Ammonite

Chapter Fourteen

HILT LEFT FOR North Haven, taking the message with her. The Moon of Rowers came, but Marghe Amun’s monthly bleeding did not. It was then that she realized that what she and Thenike had done would affect her whole life. In a few months—a year, by Jeep standards—she would bear a child. A daughter. It was strange to think that soon she would be responsible for another human being. It made her feel restless, trapped.

Marghe paused, weed in one hand, trowel in the other. The ovum—the blastosphere, her enhanced memory whispered to her—was just cells. She could abort them, it, as easily as she had induced cell division. She could be just herself; she did not need to be responsible.

But she was responsible already. The child growing inside Thenike was partially of her doing. They would be soestre. There was already a bond.

Marghe knelt on the damp ground. She had a child growing in her belly. Did she want it?

Yes. She wanted to bear it—her; she wanted to name her, watch her learn to crawl, speak, think. Wanted her to have a home, belong.

She went back to her gardening.

The clear air of Ollfoss grew warmer daily, and Marghe and Gerrel spent their mornings and afternoons, and sometimes early evenings when the sun lay like an amber cloak over the tops of the trees, digging out weeds on their knees, trimming back excessive growth of jaellums and soca and neat’s-foot.

When she was not on her knees in the garden, Marghe was with Thenike. They helped Wenn weave, gathered herbs with old Kenisi, took turns looking after Moss and Otter while Leifin and Namri were choosing a tree to cut to make a new door and Huellis made candles. They ate together, slept together, talked together; and Marghe learned.

When she took up the drums, it was to learn from Thenike how to use them to drive a story deep into the hearts of her listeners. When she took up a rope, she learned how the knots spelled out shorthand versions of concepts and phrases, how the colored threads made the words, or added emphasis. She was not a good singer, she did not have that smoky voice of Thenike’s, but she learned how to give a story rhythm and pacing, how to make it live in the mind’s eye of her listener. She was good at that.

She practiced on Thenike, telling her the story of her life, of her mother’s life, and her father’s, of how Company stole what it could not cheat from people, of the worlds she had visited, and the places of which she only knew rumor.

Her skin browned, and her arms thickened and grew strong. The room where Marghe had stayed became the guest room once more, and at night, before she fell asleep, she would look at their hands lying together, Thenike’s long, all sinew and bone, with that white scar snaking over the back of the thumb, her own blunt and spatulate, and feel full of the wonder of their differences. Sometimes she had strange dreams in which her belly swelled so much that she could not get through the doorway, and she felt trapped. She woke on those mornings to sunshine and Thenike’s hair spread over her pillow, and a feeling of restlessness she could not explain.

That restlessness grew like an unreachable itch as the Moon of Flowers passed into the beginning of Lazy Moon, and spring became early summer.

One evening, Thenike was sitting behind Marghe in the tub, rinsing Marghe’s hair.

It had been windy that day, and the hair was tangled.

“Ouch.” Marghe felt irritable. “Be careful.”

“I am careful, but a knot is a knot.”

Marghe sat stiffly; Thenike worked in silence. Marghe felt restlessness and tension building up inside her until it was almost unbearable. “Stop. Just stop.” She pushed Thenike’s hands away. “We’ll cut it off. It’ll be easier.”

“Another few minutes and the tangles will all be gone.”

“I don’t want to wait another few minutes. And tomorrow it’ll only be all tangled again.” She twisted around to face Thenike. “I want it cut.”

“Well, how do you suggest we proceed? Shall I use my teeth?”

Thenike’s exasperation was understandable but did nothing to curb Marghe’s irritation. “I’m sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “It’s just…”She slapped at the water in frustration, sending it slopping over the edge of the tub. She would have to clean that later; it made her even more cross.

Thenike reached out and touched her hand. “I’ve watched you the last few days, winding up tighter and tighter, like a bow. Talk to me, and perhaps we can sort something out that does not rely upon cutting your beautiful hair.”

“I feel… trapped. No, that’s not the right word. It’s just that this place, Ollfoss, is so small. I see the same people, who talk about the same things. And every day I go into the garden, and I pull up the weeds from a different patch. And then I eat the same food. It’s… I want to know what’s happening in other places. Has my message got to Danner yet, and what does she think? How will Sara Hiam feel about me not testing the vaccine to the limit? And there’s so much I want to know. Here I am, stuck up here in the north—” She broke off, remembering that this was Thenike’s home. And yours.

Thenike merely gestured for her to go on.

“I’m here, in this small place, when there’s a whole world to see! The deserts and mountains, the swamplands and canyons. And the seas. Talking to you, before, while I was recovering from frostbite and exposure, before I got the virus, you made me realize who I really am, what it is that I like: new places, new people, discovering both, and how they influence each other. And since I realized that, all I’ve done is stay here, in one place. I need to be out there”—she waved her arm—“seeing a different horizon. I want to see old Ollfoss. The place where everything began, where all these different societies started. You’ve no idea how exciting that would be for me. To actually see the one place from which all this spread! I know, I know, there’s nothing there, probably, but I just want to see it. It’s history.” She wanted to go, taste the air, touch the dirt, imagine how it had felt for those people.

