The last items were pasties about the size of a man's fist. Web carried them in a sack of twisted and woven grass lined with wide fronds of seaweed. As he set them out on the table, I smelled fish. The pasties were stuffed with chunks of white fish in rich and greasy gravy. It heartened me when Thick tottered out of his bed to come to the table for one. He ate one hurriedly, pausing only when his coughing fits forced him to, and a second one more slowly, with another cup of tea to wash it down. He coughed so heavily and for so long after his tea that I feared he was choking, but at last he took a deeper breath and looked round at us with watery eyes. “I'm so tired,” he said in a trembling voice, and no sooner did Swift help him back to bed than he nodded off to sleep.

Swift had enlivened our meal with his discussion of the town with Web. I had kept quiet while we ate, listening to the boy's observations. He had a quick eye and an inquisitive mind. It seemed that most of the market folk had been friendly enough after they'd seen his coins. I suspected that Web's genial curiosity had once more worked for him. One woman had even told him that the morning's low tide would be a good time for gathering the sweet little clams from the beaches. Web mentioned this, and then wandered into a tale of clamming with his mother when he was a youngster, and from there to other tales of his childhood. Both Swift and I were fascinated by them.

We shared another mug of the tea I'd made, and just as the afternoon began to seem companionable and pleasant, Riddle arrived at the door. “Lord Chade sent me to say you're to go up to the mothershouse for a welcome,” he announced from the door.

“You'd best go, then,” I told Web and Swift reluctantly.

“You, too,” Riddle informed me. “I'm to stay with the prince's half-wit.”

I gave him a look. “Thick,” I said quietly. “His name is Thick.”

It was the first time I'd ever rebuked Riddle for anything. He just looked at me, and I could not tell if he was hurt or offended. “Thick,” he amended. “I'm to stay with Thick. You know I didn't mean anything by that, Tom Badgerlock,” he added almost petulantly.

“I know. But it hurts Thick's feelings.”

“Oh.” Riddle glanced suddenly at the sleeping man, as if startled to learn he had feelings. “Oh.”

I took pity on him. “There's food on the table, and hot water for tea if you want.”

He nodded, and I sensed that we'd made peace. I took a moment to smooth my hair back and put on a fresh shirt. Then I took a comb to Swift, much to his disgust, and was dismayed at the knots in the boy's hair. “You need to do this every morning. I'm sure your father taught you better than to go about looking like a half-shed mountain pony.”

He gave me a sharp look. “That's the very words he uses!” he exclaimed, and I excused my own slip, saying, “It's a common saying in Buck, lad. Let's look at you, now. Well, you'll do. Washing a bit more often wouldn't hurt you either, but we've no time for it now. Let's go.”

I felt a pang of sympathy for Riddle as we left him sitting alone at the table.

Chapter 10

THE NARCHESKA

This is their custom regarding marriage: it is binding only so long as the woman wishes to be bound by it. The woman chooses the man, although the man may court a woman he finds desirable, with gifts and deeds of war done in her honor. If an Outislander woman accepts a man's courtship, it does not mean she has bound herself to him, only that she may welcome him into her bed. Their dalliances may last a week, a year, or a lifetime. It is entirely of the woman's choosing. All things that are kept under a roof belong to the woman, as does all that comes from the earth which her mothershouse claims. Her children belong to her clan, and are commonly disciplined and taught by her brothers and uncles rather than by their father. While the man lives on her land or in her mothershouse, his labor is hers to command. All in all, it baffles this traveler why a man would willingly submit to such a minor role, but Outislanders seem likewise baffled by our arrangements, asking me sometimes, “Why do your women willingly leave the wealth of their own families to become servants in a man's home?”

— “AN ACCOUNT OF TRAVEL IN A BARBAROUS LAND,”
BY SCRIBE FEDWREN

The mothershouse of the Narwhal Clan was both fortification and home. It was by far the oldest structure in Wuislington. The stout wall that surrounded its grounds and garden were the first line of defense. If invaders pushed the defenders back, they could retreat to the mothershouse itself. Scorch marks on its stone walls and timbers showed that it had stood even against fire. There were no apertures at all in the lower story, the second boasted arrow slits, and only the third had real windows and these featured stout shutters that would have defied any missiles. Yet it was not a castle in our tradition. There was no place to bring sheep or for an entire village to take shelter, nor a place for great stores of food. I suspected it was intended to defy raiders who would come and go with a tide rather than to withstand a significant siege. It was one more way in which the Outislanders differed from our folk and our way of thinking.