Errant, p.14
Errant, page 14
He stomped out, but Charm noticed that Aspen didn’t relax any. She kept her hands loose in front of her, back straight, jaw clenched—ready to fight, even unarmed. But then again, Charm had seen her fight bare-handed; Aspen’s body was a weapon all by itself. Even as Audacity hugged each of them and Rex shook their hands, Aspen stayed on guard.
She didn’t relax, even after the official paperwork was signed, and they started on the road back to the farm. Audacity was talking about a small celebration, and Rex was making plans for expanding the farmhouse and maybe planting some new crops so they weren’t completely beholden to the wheat harvest.
It was enough background chatter for Charm to ride up next to Aspen. “We won. This is when we eat and drink and be merry.”
Aspen shook her head. “Good things don’t just happen.”
“You’re fun at parties, I see.” Charm huffed and Mouse echoed the sentiment. “This didn’t just happen. We worked for it. Hard. But we used the law, and we did something good. Audacity and Rex will have their happily ever after. I walked into and out of a courtroom multiple times without being locked up. This is a joyous occasion. Smile.”
Aspen, predictably, scowled.
“No, your lips turn the other way when you smile.” Charm tsked. “Once we’re at the farm, I’ll show you.”
“I don’t need you to teach me how to smile.”
“Clearly, you do.”
They squabbled good-naturedly as they continued down the road. At one point, Audacity and Rex were watching them fondly. They’d be so disappointed if they found out she and Aspen weren’t actually married. Charm had meant to confess, but she held back. What was a little more deception before they were finished?
6
“Come in, come in,” Audacity urged. The woman hadn’t stopped smiling since Magistrate Napier’s ruling. Aspen wasn’t keen to be the first to bring the mood down, so she caved at Audacity’s insistence and entered the house. “I’ll make tea.” Audacity flitted over to the hearth, but she paused before hanging the kettle. “What kind of celebration has tea? Where’s the beer?”
“Oh, we don’t need anything special,” Aspen said. She remembered the testimony from the trial. It hadn’t been a particularly good harvest. She didn’t want Audacity and Rex to put themselves out on Aspen and Charm’s behalf.
“You saved Rex’s life and then you saved my happiness.” Audacity clasped Aspen’s hands in her own. She squeezed them lightly and then kissed Aspen’s cheek. She did the same to Charm before she giggled and twirled her way to the cellar hatch. “This calls for a celebration.”
Aspen was prepared to protest again, but Charm’s hand on her arm brought her up short.
“Let them,” Charm murmured, too quietly for Audacity, now in the cellar, or Rex, still in the kitchen, to hear. It meant Charm’s hand curled around Aspen’s arm, and her mouth was mere inches from Aspen’s ear. It was altogether distracting, and Aspen didn’t have time to come up with an excuse to leave before Audacity reappeared.
She smiled at the sight of them, and then paused to kiss Rex at the entrance to the kitchen. She giggled again and slipped out of his hold so she could place the three jars she gathered on the table.
“Tea, acorn cakes, and cherry preserves,” she said. “I know it isn’t much but—”
“It’s perfect,” Charm said, but for once her persuasive tone didn’t sway its recipient.
“It is.” Aspen carefully avoided Charm’s gaze as she admitted, “Acorn cakes are my favorite. They remind me of home.”
“With a name like Aspen Silverglade, of course they do.” Audacity’s smile returned, as if she could sense Aspen’s honesty. “Did you two meet when Charm’s troupe performed for your village?”
The edge of the Silverglade was four days away on foot, but the forest was dense and impassable for someone without knowledge, and Aspen’s village was far deeper in the Wood than People of the Earth tended to make it. The Harstead Traveling Players would never have found Prairie's Edge, where Aspen was born, unless they’d had a guide.
“We met in Cheyford,” Aspen said. She was only keeping up the pretense of them being married because to tell the truth now would hurt Audacity’s feelings. A few more hours and then Charm and Aspen would be on their way.
“And now you travel with the troupe?” Audacity handed Rex an empty bucket. “Would you fill this from the well?”
