Riverkeep Page 8

  “’Cause magic’s like that. Jus’ as pretty an’ jus’ as dangerous, an’ it comes to us the way lightnin’ strikes the ground. So once ye can bottle up lightnin’, wee man o’ mine, ye let me know an’ we’ll use it for the keep. All right?”

  Wull had laughed, thinking of a bottle of lightning, and they’d turned back home.

  Now, the oars in his hands, he looked at Pappa’s face, gaunt and loose, eyes once more closed in sleep. Fighting it, Wull knew—fighting for his own skin.

  There was a small bottle of whale oil in the bow, packed out of grim duty; taking the bäta on the river without it would have made the abandonment of his keep seem even more cowardly. Wull dropped the oars in their locks and pulled close to the lantern, feeling the warmth of the fire in the iron rod, and, removing his gloves for a second to loose the cork, tipped the whole, stinking bottle into the reservoir. He shut the cap and watched as the oil soaked into the supple wick, swelling the flame to a bold finger of white against its globe. In the absence of the other lanterns, its light was impossibly bright: a beacon at the edge of the world.

  Holding his hand on the warm iron a moment longer, Wull looked back into the dark cave of the Riverkeep’s world, then sat and rowed on, past that final barrier of light into new, unknown waters.

  Scribbled in the margins of Wilcy’s journal were the details of currents and whirlpools, along with the names of towns and villages speckling the boundaries of Oracco, the great city, through which spilled people in numbers Wull could not imagine.

  And between these outposts of bustling civilization were miles and miles of inhospitable wilderness and threatening badlands—the banks of which heaved with all manner of animal and human danger.

  “There’s meanin’ in this when you think about it,” he said after another silent time. “There’s got to be a reason for the one recognizable bit o’ that Blummells man to land on our doorstep, an’ for it to be the thing that brings this animal to us. If we get ahold o’ this mormorach, we’ll be rich forever, Pappa, but first we’ll be able to make you better.”

  Pappa, who Wull had thought asleep, gurgled loudly—a wet, bubbling croak. Thinking he was choking, Wull went to thump his back, when he realized that the gurgling sound was laughter.

  “Better . . .” said Pappa, leering horribly. “No better . . . all fine. Strong. Fine.”

  “What do you mean?” said Wull. “You’re ill. You’re not well.” He jumped as a seula popped up beside the boat, nosing at the smell of fish heads. It blinked its glassy blue eyes at him, then flicked its whiskers and slid beneath the surface once again.

  “Am fine, it that speaks,” said Pappa, looking directly, properly at Wull for the first time since he disappeared. “Failure boy, stinking failure boy . . .”

  “Why are you saying that?” said Wull. His hands began to slow on the oars as the needle of pain in his guts pushed vomit into the back of his throat. The light of the final lantern was a speck in the distance now.

  “Ice river,” said Pappa. “Ice, ice, ice, all the river.”

  “I tried!” said Wull, rowing again, harder. “I did my best, but it can’t be done—not without you to show me how! This winter’s worse than any I c’n remember. I can’t keep it back on my own!”

  Pappa shrugged, a one-shouldered hunch that nearly toppled him on his side. “Failure, it that speaks,” he said. “Eat now.”

  “Don’t say that about me,” said Wull, raising his voice. “I’ve done my best! An’ I’ll make you better when we get there, you’ll see!”

  “Eat! Now!”

  “No! We’re hardly even away—there’s days to go an’ there’s not many fish heads left as it is. You c’n eat once we get to the inn. They’ve a jetty we can tie up to for the night.”

  “Eat! Now!” shouted Pappa, straining against his bonds.

  Wull’s head throbbed, a little speck of pain deep in the center of his skull.

  “No!” he shouted back. “I’ve told you, we’re goin’ to . . .”

  His words stopped in his throat: the figure of a man, shoulders bristling with the fronds of a bank fern, was silhouetted against the lantern’s pinprick of light.

  “Oh gods,” said Wull. “Bradai.”

  The figure dropped out of sight. Wull saw the dot of the low black bandit craft racing toward them—a little dart in the water, the shoulders of its occupants just visible, wafting with feathers and plants.

