they being hanged?’ Tobin gasped as they rode past. He’d heard of such punishments but hadn’t pictured it quite like this. The children seemed to be enjoying themselves.
His father laughed. ‘No, they’re playing at swings.’
‘Could I do that?’
The two men exchanged an odd look that Tobin couldn’t quite decipher.
‘Would you like to?’ asked Tharin.
Tobin looked back at the laughing children clambering like squirrels among the branches. ‘Maybe.’
At the gate a pikeman stepped forward and bowed to his father, touching a hand to his heart. ‘Good day to you, Duke Rhius.’
‘Good day to you, Lika.’
‘Say, this fine young fellow wouldn’t be your son, would he?’
‘Indeed he is, come to visit at last.’
Tobin sat up a little straighter in his saddle.
‘Welcome, young prince,’ Lika said, bowing to Tobin. ‘Come to see the pleasures of the town? It’s market day, and there’s lots to look at!’
‘It’s my name day!’ Tobin told him.
‘Blessings on you, then, by the Four!’
Alestun was only a small market town, but to Tobin it seemed a vast city. Low, thatch-roofed cottages lined the muddy streets, and there were children and animals everywhere. Pigs chased dogs, dogs chased cats and chickens, and small children chased each other and everything else. Tobin couldn’t help staring, for he’d never seen so many children in one place. Those who noticed him stopped to stare back or point and he began to feel rather uncomfortable again. A little girl with a wooden doll tucked under her arm gazed at him and he scowled back at her until she looked away.
The square was too crowded for riding, so they left their mounts with an ostler and continued on foot. Tobin held tightly to his father’s hand for fear he’d be lost forever in the throng if they got separated.
‘Stand up tall, Tobin,’ his father murmured. ‘It’s not every day a prince comes to Alestun market.’
They went first to the shrine of the Four, which stood at the centre of the square. The shrine at the keep was just a stone niche in the hall, carved and painted with the symbols of the four gods of Skala. This one looked more like Cook’s summer kitchen. Four posts supported the thatch roof and each was painted a different colour: white for Illior, red for Sakor, blue for Astellus, and yellow for Dalna. A small offering brazier burned at the foot of each. An elderly priestess sat on a stool inside, surrounded by pots and baskets. She accepted Tobin’s offerings, sprinkling the portions of salt, bread, herbs and incense onto the braziers with the proper prayers.
‘Would you like to make a special prayer, my prince?’ she asked when she’d finished.
Tobin looked to his father, who smiled and gave the priestess a silver sester.
‘To which of the Four do you petition?’ she asked, laying a hand on Tobin’s head.
‘Sakor, so that I can be a great warrior, like my father.’
‘Bravely said! Well then, we must make the warrior’s offering to please the god.’
The priestess cut a bit of Tobin’s hair with a steel blade and kneaded it into a lump of wax, along with salt, a few drops of water, and some powders that turned the wax bright red.
‘There now,’ she said, placing the softened wax in his hand. ‘Shape it into a horse.’
Tobin liked the smooth feel of the wax under his fingers as he pinched and moulded it. He thought of Gosi as he fashioned the animal’s shape, then used his fingernail to make lines for the mane and tail.
‘Huh!’ the priestess said, turning it over in her hands when he’d finished. ‘That’s fine work for a little fellow like you. I’ve seen grown men not do so well. Sakor will be pleased.’ She made a few designs on the wax with her fingernail, then gave it back to him. ‘Make your prayer, and give it to the god.’
Tobin bent over the brazier at the foot of the Sakor post and inhaled the pungent smoke. ‘Make me a great warrior, a defender of Skala,’ he whispered, then cast the little figure onto the coals. Acrid green flames flared up as it melted away.
Leaving the shrine, they plunged again into the market day crowd. Tobin still held his father’s hand, but curiosity was quickly replacing fear.
Tobin recognized a few faces here, people who came to sell their goods to Cook in the kitchen courtyard. Balus the knife grinder saw him and touched his brow to Tobin.
Farmers hawked their fruits and vegetables from the backs of carts. There were piles of turnips, onions, rabes, and marrows, and baskets of apples that made Tobin’s mouth water. One sour smelling cart was stacked with waxed wheels of cheese and buckets of milk and butter. The next was full of hams. A tinker was selling new pots and mending old ones, creating a continuous clatter in his corner by the town well. Merchants carried their wares in baskets hanging from shoulder yokes, crying, ‘Almond milk!’ ‘Good marrow bones!’ ‘Candles and flints!’ ‘Coral beads for luck!’ ‘Needles and thread!’
This must be what Ero is like! Tobin thought in wonder.
‘What would you like for your present?’ his father asked, raising his voice to be heard over the din.
‘I don’t know,’ Tobin replied. All he’d wanted, really, was to come here, and now he had, and been given a horse and a sword into the bargain.
‘Come on, then, we’ll have a look around.’
Tharin went off on business of his own and his father found people who needed to talk to him. Tobin stood patiently by as several of his father’s tenants brought him news and complaints. Tobin was half-listening to a sheep farmer rattle on about blocked teats when he spied a knot of children gathered at a nearby table. Bolder now, he left his father and sidled over to see what the attraction was.
A toy maker had spread her wares there. There were the tops and whirligigs, cup and ball sets, sacks of marbles and a few crudely painted linen gaming boards. But what caught Tobin’s eye were the dolls.
Nari and Cook said that his mother made the prettiest dolls in Skala and he saw nothing here to contradict them. Some were carved from flat pieces of wood, like the one he’d seen the little girl carrying. Others were made of stuffed cloth, like his mother’s, but they were not so well shaped and had no fine clothes. All the same, their embroidered faces had mouths – smiling mouths – that gave them a friendly, comfortable look. Tobin picked one up and squeezed it. The coarse stuffing crunched nicely under his fingers. He smiled, imagining tucking this funny little fellow under his covers with the wooden family. Perhaps Nari could make some clothes for it …
Glancing up, he saw that the other children and the merchant were all staring at him. One of the older boys sniggered.
And then his father was beside him again, angrily snatching the doll from his hands. His face was pale, his eyes hard and angry. Tobin shrank back against the table; he’d never seen his father look like that before. It was the sort of look his mother gave him on her worst days.
Then it was gone, replaced by a stiff smile that was even worse. ‘What a silly thing that is!’ his father exclaimed, tossing the doll back onto the pile. ‘Here’s what we want!’ He snatched something up from the table and thrust it into Tobin’s hands – a sack of clay marbles. ‘Captain Tharin will pay you, Mistress. Come on, Tobin, there’s more to see.’
He led Tobin away, gripping him too hard by the arm. Tobin heard a burst of mean laughter behind them from the children and some man muttering, ‘Told you he was an idiot child.’
Tobin kept his head down to hide the tears of shame burning his eyes. This was worse, far worse, than the scene with his mother that morning. He couldn’t imagine what had made