Deep magic second coll.., p.53
Deep Magic - Second Collection, page 53
part #2 of Deep Magic Collection Series
“I need to talk with your mother, Em,” he said. “Can you go upstairs?”
Emmi squeezed Bunchy to her chest. “Will you come tuck us in after?”
Baylian, shifting in his seat, managed a smile. “Of course. Maybe we’ll even have a story.”
Emmi skipped out into the hall and up the stairs. When Neladi was certain her daughter wasn’t hovering on the landing above, she went to her husband’s side.
“What happened?”
Baylian’s breathing grew laboured. He shot her a dark look, but she returned one that warned him she’d have an answer.
“We were in the mountains, chasing the remnants of the raider party that hit the Redwyns’ house two moons ago,” he said. “We had them pinned against a wall, but like beasts, they refused to throw down their arms.” He poured more wine. “We had no choice but to finish them.”
Baylian paused, and Neladi guessed the fortune of the company was about to change. She signalled for him to continue.
“They came from nowhere—hundreds of them. They were on us before we could muster.”
Neladi set her husband’s wine on the table. “But you escaped.”
Baylian sent his eyes scurrying. His voice fell to a whisper. “No. He let me go.”
A stray wind rocked the house. Baylian’s last words echoed.
“Who?” she asked.
“The Viper King,” he said, quicker than she expected. “The saptor who claims he can finally take the Frontier.”
The declaration was so bold that Neladi felt even the three ghosts arching their eyebrows. She suddenly realised why Sir Kelvin had sent the cavalry to retrieve her husband, and why he’d questioned him for so long before letting Baylian return home.
“The Frontier can’t be taken by force,” Neladi said, but her assertion had far less weight than she’d intended. It shattered the moment it left her lips.
“People said Tarnor could never fall.”
Neladi frowned. Tarnor—a city that had once stood on the eastern fringes of the Frontier. A city so magnificent that nobles vowed it would take a thousand dragons to raze it. But of course, unlike in most of the Frontier, when the fight did come, there were no reptiles at all. Instead, it was the savages of the Blackdust Mountains, a few paltry torches, and Tarnor’s own complacency that caused the city to crumble. The next morning, the ashes had scattered so far even the Aelia woke up to find them. It was the first real scar on their flawless skin. Small wonder the people had been singing about the city for centuries.
“Maybe one day they’ll write a song about us too,” she said. Baylian didn’t laugh.
“I’m afraid,” he said, breathing the last word with some effort.
Neladi placed a hand on his shoulder. “I know. What are we going to do?”
Baylian glanced upwards. “What do you mean?”
She gestured to the door. “When you were gone, they tried to make us leave.” She paused. “Do you think we should?”
His eyes questioned hers. “The woman I married has never run from a fight before.”
She shrugged. “The man I married has never told me he was afraid before.”
Neither of them spoke after that. Baylian, who seemed more lost than her, pulled her close, lowered his face into hers. It might have given her comfort if she felt it wasn’t his only choice.
They stayed there for a time, cradling each other, listening to the fire die behind them. When Neladi finally pulled away, her face was wet, and she feared one of Baylian’s wounds had opened again. Instead, she realised he was crying.
His face tried to deny it, but then he blinked, and a tear slipped right down his cheek. Neladi wavered, then pressed her lips to it.
Salt and water. Neladi tasted it, and wondered if he smelled it too, perhaps thinking of the sea he’d left behind all those years before. And then, because it was her turn to know nothing else to do, she drew him by the hand to his feet, then to the stairs, then up into the dark of the house.
Outside, as always, the two torches stood guard at the fence. The wind tugged at them, and the flames, kept yards apart, wriggled closer. In time, they even met. They gave each other a brief kiss, a touch so tender that nobody at the Frontier saw or knew. It was as if they weren’t there at all. But long into the night they wrestled in the desert.
Two pale flames and their share of the darkness.
