The Last Peddler of Arch by Laurel Hanson
A grieving merchant travels the dangerous Dread Road to sell her wares - if she can make it to town alive.
Hawthorn had been trekking for over a day and hadn't seen another living creature, not even a lizard, let alone a reaver. The Dread Road was safer than it used to be. She supposed she was to blame for that.
The sheer walls of the gorge trapped the heat, and the air rippled with it. It even smelled hot, a baked absence of life. She shifted her straw hat over her eyes. Mountain-bred, she was unaccustomed to the summers of the lowlands, but though mountain people are small, they have strong legs. She could walk all day without tiring, and she'd need to do just that. Any day now, the rains would break over the mountains, and the floodwaters would cascade down the Dread without warning. Then, there would be no escaping the deluge which would carry her out to the sea where there were monsters she didn't even want to think about.
Which is what she was thinking about, so she shifted her heavy pack and picked up her pace. This was her last chance of the season to make a profit in Fareport at the mouth of the river.
"Are we almost there?" It was a child's voice, brimming with eagerness to reach the marketplace where the stalls were piled with bright pyramids of fruit, and wheels of aromatic cheeses, and baskets of even more aromatic pastries. There was even a candy stall that spun colored sugar into fantastical animal shapes no child could resist. Each year, Sershin would beg, "Just one, Mother. Please?"
"The last tunnel's around the bend," she assured the child who wasn't there. Had she looked beside her, she knew she would see the memory of Sershin kicking at the hard ground disconsolately but plodding on all the same. These past two years she'd always felt the shape of that emptiness walking at her side.
Swabbing her brow, she took a sparing sip from her water bladder. The shadow of a fire-hawk floating overhead painted its dark echo across the white walls surrounding her. Bundles of bright yellow save-me-nows sprang from the jagged cracks with stubborn resilience. The air was still, as though the Dread itself held its breath for the coming of the floodwaters which had carved the twisted channels and tunnels through the limestone foothills. Here at the tail end of the dry season, the bare riverbed stretched out like tangled white snakes basking in the sun.
"A mite of shade wouldn't go amiss," she told Sershin and winced at the memory of the child running ahead into the cool mouth of the tunnel as he had every year. She hurried into it herself, and the blackness folded around her as dark as her thoughts.
Unwinding a length of ribbon from the brim of her hat, she held it aloft. By its gentle glow, she picked her way along through the gloom until the harsh light of day showed itself as a bright white eye ahead. Two hulking figures near the mouth of the tunnel rose as she approached. Reavers.
"Well, what have we here?" one boomed. His voice volleyed between the walls, turning the single threat he posed into an army of sound.
"Looks like small pickings," said the other, snickering at the joke Hawthorn had heard from countless other reavers. Yes, she was a small person. Small pickings. Har. Har.
They were lowlanders, large ones. They stretched to their full height and spread their arms, effortlessly blocking her way. She sighed. Being small, there was no gain in putting up a fight nor any hope of outrunning them. Instead, she stepped toward them until she could see the pair as more than misshapen silhouettes.
The one who had spoken first was a broad fellow in a greasy vest with greasier hair hanging in glossy black curls. He gave her an easy smile. "Madam," he said with exaggerated care. "What's in the pack?"
She slid it off her shoulders, glad to ease the weight. "I'm a dealer in little things. Just ribbons for the market."
The other fellow jabbed his cudgel at her. "I like little things." He winked one gummy eye and chortled. The beads woven into his braided beard clattered in accompaniment.
"No need for discourtesy," said the first. "You'll frighten our visitor." He flashed his grin down at her again. Hawthorn thought perhaps this one might be the brighter of the two and decided to think of him as Wit.
The slack-jawed look of his companion prompted the name Witless. Witless leaned toward her, bringing the ripe animal tang of unwashed garments with him. "All kinds of little things," he said with a leer that revealed teeth like drunken fenceposts.
She stared unblinking into his eyes and then nudged the pack with her foot. "Take a look."
He breathed into her face a moment longer before curiosity got the better of him, and he bent down to her flick open her pack with a dirty finger. Snatching up one of the spools of ribbon, he held it to the light where it glowed in shades of green one only sees in the budding leaves of barnybal trees. The fenceposts peeped out again, and he said, "Pretty! I've never seen ribbons like these."
Hawthorn wondered what sort of study of ribbons the reaver might have made in his life before this chance encounter, but Wit proved the greater scholar. "Those are Changeling ribbons." He looked down at her appraisingly. "From the mountain spiders that spin the colored webs."
