Deep Water (56 page)

Bramble thought it odd, that she could never feel the gods coming and going from Safred, the way she could with Baluch. Maybe
they didn’t come and go. Maybe they were there all the time.

Then Cael moved away so she could put her breeches back on in privacy, and she became consumed with thoughts of food. She
was starving.

In the middle of the night, after the moon had gone down, Bramble woke with a sudden jerk. Had she heard something? She drew
her knife and rolled out of her blankets, glad to be disturbed from a sleep choked with dreams of Acton’s blood. It was a
cloudy, flickering night, with a wind high in the sky sending the clouds streaming in tatters across the stars, so that the
light varied from faint to none unpredictably. An unchancy night to meet something vicious in the dark.

The others had told her about the mist, although she had a feeling they were leaving out the details. Since then, they had
set a watch. She had thought it was Martine’s turn, but she could not see her anywhere on the perimeter of the camp, where
she was supposed to be. She didn’t wake the others. Not yet. Just in case the noise she had heard was Martine making her rounds.

She prowled the border of the camp closest to the Forest, but heard nothing but the sough of the branches. Then she realized
that something was moving down at the water. She paused, her heartbeat increasing. That mere… They could probably cope
with wolf or bear, but a creature from the depths of the lake… She forced her imagination away from the thought.

She walked down toward the water, which was lying still even in the increasing wind. There was a figure at the water’s edge,
pacing backward and forward — Zel. It must be later than she had thought, if it was Zel’s watch. She felt adrift in time,
where before she had always been securely anchored.

“Sorry if I woke you,” Zel said. They moved closer together so they would not disturb the others.

Bramble shrugged. “No matter.” In the past, she would have just turned and gone back to bed, but in the moonlight she could
clearly see the little telltale signs that Zel was worried, or upset, and somehow she didn’t want to just leave her to her
troubles.

“Are you all right?” she asked, although it went against all her habits and felt like prying.

Zel fiddled with her belt and half-shook her head. “Just thinking about Flax.”

“Mmm.” Well, Bramble could understand that. When Maryrose had left for Carlion, Bramble had worried about her every day, too.
I was right to worry, she thought, grief clutching her throat. She should say something comforting, like, “He’ll be all right,”
but with Maryrose’s death so fresh she couldn’t bring herself to say a well-meaning lie. He was abroad in a world where ghosts
killed the living. Who knew if he would be all right or not?

Zel looked down at the ground, and then out at the mere, then back, as if it were hard for her to talk. “Um… I wanted
to ask… what was he like?” she said finally.

“Acton?”

Zel nodded.

Bramble shook her head, not to refuse the question, but to clear her thoughts. “He was very alive. It’s hard to believe he’s
dead.”

“Are the songs true? Did he really laugh during battle? While he was killing people?”

Bramble hesitated, then shrugged. “Yes,” she said. “He laughed.”

“Did he really say, ‘Kill them all’?”

“Yes,” she said. “He said that.”

“And that they should keep the houses intact so his people could use them?”

“Yes.”

Bramble could see that Zel was somehow eased by the knowledge that Acton was as bad as she had imagined — that the songs didn’t
lie. Bramble stared out at the lake. Her eyes filled with tears. Why did it feel like betrayal to tell the truth? Acton
had
done all those things. He had killed and massacred and taken this land for his own people, he had
enjoyed
battle. He had. But he was not what people thought he was. She thought that even now she didn’t really know what he was.
No — what he
had been.
She mustn’t forget that he was dead, even though it seemed to her that she could take the brooch in her hand again and swim
through the waters to find him; to watch him; to perhaps finally understand him.

“He was a man of his time,” she said, and blinked away the tears before they fell. She sat on a rock at the edge of the mere
and stared at the still water, trying to find calmness in its serenity.

“Do you want company?” Zel said.

Bramble stiffened. “No. No, with thanks. I’ve slept too long, I think, and now my body doesn’t know when to rest. Go back
to sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

“Good night, then,” Zel said.

