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TABETH’S PLAN WAS TO give Gil and Door a few hours’ head start before she and Ade ambled down to the docks, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. “Keep your hat pulled low,” she said. “It’ll help.” She walked on his left, further hiding the marked side of his face. Not that she was too worried. It was full dark now, the stars and curly moon hidden under clouds and spitting rain.
Samar’s little dock area was quieter at this time of the evening, though people were still loading and off-loading wherries. These were the grey-wherries, not exactly illegal, but not exactly legal neither. Most wherries had a system of little flags telling who captained, where she hailed from, and what kind of cargo she was carrying; like the post-wherries, which were small and fast, and had flags of triangular blue, or the great wherries of the high Houses of MallenIve which brought silks and scriv and luxuries. The flags all rippled with information, and the Look-Fars of Pelimburg and the watchers of MallenIve could spot a wherry coming, and know immediately what news to send where.
Grey-wherries flew only grey flags. They declared nothing. Grey-wherries mostly only docked at night, travelling at different times to the regular wherry services. Not because of trying to trick the customs-Sharif—they had to go through the same rigmarole as the rest of the traders—but because it suited them. Sometimes it was high Houses carrying goods they didn’t want other Houses to know about, or it was passengers who don’t want their arrival announced.
Whatever the reasons, people looked on grey-wherries a little askance. There was something fishy about them, people said. After all, if you had something to hide, it couldn’t be any good.
Three boats waited at the docks, the sails furled and quiet as a dead bird’s wings. Workers were shifting the last of the cargo onboard.
“Pick one.” Tabeth was curious to see if he actually would, or defer to her.
“Eh?”
Tabeth found herself slightly amused by the uncertainty on Ade’s face. He showed every thought. She’d have to train him out of it, for his own good. Or every cardsharp in MallenIve would cream their trousers just to look at him. She snorted softly, and buried her hands deeper in her jacket pockets. “One’s going to be as good as the other.”
“Or bad,” Ade said, and walked a little closer. Tabeth trailed him. The three wherries all looked a little threatening—boys loitering in an alley with their caps pulled low. Their names were written on their prows: The Merry Moppet, Ragamuffyn, and Greymalkin.
“That one.” Ade pointed to The Greymalkin.
“Any reason?”
He managed to look guilty. “Reminds me of the long-tailed cats that prowl the Stilts.”
“Fond of them, are you.” She stared up at the looming wherry. “We’ve got plenty of them down by the tower. We feed them scraps, keep them mostly tame. Good for keeping the rats down.”
“You don’t kill them?”
Tabeth turned her head sharply. “Ill-luck to kill malkins. People who set traps for them always end up dead sooner than they should.”
“Ma never let me have a kitling of my own, said they were troublesome, and that they steal dreams right out of people’s heads.”
“As if that should have frightened the old bitch, what with her own inclinations,” Tabeth muttered, expecting Ade to leap to his ma’s defence, but he just looked mealy-mouthed and faintly stubborn.
He shot her a look, defiant. “Didn’t stop me wanting.” He waved one hand up at the wherry, hazy with lights and fog.
Tabeth walked to where a Hob in a wherryman’s short coat and loose trousers was watching the last of the cargo being loaded up on to The Greymalkin.
“What?” he said at their approach. He was skinny and hard-muscled. His ears stuck out a little too wide, and the tips were rounder than most. His eye-teeth were skew, and it made him look like a nervous little mouse wearing a round hat. His voice was friendly enough. Tabeth relaxed. Grey-wherrymen knew better than to sell anyone out to the Sharif—get a reputation like that, and you didn’t get to charge exorbitant fares.
Tabeth glanced at Ade, who was looking distinctly nervous and holding his head at an odd angle. Trying to hide the mark. “We’re looking for passage to MallenIve, my brother and me.”
“Brother, is it?” said the man, and laughed. “Won’t be the first time I heard that one.”
She flashed him a lazy grin, unselfconscious at being caught out in a lie. “Suppose you have. All right then, how much for fare for my friend and me?”
The man huffed, amused, and moments later, the exchange was done, no more questions asked, and though the grey-wherries weren’t used much by passengers, the man found them a place out of the way, a cabin barely wider than the bunk inside it, with just enough room for them to squeeze in sideways. They stowed their rucksacks under the bunk.
“You look like shit,” Tabeth said. “Best get what sleep you can before we reach the border towns.” She prodded the mattress with her forefinger. Thin and hard, but better than nothing. “Top or bottom?”
