Martine

THEY LEFT THE Valuer’s Plantation early. Apple rousted them out of bed before dawn and they set off as soon as they had eaten breakfast.

Travel with a warlord was easy, Martine discovered. No one looked sideways at a dark-haired woman in the warlord’s party. Food just appeared out of inns as they stopped to water the horses; carts pulled to the side of the road to let them go past. Even with Arvid, who was probably as good as warlords got, there was still the forelock-tugging and the curtseys and the obsequiousness that all sensible people show to anyone who travels with a party of armed guards. She got angrier as the day went on, and noticed Zel felt the same.

Martine maneuvered her horse next to Zel’s chestnut, and they dropped back a little so they could talk. Trine came up next to them, still on a leading rein, but to Martine’s surprise she didn’t try to bite or kick. Perhaps she was beginning to accept Zel.

“It puts a bad taste in my mouth,” Zel said, nodding to where a goose girl was bending double, she was curtseying so hard. Martine discovered a desire in herself to defend Arvid. Which was ridiculous. She had to change the course of this conversation. “The Valuers want to do away with warlords,” Martine said. “Will you join them?”

That silenced her. Zel wasn’t a joiner by nature, that was clear. She leaned over to pat Trine, perhaps taking as well as giving reassurance. Trine snorted at the touch, but didn’t bite. It might do her good to be with Zel, someone else she could learn to trust. Martine thought they were all having a lesson in trust, herself included.

It was two long days’ ride to Foreverfroze, so they stopped overnight at an inn which did nothing but service the traffic to the port. There was barely a village surrounding it, and the countryside around was pure forest. The road here was only a cart’s width, although the ground on either side had been cleared for a bow-shot by Arvid’s orders to prevent bandits ambushing trading parties.

They ate in the inn parlour. Martine sat as far from Arvid as she could, but the fire was still disturbing her, still churning at her every time she looked at him, every time she heard his voice. Her hand shook with desire as she poured cider into her cup, and she put the jug down abruptly to conceal it. This was worse than her infatuation with Cob, when she’d had the excuse of youth. The fire was taking a difficult revenge. She went to her room early, ignoring Arvid’s attempt to catch her eye.

What was she doing here? Martine wondered. She stood in the inn chamber and stared at her empty bed, too restless to go to sleep.

When she and Ash had left Turvite, she had meant to go to the Hidden Valley, to visit Elva and Mabry. She had done that, and the winter she had spent with them and the new baby had been a golden time, despite the shadow of the ghosts hanging over them. But since leaving the valley — since the gods had told her to leave — she had just moved from one place to another without a plan, without any idea of what she was supposed to be doing. Finding Bramble, bringing her to the Well of Secrets, the journey into the Great Forest, sending Bramble on her mysterious journey, even taking horse for Foreverfroze, had seemed to make sense because she felt some responsibility for Ash, and then for Bramble.

But now, with Ash gone to the Deep and Bramble gone gods knew where, what was she doing here? Her gifts weren’t needed — Safred could do all the future sensing anyone could ask, and more. Any part she might play in this gods’-driven attempt to stop Saker was probably over when she gave Acton’s brooch to Bramble.

Martine was used to being in control of her own life. Now she felt adrift, and she didn’t like it. She sat down on the side of the bed and took off her right boot, then noticed the sole. All around the edge it had been nibbled away, as though rats had got to it, and the bottom was pitted with holes that went almost all the way through the thick leather. She stared at it in puzzlement, then suddenly understood. She had walked in these boots out on Obsidian Lake, not once but six times, and the water of the lake had done this. Eaten tanned leather, hard leather, like vitriol did. She shivered, remembering the sting of the waters as she and Zel had cowered away from the fire. If the fire hadn’t burnt off the water so quickly, she and Zel might look like this boot, or worse.

Martine felt a sudden desire to go home, back to Hidden Valley, and protect her daughter and grandson. But she had promised to meet Ash, and she would keep that promise.

