Pasevalles. “You may see him later if you wish. I would be pleased to have your thoughts.”
“But who was he?”
“Come inside and you will have answers to all your questions,” Pasevalles told him. “The king and queen will want to know you have been found alive and hale.” He waved, signaling to the guards that the carriage’s occupants were welcome inside the residence. At Tiamak’s request, Captain Zakiel picked out four strong soldiers to carry Aengas’s litter into the throne hall.
As he limped after the litter, ignoring the murmurs of the soldiers as they struggled beneath Lord Aengas’ considerable weight, Tiamak found his thoughts swirling like a flock of marsh teal startled into flight. On the one hand, the attack had apparently been the work of some kind of lunatic, one of Eolair’s own countrymen with who knew what kind of mad, festering grudge—likely a meaningless, and fortunately bootless, crime. But it also felt like the vision of disaster that had come to him on the plains of the Frostmarch, showing its true form at last.
Evil times, he thought helplessly, almost as if someone else spoke in his head. With so many strange signs, how can I doubt that evil times are truly upon us? He Who Always Steps On Sand, please guide me now, because I feel the ground turning treacherous all around me.
39
A Grassland Wedding
It was hot again, very hot for the Third Green Moon. The air seemed to crackle, as if someone had rubbed a dry fleece across it, and when Fremur looked through the wagon’s small window he could see no clouds anywhere. He felt as though some fell creature breathed on his neck, but he knew he could not delay going out to join the clan any longer. His sister was being married to Drojan and his brother Odrig was giving the feast.
He untangled the ribbons of his best shirt one last time. Before the day was ended, he knew, the full-sleeved white garment would be dripping with his sweat and muddy from the hands of others, from being clapped on the back and dragged into unwanted wrestling matches with drunken guests. His aunt would have to sew on new ribbons, because half of them would be torn off during the festivities.
It would all feel different, he thought, if Drojan was not such a pig.
Fremur saw nothing wrong with a woman, even his sister Kulva, being given away in marriage to a man chosen by the head of the family, especially when the head of the family was also the clan’s thane. That was how it had always been done. But when their father Hurvalt had been thane, before he had been struck dumb and crippled by the gods, he would have balked at giving one of his daughters to a swaggering fool like Drojan, whose only accomplishment was that of being Odrig’s crony. And in fact Hurvalt had given their oldest sister to a man she cared for, although he could have chosen a richer suitor.
“The clan’s happiness is more important to a thane than it is to any other clansman,” his father had told him once. “A thane must always think with two minds, both his own and the wisdom of his ancestors. And the ancestors care only that the clan survives.”
His father was one of the first people Fremur saw when he stepped down from the wagon onto the grass of the paddock where the wedding feast was to take place. Hurvalt sat on a bench in the scant shade of the wagon, wrapped in blankets despite the heat, his body as curled and useless as a fallen leaf.
Fremur kneeled at his father’s feet. “May the Sky Piercer watch over you. And may he bring you joy on your daughter’s wedding day.”
His father rolled his eyes in Fremur’s direction, but otherwise gave no sign of having heard. He had not spoken for seven summers, but he had always been a strong man, and even though he could not speak or feed himself and could not walk without two men supporting him, he lived on. Fremur wondered what the Sky Piercer, the clan’s guardian, meant by the terrible exercise of letting Hurvalt go on breathing long after he had lost his manhood.
We are Crane Clan, he reminded himself. We do not question the Sky Piercer.
The expanse of grass, with Odrig’s herd of horses fenced at one end, was surrounded by wagons of all sizes. Every member of Clan Kragni was there—no, Fremur corrected himself, almost every member—as well as important folk from neighboring clans like the Dragonfly, Adder, and White Spot Deer, with whom the Cranes often intermarried. Fremur’s family, at least the women and his many nieces and nephews, had already taken their places near Thane Odrig’s wagon. As usual, the younger boys were playing at men’s work, straddling the wooden paddock fence as though it were a horse’s saddle, smacking at each other with long sticks, and of course ignoring all warnings from their female relatives. Several of Fremur’s aunts and cousins whistled to him as he walked past. He nodded, but did not stop, even when some of the boys begged him to.
Most of the rest of the clanfolk had gathered in the center of the paddock, where a tent had been erected for the bride to wait, and where food and drink were laid out on colorful blankets and covered with fairy-nets to keep the flies away. Although Odrig had not stinted, buying several barrels of stone-dweller beer to swell the happiness of the feast, those barrels had not been breached. That did not mean that the day’s drinking had not begun: many of the clansmen had brought their own yerut, the fermented mare’s milk that the Thrithings-folk had drunk since time before time. The number of snoring, bearded men scattered across the grass, along with the sour smell of vomit, told Fremur all that he needed to know.
Odrig stood near the tent with Drojan and several others, passing a skin of yerut and playing a knife-throwing game directed at the paddock’s nearest fencepost a few dozen paces away. Fremur knew he should stop and speak the Blessing of the Sky Piercer to his brother the thane, but at that moment he did not want to talk to Odrig, still less Drojan, whose charms were not improved by the crimson flush of drunkenness or the gap-toothed bray of his laughter. Fremur made a wider circuit out into the paddock so he could reach the tent from the other side without having to talk to the thane and his closest supporters. He was not particularly successful.
“Hoy, there, little brother!” Odrig shouted. “Where are you going? Not to the bride’s tent to sit with the women, I hope!”
“He wants you to choose him a husband, Thane!” bellowed Drojan.
Odrig enjoyed this jest, and grabbed Drojan’s scarred face and squeezed it as if it was a child’s. “Mark your new brother, Mouse!” he said. “Come and drink his health, or must I start looking, as Drojan says, for a strong man to take care of you? I do not think I could get many horses for you, though, scrawny thing that you are.”
“That’s what a veil is for,” suggested another of his brother’s friends, and they all laughed.