Francesca Haig - The Map of Bones

I’d seen how she and Piper moved, and fought – their bodies fluid, not responding to their thoughts but becoming their thoughts. It was true what she’d said – There’s nothing pretty about fighting – and I knew that however striking Zoe’s and Piper’s movements, the results were the same: blood, death. Flies swarming on sticky bodies. But I still found myself admiring the certainty of their bodies as they inscribed their answers on the world with a blade.

It was past noon when we stopped.

‘Enough,’ she said, when I clumsily blocked her final parry. ‘You’re tired. That’s how stupid mistakes happen.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, as I slipped my knife back into my belt. I smiled at her.

She shrugged. ‘It’s in my interests to give you a better chance of getting yourself out of trouble, for a change.’ She was already walking away. She was a door, forever slamming shut in my face.

‘Why are you like this?’ I called after her. ‘Why do you always have to cut me down and stalk off?’

She looked back at me.

‘What do you want from me?’ she said. ‘You want me to hold your hand, and braid your hair? Have we not given you enough, me and Piper?’

I couldn’t answer. More than once, she’d proved that she was willing to risk her life to protect me. It seemed petty to complain that she didn’t also give me her friendship.

‘I didn’t mean to see your dreams,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t help it. You don’t know what it’s like, being a seer.’

‘You’re not the first seer,’ she said, and she walked away. ‘I doubt you’ll be the last.’

*

It was dawn, two days later, when the bards came. We’d made camp just a few hours before, at a spot Zoe and Piper knew. It was a forested hill overlooking the road, with a spring nearby. Since The Ringmaster’s ambush we’d been edgy, flinching at every sound. To make it worse, for two days it hadn’t stopped raining. My blanket was a sodden load, dragging my rucksack until the straps chafed at my shoulders. The rain had thinned to a drizzle when we arrived, but everything was soaked and there was no chance of a fire. Piper took the first lookout shift. He spotted them in the tentative dawn light – two travellers making their way along the main road, in the opposite direction from where we’d come. He called us over. I’d been wrapped in a blanket in the shelter of the trees, and Zoe had just returned from a hunt, two freshly-dead rabbits swinging from her belt.

The newcomers were still only small figures on the road when we heard the music. As they drew closer, through the thinning fog we could see that one of them was thrumming her fingers on the drum hanging by her side, sounding out the rhythm of their steps. The other one, a bearded man with a staff, held a mouth organ to his lips with one hand, exploring fragments of a tune as they walked.

When they reached the point where the road curved away, they broke with it, instead heading up the hill through the longer grass, towards the woods where we sheltered.

‘We need to leave,’ said Zoe, already shoving her flask back into her bag.

‘How do they know the spot?’ I asked.

‘The same way that I do,’ Piper said. ‘From travelling this road many times before. They’re bards – they’re always on the road. This is the only spring for miles – they’re heading right for it.’

‘Pack your things,’ Zoe said to me.

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘We could talk to them, at least. Tell them what we know.’

‘When are you going to learn that we need to be more cautious?’ Zoe said.

‘In case word gets out?’ I said. ‘Isn’t that what we’ve been trying to do? We’ve been trying to spread the word ever since we left the deadlands, and we’re getting nowhere.’

‘It’s one thing for word to get out about the refuges,’ Piper said. ‘Another for word to get out about us, and where we are. If it had been Zach, and not The Ringmaster, who found us the other day, we’d all be in cells by now, or worse. I’m trying to protect you, and keep us all alive. We don’t know who we can trust.’

‘You saw what happened at the refuge,’ I said. ‘And there are more people turning themselves in every day, thinking it’s a haven. We could stop them, if we could spread the word about what really happens there.’

‘And you think two strangers can do it better than us?’ Piper said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We need people who travel without raising suspicion. Who draw a crowd to hear them wherever they go. People who can make the news catch on, so it starts to spread by itself.’ An Omega bard could count on a welcome at any Omega settlement, and an Alpha bard could expect to be hosted at any Alpha village. Bards were the roaming memory of the world. They sang the stories that would otherwise be buried along with their subjects. Their songs traced the love stories of individuals, and the bloodlines of families, and the history of whole villages, towns, or regions. And they sang imaginary tales as well: great battles and fantastical happenings. They played on feast days, and at burials, and their songs were a currency accepted all over the land.

‘Nobody’s listening to us,’ I said. ‘They listen to bards. And you know how it works. Songs spread like fire, or plague.’

‘They’re not exactly positive things,’ Zoe pointed out.

‘They’re powerful things,’ I said.

Piper was watching me carefully.

‘Even if we can trust the bards, it would be a lot to ask of them,’ he said.

‘Give them the choice,’ I said.

Neither Zoe nor Piper spoke, but they’d stopped their packing. The music was drawing nearer. I looked back down the hill to the pair approaching. The bearded man wasn’t leaning on his staff; instead, he swung it loosely in front of him, back and forth, sweeping the air for obstacles. He was blind.

When they reached the edge of the woods, Piper called a greeting to them. The music stopped, the sounds of the forest suddenly loud in the new silence.

‘Who’s there?’ called the woman.

‘Fellow travellers,’ said Piper.

They stepped into the clearing. She was younger than us, her red hair plaited and reaching all the way down her back. I couldn’t see her mutation, though she was branded.

‘You heading north, to Pullman market?’ the man asked. He still held the mouth organ in one hand, the staff in the other. His eyes weren’t closed – they were missing altogether. Below the brand on his forehead, the skin stretched uninterrupted across his eye sockets. His hands had extra fingers, unruly offshoots from every knuckle, like a sprouting potato. Seven fingers, at least, on each hand.

Piper avoided his question. ‘We’re leaving tonight, when it’s dark. You’ll have the clearing to yourselves.’

The man shrugged. ‘If you’re travelling at night, then I shouldn’t be surprised you don’t want to tell us where you’re headed.’

‘You’re travelling at night, too,’ I pointed out.

‘Night and day, at the moment,’ the woman said. ‘The market starts in two days. We were delayed at Abberley when the flooding swept the bridge.’

‘And I always travel in the dark, even if the sun’s shining.’ The man gestured to his sealed eye sockets. ‘So who am I to judge you for it?’

‘Our travel’s not your business,’ said Zoe. The woman stared at her, and kept staring, taking in Zoe’s unbranded face, her Alpha body. I wondered whether my scrutiny of the bards had been so obvious.

‘True enough,’ the man said, unflustered by Zoe’s tone.

He and the woman moved to the centre of the clearing. He didn’t take her arm, but guided himself with his staff. Watching him negotiate the unseen world reminded me of how it felt to be a seer. When I’d navigated the reef, or the caves under Wyndham, my mind had been groping the air for directions, reaching out before me just as the bard’s staff did.