* * *
Neladi hated the banners. More than the rustle of chain mail, more than pointed steel, Neladi hated poles and coloured standards.
Hundreds of them now crowded the street below her window, waving back and forth like some great parade. What the men holding them wanted to celebrate, she could only guess. Neladi checked to see whether Baylian carried one too.
She’d once told him about her disgust, and her husband had nearly passed out from laughter.
“Perhaps it’s because they’re the first sign of a battle,” he’d said. “They’re the first sign of something that’s more than two men and their pride.”
Neladi returned her gaze to the marching soldiers—to the half of the argument that belonged to the Frontier. She wondered was her husband right, because a single man couldn’t be responsible for all the arrogance they had on show. That was before her eyes fell on Sir Kelvin.
“You should be damn ashamed,” she said, so loud the heads nearest the house turned. She retreated quickly away from the sill.
A moment later, Neladi gravitated back to the window. Outside, a score more banners were unfurled. The flags, a sea of rippling colour, rose over Sir Kelvin’s army, snapping in the afternoon wind. A great host of Clawhold knights rode underneath them, noble families whose emblems and sigils fought for dominion of the sky. Alongside, marooned amongst the flotsam and jetsam of the Frontier’s own patchwork forces, Baylian stood in his armour. Despite everything, he was smiling.
A smile that belongs behind bars, she thought. A smile so dangerous even the Frontier should know better than to let it walk free.
“Mama,” a voice squeaked. Neladi turned.
Emmi huddled with the shadows in the doorway. When Neladi beckoned, her daughter scurried to her side.
“What is it, my sweet?” she said, combing her fingers through a mess of Emmi’s brown hair.
“Dada promised me a story.”
Emmi’s hands coiled tight around Neladi’s waist. Her voice became muffled, lost within the folds of the dress she clung to.
Neladi glanced once more at her husband—at the man who’d shown up on her doorstep all those years before.
“Did your father ever tell you the story of the stranger and the pie?”
Emmi arched an eyebrow. “Dada never tells stories about pies.”
“Well, why not?”
Emmi made an empty show of frustration. “Because Dada’s stories are make-believe, obviously. Fairy princesses don’t eat pie,” she said. “They eat silver lilies and live in the magical castle beneath the lake. I think the castle is called Evelusia ...”
Neladi sighed. What sort of dreams has he been giving her?
Back when Neladi was Emmi’s age, her father had read her a story called The Disturbance of Spring. But of course, that tale wasn’t make-believe; the rebellion was scarce five decades old. Neladi was sure a cousin of hers had even fought in it.
“I promise you “The Stranger and the Pie” is just as magical as Evelusia,” she said, leading her daughter to a stool. Emmi pouted as she propped herself on it.
“Bet it doesn’t even have a fairy princess,” she muttered.
“It has a handsome knight in shining armour.”
Emmi straightened in her seat. “I’m listening.”
Neladi cleared her throat, so loud that the whole room sat up and noticed. She’d seen an actor in a troupe from the port city of Amarin do that once, commanding silence as though he owned sound. Neladi’s own effort didn’t seem as convincing, not least because she was playing the part of herself.
“Once upon a time, there lived a woman named Emmilia.”
Emmi gasped. “That’s my name,” she said, clutching the air in front of her as though she might catch it.
Neladi nodded. “This woman was a lot like you, my sweet. She was smart, kind, and did everything her mother ever asked of her.”
Emmi smiled.
“But,” Neladi said, shaking her voice for dramatic effect. “Her family were no longer beside her. The woman lived all alone in a great empty house in the wilderness.”
Emmi’s face, too-knowing, became a battlefield of emotions. “But then the stranger came?” she said.
Neladi closed her eyes, felt time stirring inside her. “Yes,” a voice said. She questioned whether it was hers.
She drifted far away now, out of the room, beyond the house, towards the vale that gushed grey with the fog of her memory.
“Yes,” the voice repeated, but Neladi didn’t feel the vibrations thrum her throat. If she was speaking, the words belonged to another part of her.