They rode on the next day into increasing cold. Although it was summer, the Foreverfroze peninsula was swept by winds that blew across the never-melting northern ice. Yet the country teemed with life under the horses’ hooves. As they turned north and began the journey up the peninsula, the trees grew sparser and more crooked, bent like old women toting loads of kindling home. Under the trees, though, there was lush grass and blazing wildflowers, and a constant scurrying of small animals making paths through the long stems. In the distance they saw elk and deer browsing. Birds were everywhere, and ignored them as if they had never seen humans. Terns, swallows, herons in the hundreds of low-lying pools, hawks high above in the vaulting pale blue sky, flocks of geese and ducks, waders and moorhens and cranes, even an albatross sailed above them and went on, riding the wind further out to sea.

The wind made Martine glad of the felt coat Drema had made for her in Hidden Valley. It seemed a long time ago, although it was less than a month since they had left. She spent a while wondering how little Ash was and how Elva was coping with motherhood. She realized with amusement that she had turned into a grandmother… at least in her thoughts.

With some determination, she forced herself to think about the present place and time. At least the wind kept the insects at bay. She was sure that in the lee the midges would attack furiously.

As though he had been waiting for her to finish her thoughts, Arvid brought his horse next to hers and smiled at her. The smile seemed to split her mind in two. One part was full of the suspicion of a lifetime: what would a warlord want with a Traveler woman? That had an easy answer! The other part came from deeper down, the part that had been brought back to singing life by the fire. The easy answer was the answer it wanted. The fire inside her urged her to simply drag him from his horse and take him there, on the ground, in front of everyone. No, the fire’s voice seemed to whisper to her, it would be better in private, where he would not be distracted. She was increasingly sure that this was her punishment from the fire — to be tormented by desire that could never be fulfilled.

His smile was tentative and he looked like a boy of sixteen approaching his first Springtree dance partner. There was a sweetness in that smile that disarmed her. Sweetness wasn’t a quality she associated with warlords.

But he was also an experienced negotiator, and he was too canny to begin with anything personal.

“Safred is still upset with your friend who has gone,” he said, a trace of the smile lingering at the corner of his mouth.

She smiled involuntarily. “Bramble’s hard to predict,” she said.

“You know her well?”

Martine considered. “I’ve not known her long,” she said. “But I have some understanding of her, I think.”

“Safred has told me about your undertaking,” Arvid said, his face completely serious.

Martine was shocked, and then wondered why she should be. They would need all the help they could get — this was a problem for the whole of the Domains. They were not spies, on a secret quest for their lord! Of course Safred had told him. No doubt all the warlords would know soon enough anyway. They kept each other informed of any threats to the Domains.

“Do you think Bramble is committed to her task?” Arvid asked.

That was the warlord talking, and Martine resented it. “Oh, no, I think she’s gone off on a holiday,” she said.

He winced. “She is young, and perhaps afraid,” he suggested.

“Hah! That one’s never been afraid of anything in her life,” Martine retorted. “She says she’s found a quicker way. She’ll meet us in Sanctuary. Well then, we should go to Sanctuary.”

“‘We’?” Arvid asked delicately.

“Safred and Zel and Cael and I,” Martine said. She didn’t look at him. Would he offer to come with them? It was unheard of for a warlord to enter another warlord’s territory without formal invitation: an act of war. He could come as far as Turvite, but after that . . .

“And Trine?” he asked with a smile, then paused. “I could come as far as Turvite, if you think it would be helpful.”

She paused, struggling with herself. The two halves of her mind were in conflict. One wanted nothing to do with him. The other craved his company. Then her Sight reared up and swept all personal feelings aside. It was one of the strongest sensings she had ever had. Her hands shook with the power of it and the chestnut she was riding skittered a little. She clutched at the reins, still unsure on horseback.

“Yes,” she said, eyes staring blindly at the stream they were passing. “Yes, we will have need of you in Turvite. Great need.”

