"Would you mind terribly much if I left while you were talking with Heedful? I'd like to go check on the Bays." This was the first time Lark had really said anything all morning. While the quiet was nice, it was also an unsettling sign that Lark was out of sorts.
So Able was quick to reply, "No, you should do that. I'll be fine."
"Thank you." Lark gave him a grateful smile then, once they had reached the door to Fairweather's house, also gave him a reassuring one and knocked.
"Much better," Chessie said in lieu of a greeting when she opened the door.
"Chestnut Miller, Able Houser." Lark waved a hand from one of them to the other and back again. "Able, Chestnut. I'm gonna scoot for a bit." And he pointed back the way he came with his thumbs.
"Can't sit still for two minutes, can you?" Miller noted flatly.
"It's important."
"Fine." She opened the door more and looked at Able expectantly.
"Good luck, have fun." Lark flashed a quick smile and was back down the street.
"Yep," Able acknowledged, then stepped into the house.
The house of Heedful Fairweather was almost hot inside, which was probably why Miller was wearing a sleeveless tunic that incidentally showed the tattoos peeking out from her chest area and winding around her scrawny left arm. She offered to take Able's jacket, so he shrugged out of it and handed it to her.
"Thanks," he added. "So, do you...uh—the word is 'practice,' right? Practice the Eagle here in town? Is that where you know Lark from?"
She turned shocking green eyes on him and peered...almost it seemed through him.
"You're astute," she finally remarked after his guts had turned to ice. She hung up his jacket and proceeded into the main room.
"I'm sorry he's so presumptuous." He followed after her. "He means well."
"It's hardly your responsibility that he's a lousy practitioner yet skilled at making my life difficult." Then she gave him a wry smile, "But you're still allowed to like him."
Able's breath froze in his chest.
But fortunately, her back was to him again as she was pulling a rocking chair closer to the fire. "I like him myself, if I'm honest. Would you care to sit?" And she gestured to a...well, it wasn't a couch so much as a bench with cushions on it, and before he could reply she crossed to a door at the back of the room. "He's here, ma'am."
"I know it," rasped a shredded voice from within. "Me ears aren't that far gone."
Miller nodded and, clasping her hands together, turned back to scan the room and assure herself everything was in order. The room was rustic, roughly finished, and sparse, but tidy and not wanting in any necessity that Able saw.
The door opened and the oldest person Able had ever seen or probably ever would see hobbled into the room. Heedful Fairweather looked much like a speckled, melted candle. Her wispy white hair, mostly absent from the top of her head, was parted into two braids that each rested in her shoulders, which were so hunched that she looked like she was collapsing in on herself. She was bent nearly in half over the cane on which she leaned with both hands as she huffed and puffed determinedly with each shuffle.
Why wasn't Miller helping Fairweather? She just stood solemnly with unblinking eyes as Fairweather shuffled by her. Although, her stance had a readiness to it. Fairweather made it to the rocking chair on her own then, trembling with exertion, eased herself down into it. With a long, pained inhalation she straightened in her seat and peered at Able with one cloudy eye. The other eye was dead, the socket laced with scarring.
"Standing on ceremony, Larbant?" she croaked.
"It's considered polite to stand when an elder is standing in my country." He seated himself on the bench.
She smirked. "But we're not in your country, are we?"
"I suppose not," he replied cautiously, as it was really not the time to point out that technically they were. "Please pardon my manners."
"Heh! Bander manners. I've seen your Bander manners, whipping on innocent folk and branding them and beating them and running them down and running them through. Bander manners are not to be pardoned." Well, this was going as expected so far.
"Those are not my manners, and I'd thank you if you granted me the courtesy of judging my own actions and theirs separately."
"I don't want your thanks, Larbant, I want to know what you want."
"I want the story. The whole story, and I'm having a hard time getting the Resistance to give me their side of it. Which, given my nationality, is understandable, but I'm going to keep trying."
She raised an eyebrow. "What side did you think I could tell you about?"
"Well," might as well play the best card, "why don't we start with Pristine Fires?"
"Ha!" Fairweather broke into a single-toothed grin. "There's a name I haven't heard in some time, curse him. What would you like to know?"
Able relaxed a bit. "Could you describe his rise to power? How the, uh, opposition took it?"
"Hmmm." She grunted and shifted some. "S'been a while since that all happened."
"Eighty-some years, yes?"
"That long? Must have been. Oh, I were but a girl of twelve." She rubbed her chin thoughtfully.
"Should I start some tea, ma'am?" Miller put in, probably satisfied that this interview was actually going to happen.
"Tea?" Fairweather scoffed. "What do you think we're discussing, crops and weather? No, we're telling war stories, girl! Get the vodka."
"It's rather early, ma'am," Miller reminded her, quite in stride.
"Vodka's fine," Able said hastily, not wanting to jeopardize Fairweather's goodwill. He had only just eaten, so it shouldn't affect him too greatly.
Miller looked him sideways but proceeded to the kitchen without another word.