Changeling spiders camouflaged their silk to their surroundings. When set among the purple tarran flowers in the meadows, they spun purple webs, but among the blood ferns on the northern slopes, their webs were a gossamer of crimson. In the iridescent mineral outcrops of the Fire Mountains, they spun webs of prismed light, ever shifting. Most valuable of all, though, were the spiders of the mountain caves. There, the luminescent walls produced webs that glowed long after the sun has faded into night. Woven of those fine threads, the near priceless ribbon around Hawthorne's hat had guided her through many a dark place, though it could do little to shed light on the darkness within her.
The villagers of Arch had been web weavers for near as long as people had lived in the mountains, harvesting and spinning the silk into ribbons of the rarest beauty. Twice a year, Hawthorn's family would bring the spools down to the Fareport market to sell. Well, now it was just her. The last peddler of Arch.
"Aye. Changeling ribbons," she said dismissively of her beautiful wares. "It's not much, but I scrape by."
Wit studied her narrowly and then poked a blunt thumb toward his companion. "As you can see, my compatriot finds them most diverting."
Indeed, his compatriot was twirling a length of iridescent ribbon in front of his nose, bedazzled by the flickering play of color. His mouth hung ajar.
Wit chuckled and held out a hand as broad and hard as a paddle. When he spoke, she detected the stale wind of last night's dinner. "I'm afraid you'll have to give them over."
Adopting a slight tremor in her voice, she said, "You wouldn't rob a helpless woman, would you?"
"Rob and more," Witless said, curling his lips at her.
Oh dear. It was always so unpleasant when the reavers got greedy.
She was spared the need to protest her maidenly innocence when Wit tipped his head at her curiously. "Why do you make this dangerous trek, a lone woman and, well..." He let his point dangle unspoken. She was small. She was vulnerable. There were reavers in the Dread.
She lifted her shoulders. "What can I do? All alone in the world as I am." Thinking she might be laying it on a bit thick, she paused, but the memory of why she was alone in the world slipped in between her thoughts. She swallowed down the pain before gesturing to the pack. "They're just little things. Hardly worth your time."
"Such ribbons are rare. I'd wager they are worth a fair price at market," Wit said. He hefted her pack and then held out his hand again, fingers twitching. "We'll be needing that water bladder too."
"You'd leave me in the Dread without water? I could die!"
"I'd leave me own ma in the Dread without water for pretty things like these," Witless volunteered.
Pinching the stopper of the bladder, Hawthorne counted to three before letting out a sigh and handing the bladder over. "You know," she said with the greatest degree of regret she could muster, "taking from others, you only diminish yourselves."
Wit snorted. "If I wanted to be scolded by my ma, I would've had one of my own."
"Well, that's fair," Hawthorn said mildly. "Just don't say I didn't warn you."
The pair laughed. For a moment longer, they stared down at her. Her throat tightened under their scrutiny, but she lifted her chin to show a brave face. Beyond their heads, she saw the first clouds of the season, swollen with brassy light, scudding towards the mountains.
Wit followed her glance and jerked his head at his companion. "We'd best get on our way. Rain's coming." With that, they headed out onto the last stretch of the gorge before the floodplains at Fareport, taking her pack and her water with them.
Watching them walk away, Hawthorn remarked to the child who wasn't there, "Well, that went nicely. I thought they might get rough." Usually, it was enough to remind the reavers of the rains that would soon soak the mountains. Timing was everything, though that hadn't always worked.
She followed them through the afternoon, grateful they hadn't taken her straw hat. Always, she kept them at a distance, tipping her ear to their deep voices which rode the twists and turns of the channel like wind through a horn.
Soon, the western wall threw its shadow across the gorge, and the stifling air cooled. Before nightfall, she found her empty water bladder discarded on the stones and retrieved it. The reaver's voices floated back to her, a tenor tune spiked with querulous notes of agitation.
When the stars filled the long ribbon of sky above her, she tucked herself into a nook the river had sculpted into the limestone wall. Settling the straw hat over her face, she slept well enough until the soft grey light of morning lay down beside her.
Then she rose, her parched throat begging for water. Lodging her fingers into a narrow crack in the wall, she began to climb. Her toes gripped the slightest nubbins upon which to lever herself upwards until she reached the bright clusters of save-me-nows. The sturdy little flowers caught the morning dew and funneled it into the bulbs beneath their petals. She plucked as many of the globes as she could and sucked them dry. Though they didn't entirely quench her thirst, they were nectar all the same.
She resumed her pursuit. The gorge was quiet this morning, the air sullen and thick. She soon found Witless' abandoned cudgel. It would serve her no purpose, so she left it where it lay and carried on.
Around the next bend, she discovered beads scattered over the white stone. Those she plucked up, rather fond of small things herself.
Bundles of copper-colored clouds hung fat and low in the pale sky over the ridge. The weight of them seemed to compress the air into a thick sludge. She picked up her pace.