There was no answer. Ade just stared at her with his mouth open, as though he were about to ask her something but had forgotten the words.
“The bunk, nitwit. Do you want the top bed or the bottom?” She pinched her brow, trying her hardest not to laugh at the poor idiot.
“Oh, top,” he said, quickly.
Sleep was scarce. Tabeth lay on the high narrow bed, her back pressed against thin hard padding, feeling the slow rock of the wherry in the water, and then hours later, the lurch when she set off. It wasn’t nerves or illness that set her stomach roiling.
It was him. The sparked Onnery lying on the bed above. Even though the wooden slats and the ticked mattress that kept them apart, she could sense him. Like spiders walking under her clothes.
A creaking and groaning sounded as Ade twisted and turned, pulling blankets about himself then shoving them back down again. The constant movement set Tabeth’s teeth on edge. “Will you stop bouncing about like a sackful of alley cats!” she snapped. “You’re doing my head in.”
For a moment, the Onnery was still. The wherry creaked and cracked, and below them the water sloshed. It was clear he hadn’t fallen asleep. The cadence of his breathing felt wrong. The room seemed lighter too. Tabeth squeezed her eyes tight shut in annoyance. It was going to be a long journey at this rate. “Can’t you sleep?” she asked after a little while.
He didn’t answer her, but shifted slightly. It was enough. The little bastard was awake, and the moment she dropped off, he was going to start in with his tossing and turning again.
.“Do you not like being on the wherries? Do you get river-sick?” There was no point trying to rest. She eased from the bed and stood up to peer at him, her face almost right in his.
He scooted back away from Tabeth, turning on his side to watch her warily. “I don’t get river-sick,” he mumbled. “What do I look like—a little Lammer-born lad who’s never even seen a row boat?” The whites of his eyes seemed like shiny flecks of fallen moon.
“Go on,” Tabeth said. “You’ve not been in a wherry before. I’d be shocked if you had, what with that dam of yours.”
“Don’t you say nothing about my ma,” he said furiously, and she grinned as he blinked and blinked, as though something was caught in his eyes. He sniffled again. Allergic, she suspected. Allergic to spark, if there could be anything so ridiculous as a magic worker allergic to magic. She felt his spark too, and it grated at her like a hair shirt, but it didn’t have the same level of annoyance for her as it obviously had for him.
Tabeth rested her chin on her crossed arms and said nothing, just observing him. No, not an allergy, she thought, though like it. When she’d touched him to put on the face covering, he’d stilled then. And it had been likewise for her, that relentless itch had died down when they touched. It was like a poison that could only be cured by more poison.
He was shivering now, and his forehead was dampened with sweat. It was curious how freely the Onnery seemed to feel his emotions. There was more to him than she’d first thought. When he’d come to her, she’d been a little disappointed. The sister had warned her that her brother was a little strange, but when Tabeth had finally seen him, he’d thrown her. Not because he was weak, but because of some other quality. Something nameless and unexpected. He’d made her doubt herself. She’d begun to wonder if there was not a lot more power to him than she’d assumed. He kept his hair cropped unfashionably, which was rather uncommon. The Grinningtommy had always taught her that the Ones of Power in the Long Tales had kept their hair long because it had been a measure of their power. How there had been shaman with hair that covered their feet it was kept so long. Her own power stayed tamed when she braided her hair and kept it slicked with saltgrease, washed it in sea water. Something had been done to him.
Likely by that sour dam of his, the Onnery-Proper.
“Your ma’s not a bad person,” she said finally, “but she’s not the be all and end all, and the sooner you start seeing that, the better.” She unfolded her arms, and touched the mark on his cheek before he had time to twist his head away.
It stung like a wasp, but just for a moment, and the itch that had been eating away at her was gone. From his sudden stillness, Tabeth guessed that the same had happened to him. She left her palm there, his skin warm under her hand.
The Onnery’s shoulders trembled.
“I keep wanting to touch you,” Tabeth said, softly. She wasn’t grinning any more. Her brow furrowed as she squinted in the gloom. Ade Onnery, who had seemed a gift, and was now turning out to be more than that.
“Well, I don’t.” But it was barely a protest, just a rote response, because he didn’t move away.
