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[untitled novel of doom] chapter two: i cut my branch from my family tree
Title: i cut my branch from my family tree
Character: Tanwen
Location: Dein Efyd
Date: Day One
I remembered our last visit to this city, the previous year. My uncle’s children, both younger than ten, had run around like those possessed by demons. They’d had a little dog they kept as a pet that had escaped, and we’d had to ransom it back from the old Enwythau woman who found it. Grandfather Idris gave them hell for that; he wanted to just let the woman keep the dog and eat it, but Uncle Delwyn had insisted. So my predominant memory of Dein Efyd was of my uncle trying to get my grandfather to stop yelling at my cousins, in the housing compound of a startled Enwythau family.
The city outside of that wasn’t very impressive. Nor was it, I reminded myself, really a proper city. It had a manor, and a temple, and outlying farms, but it paid its dues to the city of Cyfalaf. Either way, its memorable feature besides the Great Dog Escape of 5171 was the clothing of the local people, whoever they were, before the Enwythau moved in. I’d like to have my cousin Mairwen study it.
Not that there was time. ‘I am right here, Aelwen!’ I called to my stepmother, jogging back to help her repack a box of tea leaves. ‘I promised that I wouldn’t leave until Andras Rheolwyr comes.’
Aelwen smiled at me, the smile of a proud mother pleased with how well her children had grown up; a smile that made my gut twist with guilt over leaving when I was clearly needed. I would never be so conceited as to think they needed me, specifically, when my presence these days only drew the sort of attention that got cousins killed; but an extra set of hands, an extra vendor to convince the city folk that they still needed our wares; that, they could use.
‘Stop standing around, we ain’t your servants,’ Kieve hollered into my ear, as he passed by with a pile of skins loaded in his arms. He thumped it down into the canvas that our father laid out. ‘My wonderful and exalted draethyr, you are still a peasant yet; do your job.’ He aimed a neat roundhouse kick at my head.
I grinned, jumped back, and grabbed his ankle, holding it at shoulder level while he staggered and hopped for balance. ‘I saw that coming a mile away, peasant. You’re lucky I was too busy daydreaming about life without you around anymore.’
Kieve smiled. ‘Yeah, you and dear Cousin Gethin.’ He put on a snooty Enwythau accent, which failed because like most of our family, he couldn’t pronounce his ‘r’s correctly. ‘My dearest cousin, won’t you please pass me the engraved vase of txokolatl? It belonged to our common ancestor, you know, our great-great grandmother, you will remember when I commissioned the mural of her to commemorate the birth of her second daughter, you know, my great grandmother and yours, you know that we do go back quite a ways, remember? And as I was saying, she was very fond of txokolatl, so it’s only fitting that we drink it in her memory.’
‘It’s pronounced ‘chocolate’, don’t you know?’ chimed in Mairwen, sweeping past with her bloody red scarf fluttering out behind her. ‘Hey, Tanwen, you’ll be missing us during every daily ritual, I’ll bet.’
I made a face, and Kieve took advantage of the distraction to hop out of my grip with a brainless expression on his face.
‘Keep your voice down,’ said Aelwen. ‘You don’t need to be disturbing the civilians.’
Kieve looked as though he had a smart retort coming up; I grabbed his arm to drag him away before he and Aelwen could get into another fight. ‘Let’s go see what Grandfather is making for dinner,’ I said loudly.
‘No, I need you to finish wrapping up the tea. And make sure that your brother knows how to tie all of your knots, I don’t want to lose an entire sling of tea,’ Aelwen told me.
‘Andras and I aren’t leaving until tomorrow morning,’ I reminded her, in tones as gentle and diplomatic as possible. ‘With Uncle Rhydian. If he can’t do it right tonight, we can practice.’
Aelwen still looked harassed, but it was the directionless sort now, not the kind likely to result in her being difficult and overbearing. Good — I loved her better than I’d loved my own mother, and I didn’t want to leave her on angry terms. I marched away, still holding Kieve by the elbow, and dragged him down to the tea sling.
‘Where is Rhydian, anyway?’ asked Kieve. He craned his neck around the market, as if expecting our uncle to materialize out of thin air. But it was clear he wasn’t there; the marketplace was deserted in the evening, and our family only took up one small corner — not even the full area that our family had been allotted.
‘In town. Father and I decided it would be better to have someone meet Andras first, and bring him here.’
‘Of course that’s a good idea.’ The corners of his mouth twitched.
I responded with a tilt of my head, eyes cast skyward. ‘You’re supposed to be learning knots. Re-learning knots. Pay attention.’
We set about packing the tea, bundling it into the sling frame and tying the canvas shut with rope knotted in configurations meant to ward off rot and insects, among other things. Kieve had learned them from Grandmother at the same time that I had, but his head was more suited to measurements and mathematics than art; Bran had been the one who’d caught onto them the best, after Mairwen. We practiced together, lingering over the last few out in unspoken agreement because it was probably one of the last few times we’d be doing this together. Not that he’d ever mention it, of course. Kieve had, over the past few months, perfected the art of talking around anything unpleasant. I shrugged at it, and Mairwen said he was talking out of his ass, and Bran had nothing to say on this or any subject anymore.
After we’d demonstrated to Aelwen that there was, indeed, nothing to fear in the way of inferior knot-tying, my brother and I wandered over to the corner that our grandparents had claimed for their kitchen. They, with the addition of Rhian, shifted around one fire, three large bowls, and an assortment of smaller jars, packets, and knives. Grandmother wielded a wooden spoon with which she stirred the contents of one bowl over the fire. I’d been working downwind of the setup today, so I had no chance to smell the contents as the steam drifted out. Now I could, and I paused a moment to stand and inhale. Before I got too close, though, Rhian came dashing up to me with her clasped hands held out before her.