"So, Pristine Fires, was it?" Fairweather's short-term memory at least seemed fine. "All right, he was the Eagle-servant. One of many, sure, but the empty vessel one here in Aimsby. Extra spiritual. The whole trouble started when the Dags wanted more trees. Everyone said 'no, we've been over this, you only get these many trees,' but then Fires had something about foreseeing blessings if we gave them more this time, if I remember right. I was only a child, not paying much attention to anything. He had some of his apprentices saying the same thing, and I think people were convinced enough to go along at first. The Bear-servants didn't like it one bit, but at first, the extra logging was happening around the cities, so it were not really much of their nevermind—ah, thank you."
Miller had brought out two mugs with alcohol strong enough to sting Able's nose just from sniffing it. Once she had supplied each of them with one, she pulled out a chair from the table and sat facing them. Able watched her idly while he followed Fairweather's lead in taking a sip of his drink, well—he took a sip at least.
"So the Bears couldn't stop it at first," Fairweather continued after a large slurp and swallow, "and I think it went on for some two years like that, more and more towns participating and more and more trees coming down until the first mudslide happened. Just about all of Crookcroft gone in a manner of minutes. I didn't see it meself, but it's the sort of thing one doesn't forget easy: tales of folks climbing on top of houses to try to tear the roof open and get the people trapped inside out before the house collapses in on them. Whole families buried alive. Don't mind Chessie."
"I—" Able started. While Heedful Fairweather had been talking, Chestnut Miller had become a statue in her chair while watching them and had not blinked once—Able realized he'd been waiting for her to blink. "Is she all right?"
"She's just channeling the Eagle." Fairweather shrugged weakly with one shoulder then took another swallow.
"What? Why?" Able's belly did a somersault, for Miller's cold, piercing eyes had settled on him.
"Why not? She's not doing anything otherwise, and she might see something she otherwise wouldn't."
"So..." Able turned back to Fairweather, denying his dark fascination to focus on what he was here for. "The Bear-servants got some traction then?"
"Not just them, neither. They may have been the first to protest, but as the money from the logging came pouring in, people got pretty divided on the matter. Unlike the vague Bear warnings, it'd been Fox-servants that predicted the actual catastrophe, is what I heard, which, heh, you probably don't know this, but they don't do much in the way of predicting more than food-related things, so it were a big deal. Fires used that to his advantage, asking the Elder Fox-servant to head an overview of all the logging sites. Grace Hawking, she was, and she agreed. She told me later she had hoped to stop the logging altogether, but settled for doing her best to save lives."
"Did she join the first Resistance, then?" Able found himself reaching for his notebook.
She cackled. "Getting ahead of me."
"Do you mind if I take notes? I won't write anything that could incriminate you should the Larbantry enforcers get a hold of it—"
"Get out your notebook, Chronicler, I got plenty to say to you on that subject, and I don't want you forgetting it."
"Well—thank you." He opened his bag to do so. "That will be helpful."
"I know it—not everybody's got a memory as good as mine." She cackled again. "Now there weren't a Resistance until there was something to resist. But, ah let's see...right, so Hawking was doing these inspections of the logging sites, and the people who were profiting the most from the whole thing were satisfied to keep doing so. That's when Yew Vale, a prominent Bear-servant, challenged Fires to strichenat."
"...I'm sorry?"
"Strichenat," she repeated, apparently expecting his ignorance. "Dunno if people still do that. Pretty much you take turns punching each other in the head until one of you can't get up anymore. The idea being the one with the most stamina has the strongest convictions. I expect a Bear-servant invented it, and if you get challenged by one, well, you gotta resign yourself to getting your face messed up in order to save it."
Here she cackled again. "Ah, but that's when all hell broke loose. You see, not only did Pristine Fires decline, but he had Yew Vale arrested for threatening his person. That was a crime suddenly, because you see, he was king. Not our king, not at first, it were meant to be a functional formality for our dealings with the Dags or some such bullshit...actually don't really remember in what order things started happening, sorry. It's a big stew in me memory."
She scratched her chin a moment before shrugging it up for lost. "But the point is he suddenly had the power to arrest people and was doing so with impunity. So people who were outspoken against him were winding up beaten or disappeared, and you'd think that would give people enough clue that he was up to no good, but no, it took the first town deciding not to cut trees anymore and being threatened by Fires's supporters armed with Dagobari weapons.
"I was fifteen, and I 'borrowed' me uncle's hunting spear and joined the march to aid Westcore—that were the besieged town. It were pretty ugly, and I survived because people kept pushing me to the back, no doubt. We routed them, though, and chased their sorry asses back to Aimsby where there were more of them, and we got beat back ourselves. Over the next year we built up our numbers, ah, but so did he.
"I didn't understand it then, how so many people would rally behind Pristine Fires when he was clearly a liar and a sell-out, oh, but I understand it now, Chronicler. The power that is greed." And here she took another deep swig.
