Errant, Volume Two, page 3
The answer to how Charm had paid for two cloaks had to be theft or singing mortifying songs about Aspen. So they paused on the road in silence while Aspen retrieved her scissors and made two careful, vertical cuts in Sky’s new cloak.
Sky’s healthy wing stretched upward, a red spray of feathers catching the winter light. His injured wing stayed tucked close, splinted as best Aspen could with the limited materials and knowledge she had at the Blooming Rose.
When Aspen traveled, either she was employed as someone’s guard, which meant very little conversation, or she was alone, which meant silence interrupted by the occasional murmur to Mouse. Her brief few weeks accompanying Charm’s theater troupe had been loud and cheerful. There had been so many people wandering among the slow-rolling wagons, shouting back and forth to each other, or sometimes singing, that Aspen’s participation hadn’t been necessary. This was different. There were only three of them. Charm and Sky kept up pleasant chatter with only short lulls in between. Aspen worried that she ought to say more, but the two of them seemed to have no trouble without her.
“What’s your village called again?”
As before, the answer was a whistle so long Aspen couldn’t have reproduced it if her life were on the line.
“Does that, um, have a translation?” Charm asked.
Sky cocked his head to the side and then said, “Two Crooked Pines Pointing at the Bald Rock Face to the South.”
“A lovely and helpfully descriptive name. Who should we look for first when we bring you back to your people?” Charm asked.
“The One Whose Feathers Shine Blue in the Moonlight.”
“Who’s that?”
“Uh.” Sky whistled a phrase. “The person who made sure I didn’t fall out of the nest when I was a baby?”
“Mom or dad?”
“No, that’s for girls and boys. The One Whose Feathers Shine Blue in the Moonlight isn’t a girl or a boy,” Sky said.
“Parent,” Charm said. “Tell me about who else is in your family.”
“My aunt is The One Who Drops onto Prey Like a Stone. She’s the best hunter and the most fun. She won’t like you, though. She doesn’t like walkers.”
Unfazed, Charm asked, “Why not?”
Sky scrunched up his face. “I don’t know. It’s stupid grown-up stuff about feathers. My parent said only young people with no kids care about feathers more than they care about being warm in the winter. But that made The One Who Drops onto Prey Like a Stone really mad. She said the Ancients don’t want us to give their gifts to walkers. The two of them had a big fight and I hated it so I flew off.”
“Is that when you got hurt?”
He nodded.
“Well, all we can do is try to get you back to them. I’m sure you can talk some sense into them,” Charm said. “Are there other kids in Two Crooked Pines Pointing at the Bald Rock Face to the South? Can you tell me about them?”
He could, as it turned out. Aspen let that wash over her, thinking instead about stupid grown-up stuff about feathers. Sky’s parent and aunt seemed to be in conflict over a question of trade with outsiders, most likely People of the Earth.
As Sky and Charm entered their second hour of Charm’s extensive interview about the history and personality of every person in Sky’s enclave, Aspen heard voices in the woods.
She shushed Charm and Sky, stopped, and scanned the trees.
Two people emerged, dragging a large tangle of net and wooden poles between them. They were grumbling and arguing about something.
Behind her, Sky shrieked like he’d been shot.
Aspen whirled around, but he was unharmed. The scream continued. His uninjured wing was spread all the way out, feathers quivering with rage while he howled. Charm covered her ears. The kid’s parent naming him “The One Whose Scream Echoes Across the Sky” began to make more sense.
Sky pointed one hand at the trap. “That’s how I hurt my wing!”
“Hunters,” Aspen said to Charm. “Keep him with you.”
Charm settled a hand on his shoulder. Aspen approached the hunters.
“An ohla trap,” she said. “Did you know they sometimes catch Wind children instead?”
“Yeah, their feathers sell for even more,” said one, baring their teeth. The other elbowed them in the gut.
Aspen had only wanted to warn them of the damage they were doing, but since they already knew, she strode forward, grabbed the long bar holding one end of the net, cracked them in the head with it one after the other.
