‘There’s me!’
‘Then you’re the last, brother.’
‘You’re no brother of mine!’ Dae Hyo stooped to pick up his axe and Min Ki flinched back. ‘Go. Get out of my sight,’ Dae Hyo told him, before rage could make him do something it was possible he’d regret.
Min Ki didn’t pick up his own weapon before turning and fleeing. His shape was soon lost in the darkness, as if he’d never been there. Dae Ho thought for a moment about running after him and telling Min Ki he was sorry. Wasn’t any brother better than none? But the answer must be no, because his feet stayed rooted to the ground until the sound of the other man’s footsteps was lost in the hush of the wind.
He couldn’t face going back to the wagons, not now he knew one of his own had helped kill those he was guarding. He decided to finish off the rest of the bandits at least, in payment for the food he’d had while travelling with the caravan. But the first man he stumbled over was already dying, so Dae Hyo bent to finish the job with a knife across his throat.
Gouts of blood splattered the man’s pack. Most of the clothes inside were ruined, but there were a few coins tucked among them, and at the bottom there was a bottle. Dae Hyo knew the instant he pulled out the stopper what it contained: whisky. The smell filled him with a longing he no longer saw any reason to resist, and the first swallow sent a fire through him he’d missed more than he knew. Let other men change. He’d stay exactly as he’d always been.
10
It felt good to be a man at last. Krish looked round the tent at the eleven others in the village who were permitted a voice in the council, and Isuru, the headman, who had the loudest voice of them all. He was speaking now about their choice of winter grazing for the goats, using that hectoring tone Krish’s father hated. His father beat his mother sometimes, after a council meeting, because in his own tent he had power and here he must bow to Isuru. His father …
But his father was dead. It was odd how often he found himself forgetting it, even though they’d raised his cairn only yesterday. The entire village had turned out to watch Krish laying rocks on his father’s corpse. Some had gagged at the smell of decaying flesh, but he hadn’t been nauseated. How could he be, when he was the one who’d turned a living man into meat?
‘Bored already, Krishanjit?’ Isuru asked and the others laughed. The headman’s face was almost perfectly round, skin tight over the fat beneath. He’d probably been handsome in his youth, but now he looked like an overstuffed sausage, with a mole on the side of his nose like a protruding lump of gristle.
Krish didn’t mind being mocked. He was junior here, he knew it, but a man all the same. He smiled and shook his head. ‘I want to listen and learn, that’s all.’
‘A wise answer,’ Isuru said in his ponderous, patronising tone, which Krish’s father had also hated. ‘It seems sometimes the apple does fall a little way from the tree.’
Some of the men looked uncomfortable while others laughed. Krish wondered if he was supposed to defend his father’s honour. But his da wouldn’t have cared about his reputation in this place and this company. He’d had no time for any of the village men.
Krish remembered his father’s dead eyes staring up at him from the floor of their own tent. His mother had wailed and wept. He’d been weak with the poison himself and he’d felt … nothing. Not the satisfaction he’d hoped for, or the guilt he’d dreaded. Maybe he’d sucked all the marrow from the act during the years he’d dreamed of it. The actual moment had been oddly flavourless.
Isuru was droning on again, about the next market and which of the men should go downriver to trade their goods. But he stopped at the sound of voices outside the tent flap: a boy’s and a woman’s, both high and excited. And then, in a terrible breach of tradition, the flap was thrown back and the pair entered. Krish felt a surge of indignation. He’d waited long enough for the privilege of sitting here, listening to Isuru tell them all what they should think and do. How dare someone else intrude without permission?
It was Amanthi and Bayya, a widow and her son who scraped a living by watching others’ herds when illness or work kept them away. The boy seemed to realise where he was and shrank back into Amanthi’s skirt, one eye blinking out at them from behind the material. Her gaze stuck on the floor as she shuffled forward.
‘Well?’ Isuru snapped. ‘What is it, woman?’
She seemed struck speechless, and it was the boy who finally piped up. ‘A man, a man, a man from the King on a big bird. A justice!’
