The Serpent Gift Read online

  “Have a care, lass,” he said. And then he recognized me. “Pushy, aren’t ye?”

  “Sorry,” I said, lowering my gaze from old habit. “I didn’t see—”

  “I’ll say ye did not. Nose in the air, I’ll wager. But ye cannot go knocking decent people over just because yer mama is the Shamer.”

  “I never meant to,” I said, trying to edge past him.

  “Hold yer horses,” he snarled, snatching at my arm. “Ye might at least have the manners to say ye’re sorry.”

  “I did.” I tried to pull away.

  “Did ye now? Very quiet, it must have been, that ‘sorry.’ Quite silent, I think.”

  This man was such a pain. I was beginning to get really angry.

  “Let go of my arm,” I said, “or I’ll—” Or I’ll yell, was what I meant to say, but he didn’t let me finish.

  “Or what? Or ye’ll get yer mother to curse me? Threaten an honest man, would ye?”

  I wasn’t scared, not really. I looked around quickly to see if Callan was anywhere near, but he wasn’t.

  “I’m not threatening anyone,” I said, as calmly as I could. “And my mother can’t curse people. And even if she could, she wouldn’t.”

  “A likely story.”

  “A true story!” I glared at him. And right then, it happened. It wasn’t anything I wanted. It wasn’t anything I could control. Not anymore. It was just a flash, a quick searing pain inside my head, and then it was gone.

  He cried out and let go of my arm as if I had suddenly become too hot to hold.

  “Witch brat,” he hissed, backing away, and this time he did make the witch sign in my face, fully visible to me and everyone else who cared to look.

  I had looked at him with a Shamer’s eyes. I hadn’t meant to; perhaps it had happened because I was angry, or because he wouldn’t let go of me. Now he wouldn’t even look at me, much less touch me.

  “Get away!” he cried, so loudly that people turned to stare. “Keep away from me with yer devilry!”

  Other people were making the witch sign now. A woman clutching a basket full of eggs backed away, trying to look and not look at the same time, and a black-haired man in a red shirt simply stood there and stared, as if I had turned into a troll or a banshee before his eyes.

  Time to leave, I thought.

  “Just leave me alone,” I told the carter and turned to go.

  The black-haired man in the red shirt was barring my way. At first I thought it was an accident and tried to move past him. But he was still in my way.

  “Excuse me,” I said, politely. One fight a day was quite enough.

  He didn’t move. And he was staring at me with the most peculiar look on his face, as if… I wasn’t quite sure. As if he had found something, perhaps.

  “What is your name?” he asked, and his voice had a strange sort of lilt to it. He did not sound like a Highlander, nor like any Lowlander I knew. And from one ear dangled a jeweled earring, a silver serpent with green gemstone eyes. The men I knew did not wear jewelry like that.

  My heart was beating more rapidly than before. Who was he, and why was he interested in me? Was it because of the things the carter had shouted to the world, about devilry and curses and the like? I felt no desire to tell him my name.

  “Excuse me, I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

  Suddenly he put a hand on either side of my face and looked straight into my eyes. There was no roughness to his grasp, it was just so unexpected. I took a step backward, and he released me immediately.

  For a moment we stared at each other. Then I spun around and began to walk away, back the way I had come.

  “Wait,” he said.

  I looked over my shoulder. He was following me. Oh, why hadn’t I waited for Callan? I started to run as best I could in the crowded Market street. Where was our own stall? I pushed through a narrow gap between two tents, leaped across a wagon shaft, and dove beneath a table full of pottery, making the potter yell in surprise.

  “Damn monkey!”

  I didn’t stop. I just ran. Was this our street? Yes, down there at the end was Callan, so reassuringly big and trustworthy, and Rose, dressed up in her Market best in a green skirt and white embroidered blouse. I looked back once more, and to my relief there was no black-haired, red-shirted stranger bearing down on me.

  “Hello again,” said Rose. “I’ve sold three of the little horses already, and a bowl! And the herbs are selling well, too.”

