The Hidden Queen (17 page)

The woman clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Far. Have you come a long way? Was there not someone who could come with you? Times are not as they once were; it can be dangerous now for a young child to travel alone.”

Anghara could have answered that she’d already found that out, but bit her lip.

“Where do you come from, then? How come your parents allowed you to go alone like this?” persisted the young mother, bouncing her own progeny vigorously in her plump lap.

“My parents are dead,” said Anghara, quite truthfully. “My father was killed in battle against Tath.”

“Poor child,” the woman said instantly, reaching to touch Anghara’s cheek in compassion. “War. Leave it to men to mess things up. Look at what happened to you. I wonder how many other families…Is someone expecting you at Calabra?”

“Yes,” said Anghara. That was a lie. But the woman swallowed truth with falsehood and made no distinction.

“They should have come to meet you,” she said decisively, “at least as far as Tanass Han. It’s criminal, letting a child travel by herself in these times. I’ve a good mind to ask my Rogan…”

Anghara made a mental note to get as lost as possible in Tanass Han, lest the woman ask “her Rogan” anything at all and Anghara find herself prisoner of these well-meaning people to whom meddling was in the blood. Quite aside from being found out in her lies, others might pick up the trail, and quite soon Sif’s soldiers could be paying an unwelcome visit to Rogan and his family.

She managed to escape without major trouble, from Rogan as well as other familiar faces. One night she had a narrow squeak when she resorted to her pipes in one of the han’s lesser common rooms and had to step out quickly when she recognized the skipper of the boat she had abandoned on the forest landing above Tanass Han. She waited until his boat had gone before emerging from hiding to try and find a boat to take her on to Calabra, finally trading one of Morgan’s silver florins for passage on a large cargo vessel carrying skins and furs in addition to a handful of passengers.

She was wary of attracting attention by asking for a cabin for herself, although she ached for some time alone. The old woman she was sharing with had a passion for reading fortunes, and was appallingly bad at it; she read Anghara’s palm and prophesied marriage within the year to a “nice young man with a bit of land—nothing too grand, mind, just a little plot.” There would be five children…no, six. And as for her past, Anghara was cast as one of three children, her mother was a Shaymir woman, and she had lived all her life in Bodmer Forest, this being her first trip out into the world. The old lady even had the gall to foretell shipping disaster for the captain, who threatened, entirely good-naturedly, to have her thrown off his ship at the next landing. She was a nuisance and an old fraud but she was likeable enough. Even though she snored abominably at night, at least she was a safe travelling companion who often found business—and clientele—on other parts of the ship, thus affording Anghara some of the privacy she craved. Then, at least for a brief while, she could drop her guard and relax into being herself.

They were clear of the forest by now, and after a short stretch where the wide central plains of Roisinan spilled flat as a sheet on either side of the river, the land slowly changed. First it began folding itself into gentle hills, and Anghara could see occasional emerald squares of small vineyards on the slopes. Then the hills grew steeper as the river plunged into what was almost a shallow gorge. A few stretches of the river, foaming fast and treacherous with underwater rocks, were quite tricky to negotiate.

“I told him he’d have a disaster!” cackled Anghara’s companion knowingly as she felt the boat lurch and thud against some invisible obstruction. The captain had little time for frivolity, having his hands full trying to get his boat through undamaged. It was a tense time for the crew, which could not help but spill onto the passengers, and when they came out into gentler country again, the river rolling silky and placid between low hillsides, it was as if everyone let out a collectively held breath. The captain steered his vessel into the next landing stage and decreed they would stay there that night and most of the next day.

“We’ll leave tomorrow at midday,” he said. “Take the chance to give your legs a good stretch. There are not many landings we can stop at between here and Calabra. It will be a long journey.”

Anghara’s cabin mate wrapped a knitted shawl around her head and stepped gleefully onto dry land as soon as she was given the chance.

