The Witchwood Crown
“Ho, rider,” Fremur called. “May your hooves always find the path.”
Unver looked up. “I can’t say the same for you. Where is your horse?”
Fremur didn’t really want to talk about it. Instead, he nodded toward Unver’s wagon, which looked as though it was nearly finished, an altogether finer piece of work than his stepfather Zhakar’s rickety cart. The wagon was not yet painted, but every joint showed careful attention, and every spoke of the wheels had been rubbed as smooth as glass. “How does it go?”
“Well enough.” Unver held out the wineskin.
“I would help you to finish, if you want,” Fremur said, taking a sip of the sour red stuff. “Your wagon, I mean, not your wine. Since I have no horse, there is little else for me to do.”
Unver raised an eyebrow but did not ask the obvious question. “There is more polishing to do before the paint. You could help with that—but the Grass Thunderer save you if you put a nick in the wood, Mouse.”
He did not know why he said what he said next, but he said it. “I have never liked that name.”
Unver watched him take a long swallow, then took the wine back and had a drink himself before wiping the residue from his long mustaches. He was not so dark as most of the clan, whose skin the sun and dust of the plains usually turned the color of cherry wood. Unver’s flesh was lighter, like the rounded tan stones in the bottom of riverbeds. His prominent nose was sharp and thin, his cheekbones high, but the strangest thing about him were his eyes, gray as rainclouds.
Fremur waited, but Unver did not ask him to explain what he had said about his nickname. Instead, the tall man watched as a pair of clansmen rode by on the far side of the meadow, a long bowshot away. The squinting, storm-colored eyes followed them until they were gone, as though Unver were a hunting animal and they were prey.
Fremur was growing frustrated by the other man’s silence. He had come here with a yearning for comradeship, looking for someone else who knew what it meant to be an outsider in his own clan. “What do you think of my sister Kulva?” he said, then immediately regretted it. He had come to give news. This was not the best way to deliver it, but he had been stung by Unver’s seeming disinterest.
The other man looked at him carefully, as though the words might be some kind of trap. “She is a woman.” He seemed to realize this was inadequate. “She is a good woman.”
“You care about her.” Fremur said it as a statement, not a question.
Unver’s expression grew more remote, as if a cold wind had brought frost. “She is nothing particular to me. And it is nothing to you, either.”
“I have seen you walking together.”
Unver’s hand dropped to the knife at his belt and his face hardened into something fearsome. “You have been spying for Odrig—”
“No! No, but I have seen you together twice, walking and talking, when I was looking for her. And I know my sister. She would not be so easy with you if you had not spoken together that way many times.”
Still the gray eyes fixed him, but at last Unver let his hand fall away from the knife. “Why do you say these things to me, Fremur? Do you plan to defend her honor yourself? If you insist it will be so, but you will die for nothing and her reputation will be ruined. I have not dishonored her in any way. We merely spoke away from wagging tongues.” He narrowed his eyes. “Or are tongues wagging already? Is that what you have come to tell me?”
Fremur was about to answer him, but Unver leaped to his feet suddenly and strode toward the unpainted wagon. “You must think me a fool, as all the rest of the clan does. Would I try to steal the sister of the thane? I would be hunted forever.” He stopped and spread his arms. “No! This is what I have built with my own hands—the finest wagon in the Crane Clan. I have gone on every raid, I have taken every task anyone would give me. Look!” He threw open the door of the wagon and pulled out an oilcloth bundle. He unwrapped it as Fremur stared, revealing a tumble of bright objects. “Real gold for the horses’ traces and reins. Silver for the hinges and fittings, specially made by the finest smith in the Lynx Clan. When I show this wagon to your brother, he and those other fools, their eyes will pop out! He will have no choice but to give Kulva to me.” Unver was breathing hard as he rolled the oilcloth again, as though he had run a long way. He shook the bundle at Fremur and the fittings clinked. “She will ride like a queen of the lakelands!”
Fremur now felt sick at his stomach. He had only wanted to make bad blood between Unver and his hated brother. He had not understood . . .
“But that is not . . . !”
“Not enough?” He was angry and would not look at Fremur. “Then I will get enough. I will bring your brother a dowry of fine horses. Not all my gold has gone to buy fittings!”
“Unver, no.” Fremur shook his head. He did not know where to begin. “That is not what . . . I only came to tell you . . .”
His eyes almost seemed mad. “What? Tell me what?”
“That my sister Kulva . . .” Fremur swallowed. It was not easy, because the lump in his throat seemed big enough to choke him. “My brother has promised her to Drojan. They will set out the marriage stones at the clan gathering, when the moon is full.”
Unver did not say a word for long moments. He only looked at Fremur as though he had suddenly sprouted feathers and flown into the air. “A lie,” he said at last, but his voice was hollow.
“It is no lie. I hadn’t seen you for days, and I didn’t know if you’d heard.” He was suddenly frightened, and tried to find words that would change the frighteningly animal look in the man’s eyes. “I didn’t know that she meant so much to you, Unver—that is truth. But you must have known Odrig would never give her to you! You are . . .” He could not think of how to say it, because he was the same way himself. Like a fish in a stream, how could he find a word for the water that was everywhere, that they both breathed and swam in? “You are unworthy. That is what Odrig thinks. Drojan is his friend. Drojan does everything that Odrig says.”
