Vessel

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “See, that did not sound hostile,” Pia said softly.

  Raan snorted.

  “I’ll stay with the horses,” Fennik volunteered.

  “Wise idea,” Korbyn said, and Liyana saw Fennik’s eyes widen at this compliment. She realized this was the first time that Korbyn had ever complimented Fennik. Perhaps Korbyn had finally quit seeing Sendar in Fennik.

  Under her breath Raan added, “You might want to keep them ready.”

  Liyana checked Gray Luck’s bridle, and then she patted her again before handing the reins to Fennik. She joined Korbyn, Raan, and Pia, and followed their guide across the camp.

  When they reached the chief and chieftess’s tent, their guide halted. Korbyn strode inside without pause. The vessels followed.

  Inside the tent, three people were seated around the cooking fire—an ancient man with a necklace of bird skulls and a man and woman who wore feather headdresses and ornate multicolored robes. A silver kettle warmed over the fire. The man with the skulls fetched a tray of silver cups. He laid them on a carpet and then poured tea in each.

  “Welcome to our clan,” the chieftess said. She was a soft-spoken woman with thick coils of black and gray hair wound tightly against her scalp. Her headdress consisted of three rows of falcon feathers that dangled over her cheeks. “Share the water of life with us, steeped in the food of health.” Ceremonially she raised a cup of tea to her lips and sipped.

  Korbyn sat cross-legged in front of her. “We thank you for your hospitality and bring greetings from across the desert, as well as from the Dreaming.” He selected a cup and sipped the tea. Liyana watched the ancient man’s eyes widen at the mention of the Dreaming. She guessed that that was not part of this clan’s traditional greeting. “I am Korbyn, god of the Raven Clan. My companions are Liyana, vessel of Bayla of the Goat Clan; Pia, vessel of Oyri of the Silk Clan; and Raan, vessel of Maara of the Scorpion Clan. Our companion, Fennik, vessel of Sendar of the Horse Clan, tends to our mounts.”

  The chieftess’s hands shook. She laid her teacup on the tray, and she folded her hands in her lap as if to disguise the way they trembled. Liyana noticed that the old man’s eyes had widened so much that he resembled a horse about to bolt.

  “Why have you come to us?” the chief asked.

  “Five of the desert deities have been stolen from the Dreaming,” Korbyn said. His voice was even, and his face was expressionless. Liyana had an urge to hold his hand as if he needed comforting. She stayed behind him and didn’t speak. “We seek to return them to their rightful clans. Your god, Somayo, was one of them, and so we have come to ask your vessel to join us.”

  The chief rose to his feet. Without speaking, he left the tent. The man with the bird skull necklace covered his face with his hands. The chieftess blanched but did not move.

  Liyana felt a sick knot form in the base of her stomach. Please, no.

  “How . . . how long ago was it?” Raan asked. Her voice was hushed.

  The chieftess lowered her eyes and stared into the teacups. “Two nights ago.”

  Oh, goddess, two nights! If she’d learned magic faster, if Pia’s tribe had believed them faster, if Raan hadn’t wasted time with her escapes, if Fennik’s father hadn’t stabbed Liyana . . .

  “We didn’t know.” The old man’s voice was low and husky. “I should have. . . .”

  “I do not understand,” Pia said.

  Raan laid her hands on Pia’s shoulders and hauled her back toward the tent flap. “We’ll explain outside, princess. Liyana, help here?”

  “I’m not a princess,” Pia said. She dug her feet into the carpets and resisted. Liyana grabbed her other arm, and together she and Raan propelled Pia out of the tent. “Ow, ow, ow! But the vessel!”

  Outside, Liyana whispered in her ear, “They killed him.”

  Pia gasped.

  “Keep your face calm,” Raan ordered in her other ear. “We need to get out of here before it occurs to these people to blame us.”

  “But we didn’t—” Pia began.

  “It’s what people do, princess,” Raan said. She plastered a smile on her face and waved at the people who had gathered around the tent. Liyana did the same. “Better get Korbyn before they decide that any god will suffice.”

  Pia gasped again. “They wouldn’t!”

  “Return to Fennik,” Liyana said. “If Korbyn and I aren’t with you in three minutes, ride the horses through camp past this tent.” Releasing Pia, she walked back inside.