“When Gil brought you into my house, I knew what you were. It wasn’t just your face—you’re not the only Hobling born with a mark. It was something else, I could feel it...” Her voice drifted, and she half-closed her eyes dreamily. “It felt like armies of millipedes crawling over my skin, like needles of cold rain or, or—”
“Like an itch you can’t scratch,” he finished for her.
Tabeth’s eyes snapped open. “Yes. Exactly. Like an itch I couldn’t get to, right under my skin. Is that how you know when a babe is sparked?”
He nodded.
“Do you still feel it, even now?” She pressed her palm more firmly against his cheek. This meeting of spark should be burning, it should be eating right through her thin skin, through the bones of her fingers, worsening with the contact, but it wasn’t.
“Not so much now,” he whispered.
“Do you know what I think?” Tabeth said. She could see a pulse flickering in his throat, could feel the heat of flushing skin, could even smell the salt-must of arousal. “I think,” Tabeth said, her head swimming with dreams, “that the itch is a sign.”
“‘Course it is,” he managed to cough out. “It means you’re sparked and I’m supposed to sort it out.”
“No.” She shook her head, but her hand stayed still, and the warmth between that point of contact grew, spreading like honey heated, joining them in a way that spoke stronger than contracts and spark.
Ade twitched, but still made no move to pull away from her. His breathing was faster now, almost a shallow panting.
“It’s meant to pull us together, to let us know like to like. It feels better, doesn’t it?” She pushed her way uncertainly through her revelation. “If we touch, the itch goes. It’s a like a guide stone on a path showing us where we’re supposed to turn. The Casabi wants us together. She wants more sparks blowing across this world, setting a fire under the Lammers.”
“Which ones?” Ade said. “Does Gil get to live?” At Gil’s name, another tremble shook him, as though he’d had to force the name out. “Or are you planning to set yourself up as High Lady of the world and decide who burns and who doesn’t?”
She pulled her hand away fast, as though she’d trapped a hornet there, and it had finally stung her.
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THE GREYMALKIN swept into MallenIve two nights later. Tabeth had been at the bows, watching for the faint prickle of light that marked the edge of the city. She’d no plan to go to any of the minor or main docks, and certainly not into the wretched heart of the place. It was unlikely that Sharif would be watching for them this far up, but there was no need risking it with the mollycot in tow, and his face so recognisable. When the faint skein of firelight pricked through the star-dark, she crept back down to the small cabin area.
Tabeth woke Ade with a hard shake, and it was the first time she’d touched him since their awkward conversation about what was meant to be, and about what she planned to do.
The spark leaped between them, crackling the air, making both of them shriek.
Tabeth recovered first. “You sound like a squealing girl. Mollycot.” She was nervous, and when she was off-balance, her tongue always got the better of her. It was the one weapon she’d always had trouble sheathing. She sighed inwardly at the look of hurt on Ade’s face.
“Don’t call me that.” He hunched up. “Why’d you wake me anyhow?”
“MallenIve,” she said. “We’re here.”
Ade scrambled down from the bunk and ducked to haul his bag out from under the bed.
“You can swim,” Tabeth said. She was wondering if she shouldn’t have broached this earlier, but she couldn’t think of a marshborn Hob who didn’t at least know the rudiments. Then again, she’d never known a cowed little Onnery before.
“What?”
“Swim?” Tabeth hugged her rucksack to her chest like a foundling. “Idiot, you didn’t think we could get off at the docks like we were common travellers. Get up.”
It was bright and cold up on the wherry deck. The skipper gave them a lazy wave then turned back to his work. It wasn’t unusual for travellers. to take a little air—anything to escape the cramped cabins and stale smell. The cabin area was sunk low, so there was no real place to hide from view. They walked casually, taking in the sweetness of the evening air, waiting until the skipper was back to his tiller, before hunkering down low.
“Make sure that pack is strapped on tight, you hear?” Tabeth clambered up the side of the wherry, and looked down at the murky water. The wide river was dark as spilled ink, swirling with furrows of silver from the last sickle light of the waning moon.
Ade’s teeth chattered. “Are you— You want us to jump?” He whispered.
“Jump. And swim.” Tabeth slid her feet over the edge, lowering herself to sit there, arms braced to push herself off. “Come on, little Ade, even cats can swim when they need to.” And so could she. She took a deep breath and shoved, dropping over the side to land with a bright loud splash that echoed through the night.
“Shite.”Ade’s voice drifted down, and a moment later Tabeth saw him jump.
