A Sword from Red Ice

TWELVE Along the Wolf

Effie Sevrance sneezed. It was a big thick one with lots of snot. In the old days she would have been mortified; there'd be Letty Shank and Florric Horn squirming and crying "Eeeew!" Raina shaking her head and saying, "Really, Effie, get a cloth," and Da warning, "Wipe that on your sleeve and I'll tan your backside. I didn't trade two unopened fawn carcasses for that dress to be spoiled within a year." Da never tanned her backside, not once. She knew he didn't mean it. He knew that she knew. It was the thing that came after that hurt. "What would your mother think?" Effie reckoned those five words held more power than an entire armory of swords. They were like a spell: speak them and he who hears them will change.

They worked even if you had never known your mother, if she had died giving birth to you. Effie wiped her nose on a scrap of ragging left behind when the cheese it contained had been eaten. It smelled like feet. The men from the Cursed Clan had the worst kind of food.

They were over by the shore, pulling their long lightweight boat up the bank. Last night's frost had surprised them with its depth, and even though only two feet of stem had been left in the water, the entire boat had frozen in place. Waker Stone and his tiny, aging father had worked for the past hour to free the craft from the ice. Fourteen feet long, the boat consisted of mooseskin stretched over a wooden frame-It was so light that the two men could haul it over their heads and carry it right up the mud beach. Setting it down, keel up, on the dry reed— grass above the highwater mark, Waker called for Chedd to help him. Chedd was doing something stupid with a stick and centipede, making the ugly thick-bodied insect scuttle up the same mound over and over again by pushing it back down every time it reached the top. Effie had warned him centipedes could bite, but Chedd was two years older than she was and from Bannen and he wasn't about to listen to anything a nine-year-old Hail girl had to say. Served him right if he got poisoned. Might even stop him stuffing his fat face for a day.

"Got a greenie hanging," he said to her as he coaxed the centipede onto the stick.

As soon as she raised her hand to her face, Effie knew she'd made a critical mistake.

"Got you!" he cried, tossing the centipede toward her. "Nothing there."

Effie was so mad at herself she stamped her foot. Chains rattled. Chedd's annoying laugh — it sounded like a dog being sick—went on and on until a single word from Waker stopped it.

"Boy."

Chedd's face froze and he dropped the stick. Lurching into motion, he hopped and shuffled down the beach as fast as his leg irons would let him. His tunic was too short and Effie could see the roll of fat around his waist jiggling. She must be a bad person, she decided, for her thought at that moment was I'm glad it's not me. Waker Stone was not a man you wanted mad at you.

Shivering, Effie tramped her way back to the firepit—passing a somewhat disoriented centipede along the way. It was about an hour past dawn and the clouds that had hung over the Wolf for the last five days were beginning to break up. Yesterday it had snowed. Today that snow was on the ground, frozen into little icy pellets that crunched when you stood on them. Ahead, the river seemed sluggish. The Wolf was not pretty here, one day east of Ganmiddich. Waker said they were in flood country. The land north of the river was flat and choked with bog willow, frog fruit, reedgrass, and great big bulrushes with exploded heads. There was a lot of mud. Luckily it was frozen—yesterday when it was oozing it had smelled really bad. You could see it in the river, turning the water an unpleasant murky brown. Waker wasn't pleased with it at all. He said it made the river acidic, and acidity was the enemy of his boat.

He and his father would spend at least an hour a day tending the boat Its skin had to be patched and stretched, waxed and tied, the sprayrails and gunwales oiled daily, the load removed before beaching.

It was, Effie had to&miAa be#tiful vessel, with skin the color of old parchment and a gleaming cedar frame. The only time Waker and his father spoke to each other was to discuss the condition of the boat Which made the fact they'd left it overnight in the water pretty strange. Effie glanced upriver toward Ganmiddich. Although she was several leagues east of the roundhouse, she could still see the tower. The fire had gone out now, but smoke still puttered from the open gallery on the top floor. The tower was probably the reason the boat not been properly beached. Yesterday at noon when Chedd had spotted the strange green fire, Waker had immediately steered to shore. They'd been camping on the frozen mudbank ever since.