“And I haven’t even seen the forest. Not really. And soon I won’t be able to get out and about. I’ll be stuck here.”

Thenike was quiet awhile, seemingly absorbed in watching her hands slide through the water under the suds. Marghe wondered what she was thinking.

“Your message,” she said at last, “should be in Danner’s hands by now. How she feels, what she’s doing, how your other friends are, that I can’t tell you.” She looked up from the water. Marghe saw herself reflected in the dark brown eyes. “But I can help a little with the rest. How you feel sounds familiar. It’s spring, the season for wandering, for adventure. For love and danger and new things. Probably everyone here in Ollfoss feels it. But you feel it more keenly, because you’re becoming a viajera. I feel it, too. That’s why we are viajera. Journeywomen. We travel because it’s in our blood: to see new things, always. To find out why a thing is, but not always interested in the how.” She nodded. “Yes, I know how you feel. Perhaps it’s time for us to travel.”

To travel, to see new places, smell new air, see new skies…

But Thenike was not finished. “But you and I have a debt, to this family, to this place. Wenn and Leifin, and Gerrel and Huellis and Kenisi, took you in. You’ve yet to repay them. We’ll travel just a little, this summer, to North Haven, perhaps.”

“And old Ollfoss.”

“It’s on the way,” Thenike agreed. “We’ll go to old Ollfoss, and North Haven, then come back. We’ll bear our children here early next spring, and then we’ll see.

By then you’ll have brought in one harvest, and be well on the way to another.

You’ll have cooked and eaten and slept with the family for more than a year. You’ll belong. Then, when we leave, and come back now and again, they will welcome you not with grumbles, but with open arms and smiling faces, as they do me, because you’re part of them. Can you do this?”

Marghe looked at Thenike, at her planed face, the hollow by her collarbone where a soap bubble clung, the strand of brown-black hair stuck to her forehead. “Yes,” she said, and cupped a hand over her belly, barely beginning to round. She already belonged.

The path through Moanwood was not too bad, even with their packs and heavy water bottles, until the second day, when Thenike stopped on the path—such as it was—and pointed east through the trees.

“Old Ollfoss is that way. Perhaps a day’s journey.”

The trees looked so thick that Marghe found it hard to imagine anyone had walked through them in a hundred years.

They took turns forcing a path. It was not like an earth forest; the trees seemed to grow in patches of the same species. Marghe saw what looked like broadened, rougher versions of the skelter tree, with precisely ordered branches and symmetrically placed blue-black leaves. Beyond that, there were trees that looked to Marghe as though they were upside down: roots more spread, and thicker, than the branches that sprang from the crown of a trunk whose girth increased with its height.

It reminded her of the baobab of Madagascar, but that had evolved in dry conditions. She picked her way over the treacherous root systems that threaded the forest floor like an enormous pit of maggots, forever frozen, and crunched through the dry mosslike growth that covered the roots and made them hard to see and even more dangerous. Perhaps the cold climate meant there was very little free moisture available.

After the shrieking wirrels and chia birds of Ollfoss, Marghe expected the noise under the canopy to be constant, but even to her enhanced hearing there was very little audible life under the trees.

“There’s always an abundance of life at the edges of places: where forest meets plain, where water meets land,” Thenike said. “Here, the animals are fewer, and more shy.” Marghe glanced around but saw nothing.

“There. On that tree. Halfway up the trunk.” Thenike pointed. “A whist.”

It was long, not much less than a meter, and shaped like one of the ropelike hangings that twined about the trees. Marghe could not tell which way up it should go.

“Touch it,” Thenike said, “if you can.”

It looked as though it might be slow-moving. Marghe inched cautiously toward it, taking care to make as little noise as possible. When she was two strides away, she lifted her arm to reach out.

The whist disappeared.

Marghe touched the trunk uncertainly. Thenike pointed. At the top of the tree hung a new rope, vibrating slowly.

“When I was a child, I spent hours trying to touch a whist, wondering what they’d feel like under my fingers. I never caught one. Never. I don’t know anyone else who has, either. They move too fast.”

Marghe wondered what their prey was, that they had to move so quickly. Or their predator.

They walked on. Marghe, paying more attention now, spotted a strange, scuttling thing that raised its head above the mosslike undergrowth for a moment, flicked its tongue once, and disappeared back to its dry, crackling world. Everywhere there were berries, in greens and earthy reds and bluish black, but all had a milky quality, like neat’s-foot once it was picked.

Toward dark, they stopped for a rest. “The moons will be almost full this evening,” Thenike said as Marghe handed her a handful of dried fruit. “Bright enough to keep walking, if you’ve the energy. Your choice: we could sleep in old Ollfoss tonight, if you like.”

They rested until the moons came up, then set off. After half an hour, the undergrowth began to thin, disappearing in patches here and there. Marghe could sense a breeze coming through the trees from somewhere ahead, and the sound of water, feint but definite.

The clearing, or what had been a clearing, was enormous. It was floored with dark green ting grass instead of the mosslike undergrowth, and the trees were few, scattered here and there. None looked very old. All seemed to have sprung up from the shells of ruined buildings. In the moonlight, the scene looked like an old woodcut washed with silver gilt.

“How long ago was this abandoned?” She fought the urge to whisper.