Able looked down at his notebook. He had scribbled down a few names and places and a foreign word that he had likely spelled wrong. Now he scribbled in some verbatim before he forgot it.
"Let's see." She squinted at what he was doing. "Let's see, we had a few leaders. Peace Hillside, how's that for an ironic name? He organized us and soon enough old Admirable Barrows joined on to define our tactics. Skilled...I think it were Greenleaf, Golden Plowman, Punctual Chambers, and...gobspit, what was her name? Honor something. They were our elders and outfitters, and we were not ever outnumbered, so there was at least that. But Fires's men had armor and steel swords.
"Can't say we stayed honorable and blameless for long, either. We executed foremen and some of their workers, probably decent men among them, but we were in righteous fervor, taking back our land. We'd reclaimed most of our towns from Fires's control when the Dags personally came to his aid. They were well-trained and cut us down like barley, at first, but I killed more than a few of them. Me poor Uncle never got his spear back—it got shattered, but I picked up a Dagobari steel-tipped one, and I learned how to get it through their damn armor. 'Heedless' they called me. Heedless, the wild maid."
She grinned her one-tooth grin. "I were seventeen. You can't imagine it, can you, boy?"
"What color was your hair?" Able asked, prompting a blink from her.
"Blond."
"I would have guessed red," he admitted. "So I suppose I am bad at imagining after all."
Gratifyingly, the old woman howled with laughter. Until, less gratifyingly, she coughed, her tiny ribs fluttering like a trapped bird. Just as Able looked to Miller for help, the old woman was laughing again.
"Anyway!" She wiped her good eye. "That were the most important lesson. Take their weapons. Sure, they'll always bring more, which is great. You take those too. The second most important lesson was to move. Never stay in one place. Make them drag their fancy artillery all over creation only to find you packed up camp two days ago. Eventually, you'll get some of that artillery for yourself and siege Aimsby. Mm-hm."
She seemed pleased that Able's eyebrows had popped up in surprise, but her tone turned sour. "That's when Dagobar did the shifty takeover, though. They came, the reinforcements from the sea, but they wanted to talk with us. They apologized for supporting Fires, saying they thought he was respected and had not known he would turn the land into such a lawless mess, so they would be happy to help us overthrow him and restore order.
"Skies, were we fools! They said over and over it weren't about the trees and they were happy to stop the logging. They said they wanted to do the right thing. And you know, maybe that one general truly believed it. Sun Farbrook, if memory serves." Fairweather paused to drink while Able caught up.
Fortunately, he had a well-practiced, quick hand from keeping up with his own thoughts and it only took him a couple minutes. Glancing over his notes, he wanted to be sure he had this right. "So...they formed a coalition with you while you were attacking their people in Aimsby?"
"Mm-hm. But they had some sort of signal, you see, and the attacks stopped and we met in peace. They seized Pristine Fires. I remember how confused he looked. Some Eagle-servant! Our leaders and some of the Spirit-servants all got together to form a 'national' council. National, heh. National peace-guard too, they formed to enforce order. A lot of our best fighters were recruited for it. Not me, though."
"Because you're a woman?" Able guessed.
"Mm-hm. The Dags objected to it on some ground of it being a sign of chaos when women bear arms. I think enough of our people agreed, though, so that it weren't a policy exactly forced upon us. Were fine. I welcomed the opportunity to go home. Hadn't seen me folks in over a year and wasn't really sure if they were all well. So I missed a fair bit of what down next.
"For example, I don't know why so many Dag settlers showed up. We'd had Westerfolk living along the coast for ages, sure, but not in numbers like this. Nor do I know exactly how the logging resumed. Grace said something about Dagobar taking its time to suss out who in the new council was corruptible enough to push their agendas. Several of our people had already quit it to go back to quiet lives, which probably made it easy for the Dags to get more of their accomplices in.
"Grace said she'd been threatened for speaking against the logging—that was why she came to me. She wanted me for a bodyguard while she tried to figure out what to do. I were twenty and angry as hell about all this so only too happy to help her. While we came back here and she tried to rally allies, I talked to me old fighter friends who were Peace-guards—some had already quit when they were ordered to guard the logging camps. More quit after I talked to them. Wish I'd had the foresight to talk them into staying on for tactical purposes, but I guess I had thought we'd rally people pretty easily."
Able frowned. "Why didn't you?"
"Already been years of bloodshed." Her nose halfway vanished into the folds of her wrinkles when she grimaced. "A lot of Borealunders were not eager to start it again. If things turn violent again, they said, Dagobar will send more soldiers. They were right of course. That is eventually what happened, and when it did most people rather kept their heads down and put up with it. Others sought to adapt, eventually becoming indistinguishable from Dagobari, in me opinion, forgetting our ways and our gods. But..." And she sighed deeply then shrugged, briefly disappearing even more into her sunken shoulders. "I understand. I understand wanting to get along with life, even though I'm not one that ever did. The irony is so many of those people didn't fight because they didn't want to die, and now I'm here and they're not." She cackled again but without much conviction.