No one had slept much last night. The first fire hadn't lasted very long, but the smoke it produced poured from the tower's windows all day. Then, after it had grown dark and there was nothing to see in the west except sky and stars, a second fire had ignited. This one was different. It was red.

Blue fire of Dhoone, black smoke of Blackhail, red fire of Clan Bludd, that was the litany Effie had learned as a child. Clan Bludd had seized Ganmiddich in the night. Blackhail was defeated and unhoused.

Drey. Effie scooped out her lore from beneath the neck of her dress and held it in her fist. Her lore was a round piece of stone with a hole drilled through it given to her by the old clan guide Beardy Hail. As far as she knew she was the only person in the clan who had an inanimate object as her lore. It just wasn't done. People had birds and animals and fishes, and occasionally—but not often—trees. No one had a piece of glass or a chunk of coal, it just wasn't… clannish. When she had first been given it as a newborn, her da had told Beardy to take it back. "Her mother's body is still cooling," Da had said. This child has enough to bear." Beardy wouldn't hear it Beardy had never retracted a lore, not even Raif s.

Effie didn't mind it much now. She no longer cherished fantasies about the fawn lore or the swan lore. Fawns were nothing but wolf bait and swans were great honking birds that had to run half a league to take off. At least when a stone sank it sank fast.

Yesterday she had been glad of her lore. The small lump of granite had told her about Drey. She'd known he was in danger even before Chedd had seen the fire, and later she'd known when the danger became worse. Drey was in command of Blackhail forces at Ganmiddich: he would have been on the front line. Effie did not know how the battle had fared or what had befallen Blackhail. That wasn't the way her lore worked. It pushed warnings through her skin but not much else. About three hours after midday it had jumped against her breastbone and instantly she knew Drey had been hurt. There had been nothing after that; the stone was still. Through the evening and the night she kept checking, taking the stone in her fist and squeezing hard, but she could not force anything out of her lore.

It was difficult not knowing what happened to Drey. Effie Sevrance loved her brothers very much. Both of them, Drey and Raif, and she didn't give a swan's bottom about what anyone at Blackhail said. Raif wasn't a traitor. Raif had killed four Bluddsmen outside of Duffs defending Will Hawk and his son Bron.

Aware that her chin was sticking out, Effie tucked it back in. Dropping the lore against her chest, she went to sit by the dead fire as the men of the Cursed Clan fixed the boat.

Clan Gray, that was where Waker Stone and his father came from. The clan in the middle of the swamp. Effie didn't know much about Clan Gray, didn't even know if they had a roundhouse still standing. She knew it was the farthest west of the clanholds and it shared borders with Trance Vor and the Sull. Just thinking about that made Effie glad to be a Hailsman—Blackhail's only vulnerable border was with Dhoone. Still, the swamp probably kept invaders at bay, always supposing there were invaders, of course. A clan with a curse laid upon it would hardly make a grand prize. They had a good clan treasure though, if Effie remembered rightly. A steel chair that had been carried across the mountains during the Great Settlement.

We are Gray and the Stone Gods fear as and leave us be. That was their boast, or part of it Inigar Stoop had told her it overreached the boundaries of boastfulness and stepped right into blasphemy. Perhaps that was why they were cursed. No one at Blackhail ever mentioned the reason behind the curse, and Effie had come to the conclusion that there were two possible explanations why. First, they didn't know. Or second, a curse might be catching. Clansmen were nothing if not superstitious.

Effie had considered asking the present company about the origins of the curse, but Waker and his father, who Chedd believed might be named Darrow, were hardly the kind of people who could be questioned. Father Darrow barely said a word, just kept his beady-eyed gaze bouncing from Effie to Chedd and back again, and Waker was just plain scary. He looked like something that had been left too long in the water. Once, when he'd been pulling off his otter-fur coat, Effie had got a glimpse of the pale, grayish skin around his waist. You could see the organs through if the dark purple lobe of the liver and the coiled sausage of the intestines. It was enough to put Effie off her food for an entire day. Waker had the jelly eyes as well, that's what Mog Willey used to call them. Eye whites that protruded too far from their sockets and were so full of fluid that they jiggled when they moved. Waker's father didn't have them so Effie imagined they'd been passed down from his mother's side. The thought of meeting a woman with eyes like that made Effie hope the journey to Clan Gray lasted an especially long time.