A low murmur of surprise went round the room as Isuru nodded in satisfaction. ‘Good. It was past time he showed up.’
Krish felt a sliver of ice pierce his gut. ‘My da,’ he croaked. He cleared his throat. ‘Is it about my father?’
Amanthi nodded and finally looked up. ‘Yes, sir. He’s here to study the death.’
‘He flew in on a bird!’ the little boy said. ‘I saw him!’
Krish scrambled to his feet. His whole body felt rigid with terror. He knew his face was flushed with it and was glad it was too dark inside the tent for the others to see. ‘I need to tell my ma,’ he said.
Isuru seemed like he might object, but Krish didn’t give him time. He stumbled out of the tent and into daylight, looking frantically for the justice and his bird. They were further away than he’d feared, down at the bottom of the valley. Though the man’s face was impossible to see at that distance, the carrion mount was unmistakable, its dingy grey feathers a shade lighter than the rocks on which it perched. It was a scrawny animal, far past its prime, but its long curved beak still looked capable of delivering a mortal blow.
If Krish went to his mother he’d have to pass close enough for the justice to see him. He couldn’t let that happen; he knew his guilt was written all over his face. He turned away from the village instead and began to climb the hill that led towards his herd.
The walk took half an hour, not long enough to calm down but enough time to think. He’d been a fool to rush out of the council, he realised. It made him look guilty when nothing else had. He’d poisoned himself too; he’d nearly died and everyone knew it. If Isuru had summoned the justice to investigate his father’s murder he should see Krish as another victim. Krish needed to make sure of that, and the most important thing was not to act like a guilty man.
Still, checking on his herd wasn’t an unreasonable thing to do. The wind was picking up, filled with a cold moisture, and the goats would need leading to shelter when the storm the black clouds promised came. He could see the distant dots of the animals on the hillside ahead of him. They’d climbed high. His chest was tight with infection and following them would be difficult, but he didn’t dread it as he once had. His belly had been full since his father’s death. He was strong enough: a man.
Snowy bleated a greeting as he approached and he rubbed the nanny between her horns as the goat’s eyes drooped in pleasure. Her udder was full and he’d need to milk her or it would turn bad inside her. ‘You miss your little boy, don’t you?’ he said. ‘It’s all right. You’ll have another soon and I’ll take better care of him.’
He hadn’t brought a churn with him, so he had to squeeze the milk out of her and straight on to the ground. It was a waste and he resented it more now that it was his milk, his herd. When he’d done with Snowy he led the rest of the goats into the shelter of an overhang and tethered Dapple to a stake he drove into the ground by the cliff face. The herd were a comforting presence around him, with the warmth of their bodies and the musky scent he’d known all his life.
They needed food, though, and they wouldn’t be able to graze in the storm. He left them in their shelter and went out into the driving rain himself. The drops stung like summer insects. There was a grumble of distant thunder and he knew it wouldn’t be safe to stay out much longer. He found one patch of greenish grass and plucked it, lifting his tunic to hold it, though it exposed his bare belly to the freezing air. In an hour he’d found enough to last the goats until the morning, and turned tow
ards his real goal.
Stripped of its berries by him and its leaves by the goats, the bush was just the skeleton of a living thing. He’d brought flint and kindling, but it was too damp to burn. He took out his knife and cut it up instead, patiently breaking branches into twigs and twigs into fragments.
When he’d finished, only the stump remained, pointing up at him like an accusation. He left it where it was and threw the broken remnants of the bush into the nearest crevasse. He paused on the edge of the drop, looking down, and tried to think if there was any other evidence against him.
‘Krishanjit?’
The voice, carried on a ragged gust of wind, made him jump so hard he almost tumbled down to fall on top of the evidence of his guilt. He gasped in a breath of cold air and made himself stop trembling, then turned round.
It was the justice. He stood ten paces away, his green and blue cloak flapping round his thin body. Krish knew that, like all justices, he’d once been a carrion rider for the King, but it was hard to imagine. The man had aged and diminished more than his mount. It wasn’t surprising the pair of them had retired from fighting to serve the Oak Wheel in this distant place.
