A Sword from Red Ice

She had believed hiim She and Chedd had believed them. She had lost her love and nearly died because of those chains. And he had still kept them on her. Foolishly she had thought there was some honor between them and that after Waker had pulled her from the water she owed it to him to be a good passenger. She had owed him nothing. He and his father were kidnappers, and if she and Chedd had thought there was a possibility of freeing themselves from the chains they would have tried an escape. Chedd Limehouse and Effie Sevrance would have given it a go. The master faker and master gamer could have cooked something up.

Effie felt betrayed. And stupid. And suddenly very afraid. She and Chedd were going to be fed to the bog.

Waker's father waited for full comprehension to dawn's on Effie's face and then carelessly tossed the pickax in the water.

Facing front, Effie tried to breathe away the tightness in her chest. She should have snatched the pickax from him and put it through his eye. More soberly she wondered if she would ever tell Chedd. Was there any point? Only if the fish decide not to eat us.

A fortress of bulrushes encircled the open water that contained Clan Gray's roundhouse. Dark paths led through the tangle of hard canes like mouse cracks in a wall. Waker completed punting the boat through one such crack and they floated into the shallow lake. Giant rings of green light burned just above the water. Effie could hear the hiss of marsh gases and smell the methane. The Gray roundhouse was a black hump in the center of the lake. Massive torches circled it, their stands twenty feet high, their heads shaped like giant beehives. The same eerie green flames that flickered above the water burned at the top of each torch.

The roundhouse sat on an island of oozing mud shored with stones, bird skeletons, muskrat bones and a basketwork of canes. Wooden landings and causeways extended out from the main structure, supported by pilings for the first few feet and then left to float upon the lake. Ladders woven from canes and rushes led below the black water. Rafts and other shallow craft were tied to mooring poles. Some poles sticking out from the lake had iron baskets lashed to them; Effie could not see what was inside them.

Gray's roundhouse was not round; it was an octagon made from rotting cedar planks and marsh mud baked into clinker. Part of it looked to be sinking. Bands of square windows ran along its upper stories but all of the shutters were closed. Some had been boarded up. A few had been sealed with metal bars. Weeds were growing from softened sections of roof timber and a snarl of chokevines was threatening to overgrow the clan door. "Buckets of mother-mud!" Chedd whispered with feeling. Effie had never heard that particular curse before but it seemed to sum things up.

A man and a woman floating on a basic raft of lashed logs moved to intercept the boat. The woman had a scrawny coon hat perched on her head like a bird's nest—she was the one doing the poling. The man was sitting cross-legged. He was wearing muskrat furs dyed green, and his skin was mottled like a newt's.

"Way-Ker" he said, turning the name into two separate words and seeming somehow to disparage it. "What birdies have you brought us today?"

Waker set down the pole and let the boat drift toward the raft. "Boy and a girl. Real nice. The boy has the old animal skills and the girl" Waker turned to look at Effie with his oversize bulging eyes. "She's a smart one. There's no telling all she can do."

Effie spat at him.

Waker's expression didn't change as the spittle landed on his cheek and in his eye. He blinked, and as he did so he seemed to be dismissing Effie Sevrance as someone who no longer held his interest. Raising his fist he wiped his face clean and returned his attention to the green-fur man.

"She's from Blackhail," Waker told him, "and the boy's a Bannerman."

The man's gaze settled on Effie. His eyes were the same black tar as the water. "Haul 'em up. Come see me tomorrow—I'll mind you get paid."

Waker's father steered the boat so it pulled alongside the raft. The woman with the coon hat set down her pole and gripped the boat's gunwales to dock the boat against raft. Waker turned to Chedd and said, "Up." He meant both of them, but he never looked at Effie Sevrance again.

Chedd and Effie stood, their leg chains rattling in unison. Understanding that they had limited movement, the green-fur man slid over to the edge of the raft and helped them alight. Chedd first. Effie next. The man's hands dug deep into Effie's armpits as she stumbled against him. "Good shot" he whispered, as he guided her down onto her backside. He might have winked at her, but she couldn't be sure.

As soon as she and Chedd were safely on board and sitting down, the coon hat woman pushed off from the boat. "Girlie, girlie, girlie, girlie. Never assume you'll he treated fairly."