Clouds End

  “A very good friend of Shale’s has been twinned,” Foam explained.

  “Strange are the perils of living at the edge of the Mist! I am sorry.”

  Foam shook his head. “The funny thing is, the twin did not kill her. They both live still, she and the haunt. Or at least they did when we split up three months ago. We had even sailed to Delta together.”

  “Stranger still! But do not believe that it can last. I have told the Singer’s stories for a score of years now, and the act of twinning is a terrible one. Your friend has a respite, not a peace. Sooner or later one twin will have to live in the sunlight, and the other be banished to the Mist, or the grave.”

  “What do you know?” Shale said. “You tell old stories to amuse ignorant Deltans. We live with the Mist. We salvage from it for our livelihood. Our island and our people are blessed with sight and wisdom to work it, to guard against it. Brook can look after herself.”

  Seven’s ship rocked and creaked over the black water. The southern end of the Foot slid by their port bow, and the lights of Delta’s harbor burned brightly before them. “Of course,” Reed said softly. “I forgot my place. No doubt your friend will thrive in ways I cannot imagine.”

  But that was the end of storytelling, and the only words spoken for the rest of the trip were of sails, and lines, and docks.

  “How quiet it seems!” Foam said as he tied their painter to a docking ring. “This morning all Delta was cheering. Are we old news so soon?”

  Indeed, the crowded docks were strangely silent. Around them, the sixty other ships in Seven’s flotilla were bumping up to the landing, their shivering crews laughing and looking forward to hot ale and warm beds. But the Deltans themselves were quiet, milling on the jetty, and the morning’s joy had drained from their drawn faces.

  It was Glint who approached them. They had left the physician in town to help Pond. The battered white bandage she used to wear around her neck had been replaced by an elegant silk kerchief. Her face was grim. The strong hands that had dressed their dying without a tremor now shook as she raised her arms and clasped Seven to her breast.

  He stiffened and pulled back, holding her shoulders. “What is it?”

  Foam and Shale stood nearby. Fog curled and smoked across the harbor behind them, and the night breeze blew chill.

  “Pond,” Glint said.

  Seven stood as if turned to stone.

  “We think it was cutthroats, deserters from the forest army. She had finished arranging the berths and wanted to see her parents. I never thought to send anyone with her. Delta was saved! Twist had gone, and I thought . . .” Her voice caught. “When she didn’t come back we asked directions to her house. Rich place, off on its own. You know it.”

  Glint closed her eyes. When she opened them again she had herself under control. She might have been telling one of her patients that he had the canker and had little time to live, plain and steady and compassionate. “They must have slipped over while Twist was marching down to the lee docks. They had taken the place apart. Pond was in the dining room. At least she never saw her parents. I found their bodies in the back room.”

  Still Seven stood unmoving.

  “She is dead,” Glint said.

  Silence spread like nightfall over the returning navy. In all that great crowded space were only the sounds of boats creaking and rocking; sails luffing softly in the gentle breeze; the endless dark mutter of the sea.

  Seven turned and walked back to his docking ring.

  “What are you doing?”

  His cunning fingers slipped Foam’s knot and he pulled the painter free. “First I will find her killers. Then I will find Hazel Twist. Reed, Glint—take care of Pond for me. Burn her. Like Brine and Rose and all the others.” He cocked his head for a moment, getting the lie of the wind. “She hated the cold.”

  “You are mad with grief,” Foam said softly. “You cannot go, Seven. There is nothing to be done. The war is over. Grieve for Pond here. She would want it so.”

  “I look like a woodlander. I can talk like a woodlander. I lived and ate and breathed with one for years,” Seven said. “I know where they went back into the forest. I know the country around the edge of the bay. They have only a day’s start.”

  “What would you do if you found them? Even you cannot slay a whole army.”

  Seven laughed. “Oh, I shall be patient,” he said. “Hazel Twist has taught me something about patience. I am not a slow pupil. Not when learning how to kill.”

  “This is madness.” Shale strode forward to grab Seven.

