Then he was out, trying desperately to curl up, and someone above said, “Shit, look at him. They're concerned about this? He's pathetic.”
“See yeh fight th'whole camp alone,” sneered a closer voice. Female. Familiar? “Get 'im up. Ahh, he stinks.”
Hands hooked under his armpits and heaved. He tried to squirm, to kick, but his limbs felt like lead. A hand cracked hard across his cheek, making his eyes water, then gripped him by the chin and worked to angle his face.
He squinted against the sudden light of an unshuttered lantern, glimpsing a tall white-clad woman beyond it. Another stood closer, staring with a keen irritation that sparked recognition even more than her copper hair and sharp features.
“Sanava?” he mumbled, bemused.
She didn't answer, just raised something white before his eyes and crammed it over his head. In a matter of moments, he was wrapped in it, and tried to struggle against its stricture but made no headway. A strong hand bent his arm, pulled at it, then suddenly it was through a sleeve and free; getting the idea, he cooperated with the other and felt fabric fall in place over his naked frame.
“Headscarf,” Sanava demanded. The woman with the lantern handed another white thing over, and Sanava wrapped it around Vesha's head and cinched it under his chin.
“Not sure he can walk,” said the person behind him—a man.
“Yeh carry 'im then, like he been fucked right out.”
The man hesitated, then sighed. “I guess that's not unusual.”
“Say it was Colonel Venn. Everyone knows he's rough,” advised the unfamiliar woman.
“Right.”
One hand let go of Vesha, and he felt his legs unhinge. Then an arm swept under his knees, the world jerked sideways, and he found himself hefted in a soldier's arms. He blinked up at the man's face, not recognizing him either.
“Light as a child,” said the man, then wrinkled his nose. “But you're right, he reeks. You're sure he's what's flustered the hounds?”
“Yeh.”
“Let's get moving,” said the other woman.
And they did, letting the man take the lead with Vesha in his arms, the lantern-bearing woman a step behind him. Vesha tried to crane around to find Sanava again, but she was either in the man's shadow or she'd run off. He wanted to struggle just because he didn't know these two, didn't know what was going on, but she would be mad if he made trouble for her.
He'd missed her. After last time, when she'd nearly killed him, he'd thought he'd never see her again. He hadn't tried to go to ground in the women's section out of respect for her knives. That she'd come to find him made his heart swell.
That she'd brought a soldier made it hurt.
They moved along at a steady clip, the great wall of the camp looming high on their right as they emerged from a barrack alley. Sentinels with lanterns dotted it like fallen stars, but their job was to watch the barrows beyond, not the camp interior, and no outcry came.
His rescuers didn't speak, so neither did he. Questions could wait. His eyes sagged shut a few times, the exhaustion too strong for even this confusion to fight, but he twitched awake again whenever they took another turn.
Warehouse façades became stables, the horses snorting restlessly behind the walls. Another long blink and they were among bunkhouses again, but these had laundry strung between them, drip-drying in the lack of sun. A scent of woodsmoke and boiling water threaded through his nostrils, then the bunkhouses separated into a familiar clearing, veiled in steam and filled with cauldrons, tubs, benches and crates, and the low murmur of female voices. Those stopped briefly as they progressed through the ring of fire-light, then rose again. Some few greetings came, for Sanava and people called Koll and Gale, and some questions Vesha was too tired to parse. Male voices rose too, cautiously; Vesha knew they didn't belong but couldn't focus enough to see the intruders.
“This way,” said the unknown woman—Koll? Boots scuffed on brick steps, then a door opened, exhaling the scents of attar and tea-herbs. A few steps and they were swaddled in a newer, closer darkness.
“Back here,” came another female voice. Curtains passed, gilded by more lamp-light; some were drawn aside to show cots, empty or occupied by white-clad women with scissors and knitting needles and other implements of craft and potential murder. Another curtain was shunted aside to let them into a larger space: the back-end of the bunkhouse where an officer's cabin would be.