The wherryman shouted as soon as he realized what they had done, but Tabeth was already striking out, pulling away from Ade with long strokes. She heard him gasp as the muddy water filled his mouth.
The river water was cold and heavy. While she was certain any stilts-born could at the least keep themselves afloat, Tabeth worried that perhaps she’d been expecting too much. Trust the mollycoddled thing to drown. She paused, circling back to get a better look.
He was...swimming. After a fashion. It wasn’t what she’d meant by the term, but he was doing an adequate enough job of not drowning. Keeping his head above the water and paddling like a dog thrown into a pond. He was weighed down by sodden clothes, boots and pack. He sank for a moment, then bobbed up, his arms working harder and harder against the tug.
Tabeth stayed where she was, treading water.
Ade garbled something, and Tabeth, much as she wished he would keep silent, called back. “What?” The sound travelled clearly across the water.
“Nixes!” He was half-screaming. “Are there nixes in the water?”
There may well be, Tabeth thought, but telling the idiot so was just going to make him thrash harder. And now she felt some of his fear. That dark cold terror as teeth seemed to close on her legs, swallowing her down. Nixes or river-drakes. They were hardly ever seen down Pelimburg way, but here in MallenIve things were wilder. MallenIve was the root of it, from where all the wild, gone-wrong magic came.
He was frantic now, kicking and splashing toward her. Tabeth eased back until she felt the mud drifting up around her. The air smelled silty and rotten, and she could hear the hiss and rattle of the thickest of bulrushes. She was a few hand spans from the bank. “You’re nearly there,” she called out softly to Ade. Wearily, she pushed herself upright and slogged her way through the boggy edges, feet sucking down into black mud.
The air was sharper than a glass razor. It cut right through her dripping clothes, stuck to her like a second skin, and set to shivering. She slunk back under cover of the bulrushes and watched Ade stagger up out of the water.
“You didn’t lose the bag?” she said.
He threw the waterlogged rucksack at her, and it missed, landing with a splat in the boggy river.
“Tantrums?” Tabeth fished for the bag, “That’s more your sister’s style. I expected a little better from you by now.” She found one shoulder strap and hauled the bag up triumphantly. It dripped a steady stream of bowel-black mud and released a privy scent.
“Why couldn’t we have slipped off at the docks?” Ade asked. They were nowhere near MallenIve. No city buildings stood proud against the greying dawn sky. There was no city, just a stretch of open grassland.
“Because, fool boy, we don’t know who exactly might be waiting for us there. Besides—” Tabeth slung the sopping pack over one shoulder and began trekking through the reeds. “We’re off to see the Grinningtommy, not the Gris-blessed Mata in his shining palace.”Their walk through the fields was far from pleasant. Tabeth’s wet boots and stockings rubbed blisters into her ankles and toes, and she shivered and chafed against the freezing clothing plastered to her body. Ade trudged near silent behind her, but she knew from his soft winces that he was feeling just as tender as she was. It annoyed her—an irrational reaction that even she could acknowledge as nasty. She was in an odd mood, wanting to wallow in self-pity and despair, and hating herself for that want. They were so close to her past now, to memories and people she’d left behind.
Or thought she had. The Grinningtommy would know, soon as she saw Ade, just exactly what Tabeth had done and what she wanted him for. She’d have her say; that was sure as shit going to happen. Tabeth drew in a deep breath and pushed the feeling of dread out of her, let it go into the world, made her head empty and bright as the sun. Dawn was at their heels, and like it or not, she’d have her reckoning with the Grinningtommy. No point borrowing trouble before it came.
To the east, the sky slowly turned from a silvery yellow like the sides of a stockfish, to the pale pink of watered silk. It made Tabeth think of the Towerhouse, and the women inside it, fish and silks and gathered reeds and scraps of wood, all turned to beauty and commerce. She’d set it in motion, she knew, but she was also aware that now the machine ran itself. The Towerhouse women were a family, and she could slip in and out of its arms now like a sister. Her time as matriarch was over. It’s a good thing. She wouldn’t have time to play Lady of the Tower when she was in hiding with a little sparked babe at the breast. She glanced down, flat belly and worn boots. This was insanity. The Grinningtommy was right. Whatever she birthed, it would still be a child, and she had her own sullen, terror-filled memories of a childhood grown in shadows and fear, sparked and sentenced to death.
