“Wren!”
She froze on the crest of wakefulness. Was it her own scream that woke her, or the dream? She stared into the dark. The cellar was the same as any blackness—unflinching and absolute.
The name rang in her ears as she focused on yesterday, letting the dream slip away from her mind. She’d been friendly to the strangers at the courtyard fountain, as she always tried to be, even to Cat. They’d talked casually of surnames, their patterns in different parts. She’d revealed, briefly, that she wasn’t herself from Bree-land. She’d hinted, quietly, that she’d been as far south as Gondor. Tarvarthal had no last name, Southron as he was, but she knew in some parts the practice was for those of working-class stature took the name of their profession, and inherited their father’s name only as long as they inherited his trade. A Builder, having changed the nature of his work, might be Builder no longer, but Chandler, or Tailor, or Clark. The nobler would have no need of such differentiation. There may be a thousand Siriondil’s in Lossarnach, but only one that mattered. The rest must earn their individuality through the labor of their own two hands.
Teamsters were different. They had no ancestral tongue from which to craft names of meaning, no land from which to grow language in the infancy of their race. They were named after the every day. Belfry had been named for a bell toll her mother had once heard, long ago in Dale. It had run prophetic, so loudly her mother’s heartbeat had changed its pace to match it, and when Belfry was born, she’d heard it again. Their kind shared the practice with their animals, too, thus Schooner, Walker and Twain, named for the ocean, the land, and the stream.
She was born Belfry, just Belfry, but in time she would add a name to that. It was like a handshake, a secret between teamsters. It would hint at where you’d been, at who, what, or where mattered to you. What made you unique. She could have been Belfry Wood for the savage forests she still longed for in some parts of the world, or Belfry Gale for the storm she’d lead her team through when it hammered down on their crossing at Tharbad. Recent, that, and strange. In the aftermath, they’d found a steed, slain, bearing fine tack, stranded against the bank. They found no rider, though, and assumed he’d been carried out to the sea to make Ulmo’s garden his grave.
She was Belfry Wren, though. It was not usual to take the name of another, but Wren had never felt like a person outside herself. As children they were barely apart, and as youths they never left each other’s side.
In the pitch of the buried basement, she could hear him shouting her name up from the well of her dream, as clearly as she’d shouted his.
He was always brave, always there to push her, to dare her to dream, desire, and to do. He’d get her in trouble, more often than not, but he always saw her through. She wished she’d been strong enough to do the same. She wished she’d been brave.
She winced as the stale wine tested her gag reflex, and she held her breath until it passed. She hadn’t even realized she’d reached for the cup before she’d drunk it.
Belfry fumbled in the darkness for a match. The sudden gemstone flame made her blink, and she cowed from it as she touched it to a taper.
Wren would have liked Cat, she thought as she watched the shadows stir, aroused from the blanket darkness by her winking candle. They shared the same cleverness, a facade of wit to distract from deeper thoughts or at the same time to hide their absence, moods buried deep or else buoyant on a surface of whimsy. Was that why she resented her so? Was she angered by how like the young woman was to the man whose name she uttered with every introduction? Or was she sullen that they were not enough alike? There were walls, not fences, around the woman, and Belfry had not yet found the gate.
They would be working together, now, though, so she must feel for its edges.
Long ago, in Dale, when they’d rested from the road for a single blessed summer, Belfry had seen her first mechanical wonder. She knew it was special, even before she saw it, even so young she’d not yet earned the right to her own shoes. She knew by the crowd and their muttering like a swarm of bees, some even jumping as if they’d been stung by the invisible insect, yelping with nervous delight. The man in long, swooping silks had cleared the center of the market with a flourish of arms. Wren had found a way to crawl through the Dale-folk’s legs without getting stepped on, and squatting over the muddied cobbles, they had front row seats.
The man in silk said something to the crowd, but Belfry had been too young to care or remember. She was staring at the thing under a wool cloth patterned in velvet. It was deathly still, not even a shiver of breeze had stirred it. Not a single breath.
When the man had finished his address and whipped the curtain off the mystery underneath, Wren had gasped with the rest of the onlookers, but she had simply stared.
It gleamed like nothing she’d ever seen. Its wooden panels had been painted to mimic a dog or tiger or boar, she could not tell, but the metal frame was polished to a sunbeam shine. A dial was turned, some gears were wound by the tension, and it began to dance.
It clattered and whirred with alarming rhythm, an unpredictable beat like no pattern in nature, not a heartbeat or thunder or rainfall. It chilled her.
She could not watch it, but she could not unwatch it either. She stayed still as if she would not catch the thing’s attention if she didn’t move or blink. She watched, instead, out of the corner of her eye, the man in silks. He was as still as she was, his robes like windless willows. His expression was empty. Perhaps he did not want to distract the crowd from his clockwork contraption, but Belfry had imagined the man’s soul had left his body, and that was what gave the mechanimal its life. She felt revulsion, and wonder, and thrill.
She’d not thought of that memory in some time, but for some reason, meeting the doctor allowed it to return to her. As he’d given her mint, and chocolate, and sweetrolls, flavors she’d not thought she’d ever taste again, perhaps he’d jostled other doors down her corridor of memories, loosened the hinges, let them creak open. That, or he reminded her of the wizard in silks, or his mechanical accomplice, or both.
She lay back on her lumpy mattress and felt Cloven shift beside her, laying her massive block of a head on her thigh. She could afford to let the candle burn out, she thought. If she was making deliveries for The Peaceful Peach and the Blackbird Soothery, and hopefully more in time, she could allow herself a little respite from the darkness. The job Caein had given her had few leads, but Cat may have hooked another, if more slippery fish. Belfry only wondered if she was ready again to take up the reel.
It was Bree-land, she reminded herself. Peaceful country, quiet, brigands few and far between—the whole reason she’d thought it safe to linger. Simple people, low risk, modest reward. A workable township, all fuss and fools and fun and flavor, but not much besides. Not much but stirred soil, apparently. A gentle rippling of memories.
Sher closed her eyes, enjoying the color her eyelids filtered. She imagined she could see her own blood like the sun through a lace curtain, in the candlelight. She pretended it pulsed and waved, or that she could command it to do her bidding, like the man in silks.
She fell asleep, then, deeper into dreams of riverboats, of ferrymen calling out: “Mark twain!” to signal the water-depth for safe passage. She fell asleep with the smell of salted freshwater fish, of lakeweed baked on the rocky shoreline, and of a bell tolling across the still, distant water.
