Chapter Text
Once, Grandda told Asha that there were parts of Scanra where they put the dead on a boat, pushed them out to sea, and set the whole thing ablaze. She’d been young the first time he told her; she didn’t remember how young, but she did remember Ma scolding him and told him not to tell tales to frighten little girls. Asha hadn’t been frightened. The sea was alive in a way the land wasn’t. It was always changing, always moving, never the same color. If she had to go to the Peaceful Realms, it seemed like it would be a pleasant way to say goodbye. She’d dreamed that night of a pillar of fire blistering into the heavens, taking the dead on their final voyage.
When the Black God took Grandda, she’d watched as the priests fed him to the earth. The land was always cold and still and unmoving, a prison for any spirit who might want a last journey before their final rest. She’d visited every day since the burial, telling him about the weather, the way the light hit the ocean, the gossip in their little town. If he was restless, maybe that would be enough, one last taste of life before he slept.
This time, the last time, she made the journey to the boneyard in the dark, navigating the overgrown paths by the light of a lantern. The earth of his grave still looked freshly turned, despite the nearly two weeks since he’d been laid to rest. She set the lantern by the headstone and knelt to open her pack.
“It’s still not rained,” she said conversationally, the way she’d talked to him when he was alive. “Sky’s been promising it for days, but it’s just damp all the time. You’d hate it, I think.” He always said the cold and damp made his bones ache, the cost of limbs broken and healed in his youth. “But the fog’s always pretty in the early morning.” Rummaging in her pack, she finally felt the hard disk she was looking for. “I brought you another present, by the way.” By now, the shells she left previously formed a border between the edge of the plot and the headstone. She carefully added the new addition to the line, a flat white disk with a pattern like a flower. “It’s a pansy shell. I found it yesterday, in that little cove by the eastern edge. There were other ones, too, but mostly they were broken.”
That was the easy part done. She would have to get to the point soon. Dawn would break in less than an hour, and she still had to say goodbye to Sweet Pea. She hesitated, then said, “I’m going to be gone for a while, I think.” There. The worst of it was out. “I thought you’d understand. I’m going to miss you, of course, but other’n that there’s not much here for me.” The wind was picking up; she drew her cloak around her tighter and shivered. “It’d be nice if you could send me a sign, or maybe some luck. I’m sure I’ll need a fair amount of it, where I’m headed.”
She waited for a moment, hoping despite herself for a bird call, or a whisper on the wind, something she could take as tacit approval. She’d hoped Grandda of all people would understand, but for all she knew he’d be trying to stop her if he lived. Finally, she wiped roughly at her eyes and touched the headstone one last time before standing and shouldering her pack again. It was going to be a long day, and she had one more visit before dawn came in earnest.
By the time she’d made it back into the town, the sky was starting to look more grey than black; she would have to hurry. There was a path down to the cove where Sweet Pea would be, a twenty minute scramble down switchbacks through the steep cliffs. That would take too long. She paused by the edge of the cliffs, looking around, then hiked her skirts up, gathering the material in front of her and passing it between her legs. Breeches would be more serviceable for the downclimb, but it would do for now. The lantern was blown out and tucked into a clump of bushes. She wiped her hands on her overshirt, drying them as best as she could, and then stepped off the path, looking for the broad ledge that marked the fast way down. It was common knowledge to anyone who’d grown up on the island that there was an easy climb between the cove and the beginning of the path. She carefully lowered herself down, wincing at the damp of the rocks. A slip here wouldn’t be fatal—unless she was unlucky enough to hit an outcrop, she’d plunge into the deep pool beneath the climb down—but it would be unpleasant to start the day cold and wet. Despite her fears, she reached the bottom without losing her grip once. She sent a quick prayer of thanks up to whatever gods might be listening, and edged along the narrow ledge at the bottom until she rejoined the path, coming at last to the cove.
There were three small boats moored there. The largest of them was Sweet Pea, Grandda’s pride and joy. For a moment, the rush of grief was so fresh and strong she felt the breath catch in her chest. They’d spent plenty of days together in comfortable silence, Asha with a basket of clothes to mend, Grandda fishing and telling her about his days as a sailor. She’d overheard her parents arguing about it one night. Da said it wasn’t proper, Ma said it did no harm and kept her at her sewing. They’d compromised that it would stop when she was eighteen, a birthday she dreaded for years.