It had been set up as a little infirmary, one cot on each side, with a table in the center holding votive candles and incense-burners and a rough clay effigy of a praying woman. Braided cords draped her, red and white and grey. Beside it stood an older woman, plump, in a dress that had been dyed a muddy dark red—perhaps an attempt at brown.
“Put him here,” she said, directing the man toward one of the infirmary cots. The abrupt turn made Vesha woozy, the descent even more so, and he grappled at the cot's edges for stability as the arms released him. Immediately the women loomed over him, one pulling away the kerchief that had shrouded his face.
“Goddess bright,” the priestess swore, “what happened to him?”
“Dunno.” That was Sanava. “He a crowspeaker. Heard 'bout crows in here, causin' ruckus. Did m' clan rite, found him.”
The priestess pressed fingers to his brow and tilted his head back and forth. He grimaced; his spine felt like it was on fire. “I can't tell what's filth and what's bruise,” she said, then hiked up the hem of his dress to check his legs. “He was naked?”
“Yeh.”
A hand squeezed his ankle. “Skin and bone. Crows, you say?”
“Crow spirits, yeh.”
“Sergeant Vangale?”
“Yes ma'am?” That was the man, a vague silhouette behind the looming women.
“Will this be a problem?”
“Well… I can't say. We've been getting reports of crows all week. One of my sources heard they came out of the mage compound, like perhaps the mages had summoned them. Some folks hope they'll help with the grig situation, but others figure it's a Dark omen.”
“Yes, but is it a problem, dear?”
“Oh. Sorry. I don't think so. If they're spirits, they should be invisible to most mages, which leaves the hounds—and your protections block them anyway. Plus Sana had me carry him in, so hopefully there's no trail.”
Vesha's throat tightened. Corvish names weren't meant to be shortened. That the man called her 'Sana' without raising an objection…
“We'll need washcloths and a bucket,” said the priestess. “Don't want him seen outside. And some tea and broth, I think. Sanava, you'll stay with him?”
“Yeh.”
Such a grudging tone. He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he was back in the den.
The priestess made dismissing sounds, and the boot- and slipper-steps moved away, the curtains shifting again. A weight settled on the cot by his legs, but he didn't look—didn't want to see her face, no matter if it held contempt or pity.
After a silence, she murmured in Corvish, “Where have you been?”
It wasn't accusatory, but neither did it sound concerned. Curiosity was an unshakable trait of their people, driving them to cross boundaries they'd sometimes rather not. Clearly it was what had sent her after him.
“The Palace,” he mumbled in Imperial.
“The festering heart of the Empire?”
“Aa. It's… We broke it. There was fightin', spirits, wraiths...” He had difficulty speaking his native tongue at the best of times, so didn't even try. His fumbling would only offend her. “I got... I meddled wi' this dark stuff, made the crows come t'life. They in m'flesh now. Pull right outta it when they want, break me apart...”
He saw her brows draw down over her deep brown eyes. In this light, this sudden sanctuary, she looked more beautiful than ever, no matter the hard expression on her face. He wanted to bend toward her—to rest his head in her lap and be silent.
But he dared not.
“The spirits in your tattoo?�
� she asked.
He nodded slightly, the most his neck could manage. “They got m'brand on 'em still. I...I attacked the Emperor with 'em.” He still couldn't believe he'd had the guts for that. “An' the Field Marshal. Emperor vanished. Palace started crumblin'. Marshal ran back here. Came wi' the Crown Prince but we weren't thinkin' right—din't remember the Marshal. He was there across the gate. I busted out. Crown Prince din't.”
Sanava frowned, then shook her head. “When was this?”
“I...I dunno.”
“Why were you there?”
Water welled up in his eyes. “The girl… The little girl, I tried t'free her. He caught me, the Marshal. Beat me bad. Said he was gonna gimme t'the Palace, but when we went, there was all these people there… Some of m'camp friends, Cob, Erevard… Cob had antlers. I din't know what it was all about, but then this spirit came t'me. Guardian. So we fought together.”
She blinked. “Aesangat?”