  Mama was talking to a customer, getting her to sniff our thyme balm. She was careful to look at the jar, and not at the customer, but they were both smiling, and it looked like another sale.

  “Great,” I said, pushing my fringe away from my forehead and trying to calm my breathing.

  Rose peered at me. “What happened?”

  “Oh, I bumped into the carter who tried to steal our space. He wasn’t in a great mood.”

  Rose giggled. “I bet not. He missed a great space. Serves him right, too.”

  I don’t know why I didn’t say more. Perhaps it was just that Mama looked so happy right then, and I didn’t want her to become all anxious and worried again. But there might have been more to it than that. It was as if I could still feel his palms against my cheeks. His hands had been warm and slightly roughened. His hair and beard were carefully trimmed and black as night, like the fur of Maudi Kensie’s favorite hunting dog. And the eyes that had looked so searchingly into mine had been green. Just like my own.

  DINA

  Heroes and Monsters

  In the end, Nico found us. The light was beginning to fade, and we were packing up our little shop and thinking of supper. Or at least, my stomach was.

  “That was a good day,” said Rose. “I should have brought some wood along. I could have carved more of the little animals, they’re selling like hotcakes.”

  “Perhaps you should charge a little more for the ones you have left.”

  Rose hesitated. “I don’t know. I like it that everyone can afford them. And it’s not as if they cost anything to make.”

  Not if you don’t count the work, I thought. And the imagination, the skill, and the patience. But Rose didn’t seem to reckon that. She was just happy that people wanted to pay good money for something she had made.

  Suddenly, Melli came to attention like a hunting dog who has caught the scent.

  “There he is,” said my little sister and pointed. “Look. It’s Nico!”

  She was right. There was Nico, slipping easily through the crowd because people moved out of his way, perhaps without realizing why they did so. It was a little odd, because he wore the same kind of clothes as everybody else now. There was nothing particularly lordly about his woolen shirt and jerkin. And yet, you could still tell. You could tell that he was no ordinary Highland peasant. I don’t know if castellans’ sons are actually born different. I mean, when they are babies I expect they squall, sleep, and fill their nappies like any other child. But perhaps as they get older, they learn to move and talk differently. At any rate, it shows. And it’s not just the clothes.

  He had grown a beard since we moved into the Highlands. Most clansmen wore beards, so perhaps he imagined it made him look less recognizable. But it would take more than that, I thought. Even the careful courtesy with which he greeted us was somehow different from the Highland idea of good manners.

  “Where is Callan?” he asked.

  “Gone to fetch Falk,” I said. “We’re packing up for the day.”

  “Was it a profitable day?”

  I nodded. “The salves are all gone, and Rose has sold a lot of her little animals.”

  He picked up one of the carved dogs and weighed it in his palm. “They’re good,” he said. “What do you charge?”

  “A copper penny for the smallest ones and two for the others,” murmured Rose, her face coloring from the praise.

  Nico frowned. “Isn’t that too cheap?” he asked. “I’m sure you could charge more.”

  “See?” I said. “I
’ve been telling her.”

  “But that doesn’t count,” Rose burst out. “I mean, Nico isn’t used to—”

  “To what?” said Nico, suddenly very still.

  Rose shuffled a foot and clearly wished she had kept her big mouth shut.

  “Nothing,” she muttered.

  “No, tell me. What am I not used to?”

  “To counting the cost of things,” Rose whispered.

  Nico put down the little dog figure, very carefully.

  “No, you’re right.” His tone cut all the way to the bone. “People like me always have someone else to pay the price for us.”

  He spun on his heel and walked away from us, and once more you could see people making way for him without even thinking about it.

  “Wait,” I called, putting down the jars I had been packing. “Nico, wait for me!”

  “Don’t trouble yourself on my account,” he said coolly, not stopping. “I am perfectly capable of buying a mug of beer myself.”

