Palimpsest

After the Varn War the northern villages were not the villages they had been. The men who had marched east did not return in the numbers the Crown had promised, and those who did were taxed for the years they had been away. The Ledger's accounting recognised no allowance for absence under arms. The villages paid in livestock and in tools and in the stones of their own walls, and when those were gone they paid in daughters sent to service in the cities.

The rolls of the northern hundreds showed a third fewer households a decade after the war, and the empty houses were not reoccupied. A movement that had quarrelled with the Crown for centuries without ever finding more than a few hundred men now found, in the veterans of the Varn War and in their grown sons and daughters, a quarter of the north.

— On the Settlement of the Provinces, Cindorian Heralds' Register, restricted edition

Chapter 31 Mourning for Lost Memories

They had begun walking on the south side of the village, somewhere along the line where the grassland slowly gave way to a dirt track. It hadn't been dark for long, and there were still people out. The streets were dimly lit by the gas lamps and candles bleeding from inside the buildings. The further in they went the more the lights multiplied, peaking a little ahead where the way opened out into a wider street. The silhouettes that watched them from a distance neither approached nor reacted, but every one of them was watching.

Six strangers coming out of the woods after dark wasn't exactly normal for a small town of perhaps thirty or forty houses, Kaelin thought. People standing in their doorways took a step back; the ones with children pulled them in off the street and into the house. But what was unsettling wasn't the dark or the watching — it was the silence. Apart from a few crickets, a faint hum from somewhere ahead, and the sound of their own footfalls, there was nothing at all. It pressed in on them, made them walk slower without meaning to, made them quieter.

"You said the village was called Gravewick?" came Tivver's whisper from behind. Veylith, walking beside Kaelin, hushed it at once. Kaelin didn't think anyone could have come up with a better name. Veylith kept walking, eyes forward, neither right nor left, but the unease that had begun before they'd even reached the village kept growing.

"Was that what you wouldn't say earlier?" Kaelin whispered, drawing closer to her.

Veylith gave her a startled look, but said nothing and kept her eyes on the road ahead. Then, after a moment: "Partly," she whispered. "Small towns don't like strangers, especially a strange-looking band like ours turning up after dark. But that isn't really what I'm worried about." She walked over to a man on the road who seemed to have made a point of not noticing them.

"Hey — is there anywhere around here we could get a bite and a bed for the night?" she asked. The man started, lifted his head, and looked up at her. Then he looked, in turn, at the rest of them standing behind her. At last his eyes slid over to Kaelin and stayed there, fixed. Veylith caught it and prompted him with another "Hey," at which the man, still without taking his eyes off Kaelin, raised a hand to point further down the street and made a gesture turning right.

"Thanks," Veylith said. She put a hand to Kaelin's back and they walked on past him together. The man kept his eyes on Kaelin the whole time, and went on looking after them long after they had passed. None of them had any idea what it had been about, but they were all winding tighter.

A little further on, the road brightened and opened into what passed for the town's main street. In the square stood a simple stone fountain, on top of which sat a half-broken stone figure of indeterminate origin — only just taller than Ravah herself. But the whole arrangement made it plain enough that this was the centre of the town. The workshops and shops that faced the square were lined up along the main street.

On the opposite corner a smithy with its shutter half-down was closing for the night, its forge already cold. Beside it, a bakery that had shut up some time ago. Across from it, almost beside them, an older man was trying to lock up a draper's shop. Further along, on the other side of the road, a building stood out by virtue of being noticeably louder and brighter than the others. Veylith, who could read the sign well before any of the others, was already heading for it. As Kaelin and the rest drew closer to the two-storey stone building — slightly larger than the ones around it — she finally managed to make out the wood-carved sign: Rynella's Inn.

When they came up to the inn, two tables out front each held a single drinker who had clearly already had more than enough, both of them simply staring out at the street. The wooden door was shut, but light was leaking out through its one small window. The faint sound of a lute reached them as well. The music didn't sound especially cheerful, and Kaelin didn't need it to feel that the room beyond the door was no cheerier.

The men sitting at the outdoor tables threw a look at them when they reached the door, but the look was clearly too far gone to register what it was looking at. When at last Veylith pushed the door open and stepped in, the music came up briefly, then cut off. Inside there were four or five small tables — half of them empty — and two bigger ones. In a crowd of no more than ten, almost every head turned to them at once. The faint murmur that had been audible from the street vanished as if someone had cut it with a knife. On the side with the small tables, a fire burned in a hearth set into the wall, and a kettle hung over it that, judging by the smell, held supper. Beside the hearth, a young woman with a lute had stopped playing and was looking at them along with everyone else.

They walked between the tables toward the left and one of the larger tables. Ravah pulled two more chairs over from another table to the corner table near the bar, set them at the head and the foot, and they all settled in. The heads were still turned to them. There wasn't a sound in the room.

"Are you lost?" said a woman with long grey hair, who looked to be just past fifty, as she came up to them. There was a certain warmth in her voice, but also a manufactured edge. The way she had thrown the cloth in her hand over her shoulder and walked all the way up to their table made it clear she was the owner of the place, or the one running it.

