Heartseeker Page 5

  “You’re pardoned,” Jonquin replied stiffly.

  “You’re pardoned, I guess,” grumbled Ether.

  “That’s that, then.” Mama folded her hands and began our thanks. “Thanks for forgiveness.”

  “Thanks for the harvest,” said Papa.

  “Thanks for family,” said Non, looking at me.

  “Thanks for no halls,” said Ether, sighing, no doubt looking forward to a week in the fields instead of the classroom.

  “Thanks for friends,” said Jon.

  “Thanks for Mistress Mauralee,” I whispered under my breath.

  “What was that, Only?” asked Papa.

  “Thanks for our—ouch!—apple trees.” I rubbed the spot on my leg where Jon had jabbed me with his fork, his eyes wide as saucers.

  “Thanks for All,” we concluded together.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jonquin giving me the evils. As the knives and forks clanked against serving bowls, I turned and met his stare head on.

  You’re in a heap of trouble, his eyes told me.

  Not as much as you’ll be in, mine told him back, so mind how you go.

  * * *

  GLOAMING FELL ON the valley and my heart fluttered, bird light, under my quilt as I listened through the door to the sounds of the house bedding down. The light deepened from rosy red to purple on the gauzy curtains while the water trickled in the washroom, bed-shoed feet whispered against the stone floors, and finally, the latch clanked on Mama and Papa’s bedchamber.

  I crept from beneath my sheet and began to dress. I wasn’t sure what a body wore to a campfire, so I chose my deep blue overlet to cover my shift and a soft pair of field moccasins. Just as I’d checked my face in the glass, the latch of my own door flipped up. For a second, I thought I was caught before I’d even begun, but on the other side stood Non and my brothers in the shadows of the dark hall.

  Non’s face was serious as she looked at us all in turn. “I know you two have been at this for well nigh on three years now—”

  “Three years?” I gaped, turning to Jon and Ether. “It’s been three years and you’ve never thought to take me?”

  “You were too green,” Jon whispered haughtily, probably still sore about my vexing him at dinner.

  “You still are too green,” Ether complained, appealing to Non. “Why’s she coming?”

  “Because she’s been invited by those that wants to see her, that’s why. And less of that tongue with me, whelp,” said Non. “I ain’t asking you to be her shepherds, but keep half an eye peeled, you hear?” She leaned against the wall, her arms folded. “The only reason I have owt to do with this is ’cause I think it does good to see there’s more to the world than what’s behind your own garden gate. Don’t give me reason to change my mind.”

  My brothers shuffled their feet and mumbled, “Yes’m,” under their breaths. Satisfied that was as much of a promise as she was like to get, Non shooed us out like a line of wayward chicks. I followed Ether and Jon to the room they shared on the other side of the kitchen, where a chair was already pressed up to the wall underneath the window. Without speaking, each of the boys climbed over the frame and dropped into the grass outside. Ether gave me his hands and guided me down as Jonquin strode across the yard, looking as if he’d like to put as much space as possible between himself and the pair of us. In fact, he was already halfway across the field by the time we reached the gate.

  “Since when have you started keeping company with Ordish?” Ether asked, pulling a foxreed to tuck between his teeth.

  “Since this morning,” I answered saltily. “Why’s Jon in such a humor?”

  Ether shrugged. “Just antsy, I s’pose—”

  “To see Mauralee?”

  The reed was spat on the ground. “How in the name of the Mother d’you know about Maura?”

  “Lark Fairweather told me,” I replied, pleased to feel my new friend’s name roll off my tongue.

  Ether eyed me with something bordering on respect. “Well, Jon’s been sweet on her for the last two seasons. Harvest ain’t long, so he tries to spend all the time he can. Probably doesn’t want to play lookout for poky little sisters.”

  I bristled. “I don’t need looking out for. I can take care of myself!”

  Ether grunted. “Sure you can, Only. Look, if you get into bother, I’ll be about, but don’t make a fuss and shame us. I’ll be with Fen Piven, the boatswain’s whelp. Anyone’ll know him.” He squinted into the gloom ahead of us. “That who you’re looking for?”

