The corner of his mouth hooked down in irony. “That comes as no surprise.”
“But I’d have thought Rhuan would approve.” From the sound of it, Bethid was having trouble with her boots. “He’s always taking risks.”
Brodhi lay down, arranging the mantle over his body. “He is a feckless fool with no understanding of consequences, and no acknowledgment of undertakings requiring commitment. And it will get him killed one day.”
Bethid laughed lightly, yanking a boot from her stockinged foot. “Only to revive later. A handy gift.”
Brodhi thrust a doubled arm beneath the bag his head rested on. “Rhuan will die, Bethid. And he will remain dead. I don’t doubt it will be sooner rather than later.” He turned over, facing the sidewall next to his nonexistent pallet.
There was an odd note in her tone. “Did you two have some kind of argument?”
Brodhi frowned into the dimness. “Why would you ask that?”
“Because you sound for all the world like you’re wishing he was dead. That he stayed dead.”
Brodhi’s frown faded. “He is a…difficult…individual.”
Bethid’s tone was tentative. “He won’t betray us, will he? Our plans?”
He resettled the hip against the packed floor of the tent. “Put no trust in him.”
Brodhi could tell by the sound that Bethid was stripping out of her tunic. “But he’s your kinsman.”
He grimaced. “You may be certain I wish it were otherwise.”
“But—”
He cut her off. “Go to sleep, Bethid. Or at the very least stop talking.”
After a moment of heavy silence, she said, “You can be very rude, Brodhi.”
He did not deign to answer.
Chapter 40
AS HER LAST client departed, Ilona set elbows on the low lacquered table and rested her face in her hands. It was well past time for the evening meal, and she was very hungry. But she was so weary she wasn’t certain she had enough strength left for eating. She had lost count of how many karavaners visited to find out if waiting in the settlement until the next karavan season was the best plan for them. No one faulted Jorda’s decision to her face—they were aware she was in his employ—but she knew how to read what wasn’t said. It showed in their eyes, in their faces, in their hands.
She had a dull headache, likely from hunger, and her eyes were gritty with exhaustion. She was relieved that all of her readings had promised folk that the decision to stay was a good one, but it was tiring nonetheless to look into so many palms, to experience, no matter how distant, the worries and concerns of others. But circumstances were not normal. The karavaners were full of memories of what the Hecari raiding party had done at the karavan, and fresher memories of their shock and fear as they saw what the decimation had wrought at the settlement.
Ilona smiled faintly. She was in an identical situation to the karavaners; she too would wait here at the settlement for the new karavan season, petitioning all the gods for assurances that no Hecari would return.
“Ilona?”
The gravelly voice was Jorda’s. She looked up, lifting her face from her hands.
Meager lamplight glowed in the karavan-master’s luxurious red beard. “You could use a drink,” he said. “Come with me to Mikal’s.”
Jorda meant well, she knew. But Ilona wasn’t certain spirits was what she needed. Perhaps a cup of hot tea, followed by bed … “Yes,” she heard herself say. “I would like that.”
Jorda didn’t smile much, and what she had of him this time was fleeting at best. Ilona backed out of her position behind the table, then stood. Every joint from her waist down cracked. She smiled as Jorda’s ruddy brows jerked skywards. Within a matter of moments she had blown out all of the glowing lanterns hung on their iron crooks, settled her skirts, and wrapped around her shoulders the soft green shawl.
“Custom has been good?” Jorda asked as she fell into step beside him.
“Better than good. Fortunately, all that I read suggested staying here was the best course.”
“And if it were not?” He glanced at her sidelong. “If the readings suggested it was better to go on?”
Ilona slid her right arm through his left. “But none did. Don’t borrow trouble, Jorda. You’re doing the best you can. There was no other choice. Could you have borne it, wondering every day upon the road who was killed here, and who survived, as we traveled farther and farther away?”
“No,” he replied in a subdued tone.
“Of course not. Naturally some folk are unhappy with your decision, but I saw no ill tidings in their hands.”
He was silent for a long moment as they walked the pathways of the settlement. Finally he said, “You do know he’s leaving.”