She needn’t have worried. A month before her eighteenth birthday, there was an earthquake that threatened to tear the land itself apart. They found out the story later, in bits and pieces—there had been a rebellion, a dead man who came back to life, an attempt to assassinate King Jonathan. Hard on the heels of that calamity, the famine followed. She’d not understood most of it initially, just that Grandda’s fishing stopped being leisure and started becoming a chore, just as mending and splitting wood were chores. Grain prices might rise, but as long as Grandda could pull food from the water, they were shielded from the worst of it. Her daily trips continued, as Grandda had insisted he needed her. His fingers were stiff and painful, most days, and the ointment they got from the town’s hedgewitch didn’t always fix it. He needed her to help coil and haul rope, to tie and untie knots; never mind that it wasn’t proper for a girl her age to be out in breeches and a shirt sailing.
She shook her head, trying to force her mind to stay in the present. No looking back, she thought grimly. If I don’t pay attention to what I’m doing, it’ll all be over before it’s started. Dawn was coming fast; the sky was considerably lighter than it had been when she started her climb down. She pulled off her socks and boots and sloshed out to the boat, running her hand over the hull. There was the scrape from the time she’d stopped paying attention and knocked into the rocks; there, on the sail, she could see the patches she’d sewed over the holes that continued to appear; the second e in the name was crooked, something she’d always itched to paint over and fix. For a moment, she thought to say goodbye aloud, and then changed her mind, grimacing at her folly. Instead, she patted its hull a few times, almost absentmindedly, before turning her back on it and wading back to shore. You’ve said goodbye, now, she told herself sternly. No more dwelling in the past. Grandda is gone, and Sweet Pea isn’t yours anymore. Never was.
She picked up her pack and walked back towards the cliffs, squinting in the semidarkness for a darker shadow at the base. Everyone knew there were caves in the eastern cliffs, but nobody bothered to go in except for children, and they would still be abed. She’d have privacy, as long as she was quick. Even sheltered from the wind, she was cold. She let down her skirts to cover her bare legs, which only helped a little. The longer I wait, the worse it’ll be, she thought, and cast off her woolen cloak before she could think too hard about it. Gritting her teeth, she tugged off her overshirt, then her undershirt. It was exactly as cold as she had feared, standing in nothing but a breastband. Stifling curses, she rummaged in her pack until she felt the hard roll of cloth she’d stowed and unrolled it. Sending a prayer to the Goddess, she wrapped the bandage around her chest as tightly as she dared. It was harder than she anticipated: unless she held one end, it was impossible to keep it tight, but passing it around her back one-handed was impossible. At last, shivering, she decided she was as flat as she was going to get, and tucked the free end securely in. She ran her hands over her chest: not perfectly smooth, but it would have to do.
The undershirt went back on, then one of the men’s overshirts she’d worn when she sailed with Grandda. She hurried to wrap the cloak back around her, then peeked outside. The first glow of light was touching the sea. Mithros waited for no one. She tugged off her skirt and apron, fumbling to lace breeches on as quickly as she could. Finished, she tugged socks and boots back on, then, unable to help herself, walked outside to look at herself in the tidepool.
She had to admit the effect was unimpressive. She’d never been particularly curvaceous. If she turned to the side, she could see a difference, but she didn’t suddenly look like a man. She looked like Asha wearing men’s clothing. Well, hopefully we fix that now, she thought, walking back to where her pack lay. Her apron sat discarded on the ground: She spread it out on the cold stone floor, then knelt on it. Reaching into her pack, she took out the old scissors Ma had thrown away a week ago. They were old and rusty and couldn’t cut through most cloth, but they would do for her hair. Last chance to turn back, a voice whispered unbidden in her head.
Ignoring it, she gathered as much of her hair as she could into a horsetail, reached behind her, and attacked it with the scissors with ferocity. It took about a minute to saw through it, but she felt the last of it give, and suddenly she was holding almost two feet of mousy hair in her left hand. Well, she thought dizzily. Her head felt lighter than she could remember it ever feeling. She shook her head, feeling the ends of her newly shorn hair tickle her cheeks, then dropped the hair into the center of the apron. Finding the parts that were still too long, she cut them shorter, pausing to brush drifts off her breeches. When it felt like it was a respectable length, she set the scissors down, then stumbled back to the pool to stare at herself.
