A Sword from Red Ice

Effie felt a pinch of the old fear. "No," she replied, knowing straightaway that she had disappointed him. "Bring me a rock back from the top."

It was a good thing ft© give a person something to do, she had learned. Chedd nodded. "Big or small?"

Effie brought both of her hands together and cupped them. 'This big."

After committing the size of the requested rock to memory, Chedd set off. Halfway to the base of the cliff, without looking around, he raised an arm in silent salute. Effie was impressed that he had known she would still be watching.

Rising a little awkwardly to her feet, she started searching for the flask's stopper. Gods knew how Chedd was going to get up that cliff with his feet connected by two feet of iron chain. Hop, probably.

It was not going to be a nice day today, she could tell. The Wolf River, which was usually brown, was gray, and it had a little angry chop to it that made the surface matte. Thunderheads were shipping in from the south of all places and the hemlocks and blackstone pines on the riverbank were beginning to sway. To make matters worse Waker's father was just sitting by the boat, watching her with eyes that were double-beady. Sometimes she imagined that the little old man knew just what she was thinking. Clan Gray, that was where he and his son were from. It was a strange clan and not much was known about it. Perhaps the elders there had learned how to divine unguarded thought.

Even though she knew she was being silly, Effie made a face at him. It really was too much, all the staring and silence and I-see-what-you're-about-girl knowingness. For want of something better to do she shuffled down to the shore and offered to help Waker Stone head the fish. At least she had the pleasure of surprising him.

Waker had set the fish trap the night before after they'd pulled ashore. He'd caught three fish in the wicker basket; a shiner and two small trout. They were still skipping. "Take the shiner," he said, handing her the trap. "Show me how you mean to do it."

She did just that, handling all three fish with confidence. The shiner wasn't much longer than her hand and it was what Mad Binny would have called a «no-biter»: you either ate it whole or threw it away. It wasn't worth heading or gutting, and Waker Stone knew it. Still, she laid it against the cutting stump, pinned its tail fin with her middle finger, and began making a scraping motion with the edge of her free hand. "Scaling," she informed Waker calmly. "Best done before you open the gut and chop off the head."

"So you know fish then," he said, looking at her with interest for the first time in all the days that she had known him. Abruptly, he turned his back on her. "Take it," he said over his shoulder. "Don't go lighting no cookfire."

Effie didn't very much want the shiner, but the habit of good manners, drilled into her over many years by Raina Blackhail, was strong and she took it After the time she'd spent hiding in the waterfall hollow west of Ganmiddich she no longer cared for fish. Especially raw ones. Trouble was, she'd stopped hearing Raina s voice in her head and begun hearing Da's instead. You kill it You eat it He could be hard, Da. Hard but right.

Better than boat oil, she thought as she raised the wriggling shiner above her head. She had wanted to make a dedication, like Chedd, but the words "For Blackhail!" didn't mean very much to her. Perhaps she'd been gone too long from her clan. Suddenly inspired, she cried "For Drey!" and dropped the silver fish into her open mouth.

It took some swallowing, but now that Drey's name was attached to it, it simply had to go down. She still didn't know what had become of her elder brother after the raid on Ganmiddich and in some hopeful and superstitious part of her brain she thought that if she got the fish down in one gulp then Drey would be made alive and well. The shiner went down. She could feel it bucking as her gullet muscles pushed it into her stomach. After that she needed to sit. Waker's father, who might or might not have been named Darrow, followed her progress with jab like movements of his eyes. She knew, in the weird and unspoken rules of the mutual game they played, that if she broke down and hid herself deliberately from his sight—say behind a tree trunk or a rock—somehow it meant he had won. And Effie Sevrance did not want to give him the satisfaction. So in plain sight she sat, away from the boat and up high against the hemlocks.

From here she could see Chedd climbing the cliff. He was close to the top now. His technique of pulling himself up by his arms and then swinging his lower body behind him was pretty impressive for a fat boy. Now she wished she had agreed to go with him, but the old fears still had a grip on her feet.