He dozed, as one does when sated; and woke around midnight. Astrid wasn’t abed. Silhouetted naked on a stool, she was gazing out of the little half-open window at the grey gloaming of the shortest night, which was still clear of clouds.
He watched her for a while, admiring and anticipating yet also aware that this nightwatch she was keeping held some deep meaning for her.
Presently, he slid himself out of bed. Softly he padded over to her. He could tell by Astrid’s breathing that she hoped he wouldn’t overwhelm this moment with hanky-panky. So he just hunkered down beside her. Out in town, bonfire lights were flickering. Distant noises of revelry drifted. Very likely some people would be settling old scores. Fueled by booze, the murder rate soared on this briefest night of the year.
The window faced north, away from the sky-sickle that spanned the southern horizon. From Portti, on account of the cliffs of its fjord, only the very top of that silver bridge was visible—that ring of debris from a long-since disintegrated moon that had come too close to the planet. From this window, the sickle wasn’t visible at all. Few stars pricked the luminous gloom where night and day were joining hands. The brightest body was the gas-giant world, like a tiny masthead lantern far away.
“There’s Otso,” he murmured.
Essentially the sky looked empty.
“All the stars have drowned in the sea,” he joked gently. “Us mariners like to see a few constellations.”
“I don’t.” Even though it was warm, Astrid shivered.
“The Archer and the Cow, the Harp… and the Cuckoo,” he hinted, “the Cuckoo.”
Of a sudden, she began to talk hauntedly. It was as if her tattoo was compelling her to tell the tale.
“I was at Castle Cammon, enthralled by Tycho the tyrant, when he commissioned a young astronomer called Jon Kelpo to redraw the map of the sky…”
Tycho Cammon the tyrant was notorious. Cuckoos cackled about him all over the continent.
Cammon’s realm was six or seven hundred keys away to the north-east of Portti. Thirty-odd keys further to the east of Castle Cammon was Kallio Keep, where Astrid’s dad, Lord Taito Kallio, held a small woodland domain.
Bosco has just been in bed with a minor lord’s daughter… Surely she rarely confides this to other clients at Momma Rakasta’s. Does even the Momma know?
The Kallio domain was noted for its kastanut and musktree groves, and for an unusually large number of precious ivorywood trees. The Kallios husbanded those ivorywoods on an ecologically sound basis, planting out new saplings to replace felled stock that was mainly destined for expensively crafted prestige furniture.
Some domains are huge, such as that of Tapper Kippan the Forest Lord, which includes Portti. Or Saari over in the east. Others are much smaller. The Cammon and Kallio land holdings and the others thereabouts were modest in scale. However, Ivan Cammon, Tycho’s father, had an acquisitive, predatory attitude to life. His marriage to Sophie Donner of Verinitty (just to the north) proved, as time went by, to have virtually united both domains under Cammon control. So Astrid’s dad was wary.
He was doubly and trebly wary as Ivan Cammon’s eldest son grew up.
The lad was well favored and gifted, but…
“Ukko-ukkoo,” a cuckoo would cackle, “a cocksure rooster crowed from its dunghill at young Tycho Cammon, and he bespoke it to burst itself. Feathers and flesh went flying in all directions.”
That was only the beginning. Before long Tycho was bespeaking farmers’ daughters to spread themselves for him or come home with him as his compliant toys. Woe betide any fathers or brothers who interfered.
One lad tried to intervene when Tycho called his girl away. Ruptured by Tycho’s brutal words, the boyfriend died lingeringly of peritonitis. The lass was obliged to enjoy herself pleasuring Tycho until he tired of her. A cruel streak, cruel.
Tycho’s power as a proclaimer was admirable when he used it against Unmen. Tycho’s father loved hunting fierce hervies in the woods to mount their racks of horns in his banqueting hall; but the son hunted more intelligent prey—servants of the alien snakes bent on spying and mischief and kidnap. What’s more, Tycho was soon traveling as his domain’s champion to the autumn galas in Yulistalax to pit himself against other proclaimers. Voice against voice. Sway against sway. Mana-wrestlers.
Although Tycho was handsome as well as clever and gifted, he also made abominable misuse of his talent. People began mumbling about his one minor disfigurement—a wart on his right cheek—as being his verrin’s nipple.
Verinitty, his mother’s home, had been pestered by the vicious carnivores until they were controlled by poison bait. The implication was that a verrin might have bitten Tycho’s cheek as a child, sucking on the wound and infecting him with its saliva.
“His father’s been somewhat of a check on Tycho’s excesses,” Taito Kallio told Astrid on the day when a cuckoo cried the news about the goring-to-death of Ivan Cammon by a bull hervy. “But what now—?”
Father and daughter were in Astrid’s chamber. It was the first day of June. The mullioned windows stood open, admitting a breath of musk, even though trees and riverside town were quite far below. The keep occupied a sheer little butte, a rare upthrust of rock. Access was by way of a steep winding path. Goods were usually winched upward vertically, but Astrid must have made her way up and down that path a few thousand times by now, with the result that her thighs and calves were muscular.
Tapestries of sun-dappled trees and lakes hung on the walls. At this time of year the pot-bellied stove was cold and dead, like a suit of armor for a fat dwarf. A cabinet held dozens of Pootaran wooden puzzles, which Astrid collected: artful assemblages of tiny notched rhombs and pyramids and such, in contrasting polished woods.
Astrid had recently celebrated her twenty-first birthday. Dismantled on a tray lay the pieces of a particularly complicated puzzle entirely made of ivorywood. Her dad had secretly commissioned the puzzle a whole year earlier through the Pootaran trade emporium and consulate in Landfall. Taito had supplied a block of ivorywood specially for the purpose.
“I hear a special cuckoo keeps watch on Tycho Cammon all the time,” she said.
“He’s such a source of tales, dear.”
“The same crippled cuckoo follows him everywhere, they say. Except, I suppose, when it sneaks off to pass its tattle on.”
“Now that Tycho’s the lord,” said her dad, “if he comes here I’m going to refuse to receive him. We’ll block the cliff-path. Rig deadfalls of rock. We’d better lay in more supplies than usual. We’ll simply sit up here until he goes away.”
“What about the town?”
Tycho might avenge himself for the insult.
“I know we’re responsible for their welfare down there,” agreed her dad, “but we can’t bring everyone up here for shelter, can we? I can’t face him down. I’m not a proclaimer. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”
Her dad had no mana-power. Anyone could be affected by mania, but to be able to affect other people was very much rarer. Nor was Taito assertive in a browbeating way, although he could be stubborn or subtle. Stroking his balding blond head, Astrid’s father brooded.
“If we managed to pick him off with a rifle bullet or crossbow quarrel, long distance—beyond the range of his voice—we’d have a feud on our hands, or a full-scale war. The twin-domain might gobble us up.”
“How about if we invite a proclaimer to be a permanent guest here? Pay him in ivorywood?”
“A hero in the house? Dashing and handsome, too? Trouncing Cammon, then whisking you off your feet, besotted with him?”