They crossed a huge open field, rutted with weeds and hummocky grass and narrow trenches where the rains had washed away the red soil. There were moments of unexpected beauty when the rising sun turned the tussocks of brown grass into golden sprays, edged with white feather-foam. But mostly, everything smelled too much like bad memories, flinty and dry, like iron. At the far end of the tussocky field was a series of high flat-topped hills. Tabeth recognised the landmarks and changed direction, veering toward the Northwest where low round hills rose like goosebumps on the land’s skin.
Soon enough, she’d smell them, Tabeth knew. And not moments after that thought a wave of stench breathed over them as the wind shifted. It blew down from the hills, bringing with it a heavy stink of vegetable rot, privy-leavings and the sour-sweet choke of decaying meat.
“What’s that?” Ade had drawn up beside her, arm raised as he tried to cover his mouth and nose with his damp cuff.
Tabeth didn’t bother, between clothes covered with the reek of Casabi mud and the stench of waste, it made no difference. “The Lam-heaps,” she told him. “That’s where MallenIve leaves its filth.”
They came closer to the hills as the sun rose. It was early yet, but hotter than a summer’s day in Pelimburg already. Their clothes were drying, crinkling and stained. The steam rose off Ade’s shoulders, little wisps that just caught the light. Tabeth supposed they made quite a pair—two mud-stained, stinking figures, wreathed in mist.
The stench seemed to spread outward and grow thicker. Flies buzzed around their heads, hundreds of them, crawling right into the corners of eyes, and noses and into mouths. Tabeth didn’t bother to try stop them, but next to her Ade was slapping and spitting. She allowed herself a small smile.
“I’m starting to hate MallenIve, and we haven’t even got there,” Ade said, in a brief respite from the cloud of heavy, green-shiny flies.
“It doesn’t get much better,” Tabeth said, without meaning to. Oh, there were places enough she liked her, but with them came reminders of poverty, death and a grinding numbness that came from always being scared that today was the day they found her.
“What Hob in his right mind leaves the sea and the mists to come to this wasteland?” he muttered.
“Desperate ones.” Not that it was the whole of the truth. There’d been Hobs here long before the Lammers had arrived with their Saints and their addiction and their clinging, desperate magic. But that had been a Before-time, lost in myths and mists, when the borders of magic and worlds were transparent as veils, and as easy to tear through.
A flicker of black movement caught Tabeth’s attention. A figure walking towards them.
“Tabeth.” Ade pointed at the distant skyline.
“Seen it.” A momentary unease crawled along her ribs, and Tabeth shrugged it off. They were here now, for good or ill. “You let me do any talking, understand?”
“Not like I’d planned to do anything else.”
The figure loped nearer, and broke apart. Three people. The leader held a long stick, sharpened to a point, and his two little sidekicks carried thin willow whips, tipped with mud. Tabeth was used to them from the Swartmarch where Hoblings used the thin willow branches or reeds to pelt each other with pellets of mud. Stung like a mad hornet.
“Suppose some things never change, whether it’s packs down at home, or here,” Ade said quietly. Stilts Hoblings used the same weapons as MallenIve ones.
The leader of the trio stopped a few paces from them and leaned against his spear. He wore no hat, and the sun had burned his skin almost black. He was probably no older than her companion, Tabeth guessed, but he looked leaner and wilder and more dangerous than Ade would ever be. Even though she was used to pack-thieves and Swartmarch foundlings, there was a look to this one’s eyes that made them seem like babes in swaddling.
His big spade-teeth gleamed when he grinned. “What’s this?” His words come out clipped and fast, and it took Tabeth a moment to switch her mind into time with the rapid patter. Down south their words came out slower, in waves and currents. She’d become to used to their sea rhythm.
“We’re here to see the Grinningtommy, lad, so don’t go interfering,” Tabeth drawled. She’d no more let the boy think he and his little friends spooked her than if he were a ratter-dog flanked by two kitlings.
The boy spat. “Pelimburg,” he said dismissively, and hawked up again. He regarded the bubbly mess in the red dust for a full minute before he turned his attention back to them. “There summat wrong with the little fucker then?” He tilted the spear in Ade’s direction. “Like the other one?”
“What other one?” Ade blurted, before Tabeth could speak. The boy could be a fool when he put his mind to it. Which was often, it seemed.
“The old lady. She also came up from Pelimburg, but I don’t think the air’s doing her no good,” the pack leader said.
“My Ma,” Ade said, catching Tabeth’s eye. “Must be.”
