The Inheritance and Other Stories Page 37

  “Will you be safe, Rosemary?”

  The innkeeper’s words called her gaze back to him. “I will,” she said. Pell would not. Time to finish what she had left undone. She set her two coins on the edge of the table, but Tamman shook his head.

  “Not this time, my dear. It’s been too long since you patronized my place. And your coming here today saved me a hike around the cliffs to your cottage. Now. Where is Pell? Did he come home last night?”

  She shook her head slowly and chose her words. “He never came into the cottage. I don’t know where he is now.” It was almost a truth. He had never reached the cottage door. And right now, he might have recovered and be on his way here. Or still lying behind the cow byre.

  But the innkeeper only nodded as if that confirmed his guess. “Last night, Meddalee Morrany’s father dragged her out of here. She was kicking and spitting and shrieking and trying her claws on his face. Pell stood and shouted that she was a woman grown, that her father had no right to force her to go home, but Morrany had the captain and the mate of one of his ships with him, and Pell daren’t start a fight with any one of them, let alone three. He said, woman or no, she was acting like a spoiled child and so he would treat her. So, after a noisy shouting match outside, her father took her down to his ship. Said he was taking her back across the bay in the morning and that Pell would stay away if he knew what was good for him. But Pell’s never known what was good for him. So I suspected that he’d follow and try to steal her back.” Tamman nodded to himself and stood slowly. “Pell was pretty drunk when he left here. I didn’t think he’d make it as far as your cottage even if he headed that way.”

  “He didn’t,” she said quietly. “Maybe he’s sleeping it off somewhere. Maybe he went to his father’s house.”

  “Or maybe he’s looking for a way to get across the bay. Meddalee’s father’s boat is still tied up to the docks, waiting for the tide to be right. He might even be down there trying to weasel his way back into her father’s favor.”

  “Maybe.” But she knew Pell better than Tamman did. Perhaps at first, run off by Meddalee’s father, he’d simply come home to her cottage as a place where he could go. But that wasn’t what he’d intended this morning. He’d come back to the cottage, thinking to get rid of his inconvenient son. He’d come to kill Gillam. The cat had been right. And knowing that changed everything.

  Everything.

  The cat was right. She’d been a fool. Resolution as cold as iron stiffened her spine. She smiled at Tamman, a small cat’s smile. “Well. We’ve errands to do, Gillam and I. Thank you for the chowder, Tamman, and for the warning. And you are right. It has been far too long since we’ve dropped in. Sometimes I forget that I do have friends.”

  And enemies. Sometimes she forgot that she might have enemies.

  She looked at Gillam. “Is that better? Shall we go now?”

  He nodded emphatically.

  “The market stalls will be opening soon. Shall we go have a look?”

  The boy’s eyes flew wide. A trip to market was a rare thing for both of them. They lived mostly by barter and seldom used coin. He nodded avidly, and she bid Tamman farewell. Outside, the wind was blustering, but the rain had ceased. The clouds were being pushed aside from a bright blue sky.

  The market in the little town was a tiny one, not more than a dozen shops and stalls and half of them seasonal. She was able to buy a short coil of sturdy line, a long slender boning knife, and then, because there was so little left of her money and life, she now knew, was an uncertain thing, a little packet of honey drops for the boy. He’d never had candy before and could scarcely bear to put even one of the bright-colored drops into his mouth. When she finally persuaded him to try a pale green one and saw his face light with surprise at the taste of honey and mint, she folded the packet up tight and put it into the bag. “Later, you can have more,” she promised him, her mind full of possible plans.

  They walked the cliff-top path home again. A quarter of the way back to the cottage, the cat suddenly appeared and trotted along at her heels alongside the boy. “Well, where have you been, Marmalade?” she asked him.

  Rousing the bigger dogs. They sleep later than I thought.

  “Don’t the old wives tell us to let sleeping dogs lie?” she asked him and was rewarded only by a puzzled glance from Gillam. She said nothing to the cat of what she would do and felt no further brush of a feline mind against hers. That was just as well. What she would do, she would do, and it would be her own deed.

  They reached the juncture in the path where a tiny trail wound down the grassy hillside to her cottage. She stood for a short time, looking down on it. Beyond it were the fens, a tapestry of grasses and ferns in a hundred different greens. No smoke rose from her cabin chimney. The cow had taken advantage of the open gate to lead her new calves out. The chickens scratched in the dooryard. All seemed calm.

  Of Pell, there was no sign. He could be in hiding. He could be sleeping in the cabin. He might still be lying in the tall meadow grass behind the byre. She sighed. “I should have been certain of him when I had the chance,” she said to no one. The cat lifted a paw and swiped it across his face, almost as if hiding a smile.