It wasn't long before she spotted her pack, two rumpled piles of clothing beside it. A fire-hawk perched on a rock nearby watched the bundles attentively. As she approached, it flared its gold eyes at her, screamed once, and then flew away.
She squatted down beside the pack. "Had enough?" she asked at length.
The flap lifted and Wit, not more than two hands high, stepped out, craning his neck to stare up at her. He was naked but clutched the corner of one of her kerchiefs to cover himself. It trembled in his grip.
When he didn't speak, she said, "I did warn you."
Witless tumbled out of the pack, spitting mad, with no more sense than a turnip. "Witch!" His voice was as high and thin as a pennywhistle. "Turn us back or I'll -" He stopped and clenched his fists, apparently only just realizing there was no threat his diminutive size could render potent.
Wit cuffed him. "Stow it, you daft bugger." He adjusted the kerchief and stood as tall as possible. "Madam, what do you require of us in exchange for turning us back?"
"You mean returning you to your former stature?"
"Yes." Relief shuddered through him at her words.
"I cannot," she said simply. There was no undoing the effects of the potion she'd released from the stopper before handing them her water bladder. For generations, her family had harvested Changeling eggs and distilled the sticky green yolk into an odorless, colorless compound that produced this profound effect upon warm-blooded creatures. The potion was her family's tightly guarded secret, difficult and costly to make, but one had business expenses in any line of work.
Before the little reavers could protest, she repeated her words. "I cannot." She picked up her pack, shouldered it, and began to walk away.
Their voices piped after her. "Wait! Hold on!"
She turned to see them running in her shadow, already winded. Witless put his hands on his knees and gasped for breath. Wit trailed the kerchief in one hand and held the other, no larger than a coin, to implore her. "You can't just leave us here!"
She studied him curiously. "Why not?"
"We'll die! That fire-hawk almost had us before you came along."
"How strange," Hawthorn remarked. "You had no concern about leaving me to die."
The two fell silent, standing in the dark splash of her shadow. Then Witless squared his shoulders. "Bring us to town with you! We'll cause you no harm."
"Exactly what is the harm you think you can do me now?"
He blustered, knotting his fists and shifting his shoulders as though his body could not understand the change that had occurred, that such posturing now made him look weak and ineffectual. Indeed, almost comical.
Wit seemed to have assessed their predicament more rationally and arrived at a negotiation. "We'll reward you handsomely, of course."
"And what do you have to offer?"
Both of them opened their mouths, but neither found a retort.
"I thought not," she said.
Wit gave an agonized cry. "You have to take us with you!" He pointed his tiny finger at the sky. "The floodwaters will be coming!" As if to emphasize his point, a deep bellow of thunder unrolled from the high peaks which now wore ominous caps of clouds the color of overripe plums.
She bent down and the wind of her breath ruffled Wit's greasy locks. "You wish me to take you to Fareport?"
"Yes." Wit sagged with relief. "Please." He tacked on the unfamiliar word.
She dropped the pack beside them. "Climb in. I will bear you to Fareport at your request."
Witless grumbled but sat down among the spools of ribbon all the same. Wit paused to thank her effusively, making a show of returning her kerchief to the pack as if to say, "See? I am no thief."
It was a sentiment undermined by their muffled conversation as she trekked.
"We'll have to leave off working on the Dread," Wit observed to his companion. "But we'd make fine sneak thieves. No one would see us."
When Witless only moaned, Wit continued. "Slip in an open window, case the joint, grab a key, easy as falling down -"
"Pick a pocket in the tavern, no one the wiser," Witless joined in, beginning to grasp the potential.
This was followed by some snickering. Hawthorn almost admired their resilience.
Ignoring their plotting, she focused on keeping up her pace. The grumble of thunder was unceasing now, and a breeze picked up at her back. She must make haste or none of them would make it out alive.
As she reached the floodplain, she could hear the monstrous roar of the newborn river booming within its stone bed. She hurried. The cracked earth trembled beneath her feet. She was breathless by the time she scrambled up the steps of Fareport's river wall.
Already, the thunderous noise had brought the town's children to the wall where they waited with bright-eyed anticipation. Hawthorn had just joined them when the floodwaters exploded from the mouth of the Dread in a chaos of sound. Uncontained, the river boiled onto the floodplains, scattering rainbows through the air. The children cheered and screamed and soon were soaked with spray as they ran laughing in the cooling mist.
Had it not been for the reavers, Sershin would have been among them, dancing through the rainbows. She swallowed hard at the sound of his laughter in her head.
He'd been laughing two years before when a lone reaver had accosted them in the Dread. The man had gotten rough with her, and Sershin, who had just turned ten, thought to defend his mother. He did not understand that there are times one cannot fight. That was the secret of their family business. With a single lazy swat of a hand as broad and hard as a paddle, the reaver had cuffed her young son a blow, smashing his head against the channel wall. He'd died in an instant, there on the unforgiving white stones of the Dread.