She was disappointed to realize that she did not look like a man. Charitably, she looked like a boy. Her hair had always been wavy, which she was glad of now. It hid the worst of her hack job, the unevenness attributable to the texture rather than the cut. Her face had never been especially feminine; an aunt of hers had once told her that with her thick brows and a jaw that square, she’d better not harbor any dreams of beauty. I can work with it, she decided.
In the light of the rising sun, she could see a tiny wavering shape in front of the mainland. She would have enough time to make the ferry, if she ran. Racing back to her pack, she hauled out the brick that lay inside, and placed it on the apron. Carefully, she folded it into a neat parcel, keeping hair, scissors, and brick inside the bundle, then tied it tightly with the apron strings. She tied her skirt over the breeches, then pulled a linen square from her pack before putting her apron-bundle back inside. She tied it quickly over her head and then pinned it, careful to leave space for her missing hair. Anyone who knew her well would be surprised to see her wearing a cap, but a sudden desire to remain modest would be less surprising than close-cropped hair. Closing her pack, she took stock of her situation. She looked passably the same, as long as nobody stared and she kept the cloak covering her overshirt; her cap was securely fastened; her chest ached, but she supposed she would get used to it. As good as it gets, she thought, and began to jog to the main docks.
She found, as she arrived, that she was not the only passenger waiting on the ferry. She’d hoped that she’d be alone on her way to Port Legann, but her luck had been almost too good. It was somehow reassuring that this wasn’t going as expected. The small troupe of Players who had come to visit a week and a half ago were leaving Staffast. She was surprised they’d stayed even that long. The fisherfolk weren’t particularly rich at the best of times, but coin was short for everyone right now; she’d have expected them to ignore a tiny island a few miles from the mainland.
She recognized a few of them. She’d been in no mood to go, so soon after Grandda died, but Leyla had wheedled and cajoled until she’d given into her older sister’s whims purely to get her to be quiet. The blonde man sitting on his own large bag had juggled first balls, then clubs, then finally knives. A man was having a whispered argument with a woman who looked to be his twin, the two of them nearly exactly the same height. They had done partner acrobatics, the kind that Asha had always wished she had the flexibility to do. The old man apparently sleeping against one of the dock posts had done conjuring tricks, although not very well. And the woman sitting on the edge of the dock, legs swinging, was the singer. Asha remembered her very well indeed.
She’d gone through the classics first, in a fine clear alto, accompanying herself on the lap harp. Asha had only half been listening, drifting in an idle stupor of grief and self-pity. Grandda was gone, and with him any chance of spending her days on Sweet Pea. She’d be expected to spend her time on land, now, working in the shop to mending sailors’ shirts and maybe making a wedding dress every few years if she were lucky. Listening through the wall to her parents’ arguments was habit, at this point, and they were already debating in low murmurs how they could afford to feed four on bought supplies alone. They’d talked of sending her elder sister to Port Legann to make her living, leaving them and Asha to run the tailor shop, which was rank unfairness: Leyla, only a year older, was poetry with a needle, while Asha was merely passable. It wouldn’t do. And in that moment, as she was racking her brains for something, anything she could do to lighten her burden, the singer had taken a sip of water and launched into the Song of the Lioness, and suddenly a plan clicked into place.
Everyone knew that the King’s Champion was a woman now. She’d heard three variations on the story, but everyone agreed that she’d started as a little girl, binding her chest and cutting her hair to disguise herself as a boy. She’d been a child then, and noble to boot. Asha had never met a noble, but she got the impression from the way people talked that they mostly sat around ordering other people to do real work for them. As if by magic, here was the solution that would make everyone happy. Ma and Da could stop their worrying, Leyla would stay in the shop where she belonged, and Asha wouldn’t be marooned on Staffast for the rest of her life, staring out a window while sticking her fingers with needles.
Maybe this is the sign, she thought hopefully. Maybe Grandda sent her so I’d know what to do.
