The Ferryman - Book 1

Chapter 60:

Standing Before the Farmers

The next morning before sunrise, farmers began to gather around Pehku Inn. The crowd grew larger and larger, and by morning a silent sea of tinners filled Okatto from street to street.

They waited.

Moth stood at the window of her room and watched them through a crack of the curtain, blood rushing in her ears.

They were here for her. They were here for what news, what comfort she could give them. Most of them would be disappointed when she did not have a fantastic, easy cure for all the problems of Hiren. Others were desperate just to know Correb was not dead.

“You better get dressed.” Nehem said, looking through a curtain gap at another window, the muscles in his neck tensed. “We can’t delay much longer.”

Moth looked towards the bags of fanciful clothing. “Would you send in a maid to help me?”

Nehem nodded and left.

A few minutes after he left, there was a rap at the door and Moth let in a woman.

She was not a maid – her outfit was too fine – but she stood with a strained face and gave a half curtsy. “I’ll be helping you get dressed, Milady.”

Moth remembered her. “Charlotte?” she said, amazed. “Charlotte Casswork?”

Charlotte gave a tense nod.

Charlotte, Quin, and Petri had always been together through most of their childhood. Moth’s last memory of Charlotte – or just the most vivid – was Charlotte holding onto her apron so she wouldn’t fall into the Ofere.

Moth suspected that was Charlotte’s strongest memory of her as well.

The Casswork’s owned Pehku Inn. They were wealthy, and Charlotte was highly involved in the working and hosting of the inn – Moth found it strange that she was here acting as a maid, but Charlotte set to helping Moth undress in front of the mirror and get into her outfit – one with convoluted lacing up the back, something Agate had marked as ‘Impact’. It was so dense with black pie lace Moth looked like a bird herself.

They kept peeking at each other’s reflection in the mirror but were silent.

Unable to bear it any longer, Moth said, “I’m sure you have much more important work than this to do, Charlotte; the maid from before was perfectly fine.”

Charlotte glanced at her. “She said she was attacked by talking magpies.”

Moth pursed her lips and tried not to smile.

Charlote had a shadow of a grin on her face. “She got all the other maids so terrified of the shaman queen they refused altogether, to my face, not to go to your room.”

Moth laughed now, unable to help it. “I’m so sorry.” Charlotte and her exchanged smiles, and Moth asked gently, “How have you been? I hear there’s been an increase of fog bursts.”

Charlotte sighed, tugging on the laces of Moth’s dress. “The inn has been doing well, we just don’t get the clientele we wish.”

“Oh?”

“More high-ranking military men coming to assess the sentries, or scholars from the university. No more folk from the cities, or royals, coming to the range to

honor the ferryman-” realizing what she said, she snapped her mouth shut and hurriedly finished dressing Moth.

They were silent as Charlotte undid Moth’s braids. After a moment, Moth asked, “You know Patri married my brother Japh. Have you seen her much?”

Charlotte had a perfectly round, friendly face that either seemed commanding or full of good humor – at the mention of Patri it contorted into a scowl. “No I have not. God I can’t believe my parents ever made me play with her, she was so…she’d bite me! And they wouldn’t believe me! She’s too pretty, she’s from such a good family, stop lying Lottie.” Her hands yanked at the braids to undo them and Moth’s clutched her chair to not fall off. “Mere I’m shocked you can bear her after nearly falling into…”

She suddenly stopped again and covered her mouth. “Oh, Milady I’m sorry. That was disrespectful.”

Moth grabbed her hand and said earnestly, “I never thanked you for tugging me back. Sorry for wasting it – I threw myself in later.”

A mix of giggles and mortification, Charlotte continued with her hair. She fell quiet for a while and said, “The crowd is getting big outside. Some people have tried to wriggle in early to see you but we’ve kept them out. We weren’t prepared for any of this.”

“I shouldn’t have asked them to gather here,” said Moth. She wasn’t prepared either.

“Your brother has been a help keeping them out, he’s quite a wall,” said Charlotte, and scrunched her brow. “Does he have a temper?”

“Nehem?” exclaimed Moth. “I’ve never seen him angry in my life. Well, once with Brohm, but…that’s different.”

“He delivers groceries to the kitchen, but I can never get a word out of him. I thought he was in a bad mood – it is a long trip from Hevwed farms to Okatto. He looks like he’s going to break a table if anyone asks too many questions.”

“Oh, it’s just because he’s shy. He can barely form a sentence in front of a stranger.”

“That’s a relief. Being that size and having a temper is a bull you’d have to put down.” Charlotte finished Moth’s hair, admiring the curls but wrinkling her nose. “Smells a bit like horse. Would you like me to perfume it?”

Moth sighed and nodded.

They rooted around in her bags, Charlotte gasping over a pair of boots that were beaded with green blister pearls. Moth wore those, along with the bridal horn tiara.

Though she was getting more used to wearing the clothes, she kept wondering - who am I trying to deceive? And her grave face stared back from the mirror without answer.

A fist banged on the door.

Moth leapt over to let in Nehem. He was sweating, and said, grabbing up all her luggage; “We need to go outside now. The sentries are panicking – they think it’s a tin cry.”