‘Tanwen! Grandfather and I made sticky grain balls. See?’ She opened her hands and thrust them up at me. I plucked the misshapen golden-brown object out of her hands and sniffed it: rye and rice from across the sea, and far, far too much paprika. I stifled a sneeze.
‘I think you should eat this one yourself,’ I told her, placing it back into her palms. Beside me, Kieve huffed with soft laughter.
‘But you like it, right? I did a good job?’ Rhian looked up at me with imploring almond eyes.
‘I’m not a cook; I can’t tell you that. Why don’t you ask Grandfather?’ I managed, lifting my eyes to where he sat, waiting for her to return. He smiled with good humor.
Rhian frowned. ‘He said I put so much paprika in, I was gonna burn a hole in my mama’s tongue,’ she confided.
I patted her head. ‘Maybe not quite that much, next time.’
&
The sun had nearly vanished behind the city line and the high stone walls of the market when I saw movement at the far end of those walls. I sat with my back to the wall, watching Mairwen while she made some of her woven spell nets next to me. Art, she called it. They weren’t particularly powerful — she had no formal training, that would involve sending her off to a citadel on the west coast — but beautiful to look at all the same. Kieve sat on my other side, playing with her leftover pieces of cord; our parents had discarded their scarves and were sparring in the open area.
It all stopped when Uncle Rhydian came back. He walked through the entrance, round-shouldered and with his head jutting forwards so that he looked even more like a bird of prey than usual. Aunt Myfanwy moved towards him like a spirit possessed. Everyone else’s attention swept past him, onwards to the man who accompanied him at a cautious distance.
I’d met Andras of Eldareth a few times before. Two years ago was the most recent, when we were in the northernmost part of our route. He came to visit my guard, his partner, at times when he wasn’t fighting in yet another war between the Mynyoed and the northern Enwythau city-states. The most recent time, he’d come back with spell burns across the left side of his face, souvenirs of a battle that had finished that war and made him into something of a hero to the Enwythau. The scars had darkened since then: turned black and ridged and bled over from his sharp, skull-like face onto the shaved side of his head. Added to the fanged smile tattooed across his lips and the spear in his hands, he made an impressive and singularly Enwythau figure as he approached.
I scrambled to my feet, heart pounding. It wasn’t that I feared him — he had been hired to protect me — I simply did not know him well. I only had Rhydwen’s dreamy-eyed anecdotes and a few memories of the man as he had been before his partner had been killed for my sake.
Beside me, Kieve stood as well, and clapped a hand to my shoulder. ‘I’ve got your back,’ he murmured in my ear. ‘But I make no guarantee if he’s got fangs like that on the inside of his mouth, too.’
I turned my head enough to give him a look. Then I ignored him. ‘Mair, aren’t you — no, never mind.’ From her posture, and the way she was twisting cords together with fierce indifference, I could tell she was dying for one of us to ask her if she was going to stand to greet her father and our visitor.
Andras Rheolwyr walked straight up to Grandmother, past Father and Aelwen, and knelt on one knee before her, hands folded. She pursed her lips and leaned on the stand that held up the bowl over the fire. Grandmother was one of the sailors who crossed the oceans to come here from a land with giant lizards and worms that lived in trees to spin silk; she’d seen things, and wasn’t about to be impressed by a mere hero of the Enwythau.
‘Please accept my greetings, Mabyn Sisawain, and my sorrows for your family,’ said Andras in his rough, deep voice.
‘Thank you,’ said Grandmother. She looked as though she were waiting for him to say more — move on to Grandfather, or keep on talking about dead relatives and chaotic weeks trying to sort it all out — but he did none of that. Instead, he rose again, bent at the waist to acknowledge Grandfather, and turned in my direction without another word. I sucked in a breath and puffed out my chest with false confidence in the hope that by doing so, going through the motions, I would feel more self-assured as well.
He is only a man, I reminded myself. He is only a man, and he has agreed to pledge loyalty to me. Rhydwen had sense; he wouldn’t have asked this man to watch over me if he was untrustworthy.
Rhydwen’s judgment has been known to be clouded by fondness, whispered a voice at the back of my head. He chose to serve you, against all common sense.
Right.
Andras knelt in front of me in a gesture identical to the one he had performed for Grandmother only a few seconds before. ‘Tanwen Seren of Cyfalaf,’ he said. His eyes didn’t quite meet mine; their gaze stopped short at the belt around my waist.
‘Andras Rheolwyr of Eldareth,’ I said in reply. I had practiced this greeting with Father for the past two days, and I prayed that I wouldn’t stumble over the words now. ‘May the Skinless Deity bring peace to Rhydwen, and may its care ease your own pain.’
His lips pressed together, deforming the painted fangs, and his gaze flickered up for a fraction of a second. ‘Well said. Thank you.’
‘You may rise,’ I instructed him, feeling slightly odd about issuing the command. Rhydwen had always knelt in the presence of my Enwythau family, of course, but I had known him since before Rhian was born. Andras got smoothly to his feet. Standing, he was four inches taller than me — not an inconsiderable achievement — and broad-shouldered. I wished that I was not backed against a wall.
‘How was your journey here?’ I asked. ‘You came from Caerath, right?’