At least she assumed that's where they were going. Waker had made it clear to her from the very first night he would answer no questions from a child.

"You'll be quiet, girl, unless you fancy the gag."

Effie did not fancy the gag. Even in the confusion of all that had happened that night, she knew she didn't want that wet and moldy ball of ragging thrust in her mouth. "I will not cry out," she had told him quite calmly. "I doubt if the men crossing the river would aid me even if I did."

Waker Stone had glanced across the Wolf at the city men army crossing on barges. "You're a smart one," he told her, "but don't make the mistake of imagining you're smart enough to fool me."

It had been ten days since she'd been abducted from the clearing by the waterfall. That first night Waker had dragged her north through the brush that choked the riverbank to a camp set up in the tumbled-down ruins of an old stovehouse. Part of the stove was still standing, and although its iron door had long since gone, the big wrist-thick hinge pins that had held it in place were still sunk into the brick. Waker had shackled her to them while he explained the rules she would now live by.

"You'll be fed and treated fair as long as you are silent and obey me. The first time you attempt to run I will capture you and cut off your left hand. Try it again and my knife moves up to your elbow. If you're foolish enough to attempt a third time you will die—not because I will kill you, because no one's ever survived having their arm hacked off at the shoulder." He looked at her hard with his pale, bulging eyes. "Do you understand?"

She did and nodded.

"Good. Tomorrow I put leg irons on you. Once they are on there is nothing in my possession that can remove them. I carry no ax strong enough to cut the chains or no pick with the correct bore to punch out the pins. Do you understand this also?"

Again, she had nodded.

"Very well. I'll send the boy over with some food. You will eat it and then you will sleep."

The boy had turned out to be Chedd Limehouse, a big lumbering redhead from Bannen who she had been surprised to learn was only eleven. He'd been taken three days earlier, he explained the next day when they were finally alone. Her leg irons were on by then—ankle cuffs forged from matte gray pig iron strung together by a two-foot chain—and Waker had gone off to sell Chedd's horse. Chedd had been taken by the river too. Not the Wolf, but by its northern tributary, the Minkwater, that drained the uplands above Bannen. Chedd had been turtling in the rock pools close to the bank. It'd had been a good day for it, he explained. Warm enough to have roused some snappers from their winter sleep. He had been alone except for his horse. "Waker came out of nowhere, he did," Chedd whispered. "One minute I'm turning over a great big dobber, the next I'm being dragged by the hair through the reeds." His horse had been taken too, and while Chedd and Waker's father had paddled upriver on the boat, Waker had ridden parallel to the shore. "He's not much of a horseman," Chedd confided knowingly. "Kept bending forward in the saddle and losing his stirrups."

Chedd didn't know why he had been taken, but he feared the worst. 'They're going to eat us—roasted whole on sticks. Either that or sacrifice us to the marsh gods: tie stones around our ankles and throw us over the side."

Effie wasn't having any of that. "There's no such thing as a marsh god," she'd told him, "and clansmen aren't cannibals. They're more than likely selling us to the mines."

To hear Chedd wail about that one you'd think he'd prefer to be eaten alive. "But it's not clan! They can't take us to Trance Vor… it's not… right."

Nor was being shackled and kidnapped, but Chedd did have a point. It was hard to imagine any clansman anywhere—even one who was cursed—selling clan children to the mine lords. Perhaps Waker was up to something else, but Effie couldn't imagine what that might be. Only two things were clear: they were slowly heading east toward Gray; and Waker wanted her and Chedd alive. So far the going had been slow. It wasn't just that they were paddling upstream, it was the need for caution. With all sorts of armies fighting over Ganmiddich, the Wolf River had become a dangerous place. Waker's father had knowledge of the waterways, and sometimes they would leave the main river and portage to the backwaters; the streams and meanders, the flood-season creeks and pools. They had circumvented the Ganmiddich roundhouse entirely, and Effie still hadn't quite worked out how. She just knew they left the Wolf for a day, poled up a fast-running tributary, portaged through an overgrown shrub swamp and then floated the boat on a second tributary, following the current downstream to the Wolf.

