Blood Ties by Pamela Freeman Read Free Book Online Page A

you, it’s good to be able to curse or hit or kick someone else, someone weaker. Makes you feel strong.”
    “And the strong hate the weak,” Bramble said.
    Her grandfather looked sideways at her, his brows lifted.
    “That may be. No matter what the way of it, Traveling alone is dangerous. No warlord will give justice to a Traveler. Theft, beatings, even murder, it seems it doesn’t count if it’s a Traveler who’s hurt. That’s the worst of it. Even at the best, we’re treated like foreigners. Like we don’t belong anywhere. That can be hard, to be told you don’t belong in your own land. Especially if you love it.” His voice grew reminiscent. “You can’t help but love it. From the cold north to the southern deserts, it’s all beautiful. Travelers love the whole of it, not just the part they were born in.”
    “You do miss it.”
    “Sometimes.” He paused. “But in the end, it’s the people you love that matter. Traveling — it doesn’t keep your heart warm. Remember that, sweetheart. It may make your heart beat faster, but it doesn’t keep it warm. So, yes, I reckon I would settle, if I had to do it over again. Your gran was worth it, and I pray the gods give her rest until I join her, so we can be reborn together.”
    It wasn’t, in a way, what she had wanted to hear, but it was reassuring nonetheless.
    In the morning, Bramble washed and dressed carefully. She fed the goats and the chickens, carried water from the stream to the kitchen, swept out the cottage, laid her room straight and tidy, even weeded the front herb bed. At last it was time to go.
    She walked down to the stream and turned east to follow it to the linden tree where his ghost would rise. Udall, the old thatcher, was gathering reeds in the stream and he nodded politely to her, though he didn’t speak. He only spoke when he needed to: a silent, gray man, who lived alone and liked it. No need to worry about him gossiping with the neighbors about where she was off to at lunchtime. He looked at her with no curiosity at all, just recognition, and she wondered what he could see in her face.
    It wasn’t merriment, that was for sure and certain. She had a job to do, and the least she could do was show some respect. Just before noon, it would be three full days since she had kicked the warlord’s man. Killed the warlord’s man. And as his killer, it was up to her to lay his ghost when it quickened.

Udall’s story
    I T BEGAN on Sylvie’s roof. My hands were cold. I blew on them to warm them, then gripped the ladder with my right hand, hoisted the third yelm of reeds onto my left shoulder and began to climb. My back was aching, low down, as it did those autumn mornings.
    “Past my prime,” I said to the reeds, and the reeds whispered back, as they always did.
    Balanced carefully, I walked along the ridge pole of the roof to the southern end of the gable, the high end where the ladder didn’t reach, and laid down the bundles of reed. My lashing awl was in my pocket. I sat astride the ridge pole and began to place the yelms so the reed lay snug and watertight, yelm over yelm. Then I lashed them with the crisscross herringbone pattern of the thatchers of Laagway.
    “Getting too old for this,” I said to the reeds. “They’ll be cutting you and drying you and lashing you, too, for a long time yet, but I’m not sure I’ll be doing it.”
    “Do they talk back?” A voice came from below me.
    The stonecaster was standing in the room under me, looking up. She grinned. “It’s an odd thing, to have your home open to the sky. I think I like it,” she said.
    “You always were an odd magpie, Sylvie. You wouldn’t like it open when the winter rains set in.”
    “That’s why I’m paying you, old man.”
    She stepped up onto a chest by the wall and stuck her head through the empty rafters to face me. “If you’re feeling old, Udall,” she said, “you should take an apprentice.”
    “Pot calling the kettle black.”
    “Ahah! But