Ilona suppressed an aggravated sigh; how many more would ask her that? “Yes, of course.”
“Will you be all right?”
She tightened her grasp on his arm. “We are no more than friends, Jorda. I will miss him as friends do, but that
is all.”
“Oh. I thought—”
She overrode him. “I know what you thought. Apparently everyone thinks it. But there has been no man for me since Tansit.” It brought but a twinge now; Rhuan had found work with Jorda only because Tansit, Jorda’s guide and Ilona’s lover, had been killed by Hecari. “I will do well enough. And he swears he’ll be back in time for the new season, so you won’t have lost a guide.”
They threaded their way through the denuded settlement, Jorda taking pains to find the smoothest footing for her. “Have you read his hand, to know if he will be?”
“Rhuan’s hand?” She could not keep the note of surprise from her tone. “Oh, no. Rhuan won’t allow me to read his hand.”
Jorda’s startlement was palpable. “Won’t allow?” he echoed.
“No. He never has.”
“Then he’s seen Branca or Melior.”
Ilona smiled crookedly. She knew Rhuan disdained the other two diviners as weak in the art, but she said nothing of it to Jorda. “Rhuan believes he makes his own future without such aids.”
The karavan-master made a sound akin to a growl. “It is a term of employment, that all new hires see one of my diviners. I assumed you had read his hand before recommending him to me.”
She kept her voice steady. “Tansit was dead, Jorda, his butchered body still in your wagon awaiting rites and burial. You needed a new guide to take over his duties as soon as possible.”
“So you knew nothing about him.” Jorda shook his head, scowling at the ground. “I don’t like to scold, Ilona, but it’s imperative I be able to trust my guides. I believed you had read his hand.”
She didn’t duck the mild rebuke, nodding her under- standing. “Yes, I recommended him without reading his hand; he is Shoia, and I felt it appropriate, in view of Tansit’s death, that the karavan have a guide who could revive if he was killed.”
Jorda mulled that over as they walked, finally growling acquiescence as they reached Mikal’s tent. “He’s been trustworthy enough, I’ll agree—but in the future, do as I ask and read the hands of all potential hires. Men do tell lies … I depend on you to find the truths in their hands.”
Ilona promised him she would do so, but did not divulge her fear that hiring a new guide might occur sooner rather than later, if Rhuan did not return from escorting the farmerfolk to Atalanda along the road so close to Alisanos.
Jorda stepped aside and motioned for Ilona to precede him into the tent. The door flap was tied back. Lantern light, voices, and the tang of pungent ale spilled out into the darkness.
Ilona’s stomach growled noisily. She clapped a hand to it as warmth suffused her cheeks. But it elicited a brief chuckle from Jorda, and if it played any role in easing his concerns, the embarrassment was worth it.
“Come.” Jorda, grinning, guided her inside. “We’ll find a table and I’ll ask Mikal for food as well as ale.”
She would be glad of food. But she was not glad to have misled Jorda.
Once, she had looked into Rhuan’s hand. She had believed him dead, not yet knowing he was Shoia and would revive; she wanted only to discover what manner of death ritual he might prefer. But what she had seen, that fleeting glimpse of Rhuan’s soul, had left her with no knowledge of anything substantive. Only an awareness of maelstrom, the violent, drowning whirlpool of his spirit.
BRODHI AWOKE ABRUPTLY to a hot hand on his cheek. It was a woman, a black-haired woman leaning over him, her lips but an inch away from his own. As they brushed his mouth, he felt the familiar pull of arousal, the helplessness to resist. But he and she had parted in anger; a portion of him remained angry and did not want to submit to her kisses.
And yet he did. He always did. And did so now.
When he finally broke the kiss, she sat back from him, feet folded neatly beneath her. Brodhi heard the steady breathing of Timmon, Alorn, and Bethid, all lost to sleep, ignorant of Ferize’s presence. She smiled at him, tossing back the curtain of tumbled, waist-length hair. Black-haired tonight—or perhaps for only a moment—and black-eyed, with fine, fair, translucent skin begging him to touch it.
