Karavans

by Jennifer Roberson

  Well, and the guide himself. But he hadn’t remained dead.

  “Mam said he wasn’t breathing,” Gillan commented as they topped the hill. The grove of trees formed a spreading canopy over them, muffling the cries of Torvic and Megritte.

  “Who wasn’t breathing?” Ellica asked.

  “The guide. He said he was going to die, but it wouldn’t be for good. And Mam said he wasn’t breathing, that his heart didn’t beat.”

  Ellica stooped to pick up a forked branch from the ground beneath the nearest tree; her donation toward fuel for the cookfire. Pale strands of hair, coming loose from their ties, fell forward over her shoulders to mask her face. “You know what Da will say.”

  That puzzled him. “About the guide?”

  “No, not about the guide.” She bent to gather up another tree branch. “He will say we should go on. That we can’t go back to the settlement.” She straightened. “You saw the look on Mam’s face when the karavan-master said he was turning back.”

  Gillan scooped up a heavier branch and whacked it against the nearest tree, knocking dry, curling bark off the smooth inner wood of the deadfall, the bone of the branch. He was aware of an uncomfortable fluttering of apprehension in his belly.

  “We’ll go on by ourselves,” Ellica continued. She didn’t look at him, but her profile, silhouetted against the setting sun, seemed sharp as cut tin. “It doesn’t matter to Da what the guide said about Alisanos. Mam just wants to be in Atalanda when the baby comes.”

  Two trees away, Torvic mimed slashing the throat of an invisible Hecari warrior. Megritte shrilly crowed her approval.

  “Because of what all the diviners told her,” Gillan said, studying the branch in his hands.

  “And so we’ll go on by ourselves, and there won’t be anyone there to save us if more Hecari show up.” She turned her strained face to him, blue eyes shadowed with worry. “We should go back. Like all the others. Go back to that settlement, and wait. But we won’t.”

  Gillan was certain his sister was correct. It wasn’t that Da was stubborn, not stubborn for no reason; who could argue with fourteen—no, fifteen diviners; his da and mam had visited the karavan hand-reader—when all of them said the baby had to be born in Atalanda?

  Then inspiration lurched out of the burgeoning twilight and into his mouth. “What if he came with us?” When he saw Ellica’s blank look, he clarified. “The guide. Everyone’s going back to the settlement. There will be no karavans to guide.”

  She shrugged.

  “Don’t you see?” Gillan continued. “There won’t be any guiding jobs.”

  Ellica’s attention sharpened as her mind jumped ahead to what he meant. “Unless he guided us.”

  “Yes!” He nodded enthusiastically. “He can guide us to Atalanda, and protect us from Hecari. Or anything else.”

  “He did die,” Ellica reminded him, collecting more deadfall branches. “It just didn’t happen until all the Hecari were dead. If they’d killed him sooner, we might be dead.”

  It was not, Gillan felt, a convincing argument. Not when the guide had already demonstrated in a most dramatic way that he didn’t remain dead. “Given a choice between going on alone, or going in the company of a Shoia who can not only kill five Hecari warriors in less than the count of ten, but come back to life if he himself is killed, which would you pick?”

  Ellica grimaced. Her expression was solemn as she nodded slow agreement.

  “Say after dinner that you want to go for a walk,” Gillan suggested. “And I’ll come with you to make sure you’ll be safe. We’ll go find the guide. Da and Mam don’t even have to know.”

  Her eyes remained worried. “What if he refuses?”

  “He won’t.”

  “You don’t know that, Gillan.”

  He hated it when she said things like that, when he was so very certain. “He won’t refuse.”

  Now she was annoyed. “You can’t be sure—”

  “I can, Elli. Mam’s pregnant… how many decent men would turn their backs on a pregnant woman? He’s already warned us about taking a road so close to the border of the deepwood—do you think he’ll just let us go on alone? He has no employment, now that the karavan’s turning back. I think he’ll come.”

  She resettled the lopsided stack of firewood in her arms. Behind her, winding around the trees and back again, Torvic chased Megritte. Apparently he had stopped being the hero saving the maiden and now acted the part of a Hecari in pursuit of his sister, whose thin-voiced shrieks of terror were clearly feigned. “We can ask,” Ellica said, though doubt still shaded her tone.

