by K. Johansen
“Divining?” Holla-Sayan asked, behind her. She hadn’t heard him come in. Didn’t look around, as if freezing there might make him leave.
A failing swing. Such a blow with a sharp edge and someone’s full strength behind it could have taken the top of her head off. Old Great Gods, she was alive. She was alive.
Face floated in the tea. Hers, she supposed. Tattoos dark, scabs darker. She was all shadows, drifting there. Hollow. One eye peering out of darkness, as if it were all that were left of some shattered painting on a broken jug.
Hideous. Her head ached.
“You’ve got the knack of caravaneer’s tea, now,” he said, peering over her shoulder. Voice gentle, as if he thought she might bolt like a half-wild horse. “Thick enough to bear a mouse.”
She shook her head.
“A small mouse,” he protested. “Maybe a shrew?”
She didn’t mind Moth, Rifat, Deysanal and Iarka, none of them. They didn’t know her. They didn’t matter.
Someone’s face looked back at her. Not hers.
“Hey.” He came around before her, hands over hers. “Don’t,” Holla-Sayan said.
She frowned. Mistake. Face hurt. “I want to see.” See her own face. See, not half a world. Not see the great livid furrow that would still cross half her face when the scabs peeled away, the hollow, scar-filled socket.
Wanted not to be seen.
She had never thought she was vain.
It wasn’t vanity, that sick turn in the stomach when you didn’t recognize yourself.
Her hands were shaking. She let him take the tea away, set it on the table. Scalding, and she was going to spill it down her shirt. His hands on her shoulders. Hands cupping her face, careful of the scabs. Didn’t force her to look up, just held there, cool fingers growing warmer.
“Jo, you’re alive.” Hands stroked down her arms, to enfold her own again. Her hands were still her own. “I keep losing people, Jo. I thought they’d killed you and you’re here. Please. Your face will heal. It’s healing already.” His thumbs caressed the backs of her hands. “Won’t you look at me?”
She shook her head.
She didn’t look at him. She never did. She looked at the floor, the soup-kettle, the platter of bread, her hands, whenever he was near. Turned over in the night to face the wall.
She hadn’t realized…
“You want me to stay away, leave you alone?” He’d not quite released her hands, but his grip was light, hardly touching.
Her one eye could cry. Watery. It wept in the slightest breeze, when she went out into the courtyards. It wept now. Made her nose run. Thin, bloody snot, draining tears. Something not quite healed yet.
“No.” That was a choked whisper.
Fingers tightened on hers again. Carried her hands to his mouth, pressed them there. Great Gods damn, she needed to wipe her face.
“Jo,” he said. “Oh, Jolanan. It’s gruesome now. It’ll be better.”
He could say so. He must have come close to losing an eye himself, once, those ancient scars—but he was not human, and anyway, he had not.
“Better, how? It won’t grow back. I can’t see, all that side. There’s just this—this lump, in the way.”
“That’s your nose.”
“How can I fight?” As if she cared. She should. She didn’t.
“With practice,” he said. “Adapt. Make sure you’ve always got a friend to be your near-side shield. Is that really what you’re afraid of?”
He had a handkerchief, clean rag, at any rate. He was wiping her face for her as if she were a snivelling child, and he had so much practice with that, didn’t he, with snivelling little girls and cranky children who bawled over nothings, as children did—father, grandfather, great-grandfather…She was crying, stupid choking coughing sobs, and she couldn’t seem to stop. So tired, so devils-damned tired and papa, child-simple, mind-addled papa dead, lost, but not the peace he deserved, only more pain and uncomprehending horror for his last moments a summer and a life ago and now, now she cried, and—and she didn’t even know what she was crying for, only she was tired and her head hurt and—
So childish. So ungrateful of this gift of the Old Great Gods, of fate, of chance, of Rose’s skill and wizardry. She could so easily be dead.