Bramble watched all night by the mere, trying not to remember. The silent water should have been soothing, but it wasn’t.
It reminded her too much of the waves that had risen up, over and over again, to take her away from Acton’s life. She knew
she couldn’t sleep. She kept seeing Red’s arm — her arm, it had felt like — strike at Acton. Kept feeling the knife go in.

If she had been told, before she grasped the brooch, that she would have the chance to kill Acton, she would have rejoiced.
But all she felt was horror. How could she be lamenting his death — the death of the invader?

It was because of the future that had been killed, she decided. The future where all towns would have been free towns, where
every person, Travelers included, would have had a say in how things were done. The gods had stopped her from creating that
future, and no doubt they had their reasons, but she mourned for that world, for the nation the Domains could have become,
for the freedom lost.

She still had a chance to save
this
world. Maybe, afterward, there would be a way to create the future she had seen, if only briefly, in Acton’s eyes. She put
that thought aside. There was no use thinking about it now. Now they had to stop Saker.

But walking by the lakeside, she kept wondering what she could have replied to Zel’s questions. “Yes, but he wasn’t that bad?”
He
was
what Zel believed: a killer, an invader, a destroyer of too much. He
had
laughed as he killed, in the battle light-heartedness that all his people seemed to share. He
had
said, “Kill them all.” The provocation didn’t matter, did it? Had Hawk and his men deserved to die? Maybe. But their women
and children? No. And yet, he had been upset about that… Oh, it was too much to think about, Bramble told herself. It
was over, and she had to get on with things.

She went to the privy before she woke the others, and was returning to the camp when the trees shimmered in front of her eyes
and her hunter appeared next to a huge oak, its gold eyes gleaming in the shadow as though reflecting light from some other
place or time. She controlled her shock instinctively. Show no fear, she thought.

“Kill Reborn,” it said, “you are in haste.”

She didn’t care how it knew, only what it might be able to do.

“I need to get to the Western Mountains quickly,” she said. “Can you help me?”

It tilted its head as though listening to the Forest. Then it nodded.

“It will not be easy.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Trust me.”

Bramble laughed. This was better. No more discussions or plans or arguing. Just a leap of faith.

“I have to tell them, get my saddlebags.”

“Just come,” the hunter said. “Or not.”

She paused. Just walk away? Oh, that was tempting. She would have done it, too, except for Trine.

“I have to make sure my horse is looked after,” she said. “That’s my duty.”

The hunter understood duty, and the husbanding of animals, even if its way of husbanding was to cull. It nodded.

“Be quick,” it said. The hawks’ feathers in its hair caught the light as it shifted backward into the undergrowth and disappeared.

Bramble ran back to the camp. Her saddlebags were by her bedroll. She grabbed them. Her last memory of Maryrose was wound
up with these bags, and she wasn’t going to leave them behind.

Zel woke immediately when she touched her shoulder.

“Look after Trine for me,” Bramble said softly. “I’ve found a quicker way. I’ll meet you in Sanctuary.”

Zel barely had time to nod and no time for questions, before Bramble was racing for the Forest.

She found her way back to the oak and stood on the same spot as before. “I’m ready,” she said.

The air shimmered and the hunter appeared.

“Then walk with me,” it said.

S
AFRED WASN
’
T HAPPY
, with Bramble or with Zel, and Martine felt increasingly annoyed with her as they rode single file back through the Forest
and she maintained the sulk. Trine was sulking, too, lagging as much as she could on the leading rein Zel had secured to her
own saddle. Zel already had bites on both hands from bridling her. Martine thought that Safred and Trine had the same expression,
and the horse had more cause.

Nothing happened to disturb them. They crossed the stream without incident; they weren’t even bothered by the strange panic
that they had felt earlier. It was all easy — too easy, Martine felt, as though the Forest wanted to see the back of them
and was urging them on.

At the point where the trail into the Forest crossed the northwest road, they dismounted so that Safred could heal Cael.

“Out of the Forest,” she said, smiling. She placed her hand on his chest confidently, and sang a high chant in her terrible
voice. When she took her hand away the wound was as bad as ever. She tried twice more, with the same result, until her face
was white with effort and she swayed on her feet.