‘I’m Krish,’ he said at last, stepping towards the man and offering his hand.
The justice took it, his grip far stronger than Krish had expected. ‘Good. Good. Your mother said I might find you here. I’m sorry indeed for your loss. My wife lost her own father last year. Devastating.’
Krish nodded, not knowing what to say. Should he pretend grief? But if the justice had spoken to anyone in the village, he’d know how things had stood between him and his father.
‘A man of few words,’ the justice said after a moment. ‘I respect that. I was wondering, though, did you think your father’s death unnatural? To be frank, I’m not sure why I’m here.’
‘Isuru our headman summoned you,’ Krish said as carefully as a man walking on a cliff edge. ‘I suppose he wanted to be certain he kept the law. But it was just bad food. I ate it too.’
‘So I heard. You don’t think it could have been poison, then? Maybe whoever it was wanted to dispose of your whole family.’
‘To steal our goats?’ Krish laughed and the justice smiled a little uncertainly. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well, better to be thorough. Better to be sure. Have you finished your work here for the day?’ He looked up at the sky, dark with rain, as a jagged flash of lightning split it apart.
Krish nodded. ‘Yes. I’m heading home.’
‘Then I’ll walk with you. You can tell me exactly what happened, and with the Lady’s blessing I can be on my bird and away by sunset.’
Krish’s head jerked up at another flash of lightning. When he looked back down the other man had stepped close to him and their gazes locked for a moment. The justice startled, as if in delayed reaction to the lightning, but Krish knew it was the sight of his strange eyes that had surprised the man. He’d seen that expression before. Then the thunder growled violently and the justice jumped again and swallowed nervously.
‘Don’t worry,’ Krish said. ‘We’ll be safe from the storm down below.’
‘Yes. Yes. Safe.’ The man drew in a deep breath and seemed to steady himself, giving Krish a wobbly smile. ‘Safe indeed. Let us get down as soon as possible, then.’
But he stayed still and after a moment Krish realised the justice meant for him to lead. Maybe he was uncertain of his footing on the goat tracks. Even Krish struggled over the slippery wet ground. The gloom painted everything grey, so that he turned his ankle on unseen loose rocks more than once. After they’d been travelling a little while he heard the justice curse and the clatter of stones as he fell to his knees. But when Krish turned back to help, the man waved him on. ‘No need. No need. Speed is of the utmost, is it not?’
The storm was blowing fiercely now. It prevented any talking and Krish used the time to consider what more he could say. He’d be truthful about his father, he decided. He’d say that he was a violent man, not well liked. He’d admit that his life was better without him. And he’d concede that someone might have tried to poison them both. He considered hinting at who it might be – Rahul was known to dislike his da – then decided that would be dangerous. He didn’t want to look like he was trying to put blame elsewhere. No, he’d tell only the one, big lie and stick to it. Other little lies would just tangle him up.
He was smiling by the time the village came in sight. He could do this. He stopped to wait for the justice to catch up, offering him a hand to help him down the steep ridge that bounded the settlement on its western side. The other man’s arm shook beneath his hand and he felt a stab of sympathy. Up close, he could see that the justice was an old man, his hair more grey than brown and his thin face seamed with wrinkles. It seemed cruel of the King to send him out to such distant parts in such bad weather.
‘Almost there,’ Krish said.
The justice nodded, his eyes scanning the village. ‘I don’t see any people.’
‘They’ll be sheltering from the rain. Who did you want to find?’
That seemed to stump the justice for a moment. ‘Your headman, perhaps?’ he said finally.
Krish led him towards Isuru’s big, white tent. He found that he was shaking too, and he wasn’t quite sure why, except that the justice kept shooting quick, sideways glances at him when he thought Krish wasn’t looking.
Without having made a conscious decision, Krish found himself drawing away from the other man as they approached the headman’s tent. He was bowing an awkward farewell when the tent flap was thrown back and Isuru strode out, followed by the rest of the council.
