The Nethergrim (29 page)

Katherine bowed her head. Her father embraced her, then turned to Tom. “Come. We have miles to go before we rest tonight.”

Tom stepped out from the children and came to stand by John. Jumble followed at his heel. Edmund felt a moment of shock—then relief and gratitude.

Katherine’s face showed none of those feelings. “You’re sending me home, but you’re taking Tom?”

“You have a home to which you may return,” said her father. “Tom does not. If I let him go back to his master, I would be maiming him as surely as if I held the whip myself. I am taking him on to a new chance at life—I am bringing him to Tristan, in hopes he can find him a place among his household. Perhaps I should have done this long ago, but now is much better than never.”

“Goodbye.” Tom looked more sad than eager at the prospect. “I will miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too.” Edmund clasped him by the arm. “Safe journey.”

Katherine seized Tom around his bony shoulders. She tried to speak, to bless him for the road, but could not seem to find words, so she held him close once more and let him go.

Tom followed John to the head of the trail. There they stood for one moment more, and then, as there was nothing left to say that would do more than prolong the ache of parting, they turned and strode away.

Geoffrey and the kids from Roughy ran onward to the houses, shouting that they needed dinner very badly and that their parents would surely pay for it. Edmund stayed with Katherine, watching her father and their friend diminish until they passed on over the farthest of the hills.

They left Sedmey and Harbert to sleep at Thicket grange, promising to send word down to their parents in the morning. The shadows grew long by the bend of Wishing Hill, throwing a shroud over cottage and tree. Katherine walked Indigo a few lengths ahead, leaving the brothers to themselves.

“Mum’ll need a lot of help, if—” Geoffrey could not finish. Edmund watched night come sweeping from the east. He hoped, hoped hard, and spent a while thinking on what hope really was. He wondered whether things were fated to be, or if it only sometimes seemed that way. He wondered it all the way home.

The inn sat quiet—quiet enough that his heart misgave him. There was no one on the steps, no babble of talk through the shutters. Geoffrey crossed his arms on the road, looking very small. Katherine came down from the saddle and took his hand. Edmund drew in a breath and pushed back the door.

He found the place quiet, but not empty. A few of his neighbors sat with ales by the fire. They all stood up, like he was Lord Aelfric himself come in for an evening ale. One look at their faces told him what he had been waiting and hoping to hear. Nicky Bird started to say something, but Martin Upfield clapped a hand over his mouth and pointed upstairs.

Edmund climbed up to the bedrooms. He turned toward his parents’ room first, then spied the light coming from under his own door. He pushed it back to find it made into a sickroom, his father laid out, swaddled on his pallet, and his mother bending down to tuck him in.

“If you want an ale, ask Martin—and if you want dinner, forget it.” Edmund’s mother had her back to him, so his father saw him first. Harman stared, one long look that said more than any words could say, then squeezed his wife’s hand.

Edmund’s mother turned, and nearly kicked over the lantern. Edmund had to grab her so she did not faint and fall on top of his father.

Edmund’s father reached out trembling from the bed. “Going to build some shelves in here. Been thinking about it, there’s some space over there. Any books you like, son. Any books.”

“Mum—Mum, ow!” Edmund wriggled—her grip was almost as tight as Vithric’s. “My ribs. I hurt my ribs.”

“Oh, oh, my son—oh, Katherine!” Sarra met her at the door and kissed her hands. “We thought—we were so afraid.”

Edmund knelt at his father’s side. Harman looked pale and drawn—but whole, breathing even, the bandages wrapped around his middle clean of blood. The letter Edmund had written him lay on the pallet at his side.

“Had time to think, think hard on things, what I meant to say if—when you came home.” Harman tried to prop himself up, then grimaced, and sank back. “Had time to think on it.”

Edmund nodded to the door. “Tell us both.”

Harman peered past him in confusion at Katherine. She stepped aside to let Geoffrey through.

Chapter
30

E
dmund set down the jug. “That’s two farthings for the table.”

“Sure you won’t have a sit with us awhile?” Nicky Bird slapped his back—right on the healing cut on his shoulder. “Come on, Edmund, give us the story again!”

“I told it last night—and the night before.” Edmund set out the mugs around the table.

“We want to hear it good and proper, before the minstrels get wind of it and mangle it up.” Martin Upfield knelt to stoke the fire. Someone proposed a brave song, a glad song, and soon after, Horsa Blackcalf started up a jig on his fiddle.

“Quit that noise, curse you!” Edmund’s mother shouted from the kitchen. “My husband is sleeping up there!”

Edmund made his rounds, dodging more requests for a story or a song. He stepped out the door for a breath of air, and found his brother sitting alone on the step, staring up at Wishing Hill and past it to the Girth.

He sat down. “What are you thinking about?”

“Home, I guess.” Geoffrey looked around him. “Doesn’t seem so bad anymore.”

Edmund leaned back to rest on the step. From the inn behind him came a rising roll of talk—he heard his own name spoken once and again.

“You’re going to be a wizard,” said Geoffrey. “A real one.”

“Of course I am.” Edmund looked across at him. “It’s what I’ve always wanted.”

Geoffrey shook his head. “It’s not a question of what you want anymore. You’re going to be a wizard because that’s what we need of you.”

Edmund snorted. “When did you get so grown up?” As soon as he said it, he felt sorry—but Geoffrey only smiled.

Edmund breathed in the scent of home—turned fields and haystacks, wood and earth. “I used to wish and dream for something to happen, something to make me feel that my life was a grand adventure.”

Geoffrey punched his arm. “Wish granted, you twit.”

“I said it to Katherine and Tom, the night Vithric stole you and Tilly.” Edmund looked up to the Girth. “I told them I wanted to run away, to someplace with excitement and danger.” The mountains seemed to loom in, to menace and wait.

“I’m going to make you study,” said Geoffrey. “You’ll wish you’d never learned to read before I’m done with you.”

“And I’m going to make you practice with that bow,” said Edmund. “Next time, you’ve got to hit him in the heart.”

Horsa prevailed upon their mother to at least play one, a quiet one—and it really was good, the sort of song that stirs sad with happy and seems to hint that they are halves of a whole. The moon rose over the last fine night of the year. The warm spell that had come to bless their return was about to end—autumn would soon make its first stumble with winter ever closer on its heels. Edmund closed his eyes. The wind rushed up the lanes of the village and through the tops of the trees all around, one note of joy, of gift, of hard things done. It would have been as near to perfect as anyone could ask, were it not for the whisper he heard beneath.