“Two hundred years ago. Perhaps more. Things grow slowly here.”

In the center of the clearing, the sound of rushing water was loud. Marghe turned her head this way and that, trying to pinpoint the direction. “Where is it?”

Thenike smiled. Her teeth and the whites of her eyes gleamed. In the moonlight, all in monochrome, she looked less like a woman than a creature of polished wood, heartwood exposed for a century and honed by wind and rain to a stylized shape, a symbol. “This way, Amun.”

They walked through the clearing and past a thin stand of trees, toward the sound of water.

“Menalden Pool.”

It was sleek and black in the moonlight. At the western end, water fell endlessly from rock that looked slippery and metaled. Moonlight gave the spray a ghostly quality, and Marghe half expected a nymph to step out from under the sheet of water, singing, wringing her hair.

“This way.” Thenike led her around the foss, to the quiet, northern edge of the pool, where a single tree with outspread branches like an enormous candelabra dipped its roots into the gently lapping water. The journeywoman seemed to look around for something. “Here.” She sat down on a flat rock slightly behind the tree, and to one side, patted it for Marghe to join her, Marghe did, and gasped.

The tree in front of her was alive with light reflected from the water. Light ran like electricity along the underside of its black glossy branches; the tree flickered and shimmered, like a menorah made of fiber optics, a dendrite flashing with nerve impulses. Like lightning.

“I found it the first time I traveled to Ollfoss from North Haven. I was very young. I stayed up half the night, watching it, half dreaming. Every time I make this journey I stop here.”

Marghe nodded, still lost in wonder.

“I think of it as my tree, my levin tree. You’re the first person I’ve ever shown it to.”

Marghe wrapped her arms around Thenike. “You give me so much.”

”I have something else for you.” She reached inside her tunic and untied the belt pouch. “Here.”

It was a suke, with a bas-relief carving on both sides: an ammonite.

“I drew it for Leifin. She carved it, I polished it and drilled the hole.” Marghe touched the silky raised carving. So much love. “Here’s a thong. For your waist or neck.”

Marghe threaded the braided leather through the hole.

“Do you want me to tie it?”

Marghe shook her head. “I’d like to just hold it awhile.”

They sat side by side, watching the water, listening to the soft thunder of the foss.

Marghe held the suke more tightly than she would have clutched a diamond.

“The pool’s named after the menalden that used to live here.” Thenike leaned forward and traced an outline in the sand with her finger. “A menalden. They’re dappled, like forest shadow.”

It looked like an awkward-legged deer, with a flat, rudderlike tail and splayed feet.

Menalden. Dappled deer. From menald, seventeenth-century dialect for “bitten,” or

“discolored,” or “dappled.”

Marghe’s heart thumped. How did she know that? She had no idea how she knew it, but she did, and suddenly she knew why the women of this world used ancient Greek words and Zapotec words and phrases from Gaelic, languages dead for hundreds of years. The words just came, and they fitted. Whether that particular knowledge of the menalden had lain in her unconscious for years, after a cursory leaf through a dictionary, and then been pulled up by some incredible feat of memory made possible by me actions of the virus, she was not certain. That explanation seemed easier to believe than the only other one she could come up with: that this might be some kind of race memory stirred by the virus, a memory of someone who had lived long ago and used such a dialect.

Marghe looked at the levin tree, and leaned against the warmth of Thenike’s shoulder.

“What is it, Amu?”

“Just as I thought I was beginning to know this world and understand it, it throws more magic at me.”

“What’s life without magic? Turn your magic into a song, share it with others.”

“You know I can’t sing.”

“A story, then.”

They found a ruined house with most of its roof still intact. Thenike fell asleep straightaway, but Marghe lay awake, thinking of moonlight and magic, and how she could tell a story about what she had just seen so that others would feel what she had felt.

Thenike was already up and about when Marghe woke. Sunlight worked as well as moonlight on the water and the levin tree, she found, though it did not have the same eerie magic. She splashed her face with water from the pool, then leaned forward a little to admire her reflection and the look of the suke on its thong around her neck.

Thenike laughed. “You’ll fall in if you’re not careful.” She was carrying a freshly caught fish.

After breakfast, when they had damped the fire and rolled up their nightbags, Thenike showed Marghe what she had really come to see of old Ollfoss.

“This is all there is left.”

It was a huge valley, gouged out of the side of a hill, ending in a curiously shaped hump; not natural, because it did not follow the gradient, as a stream or glacier might have done. Gouged by human—or at least intelligent, Marghe amended—hands.

And so big. It was carpeted with ting grass, and big, bell-shaped blue flowers that nodded in the slight breeze and filled the air with the scent of spring mornings and sunshine.

“What are they?”

“Bemebells. Or bluebells. There’s a children’s song that tells how at dawn and dusk, fairies creep out from under the eaves of the wood and play upon the bemebells with drumsticks made from grass and the anthers of other flowers.”

Marghe contemplated the valley, with its raised hump at the far end, glad that Thenike had not shown her this in the moonlight; there was too much melancholy here.