Waker always paddled from the bow while his father guided the boat from the stern. Chedd paddled from the center, though he wasn't very good at it, and tended to cheat after a while when his shoulder got sore. So far Effie had not been assigned any tasks. Which was just as well really, as it was hard getting used to the boat.

It was a new and distressing experience, being afloat. Hailsmen had never been rivermen—probably because no navigable river flowed close to the roundhouse—and it wasn't unknown for clansmen to live and die without once setting foot in a boat. Effie hadn't really given them much thought before, even when she'd stayed with Mad Binny out on Cold Lake. Just being outside was trial enough, let alone being outside on dangerous, changeable, death-dealing water. She couldn't swim, even though two summers ago Raif had tried very hard to teach her at the beaver pond in the Wedge. It would have helped, she had to admit, if she'd actually got in the water. Poor Raif tried everything to coax her in—letting her know how warm the water was, promising to keep hold of her at all times, and then finally attempting to bribe her with cakes—but she wasn't having any of it. So she had watched from the rocks as he did swoopy things with his arms and kicked his feet. It didn't look very hard, and she'd decided it was a bit of a worthless skill, like dancing, and promptly dismissed it from her mind.

That had all changed five days ago when Waker had made her step into the boat. "Easy, girl," he'd warned as he held the gunwales to steady the long, thin watercraft. "Bend at the waist, keep yourself low.

That was all very well, but it was only her second day in leg irons, and she was still working on the techniques required to walk with only two feet of slack. That was one thing Chedd excelled at, the shuffling, the sidling and—when all else failed—the one-legged hop. He was pretty quick on his feet, she had to give him that. In the end she couldn't manage to step in the boat and had to be picked up. Waker had not been gentle as he plunked her down on the seat.

Things were getting a bit better now, but there was always the fear of falling in the water. The boat rocked and swayed, especially when Waker and his father stood to use the poles. Chedd said farther upstream there were rapids where the water frothed and bucked like a rabid raccoon. He said they'd probably die trying to pole against them. There was a lot wrong with those two statements, Effie decided. Waker and his father obviously had experience of the river, and if they could circumvent an entire roundhouse they could certainly find a way around some rapids. Plus she doubted very much that either one of them would attempt anything that placed themselves and the boat in danger. And finally, if there was anything less like water than a rabid raccoon Effie Sevrance would like to see it.

"Girl. Cover the fire. We leave within the quarter." Waker didn't even look at her as he spoke. They'd finished repairing the ice damage and the boat was now back in the free-flowing water beyond the ice. As Waker's father held the craft in place, Chedd and Waker began to load the supplies. They traveled light, without tents or fireirons, and it made for swift camps and departures. No comforts were afforded. Waker's father had a distrust of fires and let one be lit only for the time it took to boil a kettle for the trail tea. Yet even when the fire burned for only half an hour and left the smallest possible footprint, Waker was meticulous about covering all traces of it when he left. Effie had a feeling she knew why.

She'd been observing the way he and his father traveled for the past few days. They were sneaks. They knew the back ways and the side ways, the ways through the reeds and the ways under the deeply shaded canopies of weeping willow. They knew exactly where they would stop each evening. Campgrounds and hideaways, stock ponds for fishing, mussel beds for musseling, duck-nesting banks for fresh eggs: they knew them all. And did not want to share them. Leave a burned-out fire or any other trace of habitation and their secret places might be lost. They inhabited a world right under the noses of a dozen clans yet floated by undetected. It was a type of power, Effie recognized, to possess such stealth.