Somehow the word was familiar, though he knew he'd never heard it. “Yeh.”
“You lie.”
“I swear it happened. ...I think it happened.” Sometimes it seemed like a crazy dream, or a nightmare. “What matters is the pikin' Field Marshal, he gotta die. He got the Prince locked up, an' I don't care about the Prince but he better'n the Marshal for sure. Marshal led the Gold once.”
That got her attention. “When?”
“Ten, eleven years ago. Back when the Gold really started pushin' us in Corvia. When m'family died.”
For once, the look she gave him wasn't cold or cutting. “You must have been little.”
“Neh, eleven. I think we were the first clan t' get burnt out though. Nobody was expectin' it. An' everyone else the Gold caught, they cut their own throats. I...” He couldn't go on. He'd already told her about his time as a slave, but here, now, he couldn't revisit it.
By the marginal softening of her stare, she understood. “You should have told me about the commander, not the girl.”
Back when she'd nearly kicked his teeth in. He realized that now. Other people's danger didn't matter to her. She just wanted revenge. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Fer everythin'.”
Her fingertips brushed his cheek, once, gently. Then the sound of footsteps outside the curtain returned, and she withdrew to a prim distance. He wanted to say don't go but knew that would just drive her away more quickly.
The priestess and several other women pushed through the curtain, laden with pots and washcloths and cups and kettles. Vesha soon found himself in the middle of their flurry, too weak to protest as he was stripped down and scrubbed and slathered with some sort of salve and forced to drink various things his knotted stomach wouldn't accept. He retched them up until the priestess gave him a lozenge to suck on that made him vague and hazy but also settled his guts. After that, he managed to keep things down.
By the time they forced him into clothes again, Sanava was gone.
*****
From the front step of the bunkhouse, Sanava en-Verosh surveyed her territory. It wasn't much to look at: just a circle of barracks populated by the women and children who did the camp's dirty work. Boiling the river-water, washing the clothes and dishware, peeling vegetables for the commissary, cleaning up after servicing the soldiers.
But that was just the surface. Every woman had a knife on her now. Every child knew where to run when trouble went down. Every bunkhouse—not the pleasure-rooms up by the service tables, but these more-remote ones that were supposed to be for the ill or the young or the resting—had its illicit stock of supplies and weapons.
And the priestesses, when they'd been cast here after being exiled from their infirmaries, had drawn a circle in red dye around the entire area.
It was meant to keep out abominations—not that any had tested the boundary yet. Hounds passed by periodically, howling their heads off, but the soldiers knew better than to approach. These back buildings were the only areas the women were actually permitted to defend.
Or had been. Before the new General and his purges.
Sanava didn't know whether the rules had officially changed; it was hard to follow discussions in Imperial, everyone's accents so thick. She did know that the women's so-called free section had been shut down two weeks ago, its occupants forced into the mage-dome to some unknown end. That was more than a thousand women and children gone. Another few hundred had been taken from this larger section—six bunkhouses' worth—and even more had been slated to go a few days ago. The loss of the sun had stopped that.
Which left approximately fifteen hundred women and five hundred children spread through forty-odd bunkhouses, rotating through the pleasure-rooms as they tried to handle the eight thousand soldiers still in residence. The numbers weren't as bad as they seemed; many soldiers preferred to shack up with each other or live celibate, and before the loss of the sun there had always been maneuvers that took a good several thousand away from the camp.
Not so now. Nearly all the Crimsons were locked down behind the walls while their leaders struggled to get a grip on the situation.
That meant a run on the women's services—which meant a heightened need for security, especially considering the lawless mood of the camp. Which led in turn to Gale and his crew sitting on crates by the bunkhouse next door, smoking rashi with Koll and a few of the washerwomen. Their military police surcoats were well-maintained, buckles polished, chainmail glinting in the glow from the fires, and as Sanava started toward them, she imagined how she might approach a different set of police. How she'd slide a truncheon or short sword from a man's belt before he could react, then shed some blood.
Not from these men, though. They were too useful.