The reaver had robbed her all the same, and taken her water bladder all the same, and left her there with her dead child, never the same again. With neither food nor water, she'd carried Sershin back into the mountains. With every step, she'd heard the small voice asking, "Are we almost there?"
She blinked the moisture from her eyes, though she was not standing close enough to feel the spray. Turning her back to the celebration, she wound along the wharf to the marketplace, passing the stalls with the bright pyramids of fruit and aromatic wheels of cheeses. She spotted the stall with the spun sugar animals and looked aside for fear the child who was always with her would call out, "Just one, Mother! Please?"
When she angled down Tanner's Lane, she heard a muffled voice at her shoulder, thin and high as a child's but not her child's. "Oi!" it said, "You've passed the marketplace!"
"That I have," she replied, startling a lad bearing a roll of leather on his shoulder. He must have thought her a madwoman speaking to the empty air.
"You can let us off now," Wit called out.
"Is that so? You think I can drop you here in Tanner's Lane and you won't get rolled over by the dray there or stepped on by the big boots of that farmer?"
There was a momentary silence. When Wit spoke again, his voice was subdued. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to take us to Thieves' Corner? I have a cousin there. He'll help us."
"Will he now?" Her skepticism was thick. These two reavers had made it abundantly clear their families ties were less substantial than the mist off the river.
"Oh ay, Jocko will help us out." Wit's effort at confidence was valiant but she knew empty hope when she heard it.
"And you'll reward me handsomely," she prompted.
Another silence followed. It seemed the pair had forgotten their promises.
"The bargain was that I bring you to Fareport, which I have done," she said. "And just in time, mind. For your part, lest you forgot, you mentioned rewarding me handsomely."
"It might have been more a figure of speech," Wit volunteered. "You know, if ever we can do something for you in the future, we will."
"Sure, sure," Witless joined in. "On our honor."
She snorted and edged past a woman carrying buckets from the well. "Well," she began thoughtfully, "there is something..."
"Anything," two voices piped out of her pack.
She shook her head, surprised they still hadn't noticed their own requests had each time brought them grief.
At Thieves' Corner, she crossed to a door painted in shades of crimson and gold. A sign creaking overhead read, "Safrom's Here to There."
"I know this place," Wit said at her ear. He'd stuck his head out of the pack; she could tell by how much louder his voice was. "Jocko lives just down the street. He says Safrom deals in exotic -"
He broke off as she stepped into the shop. Her eyes took a moment to adjust, but she could smell the animals. As Wit had been about to tell her, Safrom dealt in exotic beasts from distant places for the circuses and private houses of entertainment. Through the gloom, she thought she saw a striped moorbund coiled in a cage. Another creature perched on the rafters fluttered three sets of lemon-yellow wings, stirring the air into currents of dust and duff.
"Hawthorn!" A large man emerged from the gloom and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Good to see you! I didn't think you'd make it so late in the season. Must have been a near thing, eh?"
"That it was," she agreed as Safrom gave her a hug and then leaned back to eye her sharply.
"So, got anything for me or is this just a social call?"
Hawthorn set the pack down on the counter. "I was able to fetch a pair this time. They are exceptionally fine. Young, strong. Not too stupid."
Safrom snatched up the two reavers, one in each meaty hand. "Aye, I recognize these two. Seen them sometimes over at Jocko's. Right nuisance they are. This one here thinks he's a treat for the ladies." Safrom gave Wit a shake, adding, "A right braggart he is." Then he raked a hard glance over Witless. "And the law's been after this one since he was in short pants. Thieves, the pair of them. I reckon you've done well."
The little reavers began shouting protests and threats in varying combinations.
"Feisty blighters," Safrom chortled. He set them in a wooden cage on the counter and consulted a ledger, mumbling to himself.
"I'll expect a better price than last time," Hawthorn said.
"Well, be fair Hawthorn. Last time, the fire-hawk had done some damage."
"I know, I know. But these two are in good health and undamaged." She raised her voice to be heard above the commotion Wit and Witless were making as they shouted and rattled the bars.
"Reckon I can give you two hundred royals for the pair," Safrom said at length.
"Two fifty," she said automatically.
"We can work out something!" Wit shouted. "Whatever you want!"
"No, we can't," Hawthorn said. She closed her eyes and stopped her ears to their pleas, remembering that long walk with her dead child, remembering how she and her partner had buried Sershin among the purple terran flowers. They had grieved during that long, dark winter until Tarshin had taken his grief to the high peaks and died in a fall of his own making.