The moment he saw them, the justice spun to face Krish, one trembling finger pointed at his chest. ‘Arrest him!’ he screeched. ‘You men, arrest him now!’
For a second everyone was too shocked to move. Krish began to run just as the others started to move towards him and in five strides he was thrown to the ground beneath a pile of bodies. The mud was sucked into his nostrils by his desperate breath until he panicked, thrashing and lashing out at the people over him. One body fell away, then a second, and he saw a flash of sky and a brief hope of freedom before both his arms were grabbed and twisted behind his back and he was dragged to his knees. Filth dripped from his face as he lifted it to stare at the justice.
‘But I told you,’ he gasped. ‘The food was bad. I didn’t kill him!’
The other man looked puzzled. Then he shook his head. ‘I’m sure you didn’t. It’s no matter.’
‘Then why …?’
‘Yes, I think you need to answer that,’ Isuru said. He was using his pompous tone and Krish didn’t mind at all.
‘You don’t know?’ the justice said. ‘You really have no idea, do you?’
Isuru deflated a little. ‘No, we don’t. Why don’t you tell us?’
‘It’s incredible. Here in this backwater, this village without even a name, you have living the most wanted man in all of Ashanesland.’ The justice looked at Krish, smiling triumphantly. ‘And I found him.’
They took Krish to the edge of the village and manacled him to the old tree with loops of chain he knew he’d never break. He’d never seen so much metal in his life. It was heavy on his wrists and the tree’s bare branches provided little shelter from the wind. He hoped he might be given food or at least a cloak, but the hidden sun sank towards the horizon and no one came. His throat was dry with fear and he raised his mouth to let the rain trickle down his throat. It dripped from the gnarled branches and tasted of wood.
The most wanted man in the kingdom.
It was ridiculous. They must have mistaken him for someone else. The only time he’d ever left the village was to go to Frogsing. Could the men who’d tried to rob him have accused him of a crime to cover their own? But why would anyone believe them? He told himself over and over that it would all be fine. They’d realise they had the wrong man and let him go.
But he remembered, with unforgiving clarity, the moment wh
en the justice’s friendliness had changed. It had been when the man saw his eyes for the first time: his strange, moon-silver eyes, which had always marked him as different – which proved he was a foundling. Those eyes were a gift from his parents, his real parents; his study of the goats had proven that. So who were his real parents? Were they enemies of the King? Was he being held to pay for their crimes?
Just before full dark, he saw a commotion at the far end of the village around the justice’s carrion bird and then it took to the air. There was a figure on its back and he guessed it was the justice himself, gone to get help. The bird was probably too old to carry two, or perhaps the justice was afraid to share his ride with Krish. Afraid I’d attack and overpower him, Krish thought, being this dangerous criminal that I apparently am.
A little while after the justice left, Vidu separated from the other villagers and headed towards Krish. He was a squat, ugly man, about the same age as Krish’s father but gentle and warm where his da had been cold and hard. He stopped a dozen paces away, then sighed and settled to the ground, wrapping his cloak round him and pulling it up to cover his head. His eyes settled on Krish, but he didn’t say anything. His expression was hard to read. Maybe a little ashamed.
‘I didn’t do it,’ Krish said. ‘Whatever they say I did, I didn’t.’
The other man didn’t answer, but his eyes shifted away.
‘What does the justice say I did?’ Krish asked after a moment.
It didn’t seem that Vidu would answer him. Then he sighed and said, ‘I don’t know, Krish, but he said there’s a five hundred gold wheel reward for you. He’ll split it with all of us if we’ll just keep you safe until he brings more men.’
‘Five hundred gold wheels,’ Krish said. ‘It’s nice to know what I’m worth.’
‘It’s a fortune. Would you turn it down if it was me?’
‘And you believe the justice? I’m the most wanted man in Ashanesland, he says. They’re probably offering five thousand gold wheels for me. He’ll be laughing at you as he gives you a few coins and keeps all the rest.’
Smiler's Fair: Book I of The Hollow Gods Page 13