“I, uh, yes. I do.” It was mostly true, Aspen told herself as guilt over lying threatened to turn her face a mottled red.
“It must be different.”
Charm was still standing at Aspen’s side, her hand resting on Aspen’s arm, a warm presence. One Aspen wouldn’t feel again after she left the Granger farm and then the troupe. This was all temporary. Telling the truth couldn’t hurt anything. “Not as much as you’d think. I’m from one of the wandering villages. I’m used to traveling.”
As a sapling, she’d learned the importance of mobility. If her people stayed in one place, they risked depleting the forest. Living harmoniously with nature meant moving. Homes were easy to break down and then even easier to set up again. Personal possessions were limited to what she could carry on her back when it was time to go.
They were lessons she hadn’t needed after marrying Frugality, but they’d been of use after Integrity had taken her into the Hanging Scale’s ranks. On her own, they mattered even more. The nomadic life was the one in her blood. She’d never expected to do it by herself—that was one thing her childhood hadn’t prepared her for—but she’d grown used to it. It was her, Mouse, and whoever happened to hire them.
Or in Audacity and Rex’s case, whoever needed help. It felt good to be working toward justice again.
“And you?” Audacity asked Charm.
“Oh, I’m a wanderer as well,” Charm said. “I need variety. My childhood home wasn’t enough for me. I found the troupe and fell in love, and I haven’t left since.”
“And now you have Aspen, too.” Audacity sighed happily. “Love stories have always been my favorite. Yours too, I think.”
Aspen wasn’t expecting to be singled out and she struggled to find a response. “When you see enough bad harvests, you appreciate the good ones even more.” The words were clumsy on her tongue like all Earth expressions. She’d never fully adopted them, even though it had been years since she’d left her people. She’d been in Falland longer than she was ever in The Silverglade. Now neither place felt like home.
Constance giggled, calling attention to the three girls hovering in the doorway. They stood in order, Perseverance at the front, Bluebell behind her, and Constance behind them both. Constance waved two fingers and then ducked back behind her sisters.
Perseverance, the eldest and most authoritative, said, “Will you teach us to fight?”
“Let Aspen rest, girls,” Audacity said.
“No, it’s fine,” Aspen said. She’d rather teach a lesson on defense than continue this conversation. “Let’s go outside and I’ll show you a few things.”
Charm didn’t follow, but Aspen and the girls went to a field behind the house. Aspen lined them up and taught them to plant their feet in the flat, short grass.
“The first thing you need to know is what to do if someone grabs you. Perseverance, may I demonstrate with you?”
“Please call me Percy, Honored Silverglade.”
“Of course, Percy. I prefer Aspen.”
Bluebell grinned at her. “Our people don’t call each other ‘Honored.’”
“That’s exactly right, little sister,” Aspen said. Bluebell’s freckled, lightly sunburned cheeks went even pinker, and Aspen felt as though the ground had tilted under her feet. It had been a long time since she’d called anyone little sister. She’d been so young when Frugality had lured her away from home, people had still been calling her little sister.
Like Mouse flicking her tail at a stray fly, Aspen set aside the feeling. She demonstrated various holds and how to break them. The young women took her very seriously, even Constance—Connie, that is—who was only eleven.
Aspen hadn’t spent much time with children of that age. Her main experience with young people was training Integrity’s new recruits into the Scale, but they’d usually been eighteen or so, closer to Percy’s age.
Aspen had been twenty. Integrity had found her huddled under the dripping eave of the Temple of the Hearth. She’d knocked three times, but no one had answered, and she’d given up, slumping in the doorway and waiting for the rain, the cold, or the magistrates to take her. Integrity had found her instead, kneeling down in the wet street before her and holding out a hand. He’d taken her to a tavern, bought her a bowl of stew, and coaxed the whole story out of her. Aspen’s tiny life circumscribed by the walls of the narrow house in Prentice Lane, Frugality’s years of fury and cruelty, the final rage, the kitchen knife she’d wrested from his hands and pushed under his ribs. Integrity had never told her she was wrong to do it. He’d asked if she’d like to help others. She’d said yes.
