Robin Hobb - The Inheritance and Other Stories

And enemies. Sometimes she forgot that she might have enemies.

She looked at Gillam. “Is that better? Shall we go now?”

He nodded emphatically.

“The market stalls will be opening soon. Shall we go have a look?”

The boy’s eyes flew wide. A trip to market was a rare thing for both of them. They lived mostly by barter and seldom used coin. He nodded avidly, and she bid Tamman farewell. Outside, the wind was blustering, but the rain had ceased. The clouds were being pushed aside from a bright blue sky.

The market in the little town was a tiny one, not more than a dozen shops and stalls and half of them seasonal. She was able to buy a short coil of sturdy line, a long slender boning knife, and then, because there was so little left of her money and life, she now knew, was an uncertain thing, a little packet of honey drops for the boy. He’d never had candy before and could scarcely bear to put even one of the bright-colored drops into his mouth. When she finally persuaded him to try a pale green one and saw his face light with surprise at the taste of honey and mint, she folded the packet up tight and put it into the bag. “Later, you can have more,” she promised him, her mind full of possible plans.

They walked the cliff-top path home again. A quarter of the way back to the cottage, the cat suddenly appeared and trotted along at her heels alongside the boy. “Well, where have you been, Marmalade?” she asked him.

Rousing the bigger dogs. They sleep later than I thought.

“Don’t the old wives tell us to let sleeping dogs lie?” she asked him and was rewarded only by a puzzled glance from Gillam. She said nothing to the cat of what she would do and felt no further brush of a feline mind against hers. That was just as well. What she would do, she would do, and it would be her own deed.

They reached the juncture in the path where a tiny trail wound down the grassy hillside to her cottage. She stood for a short time, looking down on it. Beyond it were the fens, a tapestry of grasses and ferns in a hundred different greens. No smoke rose from her cabin chimney. The cow had taken advantage of the open gate to lead her new calves out. The chickens scratched in the dooryard. All seemed calm.

Of Pell, there was no sign. He could be in hiding. He could be sleeping in the cabin. He might still be lying in the tall meadow grass behind the byre. She sighed. “I should have been certain of him when I had the chance,” she said to no one. The cat lifted a paw and swiped it across his face, almost as if hiding a smile.

Gillam started down the path ahead of her. She called him back. She reached into the bag and gave him another honey drop, a yellow one. “You and Marmalade stay right here,” she told him. “Sit down and see how long the candy lasts if you only suck on it.” The novelty of the candy was enough to win her instant obedience. She put the little cloth bag in his hands. “When it’s all gone, try a red one. When it’s all gone, have a pink one. Suck on each one slowly. And wait for me to come back and ask you which one you liked best.” Gillam’s eyes were big as saucers at his good fortune. He found a rock jutting up in the grass by the trail and perched on it, sucking thoughtfully. The cat sat down beside him and curled his tail around his feet.

Luck.

“Thank you.” She set her pack down beside them. She took only the rope and the skinning knife and the hatchet. She walked silently down the hill. It was impossible to disguise her approach to the cabin. It was a bare, broad hillside. She carried the bared knife gleaming in her hand.

She looked for him first in the cabin, but it was still and cold as a dead thing. She searched it well, even climbing up to peer into the loft and then looking under the bed. There was nowhere else in the cabin where a grown man could hide. She went out and about her small farmstead. The chickens scattered as she walked through the scratching, pecking flock but otherwise showed no alarm. The cow was grazing peacefully, her two red calves sleeping together. Pell was not hiding in her stall.

She glanced up the hillside. Gillam still perched on his rock. She could not see Marmalade. She waved at her son, and he waved back at her. Then, knife in one hand and hatchet in the other, she went behind the cowshed.

If Eda had blessed her, the man would be dead where he had fallen. But Eda was a goddess of light and life and fertility. One did not pray to her for a convenient death. Pell was not sprawled there. He was gone, and so was his knife.

And she suddenly saw her error. She lifted her skirts and ran, suddenly sure of her mistake. And as she rounded the byre, she saw Pell striding up to her boy.

“Well, what’s that you have there, Gillam? Candy? Why don’t you show me?”

His words just reached her ears. Pell was standing over the boy. “Gillam!” she shouted, a useless warning. What would she tell him to do? Run? He could not outrun a determined man. As Gillam turned, startled at her cry, Pell scooped him up. Scooped him up and began to run with him, up the path to the cliffs.

She screamed, a useless waste of her breath, and ran. Her heart was pounding so that it filled her ears, and then suddenly she realized that thundering sound was not her heart at all. Hoofbeats. Someone was riding a horse along the cliff trail. She lifted her panicked gaze and saw three mounted men galloping heedlessly on the cliff-side path.

“Stop him!” she shouted at them, helplessly, hopelessly. “Stop him! He means to kill the boy! Help me, please. Please!”

Did they even hear her breathless cries? She kept running and became aware of a tawny little shape that was leaping after Pell, catching at his legs and then falling back and racing after him again. Gillam had found his voice and was roaring with terror even as he clutched his bag of sweets. And Pell was getting ever closer to the cliff tops.

The three men all but rode him down. She cried out in horror as Pell flung her son at them and tried to run even as the men abandoned the stamping horses to chase after him. Gillam struck the ground hard and rolled away from them, and then lay, sprawled and still in the early spring sunlight.

“Gillam,” she shrieked and ran to him. The horses, spooked by her cries, wheeled and ran back the way they had come. She cared nothing for them or for the struggling men by the cliff’s edge. She reached her boy and scooped him up.

“Gillam, Gillam, are you all right?” she cried. She sank to the earth and gathered his little body into her arms. He seemed so small.

He took a shuddering breath and then sobbed out, “I wost my candy! I dwopped my candy!”

In her joy, she laughed aloud, and then, because of the hurt in his eyes that she laughed at his tragedy, she felt in the grass and came up with the little cloth sack. “No, you didn’t lose them. See, here they are and just fine. Just fine.”

He’s gone now.

Marmalade had found them. He clambered into her lap with Gillam, and he hugged the cat tightly.

“Gone?” she asked in wonder. “Gone where?”

Gillam spoke the cat’s thought aloud. “The bigger dogs chased him over the cliff’s edge.” He glanced back toward the returning men and observed sourly, “They took too long to get here. They were nearly too late.”

She let him keep the bag of candy and told him he might look at the new calves as long as he wanted if he sat on the top of the fence and did not go near them. The cat followed her as she walked toward the cottage. The three men were standing uncomfortably by the door. The oldest man leaned on a younger companion. “You are welcome to come in,” she said quietly as she walked through them and into her cottage. They followed her, awkward and silent. “Sit down,” she invited the older man. His face was grayish with sorrow. He sat on her chair heavily and then lowered his face into his hands.