Errant, p.4
Errant, page 4
Aspen tugged her cloak away from her face and said, “There weren’t any flowers.” She’d been courted. People of the Earth always brought their would-be lovers cut flowers. Sweet-smelling roses, plentiful daisies, colorful lilies.
In the early days, when Aspen had thought she was in love, Frugality had brought her flowers by the armful, in spite of his name. It had been so foreign to be given a gift of severed stems, plants with no roots. The strangeness had felt a little like an adventure. She hadn’t understood until later that Frugality intended to uproot her.
He’d lured her out of Prairie’s Edge to a townhouse in Harstead, and she’d tried to be a good Earth wife. She hadn’t asked for rose bushes instead of a dozen long-stemmed flowers. She hadn’t turned away from the red meat at dinner. She hadn’t stared out the window and wished herself surrounded by trees instead of cobblestone streets.
“I thought People of the Wood usually gave each other plants with roots,” Charm said.
“We do,” Aspen whispered, wondering how she knew.
“But if I need flowers to woo you, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Don’t,” Aspen said. Flowers were a false promise, and Aspen wouldn’t fall for them again.
She turned on her side to end the conversation. Charm took the hint and fell silent.
Aspen slept lightly. When she woke in the middle of the night, she checked for threats.
There was only Charm. “Aspen, you’re shivering.”
Aspen was hardly shivering. Her cloak had slipped, exposing her shoulders, and they were chilled, but she’d slept through worse. For late autumn, this was mild weather. “Go back to sleep.”
Unsurprisingly, Charm chose to be stubborn. “You gave me your blanket. Let me share my warmth.”
“No.” This wouldn’t be Aspen’s best sleep, but it would be enough. When Mort was dealt with and Charm was back with her troupe, Aspen would rent a room and reward herself with a long rest on a real bed.
“This isn’t a trick.” Charm huffed. She could tell Aspen wasn’t swayed. “This is completely self-serving. I’m cold, too.”
Selfishness, Aspen could believe, but she hesitated. Liking Charm made her vulnerable. Charm was clever and could catch Aspen off guard. She’d proven that.
“Curl behind me,” Charm said. “It won’t be that different from when we were riding.”
Aspen wanted to do it, which was reason enough to be wary. She couldn’t trust anything she wanted so much. Maybe Charm had only offered because she knew how likely Aspen was to refuse. Some kind of a game or an elaborate prank.
Still, Aspen would be warmer if they were tucked against each other.
“You said you’d keep me safe, so protect me from the cold,” Charm said. “Besides, who will fight off bandits on the road if you’re tired?”
“You won’t stop until I agree,” Aspen said. “So much for being worried about my sleep.”
“Stop arguing and come over.”
Aspen shuffled closer until she could feel the heat from Charm’s body. And then closer still, until she could curve her body around Charm’s. Despite what Charm had said, this felt different from being tucked against each other all day on Mouse. Maybe it was the darkness, or their intention to sleep, or all Charm’s talk about courting, but this felt weighted. Intimate.
After a moment, Charm shifted, rolling over so now they faced each other. She tucked her head beneath Aspen’s chin. Her hair, braided loosely for the night, tickled Aspen’s face. Charm didn’t smell fresh like lemons or sweet like her perfume anymore. She smelled like dirt, like the smoke from the fire.
Aspen still wanted to breathe her in.
“I need a bath,” Charm declared. She pointed a warning finger as Aspen tidied up their camp and prepared for their departure. “And don’t suggest the stream. It is too fucking cold for that.” She picked a dead fly out of her hair and gagged.
Mouse nudged Aspen’s arm with her head and then tilted her ears toward the pack on the ground. Sticking out of one of the side pockets was the curry brush Aspen used for Mouse. She slid her gaze slowly from the brush to Charm.
“Don’t you dare,” Charm said.
Her outrage was enough for Aspen to laugh. It was a rumbling laugh, the kind that started deep in her belly and used her whole body until she had to lean against Mouse to stay standing. She hadn’t laughed that hard in… branch, leaf, and root, forever.