The singer turned her head, and Asha averted her eyes quickly, blushing slightly at being caught staring. The ferry was docking, anyway; in a few moments they would board. The big juggler nudged the conjurer awake with a foot and offered him a hand up. She turned to look back at the town, up on the cliffs. Lights winked in the windows of the tailor shop; had they found her note, yet? She’d hidden it under her pillow, where nobody would bother to look until they got concerned. She shifted impatiently as the two passengers from Legann disembarked, two women, one older than the other. She vaguely recognized them, but they didn’t nod to her as they passed, so they probably didn’t recognize her. That suited her fine.
The Players boarded first, and for a terrifying moment she thought the ferryman would tell her to wait for the next ferry. Instead, he nodded at her, and took the copper she handed without comment. She sat on the end of the bench, eyes on the dock until they were safely underway. Only when they were a hundred feet away did she relax. A wave caught the ship and rocked her pack in her lap, the weight reminding her that she had one more task to finish. She glanced sidelong at her neighbor, the singer herself. She was humming to herself, her belt knife out as she cut slices of apple, passing them down the bench. Catching Asha’s gaze, she grinned and offered a slice. Asha smiled and shook her head. The singer shrugged and popped it into her own mouth instead, before turning back to her own friends.
Asha slid off the side of the bench, staggering to the rail as if she were going to be ill. She’d seen people seasick before, and she leaned over the rail, almost bent double, concealing her pack with her body. The apron-package was at the top; carefully, she pulled it out, making a show of retching. She hacked loudly to cover the splash as she dropped it over the side, slipping into the water and disappearing almost instantly. Wavewalker, please accept my offering, she thought, and then in case the god valued honesty, she hastily added, and please keep it hidden, thank you. She stayed a moment longer, just long enough to fasten her pack shut again, then made a show of wiping her mouth and slid back onto the bench.
Her neighbor nudged her, something in her hand. It was what looked like a sweet, wrapped in brown paper. She looked into the woman’s eyes, confused.
“It’s ginger,” she explained, her voice unsurprisingly musical. “Good for the belly.”
Asha winced internally. She felt badly about deceiving the woman out of her medicine, and she couldn’t very well explain that she’d never been seasick a day in her life, not even when she and Grandda had been too slow to avoid the beginnings of a storm and Sweet Pea had tossed in the waves until Grandda was swearing. She took the candy and thanked the woman, putting it in her mouth. It was sweet and pleasantly spicy.
“Going for a day trip?” the singer asked.
“I’ve some errands, Mistress.” It was her favorite type of lie, the kind that wasn’t really untrue.
One perfect brow lifted. “Alone?”
“You want to be careful, lass,” the juggler advised, leaning around. “Plenty of rogues in Legann nowadays. Keep an eye on your purse, and don’t stay out past sundown.”
She tried to avoid a wry smile. If a pickpocket did take the two coppers she had left, a Midwinter gift from her parents, she suspected they would be more disappointed than she. “I will, thank you.”
“And avoid sailors,” the singer cut in. “Plenty of them hanging around the docks as well. They’ll make promises to a young girl they’ve no intent to keep.”
She ducked her head, turning her face away from her advisors. Let them think she was hiding a blush; in reality she could have laughed out loud. “I’ve no intent to let a sailor flirt with me,” she said, when she felt she could keep a straight face. She said nothing about avoiding them.
They let her be after that, thankfully. The rest of her day might not go as she anticipated; she welcomed the chance to sit quietly and listen to the rush of the waves, her eyes on the two ferrymen as they worked. If she was sent home in disgrace, she suspected this would be the last time she’d be allowed off Staffast Isle for years; she might as well enjoy it.
It took the better part of an hour before they began to draw near Port Legann. Sound carried well over water; she could hear the sounds of the docks beginning to bustle to life, the cries of vendors hawking their wares, an argument between two sailors who seemed about to come to blows, and over it all the incessant shrieking of gulls. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she scanned the big ships docked in the harbor. There were the usual array of merchant ships; most sported the Tortallan flag, although there were a fair number of ships from Maren and Tyra as well. She grimaced. Since the famine had started, they had been forced to import seed and grain from their neighbors. The Crown subsidized some of the cost, she knew, but it was hard to see these ships as anything but vultures profiting off the hunger of Tortallan people.
She moved on to a vessel that puzzled her for a moment. It bore the flag of Carthak, but wasn’t near big enough to be a merchant ship. There was a second flag under it, one she didn’t recognize, and the whole thing looked almost too clean and perfect. Probably a delegation, she decided. Flag’s a coat of arms for a noble. It’s too pretty to belong to someone normal. Her eye fell on the last ship, a massive ship that nobody could mistake for anything but a battleship, the flag of Tortall flying proudly. She stared hungrily at it as long as she dared, eyeing the square-rigged sails, the slits in the side, the Stormwing figurehead.