  “We can beg,” Gillan corrected. “But I don’t think we’ll have to.”

  Chapter 26

  ILONA HUNG UP the kettle that had fallen from the Mother Rib. She examined the tin door lantern for dents, found two, and inserted fingers carefully inside the housing, avoiding the oil reservoir and wick, to press the dents back out. She was not entirely successful, and it turned her fingers black, but the repairs would do. She replenished the oil, trimmed the wick, relighted the lantern and hung it up, setting the metal loop back over the horseshoe nail in the door lintel. Once again it created a welcoming pool of light over the steps, though the bottom one was burned and broken, and the middle one was blackened.

  Tea leaves lay scattered across the floorboards, scenting the air with the sharp astringency of rough-ground willow bark. Tea was dear on a journey because there were never certainties as to when one might replenish stores. Ilona hand-swept the leaves into a sad little pile, intending to carefully gather up the leaves and return them to the muslin bag. But even as she recovered the bag and leaned down to begin the careful transferral from floorboards to fabric bag, she hesitated.

  Diviners existed who used tea leaves in their craft. It was possible that if she saved the leaves for a diviner’s service, for reciprocal professional courtesy, she might learn what was to face her in the coming days and weeks, now that the karavan would be returning to the settlement.

  But did she truly wish to know?

  Kneeling there upon the floorboards where so very recently her body had been thrown down by a man intent on raping her, Ilona thoughtfully removed the sticks from her hair and set them on her cot. Then she took down the haphazard coil of hair, tidied and spun it into a long rope, rewound that rope against her head with deft movements of her hands, and once again anchored it with the rune-scribed sticks.

  There.

  She swept the loose pile of tea into the palm of one hand, carried it to her open door, and scattered the leaves into the twilight.

  There.

  Ilona shut and latched her door, filled a basin with cool water, and set a washing cloth in it to soak.

  There was little clothing to remove. Her belt lay on the floor, and the torn split skirt had fallen into a pile as she rose. Ilona removed the long-tailed tunic and her smallclothes, folding them neatly and setting them aside. Naked, a mosaic of bruises blossoming faintly against her olive skin, Ilona took up the soaked cloth and began to wash herself.

  Face, neck, arms. Breasts. And more.

  Had Rhuan not come …

  Had he not heard the kettle fall inside the wagon …

  Had he not seen the lantern fall …

  But he did.

  He had.

  And by such subtle happenstance was a potential future averted.

  She had seen the icy anger in Rhuan’s eyes, in the cold sculpture of his face. Heard it, and recognized it, in his voice: “You do know he’ll have to be killed.”

  And when she remonstrated, he answered: “Oh, I do think so.”

  Her memory was clear. She heard it again, the quiet intonations that hid nothing of his rage despite the ease with which he spoke, the grace of his movements; saw again in that initial instant of anger, in that first flush of rage, eyes that flickered red.

  Other men burned hot when so angry.

  Rhuan burned cold.

  She wondered, as she did so often abo
ut so many other things concerning the guide, if it was the Shoia in him. The nonhuman in him.

  Or merely the male.

  RHUAN FOUND JORDA seated on his beloved three-legged stool beside his high-wheeled wagon. He was hunched over his writing board, the surface illuminated by a lively, snapping fire a long pace away. Pinned to the board was a sheet of rumpled, rough-made paper, and Jorda was carefully marking down figures with a goose quill nib thread-wrapped and glued onto a length of slender, whittled sapling branch. The master lacked a fine hand, but the numbers were legible, if barely; the quality of the paper was poor enough that if he made the figures too small, the ink would spread and obscure them. Now and again he stopped to dip the nib in a small pot of watery ink. He scowled in fierce concentration, chewing absently at the tuft of beard growing in the hollow immediately below his lower lip.

  Rhuan leaned against a tall wagon wheel and smiled crookedly at a man he both liked and admired. “No wages for the wicked, I assume.”

  Jorda finished the number he was scribing, then flicked a glance at his guide from under red-gold lashes. “You’ll be paid.”

