Seeklight

He spun around—there was no one behind him. He touched the stinging spot on his skull, then looked at his hand. A tiny spot of red mingled in something sticky. At his feet was one of the rotten fruit from the stall opposite him, the hard stone visible through the shattered pulp. The stallkeeper’s eyes were bent on his own hands as they fussed over the trays.

A second passed as the boy stared at the coarse-faced man.

Suddenly, a tall woman, her face rigid with anger, appeared, striding out of the marketplace’s center. One hand clenched the silver handle of the slender black rod she used to point to the items in the stalls that she wished to buy, and to pick her way along the narrow path that led through the hills above the village. She and Daenek lived in the small house at the end of the path, and the silver-headed stick would be laid in the corner beside the door when they arrived back home, in readiness for the next trip to the marketplace. But now the stick had another purpose.

The man behind the stall looked up in time to see the stick come whistling through the air and land with a sharp crack on his forehead. “A child!” the Lady Marche said fiercely, landing another blow above the man’s ear. “Not yet seven! For shame!”

The stick flew again, hitting across the man’s wide back as he crouched behind the stall.

“Naaaww!” howled the man, covering his head with his hands.

“Fer God’s sake, I didn’t chuck the damn thing at the kid!”

“Shame enough that it should be done in front of you.” The stick’s point jabbed into the pavement.

A snickering laugh sounded from a few feet away. A boy, three or four years older than Daenek, stepped into the path from around the corner of another stall. A grin seemed to almost divide his broad, pale face in two. Another of the rotten fruits was cradled in his hand.

The older boy stared boldly at the woman as she strode towards him, his confident expression not changing until a second before the stick whipped across his shoulders. He shrieked, his face rushing full with blood as he fell and scrabbled on the pavement.

“Think better,” said the Lady Marche, giving a perfunctory rap for the stick on the bobbing head, “of flinging refuse at anyone, let alone a ward of the throne.”

“A traitor’s son,” muttered a voice from the crowd of villagers that had gathered from all over the marketplace.

She turned around, sweeping her cold gaze across the sullen faces. “A protectee of—” Her voice hesitated, then continued at a lower pitch. “—of the Regent.”

A few of the faces in the crowd bent into smirks, as if a small triumph had been acknowledged.

“And a child,” she said, her voice sharp with authority, “like other children. Pity those who could fear one!”

“Yahhh,” screamed the older boy, now crouching on his knees.

His red face was wet with tears. “You better watch out! My father’ll getcha—he’s the sub-thane, and he’ll do it, too! Just you wait!”

“Child,” said the woman, extending the tip of her stick towards him—it transfixed his glassy eyes, “you may have inherited your repellent nature from your father, but his is at least somewhat tempered with age. He knows what is expected of him, and better, what would happen to him should he forget.”

She looked over her shoulder at the crowd behind her, including them in her speech. “There is a court in the capital, and this child—” The stick swung to indicate Daenek. “—is under its protection.” She turned to Daenek and spoke quietly to him: “Let’s to home.”

The crowd parted, backing up against the stalls as the lady and the boy passed through them. The faces of the crowd were still set in their expressions of dull resentment and repressed anger. One of them found his voice, a tall youth dressed in the same black fabric as the boy who had thrown the fruit, but with a short, rust-pitted knife tucked in his belt. “Ah, Someday,” the youth whispered as they went by him, “his protection ends. And then he’ll get it like what his father did.”

The Lady Marche either did not hear or chose to ignore him.

She and Daenek reached the other side of the marketplace, the boy half-running to keep up with her quick strides. They passed quickly through the squat village buildings and out to the open spaces beyond.

Chapter II

Where the hills above the village levelled off, the narrow trail ran straight as a knife edge pressed into the ground. The fields were covered thick with weeds, taller than Daenek could reach, and dried stiff and golden by the summer sun. The stalks rustled in the wind and bent over the path.

Daenek stopped and craned his neck to watch a field bat flap upwards, its belly yellow with pollen, like a fur sun. Then, cradling the net bag stuffed with the purchases from the marketplace, he hurried to catch up with the Lady Marche.

“Fools,” he heard her say as he came up behind her on the path. With each step she planted the silver-headed stick firmly into the dirt. “A fortunate breed whose crime is its own punishment.”