“You are going — just like that?” Niav stared at him wide-eyed.
“Well, I came to say goodbye. It’s more than he did.”
“But we always expected him to come back.”
“Did you now?” said Fearn. “How little you knew him.”
“You were only a toddler — how could you have appreciated subtle nuances like that?”
“But I was not stupid. Small children are not always stupid. Besides I get much more information out of my uncles than they think I do. Or maybe they are just testing me to sort out how much I can work out for myself. Anyway, I aim to leave tomorrow.”
“What about your blade?”
“Oh, I plan to be getting my blade.”
Niav could just imagine the scene — oh to be an insect on the Lurgan family wall! “And what about Canya?”
“What about Canya? She could have anyone she wants, why would she want me? Besides, Estra would take it very badly. You know as well as I do that that’s who Lurgan proposes to pair me off with. I do not propose to come in the way of anything that Estra feels she is entitled to — it could ruin your life. Best to be elsewhere, I feel.”
“How perceptive of you. Well if you are so sure, what can I say?” Then she paused for a moment — if she didn’t ask him now she never would.” I need to know something about Artin that you might be able to help me with.”
Fearn raised a perfect eyebrow.
“It’s about the death of my parents. You seem to be able to remember a whole lot more than a toddler might be expected to, so it’s worth a try. I am told it was a good three years after my parents were drowned that your father reappeared like magic and people started to suspect he could be a demi-god. He never seems to have told anyone how he got away, or, if he did, there is some reason why no one one will tell me. Did you ever hear him talk of an escape, or maybe he said someone tried to kill him …?”
Fearn pondered for a minute. “Maybe — but I don’t remember details. Someone did try to kill him — but he went back and faced them out. In other words, yes, but I don’t know if it was here. He can make himself unpopular all over the place I am told.”
“Surely he wouldn’t have brought both of you back here if it was dangerous?”
“My mother is dead, my father is gone — end of story!”
Niav was stunned — all these years and he could have been harbouring doubts and terrors just the same as hers. “We are probably both being as daft as Estra,” she said, almost crying. “So that is that then. Is there anything I can give you to remember me by? I take it you won’t be back either.” Niav felt blank inside.
Fearn smiled, a smile like dark sunlight, and for her alone. “Now just imagine me,” he said. “With my hair the colour of honey, and, if you wish it, a crippled leg — though, as Aunty Grizzel pointed out, that wouldn’t notice if we were lying down. Or maybe think of me as him, reflected deep in jet — just to say goodbye to him, you understand — because, quite honestly, I don’t think he is going to come back this way, and I would like you to be happy for once, if only at second best.”
When Aunty Grizzel found them hard at work in her bed, she laughed till she wept. “Children, children, I do hope I am interrupting you before a truly delicate moment. Oh, but if you could see yourselves!” she cried. “A beast with two backs — and four wings! Really Niav, didn’t you think — couldn’t you guess? I hope nothing irretrievable has happened yet?”
“When would I get to see my back? Why did you never tell me?” screamed Niav in unbelieving shock.
“I’m going tomorrow,” laughed Fearn, who undoubtedly had been aware of the hidden interest of Niav’s back. “I don’t suppose there is anything that I can do for you, too, before I go?” He paused as he did up his belt.
“Arrogant bastard, like father like son!” yelled Grizzel. “We didn’t want my poor brother to know. So many years of marriage and no child — what else was your poor mother expected to do, Niav? Taunts of infertility get anyone down — men and women alike — and particularly when you are meant to be a healer.”
“Exactly — I’m sure that my father was merely trying to repay the hospitality that he had received — I’m told that it’s his way,” countered Fearn, still laughing as he laced up his right moccasin.
“Viper!” retorted Aunty Grizzel, flinging the nearest thing to hand — a wooden milk dipper, which Fearn avoided with a backward leap that took him smacking into the dresser and nearly dislodging Aunty Grizzel’s heavy scrying bowl. The drum and rattle bounced noisily across the earthen floor.
“Well, Niav,” Grizzel sighed, suddenly looking her age, “When I delivered you and saw that birthmark, your mother and I thanked our stars for you being a girl. For the normal reasons of decency, it would probably remain well hid, if we could only steer you past the baby stage. I know your mother had reassured Artin as much. I don’t know which one of them had had the bright idea in the first place — mutual lust is my suspicion, but then I’m over- suspicious by nature.
“Anyway, between us we were coping very well till one morning my brother Diarma popped his head into the hut just as we were bathing you. We didn’t think that he had noticed anything.
“That was the same day they had planned to go out testing that wretched boat. The whole village was there to see them off. At the last minute your mother decided to go too, and handed you to me to take home. But I went up to the west cliff so that we could watch. Even with them that far out, I noticed a tussle of some sort. Then the whole boat capsized and I thought them all gone forever. Who could have blamed my poor brother if he had seized a chance to push Artin in — but some people lead a charmed life. Abusing hospitality seems a family failing round here.”
“But it doesn’t make me the bastard!” hissed Fearn, now silhouetted in the doorway. “My mother loved him, you know, and she loved me, and once upon a time my father loved her! She was his wife! But you wouldn’t give up the beads he had made for her when he still pined for her and his distant home. Even after you had to thrust his love-child in her face! Eggs — she threw them at him, all of them — and they were rotten too! I forget nothing!” said Fearn with a terrible matter-of-factness.
Grizzel had seized the broom. Niav had finished scrabbling around for her scattered clothes. “Get out, you bastard’s bastard. You leave now, not tomorrow!”
“Yes, perfect timing, into the setting sun!”
They harried him down the cluttered compound, tripping up on hay-rakes and buckets and panicked livestock, past the weaving-hut and the herb garden and stumbling through the clutch of hives. The last they saw of him, he was running, screaming, towards the river, followed by a cloud of bees.
Grizzel dusted off her palms and walked sedately back towards the well. She undid her jet necklace, held it for a moment catching the sunlight and then, pushing the well cover aside, she dropped it clattering down the shaft.
Aunty Grizzel sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands. Niav suddenly remembered how tired she must be — she had been called out at crack of dawn on a blisteringly hot day.
“Was the birth all right in the end?”
“Yes, she should be fine — but she has lost a lot of blood.”
“And the baby?”
“Two boys!”
“Well, you thought it might be twins. Now you lie down. I will get you a nice camomile tea and then start the meal — at least I will know how many to cook for this time!”
At this, astonishingly, Aunty Grizzel burst into tears. Niav had never known her to cry real gulping tears, not in her whole life — she was more used to Grizzel comforting hers.
“I should not have done that,” said Aunty Grizzel shakily. “That was a beautiful thing and I should have given it to you long since — my stupid temper, why must I do these things!”
“Your necklace? Why on earth to me? Maybe it should have been buried with Fearn’s mum, and anyway, didn’t you help to make it?”
“I only helped Artin to string it and, we were making it for Orchil, Artin’s much-loved wife — he planned to take it to her when he sailed away, but of course that never happened. I have never had any right to it. It should have been yours because poor Orchil wanted you to have it. Don’t you have any memories of my going out the night