Charm was staring like she’d never seen Aspen before. “You have a nice laugh.”
Aspen would have sworn she wasn’t prone to blushing, but Charm was making a liar out of her. She turned her face away.
“But I’ll never forgive you for interrupting my skincare regimen,” Charm continued. “Do you know how sophisticated and complex it is? Missing these days will turn my skin to onion paper, and then I’ll be ruined. No brush, no lotions, no bath, not even a decent change of clothes. How do you live like this?”
“You can’t miss what you never had,” Aspen said. Like yesterday, she helped Charm onto Mouse’s back. Unlike yesterday, Aspen didn’t climb up behind her. She took Mouse’s reins and stayed on foot as she led them back toward the road.
“What are you doing?” Charm asked.
Aspen allowed herself a brief smile. “You’ve never seen someone walk before? Ah, right, pampered lifestyle. You’re used to carriages? No, litters. You seem like the type to be carried everywhere.”
“You know me so well,” Charm said. After a few minutes of silence, she returned to her questions. “Why are you down there? Is it because of last night? You slipped and indulged in a small amount of human comfort and now you have to punish yourself for it?”
“Yes, that’s exactly it.” Aspen dropped Mouse’s reins so she could stretch her arms as they walked. “That and Mouse isn’t used to carrying two people.”
“I thought I misheard earlier. But you really named your horse Mouse?”
“Bought her from a horse breeder whose five-year-old daughter named her Mouse. I wasn’t going to change her name.”
Charm obviously had further inquiry on the tip of her tongue—Mouse’s name was always a good topic of conversation—but she changed course at the last moment. “If we’re really committed to this little bit of theater where you deliver me to the magistrate and she jails me, then shouldn’t I be the one walking?”
Charm’s embroidered slippers were worse for wear after a mere day of horseback riding. Aspen would bet the feet inside them were just as delicate. “As you’ve said several times, I snatched you away without letting you pack a bag.”
“Well, I’m certainly not going to talk myself into having to walk,” Charm said. “Why are we going all the way to Ilgate anyway? There are closer settlements.”
“We passed the turn off for Taghton yesterday,” Aspen said, referring to the small village between Cheyford and Ilgate. “They don’t have the budget for a jail or law enforcement. They still use stocks.” Aspen would never humiliate Charm—or anyone—like that. Mobs of cruel villagers sometimes pelted people in the stocks with rotten vegetables or rocks.
“We could have gone south to Sottville,” Aspen added. “The town’s big enough to handle your case. But the deputy magistrate there takes bribes and I wouldn’t trust him not to put you in a cell with someone unpleasant.”
“You’re worried about me,” Charm said, almost a question.
“Napier, the magistrate in Ilgate, is a good sort. She’ll keep you safe.”
“If you’re so worried, we could scrap this whole plan and you could take me back to my troupe.” Charm flashed a smile, but it was weak. She wasn’t really trying.
“I think a short stint in jail will be good for you,” Aspen said.
“You’re twenty-nine years too late to reform me,” Charm said. “Well, nineteen, I suppose.”
“You were innocent for the first ten years? Somehow I find that hard to believe.”
“I was a paragon of virtue. They could have given me one of those really terrible Earth names like Obedience or Modesty.”
Aspen laughed. “But instead your parents named you Charm?”
“No,” Charm said softly, in a tone Aspen had never heard her use. “They didn’t.”
Aspen studied her. Those really terrible Earth names, she’d said, as if it wasn’t her culture. But as far as Aspen could tell, Charm didn’t have the identifying marks of any other culture. Aspen would have recognized a Wood sister even without fur or antlers. Charm was too short and too far inland to be Sea and, from the parts of her that Aspen had seen bare, not scaly enough to be Sun. It was possible she was Rain, since they could be mistaken for People of the Earth. Or maybe she’d lied about not being a Moon witch. Supposedly there were People of the Mist, too, but in all her travels, Aspen had never met one. It would be rude to ask.
They lapsed into silence again. It gave Aspen time to think about Charm’s thefts and her claim that sometimes stealing was fair. Aspen wasn’t sure about that, but she’d gladly punch Mort in the face for groping and hurting Charm.