She stilled her thoughts, breathing in the warm musk of the animals. Opening her eyes, she looked down at the two reavers in a cage bound for some distant port. "I did tell you," she said at length. "I'm a dealer in little things."
 |
| Image generated with OpenAI |
The sheer walls of the gorge trapped the heat, and the air rippled with it. It even smelled hot, a baked absence of life. She shifted her straw hat over her eyes. Mountain-bred, she was unaccustomed to the summers of the lowlands, but though mountain people are small, they have strong legs. She could walk all day without tiring, and she'd need to do just that. Any day now, the rains would break over the mountains, and the floodwaters would cascade down the Dread without warning. Then, there would be no escaping the deluge which would carry her out to the sea where there were monsters she didn't even want to think about.
Which is what she was thinking about, so she shifted her heavy pack and picked up her pace. This was her last chance of the season to make a profit in Fareport at the mouth of the river.
"Are we almost there?" It was a child's voice, brimming with eagerness to reach the marketplace where the stalls were piled with bright pyramids of fruit, and wheels of aromatic cheeses, and baskets of even more aromatic pastries. There was even a candy stall that spun colored sugar into fantastical animal shapes no child could resist. Each year, Sershin would beg, "Just one, Mother. Please?"
"The last tunnel's around the bend," she assured the child who wasn't there. Had she looked beside her, she knew she would see the memory of Sershin kicking at the hard ground disconsolately but plodding on all the same. These past two years she'd always felt the shape of that emptiness walking at her side.
Swabbing her brow, she took a sparing sip from her water bladder. The shadow of a fire-hawk floating overhead painted its dark echo across the white walls surrounding her. Bundles of bright yellow save-me-nows sprang from the jagged cracks with stubborn resilience. The air was still, as though the Dread itself held its breath for the coming of the floodwaters which had carved the twisted channels and tunnels through the limestone foothills. Here at the tail end of the dry season, the bare riverbed stretched out like tangled white snakes basking in the sun.
"A mite of shade wouldn't go amiss," she told Sershin and winced at the memory of the child running ahead into the cool mouth of the tunnel as he had every year. She hurried into it herself, and the blackness folded around her as dark as her thoughts.
Unwinding a length of ribbon from the brim of her hat, she held it aloft. By its gentle glow, she picked her way along through the gloom until the harsh light of day showed itself as a bright white eye ahead. Two hulking figures near the mouth of the tunnel rose as she approached. Reavers.
"Well, what have we here?" one boomed. His voice volleyed between the walls, turning the single threat he posed into an army of sound.
"Looks like small pickings," said the other, snickering at the joke Hawthorn had heard from countless other reavers. Yes, she was a small person. Small pickings. Har. Har.
They were lowlanders, large ones. They stretched to their full height and spread their arms, effortlessly blocking her way. She sighed. Being small, there was no gain in putting up a fight nor any hope of outrunning them. Instead, she stepped toward them until she could see the pair as more than misshapen silhouettes.
The one who had spoken first was a broad fellow in a greasy vest with greasier hair hanging in glossy black curls. He gave her an easy smile. "Madam," he said with exaggerated care. "What's in the pack?"
She slid it off her shoulders, glad to ease the weight. "I'm a dealer in little things. Just ribbons for the market."
The other fellow jabbed his cudgel at her. "I like little things." He winked one gummy eye and chortled. The beads woven into his braided beard clattered in accompaniment.
"No need for discourtesy," said the first. "You'll frighten our visitor." He flashed his grin down at her again. Hawthorn thought perhaps this one might be the brighter of the two and decided to think of him as Wit.
The slack-jawed look of his companion prompted the name Witless. Witless leaned toward her, bringing the ripe animal tang of unwashed garments with him. "All kinds of little things," he said with a leer that revealed teeth like drunken fenceposts.
She stared unblinking into his eyes and then nudged the pack with her foot. "Take a look."
He breathed into her face a moment longer before curiosity got the better of him, and he bent down to her flick open her pack with a dirty finger. Snatching up one of the spools of ribbon, he held it to the light where it glowed in shades of green one only sees in the budding leaves of barnybal trees. The fenceposts peeped out again, and he said, "Pretty! I've never seen ribbons like these."
Hawthorn wondered what sort of study of ribbons the reaver might have made in his life before this chance encounter, but Wit proved the greater scholar. "Those are Changeling ribbons." He looked down at her appraisingly. "From the mountain spiders that spin the colored webs."
Changeling spiders camouflaged their silk to their surroundings. When set among the purple tarran flowers in the meadows, they spun purple webs, but among the blood ferns on the northern slopes, their webs were a gossamer of crimson. In the iridescent mineral outcrops of the Fire Mountains, they spun webs of prismed light, ever shifting. Most valuable of all, though, were the spiders of the mountain caves. There, the luminescent walls produced webs that glowed long after the sun has faded into night. Woven of those fine threads, the near priceless ribbon around Hawthorne's hat had guided her through many a dark place, though it could do little to shed light on the darkness within her.