  As promised, standing by the trunk of the oak were Lark and Rowan, waving at me. The smile that broke over my face at the sight of them must have lit up half the field, in spite of the flutter of fear in my guts. I waved back.

  “We’ll meet back here when the Maiden is overhead, so keep one eye on the sky,” Ether said, breaking from me on the path. “Don’t be tardy.”

  I glanced up. The constellation wasn’t even visible on the horizon yet, so I knew we had several hours before we’d need to make our way back.

  As Ether disappeared down one of the far rows of lavender, I made haste to where Lark and Rowan were waiting.

  “Good met, Only!” Lark chirped, embracing me like a sister. It was so familiar, I almost forgot to embrace back. None of my acquaintances had ever greeted me so. As she let me go, Rowan immediately swooped in to kiss both of my cheeks. I barely had time to be surprised before both of them took hold of my hands and pulled me toward the camp.

  “I’m glad you came,” said Lark, grinning. “D’your mam and pa know you’re here?”

  “No,” I confessed. “But my non does. She can be a little bendier when it comes to rules.”

  “Mistress Beulah ain’t been down yet this season,” remarked Rowan. “Last year she came with a paste for that sting I got from a muck wasp, remember, Lark?”

  I near tripped over my own feet. “Wait, you know Non?”

  “Sure as tides. Comes every season to jaw with Auntie Maven on healing and the like.”

  “Am I the only one of my kin that hasn’t been haunting your camp the last few years?” I cried indignantly.

  “Oh, don’t take it so,” Lark reassured me. “You’re here now, ain’t you? Come, come to the fire.”

  I’d never been allowed down to the site during harvest, so it was a bit of a jolt to see the big, bare space by the river full of noise, fire, and a sea of riotous red. Ordish barges lined the bank—nearly forty in all, each almost as big as two houses lashed together. A small tent city had sprouted on the shore, in a dizzying array of colors. In some, sleeping rolls were spread on the ground. Others had open sides where delicious smells of cooking drifted into the night air. In the middle of it all roared an enormous bonfire, whose heat I could feel even standing a ways off. In its dancing light, I could see bare-chested young boys and men trying see who could stand closest to the flames the longest, before running to take a howling leap into the river. Lark heaved the same sigh Mama did when she was faced with my brothers’ foolishness. “Flame-baiting,” she said. “Rowan tried last year. He lost his eyebrows.”

  Rowan gave his sister a punch on the shoulder. “They grew back!”

  “After two months!” Lark snorted. “Oh, I’m sorry, Ro, I don’t mean to shame you, specially not before Only, but you did look awful rich without ’em!”

  “Auntie Maven’s our cunning woman. She had to make me a salve and all,” grumbled Rowan, rubbing his grown-back brows.

  “Cunning woman?”

  Rowan’s hand darted into a nearby tent and emerged with three sticks, all dripping with strips of succulent pork. He handed one to me. “You know, medicines. Birthing. Seeing. Lore. Things like that. Like what your non does.”

  I’d never heard of cunning women before. “Is that what you call them?” I said, testing the hot morsel with the tip of my tongue. “My
non does the herbs and the birthing, and she can talk the hind legs off a donkey, but I don’t know about . . . seeing?”

  “Reading the stars? Tea leaves? Divining?”

  “Mistress Beulah don’t practice augury, Ro—she’s a landwalker,” said Lark, with the air of an older sibling that I knew all too well, but my heart did a leap in my chest at the word and I wondered for a second if I should have come after all.

  But I didn’t have time to dwell on it, as Lark and Rowan pulled me onto the gangplank of the nearest barge and the three of us scrambled up to the roof. My legs felt wobbly as the vessel beneath us bobbed up and down in the current, so Rowan kept a steady hand on my elbow until we sat by the dovecote. The pigeons inside ruffled their feathers, but seemed used to sharing space with two-legged folk.

  “Ain’t you ever been on a boat before?” Rowan asked, tearing a piece of meat from the stick. He shot me a quick look as I settled myself. “You ain’t afraid of the water or anything?”

  “Course not! You don’t grow up on a riverbank without knowing how to swim.” The gentle sway of the boat in the current was hypnotic. “It’s nice, this. Like being rocked in a cradle. What’s it like living on one?”