The oilcloth bundle dropped from Unver’s fingers to the ground and his face went pale as dry grass. For a stretching moment, Fremur was certain Unver would pull the knife from his belt and kill him, and he knew there was nothing he could do to prevent it. Expressions flickered across the tall man’s face so swiftly that Fremur could not make sense of any of them. Then Unver found his voice.
“Go!” he roared. “Get away from me! You and your cursed family! What are you but the crow who brings bad tidings, screeching and preening on a tree branch? Your sister is as false as a stone-dweller’s bargain!”
“It’s not her doing . . .”
“Go!” And with this last cry of rage, Unver turned his back on Fremur and strode back toward the wagon he had worked on so long and carefully. He put his hands against the side of it and pushed until the muscles of his neck bulged. The wood creaked and the wagon tottered, but it did not tip: it was too large for any single man to push it over, or so Fremur thought. Then Unver bent his legs beneath him, leaned his entire body into the side of the wagon, and, with a wordless cry of rage, managed to topple it. It fell slowly, as in a dream, and hit the hard ground with a crash like thunder, splintering into pieces.
Fremur turned and ran.
Jesa carefully swaddled Serasina and brought her to her mother, who was sitting near the window with three of her ladies-in-waiting, taking advantage of the afternoon light to work at their sewing.
“Ah, there she is, the little coney, the little fur-rabbit,” said the duchess. She set down her sewing and took the baby from Jesa, who stood by patiently. It was time for little Serasina to nap, and this was how it was done. Jesa did not entirely understand why a woman who loved her daughter as much as Duchess Canthia spent so little time holding her. In the Wran, where Jesa had been born, a child was put in a sling against her mother’s belly as soon as she could hold her head up, and rode that way all day. Dryland
er children, at least those Jesa had known here in Nabban, were treated more like beautiful jewelry or clothing, to be taken out by their mothers and admired, then soon put back again.
It was puzzling, but Jesa had given up trying to understand. Things were just different here among the drylanders, and Jesa had to believe that She Who Birthed Mankind had made them that way for some good reason. But as she took the baby back from the duchess and set her in her huge, painted cradle, it was hard to imagine what that reason could be.
Despite the tight swaddling, little Serasina fussed and wriggled. To quiet her, Jesa sank into a crouch beside the cradle and began to rock it. Duchess Canthia was a kind woman, and would not have begrudged her a stool to sit on, but Jesa was never entirely comfortable perched on such a thing. Some of the furniture the drylanders used felt to her as untrustworthy as ill-made boats, as if any moment they might tip and throw her down. She had been squatting on her heels since she had been only a few months older than little Serasina, and she was comfortable that way.
The duchess and her ladies talked quietly among themselves, but Jesa could tell from the way they glanced over their shoulders toward the cradle that Serasina’s crying was irritating some of them, so she began to sing one of the songs her own mother had sung to her, long ago in their house on stilts in Red Pig Lagoon.
Come moon, come sweet moon
Come across the marsh, bring an armful of mallows
Come in a pole boat, bring a handful of hyacinths
Come across the stream, bring a comb of honey
Come on a carry-chair, bring milk and curd
Come on walking feet, bring a basket of bilberries
Now listen to me and hold them tight
Keep them here for baby’s delight
As Jesa sang and rocked the cradle, she wondered if she would ever hold a baby of her own. She had not been much more than a child herself when she first came to Nabban, purchased as a companion and servant for the duchess when they were both young girls. Canthia had been fond of her, so when she grew up and began to have children of her own, first her son Blasis and now the new baby, the duchess had kept Jesa on as nurse for the children. Jesa missed her home sometimes, of course, and would never entirely get used to going days at a time without feeling soil or water beneath her feet. But when Jesa thought of her own mother and all that woman’s backbreaking work, gathering and pounding roots all day long, mending nets, and tending children as well, or when she considered the many other Wran-folk she saw here in Nabban whose daily work seemed so hard and dangerous, she thought that even with no child of her own, she must still be one of the luckiest people in the world.
Jesa had just begun a new cradle song when someone knocked at the door. One of the duchess’ ladies-in-waiting rose to open it. It was the duke himself, and when Saluceris made it clear he wanted to talk to his wife in private, the highborn ladies gathered themselves up and went out, chatting happily about visiting the Sancellan’s courtyard garden as though they would have been headed there even had the duchess’s husband not arrived.
Duke Saluceris glanced briefly at Jesa where she crouched beside the cradle, but his gaze slid from her face as though she were made of polished stone. That was one of the strangest things about the drylanders, Jesa had always thought: if they were not speaking to a servant face to face, they pretended that servant did not exist, as if their maids and nurses were only furniture.
As the duke approached, Duchess Canthia smiled and lifted her cheek. Saluceris bent and gave his wife a kiss. “I’m sorry to send your companions away,” he told her, “but Tersian Vullis is pressing me for an answer and I can’t delay it much longer.”