“You’re her spawn?”
He nodded.
“With that face. Makes sense.”
“Doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t,” snapped Tabeth. “Just tell us the way to the Grinningtommy, if you please.” It had been years since she’d come this way, and the sprawl of MallenIve’s outskirts had grown. When she’d left Pelimburg, she’d been certain that there would be no trouble remembering a place she had mostly grown up in, but she hadn’t counted on how much things had changed. Even the few tall gum trees looked different, as though the landscape had been rearranged. It set her on edge, this strangeness, made her feel wary and out of place.
“If I please?” the boy responded in a mocking sing-song, but he laughed easily enough, and Tabeth felt some of her fear evaporate. Pack Hobling or not, he didn’t take two tired and mud-stained travellers. as any kind of threat. Even if she could have probably crushed him, if she’d been in the mood. “What’ll you give me for the favour?”
“A clip round the ear if you’re lucky.” She bristled; she was done in. Tabeth had just taken a long drink and a shivery swim in a river that was probably more sewer than waterway, marched across this burning wasteland with the sun beating down on them, and now she had to deal with this.
“Just point us in the right direction,” Tabeth said, “Or I’ll let you taste a bit of what a sparked Hob can do.”
The two rabbit-face boys looked to their leader in a mixture of alarm and anger, but he ignored them. He squinted, looking first from Tabeth to Ade, and back again. “You ain’t sparked,” he said, but he wavered as he stared at Ade’s face. “Ah, fine. It’s no fun baiting lame hares, anywise.” He jabbed with his spear toward the high, stinking Lam-heaps. “Head 'twixt them and the river.” The spear point moved in a small arc. “You’ll hit a road, lots of houses all crammed up on each side. Just keep walking that road until you see the biggest house. It’s got a garden gate an all, you won’t be able to miss it.” He dropped the spear point and it marked the sand. “An don’t try that sparked shite on no one else. There’s plenty who’ll be quick to hand you over to the Sharif if they think it’ll bring them a little brass. Lammers like to hang sparked Hobs from the bridges, an they ain’t had their fun in a while.” He looked past Tabeth, and into Ade’s eyes, not at the mark at all. “An there’s nothing quite so dangerous as a bored Lammer.”
“So why aren’t you scared of me?” Ade asked. “You should be scared. Of my ma, anywise.”
Tabeth kicked at the dry red dust, sending plumes of it sifting up. Trust the boy to start asking stupid questions. She knew what he meant. He was sparked, that’s why she’d set up this fool’s journey, but he was also trained to do only one thing. Ade might be soft as a little pink rabbit kit, but he was still dangerous in his own way, and the only person Ade could hurt was her. He could pull out her spark. He could have done it that night she was touching his face in the dark belly of the wherry. Tabeth knew Ade could have mirrored her—reached out and cupped her cheek and felt the way her spark flared and ebbed with her heartbeat, and he could have willed it right out of her. He could have held everything Tabeth was in the palm of his hand.
If it had been his mother standing there, she would have.
“How many Hoblings have you scooped out?” Tabeth said instead.
Ade was quiet for a long time, thinking. When he began to speak it was in a far-away voice, as though he weren’t talking to Tabeth, but to some impartial observer, looking down on them. “Truth is mostly the Onnery work is just midwifery. We hardly ever have to deal with sparked babes. I’ve only ever felt the spark coming off one new-born.”
“And?”
He made a choked noise that might have been a laugh, but he kept his head turned from her so Tabeth couldn’t see his expression. “I don’t even know the proper way of doing it.” Ade stopped walking, and took the cap from his head to run his hand through his sweat-darkened hair.
It was too short, Tabeth decided. He looked wrong, less like a Hob than he should. Perhaps his dam made him keep it like that, scared as she was of spark. It would make sense for her to try control him, keeping him shorn and weak. She wondered if he even realised what it meant.
“What happened to the sparked babe?” She knew, of course, but she wanted to hear him say it.
Ade put his cap back on, switched his rucksack to the other shoulder, and started walking again. “Ma dealt with it.”
Tabeth snorted and the two walked side by side a little longer before she asked, “Do you think you could, if you had to?” She watched his face sidelong, saw the grimace, the tightening of his eyes and had her answer before he spoke.
“No,” he said to the ground. “Truth is, I make a terrible Onnery, and my ma knows it.”