  “Hot, in the summer. That’s why we set up the tents outside,” replied Lark. She patted the roof. “We share the Briar with Pa’s kin—his brother’s and sister’s families. Fifteen of us!”

  “The Briar?”

  “It’s the name of the barge,” explained Rowan, pointing toward the bow. I leaned careful over the lip of the roof to see curling script spelling out the word Briar on the side of the vessel. Beautiful painted thorny roses wove in and out of the lettering. “They all got names.” He pointed down the line. “The Greenling, Firefloat, White Lady’s Bane . . . but everyone knows Briar’s the queen of the river.” He puffed up like a partridge and Lark laughed.

  “It’s true enough,” she agreed. “She can outsail the king’s skiffs any day.”

  Rowan snorted in a temper. “The king can go hang.”

  Lark aimed a not-so-gentle punch at her brother’s arm. “Don’t speak so in front of Only!” she hissed.

  “It’s all right,” I said quickly, my stomach filling with stones. “I know why you ain’t got much love for the king. Non told me about . . . you know, the ransomers.”

  Lark’s gaze fluttered down to the river. “Our mate Echo Gladbrook got took down near Whiteburn Watch last season.”

  Rowan put his chin in his hands. “Linden Varley’s oldest boy’s been in Bellskeep for two years now. He’ll have enough after this harvest to go north and fetch him.”

  What could I even say to folk who’d lost so much? “Just so’s you know, I think it’s dead rotten. I wish more’d speak up for you.”

  Lark shrugged. “Not many folks figure we’re good for much but pulling in the harvest. Not that your pa ain’t been kind to us, mind,” she added quick like. “But not everyone in the kingdom feels as warm when they see barges on the river.”

  River rats. Sodden thieves. Wetcollars.

  Our chat was interrupted by the cry of two fiddles that struck up round the fire. The crowd roared and hands were grabbed to begin a wild reel. I gasped as glamours erupted round the heads of the dancers in the form of wildflowers or twinkling fireflies. As the dancers began to whirl, I couldn’t help notice a handsome young pair in the middle, their heads wreathed in glowing nightmoths. The girl, whose dark hair glinted orange in the firelight, beamed at her fair-haired partner as if he were the last word in wonderful.

  Though I knew Jon would be at the campfire, it was like I’d never seen him before. He looked happy—the kind of happy I saw on Papa’s face when he and Mama sat side by side on the garden bench on an evening. As I watched them turn in each other’s arms, I suddenly realized why it was my Jon hadn’t shared a joy so dear to him. It was the same reason I never told no one of my gift—he wasn’t sure what he’d got to lose if he did. Rowan followed my gaze and nudged me in the ribs.

  “Though some feel pretty warm indeed.”

  I blushed, hoping my friends couldn’t tell in the dark. I hoped the Ordish looked on my brother kindly and not like some arrogant son of the land, come to take their daughter away. But it seemed no one cared for anything but the giddy tune that moved the dancers round the fire. And my brother’s face, split from ear to ear in a grin, quieted my worries.

  A whistle like a chicktail’s sounded from the bank near the bow. Lark and Rowan cocked their heads to listen as it sounded a second time. “It’s late for birds, ain’t it?” I asked, confused.

  A head suddenly popped up over the lip of the roof. It belonged to a merry-looking young man with dimpled cheeks and soft brown eyes. His dark curly hair exploded out of a dusty brown cap, which he doffed in our direction. “Good met, whelps.”

  “Toly!” Rowan cried, leaping to his feet and setting the barge swaying as he crossed to meet the newcomer. “Is it finished? Tell me it’s finished.”

  The young man laughed. “Would I have come for you if it wasn’t?”

  Rowan turned round to Lark and me. “He’s finished it, Lark! Let’s go see!”

  Lark bit her lip, torn. “Dunno, Ro—might not be so interesting for Only.”

  Toly looked past Lark, noticing me for the first time. It may have been my imagination, but I could have sworn I saw a flicker of something like disappointment cross his face. I scooted closer to the dovecote.