There was only one thing this could be, only one thing that made immediate sense: this was the landing site of the ship that had brought the women and men of Jeep to this world for the first time. Marghe did not know enough about such things to determine whether or not it was a crash landing, but she thought not. Forced, perhaps, for who would want to land here in the north when there were more hospitable areas south?

How had it felt, she wondered, to land in such a strange place, where they could see nothing but walls of trees and a lid of cloud? It must have seemed that there was not enough room to breathe. And then, when they began to sicken, and it became clear that the men would not recover… They had been brave.

“What’s under the mound?”

“Nothing,” Thenike said. “What there might have been has been dug up and used and reused, long before today.”

Nothing. “You’re sure? Yo’ve dug there yourself?”

“In other times, yes.”

Marghe wondered if she would ever get used to the fact that her lover could talk about memories that belonged to women long dead and rely upon them, trust them as she would her own. She did not want to believe Thenike, not this time.

“But that heap, it must have been something.”

“Nothing but dirt rucked up like a lover’s skirt.”

Nothing but dirt. It seemed fitting, somehow.

Marghe sighed, and turned away. She had not expected anything useful, had just wanted to find something, some piece of broken ceramic or discarded plastic, something she could hold in her hand and imagine being whole and new. But she did not need artifacts; there were the people themselves— people like Thenike. They carried their history with them. As she herself did now.

They walked out of Ollfoss with their packs on their backs and their water flasks bobbing full at their belts, and Thenike sang the bemebell song for Marghe Amun. It was simple and rhythmic, with lots of repetition and places where children were supposed to clap their hands and slap their thighs and stamp their feet in time to the music. The two women sang, and clapped, and smiled at the echoes in the forest, and walked on through the trees toward North Haven.

On the day of their arrival, North Haven was humming with the simultaneous arrival of new ships and an unseasonable wind that blew cold and hard from the Ice Sea.

“Though now, during Lazy Moon, the ice will be mostly water,” Thenike said.

“At least in the more southerly reaches.” Then she pointed out a ship with two masts, whose sails might once have been blue-green. “I think that might be the Nemora, out of Southmeet. We’ll find out soon enough.” She smiled but said no more, and Marghe decided that some old friend must be aboard.

Apart from its size, what struck Marghe about North Haven was its life: women on the stone wharfs, unloading fish and baskets of what looked like turtle shells, mending nets and splicing ropes, tossing buckets of water over piles of fish guts while fast cadaverous-looking birds quarreled over the mess. It was noisy; women called greetings and shouted insults, water crashed against the stone wharfs and hissed up to the wattle quays farther down the coast, and baskets and ropes creaked as catches were hauled up from the decks. And everywhere there were children: some busy, some just playing an incomprehensible game of tag that involved running and hiding and getting underfoot, and much whooping and shrieking when someone was caught.

Some of the children recognized Thenike: did she have news? Would she sing?

Could she spare a comb of krisbread, or a slice of goura? A tune on her pipe? Who was her confused-looking friend?

Marghe felt bewildered by their rapacity and their hard, bright little voices, but Thenike just kept walking, answering questions as she went: yes, she had news, though how would they pay for it? She would sing, all in the proper time. There was no krisbread in her pack, no goura. No doubt she would play them a tune, if they came with their families, and if their families made it worth her while. Her companion was Marghe Amun, who was only confused because she was not used to such rudeness as displayed by the children of North Haven, and she was a fine player of drums and teller of stories who would, no doubt, not deign to display her talents for such rude daughters of herd birds!

Marghe watched Thenike as she laughed and shouted at the children, loving her.

The children, being children, noticed.

“Haii! The journeywomen are in love!” one of the older ones called. “The journeywomen are in love!” the others chanted, pleased with themselves. “The journeywomen are in love!” Marghe felt her cheeks go red, but Thenike laughed and took her hand. “And we’d be in love with a good meal of something that hasn’t been in our packs for five days. Is the inn full?”

“There’s lots of ships in,” the older one who had started the chant offered, “The wind brought them in all at once. But there’s some room. I think.”

The children followed them, resuming their game as they went.

The inn turned out to be a cluster of buildings: different shapes and ages, built of different materials and to different standards, growing as North Haven had grown—gradually, and in no particular order. The result was a pleasing mix of old stone and raw wood, mossy shingles and bright tiles, with windows winking higgledy-piggledy into three separate courtyards, one of which had a fountain.

A woman with reddish gold hair down her back was sweeping at the leaves in the fountain yard. She looked up when she heard the giggles of the children, and saw Marghe and Thenike.

“Thenike, is it? About time. That boat of yours needs hauling out of the water and its bottom scraping before it rots down to its timbers. But what are you doing standing there gawping—never seen a woman sweep leaves? Get away!” Marghe jumped, but the woman was shouting at the children. “Away with you. Did they follow you all the way here?” This time she was talking to Thenike. Then she shouted again. “If you’ve nothing better to do than laugh at a poor working woman, then I’ll find you something. Now”—she turned back to her visitors—“what can I do for you Thenike, and your companion.”

“Zabett, I’d like you to meet Marghe Amun.”

“Marghe Amun, is it? That’s a big name. How do you like to be called by ordinary folk?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ve not had the name long.” Marghe had to struggle not to fall into Zabett’s speech patterns.