  She screamed and stopped short, staggering off balance. Where a moment before Seven had been squatting with his back turned, now he crouched before her. His knife pricked her neck. “Never touch me,” he said. “If you take one step closer, I will kill you. I swear it.”

  There was a blackness in his voice and his strong killer’s hands. Shale backed away. A puff of wind came up, stirring a clamor from the boats. Like daggers of flame, their tiny lanterns danced in Seven’s eyes.

  Delta watched as the hero of the islands climbed into his boat. He used his sheathed sword to push away from the dock. Then he set his sail and slid smoothly out into the night, heading into the darkness under the shadow of the wood.

  CHAPTER 20

  WILLOW

  “IN THE end I think it was inevitable,” Hazel Twist said one night that autumn, sipping his brandy from a pearwood goblet. “The Emperor had lived too long with the certainty of his own doom.”

  Alder Shade rocked slowly in the swing next to Twist’s, sucking on a black briar pipe. Rowan Spark prowled around the talking room, threading between the tree trunks. He ducked to avoid a lantern hung from the ceiling branches. An ivy of shadows wound through the room, thrown by the lantern’s weak yellow light.

  Spark grimaced. “What kind of man could do it that way?”

  “A Bronze, of course.”

  “Live coals,” Shade rumbled. “Taken from his son’s pyre. They say the stewards tried to stop him after the first, but the Emperor held them off with a sword. He used tongs to pick them out of the brazier and popped them down like baked locusts. His tongue looked like a hank of black leather.”

  “Shade, while I would be more than happy to refill your drink,” Twist remarked, rising and walking to the cabinet where he kept his liquor, “I note without approbation your tendency to linger on the gruesome.”

  “Apologies,” Shade murmured, holding out his goblet. Pipe smoke eddied from his nose and mouth. “But you must admit the method was unorthodox. I wonder why he chose to forgo the customary Thirsting.”

  “How it must have burned!” Spark said. He glanced at the hanging lanterns and shuddered. “Six days faster anyway.”

  Hazel Twist decided not to refill his own glass. “The Emperor and his son lost between one moonrise and the next, leaving Bronze Cut with undisputed power. He has been lucky with the rain. It looks to be a clement fall.” Twist returned to his swing and settled comfortably within its mesh. The three men fell silent, pondering the future of their nation. Normally Twist was fond of such speculations, but Rowan Hilt’s murder and the Emperor’s grisly suicide had turned such thoughts bitter.

  At length Twist stirred. “The reason the Emperor’s death is so shocking, I believe, is that it was so personal, so apolitical an act.” He fingered his goblet of brandy, turning it slowly before his eyes. The talking-room was fragrant with the smell of damp willow-wood and alcohol. Rain pattered on the ceiling and ran down the tree trunks, disappearing below the plank floor. “Our state, after all, is like a Power to us. The clans, the whole community of our people, have a history and momentum that seems as great as that of the forest itself, or the mountains, or the sea.

  “But something like this reminds us that our laws and customs, our history and our politics, are not ruled by processes as sure and immutable as those by which the mountains are created and consumed. To eat fire!” He shook his head. “That is the act of a single man, torn b
y anguish.” He sipped his brandy again, feeling it burn across his palate. “We empathize, of course. We cannot help but imagine the sensation, and we recoil. But more than that, we are reminded that the whole delicate human web within which we exist can be rent by sudden emotions. In the end we are all at the mercy of our passions, and the passions of others.”

  “You will not catch me eating coals,” Spark said.

  Twist watched a moth flutter drunkenly around the nearest lantern. “And we are reminded that we too have such passions. We are forced to acknowledge our enormous capacity for cruelty. We must admit to ourselves the wild urge for self-destruction. The Spark smolders, as the old story says. It longs to be free.”

  Shade stirred. “To talk of such things, Hazel Twist, may be to speak truths which are more wisely left unsaid.”

  Twist smiled. “Such is the folly of wisdom!”

  “—Did you hear that?” Spark said.

  Rain pattered insistently on the roof; dripped down the tree trunks; vanished into darkness. Branches creaked in the warm wind and their leaves sighed, weeping. “Hear what?” Twist said.