"We lost our way and got caught out by the dark, yes," Veylith answered. Then she turned to the room of staring faces and let her discomfort show. The woman paused for a beat, then turned and threw a hard look at the other tables without a word. Almost as one they all turned back to their own business; the woman by the fire began to play again. The owner turned back to Veylith and looked at her as if waiting for something.

"We need food and a bed for the night," Vaelra cut in this time, her face wearing a careful gratitude as she did. Her social skills were considerably better than Veylith's; Kaelin knew, of course, that she was layering it on a little, putting on a small show of helplessness, but she also didn't think the woman was buying it for a moment.

"There's mutton stew left over from the afternoon hanging on the fire, and beer of my own brewing," the woman finally said. Then she added, looking each of them over in turn: "Two empty rooms upstairs, two beds each. You'll have to share." Then, more pointedly: "No funny business though."

"That'll be more than enough for us," Vaelra answered. "We just need to rest and we'll be on our way in the morning."

Without much change in her expression, the woman looked them over again. "Stew and bread, seven shards a head. The two rooms for the night, two lorins." Veylith reached for her satchel at this, but the woman caught it and stepped in again. "You can settle it all in the morning when you leave. This isn't the big city, honey — there's still some trust left here." Nobody offered a reply.

The woman made to step away from the table, but, as if she had forgotten something, turned back before her foot landed. "By the way — the ale's four shards a mug. First round's on me." She gave a faint smile, and started for the bar. The word ale brought a visible smile to Tivver's and Vaelra's faces. The rest of them, Veylith chief among them, let out a breath. Kaelin finally let herself sink fully into her chair. The weariness of the road and the hunger came up on her the moment she did.

"I'll grant we just turned up at this hour as strangers," Darian said in a low voice none of them had been expecting, "but didn't this village strike the rest of you as strange?" At that, every face round the table grew more serious; they were all thinking now, glancing around the room. "It's like they're in mourning, just after a war that's only ended. This is in all likelihood the only tavern in the place, and even here there isn't a smiling face. Just listen to the music."

"I've been thinking the same thing since we walked in," Ravah answered. She wasn't an especially cheerful sort herself, but she knew a place like this should have had more life in it. Tivver, on hearing that, had begun studying the young woman with the lute. Veylith didn't seem especially troubled by any of it; she was busy planning how to leave again without trouble.

"Kaelin?" Vaelra said suddenly. Kaelin, who hadn't been expecting it, gave a small start. "What do you feel?" Vaelra asked when their eyes met.

"I'm not sure I follow," Kaelin said. She had a guess, but wanted to hear it.

"You can shape what people feel — so you must be able to read them as well," Vaelra said, without pausing to think it through. "Did something really happen here, or are we imagining things?"

Kaelin suddenly noticed that all of them were looking at her. The pressure of it was real, but there was also a strange satisfaction in someone asking her opinion about something, in being given a chance to be useful. She gathered herself, closed her eyes, and tried, deliberately, to extend her attention into the room around her.

Reading one person was easy; reading the whole environment was less knowing than guessing — building an intuition rather than seeing a thing. In the dark behind her eyes silhouettes began to form, and Kaelin almost saw what they felt. Some shapes brighter, some far dimmer; they all seemed to be in mourning, but it wasn't fresh grief. In people who had just lost someone, pain and fear usually competed inside them, drowning out and putting off the mourning itself. These people were simply mourning. There was almost no anger in them, and almost no fear. They had given up a long time ago. The more she focused, the wider the area she could feel grew, spilling out beyond the walls of the inn. More silhouettes emerged in the dark; more grief joined the grief she had already found.

The mugs that came down hard on the table snapped her back into herself and made her jump in her chair. The woman who had set the drinks and the bread basket down looked at her oddly, not understanding what had startled her.

"Are you all right?" Vaelra asked, her hand on Kaelin's arm. The others, instead of reaching for their drinks, were also looking at her with worried faces. Kaelin, drawing slow deep breaths, didn't see any of them; her eyes were following the woman, who had gone back to the bar to take a tray of plates from it. Without answering anyone, she watched her bring the food back to the table. The moment the tray came down, Kaelin spoke. "What is it you're mourning?"

For a moment the woman looked at her as though all the blood had drained out of her face. There was surprise there, and beneath the surprise — for the first time — fear. She looked at her for a long while without answering. Kaelin held her eyes, and the others were still trying to understand what was happening.

"Where did you say you were coming from?" the woman said at last, her face hardening, as she began to set the plates around the table. "We didn't say," Kaelin answered. Even Veylith was caught off-guard by her tone. Without answering, the woman finished setting out the plates and looked at the other tables, where the regulars were drinking. A few of the people who still had their eyes fixed on them turned their heads away when they saw her looking.

"We lost a great many brave men," she said eventually, her gaze still moving around the room. Then she turned to Kaelin and added, "Twenty years ago." Kaelin didn't answer.

