The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,93

the outside of the fence I fell down on my knees and then full length on the ground. I just lay there for the longest time, feeling myself already more lost than I had ever been.

Far wide, a million miles or more, and the way home many years forgot.

34

Most things in a story got to stay in their right place, or they won’t make no sense at all. But there’s other things that only come to make sense a long time after they’re done with.

I believe that day, that night, was a thing of the second kind. Some parts of it was anyway. I thought I seen plain enough what the Vennastins was doing to me, and why they was doing it, but I done wrong to see it as the same thing for all of them, with the same reason behind it.

Fer was clear enough about what she wanted: it was to turn away the threat she seen in me and keep her family in the high state they always enjoyed. Mardew was simpler still, for he was just all desiring to spite me on account of the DreamSleeve being mine and not his, even when it was in his hand. And Perliu, I thought, had woke out of a dream for just long enough to show willing.

But that fear I seen in Catrin’s eyes showed her different than any of them others. I thought then that it was a fear for me, her being disinclined on account of a mother’s soft feelings to see someone she knowed from the cradle kicking his heels inside of a noose, or burned, or shot, or whatever else they might of done to me.

But I have thought more on the matter since, seeing it in different lights at different times, and I believe I was wrong. It wasn’t a fear for me, like I thought, but for something else. Or maybe a part of it was for me. The rest was for that thing she drawed in words for me, of the Count and Seal bowing to the Ramparts’ naked will, and Ramparts lording it through threats and intimidations and the spilling of blood. She was afraid of what Ramparts would become if their lies was knowed and they still had power. If instead of tricks, they ruled by hurting and forcing. She seen in her heart what awful things that might bring, and she could not bear the thought of it.

That was why she bent so far and worked so hard to give me the choice of going faceless. Her saving my life was the smallest part of it, for how long would I live outside the gates on my own? It was Mythen Rood she meant to save, and the twice times a hundred people that was in her care.

Out of all of them, I think she was the one that knowed what Rampart meant.

35

Though I was full of despair and empty of ideas, it was too cold to stay long on the damp ground. By and by, I picked myself up and moved away from the fence, into the half-outside. A freshet of wind blowed up in my face that seemed to have some threat of rain in it, though the rain did not come down right then.

The forest was a mass of shadow that started a hundred steps ahead of me and went on for ever. In between, there wasn’t nothing except for that lookout tower I told you of so many times already.

I turned slowly to look in all quarters to see if anything was already stalking me. I had forest-lore enough, from my few times on hunting parties and many more occasions with my mother’s catchers, to know what danger I was in. It was full night, of course, and with the Salt Feast done we was in Winter now, but only just the start of Winter. If the next day brung a clear sky, the trees would be waked and hungry and I would be in a sorry state indeed. Until then, my fears was mostly for beasts. There would be many.

I turned to the lookout again. I had helped to build up those walls and clear that ground, so I knowed it was solid enough to give me shelter. But there was a reason why we didn’t yet set a sentry in that tower, though we finished the work months before. That morning stink I told you of, from some night-time visitor we never