  Gillam started down the path ahead of her. She called him back. She reached into the bag and gave him another honey drop, a yellow one. “You and Marmalade stay right here,” she told him. “Sit down and see how long the candy lasts if you only suck on it.” The novelty of the candy was enough to win her instant obedience. She put the little cloth bag in his hands. “When it’s all gone, try a red one. When it’s all gone, have a pink one. Suck on each one slowly. And wait for me to come back and ask you which one you liked best.” Gillam’s eyes were big as saucers at his good fortune. He found a rock jutting up in the grass by the trail and perched on it, sucking thoughtfully. The cat sat down beside him and curled his tail around his feet.

  Luck.

  “Thank you.” She set her pack down beside them. She took only the rope and the skinning knife and the hatchet. She walked silently down the hill. It was impossible to disguise her approach to the cabin. It was a bare, broad hillside. She carried the bared knife gleaming in her hand.

  She looked for him first in the cabin, but it was still and cold as a dead thing. She searched it well, even climbing up to peer into the loft and then looking under the bed. There was nowhere else in the cabin where a grown man could hide. She went out and about her small farmstead. The chickens scattered as she walked through the scratching, pecking flock but otherwise showed no alarm. The cow was grazing peacefully, her two red calves sleeping together. Pell was not hiding in her stall.

  She glanced up the hillside. Gillam still perched on his rock. She could not see Marmalade. She waved at her son, and he waved back at her. Then, knife in one hand and hatchet in the other, she went behind the cowshed.

  If Eda had blessed her, the man would be dead where he had fallen. But Eda was a goddess of light and life and fertility. One did not pray to her for a convenient death. Pell was not sprawled there. He was gone, and so was his knife.

  And she suddenly saw her error. She lifted her skirts and ran, suddenly sure of her mistake. And as she rounded the byre, she saw Pell striding up to her boy.

  “Well, what’s that you have there, Gillam? Candy? Why don’t you show me?”

  His words just reached her ears. Pell was standing over the boy. “Gillam!” she shouted, a useless warning. What would she tell him to do? Run? He could not outrun a determined man. As Gillam turned, startled at her cry, Pell scooped him up. Scooped him up and began to run with him, up the path to the cliffs.

  She screamed, a useless waste of her breath, and ran. Her heart was pounding so that it filled her ears, and then suddenly she realized that thundering sound was not her heart at all. Hoofbeats. Someone was riding a horse along the cliff trail. She lifted her panicked gaze and saw three mounted men galloping heedlessly on the cliff-side path.

  “Stop him!” she shouted at them, helple
ssly, hopelessly. “Stop him! He means to kill the boy! Help me, please. Please!”

  Did they even hear her breathless cries? She kept running and became aware of a tawny little shape that was leaping after Pell, catching at his legs and then falling back and racing after him again. Gillam had found his voice and was roaring with terror even as he clutched his bag of sweets. And Pell was getting ever closer to the cliff tops.

  The three men all but rode him down. She cried out in horror as Pell flung her son at them and tried to run even as the men abandoned the stamping horses to chase after him. Gillam struck the ground hard and rolled away from them, and then lay, sprawled and still in the early spring sunlight.

  “Gillam,” she shrieked and ran to him. The horses, spooked by her cries, wheeled and ran back the way they had come. She cared nothing for them or for the struggling men by the cliff’s edge. She reached her boy and scooped him up.

  “Gillam, Gillam, are you all right?” she cried. She sank to the earth and gathered his little body into her arms. He seemed so small.

  He took a shuddering breath and then sobbed out, “I wost my candy! I dwopped my candy!”

  In her joy, she laughed aloud, and then, because of the hurt in his eyes that she laughed at his tragedy, she felt in the grass and came up with the little cloth sack. “No, you didn’t lose them. See, here they are and just fine. Just fine.”

  He’s gone now.

  Marmalade had found them. He clambered into her lap with Gillam, and he hugged the cat tightly.

  “Gone?” she asked in wonder. “Gone where?”

  Gillam spoke the cat’s thought aloud. “The bigger dogs chased him over the cliff’s edge.” He glanced back toward the returning men and observed sourly, “They took too long to get here. They were nearly too late.”

  She let him keep the bag of candy and told him he might look at the new calves as long as he wanted if he sat on the top of the fence and did not go near them. The cat followed her as she walked toward the cottage. The three men were standing uncomfortably by the door. The oldest man leaned on a younger companion. “You are welcome to come in,” she said quietly as she walked through them and into her cottage. They followed her, awkward and silent. “Sit down,” she invited the older man. His face was grayish with sorrow. He sat on her chair heavily and then lowered his face into his hands.

  “I thought I knew him,” he said quietly. “Three years he worked for me and courted my daughter. I thought I knew him. Never imagined he could do what he did.”