"When I was a child this was a lively place, always working. I worked at the dressmaker's and looked after my mother. Then I married, and my husband and I started running this place together. Things were going well — I was even going to have a child. Then — " The woman went quiet. "Well, there was no real then, after that. A great many men and women of this village had gone off to a war and never come back. I gave birth alone, and went on running this place alone. Most of the houses around here were no different. For years the village tried to put itself back together, but it never really came back to what it had been. And the worst of it was, no one could remember exactly what had happened."

She paused. The whole table was listening to her with such attention that no one had touched the drinks or the food.

"For twenty years, when my daughter asked me what had happened to her father, I'd find some way to put her off, and then spend the whole night missing memories I didn't have. I'm not sure that's something I can describe. Outside this village I don't know if there's anyone who could understand what I mean." Her voice trembled but she kept her face. "Yesterday, finally, I was able to tell my daughter what had happened. The memories that had been taken from us came back. The memories we'd give anything not to have."

"The rebellion," Kaelin said, almost as if she were reading her. There was no other sound in the room. The same look of surprise crossed the woman's face, but this time it gave way to suspicion.

"Almost everyone in this village fought in the Varn War for Cindoria. Fifty years ago they walked away from this town and went off to fight that great war in the east. Very few of them came back, and what they got from the Crown of Cindoria for it was nothing but more taxes. After the fucking Ledger funnelled money to the king for his war, they considered it their right to recoup it from the people. Through thirty years of recovering by inches, this village never forgot. I remember, even as a child, my parents telling me plainly what kind of people they really were. That anger, when at last it found its way to a rebellion that had been alive for years, rose to a place all its own. The village became one of the centres of the movement. For a few years we ran small jobs — robbing supply convoys, destroying Ledger records, that kind of thing. I was young, and there was a strange pleasure in throwing oneself at a different danger every day, in sleeping under the stars most nights." A nostalgic smile touched the corner of her mouth. Then, as if a happy memory had come back to her, the smile widened a little.

"On one of those jobs I met a man at least as foolish as I was. A very kind, very clever man, but where rebellion and justice were concerned he could be made not to see a great deal. We went on jobs together. We started lying together under the stars. After a few months of that, the jobs grew less frequent and grander in scope. He still wanted to be at the front of things, but by then there was a child in my belly. We knew we couldn't keep this life up much longer. Setting up a business in the village and giving that child a family had become more important to me than saving the world. Two months into the dream of this new life, the news of the great push came. There were going to be uprisings in many places at once; they would seize the governments. The whole village was to ride for Marialis that very day. As he packed his bag he only said that he owed it to his family. Then he kissed me, walked out that door, and was gone. Then twenty years went by — me staring at that door, trying to remember why the man who left me alone had gone. He was the love of my life, and the best man I ever knew. And for putting the rebellion ahead of his own family, I will never forgive him." She paused, and cleared her throat.

For a moment Kaelin remembered her own father. Then a half-recovered memory of an argument between her mother and father drifted across her mind.

"So, in short — my daughter is mourning the father she never met, now that she's finally heard his story. I'm mourning the family I never had. The others? Go and ask them. I'm sure you'll hear plenty of stories like it."

"It seems we all share something close to that kind of story," Kaelin said, and there was a softness in her voice that took the edge off everything. The woman looked at her, and seemed, for the first time, to understand that whatever this was, it wasn't something confined to her village. She didn't answer, but Kaelin knew what she was feeling. Then, partly to break the moment and partly to learn something, she asked, "Do you know why this happened? Or who did it?" The others had turned to the woman in expectation; Veylith was looking at Kaelin.

"There are rumours, but nobody really knows."

"Rumours?"

"We heard that in Marialis a small group took the wardens' headquarters, wounded their commanders, and killed a high-ranking member of the Ledger. The memories started coming back at almost the same time. We think they had something to do with it, but no one knows the truth." At that, every one of them at the table threw a glance at one another for a moment. It didn't escape the woman's notice. "Do you know anything about it?" she asked.

"We didn't know even that much," Kaelin answered before any of the others had a chance. The woman looked her over, looked the rest of them over, and then nodded with a kind of separate, private satisfaction. "Thank you, ma'am," Kaelin said after a beat. "For sharing that with us."

"You can call me Rynella," the woman said, her voice slipping back into its earlier roughness. "Now eat your food. I am not reheating that damned stew," she added, and turned and walked back toward the bar.

For a while they all looked at one another, and then, without speaking, fell on the food. Eating and drinking in silence, they had begun, by the end of it, to look very much like the villagers at the other tables. None of them had any appetite left for talking, or for planning anything. Veylith was the first to leave the table. The others, one by one, climbed the stairs and dropped wherever they could. At last Vaelra touched Kaelin on the shoulder. "Come on, get some sleep," she said, and headed up. Kaelin sat at the table alone, sipping at her drink. She was still thinking about that half-remembered memory. After a while she finished her drink and made for the stairs herself.

The young woman who came to take Kaelin's empty mug wiped down the end of the table with a cloth and carried the mug to the bar. As she handed it to her mother, who was washing dishes, she said, "Do you think that's her?" — and tilted her head toward the staircase.

The woman paused for an instant in her washing, then answered, "I think it really is her."