Foam rushed past his chin, racing toward the beach.
Poppy snorted and stomped her feet.
Creamy bubbles swirled past her legs. They reminded him of the head on the beer Lorel was so fond of. He sighed deeply. They reminded him that Lorel wasn’t speaking to him.
Sandy froth swept past Poppy’s knees, back to the ocean. Seaweed tangled around her legs like hobbles.
He giggled at her leafy manacles. But the ocean wasn’t allowed take a sweet horse like her. He leaned forward to drag the seaweed off. One handed and seated, he couldn’t get enough leverage to free her legs, so he wiggled to his knees.
Something nudged him hard under his butt.
He staggered upright and grabbed at Poppy’s collar to steady himself.
An incoming wave spun him around.
Periwinkle looked at him with wide, curious eyes. Eyes that gleamed blue for an instant.
Viper blinked and stared hard. Periwinkle’s eyes were brown again. Had always been brown. Froth coated the end of the gelding’s nose.
He shook his head. The horse had always been curious. He’d simply pushed with his muzzle. Not such odd behavior for any horse. His eyes had never turned blue.
Water rushed back into the ocean.
Viper closed his eyes and took several slow breaths. He leaned against Poppy as the wave rushed back to the ocean and clutched at her collar as though it were his last link to sanity.
Periwinkle arched his neck and huffed into Viper’s ear.
Poppy shivered her skin, shedding salty droplets, and plodded toward the beach.
Viper clung to her collar and lurched along beside her. Periwinkle splashed directly behind him. Together they guided – or herded – him back to the wagon.
The Kyridon watched their procession from the driver’s platform.
For a creature with no facial expressions, it still managed to give the impression that it was angry. The angle of its head reminded him of his mother when she couldn’t decide whether to spank him or laugh at him.
“The hatchling gamboled in the ocean most excessively.” It reared up taller and arched its neck. “The earth children harbor more wisdom than the hatchling. The hatchling sickens with exposure. This one wonders if the hatchling possesses any intelligence whatsoever.”
“It was your idea.” Too tired to walk the extra ten feet to the fire, he leaned against Poppy’s warm hide.
“The hatchling must remove its clothing and hang the garments in the sun to dry. The hatchling must treat its injured shoulder. The hatchling shall do so immediately.”
Viper sighed and patted Poppy’s neck. He turned and trudged toward the wagon.
He writhed out of his sodden, mangled coat and draped it on a wagon wheel. After dragging off his soggy, serdil-fur boots, he unlaced his trousers and stepped out of them. The beach spun and dipped when he reached down to lift them off the sand. He lurched upright, gasping. He had to lean against the corner of the wagon to lay his trousers on the edge of the driver’s platform.
He squirmed out of his shredded shirt and looked for a place to hang it.
Weak winter sunlight warmed his arms. Grayish-blue arms. Were they supposed to be that color?
“The hatchling will repose by the fire.”
He dropped the shirt in the sand and plodded to the campfire.
“The hatchling will sit close to the fire.” Exasperation crept into its voice.
He collapsed next to the fire, and immediately began to shiver. “Can’t I get dressed?”
“Praise Menajr! The hatchling has awakened.” The serpent slithered down to the platform beneath the driver’s bench, but seemed unwilling to crawl down to the sand. “The hatchling may attire itself after it has tended its wounds. First it must create a poultice of powdered prunella, hoary plantain, and comfrey leaves.”
He moaned and slapped his thigh. “You could have said that before I sat down.” At least he had all those herbs in stock. Bought at the Kyridon’s insistence, way back in Leiya. Could Dreshin Vipers predict the future?
He staggered upright and limped to the back of the wagon and opened the bottom chest. He collected his poultice box and a pair of bronze bowls, but had to stop and lean against the side of the wagon while he tried to catch his breath.
Here he was, at the end of winter in the far north, running around naked. No wonder the Kyridon was treating him as though he’d gone quite mad.
But he didn’t know what to do to fix the situation, other than obey orders. He shook his head and limped back to the fire.