He nodded silently, but then let his horse fall back as though unsettled by her. She felt a flash of an old bitterness. She had lost her first love because he couldn’t accept her gifts. Elva’s father, Cob, had turned to Elva’s mother instead, but fathered a babe far stranger than Martine. It was so long ago that most of the time she rarely thought of Elva as anything but her own child, but their relationship was the result of a man rejecting the uncanny twice over, in her and in his own flesh. With no excuse, because he was of the old blood. The oldest blood.

She shook her head free of the thoughts. Time she accepted that no man wanted to lie next to a seer, in case she could see into his soul and perceive the small, grimy secrets that lie in the center of all human hearts. Well, that rejection had given her a daughter, and now a grandson, so she should thank Cob instead of resenting him.

But when they stopped for lunch and to water the horses, she kept a distance from Arvid, all the same. There was no use inviting hurt. Or thwarted desire.

In mid-afternoon they passed a long train of ox-carts lumbering along the track, piled with high, canvas-covered loads. This was the merchandise the Last Domain was shipping to Mitchen, no doubt. A party of Arvid’s guards protected them, although what bandits would attack them out here Martine couldn’t imagine.

“Go on,” Arvid said. “I’ll just have a word.”

They rode around the carts, raising their hands to the drivers who sat hunched against the wind and who occasionally lifted a whip to their oxen. The drivers nodded back, staring at Safred, whom they clearly recognized. Martine wondered how often Safred had visited Arvid at his fort, and why. Well, no doubt the gods had given her reasons, but consorting with warlords still seemed strange to her. It was disconcerting, after so many years spent avoiding warlords and their men, to be riding with them, part of their group, as safe as if she were among friends.

Arvid consulted briefly with the group’s leader and then cantered up to rejoin them. “They’ll be in Foreverfroze tomorrow, maybe the day after if the wagons get bogged down again. It happens a lot in this season. Easier on sledges in winter, really, but then the harbor is ice-locked.”

He spoke absently, as though mentally computing the oxen’s speed and endurance against a private timetable.

“Do all warlords concern themselves with trade?” Martine asked him, trying for a normal conversation with him.

He grimaced. “They don’t have to. They have the free towns to organize trade for them.”

“And you have no free towns?” Despite her intentions, the comment came out accusingly.

He glanced shrewdly at her, and smiled a little. “All our towns are free towns,” he said. Martine shut her mouth firmly. Enough talk. No matter what she said, he would twist it. That was what warlords did. But Arvid went on. “Unfortunately, there are not enough people living in them to take all the goods that we produce. The things worth the most, the furs and the sapphires and the timber, those are worth more in the southern Domains, so it pays us to ship them down, but no one town is big enough to hire a ship for itself. So I do it.”

“And take a cut!” Safred said.

Arvid laughed. “Of course! I have to support my people, after all, and that takes silver. Better a tax on exports than on grain, or cattle, or houses. This way, only the people that can afford it pay.”

Safred sniffed. “You don’t need so many guards.”

“Tell that to the people on the borders of the Ice King’s land. We have repelled two attacks this year already.”

“Why aren’t you there, then?” Martine asked. It struck her as odd that a warlord would leave a battlefield. It went against their whole code.

“Because,” Arvid said, provoked at last and glaring at Safred, “someone told me the gods forbade it. So my men have to face the enemy alone and I am here, counting wagons like a merchant, instead of leading them as I should.”

Ah, Martine thought. There’s the warlord. He’s been hiding, but he’s there. The thought gave her some satisfaction, but also brought pain, as though a needle had slid into her heart.

Safred shrugged. “Complain to the gods,” she said. “It’s not my fault.”

Involuntarily, Martine exchanged a glance with Arvid, both of them amused at Safred. It was hard not to smile back. She had never thought of blue eyes as being warm before.

To distract herself from the heat spearing through her, she said a prayer for Elva and Mabry and the baby. The gods don’t pay much attention to humans, she thought, but sometimes they do; sometimes they take a liking, and they liked both Elva and Mabry. Loved them, even. So perhaps the prayer would work. She said none for Ash or Bramble. They were already in the hands of the gods, and no prayers of hers would change the outcome.