“I see. Nothing of much interest there, then. Really, is there nothing happening for me to ponder on?”
“Cold Crossing’s tomorrow,” Magrayn said.
“Ah, yes.” Torquentine’s expression brightened a little. “Always gain to be had from the day of the Crossing. Do we know who’s going to win?”
“There are three or four who have a chance, I believe. No certainty, this year.”
“Pity. The more certainty there is, the more profit’s to be made from overturning it. Well, no matter. Always good sport to be had with the crowds, if nothing else. How many of our little rascals will be plying their trade tomorrow?”
Magrayn glanced up at the ceiling. Her disfigured lips moved as she silently counted off names.
“Thirteen,” she said after a moment or two.
“Good, good. That should ensure a multitude of cut purses and lightened pockets. Do go and see if those lemon tarts have arrived yet, if you’d be so kind. I find my desire for them so distracting.”
Magrayn left. Torquentine’s gaze rested upon the door long after it had closed behind her. He swallowed a mouthful of air and belched it out again.
“Not good,” he murmured to himself, alone with his pillows and candlelight and the still, sweet-scented air. “Soft and lazy. No good will come of it…”
The Cold Crossing was a tradition with more than two hundred years behind it. There were many contradictory tales of how it began, back then when the Bloods were young, but all agreed on the name proudly borne by the victor of that first race: Hedrig the Fish. Every year a platter of solid silver was made and offered as prize, and every year it was decorated with leaping, darting fish. Three of the Crafts, and the Haig Thane himself, took turns to pay for the trophy’s making. Whoever’s coin had bought it, though, it was always known simply as Hedrig’s Plate.
This year, it had been Gryvan oc Haig’s duty to provide the Plate. The Thane of Thanes had, inevitably, left the practicalities to his Chancellor. And Mordyn Jerain had, in turn, delegated the responsibility to his wife, passing on Gryvan’s sole instruction in the matter: the platter was to be the most dazzling, the most expensive, ever offered. Tara had taken him at his word. Tremannor, famously the best silversmith in Vaymouth, had spent months upon the task.
Now, on the bleak day of the Crossing itself, Tara Jerain rode her finest bay mare in the wake of the wagon that bore the Plate, its guards, and Tremannor himself, towards the great wooden platform on the bank of the Vay. A dozen or more of her household were around her, and behind them several ranks of Vaymouth’s Guard. The Thane of Thanes himself was up ahead, leading the way. He wore his great crimson cloak on this day of spectacle, its radiant expanse spread over the haunches of the huge white horse that bore him. Cries of adulation, of formless excitement, accompanied his progress through the crowd.
In the last half-century, the Crossing had become one of the events that gave Vaymouth’s year its shape and structure. It was a last, defiant expression of the city’s insatiable hunger for activity before the shorter days and colder nights of winter took a firm hold. During the week preceding it, a temporary town sprang up outside the city walls, on the northern bank of the Vay. Tents crowded along the fat brown river like a forest of mushrooms bulging up out of the earth. Horses and cattle were traded there, and furs of every kind and quality. Fishermen netted the river and sold their catch from stalls, even from their moored boats. Hot sweet wine was ladled out of great cauldrons. Despite the vagaries of the weather at this time of year, the event drew in folk from as far away as Drandar and the furthest reaches of the Nar Vay shores. In past years, many would even have come up from Dargannan-Haig lands to the south, but the ruin of that still leaderless Blood had rendered the roads to and from Hoke dangerous for travellers. They would, most likely, have been unwelcome guests this year, in any case.
Tara had never liked the Cold Crossing. The crowds were too tumultuous, the mood too coarse and raucous, for her liking. Tonight, if recent Crossings were anything to go by, once the great and the powerful had returned to their palaces in the city there would be drunken fighting, grubby little deaths, amongst the stalls and tents of the huge encampment. The excitement of the day’s events, combined with the loss of hard-earned coin in foolish wagers and an inexhaustible supply of powerful drink, always seemed to culminate in such excess. For now, though, there was only merriment and feverish anticipation of what was to come.
A flurry of children swirled by, shrieking in excitement and caught up in their own games. Tara watched them pass. She felt a momentary stirring of the normally dormant regret at her own childlessness. Twice, she had lost a child of Mordyn’s before its proper time. The losing of the second had almost killed her. After that, he had extracted a promise from her that there would be no further attempts. Such pain and fear and grief had possessed him then that she had given the promise almost willingly. On those rare occasions when she thought of taking it back, she closed her mind against the thought.
The long wooden dais from which Vaymouth’s elite would watch the day’s events was already crowded. Gryvan oc Haig and Abeh, his wife, mounted its steps and were swallowed up by the admiring host. Tremannor and his apprentices carried the plate onto the platform to a chorus of admiring gasps and even scattered applause. Tara, happy on this occasion to remain largely unnoticed, followed with her attendants.
The competitors – muscular young men one and all – were lined up on the short, muddy grass at the river’s edge. All were naked, save for coloured caps, and liberally smeared with goose fat that gave their pale skin a sticky white glaze. Some were shivering already, beset by the sharp wind that came up from the sea. The great expanse of the river before them was dark and choppy, speckled with little foamy wave crests. It seemed likely that the Vay would claim at least one or two victims this year, and that only fed the eagerness of the surging crowds. A line of Guards from the city, wielding clubs with impartial and indiscriminate enthusiasm, held back the mass of spectators.
From amongst the crowd on the dais, the Craftmaster of the Vintners stepped forward. He opened a scroll and began to shout out the full list of competitors. Each name was greeted with a burst of noise, mingling exhortations to vigorous effort in the challenge to come and predictions of dismal failure. Once the Craftmaster had furled his scroll and retired, it was the turn of Gryvan oc Haig himself to come to the front of the platform. Kale, the High Thane’s chief shieldman, was at his shoulder, stony-faced. Tara could not remember ever seeing the man smile. He surveyed the crowd now, as he seemed to survey everything and everyone, with suspicious disdain.
In one hand Gryvan carried a bright bronze gong, in the other a little iron hammer. There were cries for silence. The swimmers shuffled forward to the very edge of the river bank. Gryvan turned this way and that. He held the gong up, letting the vast assemblage of his people see it. The wind caught his cloak, setting it billowing. In such moments, Tara mused, the High Thane did have the look of a king. Gryvan beat the gong with the hammer, the crowd roared and the swimmers flung themselves into the turbid rushing waters of the Vay. The Cold Crossing had begun.
As a long communal bellow of encouragement rose from the mass of spectators, serving girls brought beakers of wine and tiny pastries for the elite gathered on the High Thane’s dais. Tara Jerain tasted both carefully, with diligent attention, to arm herself with some harmless pleasantries about them for the small talk that was bound to ensue. Both were good, but neither were exceptional. She recognised the wine as a Nar Vay imitation of a finer original from the vineyards around Drandar.