  Inside, the chieftess was openly crying. Korbyn held her hands, trying to comfort her. The old man looked as if he’d been punched in the gut. He huddled on a cushion, holding his knees to his chest and looking at the roof of the tent with wild eyes. Liyana wondered if he was the vessel’s magician—or if he had been his executioner.

  Liyana took a deep breath, marched across the tent, and pried the chieftess’s fingers off of Korbyn’s hands. “My clan is in Yubay,” she told the chieftess. “I recommend you join them there. Together, you can pool your resources until we rescue the deities.” She wondered what Korbyn had been telling her and hoped she hadn’t contradicted it. She decided she didn’t care. With Korbyn, she backed out of the tent.

  Outside, men and women milled between the tents, filling the spaces. Their stares felt like arrows. Pulling Korbyn by the elbow, Liyana strode in the direction of the horses.

  A woman with a baby in her arms rushed toward them. “Please, help my baby. She’s sick!” She thrust the baby at Korbyn. Korbyn stumbled as he caught the child.

  As if the woman had ignited a spark inside the crowd, others pressed forward. “The well is nearly dry,” one man said. “A few more months, that’s all we need.”

  “The birds . . . The eggs won’t hatch right. Please . . . If you help them . . .”

  “I broke my leg. Can’t work.”

  “My husband is ill. . . .”

  “Can’t find our usual prey. Hunting has gone bad. The drought . . .”

  They clustered closer. The mother of the baby was pushed toward the back of the crowd, and in Korbyn’s arms, the baby began to cry soft mewling sounds like a hurt kitten. A few began to push and shout as requests switched to demands. Liyana tried to force her way through.

  She heard hoofbeats. “Get ready,” she told Korbyn.

  The crowd broke apart as the horses thundered through. Fennik grabbed Liyana’s waist and yanked her up in front of him. Clutching the horse’s neck, she shot a look behind them to see Korbyn swing himself onto one of the other riderless horses. With a tight grip on the reins, Raan led Pia’s horse as Pia clung to her mare’s neck. They pounded through camp and burst out the other side. Men and women chased after them.

  Several miles away, at Fennik’s signal, they slowed, and then stopped. Fennik dismounted and began to care for the horses. All the horses had foam around their mouths. Sweat glistened on their sand-coated hides, and their sides heaved. Dismounting also, Pia soothed them, cooing to them as she stroked their necks.

  The baby whimpered.

  “You have a baby!” Pia cried.

  “Her mother said she was sick,” Korbyn said. He held the baby away from his body as if he were afraid that the baby would bite.

  “You have to help it,” Pia said.

  “Did you think I planned to leave it for the sand wolves?” Korbyn said. “Of course I’ll help it.” He slid off his horse. A dried-out cactus crunched under his feet.

  “You should have given it back,” Liyana said. She tried not to look at it, tried not to care, but at the baby’s cries, she felt herself twist inside. She thought of the babies in her clan, of the ones who needed Bayla.

  The baby cried louder. Her face squished and reddened.

  Pia scooped the baby out of Korbyn’s arms. “Let me.” Pacing in a circle, she sang a lullaby. The baby quieted and then began to utter a string of nonsense syllables, as if she were singing with Pia.

  Korbyn lowered himself to the ground. “Give it to me.”

&nb
sp; “We don’t have time for this,” Liyana said. But she didn’t say it with any conviction. If Korbyn didn’t heal this baby, no one would. The baby’s god wasn’t coming.

  Still crooning, Pia lowered the baby into Korbyn’s arms. Immediately the child wailed louder than before. Pia scooped her up again and sat close to Korbyn. “Will this work?” Singing, she calmed the baby. Her tiny, pudgy fingers wrapped around Pia’s white hair.

  As Korbyn focused on the child, Liyana sidled closer to Fennik and Raan. The three of them watched the camp. A plume of sand advanced from it. “He’ll collapse after he heals,” Liyana said. “He always does. It’s his worst trick.”

  Both of them looked grim. “We are fortunate that the Falcon Clan does not have horses, but even on foot, they’ll catch up,” Fennik said.

  “Loan me one of your bows,” Raan said.