“Well, now, a new name.” Zabett gave the leaves one more sweep. “There’s a story there, I’ll be bound, and no doubt the two of you will expect to stay here for free in exchange, and eat me out of house and home.”

“Why else would we come here, to the finest inn in the north?” Thenike said with a smile.

“Flatterer. But flattery won’t get you the best room in the house. In fact, there is only the one room left. Over in the west courtyard. I suppose you’ll be wanting to go there right this minute, so you can rest a bit, and wash that journey muck oft your feet.”

The room in the west courtyard was no more than a lean-to, an afterthought added to a wall. But there was room for a bed and a shelf, and there was a latch on the door. Zabett patted the bed. “It’s small for two, but no doubt you won’t be spending much time in here, except to sleep, and the bed’s newly made up.”

Maighe liked it. “It’s very nice. Thank you.”

“Well,” Zabett said grudgingly, “it’ll do. Now then, I can have you some food ready in a little while, but not instantly. I’ve more folk than you to look after, viajeras or no.” She left, still holding the broom.

“She likes you,” Thenike said, unrolling her pack.

“You’ve known her a long time.” Marghe prowled the room, looked out the tiny window. “She runs this place on her own?”

“With her sister, Scathac.”

“Is it fair for us to stay here without payment?”

“Nobody stays here without payment. We’ll sing for our supper. She was right: we won’t be spending much time in here. We’ll be telling the news to a packed common room every night, and many will want us to take messages with us when we go.”

Marghe had been looking forward to a few days of rest.“Both of us?”

“There’ll be some things only you can tell: about your world, how you were caught by the Echraidhe and escaped, how Uaithne started the tribe feud.”

“That’s a lot of talking.”

Thenike sat down on the bed. “It’ll only be in the evenings. During the day, we’ll sit in the sun and eat Scathac’s fine food, gossip about nothing in particular, and wander the docks and along the coastline. I’ll show you the Nid-Nod. No doubt Zabett’s right and she needs some work done on her.” She laid her clothes on the shelf, checked her drum. “There. The food should be ready by now. Are you done?”

Marghe was astonished to find that her hands had automatically gone about their business, unpacking, smoothing out her clothes, laying her nightbag on the bed.

“Yes.”

They took a seat at the bleached white table in the kitchen. Zabett turned and nodded, busy at the fire. After a moment she brought them hot dap. “Eggs in a moment.”

Marghe blinked. This was not Zabett: same hair, same build, but her face was not screwed up in that skeptical way, and she did not bustle and fill the room with noise.

Not Zabett. Thenike smiled, enjoying Marghe’s surprise.

“Scathac, allow me to introduce Marghe Amun. Marghe, this is Scathac, Zabett’s twin, a fine cook, a good listener, and a mind like a wirrel trap.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Marghe said.

Scathac nodded. “Viajering is hungry work. You’re welcome to come into the kitchens and eat at any time. With or without Thenike.”

They ate, eggs and bread and fruit, and left for the docks.

The day had warmed a little, though the wind was still from the north, slicing the tops off the waves, flecking the gray sea with white. Alien sea or not, it smelled to Marghe the way the sea should smell: big and wide and full of the promise of adventure.

They stood at the edge of the wharf, looking out. Several small coracles were tied together and then secured to one of the huge olla rings embedded in the stone; they bobbed precariously on the swell. Marghe pointed. “Where do these come from?”

“Two days along the west coast. From Luast. See how they’re all tied together?

Those two, there and there, the ones with the thwarts, are rowed, one woman in each, and the other four are piled up with furs, and little sacks of blue beads dug near Beston-in-the-Mountains. They paddle along the shallows, never out of sight of the shore.”

Marghe was appalled at the thought of such tiny, fragile craft battling the northern seas. All for trade. “What do they take in exchange?”

“All kinds of things: wine from the south, timber—they don’t have much where they come from, though normally they bring bigger coracles for that—sometimes fruit, or spices from Oboshi… whatever they need, assuming that they timed things right and there are people here who want furs or beads.”

Marghe scanned the other ships. There were nine, all different makes: two-masted, one-masted; oars and not; double-ended and having definite bows and sterns; larger and smaller. They looked like brightly colored children’s toys. She pointed out the ship Thenike had mentioned earlier, which looked to be just leaving. Tiny figures were hauling on sheets, and the sails were bellying. “The Nemora. You know someone aboard?”

“Vine, and her kinswomen. Ah, it’s a shame we missed them.” Thenike rubbed the white scar on the back of her hand, smiling to herself.

Sixty yards out, a boat pulled away from a lateen-rigger. As it neared the wharf, Marghe heard the breath of women pulling oars and the creak of rowlocks, and the sounds of laughter drifting over the water. It was not long before the sailors’ boat was bumping up against the stone.

They threw a rope, which landed at Marghe’s feet. She picked it up without thinking, then looked around for something to tie it to.

“Like this.” Thenike showed her a knot that would hold. “It’s called a fishback.”

It did look a little like a sinuous fish doubling back upon itself, Marghe supposed.

A woman hauled herself up onto the wharf. A bracelet of small clay disks clicked as she held out her hand. “Roth,” she said, “Captain of the Telwise. My thanks for the knot.”

“Thenike, viajera.”