Several lifetimes had passed since then.
“The best thing to do after you break the hold is run,” Aspen told Audacity’s daughters. “Stomp on their feet, elbow them in the gut, and get out. But if you can’t get out, here are a few ways to hit someone.”
Aspen was just getting into the flow when Charm appeared, framed by the back door, and called, “This is a celebration. Let’s stop hitting each other in the dark and have some fun. Your mother tells me some of you can play music.”
It wasn’t quite dark yet, but the sun was setting. Aspen hadn’t noticed.
“I can play music!” Connie yelled. “And so can Bluebell and Percy, but I’m the best!”
The girls scrambled back into the house to find instruments. Aspen returned to the kitchen with some reluctance.
Charm nudged her with an elbow. “Dance with me.”
“Can we at least wait for the music?” Aspen asked.
“Oh, fine, stall all you want.” To Audacity, Charm said, “We’re performing Calamity’s Dance right now.”
“The dances in the first act are illegal in Rispland,” Aspen said.
“Good thing we’re not in Rispland, then. And let me guess, you prefer the third act.” Charm poked Aspen’s stiff shoulders. “Rigid and controlled.”
“There’s nothing wrong with control,” Aspen said. She took a step back to avoid Charm’s next poke. “I like structured dances. I never know what to do with the freeform ones.”
Percy, Bluebell, and Connie tumbled back into the kitchen with two stringed instruments and a drum.
“We know lots of songs,” Connie said. “We can play anything you want.”
“Very impressive,” Charm said. “Do you know the music for the Wheat Dance?”
“Yes!”
Aspen frowned. The Wheat Dance was a lot of swaying and far more touching than was wise. Too late. Charm had set them on this course. She held her hands out, one at shoulder level, the other at waist level, and then waited, impatiently, for Aspen to hold her hands.
Connie, clearly the leader of the little band, counted off for her sisters and they took up the slow, delicate melody of the Wheat Dance. Audacity hummed along with her daughters and then roped Rex into dancing.
Charm led Aspen gently through the steps, swaying to the beat. It wasn’t the raucous dancing Aspen was used to seeing around the troupe’s bonfire, after a good performance and a few drinks. It wasn’t even like the dances in the play. It wasn’t salacious enough to be from the first act or tempered enough to be from the third.
It was something different.
The song came to a close and the girls began another, a tune Aspen knew but couldn’t place. Charm seemed to recognize it. She moved closer until their two bodies might as well have been one. The dance slowed, and they moved together, leaning back and then forward, taking turns supporting one another.
Audacity’s soft hum of appreciation snapped Aspen out of it. Startling Charm, Aspen stumbled back and braced her hand on the wall. At the sight of Charm’s full lips and bright eyes, Aspen decided staring at the floor was safer.
“You know the Dance of the Willow?” Aspen asked.
“Sorrel taught me.”
Right. There were People of the Wood in the troupe. They would have learned the way Aspen had, at gatherings full of storytelling, song, and dance. She knew the steps for the willow, the oak, the valley pine. There were others from villages in different parts of the Northern Lands. Aspen didn’t know them all, but maybe Charm did.
Had Tamarind taught Charm the dances from the Rivergrove? The People of the Wood who lived in distant forests knew different trees and different dances, and Tamarind had left their far-away island to wander with the troupe. They had a beautiful black-and-white furred tail like a lemur’s. Aspen couldn’t look at it without remembering what she’d given up.
Frugality hadn’t wanted her to stand out so much. Aspen’s scalp itched, but she didn’t dare rub the scars with Charm this close. As casually as possible, she removed her hand from where she’d braced it against the wall. Conscious of everyone staring at her and the pretense that she and Charm were married, she leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to Charm’s cheek.
Then she said, “I think I need some air.”
It was dark outside and already much colder than it had been. Aspen ran warm, but she still wished she hadn’t left her cloak inside.
