Free The Dread Hammer by Linda Nagata Page A

the oxen, secured the wagon, and then rewarded themselves with a late-night feast and a round of gossip. Yelena eventually declared that they all must rest, for there was work to be done tomorrow. She sent the hired boy back to the stable and with her husband she retired to bed. The other upstairs rooms were full of a tribe of small children, so Seök did as he was accustomed to do, and laid out his bedroll in a cozy nook among the trade goods on the floor of his sister’s mercantile.
    By the time he lay down to sleep the rain was thundering against the roof. He offered up a prayer of thanks that it was not pounding down against his unsheltered head, and he slipped away into slumber. Yet he woke again before long, disturbed by a dream he could not recall. After that his sleep was uneasy, and each time he closed his eyes it seemed to him a faint spirit voice whispered to him to beware. So he was half-awake when Yelena’s footsteps creaked lightly across the floor above. All was still dark inside the mercantile, but Seök sensed that dawn was not far off. Shivering, he pulled his blanket closer around him.

    Pride had finally persuaded Smoke to change his mind about the journey to Nefión. Ketty had started to look like a ragged waif. The few clothes she’d brought with her from her father’s house were spoiled with wear and made nearly useless by her expanding belly. The dress she’d stitched from a deerskin was pretty enough, but it was only one, and it was heavy and hot. She was his wife! And he’d grown up with fine things. So he resolved to do better by her.
    Even so, he didn’t abandon all caution.
    He waited for the approach of a great rain spirit; he weighed its presence in the weft until he was sure it would claim all of the sky from the north where the Binthy shepherd tribes lived, to the far south beyond the merchant city of Nefión. He told Ketty he would be going in the morning.
    That evening, there was only a fine mist falling on the forest, but when he arose three hours before dawn, in the coal-lit darkness of the cottage, the rain was rattling the thatch roof.
    The glimmering hearth spirit watched him as he dressed. Last of all he slung his sword over his back. Ketty was still sleeping. He spent a moment admiring her. “Watch over her,” he whispered to the hearth spirit. Then he pulled the hood of his coat up over his head, tugging it low so his face was a shadow enlivened only by glittering eyes.
    That part of himself he called a man, the part Ketty saw and could touch and love—in truth that part was only a reflection of a spirit that lived among the threads. When he set his soul to glide along the weft, his reflection was lost in the speed of his passage. To the watching hearth spirit it seemed that, in a swirl of confusion, he dissolved into a column of scentless gray smoke that sped away through the wall, though there was no wind to drive it forth.
    Much later, he came to Nefión.
    Dawn had come, though it had not yet found a way past the storm clouds. Rain drummed in the muddy streets, hissed in the gardens, and rumbled against the roofs. Most of the houses were dark, but lamps were lit in a few merchant shops where new shipments were waiting to be tallied and sorted.
    Smoke stood at a street corner, listening to the threads. Nefión was the hub linking both the Lutawan Kingdom and the Puzzle Lands to the forest road, and many merchant families kept compounds there. At first he heard only inconsequential sounds: the soft song of a mother soothing her infant, the faint murmur of lovers, the restrained cries of a woman in labor and the whispering of her midwife’s encouragements. Then after a few minutes he heard the voice of a woman counting aloud as she measured bolts of silk fabric. Smoke followed the sound of it, until he stood outside a sturdy, two-story house built of dressed stone. A sign identified Yelena’s mercantile. The gleam of an oil lamp shone through the window’s frosted