Nettle & Bone(35)

“Fairy tales,” said the dust-wife heavily, “are very hard on bystanders. Particularly old women. I’d rather not dance myself to death in iron shoes, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Perhaps you’re the fox,” said Marra.

“Ha!” The dust-wife’s laugh really did have a bit of a fox’s bark to it. “I deserved that.”

“Do you have a name, Lady Fox?” asked Fenris. Marra could not tell if he was amused or irked by the conversation.

“Yes,” said the dust-wife.

The silence stretched out. Marra picked at a thread of the nettle cloak, waiting.

If there was a battle of wills, the dust-wife won. Fenris’s laugh was not terribly unlike the dust-wife’s, the short, self-deprecating sound of a man who could still recognize absurdity. “What do you wish me to call you, then, ma’am?”

“Ma’am will work very well indeed. I am a dust-wife.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “One of those who live among the dead? We do not have them in my country, but we know of them.”

The silence grew again. Marra wondered what he was thinking and what he made of them. A shy nun and an old woman who communes with the dead. I don’t know if I even know what I think of us …

He’s a killer, the yellow-eyed man had said. The thought was alarming. Fenris was large enough to break her in half with his bare hands, and however imperious the dust-wife was, she was still fundamentally an old woman with a chicken. Did he think he was still a prisoner? They’d ransomed him from the tooth seller, but they hadn’t exactly set him free, had they? She’d gabbled something about needing him in the market. If he decided to escape his supposed captivity, their only defense would be a dog who was currently bouncing in the water to make it splash.

“You don’t have to stay with us,” she said.

Fenris looked over at her, his eyes unreadable. “Beg pardon?”

“I mean…” No, don’t explain about the moth—the moth is too complicated and sounds ridiculous if you say it out loud. “Uh, there was magic that took us to a thing we needed. And it picked you. But you aren’t a prisoner anymore.”

“Magic said that you needed me?” He was smiling now, but it was a smile like his laugh, not so much humorous as incredulous at the shape of the world.

“Don’t get any ideas,” said the dust-wife. “Might turn out that our fate is sealed inside a jar and we need someone to loosen the lid.”

His laugh that time had genuine humor in it, which seemed to surprise Fenris as much as it surprised Marra.

“Do we have time for me to wash?” he asked, as they left the river. “It has been a long time…”

The dust-wife shook her head. “Not here. The dead are restless and won’t settle for a day or two. We’ll find you a pond where no one’s drowned.”

“Well, I do like not drowning.”

It took them perhaps half an hour. Even though Marra felt as if an age of the earth had passed in the goblin market, the moon had barely moved in the sky. It splashed a white reflection across a stock pond. Several sleeping cows stood on the other side of a fence, black shapes on the moonlit grass.

“How did you end up in the goblin market?” asked Marra, as Fenris sat down by the edge of the pond and began to unlace his boots.

“I was a fool,” said Fenris. “I slept in a fairy fort. I knew better, but I…” He looked away.

“What’s a fairy fort?” asked Marra.

“A ring of earth. Trees grow up the sides, but the centers are usually clear. Ruins, some say, of an old people. Dwellings of the hidden ones. Uncanny places. I should not have been there.”

“You were on the run from something,” said the dust-wife crisply, “or you were trying to kill yourself but didn’t have the nerve to hold the knife. You’re from Hardack, by your accent, and no Hardishman would sleep in a fairy fort, not dead drunk with two broken legs.”

Fenris’s lips twitched. He inclined his head to the dust-wife. “As you say.”

“Well?” The dust-wife plunked herself down. The brown hen regarded Fenris with a baleful eye. “Which was it?”

“Both,” said Fenris. He rubbed his forehead. “I am … was … a knight. In Hardack, as you say. I served the Fathers, not any particular clan. The Fathers rule the clans, but their rule is not absolute. Those who serve them work as diplomats as much as enforcers.”

“And?” said the dust-wife, merciless.

“And I was a fool.” He said it with no particular intonation, less flagellation than fact. “I did not recognize what was under my nose, and the day came that I had to kill a man because of it. A clan lord.”

Marra pricked up her ears, suddenly intent. Was a clan lord as well protected as a prince?

“There was nothing I could do, within the law,” Fenris said. “A lord’s word is law in the clan’s keep. The Fathers could censure him, but they could do no more. So I could let him walk free with blood on his hands, or deal justice with blood on mine.” He shrugged. “I murdered three men who had committed no crime except defending their liege, and killed the lord, and left my sword atop him so that they would know who did the deed. And then I walked away and spent the night in a fairy fort.”