Exile

IV

‘What do you mean you’re not stopping at Hamming Ferry?’ Wren exclaimed in disbelief.

Her fury washed over the barge captain without so much as making him blink.

‘Not my doing,’ he growled. He pointed up the length of the barge with his thumb. ‘You want to shout at someone, you take it up with the Free. Whatever they’ve done, we’re getting sucked downstream like there’s a wall-tide at our back. Couldn’t pole to shore if I wanted to.’

‘And you didn’t think to tell anyone until now?’

The captain shrugged, which did nothing but stoke up the fire of Wren’s anger.

‘There’s not one thing any of us can do about it, unless you get the Free to change their plans. You’ll not hear many complaining about getting to Homneck fast.’

‘I need to get to Hamming Ferry,’ Wren snapped, and pushed him hard at the shoulder.

A mistake, as was immediately apparent. He stiffened his legs and leaned against her shove. His bearded lips pulled back to bare teeth so crooked it looked as though his mother had just flung a handful in there when he was a child, and they had taken root where they fell.

‘You don’t go raising your hand to a barge’s captain unless you know how to swim. You know how to swim, sow?’

Wren could not swim. But nor had she ever been the sort to let misfortune knock her from her feet without at least kicking its shin as she fell.

‘You took every coin I had left to carry me to Hamming Ferry,’ she said.

The captain almost smiled at that.

‘And the fare to Homneck is more, so you’ve turned a good bargain. There’s a bridge there. You’re so desperate to get yourself on the end of a Huluk Kur spear, you can cross the river easier there than at Hamming.’

He turned his back, but Wren hooked a hand on his shoulder.

‘And how many more days of walking will that mean?’ she demanded. ‘How much time are you costing me?’

She wondered if she would regret squandering food on the Free. She wondered how much further her tired legs and blistered feet could carry her. She wondered whether the Huluk Kur were even now killing the man she sought.

‘Three days,’ the captain said, glaring at her, pushing her hand roughly from his shoulder. ‘Four maybe, unless you’re stronger than you look.’

You have no idea how much stronger, Wren thought, but all she could bring herself to speak was a furious echo: ‘Four days?’

‘Aye,’ the captain shouted, the last of his patience gone. ‘Four days. Now are you going to close up your mouth or am I going to…?’

The end of Hamdan’s bow came to rest gently on the captain’s chest. The archer leaned in.

‘The woman’s disappointed,’ Hamdan said quietly. ‘Can’t blame her for that.’

The captain’s brow furrowed and twitched. He scraped his ramshackle teeth over his upper lip. And turned silently away. A murmur from one of the Free was all it took to quell his anger. Not Wren’s. Not entirely.

‘I’m more than disappointed,’ she told Hamdan, fixing him with much the same hostile gaze she had bestowed upon the captain.

‘I heard. Everyone did.’

Wren glanced around. Most of her fellow passengers, most of the crew, were watching her. They looked away without fail as she frowned at them.

‘I needed to cross at Hamming Ferry,’ she said, recognising the tone of defeat in her own voice.

‘And what’s over the river from there that’ll be gone by the time you walk up from Homneck?’

Ena Marr drifted up behind Hamdan while he spoke. It was the closest and clearest view Wren had yet had of this Clever, and she saw a small woman, almost frail. One who moved over the deck all but silently, light as a breeze. There was hard strength in her eyes though. A weight.

‘Wants to wed herself to a Huluk Kur hunter maybe?’ Ena Marr mused with a fleeting, faint smile.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Wren said. ‘We’re going to Homneck whatever I say, aren’t we?’

Hamdan nodded. He lowered his voice, slipping into a conspiratorially soft tone. ‘The thing is – what’s your name, anyway?’

‘Wren.’

It ran against her instincts to give the truth like that. She had spent many years wearing other names, the better to avoid unwanted attention. But the time for that was passing, she supposed. As likely as not, she was leaving Hommetic lands for the last time.

‘So, Wren,’ Hamdan continued, still in that near-whisper, ‘the thing is, we broke the Wardle Bridge because we need the Huluk Kur to try to cross at Homneck. The only way they can get there is through the Hung Gate Pass, and that’s our chance to stop them. If we fail, if they get across the river, there’ll be no sun for a month with all the corpse-fires that’ll be burning.’

‘If you say so,’ Wren said grudgingly.

‘I do. Our Captain’s got a hundred of our fellows and a thousand of the King’s spears up at the Hung Gate. He’s expecting us. Waiting for us to bring word. Soon.’

Hamdan was reasoned. Calm. Almost sympathetic. But Wren knew her cause was lost and her indignation futile. Her dashed hopes meant nothing to anyone but herself. So be it. So it had been for many years.

She turned her back on the Free and retreated into the solitude she knew so well.