Her smile broadened as he reached to trace the outline of her face. Even as his palm cupped her chin she twisted her head, sinking teeth into his hand.
No. Sinking fangs.
Blood ran. He tried to jerk his hand away but Ferize gripped it in her own. She turned his bleeding palm up, studied it, then kissed it. He felt the fangs transform themselves into human teeth. He felt her lips burn. The blood stopped flowing.
A lesson, she said within his mind, to teach you to treat me better.
He answered in kind. I treat you as you deserve.
Ah, but you don’t. You treat me as you believe I deserve. But since you have only such knowledge of me as I choose to give you, you are ignorant of what I deserve. Black eyes sparked. But I forgive you. This time.
Ferize could drive him mad with her beauty in any form, her heat, her mercurical and unreliable emotions. Just now she sat demurely at his side, hands and feet folded, lips curving in a slight smile. She knew very well how he reacted to her; it pleased her to use him as her instrument.
She reached out and took one of his sidelock braids into her hands. Still smiling, she began to untie the thong that held the hair and the ornaments in place.
Brodhi closed a hand over hers. Not now. Not here.
Ferize displayed a complement of very fine teeth. Human teeth, though the look in her eye was nothing approaching human. Yes, now. Yes, here.
Ferize—
I want it, she said simply, and I shall have it.
It was its own ritual, this unbraiding of the hair, undertaken only by the one who wore the braids and the one he or she took as a sworn lover. Ferize was his wife, in the parlance of the humans. She had the right. Humans wouldn’t understand, but to his people this marked them bound, that she had the right and exercised it.
Under her breath, Ferize began to sing very softly as her slender, long-nailed fingers deftly unwove the sidelock and began to strip it of ornamentation.
Brodi felt the welling up of an unaccustomed desperation. He clamped his hands around her wrists and stopped the unbraiding. Saying nothing, still imprisoning her wrists, he rose to his feet. Ferize was clearly startled, but then she began to smile.
He took her outside the courier tent, took her into the deeper darkness of the treeline but paces from the tent. He heard the occasional impact of hair ornaments striking the earth, falling from the loosening sidelock. But he did not pause for them.
At the verge of trees, he stopped. Her wrists remained trapped in his hands. Ferize was laughing at him.
“No,” he said. “I say when. I say where. And just now, there is something else more urgent.”
Her voice was husky. “I think not.”
“Rhuan’s Hearing.”
She stopped laughing. “That’s Darmuth’s business. What does it matter to us?”
He released her wrists. “It matters because it was I who Heard him earlier this evening. Not Darmuth.”
Ferize frowned. “Why?”
“Darmuth told me Rhuan has been avoiding it. Earlier this evening he was killed, so I took advantage of it.” Brodhi shrugged. “He had no strength to refuse me.”
She looked thoughtful, studying his face. “You feel polluted, yes?”
He bared his teeth in a violent grimace. “I feel poisoned.”
“Well, then,” she took him by the hand. “We’ll see that you are purged, and then I will finish what I began.” She captured the loosening sidelock, tugged it lightly, then led him deeper into the darkness, where humans would not see.
BY DAWN, AUDRUN was exhausted. She had not slept again, and her eyes felt full of sand. The children, trusting to their parents, managed to fall asleep; Megritte, who had refused to return to her little nest of bedding, now slept slumped against Audrun’s left shoulder. It pinned her in place, for she had no wish to disturb her youngest, but her body was unhappy. Now and again she moved a limb in search of a more comfortable position, taking care to do so quietly and slowly, but she ached with the need to stand, to stretch.
To sleep.
Even Davyn, spine set against the trunk, had drifted off. He didn’t look particularly comfortable with his head drooping sideways toward his left shoulder, but his breathing was deep and even. She had no doubts he would complain of a stiff neck and old bones come true morning, but he would be more rested than she.
Outside, as the lightening of the sky presaged dawn, nightsingers fell silent. In their place came early birdsong from the tree canopies. Despite the drama of the night, morning, though barely broken, was perfectly normal. And, as Davyn had promised the children, all seemed much improved now that the moon was replaced by the sun.