“Marghe Amun—” Marghe hesitated, “also a viajera. But new to it.”

“So. We all start sometime.” Other women were clambering up onto the wharf, clay disks tinkling around waists and necks. “So, Marghe Amun, where do you call home?”

Home. A long story or none at all. Marghe hesitated. “Have you heard of the women from other worlds?”

Roth nodded. “The viajera Kuorra was in Southmeet. She had the story from Telis, who had it from T’orre Na. Supposed to be from beyond the stars, or somesuch she said. Set off burns, don’t know anything about anything, wear funny clothes. Call themselves mirrors.” She looked hard at Marghe. “But you’re a viajera… Kuorra says these mirror women can’t deepsearch or remember or even have children.” She looked from Marghe to Thenike, back again. “Yours must be a strange story.”

Thenike said nothing to defend her. Marghe knew this was up to her. “You’re staying at the inn? Then come and hear it. It’s even stranger than you think.”

“No doubt. No doubt. There’s room at the inn?”

“You know Zabett,” Marghe said, “if you’ll pay double the price she’ll find you a floor to sleep on, and make you feel grateful.”

Roth laughed. “No doubt.” She touched the disks at her wrist. There were more, Marghe saw, around her neck and under her tunic. “But we’ve done well this voyage, and the last two or three. It won’t be hard to part with a few of these in exchange for Scathac’s cooking.” She nodded. “We’ll see you at the inn.” She walked away, a strong-looking woman with legs bare from the knee, a roll of clothes hanging crosswise across her chest and bumping at her hip.

“By the time she gets to the inn, half of North Haven will know what you’ve just said.” Marghe just nodded. “Roth reminds me of Vine: with those eyes that look more easily into the distance, and those strong bare legs.” Thenike laughed. “Like all sailors.” She was rubbing at the scar on her hand again. “Come. Let me show you the Nid-Nod.”

The Nid-Nod was tied fore and aft to one of the double wharves at the south of the seafront. She was a small craft with a stepped mast of about thirteen feet, and one sail, rieatly furled. A silhouette of a long-legged bird was painted in dark green on both bows. Marghe pointed to what looked like a tiny handprint next to the port symbol.

“What’s that?”

“Gerrel’s mark. The summer the boat was finished, Huellis and Leifin came to North Haven to see me off and to trade some of Leifin’s carvings. They brought Gerrel. She was about four. I was still painting on the name. Gerrel decided she wanted to help. I left the mark on.”

When they got back to the inn they found Roth and her thirteen sailors standing in the northern courtyard, with Zabett pointing an accusing finger at a pile of clay dust in her outstretched hand, shouting.

“See, it’s not there. No fish tooth. It’s a fake. One of you gave me a false credit, and until I find out who, none of you stay here. None.”

Thenike leaned toward Marghe and spoke quietly. “They may ask us to judge this matter.”

“Us?”

“We’re viajeras.”

Roth untied the string around her neck, unthreaded one of the clay tokens.

“Here’s another. Genuine. I know it’s genuine because these are the ones I had from you two years ago when we brought in that cargo of keoshell.” She held it out.

“Oh, no, it’s not as easy as all that, Roth. One of your number tried to pass me a false credit, and that’s robbery.” She folded her arms.

Roth looked irritated. “Well, you tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

“Find out who the dishonest one is among you. I’d think that that’s what you’d be after doing anyhow, for your own peace of mind. But I’m not having a thief stay in my house.”

The injured parties glared angrily at each other. Then one of the sailors saw Thenike and Marghe. “Let the viajeras sort it out,” she said.

Roth looked over at the two women, hesitating a moment over Marghe. “Well,”

she said to Zabett, “that’s agreeable to me. You?”

Zabett nodded shortly. “But you’ll pay the fee, as it’s your people who caused the trouble.”

They spat on their hands, and shook.

Marghe whispered to Thenike. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea if they agreed now, while they still don’t know who it is, what the punishment would be?” She had seen too many negotiations, on Earth and off, fall to nothing because not enough was agreed at the start.

“Tell them,” Thenike said, and gestured.

Marjhe took a deep breath. Pretend it’s just like negotiating something for SEC.

“Shake, too, on the reparation price and the punishment you’ll mete,” she said, stepping forward. While Roth and Zabett prepared to haggle over that, she turned to Thenike. “Any ideas on how to settle this thing?”

“One or two, but they’re not perfect.”

Marghe thought fast. “These tokens. Zabett has to smash them to see if they contain a fish tooth, otherwise they’re not genuine. So… Zabett makes them? Yes.

And someone’s given her a dud. But…” They were one-time use only. “That’s the central difficulty of the matter, then: once the credit’s smashed, it’s invalid. So how do we check?”

Roth and Zabett were still talking. Some of the sailors appeared resigned to a long discussion and had sat down in the dusty courtyard, Marghe thought hard. There was no perfect solution. “The only thing I can think of is that we ask each sailor to take off all her tokens, and empty her pockets, too, just in case, and put them on the ground in front of her. Then we choose one from each pile and smash it. We keep doing that until we smash a dud.”

“Some may only have three or four. Losing even one will be a great hardship to the innocents.”

“I know.”