For a wonder the sun came out as she raked over the fire coals with a willow switch. It even felt a bit warm if you squinted. The wind had started chopping up the water and Effie reckoned they'd be in for an unpleasant day afloat. Normally they got a much earlier start, but the business of the tower had thrown everyone off. Plucking at the lore suspended around her throat, Effie checked on Drey. Still nothing.

"Girl, in the boat."

Effie released her lore, but not before she saw Waker's sharp gaze skim over it.

Boarding the boat was still somewhat of a problem. She'd never been the most graceful girl—even when she'd had the full use of both legs—and she just couldn't seem to manage the combination of water, boat and leg irons in a single flowing movement. Her dress always got soaked and then she'd have to sit on it all day. It got wet now, despite the fact that she hiked it up to knee height in knee-deep water. She couldn't quite work that one out. With an awkward little move she'd named "the storker" she lifted her right leg as high as the leg irons would permit and then took a one-legged hopping jump into the craft. Positioning was everything. Land low and in the center and you were all right. High and off-center and the boat started rocking like a rabid raccoon in a storm.

Luckily today she got it just right. Chedd was already sitting on his seat, one down from the stern, and he turned around and aced her with the double thumbs. Grinning, she thumbed him back. He really wasn't bad. For a boy.

Waker's father stepped in next and she was pleased to see he had a paddle, not a pole. That meant he wouldn't be standing, and that made for a more stable day in the boat. Waker pushed the boat into motion and then vaulted onto his seat. They were off.

Father and son worked well together, paddling in perfect time on opposing sides. Waker's strokes were deep and efficient and you could feel the power of his shoulders pulling the boat. He was not big and bulky like a hammerman but he had an efficient and enduring type of strength. He could paddle upstream all day. His hair was black and flat and he pulled it back at the nape of his neck with a fine moonstone clasp that was not clan-made. It was his only jewel. His thigh-length moose-hide boots were thickly waxed and shed water, and his pants and coat were cut from dense, velvety otter hides. The only way to discern his clan was through subtleties in his gear and person. He did not carry a sword— that in itself was telling—rather a long spike-like knife that he kept in a sheath made from the green and scaleless skin of the salamander. Riding next to the spike-knife on his gear belt was a second, shorter knife this one sheathed in leather covered with frogskin. Frog and salamander: the twin knives of Clan Gray.

Once Effie had sported them she noticed other indicators of his clan. His powdered guidestone was kept dry in a swim bladder that he wore on a thong around his neck. The brass buckle of his gear belt had been stamped with water marks, and the little fingernail on his right had been excised, exposing a pad of purple flesh. At the time of their first yearman's oath all Graymen had one fingernail removed. Effie didn't know whether Graymen were allowed to choose which of their nails would be taken. She did know that Waker's father had the exact same scar: little finger, right hand.

On impulse Effie spun around in her seat to look at Waker's father. He was staring straight back at her, as if he'd anticipated her turn. Anticipate this then, she thought, feeling slightly unbalanced. "What's your name?"

Both Chedd and Waker Stone turned at the sound of her voice. Generally there was no speaking in the boat: it was one of the rules. Waker's father continued paddling in smooth, uninterrupted strokes. His jaw was slack, but he looked at her as if he knew exactly what she was up to. Which was stooge as she wasn't even sure herself. Frowning, she turned around to face front.

"Girlie, girlie, girlie, girlie. Wonder whmt wasn't early?"

Hearing the croaky, gleeful voice coming from behind, Effie spun back, but she was too late. Waker's father's jaw had already fallen slack. His little beady eyes were triumphant.

Gods, he's weird. Disgruntled, Effie turned her back on him and fixed her attention on the river.

The boat had found its channel and was moving upstream. They were about thirty paces from the north shore, which still consisted of mud banks glazed with ice. You couldn't see the southern shore because of the densely wooded island midstream. Effie spotted a ruin amidst the fire pines, and wondered what clan, if any, claimed it. Chedd had sworn blind there were river pirates living on the islands, but Effie didn't believe him. How would pirates make a living? Waker's boat was the only craft in sight.