Caermynog, actually. I needed to bring my ward to the citadel there; he would do us no good, and Cyfalaf would hold no interest for him.’ As he spoke, he looked at Kieve out of the corners of his eyes, then at Mairwen, still sitting and weaving. The latter looked up for the first time.
‘What does it look like?’
‘Quite similar to Drygionus, actually. The people there are overfond of gold.’ He showed a hint of teeth in something that might have been a smile. ‘We met a man from Yashigara who had hair the color a monkey’s belly and skin like ground flour.’
Mairwen tried to maintain a cool, unaffected front, but I wouldn’t have needed to know her as well as I did to see her obvious interest. ‘In the citadel, too?’
‘They don’t allow anyone besides students and instructors into the citadel itself, so I couldn’t say,’ said Andras.
I let them talk back and forth for a few minutes, Mairwen shooting questions at Andras about the clothing in Caermynog, and the people, and what languages were spoken most commonly. He answered everything as though it were all a matter of deadly seriousness. Listening to them was easier; it gave me room to think. Or to communicate with Kieve, as it turned out. We didn’t speak aloud, but it happened regardless. He raised his eyebrows at me; I lowered mine. He tilted his head in Andras’ direction, eyes wide, and I twisted my mouth to the side. He shrugged. I looked around at Mairwen and found her and Andras watching us: him steady, her wry.
‘My cousin can’t figure out what is so interesting about Caermynog, and Kieve is impressed that you’ve been beyond the Border River at all,’ Mairwen explained. The lies rattled off her tongue with the easiness of truth to it, and had I not been one of the speakers in question, I wouldn’t have known the difference. I never knew where she got that talent from: both of her parents and her younger siblings were transparent. ‘They do that a lot.’
Andras nodded. ‘I am fortunate, then, that I won’t be subjected to that for very long.’
None of us knew what to say to that, and silence descended. Mairwen sat down and resumed her weaving. Kieve pushed off the wall and entered the kitchen area. I avoided Andras’ gaze until it was no longer polite to do so.
‘I have some things,’ — I began, at the same time that Rhian started jangling a knot of glass beads about, shouting.
‘Supper! Supper! Calling all Sisawain men, women, others, and children!’ Grandmother bent down to whisper something in her ear. ‘And guests!’ shouted Rhian.
‘After dinner, then.’ I smiled at Andras. He bowed his head, and I breathed a mental sigh of relief. Business could wait.
Supper among the teithwyr was similar to supper with any other people in the land, I supposed, but with different rituals. They prayed to their nameless deities in the sky. We made remembrances to the sea, from whence all life came. I could see the moment when Andras realized this, halfway between the call to supper and when we sat down in a circle around the fire.
‘Rhydwen didn’t participate in our remembrances,’ I told him. ‘He passed over and said his prayers afterwards.’
Andras nodded yet again, but I thought I saw the muscles in his jaw relax as he sat down between Father and I. At any rate, he folded his hands in his lap when Grandmother took out the small porcelain bowl that she had brought from across the seas, white with blue patterns circling the sides. She poured water from a flask until the bowl had been filled halfway; stopped to say the words of thanks; then filled it the rest of the way, and threw in a pinch of limestone dust. When we could afford it, we used salt — salt to water for the ocean, recreated here to symbolize the continued connection — but this year hadn’t been good, so we used limestone powder, of which there were plentiful amounts. Grandmother passed the bowl to Grandfather, who said one thing for which he was grateful today, sprinkled in a bit of limestone, and handed it to Aunt Myfanwy. Around went the bowl, while we shared. The weather had been stayed fair, said Myfanwy. Andras had arrived safely, said Rhydian. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I proc
laimed my gratitude for Rhian’s improving skills with cooking, and handed it to Father over Andras’ hands.
Supper after that — after the bowl was set aside, to pour into the flames when we had finished eating — was conducted in relative silence, as it often was. We were constantly in each other’s presence during the day, and that was the time for talking. Throughout the meal, I was acutely aware of Andras by my side: lifting his bowl of stew to his black-and-white lips, frowning as he bit into one of Rhian’s unrealistically spicy dough balls, but mostly looking around at my family, eyes never resting. I fixed my own eyes on my food, fighting the impulse to stare straight at him until he became aware of my gaze and was ashamed. Have pity, I reminded myself. He probably recognized none of us; he was in a strange environment, and we didn’t always speak the same language.
Supper ended with the last call for more stew, twenty minutes or so later. When no one responded, Aelwen took it upon herself to say the traditional words before throwing the bowl of milky, powder-filled water into the dying fire. The rest of us took this for the signal it was, allowing us to stand and get ready to move to the empty house compound prepared for any of the city’s various groups of traveling merchants. Andras stood off to the side, watching while we moved about, dousing the fire, cleaning up the debris, packing the bits of leftover food and putting on the slings with our wares. Aelwen solved his indecision by putting all three large supper bowls into his arms, and proceeding to stack on top of that whatever else was lying about. The sight of my tiny, stocky mother standing on tiptoe to stick another bowl onto the stack already nearly to Andras’ chin made me want to laugh, and to cry at the same time; she used to do the exact same thing to Rhydwen. Of course, Rhydwen could understand the sharp commands that Grandmother and Grandfather barked out in teithaog, so he had a better idea of what was going on. Still, Andras seemed to take it in stride, which meant that I could safely ignore him and wind my way into the back set of straps for Aunt Myfanwy’s sling. Myfanwy looked over her shoulder and gave me a faint smile.
‘Are you ready?’ she asked.
‘When you are,’ I said.