“Don’t really like boats,” she confided in Anghara. “Never have. Unsafe things, boats. And they seem to have a nice little han here; maybe I’ll set me up in a corner and tell a few nice fortunes, that will keep me in coppers until we get to Calabra.” She patted Anghara on the arm. “You enjoy yourself. I heard one of the gents say there might be a dance later. It’s not every day they get this many new faces. You enjoy yourself.”

Anghara said she would, but stayed behind on the boat after her cabin mate had departed, staring first down the quiet river toward Calabra and then up at the dun-colored hills which embraced the few houses which had sprung up around the landing. The captain, emerging from his cabin not much later, found her standing alone on the prow of the boat.

“I was serious, take a walk on dry land,” he said to Anghara, to whom he’d taken a paternal liking on the journey. “There’s a Dance up on that hill,” he added after a moment, following her gaze up the grassy slopes. The way he said the word made it patently obvious he was not talking about the same dance as the old lady. “You’ve plenty of time to go and see it if you like. It’s probably the best-preserved one in Roisinan. I’d take you, but Gramin tells me we hit something up river and there might be a weakened strut or two in the belly of this beast. I’d better have that seen to before we go any further.”

“Thank you, I will,” said Anghara. She had not seen many true Standing Stones in her life, despite the ease with which she had “recognized” one in the pebble she had planted at Cascin. A dimple suddenly appeared on her cheek as she remembered her cabin mate’s parting words as she’d hurried to the han where she meant to make her fortune. “You’re the second person to tell me about dances since we got here. Old Selina just told me there might be one tonight in the han, the common-or-garden variety.”

“Perhaps you ought to go,” said the captain, smiling at her gently. “They’re a pleasant clan out here, and they’re said to be mean fiddlers. It might be fun for you young folk.”

She almost didn’t go to the village dance. Apart from one or two court balls, at which she had made a fleeting appearance before being bundled off into the royal nursery, and a few festivals in Cascin where she danced a simple step or two with Kieran or one of the twins, Anghara’s experience of dancing was severely limited. Still, the distant sound of spirited music which drifted across the pier toward the boat soon proved too great a temptation.

Old Selina, safely ensconced on a chair near the hearth, spotted Anghara as she sidled into the common room of the han, and waved her over; the old lady’s feet were tapping in time to the music, and her face was wreathed in a smile.

“You wouldn’t believe it, looking at me now, but I used to be quite a dancer in my day,” she said complacently. “Young men used to queue to dance with me. Why don’t you join in?”

“I’m…not sure I know how…” said Anghara. She felt an unexpected reluctance all of a sudden, and only part of it was due to the prospect of making a complete fool of herself in front of all these strange people.

“Rubbish,” said the old lady peremptorily. “Go on. You’ll soon pick it up.”

The crowd on the dance floor were involved in what was a complicated measure involving a large number of people dancing in a huge circle which seemed to wheel faster and faster as the music kept speeding up. Selina almost shoved Anghara toward the dance floor, and she staggered onto it to have the circle open up immediately and swallow her, each of her hands grabbed by dancers on either side of her without their missing a beat.

“I don’t know how to do this!” she yelled apologetically to the young man to her left as she lurched into him, thinking the circle was moving in the opposite direction. He grinned good-naturedly.

“Just do what everyone else is doing!” he called back over the music and the high-pitched whoops of other dancers across the floor.

A couple of dancers, a girl from one side of the circle and a young man from the opposite end, seemed to drop spontaneously out of the circle and gravitate into the middle where they wove a short burst of an intricate dance pattern around one another before withdrawing back into the circle. Another pair followed them; then a third. The circle spun furiously, faster and faster, then the music swirled to an abrupt crescendo and ended on a prolonged wailing note as the sound of violins was allowed to die gradually away. There was a moment of silence and then everyone began clapping and shouting their approval at the small knot of musicians who had been precariously packed together on a raised podium above the dance floor. They smiled and nodded, bobbing their heads in pleased acknowledgment.

“You did quite well,” Anghara’s neighbor said, a few decibels lower now that the music had given him a lull of relative silence, with another slow smile. “You’re from the boat, aren’t you? Bound for Calabra?”

“Yes,” said Anghara warily.