  In the crowded, twilit Market, he was almost lost from sight already. Oh, bother, I thought. We promised. We promised Master Maunus.

  “Mama? Mama, can I go with him?”

  “Yes,” said Mama, following Nico’s dark head with her eyes. “Perhaps you’d better.”

  I eeled my way through the throng in Nico’s wake, but he had longer legs than I did and catching up with him was not easy. I only succeeded because he had stopped at a liquor stall in the next street over. He stood there, hesitating, with the coin in his hand, but at least he had not yet put it on the vendor’s desk.

  I walked up to him.

  “Nico, won’t you eat supper with us?”

  He spun. Apparently, he had not believed I would follow. He gave me only the briefest glance before lowering his eyes, and that made a sudden wave of misery well up in me.

  “You can look at me,” I said quietly. “I’m no longer dangerous.” Strange how that made tears sting at the corner of my eyes. It had been lonely, before, when I still had my Shamer’s eyes, but it still felt wrong, somehow, not to have them. As if I was no longer quite my mother’s daughter. As if I was no longer quite myself.

  Mama had said that the gift would come back, that it was only hiding, and I did sometimes get a flash as I had with the carter just now. But most of the time… most of the time absolutely nothing happened when I looked at people.

  “Dina.” He touched my cheek, so lightly that it was only a fleeting warmth. “Why do you mind so much? I would have thought you might enjoy being able to look at other people every once in a while, without having their darkest secrets leap out at you like a monster from a cave.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You’ve had the chance to become ordinary,” he muttered. “You’ve no idea how much I envy you.”

  I didn’t feel ordinary. I just felt… broken.

  “I think it might be too late,” I said. “I’m not sure I know how to be ordinary. I’ve never really had the chance to learn.”

  “Then the two of us have more in common than I thought,” he said darkly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I had had a choice, I think I would have chosen to be the son of a horsebreeder, perhaps. Or a merchant. Or a carpenter.”

  “You only say that because you’ve never had to be hungry all the time at the end of winter when there’s hardly any food.”

  “I didn’t say I wanted to be poor. Or to starve. But all my life, people have had a lot of fancy ideas about who I was, or ought to be. When I was a boy, I wasn’t allowed to play with the guardsmen’s children because I was the son of the castellan. I would have liked to make pots or work with wood, but no, I had to learn the sword. And when I didn’t want any part of that, when I finally threw away my sword, well, you know what happened.”

  Yes. I knew. His father had beaten him. Again and again, shouting all the while that “a man is nothing without his sword.” But Nico had refused to fence anymore, no matter how often or how hard his father hit him.

  “And when—when it all happened, with my father and Adela and Bian… when they were all killed, everyone thought I had done it, and a lot of people think so still. To them I am Nicodemus the Monster, and they would kill me without hesitation and boast about it afterward. Did you know that there were people who came down to the dungeons of Dunark just to spit at me? People I knew. People I had grown up with.”

  “But there are some—quite a lot, now—who don’t believe those lies anymore,” I said. “The Weapons Master, and the Widow, and… and all the people they’ve gathered.” There was resistance now, down in the Lowlands, to Drakan and his Order of the Dragon. Secret resistance, but none the less serious for all that.

  “That is true. And to them I am the Young Lord, and they want me to fight Drakan in some bloody battle and liberate all the conquered towns and cities, so that everyone can live happily ever after. They want a hero, I think.”

  “Is that so bad? It beats being a monster.”

  “Not by much. Have you noticed how often heroes die in battle? Afterward everyone is very sorry, and a lot of pretty songs get made, but the hero is still dead. Stone cold dead. I’m in no particular hurry to climb up on my white steed and go slaughtering people until someone who is better or luckier than me spits me on his sword. No thank you.”

  He looked both determined and ashamed at the same time, as if he really thought he ought to climb on his white steed and all the rest of it. I could well understand why he didn’t want to end up dead, but all the same… I suppose I always did think that he would return to the Lowlands someday to fight Drakan.