The hunter who’d confessed the atrocity was bleeding from a cut on their temple. “Bitch, you can’t just—”
“This is my land,” the second one said. Aspen didn’t give a shit about land ownership, but as a rule, People of the Earth—or at least, Falland law—did. They clearly expected this statement, which was probably a lie, to cow her. “I can hunt what I want.”
“Ohlas, yes,” she said. “People, no.”
Aspen took hold of one of the pieces of wood in the trap, stepped on the center, and pulled until it snapped and the net tore free. She did it a second time and then tossed the broken remains aside. That left her brandishing one broken piece of wood. She considered it.
“Aspen!” Charm called. She sounded near tears. “Please don’t kill those people, Aspen, I don’t want to dig any more graves!”
Charm hadn’t actually done any digging on the last grave, but since the bleeding hunter quailed and grabbed the more belligerent hunter’s arm to hold them back, Aspen didn’t correct the record. She dropped the piece of wood at her feet.
“I have places to be,” she said, giving them a hard stare and resting a hand on her sword hilt. “You got lucky today.”
She stalked back to the road and took off with Charm and Sky, keeping her eye on the hunters as they receded into the distance.
“Don’t want to dig any more graves, huh,” Aspen said.
“It’s so hard to get the dirt out of my fingernails afterward,” Charm said. Astride Ruby, she examined her hand like she might find fresh grave soil in her cuticles.
Aspen bit back a smile.
“Do you really kill people?” Sky asked, tugging Aspen’s cloak.
“Sometimes,” Aspen said. “I try not to, though.”
He whistled. The long, up-and-down call didn’t sound like anything Aspen’s throat could do. “The One Who Breaks Traps with Righteous Ferocity,” he said. “That’s you.”
“I sort of used my foot—”
“Do I get a name?” Charm asked.
Sky whistled again. “The One Who Made Me Wear Shoes.”
“So your toes don’t freeze off, you ungrateful lout.”
He produced a different call. “The One Who Cries False Tears.”
“They were very convincing,” she said. “And nobody got murdered, which I count as a success, unlike you two bloodthirsty ghouls.”
Another whistle.
“That one sounded like Aspen’s,” Charm said, displaying an ear for music that Aspen couldn’t imagine possessing. “What does it mean?”
“The One Who Stares at the One Who Breaks Traps with Righteous Fury,” Sky said.
Charm burst out laughing and Aspen said, “I’m sure we can come up with something else.”
“No, no, I like that one,” Charm said. “I’ll take it.”
3
That night they stopped at a tavern. It was a dim little place redolent of smoke and sweat, but the crowd hummed with excitement as Charm stood by the hearth and tuned her guitar.
Aspen and Sky had taken the farthest possible table. Sky spared some attention for Charm despite the fact that there was another bowl of stew in front of him, so Charm counted that as high praise. Aspen rested her elbows on the table and tented her hands over her face.
Every now and then, she peeked.
Probably because Charm had changed out of her trousers and into her yellow dress again. Though, if Charm wasn’t mistaken, Aspen had also liked the trousers. Not enough to do anything about it, but that was Aspen for you.
Charm strummed the guitar idly and began a traditional Earth song about lost love and killing frosts. Her indifference to the song showed in her performance, but she persevered. Last night Aspen had asked her not to sing her ballad.
Charm would swear up and down that she’d written that song to tease Aspen, but she’d been on the road for several nights by herself before meeting Aspen in Orcester, and she’d sung it then too. She was developing something of an earnest attachment to it. Aspen had looked terrifying during that fight. Powerful. Deadly. And yet she was a tragic figure, skilled at violence but full of remorse. Charm wasn’t faking her admiration or her sorrow.
This was good, because genuine feeling always improved performances, and Charm wanted adoration and money, but also bad, because Aspen didn’t like the song.
Charm didn’t want to fall in love with Aspen if Aspen wasn’t going to love her back.
No. Wait. Charm didn’t want to fall in love at all. Aspen’s feelings had nothing to do with it.