If what Mort had said about the Hanging Scale burning down his village was true, then Charm had stolen the only money he had left. The occasional other travelers they’d passed were all more armed than farmers had any reason to be. Aspen didn’t like it. It boded ill for Mort and his neighbors—and for her and Charm.
Aspen wasn’t exactly brimming with sympathy for Mort, aggressive lecher that he was, but the Hanging Scale shouldn’t be driving people from their homes. Mort had clearly been terrified of them. And if Aspen could only defend people who were without fault, she might as well melt down her blade.
Mort had reacted to her with fear in the tavern, but then come looking for her later that night. Something had altered his behavior, some element Aspen couldn’t identify yet.
Mort had known it was the Hanging Scale who’d set the fire, or so he’d claimed. He’d seen a tattoo like hers somewhere before. When Integrity had run the Scale, their tattoos were always covered, a wordless pledge they made to the organization and the people they served. Gangs and crime syndicates might carve their sigils on walls to mark their territory, but the Scale was different. It was a quiet operation, a name people in need whispered in each other’s ears.
But the Hanging Scale had changed since Honor Huntsman Pike took over. Pike considered Aspen a traitor. She couldn’t say for sure if he believed the lie he’d told—that she’d murdered Integrity—or if he’d simply used it to exile her. If news of Aspen’s screw-up in the tavern had traveled, then Pike and the Scale might be looking for her. Pike probably wanted her dead.
If they were harassing local farms and villages, flaunting the symbol of the order as they did it, then Aspen owed it to Integrity’s memory to find them first.
4
In this part of Falland, people resisted the drab, wet autumn weather by painting their half-timbered buildings in bright colors. Ilgate was a tidy little town composed of houses and shops done in yellow, orange, red, and blue that looked especially cheery in the rare noontime sun. Big enough to boast two taverns, an inn, a cheese shop, a tailor, an apothecary, and, most important for Aspen’s purposes, an honest magistrate, Ilgate was quite a change from the bare-branched woods and dry yellow pastures they’d been traveling through.
The town must be preparing for a late-autumn festival of some kind—there were so many Earth gods and holidays, Aspen could never keep track—because there were fireworks piled in the commons and paper garlands strung in the branches of the few trees at the edges of the space.
Those trees and their surrounding neatly organized flowers gestured toward the razed forest that had once been here. Aspen had never understood if these commons, which most Earth settlements had, were meant to honor the native flora or to symbolize their conquest. The one time she’d asked Strength, the woman had laughed and said “That is such a Wood question, Aspen.”
Aspen wondered again about Charm. Did Earth settlements feel foreign to her?
It didn’t matter. Aspen was trying to keep Charm alive for the next few days—by hiding her in a cell, a plan she’d vocally objected to and complained about many times—and then once Mort was dealt with and Charm was back with her troupe, they’d never see each other again. The Traveling Harstead Players would perform in towns around the capital, and Aspen would continue her wise plan of avoiding Harstead forever. She should never have come this close to begin with. Look at all the trouble it had caused.
She shouldn’t want to see Charm again. Aspen was already in too deep. Charm was changeable and deceptive and probably wouldn’t even notice if she broke Aspen’s heart.
Still, maybe Charm would kiss her one last time before they parted.
Aspen would make sure she held onto her coin purse this time.
The court was an imposing building in white plaster and dark timber on a street connected to the commons. Attached to the court were the magistrate’s office and the small prison. Mouse’s hooves clacked against the grey cobblestone. Aspen checked her weapons and then helped Charm dismount.
“Are you sure I can’t persuade you to use a different, better plan?” Charm asked. “That prison is probably disgusting inside. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve felt properly clean?” Charm scowled at the dirt beneath her fingernails.
“A single day?”
“Far too long.”
Aspen stopped at the horse post. She looped Mouse’s reins over the wooden post. Mouse would never leave without her, but sometimes people mistrusted an untethered horse.
“Why do you hate this plan so much? All it requires on your part is a day or two of sitting still,” Aspen said.