To get to the housing compound, we took a road that lay perpendicular to the long main plaza of Dein Efyd, for about half a mile. It was adjacent to several other artisan cooperatives and their farms, with the result being that when we arrived an hour or so after sunset, voices still filled the air, speaking rapidly in the Enwythau dialect of the common language. In the distance, a monkey howled, then another, then a third; nightjars buzzed, and insects in the chinampas joined in to create a burbling sheet of background noise as we swatted bugs off our skin and set down our belongings.
Grandmother was always scornful of the houses that were built here; but then, she and Grandfather grew up in a different country altogether. (Grandfather didn’t comment much on the old home. I got the impression that he was happier here than anywhere else.) I found them less preferable than the houses our families had on the shores, but these ones — curved, windowless walls of mud supporting a thatched roof with a smoke hole — were nice enough. I helped Aunt Myfanwy take off the sling inside the house where her family would stay, before running back to guide Andras to my family’s place.
And then, after that, there was nothing for it. We stood outside the door, the rest of the family inside, and looked at each other without speaking, while I thought about how to say what needed to be said.
‘Am I to sleep with you and your family?’ he asked. ‘Do you need someone to stand guard?’
‘No guards. Ah. Yes, if you wouldn’t mind?’ I’d lost my opening, damn him. ‘I … regarding Rhydwen …’ I saw his head move, though it was by now too dark to see his expression. ‘My family, we tend to travel lightly. Everyone else leaves anything that’s not strictly necessary with the shipping families down south. Except that me and Rhydwen didn’t go down south with everyone else; we went to Cyfalaf.’
‘So I must accompany you there safely before I am permitted to see them,’ he supplied.
I shuffled from foot to foot, realized what I was doing, and planted my feet. ‘There were still some things that he carried. Wait here.’ I turned on my heel and fled into our house. I could hardly see inside, but I managed to locate Aelwen’s bag by feel.
‘What are you looking for?’ she asked, when I began picking through it.
‘His things. The ones for Andras Rheolwyr.’
She didn’t need to ask who ‘he’ was. ‘Towards the bottom, I expect. Don’t unpack everything, please.’
I ignored her and dug down, until my fingers met the bundle of cloth I was searching for. I pulled it up and raced back outside before I had too much time to think about what I was doing. It needed doing, but if I stopped for even a moment, there was a good chance I’d end up hiding the bundle in my own bag, and lying to Andras about it, and that would come back to bite me, hard.
Andras stood where I’d left him, gaze skyward and spear held loosely in his right hand. He turned with a start when I touched his shoulder. I held the bundle out in front of me.
‘We …’ My throat closed. I pushed down on the feeling; my own emotions had no place in this conversation, not if I was going to make it through without bursting into tears at odd intervals like Myfanwy. I breathed in and tried again. ‘We burned the bodies three weeks ago, but I know you bury your dead.’ Your dead, my dead, our dead. ‘If you wanted anything of his to use for that … I have things. Here.’ I shoved the bundle forward again.
Andras stared at me. The moonlight cast shadows that made his already strange face even more inscrutable, but he took the — gift? — all the same. He knelt to put down his spear; with that hand freed, he undid the loose bindings and opened the cloth using movements that looked too delicate for his big hands. I leaned forwards to watch in spite of myself.
The contents were few, and small: a hair wrap, to be woven into a braid; two knives, bone (the other two were tied to my belt as we spoke); a book of history and legend that I doubted he could read; and several necklaces and carved earrings. Andras pored over them as if they were holy artifacts bestowed by the Unseen One itself. I itched to reach out and snatch everything back, cover them up and hide them away for myself. I twisted my fists into the outer layer of my skirt instead, and watched as Andras rifled through the book. From within its folded pages, he removed half a dozen papers written in round, careful script, bundled them in with the other things, and handed the book back to me.
‘May I keep these?’ he asked, though his hands had already closed around the cloth.
I took the book and shrugged. ‘Whatever you like.’
He cleared his throat. When he spoke, his voice sounded close to cracking. ‘I would advise that we rest now, if you mean to leave at sunrise.’
‘I mean to rise at sunrise,’ I corrected him, latching onto the change of subject. ‘My uncle and grandmother are going to the market tomorrow to find two gaethsion, so they won’t be shorthanded. I want to go with them.’
This made Andras frown. ‘Are there not others of your people to call on for assistance?’
I glanced at the open doors of the houses around us, and hoped that our conversation wasn’t audible to everyone. I doubted it — we stood at some distance, and my family wasn’t much for eavesdropping when they could be sleeping instead — but I lowered my voice anyway. ‘I’m not making my family very popular right now with our relatives. I mean — I’m not doing anything, but the fact that they’re my family, it’s already difficult. And, well.’ I gave him a tight smile. ‘They were right, weren’t they? No one wants to lend a hand to the caravan that insists on sticking their noses into the politics of others. Lend money, to purchase hands, yes; but that’s about as far as it goes.’
Andras pursed his lips and studied me. I tilted my chin up, determined not to give him any weaknesses to criticize.
‘Tanwen.’
Both Andras and I turned. Father stood in the doorway of our house, hands braced on the door frame. ‘Come inside. You as well, Andras Rheolwyr. There will be time enough to talk tomorrow.’
&
Title this time courtesy of Radical Face. The Family Tree: The Roots is more or less the soundtrack for the Sisawain family, only with less suicide. I also need to pay extra attention to the less-central family members, because they're still important to the functioning of the group.
Mairwen and Kieve might have accidentally swapped issues in this draft. Since Mairwen is more important to the story, I'm more than okay with this.