  “But then what?” I burst out. “What do you want to do instead?” I couldn’t quite see him working as Maudi’s third assistant shepherd for the rest of his life, and to be honest, he wasn’t much good at it. Only last week we had spent a whole day looking for a sheep he had lost.

  Nico raised his head and for once looked straight at me.

  “I want to be me,” he whispered. “Is that so terrible? I just want to be Nico, not a lot of other people’s hero or monster.”

  “But, Nico, do you even know what that means?” Without meaning to, I glanced at the penny he was clutching in one hand, and Nico noticed it immediately.

  “It means,” he said angrily, “that I buy myself a mug of beer if I feel like it. Just like other people. And if you want to run home to Master Maunus and tell tales, go ahead and do so.”

  I didn’t know what to do. If Nico had a mug of beer, well, that in itself wouldn’t be so terrible, of course. It was just that with Nico it was rarely one mug. Or even five or six. And that had actually been one of the reasons why it had been so easy to get him accused of murder.

  Perhaps, if I had still had my Shamer’s eyes, I could have stopped him. But I hadn’t.

  “Nico,” I said. “When you’ve had your beer, won’t you come and eat with us? We’re camped up there, by those rocks.” I pointed.

  Nico looked a little less tense.

  “I will. Oh, go on, stop looking so worried. I will.”

  I headed for the rocks myself. After a whole day of noise and bustle, it was quite nice to get away from the crowds for a while. I was pleased now that Mama had chosen a campsite here. The dew lay like a gray veil across the grass and the rocks, and my feet and ankles were soon soaked with it. The sun had almost set, with just a few pale golden streaks to show where it had gone. A soft twilight hugged the hills. This close to Midsummer, this was about as dark as it ever got up here. Wood smoke hung like mist across the valley, and I could hear the distant baa of goats and sheep, and a little closer, dogs barking at each other.

  Suddenly, there he was. Standing right in front of me, as if he had sprouted from the earth itself. The stranger. The man in the red shirt. I breathed in a little too suddenly and ended up having to cough from sheer surprise.

  “I mean you no harm,” he said in his alien accent, softer and more lilting than the voices I was used to hearing.
“I just want to know your name.”

  I didn’t answer. I just darted sideways, away from him, and began to run.

  It wasn’t far to the camp. Our big hound, Beastie, gave a threatening wrooof when he heard me come charging up like that, and Callan, who had been nursing a small fire into life, got to his feet in one smooth, dangerous-looking move.

  “What is it?” he asked, sharp-voiced.

  “Nothing,” I said, catching my breath. “A man. A man who—”

  “Where?”

  “There.” I waved a hand at the slope.

  But the slope was empty. Only boulders, dew, and wood smoke. The stranger was gone.

  “No one there,” said Callan.

  “He… he must have gone back down. To the Market.” But I didn’t understand. How could he disappear so suddenly? Melting away, like he was a ghost or something, and not properly human at all.

  “What did he look like? What did he want?”

  “He just wanted to know my name.”

  That sounded strange, even to my ears. But Callan nodded, as if that kind of thing happened every day.

  “It is a good thing that ye’re careful,” he said. “But I do not think he wanted to harm ye.”

  I didn’t know what to think. He had said he meant no harm. But it would have been pretty stupid to say “Come here and let me harm you,” in any case. And after everything that had happened during the past two years, I felt I had reason enough to be suspicious.

  I sat down by the fire and let Beastie keep me company while Callan took Falk down to fetch the cart. A little later Davin and Black-Arse came up, and then Mama and the rest. Even Nico. Mama had spent good money on smoked sausages for all of us, seeing that we had done such good business, and as we talked and joked, I nearly forgot about the stranger once more. It was the Midsummer Market. We had a bit of money for once. Davin was happy and proud because he and Falk had taken a prize at the races, and Mama promised that we could go down to the Market later, and listen to the music, and maybe even dance a bit. Life was good right then, and worrying seemed silly.