Made herself stop, somehow. Made herself be still, and this time he put the handkerchief into her hand, let her clean herself up, but his hands held her by the shoulders and when she looked up—she could look up, and for a moment he wasn’t some old man, some legendary monster-hero, he was only a good-looking man a bit too old for her, maybe, but not even old enough to be her father, and it was a friend’s face, a comrade’s face, as it had always been, and unchanged, not flinching away. But there was a flinching in her, still. She tried to hide it. She was wrong to feel it, to be…afraid. To have that thought, that he was a beast and a monster and an alien soul was alive in him, a thing neither human nor demon nor god of the earth…
She pressed herself to him, carefully, wounded side turned away, and he wrapped his arms around her. She tried to make herself relax there, as she wanted to.
“It’s not your face,” he said. “It’s all of you, you know. It always was. And all of you is beautiful, body and soul. Still and always.”
Alone with Trout on the roof of what they called the observatory tower, where deep-scored grooves in the parapet stones marked the rising and setting of particular stars, particular dates. All over his head, such matters. No scholar, not in himself, and what the Blackdog’s hosts might have known, men like the Tiypurian Hareh, he didn’t chase.
Already in the fading light the fires of the Westron camp made their own constellations, red and threatening. There had been no further foray over the river. Not yet. A small, unauthorized excursion, not something, it seemed, that Sien-Shava Jochiz meant to retaliate for. They had a bargain, the All-Holy and Moth, and it had been Jochiz’s own folk who broke it. He would have extracted a price for that, she said, if she had not.
But she did not trust him to leave her be, if she lingered here.
“Time you were going, too, Blackdog,” Trout said. Not wizardry. They had spoken of this already, though not to say, tomorrow, the next day.
“You should all leave.”
“We can’t. You know why. He may follow, if we leave. If we stay, we can obscure the trail.”
Holla-Sayan shook his head in denial.
“Yes, father. Leave the understanding of wizardry to those of us who are wizards. I’ve seen…what comes. It’s enough.”
“What do you see?”
Trout smiled, an old man’s smile in the twilight. “For you? A road east…a road through shadows, the darkest of all…a fierce and valiant young woman.”
“For us all.”
“The long road and the stars and the blade of the ice…I can see, Blackdog, but…as if in a smear of smoke, shadows deep in the current. They…give me hope, but to name them, pin them in words…I can’t.”
“Wizards.
“Indeed. Ride with the dawn, Blackdog. Take your fierce young woman, and my fierce Iarka, and make certain that Rifat rides with you. Persuade him Iarka needs him to attend her, when she goes among the folk of other goddesses. He has ideas of serving Kinsai with a noble death.”
“I’ll make sure he stays with Iarka.”
“Good.
Only five camels in the stables. Four to ride, and one for baggage. And the fierce young woman was not his.
Moth came out onto the roof, silent as a ghost, and Mikki padding after her. Jolanan behind. She might have been walking with them. He’d never seen her speaking long with Moth, but she seemed comfortable in the Northron’s presence. Seemed to care for Mikki. She had taken over much of the cooking, making vast dishes to tempt the appetite of an invalid giant. Grown easy with strangeness, with walking among legends. Easy with some. Himself—not so much. Not always. Which hurt. Let him hold her, sometimes. Flinched away, others. Wouldn’t meet his gaze, too often.
/> Still found reflection to trap herself with, when she thought there was no one else to notice. He hurt for her, didn’t know any way to help, but to wait. To be there, when she did want an arm about her, a warm body to lean on. A friend, if nothing else.
“The Blackdog and his noekar are leaving with the dawn, Ulfhild Vartu,” Trout said. “My granddaughter Iarka and Rifat ride with him to Lissavakail in the mountains. And you?”
“No. I go to Marakand, and the Salt Desert made Mikki too ill, last time we tried to cross it. Ended up spending almost a year in the mountains while he got his strength back. Better to travel the edge of the Great Grass and cross the Undrin Rift, this time. He doesn’t like the heat.”
Mikki didn’t react, but he watched them all, listening.
“Is that what took you so long?” Holla-Sayan asked, deliberately light.
“Ya. Also there was a god in the Salt who took a dislike to me.”
“I wonder why?”
A shadow of a smile, and Mikki, Mikki, wonder, showed his teeth, not a snarl but a dog’s grin. Her hand, resting on his head, tightened in his fur. But she glanced at the horizon, not the fires but the last sliver of sun, hot red copper.