Short of breath, she couldn’t hold the last note of the song quite long enough. Embarrassing.
No one in the crowd noticed the mistake. They applauded in the wild way that usually made Charm feel alive. If they thought that boring traditional Earth song was worth cheering, they’d pass out when they heard Charm’s ballad about Aspen.
Which Charm wasn’t going to sing. Because Aspen had asked her not to. Or whatever.
“You didn’t sing the song,” Aspen said as they mounted the steps to the two rooms Charm had booked.
“Oh, did you miss it?” Charm asked.
Aspen would never, ever admit it.
“What song?” Sky asked.
“I wrote a song about how courageous and strong Aspen is,” Charm said. “Aspen doesn’t like it.”
“Is it about her breaking traps?”
“No, but you’ve got the idea,” Charm said. “There are swords in it.”
“I love swords!”
“Really? But your People don’t use swords, just bows, right?” Charm asked.
“It’s been a long day and we all need sleep,” Aspen interrupted before Charm could start either another concert or another interview. “Sky, we got you a room to yourself.”
This had been astronomically expensive, but Charm had been the one paying and, in her words, she refused to sleep in a chair again if there were perfectly good beds available. The three of them were probably in for some nights outside on the ground, so Aspen had allowed the extravagance. She didn’t mind sleeping in a chair.
“I’m not sleepy,” Sky said. “I want to hear the song.”
“Too bad,” Charm said, guiding Sky through the door and toward the bed in the center of his room. “Aspen said no and her word is law.”
Aspen snorted.
“But tomorrow I can hear the song, right?”
“I don’t know, how many mean names are you gonna call me?” Charm asked. She crouched and began to take his boots off.
“None! None, I swear!” Sky said. “Can I hear the song?”
“Only if Aspen says so,” Charm said. “We don’t want to hurt her feelings.”
Sky turned his huge, dark eyes on Aspen. “The song hurts your feelings?”
“No,” Aspen said quickly. “The song is very nice. It’s just… I don’t… um. I’m… shy?”
Still crouched on the floor at Sky’s feet, Charm turned to Aspen with an expression like she’d just stumbled upon a tiny kitten sleeping under a bush. People didn’t usually look at Aspen that way—she tended to inspire suspicion and a healthy dose of fear—and she didn’t know what to do about it.
Charm eventually coaxed Sky to sleep. They retreated to the adjacent room. Aspen hesitated as she shut the door. “You think he’ll be okay over there? You’re sure it’s safe?”
“You keep using that word,” Charm said, yawning. She set her candle on the small table beside the bed. “The tavern could burn down and we could all die. I don’t know, Aspen. You’re right here and you’ll leap up with a sword if he does his little bird shriek again.”
Aspen grimaced. “It wasn’t little.”
“The kid’s nothing but wings and lungs.” Charm bent to pull her boots off. Her luscious brown breasts tipped forward, perilously close to overflowing her bodice.
Aspen studied the already latched door with all the concentration she could muster, which was none. Behind her, she heard rustling and a satisfied sigh as Charm sat on the bed and unlaced her bodice. That whisper would be the sound of her skirts hitting the floor. That hiss, the sound of her pulling the sheets over her body. She’d be in her shift. Was she wearing stockings? Were her feet cold?
“You gonna stand by the door all night?”
“There’s a chair,” Aspen said. It was safe to face Charm now that she was under the blankets, so Aspen did. Unfortunately, she was confronted with Charm in a soft bed, her curls tied up in a silk scarf and her face lit by candlelight.
“There’s also a featherbed,” Charm said. “With me in it.”
“Charm.”
“I don’t understand, Aspen. We huddled for warmth in the woods. I know you crawled into my bed back when we were still with the troupe. How is this different?”
I had a moment of weakness would be a cruel thing to say. So would I never actually thought you’d come find me on the road. Aspen said, “You were distressed that night.”
“As I recall, I’d recovered pretty well by that point. But if distress is what it takes, very well. I’m not going to kill another person by accident, so you’ll just have to trust me that your absence from my bed puts me in deep distress.”