“There’s more to what you do than magic,” Tabeth said, grudgingly. She wasn’t even certain why she was trying to soften this blow he’d dealt himself. After all, the last thing she wanted was for him to think he could strip the spark from her. Or from some future child. “I heard you’re good in a birthing room. The girls trust you.”
Ade shrugged. “Maybe.” He kicked at the dust as he walked, and then, as though a stone had been moved out of place and freed a spring in the desert, his words began to flow. “It’s a good enough trade, and there’s something about being the person who stands at the doorway to living, greeting new Hoblings into the world. Watching the mams, new and old, meeting their littlest kin for the first time—there’s no feeling like that in the world. If I didn’t have to ever worry about the spark, I could love my work.”
“Could?”
“I don’t like knowing that one day I might have to scrape the spark out. What if I get it wrong, leave them damaged?” He said the last in little more than a whisper, a feather tip against parchment, and Tabeth nodded. Here was the truth of him then, the things his mam didn’t know. It lessened her fear and made her more certain than ever that the Casabi had brought him to her, that her path was the one she was meant to be on.
They’d left the open fields behind, and all around little shacks studded the ground, like vast mouldy puffballs. Some were familiar in shape—looking like the kind of houses Tabeth was used to now from Pelimburg, but most of them were round stone huts, their walls left raw, or sealed with red clay, their conical roofs made from pitched reeds.
Hoblings sat in the street dust and watched them walk past. Goats and chickens milled around the little yards and a few bustling women were setting out laundry, one eye on their children, the other on Tabeth and Ade streaked head to toe in dried black river mud.
She wasn’t paying the women much attention, still mulling over Ade’s confession, what it meant. So he’d never yet taken spark. “Maybe you don’t even have the skill to do that much,” she said. “Or perhaps you would have done it already.”
“Perhaps.”
“I suppose you think that’s how you’re going to get out of your debt.” Tabeth’s voice was low, a warning, even though she was sure he didn’t need it. “Don’t even think of trying it, boy. I’m older than you, and I know what I can do. You might have a weapon against me, but it’s nothing more than a little glass knife.”
Ade shook his head. “I don’t break promises. Even foolish ones.”
Tabeth ignored the last comment and stopped. The place had changed. When she’d last been here, the Grinningtommy round house had been small and dilapidated. Perhaps she’d moved. Some of the place seemed almost familiar, if she squinted. The years had passed, like it or not. “That must be it, yonder.” It was a large round building with a cone-shaped roof, like a sun hat, with a fence around it. None of the other little hovels had fences separating them from their fellows. A large tree cast the only real pool of cold shade on the whole dusty street. It had to be the place. She remembered the Grinningtommy planting it, sapling small, carrying water from the river to get it to take root in the parched clay.
The shadows of the building were hot and stifling, though the goats leaned against the sides of the houses, their slit eyes half-closed.
The tree was different though. Brightly green, where everything else here was drab and browny red. The dry dirt made the greenly willow seem all the more out of place. A weeping tree where the river didn’t run.
“This is it.” Tabeth made no move to approach the doorway.
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THE LITTLE FRONT YARD of the Grinningtommy's house was nothing but dust, swept clean. Where the other houses along the street seemed to have gathered themselves little petticoats of rubbish and weeds, this house was bare in its neatness. The clay walls were unpainted, and the constant sun has bleached it pale pink. There was glass in the windows, bubbly and green and uneven, but proper glass all the same. Definitely, times had changed.
Even Ade had noticed the little touches of luxury hidden in the austerity. “Bit flash,” he said, pointing to the glass windows.
“Hmph. Wouldn’t mention that myself,” said Tabeth. “The Grinningtommy’s on our side, after all.”
“And which side is that? Hello?” Ade pushed open the front door and peered in at the gloom. A small figure started in the shadows, and he jumped back. “B-b-beg pardon,” he said. “We’re looking for the Grinningtommy.”
“Are you now?” said the boy. He looked no older than six years, but his eyes were sharp, clever.
Tabeth brushed past Ade and went into the cool gloom of the house.
The little boy retreated, backing away from her and standing protectively next to a small day bed with a little lump curled up in the centre of it. “Then you’re here to see me Mam.”