The villagers of Arch had been web weavers for near as long as people had lived in the mountains, harvesting and spinning the silk into ribbons of the rarest beauty. Twice a year, Hawthorn's family would bring the spools down to the Fareport market to sell. Well, now it was just her. The last peddler of Arch.
"Aye. Changeling ribbons," she said dismissively of her beautiful wares. "It's not much, but I scrape by."
Wit studied her narrowly and then poked a blunt thumb toward his companion. "As you can see, my compatriot finds them most diverting."
Indeed, his compatriot was twirling a length of iridescent ribbon in front of his nose, bedazzled by the flickering play of color. His mouth hung ajar.
Wit chuckled and held out a hand as broad and hard as a paddle. When he spoke, she detected the stale wind of last night's dinner. "I'm afraid you'll have to give them over."
Adopting a slight tremor in her voice, she said, "You wouldn't rob a helpless woman, would you?"
"Rob and more," Witless said, curling his lips at her.
Oh dear. It was always so unpleasant when the reavers got greedy.
She was spared the need to protest her maidenly innocence when Wit tipped his head at her curiously. "Why do you make this dangerous trek, a lone woman and, well..." He let his point dangle unspoken. She was small. She was vulnerable. There were reavers in the Dread.
She lifted her shoulders. "What can I do? All alone in the world as I am." Thinking she might be laying it on a bit thick, she paused, but the memory of why she was alone in the world slipped in between her thoughts. She swallowed down the pain before gesturing to the pack. "They're just little things. Hardly worth your time."
"Such ribbons are rare. I'd wager they are worth a fair price at market," Wit said. He hefted her pack and then held out his hand again, fingers twitching. "We'll be needing that water bladder too."
"You'd leave me in the Dread without water? I could die!"
"I'd leave me own ma in the Dread without water for pretty things like these," Witless volunteered.
Pinching the stopper of the bladder, Hawthorne counted to three before letting out a sigh and handing the bladder over. "You know," she said with the greatest degree of regret she could muster, "taking from others, you only diminish yourselves."
Wit snorted. "If I wanted to be scolded by my ma, I would've had one of my own."
"Well, that's fair," Hawthorn said mildly. "Just don't say I didn't warn you."
The pair laughed. For a moment longer, they stared down at her. Her throat tightened under their scrutiny, but she lifted her chin to show a brave face. Beyond their heads, she saw the first clouds of the season, swollen with brassy light, scudding towards the mountains.
Wit followed her glance and jerked his head at his companion. "We'd best get on our way. Rain's coming." With that, they headed out onto the last stretch of the gorge before the floodplains at Fareport, taking her pack and her water with them.
Watching them walk away, Hawthorn remarked to the child who wasn't there, "Well, that went nicely. I thought they might get rough." Usually, it was enough to remind the reavers of the rains that would soon soak the mountains. Timing was everything, though that hadn't always worked.
She followed them through the afternoon, grateful they hadn't taken her straw hat. Always, she kept them at a distance, tipping her ear to their deep voices which rode the twists and turns of the channel like wind through a horn.
Soon, the western wall threw its shadow across the gorge, and the stifling air cooled. Before nightfall, she found her empty water bladder discarded on the stones and retrieved it. The reaver's voices floated back to her, a tenor tune spiked with querulous notes of agitation.
When the stars filled the long ribbon of sky above her, she tucked herself into a nook the river had sculpted into the limestone wall. Settling the straw hat over her face, she slept well enough until the soft grey light of morning lay down beside her.
Then she rose, her parched throat begging for water. Lodging her fingers into a narrow crack in the wall, she began to climb. Her toes gripped the slightest nubbins upon which to lever herself upwards until she reached the bright clusters of save-me-nows. The sturdy little flowers caught the morning dew and funneled it into the bulbs beneath their petals. She plucked as many of the globes as she could and sucked them dry. Though they didn't entirely quench her thirst, they were nectar all the same.
She resumed her pursuit. The gorge was quiet this morning, the air sullen and thick. She soon found Witless' abandoned cudgel. It would serve her no purpose, so she left it where it lay and carried on.
Around the next bend, she discovered beads scattered over the white stone. Those she plucked up, rather fond of small things herself.
Bundles of copper-colored clouds hung fat and low in the pale sky over the ridge. The weight of them seemed to compress the air into a thick sludge. She picked up her pace.
It wasn't long before she spotted her pack, two rumpled piles of clothing beside it. A fire-hawk perched on a rock nearby watched the bundles attentively. As she approached, it flared its gold eyes at her, screamed once, and then flew away.