He mixed the herbs in the smaller bowl, used the larger bronze bowl to pour boiling, salty water over the mixture, and set the first bowl on the glowing coals.
Viper risked a glance at his shoulder. The gashes weren’t nearly as deep as they felt. Maybe this wouldn’t be as painful as he feared.
While the poultice stewed on the embers, he filled the larger bowl with boiling water. He dipped a rag in the bowl, scalding his fingers, and daubed the rag against one gash. “Lightning strike it! Thundering sandcrabs, that hurts.”
“The hatchling generates an unwarranted disturbance.”
“And you might show a little mercy.” Not that a snake would, or even could. He clenched his teeth. “Hot brine on a deep cut deserves some screaming.”
The Kyridon stared at him for a moment before it slithered into the wagon.
He’d disappointed it. What did it expect? He was no warrior to take pain without flinching. Did it want him to be like that? Like Lorel?
He clenched his teeth tighter and finished cleaning his wounds. It took every bit of self-control he owned, but he managed to scrub the deep places without yelling.
Too much. Or at least, not very loud.
He mixed the herbal poultice with a wooden spoon, and doled the steaming mash onto a square of cloth. He clenched his teeth and pressed the bandage to his wounds.
Fire burst through his shoulder. It tore through his mind, leaving him breathless with agony. Pain twisted his navel, tangled in his belly and groin, shot through his legs and feet. His toes, real and ghostly, curled into tight knots.
He couldn’t even scream.
The torture went on forever, but he refused to pull the hot bandage from the wound. His heart thundered louder than the ocean. He knelt on the sand and fought for breath.
He rocked back and forth on his knees, mentally cursing the ancestry of the entire serdil race back to the dawn of Menajr. He managed to gasp a breath about the same time he ran out of swear words.
“May the Thunderer piss and flashflood those monsters. Now dead monsters, so I suppose he did.” He laughed silently at himself, and searched through his box for a strip of cloth long enough and clean enough to suit him. He wrapped the bandage around his shoulder and chest with shaking, awkward hands.
He tried to settle next to the fire, but the air was too cold to sit still for long. He had to get some clothes on before he caught lung fever. Wandering around wearing only a bandage wasn’t one of his smarter ideas.
What happened to his sock? He couldn’t remember taking it off.
One sock. One foot. He’d been walking around on his stump. And he hadn’t even noticed.
He noticed now. Grit burned against tender flesh. Every other step jolted his spine as his ankle sank into cold sand. He needed to find his old boots before he couldn’t walk at all.
Treading on his wet trousers, he clambered one-handed and one-legged up to the driver’s platform, and rested for a moment, sitting on his cloak on the bench. His wonderful, dry, warm cloak. Maybe he’d just rest here for a minute.
Wind flicked his hair around his shoulders. A gull soared down to inspect him, but quickly sailed away. His legs itched.
He brushed at the sand glued to his shins and thighs. He had to get clean. His mother would use his hide to line a basket if he carried that much dirt into her tent.
He scrubbed harder at the sand. And blinked. No tents. Not here. And three continents lay betwe
en him and his mother. Why did he think…? He shook his head slowly, but decided against worrying about it. Nothing made sense at the moment.
He eased through the door and crawled into the wagon. It wasn’t much warmer inside, but at least it was out of the wind.
Ignoring the Kyridon’s baleful glare, he struggled into clean smallclothes. He sat on Lorel’s bunk to tug on trousers. Lacing them with just one hand was harder than he’d dreamed possible.
The serpent watched him from the top bunk, its head tilted to one side. “The hatchling is growing.”
Viper perked up before realizing the statement was not meant literally. “I wish you’d phrase that differently.” He stood on the edge of Lorel’s mattress, swinging his stump out to help him balance, and yanked a woolen shirt out of the chest at the end of his bed. “I’d really like to grow a few inches.” He slid the shirt on and buttoned it clumsily.
“The hatchling will not wax physically. The hatchling must rely on other growth.”
So much for his dreams. He sighed and eased his old coat over his aching shoulder. His old, ratty boots hid deep in a drawer, but he dragged them out and yanked them on. Oddly enough, the padding in this one eased the pain in his stump.