Character: Tanwen
Location: Dein Efyd
Date: Day One
I remembered our last visit to this city, the previous year. My uncle’s children, both younger than ten, had run around like those possessed by demons. They’d had a little dog they kept as a pet that had escaped, and we’d had to ransom it back from the old Enwythau woman who found it. Grandfather Idris gave them hell for that; he wanted to just let the woman keep the dog and eat it, but Uncle Delwyn had insisted. So my predominant memory of Dein Efyd was of my uncle trying to get my grandfather to stop yelling at my cousins, in the housing compound of a startled Enwythau family.
The city outside of that wasn’t very impressive. Nor was it, I reminded myself, really a proper city. It had a manor, and a temple, and outlying farms, but it paid its dues to the city of Cyfalaf. Either way, its memorable feature besides the Great Dog Escape of 5171 was the clothing of the local people, whoever they were, before the Enwythau moved in. I’d like to have my cousin Mairwen study it.
Not that there was time. ‘I am right here, Aelwen!’ I called to my stepmother, jogging back to help her repack a box of tea leaves. ‘I promised that I wouldn’t leave until Andras Rheolwyr comes.’
Aelwen smiled at me, the smile of a proud mother pleased with how well her children had grown up; a smile that made my gut twist with guilt over leaving when I was clearly needed. I would never be so conceited as to think they needed me, specifically, when my presence these days only drew the sort of attention that got cousins killed; but an extra set of hands, an extra vendor to convince the city folk that they still needed our wares; that, they could use.
‘Stop standing around, we ain’t your servants,’ Kieve hollered into my ear, as he passed by with a pile of skins loaded in his arms. He thumped it down into the canvas that our father laid out. ‘My wonderful and exalted draethyr, you are still a peasant yet; do your job.’ He aimed a neat roundhouse kick at my head.
I grinned, jumped back, and grabbed his ankle, holding it at shoulder level while he staggered and hopped for balance. ‘I saw that coming a mile away, peasant. You’re lucky I was too busy daydreaming about life without you around anymore.’
Kieve smiled. ‘Yeah, you and dear Cousin Gethin.’ He put on a snooty Enwythau accent, which failed because like most of our family, he couldn’t pronounce his ‘r’s correctly. ‘My dearest cousin, won’t you please pass me the engraved vase of txokolatl? It belonged to our common ancestor, you know, our great-great grandmother, you will remember when I commissioned the mural of her to commemorate the birth of her second daughter, you know, my great grandmother and yours, you know that we do go back quite a ways, remember? And as I was saying, she was very fond of txokolatl, so it’s only fitting that we drink it in her memory.’
‘It’s pronounced ‘chocolate’, don’t you know?’ chimed in Mairwen, sweeping past with her bloody red scarf fluttering out behind her. ‘Hey, Tanwen, you’ll be missing us during every daily ritual, I’ll bet.’
I made a face, and Kieve took advantage of the distraction to hop out of my grip with a brainless expression on his face.
‘Keep your voice down,’ said Aelwen. ‘You don’t need to be disturbing the civilians.’
Kieve looked as though he had a smart retort coming up; I grabbed his arm to drag him away before he and Aelwen could get into another fight. ‘Let’s go see what Grandfather is making for dinner,’ I said loudly.
‘No, I need you to finish wrapping up the tea. And make sure that your brother knows how to tie all of your knots, I don’t want to lose an entire sling of tea,’ Aelwen told me.
‘Andras and I aren’t leaving until tomorrow morning,’ I reminded her, in tones as gentle and diplomatic as possible. ‘With Uncle Rhydian. If he can’t do it right tonight, we can practice.’
Aelwen still looked harassed, but it was the directionless sort now, not the kind likely to result in her being difficult and overbearing. Good — I loved her better than I’d loved my own mother, and I didn’t want to leave her on angry terms. I marched away, still holding Kieve by the elbow, and dragged him down to the tea sling.
‘Where is Rhydian, anyway?’ asked Kieve. He craned his neck around the market, as if expecting our uncle to materialize out of thin air. But it was clear he wasn’t there; the marketplace was deserted in the evening, and our family only took up one small corner — not even the full area that our family had been allotted.
‘In town. Father and I decided it would be better to have someone meet Andras first, and bring him here.’
‘Of course that’s a good idea.’ The corners of his mouth twitched.
I responded with a tilt of my head, eyes cast skyward. ‘You’re supposed to be learning knots. Re-learning knots. Pay attention.’
We set about packing the tea, bundling it into the sling frame and tying the canvas shut with rope knotted in configurations meant to ward off rot and insects, among other things. Kieve had learned them from Grandmother at the same time that I had, but his head was more suited to measurements and mathematics than art; Bran had been the one who’d caught onto them the best, after Mairwen. We practiced together, lingering over the last few out in unspoken agreement because it was probably one of the last few times we’d be doing this together. Not that he’d ever mention it, of course. Kieve had, over the past few months, perfected the art of talking around anything unpleasant. I shrugged at it, and Mairwen said he was talking out of his ass, and Bran had nothing to say on this or any subject anymore.
After we’d demonstrated to Aelwen that there was, indeed, nothing to fear in the way of inferior knot-tying, my brother and I wandered over to the corner that our grandparents had claimed for their kitchen. They, with the addition of Rhian, shifted around one fire, three large bowls, and an assortment of smaller jars, packets, and knives. Grandmother wielded a wooden spoon with which she stirred the contents of one bowl over the fire. I’d been working downwind of the setup today, so I had no chance to smell the contents as the steam drifted out. Now I could, and I paused a moment to stand and inhale. Before I got too close, though, Rhian came dashing up to me with her clasped hands held out before her.