“Yes!”
Neladi opened her eyes. The word was on her lips this time, but it was urgent, spoken with such force that it made the rest of her body tremble. The man in front of her, face hidden beneath a silver helm, shifted in his saddle.
“People say a woman around these parts makes pies like no other,” the stranger said.
Neladi made no response, but then the man steered his horse closer. She grunted at him and returned to her task.
Neladi had her father’s knife gripped between her young fingers, peeling away vegetable skin even as her own started to wrinkle. It was harvest time at the Frontier. A time so short that to blink was even a gamble. A time so precious that a moment spent entertaining a Clawhold knight was a moment wasted.
“Might be there are pies,” she said, keeping her eyes on the dull blade and the now naked potato. “Just not for men like you.”
She rolled the potato in her hand, checked for black scars or the blasted infestation. Satisfied, she dropped it into the good batch, a bucket so empty it landed with a thud.
The stranger tipped up his visor and grinned. “I beg your pardon, ma’am, but there are no men like me.”
Neladi paused.
Beneath his steel mask, the stranger had bright eyes, the sort of glassy gaze she’d expect of a child. His face, unkissed by the sun, kept a pale glow, marked him from somewhere over the ocean. But Neladi was too busy studying his smile to wonder where.
There’s a hard day’s work in that smile, she realised.
Neladi composed herself. “What else do people say about this woman?”
The stranger dismounted. “They say she asks a lot of questions.”
The riposte was so quick it slid straight through Neladi’s guard. She laughed, and perhaps surprised to have found the mark, the stranger laughed too. But the pause between passes was only a moment’s indulgence, a handshake so brief that even as it ended the two fencers had their foils up again. Like players on either side of a game board, the pair scrutinised each other. It was Neladi’s turn to make a move.
“A knight with two steeds?” she said, eyeing the donkey tethered to the back of the man’s horse.
“I’m no knight,” the stranger said. “I’m a soldier of fortune.”
“A mercenary?” Neladi rolled her eyes. “I thought you said you were unique.”
“I am,” he said. “As for the donkey, any man who lives by his own luck should know plenty of ways to earn more of it.”
This time, Neladi swallowed her smile.
Meanwhile, the stranger held her gaze, and she realised he was hinting at a deal between them. Her eyes flashed again to the donkey, then to the good batch of potatoes. Only one was worth a bargain.
“I could use a spare pair of hands for the harvest,” she admitted. “If you can dig out a market’s share of potatoes by sunset, you’ll have your pie.”
The stranger pulled his donkey closer. “A day’s work in exchange for a five-minute fill? You’d consider this fair?”
Neladi, too invested in her hand to fold, hardened her stare. “Fair? No, I wouldn’t say this is fair.”
The stranger started to unpack. “Well, what would you say?”
Neladi picked up her knife, sliced open a turnip. “I’d say welcome to the Frontier.”
That evening, the house was treated to the sound of laughter for the first time in years.
“You could have warned me you’ve never worked a farm before,” Neladi said, struggling to keep her wine from spilling.
The stranger, caked in dirt, clapped dust from his hands. “It’s not that bad, is it?”
“No, it’s not that bad,” Neladi said. She choked on a mouthful of wine. “I mean, at least it wouldn’t be if you were what we’d dug out of the ground.”
The stranger huffed and cut himself another serving of pie. “What can I say; my father is a court scribe.”
“And they don’t have books about farms?”
He paused in his chewing. “Oh, they have books on farms all right.” He waved a hand. “Ledgers, accounts, taxes ...”
Neladi frowned. When the stranger noticed, he did too.
“I’m sorry, I only meant—”
“I know,” she said, setting her wine back on the table. Suddenly the mess the man had made in the garden didn’t seem so funny.
“A bad summer, that’s all it was,” he said. “Yes, that’s what the others told me.”