“Enough,” Cael said. “Let it heal on its own.” His face was solemn and wary. “Don’t kill yourself for something impossible,”
he added gently.

Safred’s eyes filled with tears. “I can heal everyone else, why not you?”

He shrugged and helped her to mount. They all settled back into their saddles, while Safred recovered a little. Martine could
see that she was getting set for a long, involved discussion of why and why not and what could be done about it, and she was
thankful, at first, when they were interrupted by a party of riders cantering down the northwest road. Then she saw they were
a warlord’s men and she felt the familiar tightening in the gut that armed men always brought, anywhere in the Domains. But
Safred smiled for the first time since she had woken to find Bramble gone.

“Arvid!” Her voice rang with pleasure. “It’s you!”

She was calling to a man with light brown hair, dressed as the others were in simple green uniforms without emblems. No crossed
sword and spear here, as there was on Thegan’s uniforms. Arvid. The warlord himself. He was about forty, maybe a bit older,
with a smiling, open countenance that invited trust. With very shrewd blue eyes. Martine felt another jolt in her gut, but
this one brought heat with it, fire licking along her nerves and into her bones. She wanted to melt into her saddle, but she
stiffened her back and kept her face impassive. The week after Equinox, she thought with resignation. All the body wants is
to be satisfied, and it doesn’t care who does it.

“They didn’t tell you who to expect?” he asked, smiling.

Safred laughed too, ruefully. “No. Just that we would meet someone.” She looked quizzically at him. “Someone who would give
us silver.”

He laughed. “Oh, yes, that’s all I’m good for, I know,” he said with mock humility. “Just the treasury, that’s me.”

He was easy to like, but he was still a warlord, Martine reminded herself.

Safred introduced her companions by name, but with no other information. Martine nodded at him, and received a nod and an
assessing glance in return, which warmed into admiration.

“You travel with beautiful companions, Saf,” Arvid said, nodding politely to include Zel, but looking at Martine. She felt
the color rise in her cheeks. The fire was getting entirely too strong for comfort.

“I am riding to the Plantation, and then to Foreverfroze,” Arvid said. “There is a question of markets, of sending food to
Mitchen for sale. The Valuers and I are combining to hire a ship, to trade down the coast.”

“As far as Turvite?” Cael asked, edging his chestnut forward.

Arvid looked surprised. “We hadn’t
intended
so,” he said with a question in his voice.

Safred answered. “We need to get to Turvite. We were headed for Foreverfroze, to find a ship to take us there. The gods said
we would find someone here today to help. I
thought
they meant with silver, but a ship would be even better!”

Cael laughed at her enthusiasm and at Arvid’s long-suffering expression.

“It seems to me that the gods use me like a banker!”

“At least you have some use,” Martine said quietly.

His gaze lifted quickly to meet her eyes, and this time he was the one who flushed. “Not all warlords are useless,” he said.

“So they say,” Martine replied. She wasn’t going to give in to the fire, no matter how hard her heart beat when Arvid looked
at her. This was just backwash from the ritual, and nothing personal.

One of his men moved his horse closer, as though Martine might be a threat, and scowled at her with ferocious loyalty. “My
lord is the best warlord in the Domains!” he declared. Martine saw with surprise that it wasn’t a man but a brown-haired woman
of about thirty, strong and tall and flat-chested. The woman continued, “My lord shares his wealth and his power. He’s even
set up a council of all the Voices in the Domain to guide his laws!”

“Does he abide by their advice?” Martine asked, looking at Arvid.

He smiled and answered her directly. “He does, when he can. When he can’t, he explains why and gets their agreement.”

“Always?”

Arvid nodded. “So far. The Voices are usually reasonable people. And an increasing number are Valuers, which makes coming
to an agreement easier.”

“A warlord who values Valuers?” Martine’s tone was skeptical, but her eyes never left his. That would be more than unusual — it
would be extraordinary. Could he be that extraordinary?