Jemby was inside the tavern when his sword caught against the doorpost and brought him to a stop. He turned sideways to free it, then faced the room again, holding the scabbard away from his leg.
"I'm here for the feast," he told the woman behind the counter.
She was picking broken cork out of a jug. "Whose feast?"
"Mine. I'm the summoned hero."
"Hero?"
That was the voice grown people used when he had misunderstood something expensive. Jemby straightened. The woman looked from the embroidered suns on his cuffs to the sword, then up to his face, and her expression became worse than annoyed.
"By the Makers. You believed every word they said. Come on."
She caught his sleeve and towed him between the tables. The sword tapped three chair backs on the way. He tried to apologize to the occupants, but she was already pulling out a broad chair at the back, beside the hearth.
"Sit, sit. Time for a common sense lesson for the summoned child. HUSBAND! Bring food and drink. We got another one."
"I'm thirteen," Jemby said.
"Then you'll want bread as well."
He sat. The sword hooked over the chair arm and left him crooked, with one knee higher than the other. After two attempts to settle himself, he stood again.
"May I put this somewhere?"
"Against the wall. Point down. In its sheath, please."
He had not been going to draw it. He had been thinking of drawing it, admittedly, because he had not yet seen the whole blade.
The chair had a cushion. Beyond it stood a narrow table, and beyond that a curtain screened a little passage from the crowded room. Perhaps this was where important guests ate. The woman rolled his cuffs back twice before he could decide whether to stop her.
"What's your name?"
"Jemby."
"I'm Berrit. My husband's Pemric. Any food that makes you ill?"
"No."
"And what have you eaten today?"
He had to think back beyond the circle of singing men, the cold stone beneath his one bare foot, the extraordinary moment when they had all bowed. Before that there had been breakfast, at home, where his mother had told him not to leave the heel of the loaf for someone else again. He had meant to eat it when he came back downstairs.
"A bit of bread."
"Right. We can improve on that."
Pemric came through the curtain carrying a tray. He was bald on top, with a great deal of white hair everywhere else, including on the backs of his hands. His right foot came down on its outer edge at every step, so the cup on his tray rocked and settled as he crossed to the table. He set down a bowl of meat and barley, a loaf with a split crust, and a cup that smelled of apples.
Jemby picked up the cup. "Is this ale?"
"Apple juice," Pemric said.
"I was allowed wine at the palace."
"Did you like it?"
"Not very much."
"You'll like this."
He did. He drank half before remembering that he was being watched, then put the cup down carefully and reached for his purse. There were six round gold things in it. He had counted them on the way here, three times.
"They gave me money."
Berrit looked at the disc he offered. One side bore a sun; the other had a deep square punch mark.
"That's a barracks meal token."
"It's gold."
"It's brass. In here, you'd have to find someone who wants a meal at the barracks."
He rubbed the edge. It stayed golden.
"They said I'd be welcome at every table."
"You're welcome at this one," she said. "Put those away and eat."
The first mouthful was too hot. He swallowed it anyway, which made his eyes water, and Berrit pushed the juice nearer without saying anything. After that she let him work through half the bowl before asking where they meant to send him.
"The northern road. Tomorrow. There's a company waiting. They said the villages need us."
"Some of them do. What's your part in it?"
"To drive back the creatures."
"Have you fought one before?"
"I've only been here since this morning."
"Anything like one, then?"
He shook his head. She took the empty chair opposite him.
"Have you ever used a sword?"
"Not a real one. But they said my gifts would awaken when I was tested."
"And did they test you?"
"They brought me here. Out of my house."
Surely that counted. He could still feel the dreadful pull behind his breastbone. He had been reaching for his other sock, and then there had been bright thread around his fingers and strangers kneeling on a stone floor. One of them had wept. You could not do all that by accident.
Berrit broke off a piece of bread. "I don't doubt they've got gifts. I'm asking what they've found out about yours."
Jemby stirred his bowl, separating a pale slice of something from the barley.
"It's a turnip," Pemric said. "You can leave it."
He ate it to show that turnips were not the problem.
"They wouldn't bring me all this way if I couldn't do it."
From the front of the room someone called for another jug. Berrit called back that she had heard, and continued looking at him.
"Last spring a girl came through with those same suns on her sleeves. Older than you. They'd told her she'd know what to do when the time came. She came back with a broken jaw. I cut her bread small for six weeks."
Jemby stopped chewing.
"Is she all right?"
"She's riding with a wool merchant now. She eats perfectly well. But she hadn't known what to do, and nobody had taught her."
"Maybe her gift was something else."
"Maybe. I'd want to find that out before something tried to bite me."
The customer called again. Berrit stood so abruptly that Jemby flinched, though she was only taking the jug.
"I've got to serve him before he dies of waiting. Pemric, tell the boy about your first sword."
"It was lovely," Pemric said when she was gone. "Too heavy. Lovely handle."
Jemby looked at the sword propped by the hearth. His own handle had a red stone in it.
"Did you fight creatures?"
"A few. Mostly I tried to stay behind someone who knew what they were doing."