She was already handing him a quilted winter caftan as he shook himself and stood up, human. Even Jo was so used to this she only glanced away a brief, polite moment, while he shrugged it on, tied the sash. Moth kept an arm around his waist.
“The farther we are from Sien-Shava when he crosses the river, the better for all of us, and Mikki’s fit to travel, if we take it easy. We’ll meet again.”
“Marakand?”
“Ya. Lend me your horses, dog. I’d rather travel by night, for the first while, and those brutes they breed in the Western Grass these days can carry him.”
No protest from Mikki, whom Holla might have expected to protest that he could walk on his own four feet. He spoke rarely, quietly, and mostly to Moth. He would smile. He would meet Holla’s eyes, which in the first days he would not. But speech…mostly he just slid away into silence or away altogether, so that Holla-Sayan had begun to feel any attempt on his part an intrusion.
They needed space, and a fire, and a jar of mead. Silence and the stars, to see what followed.
“What happened to Styrma?” he asked instead.
“I lost him, long ago.”
“One of the horses is Jo’s.”
They had already spoken of this—the need to leave the horses behind, at any rate.
“Yes,” Jolanan said. “Of course. But you’ll look after them?”
“Don’t let the cub eat them,” Holla-Sayan said, with a sidelong look at Mikki.
“I don’t know, he gets hungry, sometimes.”
Mikki—Mikki shook his head and rolled his eyes. A bark of laughter. Moth—at that she might have seen the dawn, after a sunless Baisirbska winter. Mikki said nothing more, but he smiled at Jolanan.
“We won’t eat your horses, Westgrasslander. Warden of the Upper Castle…” And Moth drew her sword, bowed her head, touching it to the hilt, a salute Holla-Sayan had never seen before. Mikki gave a grave nod. She slid into Northron. “…We take our leave. Thank you. We needed shelter. We needed—” a hint of a smile, “reassurance. I did. I’ve spoken to Lady Deysanal and Master Rose much these past days. They’ve been of great comfort. We’ve already taken our leave of them, but—what blessing can I give you, short of what I won’t, to fight Jochiz in this place and lay waste to the life within this land so beloved of you?”
“None,” Trout said. “We serve the road. You are of the road, and you are my father’s true friend. And never would we have turned a demon of the earth away. What blessings are left to us to speak, go with you, and safety on your road, and healing, and…” He shrugged. “What I see, perhaps you do. Go well Ulfhild Vartu, Mikki Sammison. Come safe to where you need to be.”
She nodded, bowed, Mikki did. Spoke, deep voice rough with disuse, “Thank you, Trout.”
Moth gave Holla-Sayan and Jolanan a more casual nod.
“We shall meet at Marakand, Blackdog,” she said. “Come on, cub. The moon will rise before we leave the road for the hills.”
Holla-Sayan watched them down the stairs, till they were below the level of the rooftop.
“I want to see Lark one last time,” Jolanan said, and ran after them. Hand out to feel where the wall of the stairwell was, going down. She began to learn to judge distance again. Awkwardly. Not often successfully. Felt for cups, before she poured. Rifat had made a patch for her eye, working with soft leather. Protection for the scar against what she could not see coming, and blowing dust and grit as well.
“You should all leave,” Holla-Sayan said again.
Trout came over to him, leaning on his stick, which he so rarely did. Hugged him close.
“I’m glad,” he said, “to have known such a father.”
CHAPTER XXIII
From the Chronicle of Nikeh Gen’Emras
Within days of the death of the goddess Kinsai, the warband of the Westgrasslander chieftain Reyka had crossed the river of the goddess Bakan, abandoning their own land. Far to the south, the Lower Castle of the ferry-folk by the Fifth Cataract had burned and stood an empty shell, its folk travelling east on the caravan road while a second caravan followed them, with all the books of the Upper Castle’s library in its care. It passed the ruin of the Lower Castle while the All-Holy’s army of the South was still building its camp on the western bank of the river there.