  “Eat! Now! Now!” said Pappa.

  “Not now—we’re in trouble!” said Wull, digging into the river as hard as he could, lifting himself off the seat with the weight of the water. The bäta leaped forward, but it was nowhere near enough, he could see: already the bradai’s skiff had closed a boat length or more on them, and he could see the thin shadows of their black-painted oars working rapidly in the locks.

  “No use! Eat!” shouted Pappa. He pushed and heaved against the knots on his wrists.

  “I can’t!” said Wull. “You said yourself you can’t trust the bradai! If I can stay far enough in front of ’em, they might give up and we’ll make it to Lauston!”

  “Eat!”

  “I can’t talk an’ row! I’m not you!”

  “Stinking it that speaks!”

  Wull heaved again, palms and shoulders screaming—and this time felt an extra swell of current against his left hand. He drove the oar beneath the surface, turning the nose of the bäta toward it, letting it sniff out the extra power; pulled again on the oars, felt the boat lurch forward, quicker, saw the gap between him and the bradai even out.

  “Can’t go forever,” said Pappa.

  “Be quiet,” said Wull between his teeth. His lungs were bursting, the frozen air fire in his chest.

  To his horror, he saw the skiff’s oars quicken: six of them. Six to his two, driving a thin-hulled boat that weighed half the bäta’s bulk. There was no hope, no chance of escape. Even if he banked and fled, Pappa could barely walk and the bradai would simply run him down—scurrying through the trees and the gnarled roots of the forest floor like skirrils.

  Wull focused on the tiny star of the final lantern and rowed through pain and fatigue and the tearing of muscles. Wind whipped the backs of his ears as the flame’s star winked out until eventually, in the darkness of a fireless night that seemed to hold the world in its fist, the bäta rocked and a feather-cloaked figure said:

  “Slow down, li’l man. We’s a-caught you.”

  9

  Those who travel know that bandits are chief of all dangers, accounting for many more deaths per annum than collision-induced trauma, hypothermic complications, or loss of direction combined. The roads leading to and from Oracco are dangerous at night, and there can be few coachmen who travel without the company of a loaded barrel; but the shorelines of the Danék positively bristle with soot-blackened steel, and the bradai who stalk them are fearless in their disregard of both animal predation and the elements. They will strike at any time, night or day, as like from beneath the current as from the great swinging boughs of the oaks that line the banks. Some wear the skins of animals they have slain; others cloaks sewn with grasses and leaves. In all cases their victims’ last sound is one of surprise.

  —Wheeldon Garfill, A Path Trod Well: Journeys of My Life

  Wull’s chest was heaving. He stopped the oars’ movement but kept them high in the water.

  “That was quite a turn o’ speed, li’l man,” said the bradai. “We’s nearly puffed out us-selves. It’s rude to run, though—an’ you knows we’s goin’ to catch you eventually.”

  He stood and stretched, the feathers on his cloak fluttering. Beneath it he wore black clothes that were invisible in the darkness and belts from which Wull heard the light chime of weaponry: blades, Pappa had told him, blackened with soot. Wull said nothing, allowed his breathing to return.

  “Where’s you goin’ in such a mad hurry?” sa
id the man. “Don’t you know it’s bad manners to run from the gentlemen o’ the river?”

  “That’s herons,” said Wull. “Herons are the gentlemen o’ the river. You’re jus’ thievin’ scum.”

  The bradai turned his head to one side and raised an eyebrow.

  “People who says a thing like that is usu’lly bold or daft. Which are you, long boy?”

  “Neither,” said Wull. “I’m jus’ not interested in talkin’ to you while I’m waitin’ for you to rob me.”

  “An’ ain’t that a fine way to talk. What’s the hurry?”

  “That’s my business,” said Wull. He looked at Pappa, the big head lolling.

  The bradai laughed. “What’s your name, boldly-daft-hurrying-long-boy?”

  “What’s yours?” said Wull, meeting the black-painted stare.

  The man laughed. “Hear this?” he shouted to his companions. “He wants to know our names! Well, I’m Kenesaw—on the skiff there’s Garnet an’ Happy. Now, what’s yours?”

  “Wulliam,” said Wull.

