Corvus Read Free Page A

save one cracked little clay
bowl which would light their own way when they retired, and between its
guttering light and the red glow of the sinking hearth she seemed almost
youthful again, the lines hidden, the strong bones of her face brought out by
the shadows.
    Rictus could see
Rian in that face, and Ona, and the boy who had been born between them and
whose ashes were now in the earth and air of the valley itself. He reached out
his hand and Aise looked at him with that guarded smile of hers and let him
take her fingers in his own.
    “Well, wife,”
Rictus said.
    “Well, husband.”
    The wind was
picking up outside, and Rictus knew from the whistle in the clay-chinked
chimney that it was from the west, off the mountains. It would bring snow with
it soon, perhaps even tonight. He almost started to ask Aise if the goats had
been brought down to the lower pastures yet, but caught himself in time. She
would have seen to it already, as she saw to everything while he was away.
    “The sow had a
litter of six,” Aise said, withdrawing her hand. “We slaughtered two, sold the
rest down in Onthere. We lost two kids to the vorine, but in the spring Eunion
and Garin found a den north of Crag End hill, and killed the vixen and her
cubs. There have been no more of them about since then.”
    Rictus nodded.
    “We had a good
pressing, a dozen jars. I made that olive paste you like, with the black
vinegar from the lowlands - we got a skin of it when I sold the pigs.”
    “You should not
have sold Veria,” Rictus said quietly.
    Aise’s face did
not change.
    “She was
discontented, harping on about her dead baby, and she was unsettling Garin with
her keening.”
    “A dead child is
no light thing,” Rictus said, heat creeping into his voice. Aise seemed not to
hear him.
    “I had to go into
the chest for gold to make up the difference, but Styra is a better prospect.
She’s young, she has good hips, and Garin will father a child on her soon
enough.” She paused. “Unless you would prefer to plough her furrow yourself.”
    Rictus looked at
his wife in baffled anger, searching her face in the red firelight.
    “I don’t fuck my
slaves, wife. It is something I have never done.”
    “I was your slave;
you fucked me,” Aise said coldly.
    Something like a
chill went down Rictus’s back. They had gone straight back to the old caches of
forgotten weapons stored in their hearts, and unearthed them all sharp and
glittering again.
    “It was different
then - we were different. Gods below, woman, I will not go over this again the
very night I appear back home. You are the stone I have built this life here
upon. What’s done is done.”
    “And through the
year’s campaigning, do you have some camp girl service you at the end of the
day?”
    “You know I do, on
occasion - I’m a man. I have blood in my veins.”
    “When you left,
you said it was a summer campaign, no more - and here you are with almost a
year and a half gone by. You said it was over, Rictus. No more soldiering. You
said you would put aside the scarlet and stay here with me.” “I know.”
    “We need no more
money- we have everything here a man could want.”
    “Except a son,” he
snapped. And the instant he said it he could have slapped his own face. Such
stupid warfare, as fruitless as the year’s campaigning.
    Aise stared into
the fire, seeming somehow to wither before him, though she did not move.
    “I should not have
said that - I had no cause,” he said, reaching for her hand again. She gave it,
but it was limp in his fist; obedient, no more.
    “Men want sons,”
Aise said lightly. “That is the way of life. It’s how they make themselves
remembered. A daughter leaves the house, and she becomes someone else’s family.
A son continues his own.” She faced Rictus squarely, her face as blank as a
blade. “You should take another wife.”
    “I have a wife.”
    “I’m past bearing
children now, or as close as makes no matter. And you are no longer