Part 7

Up early on August's kalend, Mellen saddled the mare. She sidled, protesting the ropes and leathers pulled taught with his chilled fingers. Fuzzy, gaped nostrils puffed mist into the morning and her etched hooves stamped a warning into the loam: travel was afoot. Imps under grass groaned and stirred, sleepy but half-hearing the plans fashioned in the swish of her tail.

Saoirse and Nádúrtha climbed into the wagon as the sun broached the hills. They settled themselves in straw and blankets. Two hours they bumped on the rocks of Aduaine's main road as the sun climbed and warmed the wind threading their hair. From a great distance, the castle at Faodail looked pewter, a towering tankard of ale among fat stalks of broccoli.

Nádúrtha couldn't see it.

The autumn sun rose and burned off the weed-dew lining the lane. Greens of the fields deepened and gold leaves reddened in their veins just a shade. As Saoirse started to unwrap her blanket, she caught sight of Bawn Guelph in the distance, crowning its motte. The north spire shone and pierced the pale wisps of sky. As the wagon clopped and lumbered closer, she could see Lady Aoibhneas waving a kerchief by the castle door. Beside her stood a thin conglomeration of overlapping sweaters, an angle-nosed seneschal who politely declined to wave.

Aoibhneas embraced with entwining arms. “Has it truly been two moons?” She pressed her chin to Saoirse's neck. Then she stepped back, took a long gaze at the girl, and began again in formal tongue. “May I present Miss Sally Forth, my Lady, for to govern your manor with all sense and economy.” Aoibhneas looked at Miss Forth's face to see if she'd given the introduction properly, but caught only a glimpse of glowering eyebrows before the seneschal turned.

“My lady.” Sally curtsied.

“Miss Forth, how nice.” Saoirse smiled.

The three women bustled through the doors of Bawn Guelph making high-pitched, beneficent judgments on each other's attire. Nádúrtha followed. Spoons clanged as talk turned and the sun arced a few degrees overhead. After a time and half a time more, the four women quit the castle and hastened up the lane to the village market. As they approached, voiced advertisements rang out and wares were compared in the loudest of terms.

Dead rabbits hung from their toes on a shouldered pole. Their killer marched through the street beating an old drum and making a jingled music with his payment can. A pile of turnips resembled unclothed body parts, flushed with a chill. The women tittered, though Nádúrtha saw only tubers. The first tent they met held a cobbler's bench and a bearded man sorting his needles. Beyond his tent, a house stood firm with signage that read, “Draíocht the Short Shanks, Hoarder and Changer.”

“Stop, if it please,” Naddy spoke low, startling everyone. “I'm wantin' made change.”

The four women ducked into the hoarder's door and stood before a high counter in a vestibule smelling of hay. “Day, miss.” The small man behind the counter turned around. “Misses.”

“Change me ducat.” The cook dropped it in his palm.

Tewey clanked Nádúrtha's coin on the scale and handed her back thirty pennyweight.

“Ta, Tewey,” Naddy winked.

Miss Sally Forth held open the door as the women left, but she stepped in front of Nádúrtha. “Where'd you be gettin' a whole coin?”

The cook then told a story of a mysterious traveler with a sickly wife who knocked on the back kitchen door at Faodail. The wife was cold and the traveler had asked for a shawl.

Miss Sally Forth scoffed. “A full-ounce ducat for a shawl?”

“She was quite cold, Miss. And ill.”

The four women resumed their business and approached a granary stall. “Winter wheat and arrowroot,” the seneschal told the merchant. “A flask of flummery--”

“We'll not be needin' neither.” Nádúrtha drew the merchant's gaze. “Dried malt and rye. Three stone.”

The seneschal's eyes widened like blooms on a summer sunflower.

When Naddy was done listing her sundries, Saoirse uncinched her purse and counted twelve coins out to the merchant. She held a 13th in her fingers, admiring its power. How dazzling that a tiny metal mintage could convert the sweat and brawn of her gallowglass into these sacks of dried malt. What wizardry! The weighty wealth of a kingdom that a lass could hang from her wrist. The worth of a horse at 14 hands that a girl could divide without slaughter. The catch of a stream in summer, stored warm without rancid flesh or scaly rot.

A fish conjured into coin!

The merchant weighed her payment. “They're wantin', mi lady.”

“Wantin'?” Saoirse asked.

“Oh,” Aoibhneas sighed, “your coins have likely been clipped.”

Miss Sally Forth leaned in for a whisper. “Nasty merchants over in Dea Verdoya. They shave a little silver off every trade.”

“Any coin Leannán got from Balor will be wantin', lass,” Aoibhneas continued. “He pays his knights in clipped coins. Balor don't weigh. He counts.” Aoibhneas dug two pennyweights from Saoirse's satchel and laid them on the scale.

Saoirse suddenly missed Stane. Until now, she’d felt safe here in Aduaine. No one had sacked her storeroom. No one had pilfered her purse. No one had loitered her land. But someone here, in the land of Eire, had sussed how to steal from afar. This theft of her worth however small, smelt of faery folk, and she eyed sideways the stall drape that billowed on the autumn airs.

Thanks to everyone
in the Writers' Block Fiction Workshop
for their help, red ink, and encouragement!