"Were you a hero?"
"That's what they called me."
Jemby lowered his spoon. Pemric pulled out the chair Berrit had left and eased himself into it.
"You were summoned?"
"At fifteen. Had a whole mouthful of hard sweets. Very undignified, trying to answer a king with those tucked in my cheeks."
"What did you say?"
"Asked where I could spit."
Jemby laughed, then checked Pemric's face. He seemed quite willing to have it laughed at.
"Didn't you swallow them?"
"There were nine. I'd stolen a handful and heard my sister coming."
This was such a satisfactory reason to have nine sweets in your mouth that Jemby could picture the whole thing. He took another piece of bread.
"But afterward? Did you see amazing things?"
Pemric glanced toward his wife. She was arguing with the man who wanted the jug about whether he had paid for the previous one.
"Oh, yes."
"Like what?"
"A moth bigger than this table. Soft brown fur along its back. It settled on our tent and we couldn't get out until it had warmed its wings."
"Could you ride it?"
"I couldn't even persuade it to get off my trousers. They were hanging out to dry."
"But could someone?"
"I expect someone has tried."
Jemby looked from one end of the table to the other. Wings that size. He wanted to ask what moths ate in sufficient quantities to get that large.
"Has he mentioned the tent catching fire?" Berrit had returned with a wet patch down her apron.
"That was a different tent."
"But on the same journey."
"Yes."
Jemby pulled the bowl closer. The northern road had no moth in it now, only a burning tent with himself inside, tangled in blankets while the others ran. He had not asked whether someone would wake him in the mornings. At home he sometimes slept through the first bell.
Jemby's eyes went to the sword by the hearth, and Pemric followed them.
"You don't have to go with that company," he said. "Not tomorrow. Plenty of people come back from those expeditions. But you don't know how to travel with them yet, let alone fight."
"I could learn."
"Yes. Over time. You're allowed time."
Berrit put her hands on the back of her husband's chair. "What else did they promise?"
Jemby took the folded paper from inside his tunic. He had asked for something to write on after the third speech. The man with the blue sash had laughed, but had given him paper and a pen.
"Riches. A place at court. The gratitude of the nation."
He held the paper nearer the candle. His writing grew worse toward the bottom, where he had run out of room. Berrit leaned over his shoulder.
"A horse. Training in your awakened gifts. Which ought to happen before the dangerous part, I'd have thought."
"Can you do magic?" Jemby asked Pemric.
"A little."
Berrit shut her eyes. "We're trying to talk about tomorrow."
"I know," Jemby said. "But can he?"
Pemric opened his palm and laid a crumb of bread in the middle. He breathed in slowly. The crumb rose until there was a clear gap between it and his skin.
Jemby bent sideways. No thread. He looked beneath the table, although he could not have said what he expected to find there.
The crumb turned in the air, showing its browned side. Pemric's lips were slightly parted. When he finished breathing out, it settled into his hand.
"Do it again."
Pemric did. Jemby forgot the bowl, the sword, and Berrit, who eventually went to take an empty plate from another table.
"Can I?"
"Try. Take a little one."
He took a piece the size of his thumbnail.
"Smaller. We can work up to moving your supper."
Jemby pinched off most of it and ate the excess. Pemric showed him how to hold his hand loose. The thing to feel for, he said, was a small upward tug in the middle of his palm, as though someone were gently lifting the skin. Jemby could feel nothing except a crumb.
He stared at it, filled his lungs, and blew it into Pemric's beard.
"Not with your mouth," Pemric said, picking it out.
"You breathed."
"In. Then let it out slowly. The lifting's in your hand."
"You didn't say that."
"No, you're right. I haven't taught anybody in years. Here, look."
He lifted another crumb, this time with his free hand between his mouth and the crumb to show there was no breath doing the work. When Berrit came back, Jemby was trying again. His palm tingled. The bread stayed put. He held his breath until his chest ached.
"He's giving himself a headache," she said.
"I nearly had it."
"Blink, then."
He blinked. He had forgotten that. Pemric took his own crumb out of the air and ate it.
"Enough for now. It took me an afternoon to get a finger's height."
"Could you lift me?"
"No. I can hold a plum up for about as long as you just held your breath."
"Could I learn to fly?"
"Not from me."
The tingling lasted a while after Jemby put the crumb down. He rubbed his palm with his thumb, secretly pleased. Something had happened, even if it had happened where no one could see.
Berrit brought a small plate of orange fruit, split and sprinkled with sugar. The skins were pebbled and tough; the flesh tasted like a pear that had learned a better trick.
"Don't eat the rind," Pemric said.
Jemby retrieved a piece from his mouth.
"All this," Berrit said, indicating her husband, "and the end of his grand adventure was a bed in my father's kitchen. With his boots on, because his feet had swollen too much to get them off."
"I liked the moth," Pemric said quietly. "I liked the people I went with. You can't tell him I wish none of it had happened."
"I don't want him limping in here after six months."
"Neither do I."
Jemby looked down at Pemric's legs. One foot rested on its side beneath the chair. He had noticed the uneven walk without thinking much about it.