“Exactly,” Charm said. “You’ll be out there doing exciting stuff and I’ll be sitting in a cell. Let me help! We can find Mort together. It’ll be an adventure. I’m good at getting people to do things for me and I’m a great liar.”
“I’m aware,” Aspen said.
She led Charm into the magistrate’s suite of rooms. A large desk blocked the way into her private office, forcing all visitors to wait in the ink-and-dust-scented antechamber. Behind the desk was a harried young woman lost in stacks of paper, her pale fingers smudged black from work. Aspen knew she was a woman because of the pendant she wore, a white crescent and a Moon glyph signifying “woman.” She’d been to see a Moon witch to realize her true self.
Not everyone who’d undergone some form of magical transformation wore such a pendant—Aspen wasn’t proud that she’d had the identifying marks of her people removed—but many found joy and community in knowing others like themselves.
At the sound of their footsteps, the woman raised her head, taking in Aspen, her sword strapped proudly to her back, and Charm, bedraggled but standing like she was on stage about to take a bow. The young woman’s brows drew together.
“Magistrate!” the young woman shouted, her voice loud enough to make Charm jump at the noise.
A moment later, a familiar face emerged from the adjoining room. Prudence Cade Napier had her straight grey hair in a severe bun and her legs in dark brown roughspun trousers. Ilgate’s loud conservatives hadn’t succeeded in pressuring her into the skirts most Earth women wore. She was a hard woman to sway. It was why Aspen liked her.
The magistrate gestured for them to enter her office. She sat down at her desk, but didn’t indicate that either of them should sit. Instead she narrowed her eyes at Aspen and said, “You. I know you from somewhere.”
Charm perked up, glancing between Aspen and the magistrate.
“I just have one of those faces, Magistrate,” Aspen said.
“No,” Napier said. “No, I’ve seen you before. A few years ago, you were passing through right as a wealthy, cruel landowner was left tied up and unconscious on the courthouse steps. I saw you in The Red Fox. I couldn’t let that whole affair rest. I questioned everyone. You were the only stranger in town who could possibly have done it. Ha! That’s it.”
Charm was biting her lower lip like she wanted to burst out laughing.
“What’s your name, Honored Friend?” the magistrate asked. “I’m Prudence Cade Napier, but I have a feeling you know that. It’s on the door outside.”
“Aspen Silverglade,” Aspen said. “And this is Charm Linville.”
“What brings you here?” Napier asked. “Catching more bandits?”
“Something like that,” Aspen said. Her next words snagged on doubt. She couldn’t present Charm as a thief—the magistrate might sentence her to a more severe punishment than she deserved. Charm would never speak to Aspen again in that case. Her stomach twisted.
Asking the magistrate for a favor was a risk, too. Napier upheld the law. She might not like being asked to use her jail for anything other than its official purpose.
Charm asked, “Did you hear about a farm burning near Cheyford?”
Napier frowned. “The whole valley’s had a lot of trouble recently, unfortunately. Nothing concrete enough for us to chase.”
“He said it was the Hanging Scale,” Charm said. By starting this conversation, she’d established herself as Aspen’s partner and equal. She stepped closer to the magistrate’s desk. “Have you heard of them?”
“The Hanging Scale?” Napier shook her head. “Is it a new syndicate?”
“I don’t know,” Charm said. “But he was spooked.”
She didn’t mention Aspen’s tattoo or past connection to the group. Aspen tensed, ready to spin on her heel. Years of training kept the shift in her posture subtle and silent. If Charm exposed her, escaping Ilgate wouldn’t be a problem—it was only a few strides to get out of this building, and Mouse was always prepared to make a quick exit—but she’d never be able to return and she’d lose whatever tenuous good will she had with Napier.
Fool that she was, she’d handed Charm too much leverage. It would be simple for Charm to blackmail or frame Aspen for the Scale’s crimes. She hadn’t yet, but she was smart enough to have had the idea. Perhaps Charm had some kind of moral code that permitted theft but not blackmail. Not a comforting thought, but Aspen couldn’t come up with any other reasons Charm might spare her.