“No false tears to prove it?”
“They wouldn’t be false,” Charm said. “They’d be genuine tears of frustration over how stubborn you are. It’s the fifth day of Frost Moon, Aspen, Hearth God’s toes, it’s cold. There is a featherbed big enough for two people. You spent all day walking—and fighting. I swear on my life that I will not do anything you don’t specifically ask me to do. What could you possibly have to be afraid of? Lie down.”
The yearning—whether it was for the bed, or Charm, or both—in Aspen’s chest could have choked her. But she couldn’t surrender. If she said yes tonight, they’d have this conversation every night for the rest of their time on the road, until they didn’t have it because Charm had won the war. By that point, it would be far too late for Aspen and her poor, weak, soft heart. She’d have no defenses left when Charm abandoned her for the next novelty. Aspen would be left alone with the knowledge of what it was like to hold Charm close in a featherbed.
You can’t miss what you’ve never had, she told herself and felt like a liar.
But she’d let happiness get the better of her once before. She’d loved the Scale, Integrity’s strange little community, and then he’d died and she’d lost everything.
“I’ll be fine in the chair,” Aspen said.
Charm blew out the candle with a huff.
Aspen settled into the chair. It was, in all respects, unlike a featherbed.
“Aspen,” Charm said softly. Aspen braced for more pleading. “The song doesn’t hurt your feelings, right?”
“No,” Aspen said. “The song doesn’t hurt my feelings.”
It was true, but not truthful. The song, in all its agonizingly public sincerity, made her imagine what it would be like if Charm was falling in love with her.
If Aspen heard it again, she might fall for it, too.
They followed the Northern Ain River for the better part of two days before Aspen guided them off the road and onto a small game trail. They traveled single file now, even the horses. The path had no distinctive markers, but Aspen knew the way. She’d navigated it delirious with blood loss and limping with a busted arm. It was odd to do it completely healthy.
They camped among the trees. Aspen scouted for traps at Sky’s insistence, but the poachers knew better than to make themselves comfortable here on the edge of the Silverglade. Aspen’s people were known to protect their territory. She didn’t want to venture any deeper into Wood lands, either.
In the morning, they wound their way through the trees and thick underbrush until the foliage thinned out. There was a pleasant little clearing, and Aspen stopped and pulled a snack out of her bag for Sky. He happily munched on jerky.
Charm wasn’t so easily distracted. “You’re leaving us,” she said flatly.
“I’m scouting ahead,” Aspen corrected. Charm was a gifted actor, and she could weave the most incredible stories. But it wasn’t always castles and princesses and dragons. Sometimes she made worst case scenarios. Aspen wasn’t abandoning them. “I won’t be gone long. Ruby will protect you.” She patted Ruby’s flank and then gave Mouse equal attention. “And if you’re worried, Mouse knows how to find me.”
Aspen wasn’t concerned with traps, not this close to Tescui’s home, but she was concerned about the woman herself. Tescui was withdrawn on a good day, and grumpy on a bad one. Aspen appreciated a person who knew how to cultivate silence, but it wasn’t in Charm or Sky’s nature.
She knocked on Tescui’s door three times in quick succession, waited for Tescui to shout “I’m busy, go away,” and then knocked twice again.
There was a long pause and then the scrape of a wooden chair against the floor as Tescui got up. At this time of day, she’d likely been seated at the kitchen table. If Aspen thought Charm’s patience would hold out, she’d have waited for Tescui to finish eating. She was always more irritable when a meal had been interrupted.
Tescui threw the door open. She was unchanged, at least to Aspen’s eyes. No doubt Tescui would catch her up on all the new wrinkles and aches and white hairs, but Aspen couldn’t see any of it.
Most prominent on Tescui’s face was her scowl. “This isn’t an emergency. You can wait until I’ve finished my tea.”
“It isn’t an emergency,” Aspen agreed, “but I’m also not here for me.”
Tescui leaned out of the doorway, then pulled back inside her house, suspicious. “I don’t see anyone else.”