As the morning wore on the going became more difficult. The wind fought the boat and they were forced midstream by tree debris and rocks. Waker and his father muscled the boat forward, their paddles cutting parallel troughs through the water. Gradually the mud banks and reeds gave way to woods. Trees grew right up to the river's edge. Some were actually standing in the water. Effie wondered how long it would be before the river level dropped and they got some relief. When she spied a fisher eagle diving in water just off the shore, she couldn't help but speak again. "Chedd," she hissed. "Over there. It's got a fish."

Chedd had been engaging in fake paddling for the better part of an hour and was glad of the distraction. "She's a beaut," he whispered with appreciation. "Look. On the island. You can see her nest."

Effie glanced at Waker's back, checking that this hushed conversation didn't offend him. He had to be able to hear it—they were only separated by a distance of seven feet—but perhaps because they were keeping their voices extra low he'd decided to tolerate it. The back of his head, decorated with the palely beautiful moonstone clasp, held steady and did not move.

"How do you know it's a she?" she whispered, gaze following the line of Chedd's pudgy finger to the eagle's nest.

Chedd shrugged. "Just do."

Effie shrugged back. The eagle had what looked to be a green pickerel in its hooked talons. The fish wriggled wildly as the eagle flew toward her nest. Once she was overland, she released her grip and let the fish plummet toward the beach.

Chedd turned his neck to look at Effie and they both executed a collected shoulder-scrunching wince at the moment the pickerel hit the rocks. "Eew," Chedd sighed with feeling.

"Double eew," Effie agreed, watching as the eagle swooped down to retrieve the smashed fish.

"Uh-oh. Trouble coming."

"Ssh," Effie hissed. In his excitement Chedd had forgotten to lower his voice. Waker had to have heard that, but a quick glance at the back of the Grayman's head told Effie nothing.

Color crept up Chedd's neck. "Sorry," he muttered. "I forgot."

Finally Effie understood what Chedd had meant by trouble coming. As she looked on, a pair of ravens broke through the trees and swept in toward the kill. The eagle saw them coming straight for her, plucked out a piece of the pickerel's belly, gobbled it down and sprang into flight. She was nearly twice the size of the ravens, but Effie guessed she was a smart bird who knew when she was outnumbered. The ravens, night— black creatures with oily wings, fell upon the fish carcass and started cawing and squawking and battling each other for the best pieces.

"What happened to females first?" Effie whispered, fascinated.

Chedd corrected her in a voice so low it took her a moment to understand him. "They're both female too."

"How do you know that?" she demanded.

Again Chedd shrugged. "Dunno. Just do."

Effie fell silent, thinking. She looked at the back of Chedd's chubby neck and then out toward the island and the ravens. Outt of habit she reached for her lore. The stone was wind-cooled and heavy. It told her nothing. Waker's father steered the boat toward the shore, taking advantage of the deepening channel. The shoreline was still heavily wooded, but the land was beginning to rise and rocky draws and undercuts lined the bank.

"Chedd," Effie said after a while, leaning forward so she could whisper in his ear. "How did you know about the ravens before they broke the trees?"

"Didn't know," he replied, defensive.

He was a bad liar and Effie wasn't about to let him get away with it. "You did know, because you said trouble was coming when there was nothing there."

Chedd shrugged expressively, his shoulders moving upward in three separate stages.

"Has anyone ever said anything bad about you?" Effie persisted. "Like you might be…" She lowered her voice to its absolute minimum. "Chanted."

Chedd nearly jumped off his seat. He shook his head so vigorously he rocked the boat. "No. No. No. I'm training for the hammer," he said, as if this automatically disqualified him from suspicion. He thought for a moment and then added, "My da's a hammerman too."

Effie frowned. She could tell by the set of his shoulders that Chedd had entered what Mog Willey called "the clamdown." Once someone had entered the clamdown the only thing to do was leave them alone. They would open up only in their own good time.

Light goldened as the sun moved to the west. The wind died and the chop left the water. Effie couldn't see anything but water and trees. Pines and hardwoods warred for space along the shore. Over time her legs had grown stiff and she raised them a little bit to get the blood pumping. The chains were wet and dripping; there was always an inch of water in the boat. As she watched the chains swing between her feet she thought of Chedd and Waker and Waker's father. Something was lying at the far edge of her memory and she was trying to make it roll toward her. Of course as soon as she tried it rolled the other way. Memories were tricky little animals to catch.