They were silent; Roth and Zabett had finished talking, and were waiting.

“I can’t think of anything better,” Thenike said eventually, “and it may be that you won’t have to break many.”

“Me?”

“You.” Thenike deliberately stepped back. Marghe looked around her. She was Marghe Amun. A viajera. She straightened her shoulders and stepped forward.

“Roth.” She motioned for the captain to join her thirteen sailors, then stood before them. “Take off your credits and put them on the ground before you. We’ll break them one at a time until we find out who did this.”

Roth and two others looked resigned and unfastened anklets and necklaces, dropping them into the dust at their feet. The others glanced at each other.

“Why should we?” one asked, a small fair woman with a chipped front tooth.

Marghe’s heart was thumping. There was nothing to make these women do as she said. Nothing at all.

“Juomo’s right,” said a tall woman the color of rich river mud. “We’ve done nothing wrong. I don’t have enough credits to let them get smashed to pieces for nothing. We could sleep aboard.”

Several nodded in agreement, and folded their arms.

Marghe looked at Zabett. “Perhaps Zabett would agree to replace any genuine tokens that get broken?” Zabett nodded. The innkeeper was on her side, at least.

Maybe this would not be so bad after all.

The sailors still looked stubborn. Roth looked at them one by one. “I agreed with Zabett that the journeywomen should sort this dispute, Juomo, Tillis. This is the way they’re doing it. If you don’t like it, elect another captain.”

Marghe saw by Roth’s easy stance that the captain knew the sailors would not go that far; she began to enjoy herself. This might work.

The women muttered, but began to strip themselves of their wealth. Marghe set aside the urge to grin and watched carefully.

One woman placed a string with just two clay disks in the dust; Tillis, four.

Juomo, with the chipped tooth, offered a necklace of five.

Tillis looked at Juomo’s necklace and frowned. Juomo pretended not to notice.

But Marghe did.

She stepped up to Juomo, touched the necklace with one foot. “Perhaps you have more credits than this.” She watched Juomo’s carotid thump as her pulse increased. “We wish to see it all.”

“You’re seeing it.”

“I don’t think so.”

Juomo stepped back a little, tucked her thin hair behind her ears nervously.

Marghe was no longer enjoying herself. She held out her hand. “Give me the rest.”

Juomo bolted, but Tillis shot out a leg and tumbled her into the dust. The big woman hauled Juomo upright by her belt and casually wrapped one arm around her neck. Tillis yanked up Juomo’s sleeve. A string of twenty or thirty credits was wrapped around Juomo’s biceps. “Knew she had more,” Tillis said with satisfaction. She snapped the leather thong and unthreaded one of the clay disks.

She dropped it in Marghe’s outstretched hand. “Try this.”

Zabett was there now, and Roth and Thenike. And the other sailors were picking up their dusty credits.

“Leave them awhile,” Marghe said, “until we’ve tested these.”

“You can’t smash my credits!” Juomo shouted.

Tillis shook her. “Shut up. If it’s real, then you can have one of mine.” She grinned at Marghe. “Test it, journeywoman.”

Marghe was not sure she would be able to tell a dud from the real thing. She held out the disk to Zabett. “I think we should give Zabett the privilege.”

After the excitement in the courtyard, lunch was late. Marghe and Thenike ate outside. The clouds were thinning, letting afternoon sunshine heat the wood of the table, releasing a spicy, resinous scent. Their plates were almost empty; they were eating fruit.

Thenike had been explaining to Marghe the credit system. Zabett and Scathac gave board and lodgings on a barter system; if an individual or crew had a large item that was worth more than the number of nights or meals needed, then the innkeepers gave them credit, in the form of clay disks. One disk equalled one night. Because of their fixed value, and because the sailors traveled from one place to another, mixing with other travelers, the clay disks had begun to assume the status of portable wealth in those places—ports and well-frequented areas, especially around the coast.

Protocurrency. Several years ago, Hamner, the innkeeper in South Meet, had arranged with the two northern innkeepers to honor their credits if Zabett and Scathac would honor hers. They agreed, and now the disks were becoming more popular as currency.

Marghe paused, a goura half-peeled. “But if the disks are being used as currency, then much of it stays in circulation.”

“True.”

“That’s nice for Zabett and Scathac: they only have to honor part of what they receive goods for.” She cut several slices from the goura and laid them on a plate. A boatfly hummed near the glistening fruit and Marghe waved it away. “So what effect does this currency have on the trata network?”

“Not much. The clay credits are a coastal phenomenon. Besides, trata is about more than wealth. It’s about power, and favors: who is beholden to whom. It’s about friendships and enemyhood, a webwork of who is known to be trustworthy and who not. Currency is for strangers.”

They chewed on the fruit for a while.

Marghe remembered the panic on Juomo’s face as she tried to run, as she tried to get away from her, from Marghe. No one had ever run from her before. “What will happen to her?”

“Juomo? All her credits will be taken and smashed. Those that prove to be genuine will be replaced by Zabett and Scathac. But they won’t ever let her stay at their inn again. And Roth will be looking for a new hand. I doubt anyone else will take her on board, unless they’re desperate.”

“But what will she do?”

Thenike shrugged and ate another piece of fruit.