  “We cannot shoot unarmed people,” Fennik said. The sand cloud obscured the number of people, but it had to be more than a dozen. It could have been a hundred. It could have been the entire clan. “Plus I do not have enough arrows.”

  Liyana rubbed her forehead, trying to think. She kept feeling the stones that her clan had thrown at her. If Jidali hadn’t intervened, this could have been her fate, and her clan could have condemned themselves. This baby could have been her cousin.

  Fennik checked on Korbyn. “He isn’t finished yet.”

  The plume of sand drew closer. It spread out wide, blanketing a stretch of the desert. Liyana heard shouting roll across the desert toward them.

  “They’re coming,” Raan said. “A lot of them.”

  “Five minutes, and we interrupt him,” Liyana said. If he isn’t finished healing the baby by then . . .

  Fennik tightened the saddles on the horses, who pawed the ground and snorted. Closer, Liyana recognized the magician and the chieftess at the head of the horde. At least a hundred men and women fanned out behind them.

  “I don’t think we have five minutes,” Raan said.

  Liyana knelt beside Pia and Korbyn, but she couldn’t speak. She kept picturing Jidali as a baby. It wasn’t this child’s fault that his god hadn’t come.

  Singing the words in the same lullaby tune, Pia said, “Leave me here, and I will deliver the baby to her mother when she comes.”

  “You can’t risk it,” Liyana said. “Your clan needs you.”

  Pia broke off singing. “I cannot leave a baby alone and merely hope they find her!” Hearing Pia’s agitation, the baby scrunched her face into a knot and screamed. Her cheeks flushed red.

  Korbyn’s eyes snapped open. And then he toppled over.

  Using one of Raan’s choicest swears, Liyana shook him. “Korbyn, wake up! You need to ride!” She and Fennik hauled him to his feet and with Raan’s help, they hoisted him onto a horse.

  Fennik secured him on and called to Pia, “You need to mount now!”

  “I’ll take the baby back,” Raan said. She lifted the child out of Pia’s arms. Immediately, the baby began to wail, reaching for Pia. Raan bounced the baby on her hip with a practiced ease. The baby fussed but then settled against her.

  The Falcon Clan was close. The chieftess shouted to them. Liyana could nearly distinguish words in the yell. Fennik scooped up Pia and tossed her onto a horse. “Raan has the baby?” Pia said. “I don’t hear crying. . . .”

  “I’ll escape north after I deliver the child,” Raan said. “Be there so I don’t die of dehydration.”

  Liyana began, “How can we trust—”

  Raan flashed Liyana a smile. “You don’t have a choice. Or rather, you do: me or Pia. And which of us has more practice escaping?”

  There was zero time left to discuss it. Liyana swung herself onto a horse, and they galloped away, leaving Raan to greet the doomed clan.

  * * *

  Just north of the Falcon Clan, Liyana climbed the branches of a tamar tree. She squinted at the sands beyond and saw no one. The camp was a smudge in the distance. Below her, Korbyn, Fennik, and Pia camped in the tree’s wide shadow, obscured from view by the spread of drooping limbs. The ancient tree covered nearly thirty feet of desert with limbs that reached the ground and then stretched vine-like a hundred feet in every direction. In the heat of the day, its broad leaves had curled into tight rolls, but the branches still sheltered Liyana and the others from the endless hot wind.

  So far they’d waited half a day.

  Liyana climbed down the tree, negotiating her way through the tangle of branches. She dropped to the ground next to their tent. “She isn’t going to come,” Liyana said. “We should have left the baby.”

  At the base of the tree, Pia cried, “Are you heartless? It was a baby!”

  “I didn’t say leave it to die,” Liyana said. “The clan was five minutes away. If we’d left it on bright cloth, they would have seen it, rescued it, and taken it happily home. Raan used that baby to flee.”

  “She’ll rejoin us,” Pia said. “She has to. She won’t let her clan die.”

  Another hour passed. And another.

  Korbyn lit a fire, a small fire with little smoke, on the opposite side of the tamar tree. He set the various rodents, insects, and other food they had to cook.