‘Tanwen! Grandfather and I made sticky grain balls. See?’ She opened her hands and thrust them up at me. I plucked the misshapen golden-brown object out of her hands and sniffed it: rye and rice from across the sea, and far, far too much paprika. I stifled a sneeze.
‘I think you should eat this one yourself,’ I told her, placing it back into her palms. Beside me, Kieve huffed with soft laughter.
‘But you like it, right? I did a good job?’ Rhian looked up at me with imploring almond eyes.
‘I’m not a cook; I can’t tell you that. Why don’t you ask Grandfather?’ I managed, lifting my eyes to where he sat, waiting for her to return. He smiled with good humor.
Rhian frowned. ‘He said I put so much paprika in, I was gonna burn a hole in my mama’s tongue,’ she confided.
I patted her head. ‘Maybe not quite that much, next time.’
&
The sun had nearly vanished behind the city line and the high stone walls of the market when I saw movement at the far end of those walls. I sat with my back to the wall, watching Mairwen while she made some of her woven spell nets next to me. Art, she called it. They weren’t particularly powerful — she had no formal training, that would involve sending her off to a citadel on the west coast — but beautiful to look at all the same. Kieve sat on my other side, playing with her leftover pieces of cord; our parents had discarded their scarves and were sparring in the open area.
It all stopped when Uncle Rhydian came back. He walked through the entrance, round-shouldered and with his head jutting forwards so that he looked even more like a bird of prey than usual. Aunt Myfanwy moved towards him like a spirit possessed. Everyone else’s attention swept past him, onwards to the man who accompanied him at a cautious distance.
I’d met Andras of Eldareth a few times before. Two years ago was the most recent, when we were in the northernmost part of our route. He came to visit my guard, his partner, at times when he wasn’t fighting in yet another war between the Mynyoed and the northern Enwythau city-states. The most recent time, he’d come back with spell burns across the left side of his face, souvenirs of a battle that had finished that war and made him into something of a hero to the Enwythau. The scars had darkened since then: turned black and ridged and bled over from his sharp, skull-like face onto the shaved side of his head. Added to the fanged smile tattooed across his lips and the spear in his hands, he made an impressive and singularly Enwythau figure as he approached.
I scrambled to my feet, heart pounding. It wasn’t that I feared him — he had been hired to protect me — I simply did not know him well. I only had Rhydwen’s dreamy-eyed anecdotes and a few memories of the man as he had been before his partner had been killed for my sake.
Beside me, Kieve stood as well, and clapped a hand to my shoulder. ‘I’ve got your back,’ he murmured in my ear. ‘But I make no guarantee if he’s got fangs like that on the inside of his mouth, too.’
I turned my head enough to give him a look. Then I ignored him. ‘Mair, aren’t you — no, never mind.’ From her posture, and the way she was twisting cords together with fierce indifference, I could tell she was dying for one of us to ask her if she was going to stand to greet her father and our visitor.
Andras Rheolwyr walked straight up to Grandmother, past Father and Aelwen, and knelt on one knee before her, hands folded. She pursed her lips and leaned on the stand that held up the bowl over the fire. Grandmother was one of the sailors who crossed the oceans to come here from a land with giant lizards and worms that lived in trees to spin silk; she’d seen things, and wasn’t about to be impressed by a mere hero of the Enwythau.
‘Please accept my greetings, Mabyn Sisawain, and my sorrows for your family,’ said Andras in his rough, deep voice.
‘Thank you,’ said Grandmother. She looked as though she were waiting for him to say more — move on to Grandfather, or keep on talking about dead relatives and chaotic weeks trying to sort it all out — but he did none of that. Instead, he rose again, bent at the waist to acknowledge Grandfather, and turned in my direction without another word. I sucked in a breath and puffed out my chest with false confidence in the hope that by doing so, going through the motions, I would feel more self-assured as well.
He is only a man, I reminded myself. He is only a man, and he has agreed to pledge loyalty to me. Rhydwen had sense; he wouldn’t have asked this man to watch over me if he was untrustworthy.
Rhydwen’s judgment has been known to be clouded by fondness, whispered a voice at the back of my head. He chose to serve you, against all common sense.
Right.
Andras knelt in front of me in a gesture identical to the one he had performed for Grandmother only a few seconds before. ‘Tanwen Seren of Cyfalaf,’ he said. His eyes didn’t quite meet mine; their gaze stopped short at the belt around my waist.
‘Andras Rheolwyr of Eldareth,’ I said in reply. I had practiced this greeting with Father for the past two days, and I prayed that I wouldn’t stumble over the words now. ‘May the Skinless Deity bring peace to Rhydwen, and may its care ease your own pain.’
His lips pressed together, deforming the painted fangs, and his gaze flickered up for a fraction of a second. ‘Well said. Thank you.’
‘You may rise,’ I instructed him, feeling slightly odd about issuing the command. Rhydwen had always knelt in the presence of my Enwythau family, of course, but I had known him since before Rhian was born. Andras got smoothly to his feet. Standing, he was four inches taller than me — not an inconsiderable achievement — and broad-shouldered. I wished that I was not backed against a wall.
‘How was your journey here?’ I asked. ‘You came from Caerath, right?’