  “Pell ran off the cliff himself,” one of the other men suddenly declared. “It was none of your doing, sir. He could have stood and explained himself and come back to town with us to tell his story to the council. He’s the one that ran right off the cliff. If the tide had been in, he might have survived. But not that fall onto the rocks.”

  “It’s as much as he deserved,” the older man said quietly. “After what he did to my daughter. My pretty little Meddalee, flighty as a butterfly. She was thoughtless and willful true, but sweet Eda, she never deserved what he did to her.”

  “You’re Meddalee’s father?” Rosemary asked him quietly. She kept to herself her opinion of what Meddalee might deserve.

  “He is.” One of the other men answered for him. “And that bastard Pell killed his daughter last night. Must have crept on board and gone right to her room. Guess he thought that if he couldn’t have her, no one would! When we went to wake her this morning, her own father found her there in her bed. Face all slashed to ribbons and her throat cut, neat as pie.”

  Light as a leaf, Marmalade floated to the sunny windowsill. He sank his claws deep into the wooden sill, stretched, and then sat. He lifted his paw to his mouth and began to wash.

  “Shut up, Bell,” barked the other man, and the talker fell silent. Meddalee’s father groaned and hid his face deeper in his hands. “My little girl, my Meddalee,” he murmured. Rosemary stared silently at her cat.

  “Are you all right, miss?” the other man asked her. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  She found her voice. She felt oddly calm as she gave them what he needed. “He threatened me. And came at me with that knife. It was a fancy one, made from Chalcedean steel, he said. He kept it sharp as a razor. But I think it was my boy he wanted to kill.”

  “Crazy,” the first man muttered. “Man would have to be crazy to want to kill his own son.”

  She nodded silently.

  “We should get back to town,” the man named Bell suggested. “We need to tell the council what happened. And see to poor Meddalee.” He looked suddenly at Rosemary. “You seen what happened, didn’t you? How he broke from us and run right off the cliff?”

  She hadn’t, but it was a small lie to pay for peace. “I did. It was no one’s fault, really.”

  “Sir, you think you can walk that far? Sir?” Meddalee’s father slowly lifted his head. He nodded, and she almost felt sorry for the man as he left, leaning heavily on his captain’s arm. She watched them make the slow climb to the cliff top and then stood watching as they followed the cliff-top path back toward town. Marmalade came out and wound around her ankles. She watched Gillam sitting on the top rail of the fence, blissfully pulling another candy from the pouch. “Red!” he called, holding it up for her to see, and she nodded.

  She looked down at the cat. “Don’t ever speak to me again. I don’t want to know.”

  Marmalade didn’t answer her. He sat down and began to clean his claws more carefully.

  About the Author

  ROBIN HOBB / MEGAN LINDHOLM was born in California, grew up in Alaska, and currently lives in Tacoma, Washington. As Robin Hobb, she is the author of fourteen novels and numerous shorter works. Megan Lindholm has published nine novels; her short fiction has won the Asimov’s Readers’ Award and been a finalist for both the Nebula and Hugo awards.

  www.robinhobb.com

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Also by the Author

  By Megan Lindholm

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  The Windsingers

  Wizard of the Pigeons

  The Luck of the Wheels

  The Reindeer People

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  Alien Earth

  Cloven Hooves

  The Gypsy (with Steven Brust)

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  The Rain Wilds Chronicles

  Dragon Keeper

  Dragon Haven

  The Soldier Son Trilogy

  Shaman’s Crossing

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  Fool’s Errand

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  The Liveship Traders Trilogy

  Ship of Magic

  Mad Ship

  Ship of Destiny

  The Farseer Trilogy

  Assassin’s Apprentice

  Royal Assassin

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  Credits

  Cover design by Richard Aquan

  Cover illustration © by iStock

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  “A Touch of Lavender” by Megan Lindholm first published in Asimov’s, November 1989. Copyright © 1989 by Davis Publications.

  “Silver Lady and the Fortyish Man” by Megan Lindholm first published in Asimov’s, January 1989. Copyright © 1989 by Davis Publications.

  “Cut” by Megan Lindholm first published in Asimov’s, 2001. Copyright © 2001 by Davis Publications.

  “The Fifth Squashed Cat” by Megan Lindholm first published in Xanadu 2. Copyright © 1993 by Megan Lindholm.

  “Strays” by Megan Lindholm first published in Warrior Princesses. Copyright © 1
998 by Megan Lindholm.

  “Homecoming” by Robin Hobb first published in Legends II: Shadows, Gods, and Demons. Copyright © 2004 by Robin Hobb.

  “The Inheritance” by Robin Hobb first published in Voyager 5: Collector’s Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Robin Hobb.

  THE INHERITANCE. Copyright © 2011 by Megan Lindholm and Robin Hobb. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  ISBN: 9780061561641

  EPub Edition May 2011 ISBN: 9780062079312

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