  Fennik oiled his bows. He also worked on fashioning new arrow points from rocks he’d collected. Liyana tried to practice her magic on the tamar tree. She wondered if her family had attempted their dreamwalks. Without Bayla, they couldn’t have chosen a new vessel. She wondered if they felt despair. She thought about her mother and father, Jidali, Aunt Sabisa, her cousins . . . She thought of Talu and wondered what she had done when the dreamwalks failed. Eventually Liyana gave up on her practice, and she crawled into the shade of the tent. Korbyn lay there with his eyes closed and his arms crossed over his chest. She pulled her knees up to her chin and looked out the tent flap, through the drooping branches, toward the Falcon Clan. “What should we do?” she asked Korbyn.

  Eyes still closed, he said, “I could have been sleeping.”

  “You weren’t,” she said.

  “How did you know?” He opened his eyes.

  “You have a little purr to your voice when you sleep.”

  “I don’t purr.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s a divine purr.”

  His mouth quirked a little, but the faint smile faded too quickly. “This shouldn’t be my responsibility,” he said without looking at her. “I’m not leadership material. I’m a trickster god. Little tricks. Not this!”

  Liyana was silent, considering how to reply. She thought of Jidali crying “Why me?” when he was asked again to card the goats. And she thought of herself after she’d been chosen in the dreamwalk. “Why is it you?”

  “I was with Bayla on the day she was summoned,” he said. “Her soul was drawn east, though your clan was west.” East, she thought. At last there was a direction. “No one believed me. It happened again. . . . The Scorpion Clan, the Horse Clan, Silk, Falcon. All drawn east. Still no one believed me, for who would believe a trickster god? I did this to myself. I made myself untrustworthy, and here is the price I pay.”

  “Surely they must believe you now,” Liyana said.

  “Most don’t watch the world,” Korbyn said. “You can’t affect the world of the living from within the Dreaming, and it hurts to see your clan suffer and be unable to help.”

  “How did you avoid the fate of the others?”

  He snorted. “Side effect of being a trickster god. Trust no one. When I was summoned east, I suspected a trick. I did not leave until I was certain that it was my clan who called.”

  You’re trusting me now, she thought, but she didn’t say it out loud. This was the most truth he’d spoken to her in weeks. “Who’s in the east who would do this?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he watched the sky above the tamar tree. Above, two sky serpents danced. Their glass scales caught the sunlight and reflected it like a thousand jewels as their bodies twisted and intertwined. Their eyes burned like minisuns as their bodie
s etched through the blue.

  Quietly Liyana said, “You don’t know. You don’t know who took the other deities or why they were taken, or even if others have been taken since. That’s why you never answer questions. You have no idea how to rescue them. Just like you don’t know what to do if Raan doesn’t come.”

  “You know, I used to be a very good liar.”

  “I’m sure you still are.” She patted his hand. “You just don’t want to lie to me.”

  “Oh, I don’t?” He looked amused.

  “You don’t,” she said, her hand still on his. “Because you don’t want to do this alone.”

  He stared at her, and then he covered her hand with his.

  Fennik raced to the edge of the tamar tree. “I see her!”

  Jumping up and down, Pia clapped like a child. “I knew it!”

  Liyana chased after him. Korbyn followed closely behind. They stayed just within the branches as a figure walked toward them.

  Fennik rode out to meet her, leading a second horse. In moments, both rejoined them. Raan slid to the ground and collapsed onto her knees.

  “I knew you’d return,” Pia crowed.

  Raan covered her face with her hands. Her sleeves rode up her arms, and Liyana glimpsed bandages. Kneeling beside her, Liyana pushed Raan’s sleeves back. Raan lowered her hands but didn’t resist. The bandages were wrapped all the way up her arms, over her tattoos. Hesitating, Liyana unwound the bandages.

  Underneath, the skin was red and raw in between new black markings of soaring falcons. Liyana looked at Raan. Raan’s eyes were wet. “I didn’t plan to return,” Raan said.

  The falcons obscured the scorpion images. Recoiling, Liyana wrapped her own arms around her stomach as if that would protect her own clan’s tattoos.

  “They were supposed to take me in and help me return to my clan. Then my clan would quit waiting for a miracle and find a way to save themselves. But instead . . .” Raan stared at her arms, and her arms shook. “This isn’t . . . I can’t . . .” Her voice rose higher. She looked at Liyana, and then at Pia and Fennik. Lastly she looked at Korbyn. “You must fix this!”