I smiled and watched them go, spotting the baby goat with others, then followed Niero toward three outhouses on the edge of the tents. “This is more a village than a post,” I said. “There are families here? How do they keep the Zanzibians away?”
“The power of trade,” Niero said, reaching one of three outhouses first, checking it for me before gesturing inward. “And a trader with a softer heart than is healthy for him. I fear he’ll be overtaken.” His dark eyes shifted over three little girls, skipping together, hands interlocked.
I closed and tied the door shut, wondering what he could mean about a heart too soft to be healthy. And afterward, as we paused by the stream to wash our hands and splash our faces, he began to tell me what he knew. “Tonna told me that Jorre has five wives,” he said in a whisper, pausing as two children filled large earthen jars with water. I watched as they balanced them on their heads and padded off on bare feet back to their tents, even though their curious eyes said they wanted to stay with us.
“Five wives?” I whispered.
“Each were widows with children, wandering the Central Desert when he found them,” he said, scrubbing his hands, picking dirt from beneath his nails, and scrubbing his hands yet more. “They would have been kidnapped by Drifters, or Zanzibians, and their male children immediately dispatched. As a trader, he keeps them all safe. Both the Drifters and the Zanzibians respect him too much, need him too much, to steal them away. So here he sits, a trader of the desert, in nothing but tents, with his ever-burgeoning family.”
I frowned in confusion. It was against the ways of the Community to marry more than one person. We mated once, and for life. But how could I argue with what Jorre had done? I’d seen the depravity that faced women in the city. And all these little girls … I counted five, just within my direct view.
A big belly laugh greeted us as we shook our hands dry and turned back to the tents. “My friend, my friend,” said a man, turning to Niero. He carried a thin boy over his shoulders and a babe in his arms. “I finally am allowed to greet your friends,” he said. He was a huge man of about three decades, with rolls of fat at both his neck and arm, and a smile that displayed many missing teeth. He shifted the boy to the ground and passed off the baby to him, then folded me in his arms like we were long-lost family, kissing me on both cheeks, then clasping arms with Raniero. “I am Jorre of the Desert,” he said to me. “Welcome, welcome. Forgive me for not greeting you all last night. I just got in from a trade run and was rather weary.” He eyed the horizon and then Raniero. “With the sun coming up, it’s best we keep our women hidden among the tents.”
Jorre put a gentle hand on my shoulder and ushered me toward the tents again.
His overly familiar manner irritated me, even if he meant it as a kindness, and I squirmed away. “If we can get in and out of Zanzibar, I doubt that — ”
“Andriana!” Niero barked, coughing, as if he were trying to hide anger and alarm.
I looked to him and abruptly shut my mouth when those feelings were confirmed.
“Please,” he said to our host, as the big man turned keen eyes from me to Niero and back again. “Let me get Andriana back to the tent and we can then speak in private, Jorre.”
“Certainly, certainly,” Jorre said, studying me as if searching me, trying to make sense of who or what I was. He wasn’t lusting after me — he apparently had all the women he needed in camp. What I felt from him was intrigue. Curiosity. As if I were a new puzzle for him to solve.
Niero took my arm and clamped down on it, pulling me along, clearly furious. For what? Standing up for myself? I wasn’t some lost desert woman, looking for a man to save her.
He practically pushed me into the tent. The others stirred and began to sit up as I turned and faced Niero. “What?” I said, growing angry and confused. Scared I’d done something really wrong.
“We cannot have anyone knowing where we’ve gone. Or where we’re going,” he said, almost shouting at me even though he whispered. “You endanger us all, volunteering information like that,” he said, pacing a few steps and then back, one hand on his hip, the other madly gesturing in the air. “How long would it take Jorre to connect the story of those who freed the healer in Zanzibar with us, here? Given Tressa’s red hair? Your comeliness? Four men beside you? Aren’t we already recognizable enough, without you waving a report of our history like a flag before you?”
I took a step back, confused. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t think — ”
“No. You didn’t.” He heaved a sigh. “Look, Andriana … All of you,” he said, turning to the others. “We have to be careful. Wise. Jorre most likely suspects that we are the ones the Sheolites hunt. But now he knows. He knows.” He lifted his hands to the roof of the tent, as if speaking to the Maker in silence. “Please. Please,” he said to me. “Speak only upon permission when we’re not alone, especially with people we do not yet know or know we can trust. Jorre manages to keep all these women and children safe through trade. And knowledge of us is a commodity.”
“All right. All right,” I said, feeling both defensive and humiliated as his words echoed in my mind. But also surprised. He thought me … comely. Beautiful? Wasn’t Tressa far more pretty in all her soft femininity and exotic red hair? But then I immediately chastised myself for such vanity. Who cared if he thought me beautiful or not? He was my leader, my brother. Nothing more. Making an observation.
But no one in my whole life had called me beautiful. The Community considered it low to exchange such compliments, unless one was in the most intimate of situations. Catering to our most base desires …
“Stay here,” he said, looking fiercely at me and then at all the rest, daring them to argue. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
With that, he disappeared out the door, and I noticed the children outside were now quiet and far from our doorway, as if they’d sensed our tension, and it had cast a pall over the entire trading post. Or had their mothers all drawn them into their tents, as Jorre had wanted?
“Well, this is going to be a good day,” Vidar said, flopping to his back. “Way to start us out strong, Dri. Dad’s all mad now.”
Bellona and Killian smiled. But I didn’t.
Niero returned and ushered us out to our bikes in the center of the post, now filled with petrol — the extra tanks on the side topped as well. Jorre’s huge family and a fair number of the Tah Post gathered around to see us off. With that much petrol, we’d likely reach the salt caves. But would it carry us all the way to the Wall, if necessary?
