A concurring murmur ran through the surrounding crowd.
Leaning against the door of the healer's house, Annice dragged her tongue across her lips. She hoped she had the energy left for this. "Is there a quorum of villagers present?"
Beside her, Taska finished counting. "There is."
Annice straightened. "Nadina i'Gituska, step forward."
Red-rimmed eyes welling with tears under nearly white brows, Nadina had no choice but to do exactly as she was commanded. The semicircle of villagers shifted nervously.
Holding the other woman's gaze with her own, Annice spoke the second of the two ritual phrases. "Nadina i'Gituska, you will speak only the truth." Now that the command had been given, the questions themselves could be asked in a normal voice. "What were you doing to the child, Jurgis, out on the bay this afternoon?"
Above the salt-stained collar of her jacket, Nadina's throat worked, fighting the compulsion. Finally, she sniffed and rubbed her nose on her sleeve. "I was trying to get him to Sing."
There was no mistaking the bardic emphasis. Annice blinked and wondered if she looked as astonished as everyone else. "To Sing? Why?"
"Because I'm tired of working so hard. Tired of watching her …" A weather-cracked finger jabbed toward Taska. "… bring in catch after catch while my lines run empty, and my nets tangle." Nadina tossed her hair back off her face and, unable to turn, appealed to the crowd behind her with a gesture. "Why should she
be the only one to benefit from the kigh? That's not fair, is it? So…" Her tones slid from injured to self-satisfied. "… six years ago I got me a baby off a bard who Sings water and today I took him out to Sing some fish into my nets."
"But boys never Sing until after their voices change." Annice was so startled she lost eye contact.
It didn't matter. "That's what I thought, too, but I heard him this morning. And I know when water acts like it ain't supposed to. I figured the Circle moved in my favor, seeing as how he wasn't the girl he was supposed to be. So why should I wait any longer? He can Sing all right. He just wouldn't." She ground out the last word between clenched teeth.
Feeling slightly sick, Annice rephrased the first question, "What did you do to him?"
"I shook him." Her chin went up as though she were daring anyone to deny her right. "And I shook him. He made me so angry. All he had to do was Sing and he wouldn't. Then he made this noise and the boat started to in circles and he kept saying he didn't know what I wanted, but the boat wouldn't stop…"
In memory, Annice again looked down from the cliff top at a boat making circles in the bay.
"… so I hit him, and I hit him…" Her hands were clenched on air and slammed an invisible burden up and down. "But the boat still wouldn't stop, so I thought, if he thinks so much more of the kigh than me, he can just go to the kigh."
"You threw him overboard?" This from one of the men in the crowd.
Nadina turned on him. "No! I just held him under the water. I pulled him in as soon as the boat straightened out. As soon as we started heading for shore." She was panting, moving back and forth between her neighbors. "He wouldn't Sing. I knew he could, but he wouldn't do it. And after I waited so all those years. Six years watching her bring in more fish than the rest of us combined. Then he called the kigh on me. On me. His own mother. I had to do something. Look at my hands! I almost froze my hands."
A teenaged girl stepped back, away from her. "You almost drowned your son!"
"Well, he's mine! Mine, no one else's."
"Not any more."
Taska's voice drew Nadina around. "What are you talking about, old woman? I bore him. Me. I raised him. He's mine."
Annice stepped back as Taska stepped forward.
"You do not own your children," the village Head told Nadina, her voice harsh. "Their lives are their own. By bearing them, the Circle grants you the right to guide them and to love them and raise them to be the future of us all, but nothing else. By your actions, you have proved yourself unfit for this responsibility."
"Unfit? He owes me! He wouldn't even have a life without me!"
Taska ignored her. "Do I have four witnesses from those who know them both?"
After a moment's shuffling, two men, an elderly woman, and the teenage girl who'd accused her of almost drowning her son, stepped out of the crowd.
"Nadina i'Gituska, as of this moment, we take the child Jurgis from your care."
"Witnessed." The four voices spoke in ragged but emphatic unison.
"Bard?"
"Witnessed." As the woman began to shriek profanity, Annice turned and went back into the healer's cottage. The mother wasn't her problem, but it very much sounded as though the child was. Moving slowly, and thankful for the curling driftwood banister, she climbed up the steep and narrow stairs and ducked into the other second-floor room.
It was identical to the one she'd been placed in except that the bed held a small boy and, bending over him, the oldest man she'd ever seen. "Healer Emils?"
The old man turned and squinted in her direction. "I don't know the voice," he said, his own voice a rough whisper, "so it must be the bard."
Annice stepped forward and saw the milky film over both his eyes.
He snickered, as though aware of the direction of her gaze. "Lifted the fog from any number of eyes but can't clear my own. Everything else still works, though. And why are you standing up? After that stunt you pulled, your baby needs you to rest. You know very well where the energy to control the kigh like you did comes from."
"How's Jurgis?"
"Well, he should have frozen solid, but he didn't. My guess is that those water kigh he called somehow protected him."
"How…"
"How do I know about that? How do you think? You were questioning the woman right under my window. Sit down on the edge of the bed." Clawlike fingers reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her to the bed and then pushing her down. "Have a good long look, then get back where I put you. I haven't lost a patient in… in… well, in a long time, and I'm not going to start with you. Or your baby. How do you feel?"
"Tired." She had no intention of denying it, but she needed to see the child.
The hair fanned out on the pillow was bleached a fine white-blond and against the tanned skin of his face, his brows, the same sun-kissed color, almost glowed. There were smudged circles under his eyes, but whatever else his life had been lacking, at least he seemed to have gotten enough food. Annice smiled as she recognized the line of his jaw and the unmistakable alignment of his features and wondered how six years of bards Walking the north coast had missed it. Wondered how she'd missed it when she'd walked through three years before. Her smile slipped a little at the green and purple bruise still discoloring one temple.
"Got a baby on a bard who Sang water," she murmured.
"What?" The ancient healer groped for her shoulder. "What are you talking about?"
"I know who Jurgis' father is."
"Good. Good." The clutching fingers moved on to administer an approving pat on the head. "A man should be told when his seed bears fruit."
She told him three days later, sitting on top of the cliff with the boy cradled on her lap, weaving his father's name in an amazingly complicated descant around her message. It was obvious that Jurgis had inherited the ability to Sing both water and air as the kigh no longer responded with such willingness for her alone.
When they finished, and the pale bodies had disappeared against the clouds, Jurgis pushed his head into the hollow of her throat. "What if he doesn't want me?"
"He will." Annice added just enough Voice that he couldn't doubt her, confident that Petrelis would be overjoyed to discover he had a child. The older bard was one of the finest teachers the Hall had ever had; kind and patient with the fledglings, soothing fears and bringing out the best in each of them. She couldn't think of anyone who'd be a better father.