She squatted down beside the pack. "Had enough?" she asked at length.
The flap lifted and Wit, not more than two hands high, stepped out, craning his neck to stare up at her. He was naked but clutched the corner of one of her kerchiefs to cover himself. It trembled in his grip.
When he didn't speak, she said, "I did warn you."
Witless tumbled out of the pack, spitting mad, with no more sense than a turnip. "Witch!" His voice was as high and thin as a pennywhistle. "Turn us back or I'll -" He stopped and clenched his fists, apparently only just realizing there was no threat his diminutive size could render potent.
Wit cuffed him. "Stow it, you daft bugger." He adjusted the kerchief and stood as tall as possible. "Madam, what do you require of us in exchange for turning us back?"
"You mean returning you to your former stature?"
"Yes." Relief shuddered through him at her words.
"I cannot," she said simply. There was no undoing the effects of the potion she'd released from the stopper before handing them her water bladder. For generations, her family had harvested Changeling eggs and distilled the sticky green yolk into an odorless, colorless compound that produced this profound effect upon warm-blooded creatures. The potion was her family's tightly guarded secret, difficult and costly to make, but one had business expenses in any line of work.
Before the little reavers could protest, she repeated her words. "I cannot." She picked up her pack, shouldered it, and began to walk away.
Their voices piped after her. "Wait! Hold on!"
She turned to see them running in her shadow, already winded. Witless put his hands on his knees and gasped for breath. Wit trailed the kerchief in one hand and held the other, no larger than a coin, to implore her. "You can't just leave us here!"
She studied him curiously. "Why not?"
"We'll die! That fire-hawk almost had us before you came along."
"How strange," Hawthorn remarked. "You had no concern about leaving me to die."
The two fell silent, standing in the dark splash of her shadow. Then Witless squared his shoulders. "Bring us to town with you! We'll cause you no harm."
"Exactly what is the harm you think you can do me now?"
He blustered, knotting his fists and shifting his shoulders as though his body could not understand the change that had occurred, that such posturing now made him look weak and ineffectual. Indeed, almost comical.
Wit seemed to have assessed their predicament more rationally and arrived at a negotiation. "We'll reward you handsomely, of course."
"And what do you have to offer?"
Both of them opened their mouths, but neither found a retort.
"I thought not," she said.
Wit gave an agonized cry. "You have to take us with you!" He pointed his tiny finger at the sky. "The floodwaters will be coming!" As if to emphasize his point, a deep bellow of thunder unrolled from the high peaks which now wore ominous caps of clouds the color of overripe plums.
She bent down and the wind of her breath ruffled Wit's greasy locks. "You wish me to take you to Fareport?"
"Yes." Wit sagged with relief. "Please." He tacked on the unfamiliar word.
She dropped the pack beside them. "Climb in. I will bear you to Fareport at your request."
Witless grumbled but sat down among the spools of ribbon all the same. Wit paused to thank her effusively, making a show of returning her kerchief to the pack as if to say, "See? I am no thief."
It was a sentiment undermined by their muffled conversation as she trekked.
"We'll have to leave off working on the Dread," Wit observed to his companion. "But we'd make fine sneak thieves. No one would see us."
When Witless only moaned, Wit continued. "Slip in an open window, case the joint, grab a key, easy as falling down -"
"Pick a pocket in the tavern, no one the wiser," Witless joined in, beginning to grasp the potential.
This was followed by some snickering. Hawthorn almost admired their resilience.
Ignoring their plotting, she focused on keeping up her pace. The grumble of thunder was unceasing now, and a breeze picked up at her back. She must make haste or none of them would make it out alive.
As she reached the floodplain, she could hear the monstrous roar of the newborn river booming within its stone bed. She hurried. The cracked earth trembled beneath her feet. She was breathless by the time she scrambled up the steps of Fareport's river wall.
Already, the thunderous noise had brought the town's children to the wall where they waited with bright-eyed anticipation. Hawthorn had just joined them when the floodwaters exploded from the mouth of the Dread in a chaos of sound. Uncontained, the river boiled onto the floodplains, scattering rainbows through the air. The children cheered and screamed and soon were soaked with spray as they ran laughing in the cooling mist.
Had it not been for the reavers, Sershin would have been among them, dancing through the rainbows. She swallowed hard at the sound of his laughter in her head.
He'd been laughing two years before when a lone reaver had accosted them in the Dread. The man had gotten rough with her, and Sershin, who had just turned ten, thought to defend his mother. He did not understand that there are times one cannot fight. That was the secret of their family business. With a single lazy swat of a hand as broad and hard as a paddle, the reaver had cuffed her young son a blow, smashing his head against the channel wall. He'd died in an instant, there on the unforgiving white stones of the Dread.
