brought her magic to bear on her enemies at need. He would see it as a triumph, a ray of hope, a justification for his plotting. She couldn’t hear that. She glanced down at the smudge of gray beside her. It wouldn’t be true.
She turned and hurried down toward the Fringes, her throat tight with a strangling sense of failure, of fraud. Healing someone, even to mend a cold or start hair on a bald pate—that would be a ray of hope for Kodu Riik. Not this butchery.
Clinging like fungus to the curve of Koduteel’s northern wall, the Fringes was comprised of sprawling neighborhoods made of ramshackle buildings and squalid tents built from jumbles of patchworked and broken materials. They were arranged in twisty, clustered knots, each neighborhood split by narrow, zigzagging crevices that served as walkways and streets. The neighborhoods shifted constantly like the shore dunes east of the city, so that no road was ever in the same place it had been, and houses and people disappeared with alarming ease.
Reisil descended the rocky switchback along the lee side of the bluff, following the curve of the towering east wall. She pulled up her hood and huddled deep inside the folds of her cloak.
The track jerked and meandered down the steep pitch, stitching in and around strips of scree and low hummocks of rock seamed with moss and grass. There were no trees or shrubs for a quarter of a league around the walls, providing a field of fire for archers. The wall itself was pocked and blackened in places where the Patversemese had laid seige. As the trail brought her close to the wall again, Reisil patted the rough stone. Battered and pounded, the walls had held.
The Fringes smelled oppressively of manure, human waste, lye, fish guts, and acrid smoke. Children and dogs scurried through the fetid maze like ants, each as flea-ridden and filthy as the other. Their fathers worked paltry crafts, many without arms, or legs, or hands—scars of the war. Their women were equally scarred. Many in ways no one could see. Each day, sometimes twice a day, the women hiked a half a league over a steep, snow-covered ridge to the river. To discourage vagrancy, the Fringes were not permitted a well. Starvation and disease ran rampant there, and every day one or two rag-wrapped bodies were carried to the lych-ground northeast of the city.
For a while, Reisil was content to wander through the sprawl, winding around fires, dodging thin, bleating goats, carefully stepping over uncovered midden trenches. As always, she found herself both saddened and inspired by the strength of the Fringes’ denizens, the joys they wrenched from their sere lives. Tattered children, feet wrapped in rags, chased each other in a game of tag, laughing, cheeks blushing red as ripe apples. A cluster of women chatted and giggled and tied limp red ribbons in the hair of a young bride. A father taught his son the art of tying knots, the son beaming at his father’s praise. A young man presented his beloved with a wooden pendant in the shape of a dove.
The towers along the wall marked Reisil’s passage as she worked her way through the sprawl: Sunrise Tower, Ahalad-kaaslane Tower, Horn Tower. Far down the wall, past the Iisand Gate, she could see the blue cone-shape topping Talis Tower. There was a family camped below there that she had promised to visit again when time permitted. She turned her footsteps in that direction.
As she walked, she nodded absently to those who greeted the stranger in their midst, noting with dismay the ragtag bits of green affixed to a great variety of shacks and tents. Knobs of painted wood, ribbons, rags, even grass and moss. How could they keep wearing it when the nobles and the other ahalad-kaaslane hated her so?
She stopped at the edge of the Iisand’s road to wait for a midden wagon to pass. The teamster slouched on the box, his hands stained yellow by his cargo. Inside the wagon, Reisil heard a thick sloshing sound, and then the wind
She turned and hurried down toward the Fringes, her throat tight with a strangling sense of failure, of fraud. Healing someone, even to mend a cold or start hair on a bald pate—that would be a ray of hope for Kodu Riik. Not this butchery.
Clinging like fungus to the curve of Koduteel’s northern wall, the Fringes was comprised of sprawling neighborhoods made of ramshackle buildings and squalid tents built from jumbles of patchworked and broken materials. They were arranged in twisty, clustered knots, each neighborhood split by narrow, zigzagging crevices that served as walkways and streets. The neighborhoods shifted constantly like the shore dunes east of the city, so that no road was ever in the same place it had been, and houses and people disappeared with alarming ease.
Reisil descended the rocky switchback along the lee side of the bluff, following the curve of the towering east wall. She pulled up her hood and huddled deep inside the folds of her cloak.
The track jerked and meandered down the steep pitch, stitching in and around strips of scree and low hummocks of rock seamed with moss and grass. There were no trees or shrubs for a quarter of a league around the walls, providing a field of fire for archers. The wall itself was pocked and blackened in places where the Patversemese had laid seige. As the trail brought her close to the wall again, Reisil patted the rough stone. Battered and pounded, the walls had held.
The Fringes smelled oppressively of manure, human waste, lye, fish guts, and acrid smoke. Children and dogs scurried through the fetid maze like ants, each as flea-ridden and filthy as the other. Their fathers worked paltry crafts, many without arms, or legs, or hands—scars of the war. Their women were equally scarred. Many in ways no one could see. Each day, sometimes twice a day, the women hiked a half a league over a steep, snow-covered ridge to the river. To discourage vagrancy, the Fringes were not permitted a well. Starvation and disease ran rampant there, and every day one or two rag-wrapped bodies were carried to the lych-ground northeast of the city.
For a while, Reisil was content to wander through the sprawl, winding around fires, dodging thin, bleating goats, carefully stepping over uncovered midden trenches. As always, she found herself both saddened and inspired by the strength of the Fringes’ denizens, the joys they wrenched from their sere lives. Tattered children, feet wrapped in rags, chased each other in a game of tag, laughing, cheeks blushing red as ripe apples. A cluster of women chatted and giggled and tied limp red ribbons in the hair of a young bride. A father taught his son the art of tying knots, the son beaming at his father’s praise. A young man presented his beloved with a wooden pendant in the shape of a dove.
The towers along the wall marked Reisil’s passage as she worked her way through the sprawl: Sunrise Tower, Ahalad-kaaslane Tower, Horn Tower. Far down the wall, past the Iisand Gate, she could see the blue cone-shape topping Talis Tower. There was a family camped below there that she had promised to visit again when time permitted. She turned her footsteps in that direction.
As she walked, she nodded absently to those who greeted the stranger in their midst, noting with dismay the ragtag bits of green affixed to a great variety of shacks and tents. Knobs of painted wood, ribbons, rags, even grass and moss. How could they keep wearing it when the nobles and the other ahalad-kaaslane hated her so?
She stopped at the edge of the Iisand’s road to wait for a midden wagon to pass. The teamster slouched on the box, his hands stained yellow by his cargo. Inside the wagon, Reisil heard a thick sloshing sound, and then the wind
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