Without reason, anger flared in Neladi’s chest, so indignant it demanded a voice at the table too.
“Tell me,” she said. “Exactly what else do the people say about the woman who makes pies on the edge of town?”
The stranger, cornered on all sides by some of the first walls at the Frontier, gulped down his food. When he was finished, he set his fork down an inch at a time. Years later, Neladi would recognise the act as a sort of diplomacy.
“They said she wouldn’t make another winter without a donkey.”
Neladi, robbed of speech in her own home, cast her eyes out the unshuttered window, where the animal rested against the fence. She turned back to the stranger.
“You’re cleverer than you look.”
The man gave a wry smile. “Thanks.”
Neladi shrugged. “That’s not a compliment. Clever men don’t last long at the Frontier.”
The stranger, eyes lost in the space between them, nodded in understanding. He reached out for his fork again, but instead of gripping it fast in his grimy fingers, his hand hovered lifeless above it. He looked at her and sighed.
“What if I said I wanted to last long here?”
Neladi’s heart bloated in her chest. The wine tingled the back of her throat, its flavour a coin toss between sweet and bitter. She bit her lower lip and studied the stranger.
Rebuke him, the voice inside her said. Throw him to the wind and the hungry road.
Neladi had a mind for such fighting words, but then she spied the portraits above the fire, where the only two men who’d ever mattered to her seemed to urge further contemplation. She tried her best to ignore them, even shot them a dark look when they insisted. But then the stranger smiled again, and it captured Neladi’s heart. A second later, she realised why.
Something in my likeness, she heard her father say, and though the portrait remained unchanged, a part of the man in it escaped into the room. It found its new home in the stranger opposite.
“I have a field that needs ploughing in spring,” Neladi said, rising with purpose. The stranger rose with her.
“I’ll be stationed here long enough to see another harvest.”
“Then it’s agreed,” she said. Neladi extended a hand. It froze halfway between them.
“Is something wrong?” the man asked.
“No,” she said, blushing. “It’s just I’ve never asked you your name.”
The stranger bowed low. “It’s—”
“Dada!”
The shout roused Neladi from her waking dream. Emmi rushed past her to the door, where Baylian waited to catch her.
“Someone’s full of flutterflies,” he said, swinging her up into his arms.
“Mama told me a story,” Emmi said. “A make-believe about a stranger and a pie.”
Baylian gave Neladi a strange look. “I’m not sure I’ve heard that one,” he said, rocking his daughter back and forth.
“What makes you think the story was make-believe?” Neladi said. She averted her gaze from her husband’s.
Emmi lolled her head to one side. “In the story, Emmilia makes the greatest pies in town. But everyone knows my Mama makes the most famous pies at the Frontier.”
Baylian, still watching Neladi from out of the corner of his eyes, lowered Emmi to the floor. “Can you give us a moment, sweetie?”
“Mhmm.” Emmi toddled to the corridor. When she was gone, Baylian turned.
“‘The Stranger and the Pie’?”
“Seemed like a fitting name.”
“I’m not sure it’s a fitting story.”
Neladi moved to the window. Outside, a chorus of cheers greeted the next company of Clawhold knights. The men lapped up the applause, dawdling long enough for girls to bring them flowers. Neladi sighed. At the Frontier, war styled itself a romantic.
“I think that it’s fitting. That was the day everything changed, after all. Days like that don’t come round too often.”
Baylian, cased once more in his armour, heaved in a breath. “If you weren’t so stubborn, change wouldn’t have to come knocking at all.”
Neladi spun. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She read her husband’s expression before he could hide it. “He’s trying to make us leave again, isn’t he?”
Baylian didn’t answer.
“Well, you can tell Sir Kelv—”
“It’s not him this time, Neli.”
“Well then, who is it?” she shouted.
Baylian closed his eyes.
Neladi doubled back. “You?”
“It’s the only way to protect Emmi.”
Neladi glanced between Baylian and the corridor.
“This is our home,” she said.