If she were not to sleep, then it was time to begin morning chores. Audrun eased Megritte off her shoulder and carefully tipped her down toward the bedding on the floorboards, settling slack limbs even as Meggie roused just enough to briefly complain before falling asleep again. Audrun pulled a blanket up to her daughter’s chin, then began the careful process of untangling herself from hummocks of bedclothes and stepping over Davyn without waking him as she made her way to the rear of the wagon. She pulled back the loose oilcloth, noted that it was cool enough for a shawl, and liberated it from the tangle of bedding. She climbed down, glad to move at last, stretched prodigously, then made her way to the remains of the cookfire, skirt hems heavily dampened by dew. Kneeling, she scraped ash away with a stick, uncovered live embers, and began to add bits of kindling. As she blew on the remains, they came sluggishly to life. Within a matter of moments she teased flame from the coals, and the fire renewed itself with the aid of chips and twigs.
Audrun sat back. The rim of the sun began its climb above the black blade of the horizon. It seemed impossible now that the night before had engendered such fear and apprehension. She pulled the string of charms from beneath her tunic, clasped it in both hands, and gave thanks to the Mother of Moons, in her guise as the Maiden, for seeing her through the long night, for blessing the day again with light. That accomplished, Audrun reached for the kettle. The routine of morning tea would blunt any remaining concern about such things as glowing eyes and ear-piercing, howling shrieks.
Then she remembered that the karavan guide would be upon the road, intent on catching them up, and that knowledge lit within her an overwhelming sense of relief. By the time Davyn climbed down from the wagon, cracking his back with one hand as he scratched stubble with the other, Audrun was able to offer him a bright smile and a cup of hot tea, her weariness forgotten. A new day birthed new hope. Atalanda no longer seemed so distant.
Chapter 41
THE TREE RHUAN slept under was a haven for a multiplicity of birds, and it was the noise of competing morning songs that woke him. He lay flat on his back, right arm stretched out into cool, damp soil; the left, he discovered, was bound by something. He opened his eyes and rolled his head toward the enormou
s tree trunk and discovered that at some point during the night, the elderling had sent out a questing root. The thin, immature rootling had wrapped itself around his left arm in a spiral from armpit to wrist.
He smiled, sleepily patted the woody root, then remembered that he was near the human encampment, not elsewhere. Certainly not anywhere that a tree should be able to bind his arm. And that served to startle him into complete wakefulness. It shouldn’t be possible here, not in the human world. Other places, yes. But he lay quietly, not moving to free himself. To do so would be rude, when the tree was merely being supportive in response to his petition the night before.
Rhuan again touched the root wrapped around his arm. “Elderling, I thank you.” He had specifically asked for tranquility, and the tree had made certain he slept without cares, without unsettling dreams. “But I must go now. Thank you for your kindness.”
For a long moment there was no response. Then the root gently squeezed his arm and began to unwrap itself. When his arm was entirely free, Rhuan sat up. The rootling nosed through the rich soil beneath the tree canopy, then plunged, snakelike, into the earth, leaving only a ruffle of soil to mark its passing.
Rhuan suppressed the concern the tree’s action engendered; there would be time to consider it later. He assumed a kneeling position as he had the night before, and once more pressed palms and brow against the rough wood. He spoke his appreciation again in his own tongue, not that of the humans, then hastily set about shaking out and rolling up his blankets and oilcloth groundcover.
He had recovered from the killing the evening before, and the Hearing. No more delays existed. It was time now for him to pack onto his horse the things he needed for a solo journey, and to set out at a good gait. He had lost more time than intended, but he traveled light and his horse was capable of sustaining a goodly pace, while the oxen hauling the farmsteaders’ big wagon could not travel quickly.
He hoped he could catch up to them soon. The tree’s action, though sanguine, nonetheless was yet another signal that Alisanos was preparing to go active. No magic existed in the human world save it was wielded by those in whose blood and bone the power resided. For an elderling to exhibit sentience in the human world meant Alisanos was beginning to bleed through. There was very little time left before the deepwood uprooted itself and moved elsewhere.
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