with a feather of smoke rising from its chimney.
‘It do be lovely up here, the long view,’ Verrarc said.
‘Someday soon, my love, I’ll be showing you a view so long that all this,’ Raena paused to wave a contemptuous hand ‘will look like a dungheap.’
‘Oh, will you now?’
‘I will. The things that I have seen, my love, did stagger my mind and my heart, just from the seeing of them. The world be a grand place, when you get yourself beyond the Rhiddaer.’
‘No doubt.’ Verrarc hesitated. ‘And just where have you been learning all these secrets?’
‘You’ll know in good time.’ She shivered and drew the cloak more tightly about her. ‘It be needful for me to consult with Lord Havoc, to see what I may be telling you.’
He looked at her sharply. Her mouth was set in a stubborn twist.
‘Let’s get back to the house,’ he said. ‘I want to see you warm, and I’ve got a few matters to attend to before the settling of the night.’
Dera had a rheum in her chest. Huddled in her cloak, she sat close to the hearth fire and sipped a mug of herb brew.
‘Gwira left me a packet of botanicals,’ Niffa said. ‘I can make more.’
Her mother merely nodded. She was a small woman, short and thin, and now she looked as frail as a child, hunched over her mug. Her once-blonde hair hung mostly grey around her lined face.
‘You be vexing yourself about our Jahdo, Mam. I can see it by the way you look at the fire.’
Dera nodded again. Niffa knelt down beside her and laid a hand on her arm.
‘I do know it in my heart that he’ll be coming home to us safe, Mam. Truly I do. I did see it, nay, I have seen it many a time in my true dreaming.’
‘Hush. You mayn’t speak about those things so plain, like.’
‘There’s naught here but us two.’
‘Still, it frightens me. And what would our townsfolk do, if they began thinking you could dream true and see deaths, too, in their faces?’
‘Well, true-spoken. I’ll hold my tongue.’
Dera sighed, then coughed so hard she spasmed. Niffa grabbed a handful of straw from the floor and held it up for her mother to spit into, then tossed the wad into the fire.
‘My thanks,’ Dera whispered. ‘And will I be here when our Jahdo comes home?’
It took Niffa a moment to understand what her mother was asking.
‘You will. I did see that as well, you laughing with us all.’
‘Good. I – here, what be making that noise?’
From outside the two women heard shouting, swearing, and a peculiar sort of hollow bumping sound. Niffa got up and hurried to the door, opened it to a blast of cold air and peered out the crack. She could just see up the narrow steep alley that led from their door to the public street on the slope above. Panting and puffing, two men were struggling to get a four-foot-high barrel of ale down the rocky track without it escaping to crush the fellow at the bottom. The one at the top she recognized as Councilman Verrarc’s servant, Harl.
‘What are you doing?’ she called out.
‘Bringing you a gift,’ Harl panted. ‘From my master. For your wedding.’
‘Less talk!’ the other man snapped. ‘Don’t let it get away from you!’
With a grunt Harl steadied his grip on the barrel. Once they had it level with the entrance, getting the barrel over the doorstep and inside required a last round of curses and a lot of banging, but finally it stood on the straw-strewn floor. Harl and his helper – Niffa recognized him as one of the blacksmith’s sons now that he was visible – wiped their sweaty faces on the sleeves of their baggy winter shirts, then stood panting for a moment.
‘Ye gods,’ Harl said. ‘The stink of ferrets in this place be like to knock a man flat!’
The blacksmith’s lad nodded his agreement. Dera wrapped the cloak tightly around her and walked over to survey the gift, almost as tall as she.
‘It be a kind thing for the councilman to remember us,’ Dera said. ‘And so generously!’
‘It be the best ale, too,’ Harl said. ‘My master was particular about that, he was, the best dark ale. He did send it this early so it could settle. He said to tell you to leave it be till the wedding day itself.’
‘We will, then.’ Dera shot Niffa a glance. ‘And there be a need on you to go thank him.’
Niffa and her family, the town ratters, lived with their ferrets in two big rooms attached to the public granary, lodgings provided them in return for keeping the rats down. The big square building stood low on the Citadel hill, while Councilman Verrarc’s fine house stood high, just below the mysterious ruins at the island’s crest. To get there Niffa panted up the steep alley to the broader, cobbled path above, then followed it as it spiralled up the hill, past the white-washed fronts of family compounds and the occasional stone bench, provided for the weary. She dodged between the militia’s armoury and a huge boulder to come out on the next street up. Here and there, twisted little pine trees grew in patches of earth or shoved their way to the sunlight from between rocks.
In the high white wall Councilman Verrarc’s outer gate stood open. Niffa walked into a square court, paved with flat reddish stones, where huge pottery tubs stood clumped together to catch rainwater. A pair of big black hounds, lying in a patch of sun, lifted their heads, sniffed at her, then thumped lazy tails. The house itself stood beyond them, a low white structure roofed in thatch. The front door sported a big brass ring. Niffa banged it on the wood, then waited, shifting from foot to foot, until it opened a bare crack. She could just see Magpie, a girl of about her own age, staring back out. Magpie had a pudgy round face, dark eyes, and a thin mouth that always hung a little open.
‘Let me in, Maggi,’ Niffa said. ‘There’s a need on me to see the councilman.’
Maggi considered, tilting her head a little.
‘Come on now, you’d had the knowing of me since we were children! Do let me in, and then fetch the councilman.’
When Magpie’s eyes narrowed, Niffa realized she’d made a mistake by linking two different tasks together. It would take the poor girl a while to sort that out, she supposed. Fortunately, a voice sounded from inside the house, and old Korla, a bent and withered woman who shuffled along in big sheepskin shoes, took over the door from her grand-daughter.
‘Ah,’ Korla said to Niffa. ‘So, you’ve come about that ale?’
‘I have. I do wish to thank your master properly for so fine a gift.’
Giggling to herself, Magpie ran off. Korla led Niffa into the councilman’s hall, a square room with a low beamed ceiling and a floor covered with braided rushes. Below each shuttered window stood a carved chest; in the middle of the room, a table with benches; at the massive hearth,