Caermynog, actually. I needed to bring my ward to the citadel there; he would do us no good, and Cyfalaf would hold no interest for him.’ As he spoke, he looked at Kieve out of the corners of his eyes, then at Mairwen, still sitting and weaving. The latter looked up for the first time.
‘What does it look like?’
‘Quite similar to Drygionus, actually. The people there are overfond of gold.’ He showed a hint of teeth in something that might have been a smile. ‘We met a man from Yashigara who had hair the color a monkey’s belly and skin like ground flour.’
Mairwen tried to maintain a cool, unaffected front, but I wouldn’t have needed to know her as well as I did to see her obvious interest. ‘In the citadel, too?’
‘They don’t allow anyone besides students and instructors into the citadel itself, so I couldn’t say,’ said Andras.
I let them talk back and forth for a few minutes, Mairwen shooting questions at Andras about the clothing in Caermynog, and the people, and what languages were spoken most commonly. He answered everything as though it were all a matter of deadly seriousness. Listening to them was easier; it gave me room to think. Or to communicate with Kieve, as it turned out. We didn’t speak aloud, but it happened regardless. He raised his eyebrows at me; I lowered mine. He tilted his head in Andras’ direction, eyes wide, and I twisted my mouth to the side. He shrugged. I looked around at Mairwen and found her and Andras watching us: him steady, her wry.
‘My cousin can’t figure out what is so interesting about Caermynog, and Kieve is impressed that you’ve been beyond the Border River at all,’ Mairwen explained. The lies rattled off her tongue with the easiness of truth to it, and had I not been one of the speakers in question, I wouldn’t have known the difference. I never knew where she got that talent from: both of her parents and her younger siblings were transparent. ‘They do that a lot.’
Andras nodded. ‘I am fortunate, then, that I won’t be subjected to that for very long.’
None of us knew what to say to that, and silence descended. Mairwen sat down and resumed her weaving. Kieve pushed off the wall and entered the kitchen area. I avoided Andras’ gaze until it was no longer polite to do so.
‘I have some things,’ — I began, at the same time that Rhian started jangling a knot of glass beads about, shouting.
‘Supper! Supper! Calling all Sisawain men, women, others, and children!’ Grandmother bent down to whisper something in her ear. ‘And guests!’ shouted Rhian.
‘After dinner, then.’ I smiled at Andras. He bowed his head, and I breathed a mental sigh of relief. Business could wait.
Supper among the teithwyr was similar to supper with any other people in the land, I supposed, but with different rituals. They prayed to their nameless deities in the sky. We made remembrances to the sea, from whence all life came. I could see the moment when Andras realized this, halfway between the call to supper and when we sat down in a circle around the fire.
‘Rhydwen didn’t participate in our remembrances,’ I told him. ‘He passed over and said his prayers afterwards.’
Andras nodded yet again, but I thought I saw the muscles in his jaw relax as he sat down between Father and I. At any rate, he folded his hands in his lap when Grandmother took out the small porcelain bowl that she had brought from across the seas, white with blue patterns circling the sides. She poured water from a flask until the bowl had been filled halfway; stopped to say the words of thanks; then filled it the rest of the way, and threw in a pinch of limestone dust. When we could afford it, we used salt — salt to water for the ocean, recreated here to symbolize the continued connection — but this year hadn’t been good, so we used limestone powder, of which there were plentiful amounts. Grandmother passed the bowl to Grandfather, who said one thing for which he was grateful today, sprinkled in a bit of limestone, and handed it to Aunt Myfanwy. Around went the bowl, while we shared. The weather had been stayed fair, said Myfanwy. Andras had arrived safely, said Rhydian. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I proc
laimed my gratitude for Rhian’s improving skills with cooking, and handed it to Father over Andras’ hands.
Supper after that — after the bowl was set aside, to pour into the flames when we had finished eating — was conducted in relative silence, as it often was. We were constantly in each other’s presence during the day, and that was the time for talking. Throughout the meal, I was acutely aware of Andras by my side: lifting his bowl of stew to his black-and-white lips, frowning as he bit into one of Rhian’s unrealistically spicy dough balls, but mostly looking around at my family, eyes never resting. I fixed my own eyes on my food, fighting the impulse to stare straight at him until he became aware of my gaze and was ashamed. Have pity, I reminded myself. He probably recognized none of us; he was in a strange environment, and we didn’t always speak the same language.
Supper ended with the last call for more stew, twenty minutes or so later. When no one responded, Aelwen took it upon herself to say the traditional words before throwing the bowl of milky, powder-filled water into the dying fire. The rest of us took this for the signal it was, allowing us to stand and get ready to move to the empty house compound prepared for any of the city’s various groups of traveling merchants. Andras stood off to the side, watching while we moved about, dousing the fire, cleaning up the debris, packing the bits of leftover food and putting on the slings with our wares. Aelwen solved his indecision by putting all three large supper bowls into his arms, and proceeding to stack on top of that whatever else was lying about. The sight of my tiny, stocky mother standing on tiptoe to stick another bowl onto the stack already nearly to Andras’ chin made me want to laugh, and to cry at the same time; she used to do the exact same thing to Rhydwen. Of course, Rhydwen could understand the sharp commands that Grandmother and Grandfather barked out in teithaog, so he had a better idea of what was going on. Still, Andras seemed to take it in stride, which meant that I could safely ignore him and wind my way into the back set of straps for Aunt Myfanwy’s sling. Myfanwy looked over her shoulder and gave me a faint smile.
‘Are you ready?’ she asked.
‘When you are,’ I said.