Hopefully she hadn’t left everyone with the impression that she was a jealous spouse upset because someone else had taught Charm a dance. The cheek kiss should have alleviated that. A kiss on the cheek was a good married-person thing to do, she was pretty sure.
Great Oak’s roots, how was she so bad at this? She had been married.
Not happily. But not entirely unhappily, either. That was the hardest part of remembering. The early years, they hadn’t been so bad. Enough for her to know how to act like a spouse. Smiles, affection, eager acquiescence.
Cheek kisses.
Aspen hadn’t ruined their story. Charm wasn’t in there frantically apologizing to Audacity for lying about being Aspen’s wife.
Aspen tried to picture that and failed.
Mouse, her stalwart companion, met her between the house and the road. If Aspen wanted, she could mount up and gallop as fast and as far as she could. All of her belongings were on Mouse’s back. Aspen didn’t need much, and she traveled light.
Charm was resourceful; she’d find her way back to the troupe.
Mouse’s ears perked up. She tilted her head and then butted Aspen’s shoulder.
“Shit.” It was too dark to use the spyglass, but if Mouse sensed someone approaching, then there was someone approaching. “Shit,” she said again.
Willing her body to be silent, she listened. There they were. Hoofbeats.
Two horses. She couldn’t be sure if there was only one rider per horse. She strapped her sword into place and checked her knife sheaths. At least two people, maybe four headed their way.
Approaching at speed and after dark set Aspen’s teeth on edge. It wasn’t a guarantee they were enemies, but Aspen would bet they were. Rectitude had put on a good show for the court, bowing his head and accepting the sentence. Aspen should have known it was too good to be true.
Charm wouldn’t let her forget this. She could already hear Charm’s voice in her head. Trust the law, you said. They’ll protect her, you said. Aspen should have done this her way. She could have protected Audacity from the stain by doing it herself.
She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
Light spilled from the front door. Charm stood there, silhouetted. “The tea’s ready.”
Aspen was wearing her sword and standing next to Mouse. Even in low light, Charm had to be able to see that. To her credit, she didn’t panic. “Should I keep yours warm?”
“What are the chances you’ll take the Grangers into the cellar?” Aspen asked.
“Give me a weapon and I’ll do it.”
“Absolutely not.”
“How many times do I have to prove I’m helpful in a fight before you accept it?” Charm demanded.
“I have accepted it,” Aspen said. “That’s why you aren’t getting locked in the cellar. But I’m not giving you a weapon you don’t know how to use. If I give you one now, the most likely scenario is it will be used against you. How many times do I have to prove I know what I’m doing before you trust me?”
Charm snapped her mouth shut.
Their argument drew the Grangers to the door. Audacity tucked herself against Rex’s side. “Is something wrong?”
Aspen walked a few paces closer. “We have company on the way. Too dark to see, but I wager it’s Rectitude and a friend. Did he mention any friends in Harstead, Rex?”
Rex shook his head. “We only spoke briefly in the bar. He didn’t say anything about friends.”
“All right. There’s still a chance this ends somewhat peacefully.” Aspen patted the hilt of her sword. “He was dismal in your fight, which means he doesn’t have any training. Hopefully he has enough sense not to get into a fistfight with a swordswoman. Once we subdue him and his friend, I’ll bring them back to Ilgate. There’s enough to press criminal charges now.”
“Why won’t he leave me alone?” Audacity asked. “He left me for Harstead. He was fine there. Why not just stay?”
“Pride? Greed? Desperation?” She shrugged. Each reason would change her approach to negotiating with him, but she trusted her sword would be the defining argument. Audacity was protected now. If Rectitude was a typical abusive husband, he would shrink away from an actual conflict.
Aspen didn’t have to strain to hear the hoofbeats any longer.
“Do you have an extra sword?” Rex asked.
“Why does everyone want swords?” It was too dark to shoot Charm an aggrieved look, but she’d better be listening to Aspen repeating herself. “You have no training. Even if I had a second sword, I wouldn’t give it to you. You were also dismal in the fistfight.”