  “Uh-huh, an’ who’s your silent friend here?”

  “That’s my pappa,” said Wull. “He’s the Danék Riverkeep.”

  “No, he ain’t,” said Kenesaw. “I saw the keep ten days ago—he’s a fat lump with a neck like a log. Why would you need to be pretendin’ to be someone else? You on the lam?”

  “He is the Riverkeep,” said Wull hotly. “Look at his face! An’ I’m nearly sixteen. I’ll be the keep in a few days!”

  “Good for you,” said Kenesaw, “an’ happy birthday when it comes, but you ain’t puttin’ nothin’ over on us. The keep does us plenty favors, breakin’ up the ice an’ all, but this winter’s beaten him an’ that ain’t him anyhow. This looks like his boat, right enough, so I guess you’ve stole it an’ that’s why you’s in such a hurry. Where’s the money?”

  “This is my boat!”

  Pappa stirred. “Eat!” he said.

  “Pappa,” said Wull, “tell them who you are! Tell them you’re the Riverkeep!”

  Kenesaw silently drew a foot-long knife from his waistband.

  “Eat, it that speaks! Eat! Now!”

  “I can see you two must share some riveting conversation,” said Kenesaw languidly. “The money?”

  “There’s no money,” said Wull, forcing his eyes not to flick to the cache of ducats in the bow.

  Kenesaw sighed. “Now that’s jus’ silly, ain’t it?” he said wearily. “Little runt like you, off in a big, stolen boat like this, maybe you’s done in the owners. That’s fine—we ain’t got no room to judge what a man mus’ do. But you ain’t goin’ to steal somethin’ like this without findin’ a li’l money, an’ you ain’t goin’ to get far anyways without it, so why not jus’ tell us where it is, Wulliam, an’ this can be as easy as you like?”

  The other bradai emerged from the shadow of their skiff and clambered aboard the bäta. Both had the fronds of bank fern sewn countlessly into their cloaks. Both carried short, darkened blades.

  “Thievin’ scum,” said Wull, dropping the oars.

  An arm flashed toward him. At first Wull thought the man had slapped him, then he felt the wet spill of blood on his cheek. He bit off his glove and raised his hand—felt the heat of blood patter on the tips of his fingers.

  “Why’d you do that?” he said. The pain was starting to blossom.

  “No way we’s gettin’ cheeked by a stripling like you,” said Kenesaw, who hadn’t moved. “Reputations are what counts, an’ that’s ours.”

  “Aaargh . . . a-attacking defenseless children?” said Wull. He felt his cheek swelling in a bright flash across his face, pulling the rest of his body toward it: hot and tight and hard.

  “You’s no child if you’s stealin’ a boat, long boy, an’ with a quick mouth like that, you’s not defenseless anyhow. Callin’ us scum! We’s all cut by yer remark, ain’t we, fellas?”

  The other bradai, smells of dampness and bark pouring from their cloaks, were rummaging around the bäta, under the boards and stern, shifting Pappa’s legs around. Wull pulled at their fern fronds and tried to stand.

  “Leave him alone!” he shouted.

  “It that speaks!”

  “I told you,” said Wull, reaching for Pappa, the pain in his face almost blinding him, “we don’t have any money. . . .”

  Behind him came the heavy sound of bagged coins on wood.

  Kenesaw’s face lit up. “I told you,” he said.

  “You can’t,” said Wull, trying to push past them. “It’s all we have. . . .”

  “You’ll jus’ have to steal more from someone else, long boy.”

  Kenesaw pushed Wull into his seat as he stood, rocking the bäta and following the other bradai into the skiff.

  “I didn’t steal it! It’s ours!”

  “It’s ours now,” said Kenesaw. He tipped his cap. “Take care on your thievin’ journey. Gentlemen o’ the river, see?”

  The skiff shot forward on its black oars, slicing its way into the night. Wull sat as it vanished, listening to the swell smack on the bäta’s hull and trying to push away the pain from his slashed face.

  “It that speaks! Eat now!”

  Wull sighed and tightened his jaw. The blood from his cheek had run under his collar and was gathering in a sticky heat on his neck.

  “All right, Pappa. Here.”