Feeling the boat pull strongly toward the right, she glanced over her shoulder at Waker's father. His face told her nothing, but she could see from his strokes that he was guiding the boat ashore. Wondering why they were stopping so early Effie scanned ahead. Smoke lines, three of them, rose above the tree canopy in the distance. Effie wondered what roundhouse or settlement they came from. A handful of tiny ancient clanholds lay along the river between Ganmiddich and Croser. The country was wild here, thickly forested and overrun with vines. It was known as "tree country" and Inigar Stoop always said it was nothing more than a hatchery for flies and a feeding ground for bears. Effie took it to mean he disapproved of the wild clans that lived here.

When she saw Waker set down his paddle and draw out the pole from its place in thie hull of the boat, Effie realized they weren't going ashore after all. They were going to pole up a creek.

Even though she looked really hard she couldn't spot the tributary until they were right on top of it. She could feel its waters, pushing against the stern of the boat, even perceive the cross eddies swirling where the two channels met, yet could see nothing but choked-up willow and sumac ahead. Anyone looking on would have thought Waker and his father were about to pole right onto the shore. But no, at the last instant Effie spied a telling shadow beneath the trees. Crouching low and tucking their heads against their chests to avoid being hit by branches, Waker and his father steered the boat through the canopy and into the creek.

A pretty nifty move, Effie thought, slapping at a willow twig that was aiming right for her eye.

The creek was narrow and winding, a line of brown water leading through the trees. Waker's breath came harder as he poled against the quick-moving current. Effie kept herself still. The boat was rolling from side to side and she didn't like it one bit.

Girlie, girlie, girlie, girlie. Wonder why it wasn't early? For some reason Waker's father's stupid rhyme kept playing in her head.

They headed upstream until the light failed, and then Waker's father guided the boat to a narrow pebble beach surrounded by black oak and hemlock. It was nearly dark by the time Effie stepped into the water. Her legs were a bit numb so she didn't feel the cold much. The memory was back again, playing hide-and-seek in her head.

"Girl, gather sticks for the fire." Waker held the boat for his father to alight and then began to unpack the load.

Effie's feet were still in the water. The bottom of her dress was wet. She was shivering and all she wanted to do was wrap herself up in a blanket and sleep. "I have a name, you know," she said to Waker. "It's Effie Sevrance. And that over there is Chedd Limehouse."

Chedd, hearing his name mentioned, looked up from his task of laying bedrolls, saw Effie facing off against Waker Stone and decided to make himself disappear. "Off for a piss," he said to no one in particular, darting into the trees.

Waker had been in the process of unloading the waxed sack containing the food. Gaze staying on Effie he walked to the shore and deposited the sack on the beach. It landed with a crunch. "Your name won't mean nothing where you're going. So drop your proud little fan-cies and build the fire."

Effie felt heat rise to her cheeks. Waker's father passed her in the water, his malignant ferret face twitching. Effie waited for him to walk up the beach before addressing his son. "Are you selling us to the mine lords of Trance Vor?" There. She'd spit it out.

Waker Stone's eyes bulged a fraction farther from his skull. His head went back and a high braying noise exploded from his lips.

Effie stepped back. The noise continued and she realized quite suddenly that he was laughing. Behind her, Waker's father sniggered once in solidarity and then went quiet.

After a moment Waker calmed himself and looked her straight in the eye. "Girl, I promise you you're not going to no mine."

She waited but he said no more, simply picked up the sack and went about his business on the beach. As Effie watched him the memory she'd been grasping for all day rolled into place. Automatically, her hand reached for out for her lore. Girlie, girlie, girlie, girlie. Wonder why it wasn't early? Of course! Her lore hadn't warned her the night of the kidnapping. Her lore always alerted her to danger. Always. But not then. So why? It was a question she tried to answer as she gathered sticks for the fire.