Robin Hobb - The Inheritance and Other Stories

I left the room and went to my own chamber to pack. It did not take long. I had one set of clothes besides my own, and Grandmother’s old Trader robe of soft saffron. I hesitated before I put it in my rucksack. I had never seen her wear it. Once I had asked her about that only unused garment in her chest. She had shaken her head. “I don’t know why I kept it. It has nothing to do with my life anymore. In Bingtown, Trader families wear them when they go to the Traders’ Council to vote on Trader matters. Saffron was my family’s color, the Lantis family. But I gave all that up years ago.”

I fingered the soft wool. It was cut in an archaic style, but the wool would be warm, I told myself. Besides, I had no intention of leaving it for my cousins. Now that my grandmother was dead, her little house on the sea cliffs and the sheep pastures behind it would go to my uncle, son of my grandfather’s first wife. And I, the sole daughter of her daughter, would have to make my own way in the world. My uncle had scowled at me when I had told him last night that I had no place to go and asked his leave to stay on a week.

He replied heavily, “The old woman was dying for two years, Cerise. If, in two years, you couldn’t make a plan for your future, you won’t do it in a week. We need this house, and it’s fairly mine. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go.”

So I went, but not far. Hetta, the shepherd’s wife, took me in for the night. They were as angry with my uncle as I was, for he had already announced to them that he was raising their rent. In all the years that they had been my grandmother’s tenants, she had never raised their rent. Hetta was older than I, but that had never kept us from being good friends. She had two small children and was big with her third. She was glad to offer me a bed by the fire and a hot supper in exchange for help with her chores, “for as long as you want.” I tidied the house as we talked; she was relieved to sit down and put her feet up while she put the last stitches into a quilt. I showed her both my ring and my pendant and chain. She exclaimed at the sight of the pendant and pushed it away from her.

“The chain will bring you some coin, and maybe the empty ring. But that pendant is an evil thing. I’d get rid of it if I were you. Throw it in the sea. It’s wizardwood, the stuff a liveship is made from. I wouldn’t wear it next to my skin for the world.”

I picked up the pendant and looked at it more closely. In the candlelight, I could see faint colors on it, as if it had once been painted but had faded. The grain of the wood seemed finer, the features of the face more distinct than I recalled. “Why is it evil?” I demanded of Hetta. “Liveships aren’t evil. Their figureheads come to life and talk and guide the boat on its way. They’re magic, but I’ve never heard them called evil.”

Hetta shook her head stubbornly. “It’s Rain Wild magic, and all know no good ever came down the Rain Wild River. A lot of folk say that that’s where the Blood Plague came from. Leave magic like that to those Trader folk who are born to it. It’s not for you and me. It’s bound to bring you bad luck, Cerise, same as it brought your grandmother. Get rid of it.”

“She came from Trader stock,” I reply stoutly. “Maybe that’s how it came to Grandma. Maybe she inherited from the days when we were Traders.”

Hetta pursed her mouth in disapproval as I put the chain back around my neck. I heard Hetta’s husband at the door and hastily slipped the pendant inside my shirt again. I’d always liked Hetta, but her husband made me edgy.

Tonight was no exception. He grinned to see me there and grinned broader when Hetta said she’d invited me to stay the night. “You’re always welcome here, Cerise, for as long as you want to stay. There’s many a wifely chore that Hetta hasn’t been able to do for a time. You could take them on for room and board here.”

I smiled stiffly as I shook my head. “Thank you all the same, but I think I need to find a future for myself. I think I’ll go to Bingtown and see what work I can find there.”

“Bingtown!” Hetta was horrified. “That den of vice? Stay in the country, girl, where folks have hearts. No one will treat you well in the city.”

“Stay,” her husband urged me. His eyes decided me as he declared, “Live here, and I’ll treat you just like one of my own.”

And that night, he was as good as his word. As I slept on the hearth, I heard the scuff of his big bare feet as he came into the room. His children slept in the loft, and Hetta in their small bedchamber. In the past, he had done no more than stroke my buttock as I passed him, or casually brush my breast with the back of his hand as he reached past me, as if it were an accident. But I had never slept the night in his cottage. I smelled his sweat as he hunkered down beside me. “Cerise?” he whispered in the darkness. I kept my eyes shut and pretended to be asleep. My heart was hammering as I felt him lift the corner of the blanket Hetta had given me. His big hand came to rest on the angle of my neck. I gritted my teeth but could do no more than that. Useless to resist. Hetta and the children might wake, and then what would I say? I tried to be as stoic as my long-enduring grandmother. Let him touch me. If I refused to wake, surely he would leave me alone.

“Cerise, honey,” he whispered again, inching his fingers along my flesh.

“Faithless man!” a whisper answered him. Every muscle in my body tightened, for it seemed to come from my own throat. “Touch me, and I rake your face with scratches that Hetta won’t ignore.”

He jerked his hand back from me as if scalded, so startled that he sat down hard on the floor behind me. I lay still, frozen in silent terror.

“And that’s how you’d pay back my hospitality, is it? Go to Bingtown, then, you little baggage. There the men will take what they want of you, and not offer you a roof nor a bed in exchange for it.”

I said nothing, fearing his words were true. I heard him get to his feet and then shuffle back to his marriage bed. I lay still and sleepless the rest of the night, trying to pretend that I had said those words. The pendant lay against my skin like a cold toad; I feared to touch it to remove it.

I left the next morning, though Hetta near wept as she urged me to stay. All my possessions still made a light load. Bingtown was only two days away by foot, but even so, I’d only been there twice in my life. Both times, I had gone with my parents. My father had carried me sometimes on his shoulder, and my mother had cooked food for us at night. But they were both long gone. Now I walked the road alone, and my heart pounded fearfully at the sight of every passing traveler. Even when I was alone, fear rode with me, dangling from the necklace about my neck.

That night I left the road, to unroll my blanket in the lee of some rocks. There were no trees for shelter, no friendly nearby stream, only a hillside of lichen-sided boulders and scrubby brush. Hetta had given me a little sack of meal cakes to last me on my way. I was too frightened of thieves to build a fire that might draw them, so as the westering sun stole the colors from the day, I huddled in my blanket and nibbled on one of my meal cakes.

“A fine beginning to my new life,” I muttered when the last dry crumbs of the cake were gone.

“No worse than what other women of your line have faced,” whispered a voice. It came from my shirtfront. In an instant, I had snatched off chain and pendant and flung it from me. It caught on a bush and hung there, silver chain glinting in the last of the sunset. The dangling pendant came to rest facing me. Even in the fading light, I could see that it had taken on lifelike colors. It raised tiny eyebrows at me in disdain. “It’s a foolish choice you’re making, girl,” it warned me. “Throw me away, and you throw away your inheritance. Just as your grandmother did.”