  He dropped to his knees and held up a fish head. Pappa took it like a horse after hay, lips pulling at air and scale.

  “Same as again,” said Pappa.

  “They left some of the salted trout, proper fish—why don’t you try that?”

  “Same as again!”

  “You love salted trout,” said Wull quietly, passing him another fish head.

  As Pappa ate, Wull looked toward the boathouse. He could go back, forget this ever happened. Lantern twenty-two would be burning still—he could uproot it, take its flame to thaw the others, bring the river back under his control, and fight the ice, as Pappa would have done.

  “It that speaks,” said Pappa, voice garbled by the white meat of the fish.

  Wull looked at his milky pupils.

  Once Wull had accidentally cornered a red balgair—boxing it in against the hedgerows. The beast had gathered itself, peering hard at him, all its animal instinct swirling in its glare.

  “Cannae be doin’ that,” Pappa had said when he’d run into the boathouse, shaking. “Ye’re lucky it din’t have its babbies on its back—would have had yer throat out for comin’ near ’em.”

  “I din’t mean to,” Wull had said, trying not to cry. “It was an accident.”

  Pappa had ruffled his hair and made him cocoa.

  “I know,” he’d said, “but they’d fight an ursa for their babbies. Be mindful o’ that. Needs respect, does that.”

  Wull had nodded and drunk his cocoa and gone to bed to wait for his story.

  Now, knees hard on the bottom boards, his cut skin shrieking in the cold, that safe life seemed to have happened to someone else.

  And, looking at Pappa’s eyes, he saw the same swirl of instinct—the same animal tension.

  Wull lifted his water pouch to his lips and took the torn pages from his pocket. He read again about the bohdan. He had to go on—there was nothing here for him. Not without Pappa.

  He gathered the oars.

  “Eat more!” said Pappa.

  “Soon,” said Wull. “I don’t want to stay here. We need to get to the inn and try to find some more food. And something for my face, I need to cover it—a bandage or something.”

  “There’s a bandage in here,” said a small voice from the bow.

  Wull dropped the oars and the pages. He looked over his shoulder. For the briefest moment he thought the bäta itself—its eyes as judging as ever—had spoken, then a pile of blankets
shifted and a girl about his own age emerged, stretching, thick scarecrowed black hair and a high fur-lined collar around her head. She was chewing a blade of grass and smiling sleepily, her face dented by dimples. As well as a thick woolen coat, she wore heavy-soled boots and thin cotton gloves.

  “What in hells!” said Wull, mouth open and head spinning. “Where did you come from?”

  “I was on their boat,” said the girl, climbing onto the bow thwart. “Smelled awful, though. What’s that?” she added, seeing Wull stuffing the dropped pages into his pocket.

  “Never you mind! And don’t sit down, get out! Are you a bradai? Are you goin’ to rob me an’ all?”

  She tilted her head and looked at him. “Do I look like a bradai?”

  “I don’t know,” said Wull, who’d never met a girl before.

  “Well, I’m not. I’m . . . Mix. I was jus’ hidin’.”

  “You c’n hide on the bank then—you’re not stayin’!” Wull turned the bäta away from the current and started to row for shore. “How dare you sneak on here! An’ with them! Maybe I should shout them back? I bet they’d like to find out what you were doin’ on their boat!”

  “Ah, come on, you wouldn’t do that,” said Mix, holding out the roll of bandages. “I’m on my own. You wouldn’t abandon me.”

  Wull grabbed the bandages and threw them to the floor.

  “You’ve snuck onto my boat with the bandits that stole my money an’ cut my face,” he said, rowing faster. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “’S not decent,” said Mix.

  “Girl it!” said Pappa.

  “Hullo, Wulliam’s paps. C’n I interest you in a fish head?” said Mix. She tried to clamber over Wull to get to Pappa.

  “Don’t! What are you—stay there!” shouted Wull. “An’ how’d you know my name?”

  “You told the bradai,” said Mix, raising an eyebrow. “Wasn’t much of a puzzle.”

  “Well, don’t spy on me! You shouldn’t be here!”

  “I’ll give your paps a fish head while you’s rowin’,” said Mix.

  “Don’t talk to him, jus’ stay there!”