Moth pressed money into Charlotte’s hand for her stay – and a heavy tip for the extra trouble – and left the inn by a backdoor that led to the stables. Nehem saddled Aggo, loaded him with the luggage, and flung Moth into the saddle.

Nehem snagged the reins and hurried Aggo outside to the front of the inn where, by now, hundreds of farmers had gathered with their families and were waiting. While most were waiting quietly, breathlessly, a dozen or so were drunk and raucously singing.

A swarm of sentries, eyes wide and trembling hands clutching onto polearms, were a distance from the crowd – the talked frantically with each other and were rallying more sentries.

When Moth rounded the inn on Aggo, the crowd fell silent.

In the corner of her eye, she saw the sentries gathering more and more, some mounted on horses with bow and arrows, their shabby ungroomed mules – not trained for battle – nickering and bucking, agitating everyone.

“Please,” shouted Moth to the farmers, turning her horse towards the burnt fields and away from Okatto – and its sentry outpost. “Please, follow me!”

She rode slowly, and Nehem walked along with her. She felt horrible to make so many fog-touched people limp after her, but she could think of no other way to calm down the sentries.

Some of the younger farmers howled and cheered, until they realized she was heading away from the outpost. They cursed angrily at Moth, but the rest moved with her, heading over scorched grass towards Tiding Range.

Moth stopped only when they were out of sight of Okatto, well away from Pehku Inn, in the middle of an unburnt field where sheep grazed.

When she stopped, the crowd stopped. She was surprised to see that Charlotte – as well as her aged father, older brother and sister – had followed.

There were many people she recognized. The Rothkid’s were there – as well as the entire extended family of the Cride’s. The Herdson family, and the Barro family – distant relatives of Quin. It was Hiren. The same Hiren that had offered her six months ago, now staring at her as though she were a ghost.

There was so many people. She could not know who was all there; then, a familiar face pushed its way to the front of the crowd.

Feldar Tine.

His presence caused a ripple of relief from many.

He approached Nehem and Moth, an unofficial spokesperson for the crowds, and he looked up at Moth with a guarded, flat expression.

“Are you Mere Hevwed?” he asked.

Moth met his eyes, and said, “I entered the ofere as Mere Hevwed. I have returned as Lady Korraban – Lord Correb has chosen me as a bride.”

There were murmurs and excitement through the crowd, but Feldar just watched her – his eyes were dissecting every minute change of her expression. He held up a drinking horn, containing a few ounces of murky liquid.

“This is tinwater. Will you drink it?”

Moth stomach churned, but she said boldly, “I will.”

Powdered tin in springwater. No marches creature in a human disguise would survive even a touch. However, it was barely palatable for humans.

Nehem took the horn from Feldar, took a quick sip himself to make sure it really was tinwater, and handed it up to Moth.

Gritting her teeth, she drunk from the horn – every drop.

There were a few admiring cheers as she pulled it away and handed it to Feldar, proven not to be in disguise.

Feldar held up his hand to them. “This has proven she is Mere Hevwed – but we do not know if she’d the bride of Correb.”

Arguments broke out amidst the farmers, some pointing at Moth and others shouting at each other. Moth saw Nehem tighten his hand on the reins of Aggo, saw the sweat drip down his broad neck. She straightened herself and shouted, “I am the bride! I survived the ofere, I was brought through to the House of Spring, the home of the dead. I met Lord Correb – he is alive!

Feldar’s cold green eyes narrowed. “If you have seen Correb, then tell us, why has he been silent all these years. Why has he forgotten Hiren?”

Images of Correb flashed in Moth’s mind. Of him burning beneath his feathers, and soaking in the pool, yet still leaving to ferry the dead. Of his corrupted body and festering wounds – yet how he could name everyone in Hiren.

Tears sprung to Moth’s eyes, and she snarled at Feldar, “Do not say my husband has forgotten you! How could he forget Hiren – his own body! He burns when you are burned, he thinks of you all night long, can name you all by name.” She took a deep, angry breath, and said, “He is sick in his body, he has been terribly cursed, or he would come to Hiren – instead he has sent me, as an ambassador, to help you.”

“That,” said Feldar coldly, even as the crowds swelled with her speech, “brings me no comfort. What has our passionate ferrier sent you here to do, then? Anything short of a firestorm against the sentries is useless.”

“He sent me to stop the fog.”

There was dead silence form Feldar and the crowd, and then, the farmers erupted like dynamite. The sound was so overwhelming Moth winced and titled her head away, as people screamed and shouted, demanding answers, demanding proof, demanding something they could stake their hope on.

Feldar was furious. He stared at Moth in disbelief and aggression.

Moth shouted over the noise, “There is going to be a late-spring fog, a terrible burst of it. If we hurry, we can prevent it.”

“How?” demanded Feldar.

“Sunstones!” Moth reached in her bag and pulled out a handful of the gems, stretching them out to show the farmers its fiery glint. “Lord Correb told me if we buried them in a ring around the border of Hiren, the fog would not enter the circle and touch us.”

An eruption of questions burst from the people. Feldar shouted something at Moth, but Moth couldn’t hear anything.

The blood was rushing to her ears, and her heart was rising up through her throat as she watched, over the heads of the farmers, sentries riding towards them.

Over a hundred of them, charging at top speed, mounted and with weapons.