"She said I could come and go as I please, Mother. And it's only a day's ride. I'll be back and forth as often as you like. I'll ask him what he wants and needs, and you can send it back with me."
She tossed a pair of boots on the bed, sending two pillows bouncing onto the floor. "You know this has nothing to do with tea or boots."
"I know."
I kissed her and left her in Mistress Aimee's charge. Aimee would need every bit of her cheer and patience to put up with her.
To venture out alone in Avonar felt awkward and conspicuous, so I had asked Paulo to ride along with me, feeling I needed his good eyes and ears to watch my back. If anyone recognized me, matters could get very unpleasant. No one could tell by looking that Paulo was not Dar'Nethi. But if anyone did happen to discover it, we could always say he was a former Drudge, freed by the death of the Lords.
He agreed to go, of course, and we set out with as good spirits as fine weather and excellent horses can lend to a dismal journey. Once we had passed through the gates of Avonar and into the rolling countryside of the Vales, I at least felt that I could breathe again. But the farther we traveled, the more morose Paulo looked. Every time we rounded another bend in the road, he heaved a huge sigh.
"You can go back if you want," I said, after the first hour of it. "But I thought after so many days of inactivity, you might want to get away. Mistress Aimee's house isn't very lively, and when she isn't being excessively hospitable, or excessively cheerful, she is excessively quiet. Worse than me."
He popped his head up, scowling. "She's not at all. Not unpleasantly so. Only refined. And with Master Karon so ill, she wasn't going to—" He caught my look then, but couldn't bring himself to leave the lady undefended. "She's about perfect." Then he nudged, his mount to a brisk walk, as if riding ahead would punish my teasing. But I, in turn, spurred my horse deep and left him eating dust.
"Damnable belly-crawling worm-eater!" He raced me down the road until our judgment demanded we slow to spare the horses for the rest of the journey. It was the best thing we ever did together, to ride hard enough we could hear nothing but the roar of the wind and the chugging breath of our mounts, and could think of nothing but staying in the saddle, leaving every fear and worry subservient to speed and sweat and the dust of the road.
We arrived in the village of Gaelie near sunset. The houses and shops were tucked into the heavy growth of trees at the lower end of Grithna Vale as if they were shy of each other. It was a tidy place, everything neat and trimmed and freshly painted, unlike the Bounded, where the Singlars' tower houses were very like the people who lived in them, awkward and lopsided for the most part, and were never the same from one day to the next. Our houses grew, and though most were ugly, every once in a while, on some particular day, you might see a cornice or a window or a section of wall that was extraordinarily pleasing.
Gaelie was large enough to support a modest guesthouse frequented by the families of those in D'Sanya's hospice. The proprietor was a stumpy woman with a face like a granite cliff. Though I was more facile with the Dar'Nethi language, Paulo never seemed to need all that many words. He arranged for a room and a meal without any trouble.
The two of us spent the evening in the bustling common room, hoping to pick up some gossip about the Lady D'Sanya, but there was little to be had. A handful of local fellows pursued a serious conversation about weather working that I might have been interested in had the complex sorcery involved not required immense reserves of magical power. The weather in the Bounded was dreadful and seemed to be getting worse this year. But I only used what power grew in me naturally. Power-gathering carried risks I was not willing to invite.
Across the common room, a large family was celebrating a grandmother's birthday with loud toasts and speeches and much joking back and forth. They quieted only when one of them, a plain, blowsy woman whose fleshy body seemed anxious to escape her clothes, began to sing about sailing ships. I groaned inwardly. The woman's voice was wavering and thin, and it was obvious that her saga was to be a long one.
People settled into their chairs, lit pipes, and let their eyelids droop. Faces took on a look of contentment, even awe, that seemed entirely unwarranted by the talent of the performer. But then, I wondered. . . . My father had told me of Dar'Nethi Singers—his mother had been one of them—but I'd never heard one for my self. He'd said you had to close your eyes. And so I
did
"Close your eyes," I said, after only a moment, slamming my hand on Paulo's arm as he was digging his knife into a plate of mutton and mushrooms.
"You could come up four-fingered doing that," he said, his mouth already full and his knife heading back to the mutton.
"No, you need to experience this. Close your eyes." I closed my own again . . .
. . . and the blustering wind riffled my hair, and the white sails snapped and billowed above my head, sharply outlined against a cloudless blue sky. One of my hands gripped the rough, damp hemp of the bow lines, the other the polished rail. With a wet, booming crash, the bow dipped into a deep trough, and I shivered when the salt spray wet my thin shirt and runnels crept into my boots. . . .
"Cripes!" When I looked again, Paulo's hand was suspended in midair, a mushroom dangling from his knife dripping thick gravy on the table. His mouth hung open for a moment, until he blinked and lowered his hand, staring first at the Singer and then at me. "That's damned marvelous. Can you do that?"
"Certainly not. It's one of the Hundred Talents." Which meant that only those born to it, as I was born to soul weaving, possessed the skill. And even if singing was your primary talent, surely you had to have some reservoir of memory … of decent things … of beauty … to make such a vision. That would eliminate me. I sawed off a piece of the stringy mutton, watching the face of the blowsy woman as she sang. Her expression shifted subtly: shadowed, then light again, worried, then peaceful, changeable as I had read about the sea.
"There's nobody in this whole blasted world that's just ordinary," Paulo mumbled. "Singers. Soul Weaver. Horsemasters. Of all things . . ." He dug the point of his knife into the table.
"Don't you start that. She'll see what she needs to see. Just . . . when you go back to Avonar, talk to her. Tell her about all the things you do in the Bounded. No one in this world can do half the things you can. Don't think you have to race right back here as if I can't get my feet in my boots without you."
A noisy party burst through the door, informing the proprietor that they were Gardeners and Tree Delvers returning to Avonar from the borders of the Wastes. As the Singer continued her performance at one end of the room, the newcomers settled around a table, grumbling at the difficulties they'd experienced in getting their latest project to take hold. A man with a beard down to his waist joked about harvesting a bucket of Lady D'Sanya's tears to set their trees growing.
A few other people lingered in the corners: a slight, dark-haired youth huddled over a bowl of soup at the small table crammed up next the stairs, an old man and a young couple with their heads bent over ranks of brightly painted cards laid out on the table between them.