“Well, you don’t do a bad roundel for an outsider. My name’s Brem, my father owns the han. Are you from Calabra, or up country?”

“From the mountains,” said Anghara, and fought down a sudden lump that rose in her throat at this reply. She was far from the mountains now; the Gods alone knew when she would see them again. Brem’s words had invited her own name in exchange and she hesitated, if only briefly, between giving her alter ego or her true name. But caution had been bred into her too deeply by this stage. Granted, Sif must know all about Brynna Kelen by now, but it was still safer than announcing a solitary traveller who bore a royal name. “I’m Brynna.”

“They’re going to play something simpler now,” said Brem. “Will you dance with me?”

Anghara blushed violently. “I really don’t know how…”

“That’s what you said just now, and you did fine. But it’s easy, I’ll teach you. There they go, come on. Give me your hand.”

They stumbled about for a bit, but he was so nice about all her mortifying blunders she could not help but laugh at herself and by the end of the tune she was doing passably well. Better, it seemed, than one of the fiddlers, who was good enough to cover his occasional slip-ups but not entirely good enough to stop making them. He kept on wincing and offering apologetic little smiles in the general direction of the dancers; but, much like Brem with Brynna, they seemed to be taking it in good part.

“He’s been co-opted,” Brem felt impelled to explain to Anghara, defensive of the honor of his clan, as he whirled her around. “He’s not a regular member of the group, and they didn’t have time to practice before tonight. But my mother just doesn’t seem to be able to play any more. Not since…”

His face was suddenly bleak. Anghara knew that good manners mandated changing the subject, but there was something about his words that struck a cold chill of premonition into her.

“Your mother is ill?” Anghara asked carefully, keeping her voice sympathetic but neutral.

There were three of them, apparently, in this small village who were similarly afflicted—all their Sighted women. They had simply collapsed one day, fainting clean away, and they hadn’t been themselves since. Brem’s mother had walked around like a wraith for days. One of the other two had still not left her bed. And the day…the day was the same day on which Bresse had perished under the hammer of Sif’s wrath.

The echo of the tower’s dying, which Anghara had needed to smother away under a layer of practicality necessary to survive her river journey, was a familiar specter which now suddenly rose bleakly to haunt Anghara once again.
How could I? How could I come dancing? And they less than a month dead?

The vivacious spirits of a fourteen-year-old who had only just begun to find delight in her first dance faded as though they had been so much vapor. Brem’s dance partner metamorphosed in his arms from a bright-eyed, pretty young girl to someone who suddenly withdrew deep into herself, retreating into the impregnable walls of some private castle, pulling up the drawbridge behind her. Brem, bewildered and full of completely unjustified self-reproach, did his utmost to try and repair the damage, but it was a task far beyond his powers. Anghara would not dance again, and when he left her to run and bring her a mug of elderberry wine she slipped out of the hall and into the night, in desperate need of solitude and darkness.

A few whispering, giggling couples had crept outside as well, to take advantage of the cold brilliance of the full moon hanging low in the sky like a gold coin. Anghara avoided them, detouring round to the pier where her boat was tied. Within reach of the boat, hanging back in the shadows, two things made her suddenly pause in her intent to gain her cabin. One was the unmistakable figure of old Selina stepping on board. The other was the captain who, after having helped the old lady on, stood squarely in Anghara’s path, talking with a group of his crewmen and another man who, by the size of him, could only have been the vil lage smith. Anghara would have to pass by this handful of men, and quite possibly have to answer the captain’s well-meaning queries as to why she had left the dance so early. Then, in her cabin, she would have to endure Selina’s questioning until the old lady fell asleep—which, given her garrulous curiosity and the impossibility of it being satisfied by Anghara’s inadequate explanations, could prove to be uncomfortably long.

She hesitated, biting her lip, her eyes welling with tears she could not hold back. Through the sudden veil of tears the moon blurred into shapelessness, the sharp shadows it cast vanishing into trembling darkness. Turning away and blinking rapidly several times to clear her sight, Anghara found herself looking straight into the black silhouettes of the hills.