She peeled her eyes away as the ferry pulled up to a dock in a smaller marina. One of the ferrymen was already leaning out with a boathook; she gathered her pack and waited, almost thrumming with anticipation, as he drew them closer to the dock. At last, one of them hopped onto the docks, and offered her his hand. She could have hopped the gap, but took the offer instead, stepping daintily onto the dock. After even just an hour on the ferry, it felt strange how still the land was.
“Remember what we said, lass!” the juggler called after her. She turned. The group was struggling to haul their bags onto the dock. She lifted her hand in a wave before she turned back.
She’d visited Legann often enough that she didn’t need to ask directions to the temple district, pausing only to trade one of her two coppers for two sticks of cheap pine incense. She’d keep the last one in case she was forced to take the ferry back that evening, although she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. The temple of the Goddess was her first stop. Even though it was still too early for morning prayers, there was a steady flow of people entering. The statue of the goddess greeted her as soon as she entered with them. She bowed respectfully to her, but avoided the statue’s stone gaze. She wasn’t positive the Goddess would totally approve of what she was doing.
Most of the worshippers were sitting on the benches in the main room. She drew away from them. Near the back, there were smaller alcoves for worshippers to pray in privacy. Drawing into a particularly shaded one, she stripped off her skirt as quickly and quietly as she could. She tugged the cap from her hair, then smoothed her hands over her chest, making sure nothing had come loose. She carefully folded skirt and cap, then took a deep breath and stepped back into the main room.
Nothing happened. Nobody pointed and shrieked, or demanded to know what she was doing. Steeling herself, she approached the nearest priestess, clutching the folded skirt like a shield.
The priestess’s hands were reaching for the folded clothes even before she’d made it there. “Donations?”
“Yes,” she said, half-whispering. She’d practiced a deeper voice earlier, but whispering would work to disguise her voice as well.
The woman took the clothes from her hands, shaking them out to examine them and then refolding them with practiced movements. “Did your mother wash them first, boy?”
She shook her head mutely.
“We’ll take care of that, then,” the priestess said. “Thank you, and Goddess bless.”
Asha walked away, slightly giddy. She called me boy. It was the first test of many, and she had passed. She was so relieved she almost walked out before she remembered the incense she had bought. She walked to the base of the statue, where several other sticks were already smouldering, and lit a stick with shaking hands. Thank you, she thought fervently. I know I’m not supposed to act like a woman anymore, but… I hope you’ll keep watching over me.
By the time she finished praying, bowed to the statue one more time, and emerged, her hands had mostly steadied themselves. She felt hyperconscious of everyone around her as she walked—did they know? Were they looking at her?—but there were no exclamations. Nobody approached her. She was, for all intents and purposes, a boy who had finished an errand.
She had meant to burn her second stick at Oinomi Wavewalker’s temple, to pray for good luck on her travels. Something made her pause as she passed a smaller temple, sandwiched between the Graveyard Hag’s and the Smith’s. She fingered the incense in her bag for a moment, then came to a decision and entered.
In stark contrast to the Mother Goddess’s temple, the Crooked God’s temple was devoid of both worshippers and priests alike. That suited her fine. She lit the incense off a candle by the altar. In absence of an incense holder, she shrugged and left it lying on the altar.
Hello, she thought uncertainly. I don’t think I’ve ever prayed to you. Sorry. I don’t really gamble, and I’m not a thief, so it didn’t seem important. But Grandda called you the Trickster. I think I’m about to pull the trick of my life. I’ll need all the luck I can get. She struggled to find a specific request for the god, then gave up. Enjoy the incense.
It felt good to reemerge into the sun. She turned her face into it, taking a deep breath and then trying not to wince as the bandages dug into her flesh. I’ll get used to it, she thought firmly. It’s a small price to pay. She put it forcibly out of her mind, focusing instead on the task ahead. She’d put it off as long as she could. Well, she thought, determinedly cheerful, time to do my duty for king and country. With that happy thought, she walked purposefully out of the temple district, heading once more for the docks.