I touched my fingers to the scar, remembering the pain and the shock of it. How long they had tended young Jally on his deathbed I couldn’t say, but I’m sure a different boy left it. A boy who either had no memory of the past weeks or who set whatever wild talent that lay within him to burning out all trace of the events. I had sympathy with that choice, if it was a choice he’d made. I would make the same decision even now if I knew how. Or at least be tempted to.
“And the first time? When he gave you that scar, who else did Edris cut?” Snorri asked, Tuttugu and Hennan moving in behind him, stew forgotten.
“My mother.” I gritted my jaw to say it but a breath hitched in as I saw her fall again and the word cracked.
“I’ll kill him for my grandfather.” Hennan sat cross-legged, looking down. The child had never sounded so serious.
Snorri looked down too and shook his head. A moment later he patted his chest where the key lay beneath his jerkin. “He’ll come for me soon enough. Then I’ll kill him for all of us, Jal.”
EIGHTEEN
Nearly six months spent north of Rhone had improved my opinion of the country considerably. For one thing they knew what summer was about here. We walked south through long hot days and I basked in the sunshine whilst the others turned red and burned. Tuttugu proved the worst of them with the sun. At one point it seemed as though most of his exposed skin was attempting to peel off, and he moaned about it non-stop, crying out at the slightest slap on the arm-even going so far as to suggest some of them weren’t entirely accidental.
The sun also burned off the dark mood that had enfolded me for days after I woke. It didn’t reach the cold core of certainty that I would have to kill Edris Dean, but it rolled back the shadows the memory cast and left me with recollections of my mother that would have been lost forever if not for Kara’s magics. Whilst we kept moving it seemed that the past was content to trail behind me, not forgotten but not getting in the way of each moment. For the first day or two I thought the dream’s discoveries would drive me mad, but oddly with the passing of a week I felt more at ease in my own darkening skin than I had for years. Almost a form of contentment. I attributed it to the ever-narrowing gap between me and home.
Perhaps it was spending time trapped in my own head with the younger me but I seemed to have more of a rapport with Hennan on the last weeks of our journey. We started to pass through actual towns and I taught the lad a few tricks with a pack of cards I picked up. Just simple finesses, enough to bilk Snorri and Tuttugu out of their few coppers and some chore duties around camp.
“I’m sure one of you is cheating. .” Snorri rumbled that evening when saddled with an extra night watch and the task of gathering firewood for the fifth time in a row.
“That’s a common misconception among losers,” I told him. “If you call the application of intelligence and a shrewd assessment of the statistical odds cheating then yes, both I and Hennan are cheating.” In fact if you called “not playing in accordance with the rules” cheating, then we would both have to raise our hands to that also. “The rules of poker, Snorri, have outlasted the most basic information about the society and age in which they were constituted,” I continued. The important thing when denying cheating is to continue-to not stop speaking until the conversation has travelled so far from its roots that none of the listeners can remember what the original point of contention was. “What a civilization manages to keep from that which went before says as much about it as what it leaves to the next age.”
Snorri furrowed his brow. “Why is there an ace up your sleeve?”
“There isn’t.” It was a king, and there was no way he could have known it was there-just a lucky guess.
Continuation is a good policy, but sometimes it turns out that a barbarian is too stubborn to be led and you end up doing two night watches and gathering firewood all week. Snorri asked me what sort of lesson I thought my behaviour might provide Hennan with-a rather better one than would be taught by seeing a prince of Red March reduced to manual labour I thought, but at least I took satisfaction in the fact that my pupil’s cheating went undetected, a credit to my teaching.
Another benefit of a return to sun and civilization was that the summer once more restored the gold to my hair, bleaching out the drab brown. Additionally the reappearance of people helped me remember at last that there were women other than Kara in the world. I purchased new clothes in the town of Amele and spruced myself up. I considered a horse but unless I bought at least four steeds then having a saddle under my arse wouldn’t get me home any quicker. I did consider just riding on ahead by myself, but even in Rhone travelling alone can be a risky business, and even if our enemies were focused on finding the key I didn’t like the idea of having to explain to them on some country lane isolated in the middle of a thousand acres of Rhonish cornfields that I didn’t have it. I toyed with the idea of getting a nag for Snorri, Tuttugu, and Kara, with Hennan up behind me, but Mother’s locket had started to look threadbare and I wasn’t sure I could stand all the moaning and falling off the Norse were likely to do.
I visited a barber and had my beard shaved off-a ritual shedding of the north if you like. The fellow with the razor and snips declared it an unholy tangle and charged me an extra crown for the job. With it gone I felt strangely naked, my chin tender, and when he showed me the result in his mirror it took me a moment to accept that the man looking back out was me. He looked a lot younger, and vaguely surprised.
Walking through Amele in my new outfit-nothing fancy, just outdoors clothes that a country squire might wear-and my chin still stinging at the slightest breeze, I will admit to turning a few heads. I smiled at a buxom peasant girl off about whatever business it is that occupies peasants, and she smiled back. The world was good. And getting better by the mile.
• • •
“Bonjour,” Hennan greeted me when I returned to the tavern where I left the others-the King’s Leg, sporting a wooden stump above the door.
“Bon-what?”
“Snorri’s been teaching me the language the locals speak.” He looked up at Snorri to see if he’d got it right. “It means good day.”
“The locals all speak the Empire tongue well enough.” I sat down beside Tuttugu and stole a chicken wing from his plate. “Sometimes you have to wave a coin at them before they’ll admit it. Don’t waste your time, boy. Awful language.” I stopped talking in order to chew. Whatever Rhone’s failings-and they are many-I’ll call any man a liar who says they can’t cook. The lowliest Rhoneman can make a better meal than all the north put together. “Mmmm. That’s worth the trip south on its own, hey, Tuttugu?” Tuttugu nodded, mouth stuffed, beard full of grease. “Where was I now? Yes, Rhonish. Don’t bother. You know what the literal translation of the Rhonish word for defence is? The-gap-before-running-away. It’s a hard language to lie in, I’ll give you that.”
Snorri made a warning face and Tuttugu became still more interested in the rest of his chicken. I noticed a few locals aiming hard stares in my direction.
“A wonderful brave people though,” I added, loudly enough for the eavesdroppers to choke on.
“You look different,” Snorri said.
“I think ‘even more handsome’ was the phrase you were looking for.” I filched another piece of Tuttugu’s chicken. He tried to stab my hand as I pulled it back.