  “That. A—grunt, maybe. I thought I heard something moving outside, and then a sort of a . . . grunt.” The others listened. “No,” Spark said at last. “Nothing now.”

  “A dead branch falling,” Shade suggested.

  “Or a raccoon.”

  Spark shrugged. “Something.”

  Shade covered his pipe bowl with two fingers, drew deeply, held the smoke inside, and then breathed slowly out, letting it trickle from his lungs. “It is very pleasant to be here, Twist, for the autumn rains. I even took some pleasure from the ferry ride, though we Alders are not fond of boats.”

  “Boats! Do not talk to us of boats!” Spark had been one of Twist’s junior commanders during the war. “I shall never think twice about crossing this little creek again. Not after daring the sea.”

  “Was it really so bad?” Shade asked.

  Twist said, “He was caught out in a gale with only a raft beneath him. Three-quarters of the men were drowned.” His subtle Hazel eyes looked at something far away that caused him pain. He shook his small head. “It was always madness, trying to take the islands. We were not meant for the sea. It is a great Power, greater perhaps than the forest. Certainly it bears no love for us. We refused Fathom’s offer when he came to the Tree, remember, and with good reason.”

  “Well, I still think you have it rather nice here,” Shade said, returning to his earlier theme. “It was wise of you, I think, to avoid the Arbor.”

  “Unsuccessful generals are rarely made welcome by the State,” Twist said dryly. “And it is beautiful, here in Willow. I am well content to live in my wife’s house and watch my children grow.”

  Shade looked up. “There it was.”

  “What?”

  “Spark’s animal. Only it wasn’t outside this time, it was from somewhere back toward the rest of the house.” Rain fell into the uncomfortable silence. “Not in the house, of course,” Shade added. “On the roof, I meant. Or perhaps at the base of one of the trees.”

  “It seems strange to me that I should be the only one not to hear this noise. It casts a shadow on my heart.” Twist rose and placed his empty goblet on the sideboard. “Gentlemen, if you will excuse me, I shall make a quick survey of the house. No doubt Blue is sleepless again tonight, or one of the children is roaming. My apologies.”

  “Go on! While you are gone, Shade and I shall swap stories that only bachelors should hear!”

  Twist smiled. “I doubt you can say anything I have not heard from my wife.”

  Blue’s family had left the walkway from the talking-room to the rest of the mansion unpanelled; a corridor of trimmed willows was the only roof. Rain dripped from the leafy canopy, sweet and warm as blood; trailing outer branches swept in a green waterfall down either side. It was very dark, beneath tree and cloud. One hooded lantern rocked in the breeze, dripping light like golden oil on the willow creepers and the slick planking.

  As he walked, Twist let his hand rest lightly on the rail, feeling the smooth wet wood slide beneath his palm. He appreciated its strength, tamed from the raw power of the living trees. As alien, really, as the mountains or the sea.

  The wind wove cloud and wood together in the troubled night. Raindrops broke into willows’ tears.

  Twist hurried to the other end of the walkway. He had become a city-dweller, a householder. Even in the army his rank had always bought protection from the outside. Now Nature pressed itself against him: vivid, vulgar, seething with mysteries.

  He was glad to reach the mansion proper. This part of the house was large and utilitarian; first built before the days when the Willows had been great, it was not designed to hang among the trees. The talking-room had been an elegant afterthought of Blue’s grandmother, inspired by her many rings in the Arbor.

  All was quiet. Silently Twist padded to the girls’ room. Everything in order. He checked on Jay next. The boy was sprawled on his back with his teeth showing, a sure sign he was not faking sleep; awake it would have been beneath his dignity to let his mouth hang open.

  Dread was building in Hazel Twist, as if each reassuring sign hid a more terrible calamity. He found himself hesitating on the threshold of his own bedroom, one hand on his sword hilt. He cursed himself for an aging fool and stepped inside.

  Blue lay on the bed, still as death, with her wavy blond hair tumbled about her shoulders. He darted to her side and felt for the vein at her throat, then sighed with relief to feel the strong, steady pulse beating there. Her chest rose as she turned to his touch, still half-asleep. “What?”

