THE BITTERBYNDE TRILOGY

Book One: The Ill-Made Mute

(c) Cecilia Dart-Thornton.

Her name was Caitri and she was very young - perhaps twelve Summers old. She had encountered him once when he was at his work - waxing the aumbries and weeping, so that the wax mingled with his tears. She, like the rest, had at first recoiled from his ugliness - yet, after the shock of first sight, she looked upon him anew, and her gaze softened as though she viewed him not as a deformed idiot but as an injured animal in need of succour.

"Why do you weep?" she had asked. He could only shake his head. She perceived the way his belly hollowed beneath his tunic, and sometimes she brought him hunches of stale bread or withered apples. She was the only one who ever really talked to him. It was she who explained to him about Windships, the majestic vessels which sailed the skies and sometimes berthed at Isse Tower.

However, Caitri's duties kept her away from Floor Five most of the time and he met her infrequently, only accidentally.

Over time, by way of eavesdropping and osmosis and rare acts of kindness, the youth learned more from those who lorded him. Most of it he gleaned in the evenings, for that was when the servants would often gather and tell stories. In this way the unworthiest amongst them not only began to understand their speech, but also to discover the nature of the perilous and wondrous world beyond the Tower.

The servants' kitchen, Floor Five, was a spicery of sage and wood-smoke. Evening brought tranquillity to the erstwhile bustling chamber. Fireplaces, big enough to roast an ox, glowed with the last of the day's incandescence. In the chimney corner leaned one of the battered straw targets which, when soaked with water, was used to shield the spit-boys from the fierce heat of the fires. Lamps flickered with a dandelion light, describing various implements; copper pans, stoneware jars - grey hens and gotches, skeins of thyme and lemon-grass, garlic, hams, onions, turnips and cheeses hanging like comestible jewellery from blackened roof beams. Beside a set of scales, an empty one-gallon blackjack stood on a wooden bench, its leather seams reinforced with brass mounts and studs. Brass mote-skimmers, basting ladles with handles over a yard long, ale-mullers and skillets dangled against the walls. Someone had left a warming-pan sticking out of a copper-bound wooden bucket. Caudle cups, posset pots and pipkins lined up on a shelf beside a grist mill and a meat mincer. Alongside brass chamber sticks, their candles dripping yellow

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