“If your mam is the Grinningtommy, then yes.” Tabeth dropped her pack at her feet and rolled out her aching shoulders. The Grinningtommy with little ones, now there was something she’d not expected. Funny that Emme had never mentioned them. She vaguely remembered some talk, and realised she must have known, and never considered it. She’d been young when this little sprat took his first breath; probably she’d been revolted at the thought of other women spawning. She closed her eyes. It would have been around the time she’d sent Rayek Ironseed to his death. Probably why she’d paid it little attention, since after that she’d been trying to rebuild the towerhouse women. Briefly, she wished she’d remembered—she could have brought the boy something from the towerhouse, one of Iyva’s wooden carvings of nillies. She took a breath, it had been so long, so much had changed. How much was the Grinningtommy going to have twisted away from the one she remembered? “Where is she then?”
“She’s gone talking with that daft cow, trying to change her mind. They’ve been at it for days.” He stuck out one arm and petted the sleeping shape on the small bed. “Don’t stand there with the door wide open. Come in, just mind you’re quiet.” This last directed at Ade, who had lost his brief surge of confidence and was waiting at the slate entrance stone.
The inside of the Grinningtommy’s house was neat as the outside, with everything in place and the mud-packed floor swept clean. Light filtered yellow-green through the warped window, streaking the packed-dirt floor like sun falling on the seabed. Everything was scrubbed and swept.
“We’re a little on the dirty side,” Tabeth said drily. “I suppose it’s better that we stand.”
The boy shrugged. “Sit on the floor. Dirt don’t mind dirt.” He talked in a loud whisper, like a mummer on a stage. “If you wake her, I’ll have to kill you.” He glanced at the figure on the bed.
“We’ll do our best then,” said Tabeth, “to not wake your—” She racked her mind for information from their stilted correspondence. “Sister?”
The boy nodded. “What do you want from my mam?”
“Not so much her, as someone who came to meet with her.” Tabeth sat down cross-legged on the floor and regarded the boy with hooded eyes, and Ade took a seat beside her. “I’m Tabeth Greenrede.” She eased out one leg straight and rubbed at her calf. “What am I to call you?”
The boy puffed up with a sudden pigeon-burst of pride. “I’m Leorn Grinningtommy.”“It’s a smart name,” said Tabeth. “And the little one?”
Leorn scowled. “That’s Prue, but I don’t even know why mam named her. She’s sickly.”
“Oh.” Tabeth stood. “Can I look?”
“What for?” The boy was all sulks and snarls now. “Why’s everyone always interested in it? It’s just gonna die anywise.”
“Curiosity.” Tabeth grinned at him, then strode over to the cradle and stared in at it, frowning. The child was fast asleep, pinch faced and yellow-brown, with a cap of dark hair. Her arms and legs are curled up tight, too skinny. She looked to be only a couple of years and still swaddled in rags, though if she was sickly, she might well be older. Tabeth touched the child’s cheek with one finger, and her mouth twisted as the child grunted in her sleep.
“What’s with your face?” It took Tabeth a moment to realise this last was directed at her travelling companion. The paste she’d smeared on Ade’s marked cheek had long since washed off. “You family to the old cow, are you?”
“The old cow is my ma,” Ade said.
“Good luck to you,” the boy snapped back.
Voices rose outside before an argument could break out. Tabeth stilled. The “old cow” was out there, and Tabeth breathed deep, letting her spark grow ready. She doubted the Onnery would do anything in this house, but there was always a risk. Her heart beat faster and she flexed her right hand nervously.
“—till you’re turned blue in the face, Emme, but I won’t stand for it. It’s not right.”
“Oh, hush yourself, you daft thing.” A familiar rich voice, like boiled pudding, and Tabeth relaxed a little. “Always so precious about your bloody rites and rituals.” The thump and scrape of the wooden gate was followed by the approach of footfalls. “Anyone would think you’ve taken airs, the way you go on and on about your duties. Casabi this and Casabi that—”
The front door boomed open, spilling hot red air into the round house.
A tall, powerful-looking woman stood in the doorway, her curled hair loose like a thundercloud around her head. She paused and looked from Tabeth to Ade, and then to the cot, and finally to little Leorn. “What’s this?” she said. “Guests, and them standing about without tea?”
“They just got here,” Leorn said, but scrammed all the same.
Behind the Grinningtommy the other speaker had just entered. A smaller woman, her skin more sallow and pinched, and Tabeth found herself half-snarling, her teeth bared against this enemy.
The woman’s expression turned from irritation to surprise, eyes widening. “Ade?” she yelled. “What are you doing here? And what—” She levelled a pointed finger at Tabeth. “—is that?”