  “Oh,” he said, recovering himself brightly. “But you’ve got a mate, I see.”

  “Toly, this is Only, Master Fallow’s girl,” Lark told him. She turned to me. “Toly’s finished a runner. Want to go and have a gander?”

  “What’s a runner?”

  “A little boat,” she explained. “The older whelps race them, and Toly reckons his’ll be the fastest there is. Don’t suppose you’d like to see?”

  I did want to see. I wanted to see everything. The grin on Jon’s face and the flash of silver beads in the hair of the dancers. The rigging in the sails and the magics. The thought of following Toly down the river made me nervous for some reason, but I wasn’t going to look white-feathered in front of my new mates. I grabbed for Lark’s hand and stood up, ignoring the wobble in my knees. Rowan’d already scrambled over the roof and his feet made two puffs of dust as they hit the dirt of the towpath. Lark helped me down the way we came up. Toly put on his too-bright smile once more. “This way, then!”

  As the four of us skirted round the whirling bodies by the fire and crossed into the darkness beyond, the young man’s eyes flicked back to me once more, filling me with disquiet.

  Just the breeze off the river, I told myself. Just night and water.

  6

  Lantern swinging, Toly led us on a path that followed the curve of the river, away from the bonfire at the center of the camp. But lights from inside the barges spilled onto the ground along the towpath, allowing me to peek inside. Through the windows I saw small, perfect kitchens, tight rows of bunks, and even large sitting areas, strung with hammocks and filled with colorful pillows.

  “Don’t it feel awful crowded?” I asked Lark as we passed by.

  Lark shrugged. “It’s just the way of things. In the summer, we camp a lot or some of us sleep on the roof. In the winter, it’s snug. We take turns with the chores—cooking, cleaning, fishing, tending the little ones and the pigeons.”

  “You can’t use magic to do that?”

  “Chores?” she said, laughing. “Tides, that’d be a fine thing. My uncle’s got it in him to make a pot boil from cold and our cousin Fern can call a decent breeze, but bewitching a rod to beat the carpets, that would be of use.”

  “Oh, beg your pardon! The way folks go on about your auguries, I thought they were . . . bigger.”

  “Most land folk do. The way they all scatter when we float by, you’d think we could turn them into toads or set the riv
er alight.”

  My feet stopped carrying me forward a second. “You . . . can’t do that . . . right?”

  Lark laughed as we left the barges behind us on the path and headed into the willow grove that bordered the orchards. “If I could, Ro would have been sitting on a log croaking years ago!”

  Ahead of us, Toly pointed to a spot downstream. “There she is.” Rowan rushed ahead to get the first look.

  The runner sat on the bank, gleaming in the light of the lantern. Its oars were painted red and polished till they shone, looking fine. The words The Hare proudly rounded the bow next to a beautiful carving of the animal itself.

  “It’s the green on the grass, Toly!” Rowan exclaimed, running his hands over the shining, curved wood. He looked up at the young man, excited. “Will you help me make my own next season?”

  “Surely as the days get short in the winter.” Toly grinned, patting Rowan’s shoulder. Rowan beamed, but what I saw rooted me to the riverbank. Though the sun had long since disappeared and the night was dark around us, I could easily make out a blackness around Toly—it rolled and wobbled around the outlines of his body. It was bigger by far than the ugly guile of the Bonniways and boded nothing but ill. I shrank back behind Lark.

  He looked from side to side, then turned to Rowan. “Fancy a quick go? See how fast she is? I promised the first trip to Ise”—he craned his neck for any sign of his sweetheart—“but she don’t have to know, does she?”

  The darkness around him spread so far, it almost covered Rowan, who still sported a hungry grin, unable to take his eyes off the runner.

  Stay canny, Non’d warned me. Fat lot of good canny was going to do me with Toly spinning some dark and sinister tale to All knows what ends. We needed to be shot of the riverbank and the runner. I thought quick to anything that might get us back to the safety of the fire.

  “But, Rowan,” I broke out, “the dancing’s just started. You and Lark need to come show me how it’s done.”

  Toly gave a light chuckle. “Don’t worry, poppet, I’ll have him back in a blink.”