  Rhuan shook his head. “Save your coin rings, Jorda. If you’ve paid out everything the folk paid in, you’ll need every ring to make it through to next season.”

  “You’ll be paid,” Jorda repeated. “You shirked no part of your duty, even if you mishandled the Hecari patrol. My people are alive.”

  Rhuan moved to the fire and squatted down to gather a handful of kindling piled beside the stone ring. “That’s not why I’ve come. I suspect—I know—she’d rather I said nothing about it, but something should be. You’re the master.” With apologies to the wood, he dropped a stick into the fire. Anger flickered again, a deep, abiding anger. “Perhaps one of your people shouldn’t be left alive.”

  Jorda, sighing, continued to scribe figures on the pebbly surface of the paper. “Rhuan—”

  “Someone attempted to assault Ilona.”

  The master’s voice was startled as his head whipped up. “When? Here? One of the karavaners?” As Rhuan nodded, he set down his writing board and tossed the pen upon it, smearing his careful numbers. “Is she all right?”

  “Bruises, she says.” Rhuan shrugged, aware of guilt that he betrayed Ilona’s preference for privacy, but knowing too he was correct to tell Jorda. “She may indeed be fine save for bruises …but I think it’s best we look in on her.”

  Jorda growled agreement and stood. “I’ll go now.”

  But Rhuan, rising, stopped the master with a hand on his arm. “Not just yet. I think we should give her time to sort out how she feels. But later tonight, yes.”

  “I can’t stay here when one of my diviners has been attacked! I couldn’t stay here if any woman in my karavan was attacked. Mother of Moons, Rhuan, what’s in your head to suggest such a thing?”

  “Ilona’s dignity,” he answered quietly.

  Firelight gilded Jorda’s ruddy beard as he wiped a big hand over his tired face. His expression remained grim. “Does she need a healer? There’s a moonmother in the settlement—” He caught himself. “That is, if the Hecari didn’t kill her.”

  “I think she just wants to be alone. I have to go back there shortly anyway …I’m repairing her steps. I’ll look in on her.”

  Jorda’s eyes sharpened. “You said attempted to assault.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then …”

  Rhuan answered the unspoken question. “No, he was not successful.”

  “What happened?”

  Rhuan shrugged. “I happened. Fortunately.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I was more concerned with Ilona’s safety than stopping him. I didn’t see where he went.”

  “Did you see him clearly enough to recognize him if you saw him again?”

  Rhuan loosed a smile he knew was not precisely friendly. “Oh, yes, I would know this man. Even were I blind.”

  Jorda’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll deal with him, Rhuan. It’s my duty as master.”

  Rhuan fingered his horn-handled knife. “Yours. Mine. Does it matter?”

  “It matters.” Jorda turned his broad body to face him squarely. “It matters.”

  Rhuan was nothing if not a man who understood when to give in.

  Or to appear to give in.

  “Of course,” he said lightly, inclining his head.

  BRODHI TOSSED OFF the final swallow of ale, tipping back his head. When he brought it up, when he set the tankard down upon the table, he stilled. A child stood before him.

  Even in dim light, her face was exquisite. Her skin, so fair as to verge on translucence, was unblemished. Sky-blue eyes studied him steadily, framed by thick black lashes. Black curls tumbled in disarray around her shoulders. The ankle-length homespun tunic she wore was stained with blood, and soot, hanging shapelessly from thin, narrow shoulders. Her feet were bare and filthy.

  He could not ignore her. Not quite. “What do you want?”

  Her voice was clear and pure, a girl-child’s soprano with no hint of whine, nor any trace of tears. “Will you come with me?”

  Brodhi frowned, annoyed. “Come with you where?”

  “I can’t find Mam or Da.”

  His eyebrows arched up in startlement. “And you wish me to help you find them?”

  Her gaze was unrelenting. “Will you come with me?”

  “Have you no other kin?”

  “Mam and Da.”