To get to the housing compound, we took a road that lay perpendicular to the long main plaza of Dein Efyd, for about half a mile. It was adjacent to several other artisan cooperatives and their farms, with the result being that when we arrived an hour or so after sunset, voices still filled the air, speaking rapidly in the Enwythau dialect of the common language. In the distance, a monkey howled, then another, then a third; nightjars buzzed, and insects in the chinampas joined in to create a burbling sheet of background noise as we swatted bugs off our skin and set down our belongings.
Grandmother was always scornful of the houses that were built here; but then, she and Grandfather grew up in a different country altogether. (Grandfather didn’t comment much on the old home. I got the impression that he was happier here than anywhere else.) I found them less preferable than the houses our families had on the shores, but these ones — curved, windowless walls of mud supporting a thatched roof with a smoke hole — were nice enough. I helped Aunt Myfanwy take off the sling inside the house where her family would stay, before running back to guide Andras to my family’s place.
And then, after that, there was nothing for it. We stood outside the door, the rest of the family inside, and looked at each other without speaking, while I thought about how to say what needed to be said.
‘Am I to sleep with you and your family?’ he asked. ‘Do you need someone to stand guard?’
‘No guards. Ah. Yes, if you wouldn’t mind?’ I’d lost my opening, damn him. ‘I … regarding Rhydwen …’ I saw his head move, though it was by now too dark to see his expression. ‘My family, we tend to travel lightly. Everyone else leaves anything that’s not strictly necessary with the shipping families down south. Except that me and Rhydwen didn’t go down south with everyone else; we went to Cyfalaf.’
‘So I must accompany you there safely before I am permitted to see them,’ he supplied.
I shuffled from foot to foot, realized what I was doing, and planted my feet. ‘There were still some things that he carried. Wait here.’ I turned on my heel and fled into our house. I could hardly see inside, but I managed to locate Aelwen’s bag by feel.
‘What are you looking for?’ she asked, when I began picking through it.
‘His things. The ones for Andras Rheolwyr.’
She didn’t need to ask who ‘he’ was. ‘Towards the bottom, I expect. Don’t unpack everything, please.’
I ignored her and dug down, until my fingers met the bundle of cloth I was searching for. I pulled it up and raced back outside before I had too much time to think about what I was doing. It needed doing, but if I stopped for even a moment, there was a good chance I’d end up hiding the bundle in my own bag, and lying to Andras about it, and that would come back to bite me, hard.
Andras stood where I’d left him, gaze skyward and spear held loosely in his right hand. He turned with a start when I touched his shoulder. I held the bundle out in front of me.
‘We …’ My throat closed. I pushed down on the feeling; my own emotions had no place in this conversation, not if I was going to make it through without bursting into tears at odd intervals like Myfanwy. I breathed in and tried again. ‘We burned the bodies three weeks ago, but I know you bury your dead.’ Your dead, my dead, our dead. ‘If you wanted anything of his to use for that … I have things. Here.’ I shoved the bundle forward again.
Andras stared at me. The moonlight cast shadows that made his already strange face even more inscrutable, but he took the — gift? — all the same. He knelt to put down his spear; with that hand freed, he undid the loose bindings and opened the cloth using movements that looked too delicate for his big hands. I leaned forwards to watch in spite of myself.
The contents were few, and small: a hair wrap, to be woven into a braid; two knives, bone (the other two were tied to my belt as we spoke); a book of history and legend that I doubted he could read; and several necklaces and carved earrings. Andras pored over them as if they were holy artifacts bestowed by the Unseen One itself. I itched to reach out and snatch everything back, cover them up and hide them away for myself. I twisted my fists into the outer layer of my skirt instead, and watched as Andras rifled through the book. From within its folded pages, he removed half a dozen papers written in round, careful script, bundled them in with the other things, and handed the book back to me.
‘May I keep these?’ he asked, though his hands had already closed around the cloth.
I took the book and shrugged. ‘Whatever you like.’
He cleared his throat. When he spoke, his voice sounded close to cracking. ‘I would advise that we rest now, if you mean to leave at sunrise.’
‘I mean to rise at sunrise,’ I corrected him, latching onto the change of subject. ‘My uncle and grandmother are going to the market tomorrow to find two gaethsion, so they won’t be shorthanded. I want to go with them.’
This made Andras frown. ‘Are there not others of your people to call on for assistance?’
I glanced at the open doors of the houses around us, and hoped that our conversation wasn’t audible to everyone. I doubted it — we stood at some distance, and my family wasn’t much for eavesdropping when they could be sleeping instead — but I lowered my voice anyway. ‘I’m not making my family very popular right now with our relatives. I mean — I’m not doing anything, but the fact that they’re my family, it’s already difficult. And, well.’ I gave him a tight smile. ‘They were right, weren’t they? No one wants to lend a hand to the caravan that insists on sticking their noses into the politics of others. Lend money, to purchase hands, yes; but that’s about as far as it goes.’
Andras pursed his lips and studied me. I tilted my chin up, determined not to give him any weaknesses to criticize.
‘Tanwen.’
Both Andras and I turned. Father stood in the doorway of our house, hands braced on the door frame. ‘Come inside. You as well, Andras Rheolwyr. There will be time enough to talk tomorrow.’
&
Title this time courtesy of Radical Face. The Family Tree: The Roots is more or less the soundtrack for the Sisawain family, only with less suicide. I also need to pay extra attention to the less-central family members, because they're still important to the functioning of the group.
Mairwen and Kieve might have accidentally swapped issues in this draft. Since Mairwen is more important to the story, I'm more than okay with this.