Tale of Birle Read Free

that?
    Besides, if she left now, the boat would be lost. The boat, and the oars built through the sides of it, and the net that might lie folded under the seat the runaway slept on, and maybe also the owner’s short-handled fishing spear, with its five sharp prongs— If she gave up now, a man’s livelihood would be lost.
    Birle had nothing to fear. She knew the forest, even if she couldn’t know just where she was presently, and she knew the river. She could run and she could swim. The man was no danger to her. She had her knife, safe at her boot, and she had as well two brothers, so she knew how, and where, to hurt a man so that he would be able to think of nothing but his own pain. Besides, living at the Inn as she had, seeing all manner of people, she knew how to judge a man. The blood that signaled her warning—at the way eyes watched, or the way a voice spoke, or the words a voice chose—had not given her any alarm.
    Not just men, women too. There were some women who, when they had risen from the table, Nan counted the metal spoons; or women who, when they departed in the morning, you had to study them carefully to see that they hadn’t overnight become round under their cloaks, grown fat with the Inn’s bedclothes. Some men, and some women too, her father would not allow to sleep within the barred Inn doors. Man or woman, Birle trusted her blood to warn her. This man, her blood said, was no danger. She had no reason to fear him. Thus, she should not allow him to make off with this boat.
    She might have been in the wrong to be outside in the night, or, rather, they might say she was wrong to go outside alone; but she was right to stay with the boat. In the morning she would deal with this runaway.
    Birle doubted the man knew what his destination might be. Little as she knew of the lands to the south, she knew more than most people because of the caravans that traveled into the Kingdom, for the spring and fall fairs, bringing word of the world beyond the Kingdom. She knew from those merchants and entertainers that a few days’ journey downstream, the river emptied into the sea—and the sea, they said, stretched out empty farther than any boat had ever traveled. Even before the sea, there was a port. Its size was no larger than three villages put together, they said, but in danger it exceeded its size. No Lord claimed rule over the port. No law governed it. This was a place of thieves, cutpurses, murderers; it was the home to pirates, and to soldiers who had deserted their officers or had been sent away, too wild even for soldiery. No merchant traveled alone near the port. No entertainer entered it willingly. Near the port, night and the forest were safer than day and the river. Birle told herself to remember to warn this runaway that he should go wide around the port, unless he wanted to find himself run away from servitude into slavery.
    Thinking that, she slipped into sleep.

    SHE OPENED HER EYES TO darkness. Was it moments or hours she’d slept? Overhead, the river of night was crowded with stars.
    No man had mapped the sky, although some few had mapped the land. Birle had seen these maps, from her grandparents’ cupboard. It was safe to think of them, although not to put those thoughts into words. Some things were never to be spoken of.
    Maybe the Lords had maps of the sky, she thought. She might ask this runaway servant that, before she sent him on his way. She had no idea where his way would lead him, except south. To hear the merchants talk, and the tales of the entertainers, the lands to the south were more strange than people of the Kingdom could imagine. Such tales were quickly cut off, because the people of the Inn and of the village were frightened by strangeness. Just as they feared the night, Birle thought. Birle had been taught that fear, and believed it, when she was a child. But now—
    Sometimes, on a winter morning, when she opened the kitchen door to go