It was harsh punishment: Juomo would not be able to work from North Haven, no one would give her shelter, and even if all her other credits turned out to be genuine, she would not have enough to buy herself a boat to leave. It seemed there were no second chances when people could afford to lose so little. Marghe wondered if she would have been so quick to judge if she had known.

Afternoon turned to dusk and brought with it a warm wind from the southeast.

Marghe and Thenike ate their evening meal outside in the fountain courtyard, enjoying the warm smells of grass and blossom and forest along with several others.

More who were not eating, or who had already eaten, began to drift into the courtyard, sitting on the fountain rim, the stone flags, benches, the roots of trees.

Waiting.

Waiting, Marghe realized, for her and Thenike to tell them the news. And more than that: Roth’s story would have traveled by now. They wanted to see the viajera from another world.

Her mouth went dry and she had to control her breathing to get her heartrate down to normal.

“It was a good winter in Ollfoss,” Thenike began conversationally, “and a better spring. The crops will be early, and big. Marghe here knows about the gardens, about the soil and the seeds.” She gestured to Marghe.

Pretend you’re talking to one person, Thenike had said, a person who listens hard and exclaims in all the right places, and imagine what that person would like to hear, how you might make the news more interesting for them. If the person is a fisher, and it’s a tale of the plains, tell her what she might need to know to understand the story. So Marghe looked up at the women gathered in the courtyard at the inn of North Haven and pretended she was telling her story to Holle, of Singing Pastures.

“I can tell you about the gardens on the edge of Moanwood, but my story starts a long way before that. It starts further away than Ollfoss, though that’s part of it; it starts further away than the camp of the Echraidhe, though I spent some time there.

Indeed,” she said, “it was on Tehuantepec that I nearly lost my life and my will. But my story starts beyond even Singing Pastures and Holme Valley; it goes back to that place called Port Central.” She waited just a fraction longer than necessary. “You will have heard of it.”

Nods. Some grins, some scowls. Marghe looked for Roth’s face, found it.

Addressed it directly. “That’s where I’m from. Port Central. I and all the other women from Port Central come from another world. Some of you already know this from the stories of other viajeras. You will have heard that we are stupid, with less brains than a taar or one of your own children. Taars, you might say, have more sense than to trigger burns. Children can deepsearch.”

“And you stay huddled up inside that Port like children stranded in the woods,” a woman with leathery brown skin remarked.

“True. But children learn. And we are learning. Look at me. I know better than to tread on burnstone. I deepsearched and chose a name. I carry a child in my belly, soestre to the one growing inside Thenike.” She looked around the courtyard of faces: some were skeptical, some interested, one or two cynical, but none were hostile. “Some of you will know that what I say is true: your mothers’

many-times-great-grandmothers all came from a world other than this. Probably from the same one as I did.” She paused. “How many of you have had strange dreams of falling from the sky, or have walked with your ancestors as they saw this place for the first time?”

There were a few uneasy glances. She heard one clear “Aye” from the back of the crowd.

“Your ancestors learned. As I’ve learned.” General nods.

“You seem to be the only one, though,” Roth said. “According to the viajera Kuorra the rest of you are huddling in that Port and not coming out. For anything.”

“I don’t think I am the only one. But I’m one of the first. And when I tell you my story, you’ll understand why.”

“Tell the story, then,” Tillis called, in high good humor. She drank from an olla goblet. “I want to know what’s been going on since we left land.”

“And when was that?”

“Last Harvest Moon.”

“Well, last Harvest Moon, I was just landing here on this world for the first time…”

And Marghe told her story. She had learned a great deal from Thenike: in those places where the pain was still too raw she told her story in a ritual cadence that forbade interruption, but most of the time she just talked, and now and again a woman would ask her a question, or add something.

It was not just Marghe’s story, of course. Much of the tale was news that these people needed to know: that there was tribe feud between Echraidhe and Briogannon, and it was probably dangerous to cross Tehuantepec for a while; a reiteration of the fact that Marghe, a woman from the other world, had been able to deepsearch and make soestre in her belly and Thenike’s, which held all kinds of interesting implications for the future; that these foreigners from another place had struck trata with Cassil of Holme Valley—there was much thoughtful rubbing of chins at that news; that the harvest of Ollfoss would be very good this year, which meant good opportunities for traders.

The moons were up when Marghe paused in the middle of a sentence to sip at her water, only to find the cup empty. She looked into the empty cup, letting the pause lengthen. The evening was chill with night breezes.

“I’m tired,” she said at last, regretful, “and near the end of my story tonight.” She did not want the evening to end. “There will be more tomorrow.”

After Marghe and Thenike left the courtyard, they walked for, a while quietly, both wrapped under the same cloak. Marghe watched the stars, listening to the far-off hiss and drag of waves on the shore and slapping up against the wharf.

She was a viajera. For the rest of her life she would travel and tell stories and judge disputes. It would rarely be as easy as it had been today, she knew, but she found she did not mind. She had found what it was she had been looking for; she had a place in the world, a place she had made. She touched the suke resting against her breast. She was Marghe Amun. The complete one. She felt at peace.

She stopped and kissed Thenike softly, slowly, running her fingers up through her heavy hair. “Come to bed.”