“Sanava,” Gale greeted, rising. He wasn't tall—just a hand and a half over her—but nicely built under his gear, good shoulders and legs. She didn't mind his attentions. Even better, he was Darronwayn, and hid a trace of fox-ancestry with a weekly ink-wash that turned his hair from dark russet to brown-black. His status as a military police sergeant had kept the Wyndish soldiers off of her for the past few months.
He and his subordinates had also supplied a fair portion of the weapons now stashed under the women's bunks. They'd started it before the sudden darkness, before the priestesses' removal from the infirmaries—way back when Field Marshal Rackmar first took the reins of the army. Because, as Gale had told her when he made the offer, I know about him.
Know what? she'd asked, but never received a reply. Just the weapons, which were answer enough.
“Gale,” she replied, and nodded to the others as she joined their circle. The men were Gale's corporals and policemen, six in all; the women were Koll's close friends and bunk-sisters. Together with several bunk-matrons, they were the conspirators for this circle of barracks, and the main drivers of the women's collective push toward self-defense.
“Anything interesting?” said Koll. She was Darronwayn too, but the tall dark northern type touched by ogre-blood, not Gale's short southern. Though tuskless, her strong jaw dominated her features, as did the pinched look she'd worn since her soldier husband's death and her recategorization from free-woman to slave.
Planting her hands on her hips, Sanava considered what she'd just heard. Vesha was a conundrum. Even yesterday, she'd hated him, and been annoyed at herself for not cutting his useless throat. But if what he'd gabbled was true, then perhaps she'd misjudged him. He'd spied upon dire threats and lived to report them, which was all anyone could ask of a crow.
“He say he went t'the Palace,” she started, hating this stupid language. “Seen Rackmar there. Fought Emperor, who vanished.”
“Vanished?” said Koll.
Gale was shaking his head. “How'd he get there?”
“Taken by Rackmar. I believe him.” Considering how frantic he'd been about the little girl, she had no doubt that he'd attack the Field Marshal, who had already been sending slaves to the Palace in droves. “He say spirits fought Emperor and wraiths. Rackmar ran from fight, Prince followed, got caught
.”
“The Crown Prince got caught by the Field Marshal?”
“Yeh.”
“That can't be true,” said one of Gale's men, brows furrowed. “We'd've heard about that.”
Sanava shrugged. It wasn't her job to defend Vesha's report.
“From who?” said Koll. “We already know you're out of the gossip-chain.”
“All us old Crimsons are,” Gale concurred before his man could respond. “They'd have come in at the mage compound, right? The jails up there are staffed by White Flames, not us.”
“But it can't be true,” said the man. “Why would the Field Marshal lock up the Crown Prince? The Emperor would come down on him like a fist.”
“Not if he doesn't know. They say he's in seclusion, praying the Light back.”
“But she said 'vanished',” Koll pointed out.
Sanava shrugged again. “So he say. Emperor vanished, Palace crumbled.”
“What?”
“Light gone. Same time, yeh?”
Several of them were shaking their heads. She'd run up against this before: no matter their feelings about Rackmar or the army or the White Flames, they believed in the Emperor and the Light. Alas, slapping sense into them never worked. “Light gone, same time,” she repeated. “Vesha en't sure, but we know. Emperor vanished, Light left, abominations collapsed, Palace fell—all at once. All connected. Dun be stupid.”
“We're not stupid—you're crazy,” said Koll, but there was no fire in it. They'd bickered about this before, as much as they could with Sanava's bad grasp of Imperial. Sanava knew that the Light was a malicious spirit, with controlling tendrils in all its servants similar to how the beast-spirits connected to their children; conversely, Koll knew that the Light was the one true god, with an authority that spread far beyond its followers.
The loss of the sun was a point in Koll's favor, but the utter flattening of the White Flame priesthood and the abominations supported Sanava.
“That's too big for us,” said Gale with a wave to his edgy men. “Focus on the Prince. He's here? Where?”
The Drowning Dark (The War of Memory Cycle Book 4) Page 24
