back to her nest and tucked it safely away. Some ferrets were worse than magpies, stealing shiny things to wad up with rags and bits of old leather into a treasure-ball. They liked socks, too, and stole belt buckles if you didn’t watch them, dragging them belt and all into their nests.
As promised, his parents came home not long after, bent under their burdens of caged ferrets and damp traps. Dark-haired Lael, going grey in his beard and moustaches, was a tall man, built like a blacksmith, or so everyone said, while blonde Dera was a mere wisp of a woman even now, after she’d borne three healthy children and two that had died in infancy. Yet somehow, when she got in one of her rages, no one thought of her as slight or frail, and her blue eyes always snapped with some new passion or other.
‘Back, are you?’ Lael said with a nod at Jahdo. ‘Help me with the weasels.’
They carried the cages into the bedroom and opened them one at a time, grabbing each ferret and slipping off its tiny leather hood. As much as they hated the hoods, the ferrets always seemed to hate having them off even more, twisting round and grunting in your lap. For creatures that weighed no more than five pounds at the absolute most, they could be surprisingly strong. Jahdo got the first pair unhooded easily enough, but their biggest hob, Ambo, was always a battle, a frantic wiggle of pushing paws.
‘Now hold still!’ Jahdo snapped. ‘I do know you do hate it, but there’s naught I can do about it! Here, just let me get the knot undone. It’s needful for you to wear them, you know. What if you ate a big meal and then fell asleep in the walls? We’d never get you back, and you’d get eaten yourself by one of the dog packs or suchlike. Now hold still! There! Ye gods!’
Free at last Ambo shook his sable length and chittered, pausing to rub himself on Jahdo’s arm, all affection now that his work day was over. He backed up for a running start, then leapt and pranced, jigging round Jahdo’s ankles. When the boy could finally catch him, he dumped Ambo into the common pen, where the ferret began rummaging round in the straw on some weaselly concern. Dera came in with clean water in a big pottery dish and a wooden bowl of scraps of jerky. She set them down inside the common pen, then laid down some fine chopped meat for Tek-tek.
‘Food for you later,’ she announced to Jahdo.
‘Is Gwira still here, Mam?’
‘She is. Why? Don’t you feel well?’
‘Naught like that. I just did wonder.’
‘Well, then, don’t stand in the straw like a lump! Come out and see for yourself.’
Jahdo followed her out to find his elder brother home, sitting at the far end of the big table and sharing a tankard of beer with Lael. The eldest of the three and almost a man, really, Kiel was a handsome boy, with yellow hair like their mother’s, and almost as tall as their father, but slender, with unusually long and delicate fingers as well. At the nearer end of the table, the herbwoman stood, picking over the herbs Jahdo had brought back.
‘Be those herbs good?’ he asked.
‘Perfectly fine, indeed,’ Gwira said.
The herbwoman stayed to dinner that night, sitting down at the end of the table next to Dera and across from Niffa, where they could all gossip over their sauced pork and bread about possible husbands, while Lael mostly listened, voicing only the occasional concerned opinion about one suitor or another. Kiel and Jahdo pretended indifference, but at the same time, they said not one word to each other, either, lest they miss something. As the second oldest person in Cerr Cawnen, Gwira knew a good bit about most everyone.
‘Well now, with your pretty face,’ the old woman said at last, ‘you might nock an arrow for high-flying game, young Niffa. Councilman Verrarc’s been known to stop by here for a word or two on occasion.’
‘He does come to see Mam, and I’d not be marrying him if he were the last man left alive under the moon.’
Although Niffa spoke quietly, cold steel rang in her voice.
‘I doubt me if he’d marry a ratter, love,’ Dera broke in. ‘So don’t you worry.’
‘Beauty’s bettered a lass’s fortune before this.’ Gwira paused to hack a bit of gristle with her table dagger. ‘Why do you hold him in disdain, lass?’
‘He’s like reaching into a pond and touching a big old slimy newt. I hate him.’
Dera and Lael both raised an eyebrow at this outburst. Niffa buried her nose in her cup of watered ale.
‘Well, there was that scandal,’ Gwira said. ‘Him and that Raena woman, the chief speaker’s wife from over in Penli.’
‘That near cost us the alliance, it did,’ Lael said. ‘A lot of us might not vote for the young cub again, I tell you, after that botch.’
‘Worse for her, it were,’ Gwira broke in. ‘Her husband did put her aside, didn’t he? Who knows what happened to the poor woman after that?’
‘If the young cub did want her as much as all that,’ Lael growled, ‘he might have married her decently when he had the chance.’
‘I hear Raena did go back to her people in the north in shame.’ Dera turned thoughtful. ‘But I don’t know. It takes two to twist a rope, I always say, and there was somewhat about that woman I never did like. I doubt me if she were but an innocent little chick to Verro’s fox, like.’
‘Um, well, mayhap.’ Gwira pursed her lips. ‘Our Niffa might not be able to do better when it come to coin and calling, but there’s no doubt about it, she can do much better when it come to character. I’ll be putting some thought into this, over the next few days, like.’
‘Think of Demet,’ Niffa mumbled. ‘The weaver’s second son.’
Everyone laughed, relaxing. Gwira nodded slowly.
‘Not a bad choice he’d be. Good steady man, his father, and prosperous, too.’
Jahdo laid his spoon down in his bowl. All this talk of Councilman Verrarc had made him feel sick to his stomach, and cold all over, as well. He should tell Gwira how he felt, he knew, should tell her about – about what? There was some incident he wanted to tell her, just because she was old and wiser than anyone else in town. Something about some event out in the meadow. Hadn’t something scary happened? Yet he couldn’t quite remember what it was, and the moment passed beyond returning.
Yet, not two days later, the boy recovered a brief glimmering of the memory, though not enough to save him. Early on that particular morning, Dera sent Jahdo over to town to claim some eggs and meat that one of the townsfolk owed them.
‘Your Da be across, too, love,’ she said. ‘See if you can find him when you’re done.’
Jahdo had rowed about halfway across the lake, his back turned to his destination, of course, when he saw the ceremonial barge pushing off from Citadel and heading his way. With a few quick strokes he moved off its course and rested at his oars while the squat barge slipped past, painted all silver and red, riding low in the water. In the middle stood a false mast to display the yellow and green banners of Cerr Cawnen, which hung lazily in the warm summer air. At the bow clustered a group of men in rich clothing, embroidered linen shirts belted over knee-length trousers, the common style in this part of the world, with short cloaks thrown back from their shoulders. Jewels and gold winked in the rising