He opened a cabinet, pulled out a small cooking pot, and scooped in a few handfuls of rice. Pushing the door open with his good shoulder, he set the pot on the driver’s bench.
He crawled outside and hung the pot on the edge of the driver’s platform.
His serdil cloak was still exactly where he’d left it before the attack. For some reason he’d thought the monsters would drag it off. He gingerly settled the cloak around his shoulders, hissing at its weight on his gashes.
He tottered down to the ground, trampling his frozen, briny trousers. Shaking with exhaustion, he carried the little pot to the cook fire. He dipped it in the pot of boiling water, half filling it, and set it at the edge of the flames.
The Kyridon coiled on the driver’s bench and watched him.
His supper was through cooking by the time his chin touched his chest. He ate salty rice with his fingers and started yawning before the pot was empty. “I’ve got to sleep.”
“The hatchling would humble the swordling if it flayed the defunct predators and attached the pelts to the conveyance.”
Laughter bubbled up inside his chest. “That will show her. I can’t wait to see her face.”
He skinned the cold carcasses as quickly as he could without jolting his injured shoulder, but it was a long and painful process. Two of the corpses bore only their death wounds, but four had been stomped and mashed. The pelts were tattered.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s the symbol that counts.” He hacked off those pelts in chunks.
It was full dark when he nailed the last strip to the wagon. He sat down next to the fire and fed another chunk of driftwood to the flickering blue and magenta flames. Lovely, he thought sleepily. Very lovely, even if the colors are caused by burning salts. I like to watch them just the same.
But there was one more thing he needed to do. He pulled his notebook and a charcoal pencil from a pocket inside his cloak and started making notes of the methodology behind the serdils attack.
Chapter 16.
At dusk, Lorel led the way back to the Loom-warping wagon. Her thread was so frayed she could hardly breathe. Tsai knew it and kept her distance. Even poor Nightshade knew it, somehow. He was shaking all over.
The miswoven kid must’ve stopped hours ago. He hadn’t gotten hardly anywhere today.
When she left – afraid she’d kill the Loom-breaker if she stayed – she’d let Nightshade run until he got tired. But then she had to wait for Tsai to catch up. And that took seven hundred years. The little mare never had no chance to keep up with a long-legged lad like Nightshade. He’d enjoyed the rest, munching down acres of sweet green grass.
Sumach refused to leave until she’d gotten her fill of grass, too. The poor horse was so skinny neither of them complained about it.
Tsai had given her a funny look, though. “He’s only thirteen. And he’s a boy. All boys are stupid, you know.”
She knew. She knew she shouldn’t have thumped him. It was like kicking a wiggly puppy. But he made her so fraying mad!
She’d shrugged and led the way back to find the kid. Who’d proven her point without saying a thing.
The frayed thread dozed next to the fire, but he wasn’t cooking anything. An empty pot lay next to him. He hadn’t even saved anything for her and Tsai. Did he think they wouldn’t come back?
She reined Nightshade to a halt at the edge of the firelight. Tsai pulled up right beside her.
The kid ignored them.
Well, she didn’t have to put up with his crap. “Why’d you stop so early, noodle brain?”
He looked up at her through raccoon-black eyes. No, not a raccoon. His black eyes surrounded by black bruising made his face look like it belonged on a days-dead corpse.
Her gut squirmed like the time she’d eaten thirty three pollywogs to win a bet. No, even the pollywogs hadn’t wiggled that much. She never should’ve lost control and hit the little guy that hard. But he was so miswoven irritating.
He turned his face to the wagon.
His clothes were spread out all over the bench and wheels, all crusty with dried salt and sand. The turtle turd had gone swimming. Didn’t he know he could get killed out there? She sucked in a breath to yell at him, but something looked off. Bad off.
Tsai gasped. “Temple-cursed monsters.”
Ragged serdil pelts trailed drips of frozen blood down the side of the wagon. More blood made huge puddles in the sand. Naked carcasses flickered at the edge of the light.
“Blood in the Weave.” She swung off Nightshade’s back. “Serdil attacked? Here?”
