MURDER’S AN UGLY word, don’t never doubt that. But it’s a solid one, like a stone in your hand. I went to a stonecaster, and she plucked that Murder right from the bag, and Necessity, too.
We was Travelers, my brer and I. We did the rounds, town to town, city to city. We scrounged off the land where we could, worked where we could, sang in the taverns every night for food, for a roof in winter, out in the stable. Sang till Flax’s voice broke; ah, he had a voice could pierce right through your body and blood, sweet as first love. In the taverns, when Flax let out those high, quivering notes, even the rowdiest of them would calm on down and get sentimental; sometimes even throw coins. It weren’t very often I had to shag for our supper.
Then his voice cracked and we knew he had to stop his singing or risk losing his voice for good and all.
We was in Sandalwood, then, on the outskirts near the tanneries. So we walked onto Pless, and we went on back to our parents’ house.
They’d always been pleased to see us, before. They’d been Travelers, too, the both of them, roaming free all their youth, taking their knocks and their sweets, rambling all over the known world, my mam said once to me, even down to the sandy waste, and up to Foreverfroze, in the north. They’d met up on the road, my father a horsebreaker, my mam a juggler, like me.
They only settled down in Pless when my mam got the rheumatics and couldn’t juggle no more, and my father found a fancy-woman there he’d a mind to keep. He set up as a horse trainer and it’s true, it’s a rare horse my da can’t spell into manners.
We didn’t want to Settle, so they laughed and let us go, but they’d taught us how to see trouble coming and my mam showed us a few sneaky moves with the knife. Since those days we’d come visiting every year, spend a week or so and back on the Road again, and there’d be smiling and hugging enough to last the year round.
This time it were different. It were a sharp, cold autumn already, with worse to come and the grandams saying it’d be a killing winter, graveyards fat by Winterfest. I thought we could rest out the winter there with Mam and Da, work on a new act, teach Flax some more juggling, maybe some tumbling or a mind-reading act. I could sing, but not like Flax, not with that clear, heart-aching sound that brought silver out of purses.
I didn’t think they’d mind. I’d of worked for my keep, and for Flax’s, if they’d wanted. I didn’t realize they’d turned respectable. Da were setting his sights on the town council, and trying to forget his murky past; and Mam were pushing him hard as she could go. Me, I think it were the fancy-woman Mam had in mind; seems a town councilor got to be really respectable, and maybe the fancy-woman would of had to go.
It weren’t the shagging that worried Mam; it were the silver that went to keep bread on that woman’s table and clothes on her back. Mam’d stick to silver like it were her life’s price to let it go; and maybe that were true, once, out on the Road.
So when me and Flax turned up, unexpected, at the door, with Flax half-grown out of his clothes and me none so clean, neither, with the track from Sandalwood coming through swamp as it do, well, they weren’t exactly so pleased as we thought they’d be.
Maybe we shoulda turned and walked away right then and there, before that hurt got any deeper. Maybe we shoulda said the Traveler’s goodbye, “Wind at your back,” and scooted along to the tavern and juggled and sang till we got our eating silver and our traveling silver, and just kept on going. But we didn’t. No, we was cold and hungry and hoping for some hugs, so we walked straight on in and sat by the fire, and listened to the news.
They told us about the town council straight off, and if I’d been paying attention I’da noticed that new look on her face, that wary, not-welcoming look; but Flax had a cough from the damp swamp air and I were bustling him close to the fire and getting him cha. I just took it like a joke and laughed; my da the town councilor!
The next few days, I were too busy nursing Flax to think much of it. There was people coming and going all the time, with Mam serving them hot wine and spice biscuits, the smell drifting up to us and making me hungry as a waking bear, but Flax were so sick he didn’t even notice. It were a bad fever, and he were coughing up blood.