  He briefly debated reminding her that the use of the word other indicated those who were not mother and father. The imprecision of human speech annoyed him greatly. But he altered course. “Have you no friends? Adult friends,” he amended hastily, imagining himself suddenly surrounded by children. “They may be with those friends.” He managed to summon a moment’s understanding of humans, and realized there was another possibility. “They are likely searching for you.”

  “Will you come with me?”

  That, again. In the same tone of voice. It lacked the desperation of a frantic, frightened child, was unthickened by tears. The expectation in it transcended hope, touched on expectation. She had been taught, obviously, that adults, even strangers, would be willing to help her merely for the asking of it.

  Brodhi indicated the lantern. “It’s dark outside. Better to wait until morning. You may find them then, or at least someone you know who can help.”

  Her gaze upon him was disconcerting. “The woman said to come here. To you.”

  At last, more information. “What woman?” Suspicion roused. “A slight woman with pale, cropped hair and large ear-hoops?”

  The child nodded.

  “Ah.” He smiled sourly. He desired more ale, but the tankard was empty. It would be a simple matter to rise and fetch more from behind the plank bar, thereby putting distance between himself and the girl. But he didn’t rise. He matched her look for look, and said nothing. A cruel joke, he thought, that Bethid should send the child to him. “Manipulation,” Brodhi said aloud, “is most unattractive.” And utterly unlike Bethid.

  The girl said nothing.

  A lengthy hiss of frustration broke from his throat. He rose, pushing back the stool. Another man, a human man, softened by her plight, would touch her, he knew. Place a gentle hand on her head, or her shoulder, or even reach out for her hand.

  He did none of those things. He merely gestured for her to turn around and walk toward the entrance.

  Against his preference, he followed. The girl had won.

  Or Bethid had.

  HIS NAME WAS Vencik. Traveling with him in Jorda’s karavan, bound for a new start elsewhere, was a wife, two children, and his wife’s mother. The wife, two children, and his wife’s mother were, very likely, at their wagon preparing dinner. He should be there, he knew. He should not be away from it, not with chores to do. But something inexplicable had taken hold of him, something of urgency and demand and curse-the-consequences, and instead of using the charm on his wife’s mother, for whom he had purchased it wi
th the last coin-ring in his pouch, he used it on the woman. On the hand-reader.

  Away from the cookfires, away from the wagons, Vencik stumbled into darkness, fell to his knees, and vomited.

  He was not, was not that kind of man. But what he had done—what he had so nearly done—spoke of something inside, some demon or devil that had slipped into his soul. Wanting to silence his wife’s mother for a single day was not so bad a thing …but to assault the hand-reader? There was no other reason he could think of but a devil or demon.

  He needed a priest. He needed a different priest, one who could cleanse him, purify him, exorcise the evil thing inside that had forced him to do such a terrible thing.

  Vencik wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his tunic and sat back on his heels. And froze.

  It was the time of the Orphan Sky, but there were stars. What little light existed was enough. He saw the karavan guide smiling gently down at him. “I can be a priest.”

  Vencik stared.

  “I can cleanse you. I can purify you. I can most distinctly exorcise you.”

  Hope kindled. But this was a guide.

  Could priest and guide be the same thing?

  “You,” the man said with every evidence of satisfaction, “are as poor an excuse for a human as I have yet seen in this land.”

  Vencik lowered his head to stare at the ground beneath his knees.

  “And I think it’s time you left it.”

  His head snapped up. The last thing Vencik saw, beneath the Orphan Sky, was the sudden slashing movement arcing toward him out of the darkness.

  Blood. Blood. So much blood.

  And no air at all, save that which whistled out of his freshly opened throat.

  Chapter 27

  RHUAN SQUATTED BESIDE the big supply wagon, looking through the spare plankwood Jorda always carried. He had decided it was best if both of Ilona’s bottom steps were replaced, and wanted to be certain he selected the strongest planks for their construction. There were tools aplenty in the wagon as well as wood, spare ropes, harnesses, fittings, pots of axle grease, spokes; medicaments for humans, horses, draft animals; whole oilcloth canopies as well as patches, gut, and awls for stitching the heavy cloth, silk thread and needles for stitching more fragile flesh; lamp oil, lanterns, kindling; spare clothing, leather, bedding, and much more.