“An answer to what?”
“The betrothal. Surely you remember! I’ve been patient because of your condition, but Vullis has been waiting a long time.”
Canthia frowned very slightly, and Jesa thought it was like a cloud crossing the sun, bringing a moment of shadow to a beautiful day. “You say the betrothal, my husband, but surely I remember you speaking of a betrothal, or at least a suggestion of one by the margrave. Yes, that’s right, I remember you said Vullis wished to wed his daughter to our Blasis. And I also remember saying that we would speak of it after the baby came.” She smiled. “And surely before we speak of it any more, you should go and look at your beautiful daughter, who is sleeping like the angelic gift that she is.”
The duke sighed. “Don’t be difficult. Of course I want to see my daughter.”
Jesa stopped rocking as Saluceris approached the cradle. Since he still did not look at her, only at tiny Serasina in her blanket, Jesa could examine the duke. She seldom saw him from so close, despite her long connection with Duchess Canthia, and it always surprised her to see how very ordinary he was, this man with pale, fishbelly skin and a neat, sandy beard. He was tall and handsome enough in the bony-faced, drylander way, but he was in no way surprising. How could it be that after the High King and High Queen, those far away people who Jesa knew only from stories—mythic figures like They Who Watch And Shape—Duke Saluceris was perhaps the most important person in all the world?
The thought dizzied her a bit, as it often did, and with him standing so close she was terrified at the thought she might suddenly tip and fall out of her squat.
Only now that she was a woman herself had Jesa begun to understand how the drylander world worked, and what a small, disregarded part of things her birthplace, the Wran, truly was. The realization had come to her just a few years before, when she learned that her mistress (who was also in many ways her closest friend from childhood on) was going to marry not just another lord, but the Duke of Nabban himself, master of the biggest, most populous nation in all of the world. The thought had been so frightening that for many sleepless nights Jesa had thought about running away back to the swamp, back to her familiar lagoon. A girl like her had no business in the houses of such people. She could barely read, and what little she knew she had taught herself from watching Canthia and her tutors, but always from a distance.
One night, shortly before the marriage, she had huddled all night at the foot of Canthia’s bed, miserable at the idea of going to live in the Sancellan Mahistrevis, the great palace at the top of one of Nabban’s highest hills, where hundreds of servants already lived, each one fiercely envious of her position, no doubt. Here in this strange country, Jesa knew, even monarchs had been killed; the other servants would probably do away with her in her bed the first night. They would beat the young Wrannawoman and throw her off the Sancellan’s wall, and she would plummet all the way down to lie broken in the market at St. Galdin’s Square.
Don’t be a fool, Jesa, she had told herself over and over again throughout that long night. Jesa Green Honeybird, the elders named you. Green Honeybird didn’t run home to her nest when Tree Python chased her, she turned around and blinded him with her beak! Don’t shame your namesake by acting like a coward.
And as if her spirit bird had come to her then, in that dark night and in such a daunting, foreign place, Jesa had felt something whisper past her face and weave itself into a crown of air around her head. Then it was gone. But after that moment she had not been as frightened, and when she entered the Sancellan Mahistrevis for the first time a fortnight later, following her mistress, she had been astonished and gratified to find she had lost her fear. From Red Pig Lagoon to this strange place—what a journey she was on!
After he had stroked his infant daughter’s face with a careful forefinger, Duke Saluceris abandoned the cradle, and within a few moments had begun pacing back and forth in front of the large window that looked out over the harbor.
“It’s really very difficult to see anything but you just now, my lord,” said the duchess, “and you won’t stay in one place long enough for me to look at you properly, either. It’s not very restful.”
“I said, don’t be difficult, Canthia. I need Vullis, little as I like to adm
it it. The Dominiate is meeting next month and Dallo Ingadaris is introducing some damnable notion of a tariff on wool for no other reason than to push me into a fight with the High Throne. But if I have Vullis, he will pull all our northern and western lords to my side.”
The duchess smiled sadly. “My poor husband. You work so hard! Surely you do not have to convince people to listen to you—you are the duke! The king and queen themselves chose you.”
“My brother hates me for it. And those cursed Ingadarines are going to do everything they can to use him as a weapon against me.”
Little Serasina woke up then and began to fuss, and soon Jesa lost track of what the duchess and her husband were talking about. She had heard so much of this sort of thing that at first she had been frightened all the time—Thrithings-men were raiding! Nabban’s houses were at war with each other!—but now she knew that the world was bigger than she had understood, that things which seemed close when her mistress and others spoke of them were actually far away and unlikely ever to trouble the duke directly, let alone harm Jesa herself.
But some things, she had also learned, were actually closer than they seemed to be. This was proved true again just as Jesa finished patting and rocking the baby into quiet once more and put her back in her cradle. A guard knocked on the door and announced the duke’s brother Drusis, Earl of Trevinta and Eadne.
“How can this be?” Saluceris looked startled, almost fearful. “He was at his place in the east.” He stood up. “Never mind. I will meet him downstairs, dear, to spare you . . .”