The kid nodded and added a chunk of driftwood to the campfire.
That took some thinking about. The team looked fine. The kid looked mad, but not much hurt, except for his face. She unsaddled Nightshade and groomed him before speaking again. “You fought them off? By yourself?”
“The Kyridon and the horses helped.”
She patted Nightshade on the shoulder and pushed him toward the grazing team. “Pull the other leg, kid.”
The kid turned his back on her.
Tsai finished grooming Sumach and started on Poppy’s salt-crusty legs. “You go swimming, too, old girl?”
“I didn’t think you could do it, kid.” Lorel flicked her fingers at the tattered pelts. “Didn’t think you had that much fight in you. But Weaver bust the Loom, I missed all the fun.”
The kid snorted and staggered to his feet. His foot. “Since you missed the fun, you can share in the work.”
Coward crap, she’d gone and slugged a cripple. Some warrior she was. “Fair’s fair, kid.” Whatever he needed doing, she better do it, just to start redeeming her honor.
He pushed his frozen clothing down to the sand and crawled up to the driver’s platform. “I had to cut the harness straps to free the horses. You can sew them back together.”
Lorel groaned, but nodded. “Right. But I gotta tell you, you got guts, kid.”
“All I’ve got is cold and tired.” The kid hunched on the bench. “I’m taking the lower bunk tonight.”
“How come? You wounded?” She trotted toward him. “You need some help?”
“I don’t need you at all.” The kid crawled into the wagon and slammed the door.
She shook her head and gathered up the ruined harness. More than leather needed mending, and she didn’t know where to start. On either job.
Tsai climbed up to the driver’s bench and pulled up the door. “We have news.”
The kid grumbled something.
“Sure.” She closed the door and climbed down. “He wants a fire in the stove before he’ll listen to us. Maybe warming him up will make him more sensible.”
Lorel doubted that, but it was worth a try. “Help me mend this mess, and I’ll help you gather wood.”
&
nbsp; “Fire comes first.” Tsai grabbed an armful of driftwood bits and climbed back up to the driver’s bench. “It’ll take a while to warm things up.”
Just her luck to get stuck with the mending. Maybe she should take it inside. Maybe not. With the kid that pissed, the wagon’s insides must be solid ice. Or boiling to melt rock. No, frozen. The kid always got icy mad.
Tsai swung out of the wagon, bundled up more driftwood chunks, and scooped some coals into the kid’s dirty pot before clambering back inside.
Lorel finished unharnessing the team. No reason to leave them in their collars overnight. And she brushed down the parts Tsai couldn’t reach. Honestly, she was surprised to see the kid hadn’t tended them at all. That wasn’t none like him.
Tsai made one more trip outside for a pot of clean water from the almost-empty water barrel.
Good thing they’d crossed a creek only a bit ahead. All four horses were headed that way already. She’d refill the barrel in the morning.
Smoke rose out of the stovepipe. The heady scent of boiled rice soon followed.
Lorel’s belly growled.
Had she eaten since breakfast? Pretty sure not. And it was too dark out here to mend leather, even if she knew what she was doing. And she didn’t.
So she dragged all the harness straps and the kid’s soggy fur boots inside where stray critters couldn’t munch on them.
The rice smelled even better inside the wagon.
She pulled the stuffing out of the left one before she put the kid’s boots under the stove to dry. The wagon started to smell like wet fur and wet wool, like a comfortable winter day at home after she’d spent the night fighting in the streets. She kinda missed chasing around after the gangs.
Too bad she’d killed Kraken. Now she’d never get to go home. But it was hard to feel sorry about killing the monster who’d tortured the kid.
Tsai rattled around with bowls and spoons and stuff, acting like she knew what she was doing. Just the thought of that girl’s cooking almost killed her appetite.
The kid huddled at the foot of her bed under the only lit lantern and pretended to read a book, the one full of sparrow tracks instead of real writing. He only put it down when Tsai pushed a bowl of rice into his lap.
Serpent's Child (The Mindbender's Rise Book 3) Page 24