The herb woman said he’d be safe if he stayed mostly in bed all winter. That were bad news for Mam and Da. They’d not told anyone about us coming back; and then I remembered that the last couple of visits we spent a lot of time at home, not visiting or going out. I realized that not many people here knew Mam and Da even had young ones, let alone that we was Travelers — and that’s how they wanted it.
So they told the herb woman Flax were their stableboy, and they made me promise not to come down the stairs when there was visits going on; and I shrugged and said, “If you want,” for I didn’t see much harm in it, then.
Mam wanted us out, though, that were certain. She got this worried look back of her eyes every time the door banged, for fear it were some neighbor dropping in. Da turned quiet, and went to the fancy-woman’s for his evening meal more often than not. And that didn’t help Mam’s temper — not at all.
Now if Flax’d been hale, I woulda just packed us up and taken the Road again, winter or not, but the herb woman warned me, quiet in the corner, that it were his life’s price to go on the road before spring, and I believed her, he were that quiet and pale after the fever left him, and still coughing like an old man.
They knew I wouldn’t leave without him. They wouldn’t let me sing in the taverns, or juggle, in case anyone found out I were their daughter, and though I put in what I could of our Traveling silver, I had to keep some back for spring, to set us on the road again. I did what I could around the house but it weren’t much compared to what we was eating, especially Flax, now the fever were over and his real growing time began.
Da got broody over his ale next to the fire, when he were home, though mostly he were out at the farm, working the horses.
Then Mam started muttering and counting her silver in the dark of night. Night after night I’d wake up and hear her, clinking and counting, all alone in her bed in the clear frost silence, with Da off to the fancy-woman. Maybe it shouldna been so much of a surprise when I came through to Flax’s room and found Mam with a pillow over his face.
I fought her off him and it shoulda been easy, an old rheumaticky woman and a young one like me, but it weren’t easy at all. She fought like it were her life she were fighting for, and I had to fling her down on the floor before she give up. Flax slept through it all, and I knew she’d given him a sleeping draught in his cha.
“Eating us out of house and home,” she said, staring up at me like a trapped rat. “You’re sucking us dry, sucking us dry . . .”
“Let me go out to juggle, then,” I said. “I’ll pay for Flax and me, both.”
“Nay, nay,” she said, shaking her head so hard her hair came out of its braid. “You’ll bring disgrace on us, and we’re so close, so close.”
“Keep away from him, then. If you hurt him, I won’t sit quiet and say nothing. I’ll brand you up and down the town a killer,” I said. “Here we stay till spring, Mam, and Flax can take the road again. Make your mind up to it, that’s the way it is. If your council’s so important, then Flax’s keep and mine is the price you have to pay for it.”
She went away, but I knew that weren’t the end. I’d have to keep an eye on her all winter, and I couldn’t. I had to sleep sometime. To eat what she cooked and to drink what she brewed, like the others. It were too easy for her to slip something in.
I thought awhile on going to my father, but I knew him. He’d always gone along with her over everything except the fancy-woman, and now I thought on it, she’d never faced him down about that. If she had, I reckon he’da caved in, like he always did. If she’d managed to kill Flax, and me not knowing, he woulda asked no questions.
Now, I thought, she’d have to kill both of us.
That were when I went to the stonecaster, for, truth to tell, I couldn’t see my way out of it. The caster pulled Murder from the bag, and Necessity. And I thought, her or me. Her or Flax.
Two lives for one, I thought. I did it that night, while Da were with the fancy-woman and Flax were sleeping deep, and Mam too, for I’d used her own sleeping powder in both their chas.
I broke the latch on her window, like a too-strong gust of wind had blown it open, then I closed her door behind me and left her to the killing frost.
It were a long winter, shut up in the house, me and Flax practicing the new act, him getting stronger every day. Da spent more time with us, less with the fancy-woman, but he didn’t seem too upset, apart from that. Before we left he asked us how we’d feel if he married the fancy-woman. Maude, he called her. We shrugged and gave our blessing. It were no skin off our noses.