Free Goldenhand by Garth Nix Page A

Magic.
    There were four fisher-folk on the boat, all from one family. Two sons and a daughter, under the command of their mother and captain, a woman named Karrilke. They were all of middle height, but broad-shouldered and with mighty forearms from drawing heavy nets, their skin cured by sun, wind, and sea to a shade that matched the timber of their boat, which, as was the fisher-folk’s custom, had no name.
    Karrilke bore the Charter mark on her brow and knew a few spells. Most were simple charms, to find the way at night or in fog, to locate the bigger shoals of fish, to gain warning of storms. But the captain also knew a healing spell, one employed many a time to quell the bleeding from a knife cut or to soothe a bad rope burn.
    She cast that spell upon Ferin’s wounded ankle, or tried to. Though she was sure she had found the right marks in the great swim of the Charter, and joined them just so, the bright symbols skittered from the nomad’s skin and broke apart into nothingness.
    The spell did, however, wake Ferin up with a fierce and very sudden pain which stabbed her in the navel, sharper even than the pain when the crossbow bolt had creased her leg. It was as if a sharp blade had punctured her right in the stomach, pushed all the way through and out her back.
    Ferin came up with a jerk, hands fumbling for her knife, a fumble that turned into a wild flailing action as she realized she was wrapped not in her cloak, but in several dry blankets of scratchy wool. The flailing lasted only a few moments before she was held fast by two fisher-folk gripping her limbs, the one who held her injured leg careful of the wound, collecting a kick for her pains.
    â€œSteady there, steady,” called Karrilke. “We mean you no harm. We are fisher-folk, pure and simple. We sell our catch both sides ofthe Greenwash, to your people as well as our own.”
    Ferin flexed against her captors one more time, but finding their grip impossible to loosen, and with the pain in her navel going away and so clearly not the result of actually being stabbed with a spear or knife, she let herself relax. Hopefully they would too, and give her a chance to escape a little later, when they were off guard. Though with four of them, all strong and wiry, she figured she would probably have a better chance of talking her way out of trouble. They all had knives, she saw. Not fighting knives, but a fish-gutting knife could end a life as easily as any other blade.
    â€œNot my people,” she said. There was a trace of bitterness in that. The other tribes should have respected her as a messenger, but they did not.
    â€œNot yours?” asked Karrilke. “You have the look of the Twenty Tribes, though your clothes are unfamiliar.”
    â€œI’m of the Athask; we are of the mountains, not the steppe,” said Ferin slowly. She was coming fully conscious, eyes slowly moving to take in her situation, to gauge the strength of her enemies. If they were enemies. “Though it is true we usually count ourselves kin to the horse-lovers. Cousins, not sisters.”
    â€œSo, cousin of the horse people, my name is Karrilke. What do we call you?”
    Ferin was silent for a moment. She wondered if she should simply adopt a name to make it easier to go among strangers. But what name? It was easier again to simply give them what her little not-sister Lilioth called her.
    â€œFerin,” she said.
    â€œFerin from the far mountains,” said Karrilke. “What brings you to the mouth of the Greenwash, in a raft of reeds, with a burning pot that reeked of Free Magic?”
    â€œI am a messenger,” said Ferin. “I am taking a message to the other side of the great river, to the witches who live in the ice mountain.”
    â€œThere is a bridge upstream,” said Karrilke. “Easier to walk across that than take to a raft of reeds.”
    â€œI tried the bridge,” said Ferin slowly. She was looking at