Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

In that instant of waking, I had no idea where I was. A crash of something breaking had stirred me and the muttered curses that followed took my sleep-mazed mind back to the house of my childhood but as I opened my eyes, nothing seemed familiar. Insistent daylight was entering unopposed through a door in an entirely unexpected wall. Come to that, when had I last slept with a heedlessly open bedroom door?

Wakefulness burned through the mist of sleep. I wasn’t back in Ensaimin, for all that someone outside was muttering in the accents of my childhood. This was half a world away, clear across an ocean most folk would swear was impassable. This was Vithrancel, newly named first settlement of Kellarin, a colony still finding its feet after a year of digging in its heels and setting its shoulder to hacking a livelihood out of the wilderness.

Well, whatever was going on outside, it could happen without me. I wasn’t getting out of bed for anything short of a full-blown riot. Turning over, I pulled the linen sheet up around my shoulders, pushing my cheek into the welcoming down of the pillow, plump with my spoils from the festival slaughter of geese and hens. How many more days up to my elbows in chicken guts would it take before I had a feather bed, I wondered idly.

No, it was no good; I was awake. Sighing, I sat up and brushed the hair out of my eyes to survey the little room. I’d slept in better, in stone-built inns with drugget laid to mute the scuff of boots on polished floorboards, tapestries on walls to foil stray draughts and prices just as elaborate, never mind the extra copper spent to keep the potmen and chambermaids sweet. Then again, I’d slept in worse, down-at-heel taverns where you were lucky to share a bed with strangers and picking up whatever vermin they carried was all part of the price to pay. The most wretched inn was better than a freezing night beneath a market hall’s arches, giving up my last copper to persuade a watchman to look the other way.

I went to open the shutters to the bright midmorning sun. No, I wasn’t about to complain about a warm, clean room, floor newly strewn with the first herbs of spring. The breeze was cool on my bare skin and I looked for a clean shirt among clothes and trifles piled on my fine new clothes press. Ryshad had bought it for me with three days trading his skills with plumb line, mallet and chisel to a nearby carpenter. My beloved might have decided against his father’s trade in the end but he’d not forgotten his lessons. I really should tidy up, I thought, as I sat on his old travel chest pulling on my breeches.

The bright leather of a newly bound book caught my eye among the clutter on my press. It was a collection of ancient songs that I’d found the year before, full of hints of ancient magic. In an optimistic ballad for children, there’d have been some charm within it to summon sprites to do the housework for me. I smiled, not for the first time, at the notion. On the other hand, any number of darker lyrics warned of the folly of meddling with unseen powers, lest the unwise rouse the wrath of the Eldritch Kin. I’m too old to believe in blameless strangers turning into blue-grey denizens of the shadow realms and turning on those who dishonoured them but there were other reasons for me to shun some of the more tempting promises of Artifice. If I used aetheric tricks and charms to read an opponent’s thoughts or see their throw of the runes ahead of time, I’d blunt skills that had seen me through more perils than Ryshad knew of.

Chinking noises outside drew me to the window instead. A stout woman in practical brown skirts bent to retrieve shards of earthenware scattered on the track between our house’s ramshackle vegetable garden and the neater preserve over the way. A spill of liquid darkened the earth at her feet.

“Dropped something, Zigrida?” I leant my elbows on the sill. She straightened up, looking around for who had hailed her as she brushed a hand clean on her dress. I waved.

“Livak, good morning.” A smile creased her weathered face agreeably. “It’s Deglain standing the loss.” She sniffed cautiously at the base of the pitcher she’d been stacking the other pieces in. “It smells like the rotgut that Peyt and his cronies brew.”

I frowned. “It’s not like Deg to come home drunk, not at this time of the morning.”

“Swearing fouler than a cesspit and throwing away good crocks.” Zigrida’s voice darkened with disapproval. “But he’s a mercenary when all’s said and done.”

“Not like Peyt,” I objected. Granted Deglain had come to Kellarin paid to stick his sword into whoever might wish this colony venture ill, but a year and more on he’d returned to skills learned in some forgotten youth and half the colonists simply knew him as a tinsmith.

Zigrida grunted as she tucked a wisp of grey hair beneath the linen kerchief tied around her head. “I can’t see any more pieces.”

“There aren’t many passing hooves to pick them up,” I pointed out.

“That’s not the point, my girl.” Zigrida looked up at me, shading warm brown eyes with an age-spotted and work-hardened hand that brushed the lace trimming her kerchief with a hint of frivolity. “It’s time you were out of bed, my lady sluggard. You can get a bucket of water to wash this away.” She scraped a stoutly booted foot across the damp ground before glancing towards the steadily retreating trees that fringed the settlement. “I don’t care to know what the scent of strong liquor might tempt out of that wildwood.”

I grinned. “At once, mistress.” I’ll take Zigrida’s rebukes as long as a twinkle in her eye belies her scolding and besides, doing her a favour always wins me some goodwill.

Tidying up could wait. I dragged the sheets across the mattress brushing a few stray hairs to the floor, bright auburn from my head, curled black from Ryshad’s. Our bed was a solid construction of tight-fitted wood finished with golden beeswax and strung with good hemp rope. Ryshad wasn’t about to sleep on some lumpy palliasse or a box bed folded out of a settle. Lower servants slept on such things, not men chosen for preferment out of all those swearing service to the Sieur D’Olbriot, nigh on the richest and most influential of all Tormalin’s princes.

Then I looked rather doubtfully at the sheets. The mattress was still fragrant with bedstraw gathered in the golden days of autumn but the linen wanted washing, if not today then soon. I had a nice wash house out behind the house but spending the day stoking the fire to boil the water in the copper and poking seething sheets with a stick was scant entertainment. Before I’d come here, laundry was always someone else’s concern as I’d moved from inn to inn, earning my way gambling and with the occasional less reputable venture.

I pulled the top sheet free of the blanket and dumped it on the battered chest at the foot of the bed. Ryshad stowed his possessions inside it with neatness drilled into him from ten or more years of barracks life. He deserved a clothes press like mine, I decided. Ryshad’s help had set Kerse up with a better workshop than any of the other woodsmen of the colony. They were all turning to joinery now they could spare time from shaping joists and beams. Now spring Equinox had opened the sailing seasons, Kerse needed to consider the markets for work this fine right across the countries that had once made up the Tormalin Empire. I knew quality when I saw it; in a girlhood seeming even more distant than the lands we’d left behind, I’d been a housemaid polishing up prized pieces not worked with a fifth the skill of our new bed.

But Zigrida had asked me to fetch some water. I’d better do that before thinking about laundry. I abandoned the sheet and went down the cramped stair boxed into a corner of the kitchen that took up the back half of our little cruck-framed house. Using the belt knife laid on a stool with the jerkin I’d discarded the night before, I carved a slice from the ham hanging by the chimneybreast, savouring the hint of juniper and sweet briar that had gone into the curing. Chewing, I went in search of a bucket in the tiny scullery that Ryshad had screened off from the kitchen. I ignored the flagon of small beer keeping cool in the stone sink my beloved had painstakingly crafted. If I was going to the well, I’d make do with water. Ale was never my first choice for breakfast, nor Ryshad’s, but the winter had seen supplies of wine from Tormalin exhausted.