The reaver had robbed her all the same, and taken her water bladder all the same, and left her there with her dead child, never the same again. With neither food nor water, she'd carried Sershin back into the mountains. With every step, she'd heard the small voice asking, "Are we almost there?"
She blinked the moisture from her eyes, though she was not standing close enough to feel the spray. Turning her back to the celebration, she wound along the wharf to the marketplace, passing the stalls with the bright pyramids of fruit and aromatic wheels of cheeses. She spotted the stall with the spun sugar animals and looked aside for fear the child who was always with her would call out, "Just one, Mother! Please?"
When she angled down Tanner's Lane, she heard a muffled voice at her shoulder, thin and high as a child's but not her child's. "Oi!" it said, "You've passed the marketplace!"
"That I have," she replied, startling a lad bearing a roll of leather on his shoulder. He must have thought her a madwoman speaking to the empty air.
"You can let us off now," Wit called out.
"Is that so? You think I can drop you here in Tanner's Lane and you won't get rolled over by the dray there or stepped on by the big boots of that farmer?"
There was a momentary silence. When Wit spoke again, his voice was subdued. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to take us to Thieves' Corner? I have a cousin there. He'll help us."
"Will he now?" Her skepticism was thick. These two reavers had made it abundantly clear their families ties were less substantial than the mist off the river.
"Oh ay, Jocko will help us out." Wit's effort at confidence was valiant but she knew empty hope when she heard it.
"And you'll reward me handsomely," she prompted.
Another silence followed. It seemed the pair had forgotten their promises.
"The bargain was that I bring you to Fareport, which I have done," she said. "And just in time, mind. For your part, lest you forgot, you mentioned rewarding me handsomely."
"It might have been more a figure of speech," Wit volunteered. "You know, if ever we can do something for you in the future, we will."
"Sure, sure," Witless joined in. "On our honor."
She snorted and edged past a woman carrying buckets from the well. "Well," she began thoughtfully, "there is something..."
"Anything," two voices piped out of her pack.
She shook her head, surprised they still hadn't noticed their own requests had each time brought them grief.
At Thieves' Corner, she crossed to a door painted in shades of crimson and gold. A sign creaking overhead read, "Safrom's Here to There."
"I know this place," Wit said at her ear. He'd stuck his head out of the pack; she could tell by how much louder his voice was. "Jocko lives just down the street. He says Safrom deals in exotic -"
He broke off as she stepped into the shop. Her eyes took a moment to adjust, but she could smell the animals. As Wit had been about to tell her, Safrom dealt in exotic beasts from distant places for the circuses and private houses of entertainment. Through the gloom, she thought she saw a striped moorbund coiled in a cage. Another creature perched on the rafters fluttered three sets of lemon-yellow wings, stirring the air into currents of dust and duff.
"Hawthorn!" A large man emerged from the gloom and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Good to see you! I didn't think you'd make it so late in the season. Must have been a near thing, eh?"
"That it was," she agreed as Safrom gave her a hug and then leaned back to eye her sharply.
"So, got anything for me or is this just a social call?"
Hawthorn set the pack down on the counter. "I was able to fetch a pair this time. They are exceptionally fine. Young, strong. Not too stupid."
Safrom snatched up the two reavers, one in each meaty hand. "Aye, I recognize these two. Seen them sometimes over at Jocko's. Right nuisance they are. This one here thinks he's a treat for the ladies." Safrom gave Wit a shake, adding, "A right braggart he is." Then he raked a hard glance over Witless. "And the law's been after this one since he was in short pants. Thieves, the pair of them. I reckon you've done well."
The little reavers began shouting protests and threats in varying combinations.
"Feisty blighters," Safrom chortled. He set them in a wooden cage on the counter and consulted a ledger, mumbling to himself.
"I'll expect a better price than last time," Hawthorn said.
"Well, be fair Hawthorn. Last time, the fire-hawk had done some damage."
"I know, I know. But these two are in good health and undamaged." She raised her voice to be heard above the commotion Wit and Witless were making as they shouted and rattled the bars.
"Reckon I can give you two hundred royals for the pair," Safrom said at length.
"Two fifty," she said automatically.
"We can work out something!" Wit shouted. "Whatever you want!"
"No, we can't," Hawthorn said. She closed her eyes and stopped her ears to their pleas, remembering that long walk with her dead child, remembering how she and her partner had buried Sershin among the purple terran flowers. They had grieved during that long, dark winter until Tarshin had taken his grief to the high peaks and died in a fall of his own making.
She stilled her thoughts, breathing in the warm musk of the animals. Opening her eyes, she looked down at the two reavers in a cage bound for some distant port. "I did tell you," she said at length. "I'm a dealer in little things."
No comments: