The Windsingers. Megan Lindholm
of oxen, and made a quick jump away from a yellow-toothed nag that snapped at him. The teamster laughed, baring teeth as stained as his animal’s. It was not hard to spot the one he sought.
Her tall painted wagon stuck up high above the buckboards and dog carts of the others, but the hind end of her wagon was flat and bare, awaiting a cargo to haul. Her team did not stand and sweat in harness, but were tethered in what small shade the wagon offered. The teamster herself dozed on the high seat. The boy lost all respect for her. A careless fool, to doze thus in the middle of a busy market day when every second person on the street was a thief. He stood in the center of the street and looked up at her. Her voluminous blue skirts made her look even smaller than she was. Her embroidered blouse was damped with sweat. The brown hair that fell to her shoulders curled away from her forehead in damp tendrils.
His bare feet were soundless in the deep dust of the street. He reached up a hand to tug at her skirt hem. Her green eyes opened and fixed him with a stare when his hand still hovered by her skirt. ‘Cat eyes!’ hissed the boy, and jerked his hand away without making the intended tug.
‘You wanted something of me?’ Ki asked, ignoring his strange greeting.
‘Not I, teamster. I am but sent to say, “If you wish to work for fair wages and a good client, bring your wagon to the black stone building, at the end of the road that runs past the smithy shops and cask makers.” Have you any questions, teamster?’
‘Who lives in the black building, boy?’
The boy squirmed. ‘I do not know.’
‘What am I to haul?’
‘I do not know that, either.’
Ki looked down to the upturned tanned face, at the worn tunic dangerously short on the sprouting youth. ‘Why do you ask if I have any questions, if you have no answers?’
The boy shrugged. ‘It is what we say, after we have given the message. In case you did not understand what was said.’
‘I see.’ Ki fished in the flat purse at her belt and came up with one of the copper shards she had received in change from her last dru. She had spent it this morning for grain for herself and her team. She doubted the copper was enough for the customary tip, but it was all she had. She flipped it through the air and the boy caught it adroitly. He started to slip it into his pouch, but hesitated unwillingly. ‘The one who sent me paid all in advance, even the receiver’s tip. She said she doubted you would have enough.’ He tossed the small bit of metal up to Ki, but she batted it back to him with a quick flip of her hand. ‘Keep it, boy. I, too, am afflicted with an honest nature, and know how seldom one is rewarded for it.’
The boy gave her a flash of white teeth in a surprised grin. He darted off with a flash of white buttocks before the teamster could change her mind.
Ki stretched, and wiped a layer of dust and sweat from her forehead. Clambering from the seat, she began to coax the great grey horses into their harness. She wished she knew more about her mysterious patron, including how she knew Ki was perilously low on coin. She could no longer be fussy about whom she worked for. She didn’t like to think that others might know that. It attracted hard bargains and semi-legal hauls.
Sigmund stood stoically in his place but Sigurd leaned and shifted as she strove to arrange leather and fasten buckles. He had grown fractious from three boring days of standing in the hot market waiting for someone to hire them. Ki jerked the final strap flat. ‘By nightfall, I’ll have you too tired for such tricks,’ she warned the great grey animal. He snorted skeptically.
She climbed up on the box and gave the reins a flip, easing the wagon forward. She edged it out into the center of the street, and then stood on the seat, shouting for the right of way. Hawkers and buyers gave way before her grudgingly. The wagon rumbled slowly through the market amid a chorus of curses at the dust it raised. Ki set her jaw and shook the reins slightly to encourage the team. Sweat began to stain their coats a darker grey.
Finding the street of smithy shops was easy. The clang of hammers falling on red metal was a sound that carried far on a hot day. Ki pitied the apprentices working bellows to blow coals red to white. Stifling waves of heat rolled out from the sheds to assault her and her team as they plodded past. She was grateful when the smithies gave way to barrel makers. But she passed the last of the cask makers’ shops and no black building was in sight. Instead, her wagon creaked past tottering and empty wooden buildings, where not even beggars moved. This dead section of a busy town bothered her, until she passed the dried-up public well. In a climate of seasonal extremes, she, too, would wish to live by a ready source of water.
The lumber of the old buildings had shrunk and twisted away from the framing in silvery splinters. This had to be one of the oldest parts of Dyal. Instead of the dangling door slats currently popular, grey slab doors sagged or sprawled on splintery thresholds. These, and the height of the archaic rectangular window holes, told her that this part of Dyal had been built by a Human population. The wide, winding streets were a Human preference. Kerugi engineered straight, narrow streets and crowded through them like seething insects in a hive.
The street gave one more twist. She spotted her building. Black stone walls reared up above the shaky grey buildings, as if they feared that prying eyes might breach their fastness and steal away their secrets. The huge black stones of the walls had been dressed by masons into precise cubes. They fitted mortarless together, with no chink for moss or for a scrabbling sneak thief. They glistened unweathered, but the huge dead tree that twisted by the wall had branches bent awry by that stony fastness. The tree had sprouted, grown and died in the shade of the wall. Lightning had blackened it before its reaching branches had equalled the height of the walls.
A pair of wide gates, their timbers stained as black as the stone, gaped open. The team slowed outside them. Sigurd snorted and chewed his bit. Ki slapped the reins firmly on the wide grey backs, and with another snort from Sigurd the wagon creaked forward into the courtyard.
The inner courtyard looked as abandoned as the grey wooden buildings. Uprooted brush had rolled into all corners to settle against the walls. Dead trees stood as markers to what had once been careful plantings. The black stone mansion was impervious to the dead courtyard it centered. Ki halted her team and let her eyes drift up the high walls. Rectangular Human style windows gaped dark, high overhead. The ground floor level showed no openings for windows, nor for anything else, save one stout wooden door. The stretch of wall above the high windows was likewise smooth. Whatever chambers were within must do without the light of the sun.
‘Cheery place,’ Ki remarked to her horses.
‘Well. Am I to stand all day holding the door open, awaiting my lady’s pleasure, while every stinging thing that flies finds its way in?’
Ki jerked at the waspish voice. Her eyes snapped to the black door held ajar by a black-gowned old dame. Her look was as sour as her greeting. She reminded Ki of a gallows bird, with her wattled neck and snapping black eyes.
‘Did you send for a teamster?’ Ki asked, hoping this was an error.
‘Yes, but I suppose you’ll do. Does your rump come loose of that plank, or do your folk customarily bargain out in the sun?’
Silently Ki set her wheel brake. She gave her team a gruff command to stand and clambered down from the wagon. This was going to be bad. And without a dru in her purse, she was going to have to swallow it.
The house matron did not wait for her, but set off down the hallway as soon as Ki approached the door. Ki shut the door behind herself, with perhaps a louder thump than necessary. She had to hasten down the tall corridor to follow those swishing black skirts. Sunlight was left behind, and the few sconces were widely spaced and badly tended. Ki’s shadows stretched and snapped about her, and her boots rang hollowly as she strode along. The matron turned a sudden corner. Ki broke into a half-trot lest she lose sight of her.
But as Ki turned the same corner, she found herself within an immense chamber. There were no signs of servants or other house folk. The ceiling was implausibly high; the echo of her boots bounced back at her. Grey daylight fell into the room from one of the windows