Above the hundred miles of white water, the army of the North began to cross, a flotilla of small boats, and then there, too, the work of quarrying the hills of the eastern bank and bridging the never-tamed Kinsai began, and many men and women, eager Westrons and captive Westgrasslanders, died in the quarrying and in the building, as if there lingered still some hostility towards them in Kinsai’s waters and the valley that had once been hers.
Travellers on the caravan road had this news at Serakallash, and found themselves marooned, as it were, in that Red Desert town, their road to the north grown too perilous. Some sold at a loss; some turned back for Marakand. Others went on, thinking that the traditional neutrality of the caravan road would be their shield, or that they might find some route farther east of the river valley in the bare hills. In this they were mistaken, and few came through with their goods to At-Landi, or at all.
The All-Holy crossed the river with the seventh- and sixth-circle priests of his mystery, his highest officers and his seers, and determined to make his winter residence in the Upper Castle of the ferrymen, in which, his scouts and spies had reported, a few of the elderly and ill of Kinsai’s folk had remained, abandoned by their kin.
A thin skin of snow lay over the hilltops and in the dawn the river smoked. Ice fringed the rocky shore. Cat-ice, the children called it, though it would need to be a venturesome and lightweight cat that would risk it. The river never froze over, not this far south. This was only a warning of winter. The Kinsai’av stormed down the falls of the First Cataract in braids, chains of white, all foam and fury. A mile above the castle, on this eastern shore, men broke stone, gnawing a quarry into the hills. Women loaded stone. Carts hauled stone. A great company of labourers had crossed in boats. Footings were rising above the water. The piers of a bridge began to take shape.
The river’s shores were black with boats, east and west. They crossed and recrossed.
The Upper Castle was built within Kinsai’s embrace, its foundations in the water, a moat crooked around its landward side like an arm encircling. Their bridge was gone, the gates closed. They were watched, of course. The watchers might see, sometimes, candlelight, behind narrow high windows. Let them. No wizard-lights burned.
Westron labourers and Westgrasslander conscripts hauled stone to the moat, and a causeway advanced. The warden watched, every day, from the roof of the north tower. Deysanal didn’t like him climbing up there, but he wanted sun, wind, and sky while they were still his to claim. To lurk furtive at a window—no. No o
ne shot at him. He had laid a small pattern over the tower roof, nothing of great power, though he suspected such a working was beyond the capabilities of the Westron priests without their false god lending them a thread of his powers. Few wizards among that folk; even their seers were weak. They did not notice him watching. He was shade and cloud-shadow, only that.
Footsteps on the stairs. Deysanal. She came to his side, leaned there. Confident in his spell’s obscurement for herself, for all that she would rather he were below.
“They’re nearly over.”
“Yes.”
“Papa…” Long since she had called him that. She said nothing further. He put an arm around her.
Below, a man among those wrestling an unhitched cart into place slipped, but others were already heaving. Stone fell. The man screamed. Two women rushed with spade and pick to try to lever up the boulder crushing him, but there were shouts, orders—the cart was pushed away, another already backing into place. A man in a red tabard went down to him. He shrieked and was silent. Silenced. The work went on. Smaller rubble filled the gaps, making a surface.
Others kept watch on the river. The warden and Deysanal left the roof, took a meal in the kitchen. They were mostly living in the kitchen these days, and the great dining hall next to it. Eating together, sleeping there, the one fire kept burning. It was too grim, elsewhere: the library where generations had gathered the fragmented thought and dreams of the world, the study where he himself had worked, meticulously documenting the fish of the river in coloured inks and piecing together scraps of memory teased from songs and broken histories, the tales of the coming of the Westgrasslanders out of the east. What point, that work? Who could say? Gone with the caravan, racing to be ahead of the Army of the South’s crossing at the Lower Castle. The shelves and pigeon-holes and cupboards were bare. All gone, or buried in the hills, sealed in lead and wax.
Someday…
“Warden? The devil’s crossing.”
They went, nearly all, to what windows faced upriver. He to the tower roof again. Yes, the devil himself, no feigned double. Priest-knights at the oars, and banners flying, mottoes to be read, for those who knew the Tiypurian characters. He had hoped Jochiz might wait for the completion of his bridge, which would surely not be till the spring.
