Free On by Adam Roberts Page B

from his dash, but grinning. One look at the two faces of pashe and Grandhe took his mood away, though.
    ‘Hello, Grandhe,’ he said. ‘Hello, pashe.’
    ‘My boy-boy,’ said Grandhe, sonorously. Tighe remembered the tear that had gathered on the underlip of the old man’s eye; the swell of the beady water, the way it had paused on the very edge, and then the way it had abandoned itself and fallen streaking down his wrinkled cheek.
    ‘Grandhe,’ said Tighe.
    ‘Listen to your Grandhe,’ said pashe sharply.
    ‘What I have to say will not take long,’ said Grandhe, climbing to his feet. ‘I saw you at the ceremony, boy.’
    ‘Yes Grandhe.’
    ‘I saw you were with that girl-girl. The girl-girl of Old Witterhe. He is a dangerous man and a heretic. I do not want you to associate with him or his daughter. My enemies will make much of it.’
    ‘Do you
understand
?’ said pashe, shrilly. There was something alarming in her face. Tighe shrank back.
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Ye-yes. I understand.’
    There was a heartbeat’s silence.
    ‘You are a Princeling of this Princedom,’ said Grandhe. ‘You have a place in the order of things and this girl is beneath you.’ Grandhe paused and looked so intently at Tighe that he felt as if he were being stared through. Then he said, ‘Well, well enough.’ He stalked awkwardly to the door, his knees creaky with age. ‘That is well enough.’
    ‘Show your Grandhe
out
,’ hissed pashe, and Tighe, as if slapped, lurched away and shepherded the old Priest through the dawn-door. Then he stood in the hall and tried to summon the courage to go back into the main space. His pashe was waiting for him, he knew. He felt the desperate desire to duck out the door, just to run; but there was nowhere to go. It made more sense to get this out of the way now. He turned and shuffled back into the house.
    ‘So,’ said his pashe. ‘Do you understand what has happened there?’
    She was holding something behind her back. Tighe wanted to see what it was. He said, ‘No,’ in a sulky voice.
    ‘You know,
don’t
you, that we owe a debt to your Grandhe? You know that the loss of our goat has put us in a very difficult position. He comes round now to make me
feel
my humiliation. He knows I have to agree with him because he has the
debt
’
    She paused, as if expecting Tighe to say something, but he didn’t know what to say. He stared at his feet.
    Pashe took a step towards him. Her fury was very real now, very sharp; it possessed her features. ‘You associate yourself with that girl-girl and you give him more power to humiliate
me
. Do you
understand
? Do you –’ but she broke off and swung round with her right arm. Tighe flinched back. He didn’t mean to, he knew it was better to take the first blow and simply godown, but he couldn’t help himself. Something whistled past his nose and his pashe’s face was frozen for an instant in a curl of pure rage.
    Then her momentum spun her round a little and she grunted, trying to regain her footing. Tighe could see that she held a stone in her hand, one of the large flat pebbles from the ledge outside. His brain, working with an odd exactness, wondered if she had gone outside to fetch it whilst Grandhe waited in the main space for him to come home; or if she had chosen it on a previous occasion, had prepared it for the next time anger took grip of her. But she had taken a step to brace herself and was swinging her arm back. Tighe’s thinking stopped, jarred, frozen. This time pashe’s motion was accompanied by a scratchy cry, pashe’s mouth open, and Tighe had just enough wit to hold himself still until something solid clobbered the side of his temple with the sharp compression of impact and he flipped to the side and down.
    On the floor. He lay static, like a doll, aware only vaguely of his pashe standing over him panting. Some sort of pummelling should, by rights, have followed, but instead pashe simply stood there. Eventually she moved