Blood Ties by Pamela Freeman Page B

something like that with Acton, wasn’t it?”
    “And this woman gave it to you?” the jeweler said. “Because
you
were a good shag?”
    He sniffed, which made the mustache bounce. “Because the warlord there’s a right bastard and she needed to pay her taxes. But if you’re not interested, I’ll take it elsewhere.”
    “It may be old, but it’s not in my line — Acton’s or not. I’ll just keep the rubies, thanks.”
    The man turned to Ash and Hildie. Hildie hadn’t taken her eyes from the street the entire time.
    “What about you two?”
    “Not interested in anything of Acton’s,” Hildie said, her voice flat. Ash saw the man register Hildie’s Traveler accent and sneer a little.
    “What about you, lad?”
    “He’s an apprentice,” Hildie cut in. “He couldn’t afford a
fake
bronze brooch.”
    “Too bad,” the man said.
    “Yes,” Ash said, his eyes still on the curving bronze. “Too bad.” He was drawn to it; he wanted to pick it up and run his fingers across the intricate scrolling. What if this
had
belonged to Acton? The man who’d invaded this country and disinherited Ash’s people, turned them off their land and made them into Travelers — the man who’d changed everything. The first warlord.
    Half the old songs were about Acton — about his courage and leadership and humor and, of course, his love life, which by all accounts had been prodigious. He loomed larger than life in the minds of everyone in the Domains, perhaps all the more because no one knew what had happened to him. He had ridden out one day from a camp up near the Western Mountains and disappeared. The legend said that his last words had been, “I’ll be back before you need me”; and in the countryside a surprising number of people believed he
would
come back one day, from wherever he had ridden away to, if the country was in deadly peril.
    The brooch seemed to shimmer in front of Ash’s eyes, speaking of choices long made and chances long forfeited. Perhaps there had been a moment when his ancestors could have united and fought Acton off; but they hadn’t. Their settlements had been too widely scattered, the people living in the central lands had depended on the mountain people to repel any raids, so when Acton broke through that defense there was no one to stop him. There was no one who really knew how to fight and no one to rally the far-flung villages and make a stand.
    So Ash stood here in a jeweler’s shop in Turvite, which had been founded by those ancestors but was a city of Acton’s people now, and he didn’t even know what the birthright was that had been stolen from him. It was so far in the past — a thousand years! — that no Traveler alive today knew the history of their people before Acton came. Not for sure and certain, although Ash’s father had taught him what was known of the old language. All they had were a few scraps of songs and stories, some of the traditions and habits and superstitions . . . and the casting stones, which predated not only Acton but Ash’s ancestors as well, and had come, they said, straight from the gods.
    The man wrapped the brooch up again, tucked his purse securely inside his shirt and did up his coat over it. Ash blinked; it seemed the shop was darker than before.
    “Any more business for me?” the man asked the jeweler.
    She shook her head. “I’ll let you know if I have another order.”
    The trader still had his hand over his pocket. It seemed to occur to him for the first time that a money pouch could be stolen as easily as a pouch of rubies. “Walk me back to my lodgings, young’un?” he asked. “Standard rate?”
    “Danger rate,” Ash said. “They could be waiting for you to make the trade — most thieves prefer money to gems.”
    The man sniffed, then nodded and waited for Ash to go out the door before him.
    “‘Acton, lucky under the sword, lucky under the sheets, favored by gods and by all the unseen . . .’” Ash murmured.
    “Huh?”