"But you stayed," he said.
"I did."
"Did you get to go home first?"
Pemric's chair creaked. He shifted the sideways foot until the sole was flat.
"No."
Jemby smoothed the paper beside his plate. Below the horse, below the gifts, he had written the thing he had asked twice to make sure: home when finished.
"They said when we'd won they'd send me back."
Neither adult answered quickly enough.
"Did you not win?"
"The fighting I was brought here for ended," Pemric said. "Then there was more fighting somewhere else. After that, there was always a reason to wait."
"But you asked?"
"Many times. I asked other people, too. Everyone I could find who knew anything about summoning."
Jemby looked at the white hair on Pemric's hands.
"You can do it one way," he said. "So you can do it the other."
"I don't know if they can. I've never seen anyone sent back."
"Maybe the people who brought me are better."
"I haven't met them."
"There were seven."
Pemric nodded, but did not seem reassured by the number. Jemby wanted him to look at Berrit and explain that seven was very good, that everything they had said until now was about a different sort of summoning.
"They knew my name."
"They knew mine, too."
The fruit slid from Jemby's fork. He watched it leave a sticky track across the plate. His mother would be home by now. No, she might still be looking. He had not taken his coat or his other sock. She would find the sock and think he must be nearby.
"I didn't say I wanted to come."
"I know," said Pemric.
"They asked if I'd help, and I said yes. But that was after."
Berrit sat on the edge of the table beside him. For the first time she seemed unsure where to put her hands. She folded them in her apron.
"You're staying here tonight," she said. "There's a bed upstairs, and tomorrow we'll get some answers, and you needn't worry about the bill, and—"
"Berrit," Pemric said.
She stopped. Jemby could hear someone at the front of the tavern counting out coins, losing count, and starting again.
"Does your sister think you're dead?" he asked.
Pemric looked at him for a long moment.
"She might."
"My mother will think that."
His face twisted. He tried to stop it by opening his mouth very wide, which only made the first sound worse. Berrit put a hand on his back, and he leaned against her apron because it was there. She smelled of spilled beer and warm cloth. Nothing like his mother.
He wanted his mother. He wanted her to tell him off for running into the house with muddy shoes. He wanted to be made to finish his turnips at his own table, and when Berrit offered him a clean cloth he was briefly, fiercely angry that she had thought of something to do when there was nothing to do.
He took it anyway.
Neither of them told him to be brave. Pemric sat with his hands between his knees. Berrit stayed where she was until Jemby sat up and scrubbed at his nose.
"I still want to ask them," he said.
"Of course," said Pemric.
"I want them to show me how they'd send me back. Before I go anywhere."
Berrit nodded.
He looked from one to the other. "Will you come?"
"Yes," she said.
"Both of you?"
Pemric glanced at the curtain. "We'll shut for the morning."
"I can do the talking," Berrit began.
"I want to ask."
"All right. You ask."
He folded the paper along its old creases. This morning he had imagined coming home with the red stone sword and letting everyone hold it, one at a time. He remembered how the seven men had crowded around him when he spoke, all smiling, all waiting. He could face them again if Berrit stood beside him. Pemric would remember the questions when he forgot.
"I'm not going north tomorrow," he said.
He waited for the shame to arrive. Mostly he felt tired.
"Then we'll tell them that, too," Berrit said.
"What about the sword?"
"You can give it back if they want it."
That hurt a little, in a small, mean place he did not want to admit was still there. The stone had looked like a jewel from a story. He stared at it a moment, then nodded.
Berrit cleared away his bowl and came back with more juice. The man at the front wanted her again. This time she went without giving Pemric instructions.
The fruit was good even with no appetite. Jemby ate another piece while Pemric told him which stair squeaked and where the upstairs candle would be. There was an empty room beside theirs. If he woke frightened, he could knock.
"I probably won't," Jemby said.
"You can, though."
He pushed the fruit skin flat with his fork. Around them the tavern grew louder. Someone had begun a song without knowing enough of it, and three people were offering different versions of the next line.
Jemby opened his palm beneath the table. The tingling was gone. He flexed his fingers, then brought his hand up into the candlelight.
"Could I try again?"
Pemric reached for the bread. "A little one."
This time Jemby rested his elbow on the table. He held the crumb in the center of his palm and let his fingers uncurl. Pemric moved the candle away; there would be no need to lean over the flame to look.
For a while nothing happened. He thought about breathing instead of trying to force air into his hand. The song reached a verse nobody disputed, and behind Pemric, Berrit lifted a stack of plates.
The crumb rolled over.
Jemby nearly closed his fist. He made himself keep it open. There was the tug, a tiny pull at the skin, and then the crumb rose. Under it he could see the crease across his palm.
He turned his wrist. It wavered. Pemric reached out, then stopped before touching him.
"Berrit," Jemby whispered.
She set the plates down and came to look.
He had to show his mother this. The wish came so naturally that he almost said her name. She would have made him wash his hands first.
He gave a wet little laugh and caught the falling crumb.
"Again," he said, and opened his hand.