  Twist laughed softly at himself. “I love you,” he said. He knelt and kissed her on the neck.

  Weak with sleep she cradled his head in the hollow of her shoulder. “Coming t’bed soon?”

  “Very soon. I will show our guests safely to their rooms and then return.”

  “Mm? M-hmm . . .”

  He kissed her again and rose to his feet, feeling happy and foolish. It was the wind that did it, he told himself. The wind in the trees. And him with forty-three rings under the eaves of the forest. We never escape from our fear of the Outside.

  Of course it was the talk about the Emperor’s suicide that had made him uneasy.

  He heard the first yell as he stepped onto the walkway. Spark was shouting for servants, and a voice he did not recognize howled his name like a curse. The wet planks bucked beneath him like waves as he raced back to his friends.

  The talking-room was bright after the darkness outside. Spark and Shade crouched with their backs to Twist. Before them stood a stranger, a tall man in tattered clothes. He held a long-handled sword before him. The steel was beaded with rain. In an islander’s voice he said, “Greetings, Hazel Twist.”

  “Why have you come here?”

  “You can’t threaten three people,” Shade growled. “You’re a madman, and you’re bluffing.”

  “Am I? What do you think, Hazel Twist? What do you think, Rowan Spark?” The stranger smiled unpleasantly. “Do you think I am bluffing? Or does your fear whisper that you have known me before? What about Bone? Do you think that Bone would recognize me? Of course Bone is dead now,” he explained to Shade. “I killed him long ago. A knife through the throat. No matter how many men I kill, I can still remember every detail of every murder. Do not make me remember you.”

  “You bastard!” Spark swore. He drew his sword.

  The islander smiled.

  Hazel Twist grabbed his friend. “Spark! Stay back. This must be Seven, you fool.”

  Spark blanched.

  “Seven?” Shade asked.

  Twist studied the islander, seeing him in the flesh at last. “He led the Deltans against us. This is the famous pupil about whom Bronze Switch tells such extraordinary stories.”

  Shade looked at Seven with wonder and new fear in his eyes.

  “My master was not a Bronze; he killed one. That is why he was exiled.”
/>
  “Is that what he told you?” Twist shrugged. “If you are not a Bronze, the penalty for killing one is death. There are no exceptions. Bronze Switch killed three men and a woman over an imagined slight and was sent from the Empire to acquire self-discipline.”

  “You lie.”

  “Why would I?”

  “You are a woodlander. You do not need a reason to lie.”

  Twist’s eyebrows rose. “Perhaps you might consider Bronze Switch in just that light.”

  “There were four guards outside my father’s house. I killed them as easily as a man kills ants.” Seven’s eyes were as empty as the sea. “I was always good with my hands.”

  Hazel Twist prayed that Blue was awake, that she was taking the children, that they were creeping from the other end of the house, into the rain, that they were gone, that she would not be sleeping, sprawled on her back with her long hair wound around her throat. The islander stood before him like a shadow, a creature of the rain and the night and the wood’s wild heart. “What do you want?”

  Even now Seven’s hand was easy around the hilt of his sword. “She was to be a Witness, Hazel Twist. She went to visit her parents when we came back to Delta. They lived out from the city. It was a beautiful house, Hazel Twist. At sunset you could watch the seals playing down in the cove. Her father told stories of Delta in his grandfather’s time.”

  “Who was she, Seven?”

  “They mutilated her parents, Hazel Twist. What do you think they did to her? She was a beautiful woman, Hazel Twist. Do you think they raped her before she died or afterwards?”

  “I am sorry,” Twist said.

  “We too grieve for your loss,” Shade rumbled quietly. “But why come here? No one in this room was there that day, I’m sure.”

  Seven nodded. “True. True enough. But a general is responsible for his men. Am I not right, Hazel Twist? And these men were of the forest. I strangled them both. It took me a long time to find them. They fled west, up the Vein and into the grasslands.”

  “We had left the islands long before,” Twist said. “You know that.”