“Take care, friend,” Jorre said, clasping Niero’s arm and then looking over at us, as if committing each of us to memory. “The Drifters have been thick between here and the salt caves, and I suspect you have extra enemies about.” His eyes rested on me, Bellona, and Tressa. “Traveling with females won’t help.”
“We’ll have an eye out for our enemies,” Niero said. “Farewell, Jorre.” He nodded toward Jorre’s wives, then turned and passed by me while pushing his bike, and we followed. Jorre’s many children — thirty or more — watched us in mute fascination, a gauntlet of dirty feet and running noses and shy grins, with two of them holding the baby goats. I reached out and rubbed the head of the nearest animal.
But my attention was on our leader. It unnerved me, the way Niero refused to look my way, speak to me. I told myself it was childish, that I’d simply messed up and he’d called me on it, but I still wanted the uneasiness between us to go away.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to Ronan, touching his arm and gesturing forward.
He nodded, understanding, as he straddled the bike. “Hurry.”
I rushed past the others and up next to Niero. He was dressed in new oilskin pants — apparently trading for them the night before — and a brown turtleneck sweater that brought out the color of his eyes. “Niero, look, I’m sorry.”
He glanced my direction then back, ahead to the open desert. The sun was peeking out again this morning, thick rays cast from holes in
the cloudbank to the miles of clumpy grass below. “It’s all right, Andriana,” he said with a sigh. “You didn’t know, didn’t realize. Will you forgive me for reacting so strongly?”
I quickly nodded, feeling a measure of immediate relief.
“You must understand that it’s my call to see you all through this. To not only keep you safe, but to help you reach the Maker’s goals. To keep you all safe,” he quickly amended, gesturing to the rest of the Ailith behind us. “And if any of you threaten to endanger the rest, I’m liable to jump like that.”
“It’s a big task, keeping us all corralled,” I said, fully recognizing for the first time what was before him.
He smiled. “Do you know that for years before the Hour arrived, I’d steal out to see you and Ronan, Vidar, and Bellona?”
I frowned in confusion. “You knew? You knew who we were?”
“Yes,” he said, looking ahead again, a wistful smile on his face. “The Maker made it known to me that you were within reach. Once I had found you in your villages, I checked on you periodically. And alongside your trainers, kept you safe.”
I considered that. That connection. I’d known he was older than we were. Or was he simply what the elders called an old soul? “Raniero, were you born with a mark too? Of the crescent moon?”
“I have my own divine mark,” he said, looking into my eyes. “But your moon was imprinted upon my soul from the beginning. Born to serve you as much as watch over you, lead you. Serve the Maker alongside you, free our prince, and bow before the coming king.”
“Thank you, Niero. For doing as they have asked of you. Your task … it’s big.”
“I could do nothing else,” he said with a shrug, straddling his bike, considering me. “Want to ride with me?” he said, gesturing over his shoulder. “I have room.”
I paused, feeling caught again. “Oh, I, uh … I’d best get back to Ronan.”
He nodded, his face and heart unreadable again for me. A sliver of loneliness, perhaps? Longing? I left him, and even though I was certain he didn’t turn to watch me go, I could almost sense him imagining me walking back to Ronan, tucking my legs behind his, wrapping my arms around his waist.
“Everything all right?” Ronan asked me over his shoulder, his voice just audible over the roar of the dirt bike, as I did exactly that.
“All is well,” I said, locking my arms around his tautly muscled belly.
“Good,” he said, twisting the throttle.
As we took off west, heading toward the salt caves in hopes of finding the man who had been so close to Kapriel, and perhaps find out information that might help us free him, I thought more about Raniero. Of his call, unique from ours but different, in that he was not paired with either Remnant or Knight. Was it his destiny to always travel alone, in a way? Perhaps so that he wasn’t unduly tied to any one of us?
My own sorrow over the thought surprised me. For there was so much ahead of us, so much asked of us, that it was unlikely any of us would manage to bond with anyone but others within our group. But here, now, holding tight to Ronan’s strong body, I at least knew a deeper level of intimate partnership than Raniero would.
Even if Ronan and I hadn’t ever kissed.
Come noon, we paused at the edge of a steep canyon to eat like starved wolves from our packs. Salted beef, a few strips of fish — which Niero had negotiated from Tonna’s stores — dried apple, bread. We drank deeply and rested while Vidar and Bellona and Niero went to scout a way around the canyon, or at least down from the canyon’s rim and up the other side. There was a trader trail nearby we were supposed to catch in order to reach the Hoodoos — tall, eroded cliffs that had the appearance of massive statuary — and the halfway point on our path toward the salt caves. But we’d somehow missed it.
I rambled after Ronan toward the canyon, but stopped when he continued to the very edge of the cliff, plopped down, and allowed his legs to dangle over an emptiness that descended for a thousand feet. Far below, we could hear the rush of the river, the sound oddly delayed from this height.
“Must you, Ronan?” I said, disgusted with his lack of care.
“Come,” he said, gesturing me over to him. “It’s exhilarating. Like standing on the top of Devil’s Peak.”
Each week, our trainer had forced us to carry heavy packs and climb to the top of the dreaded mountain ridge. We’d hated it, every step of the way. But Ronan had loved it, every time, when we reached the top, whether we could see the entire valley spreading out below us and our villages in miniature, and especially when we rose above the clouds and all we could see was a blanket of white below us. He loved it. I spent the whole time counting seconds until we were released to return to safer grounds.
“I imagine the ocean looking like the clouds had, from up there,” I said, as I sat down behind him. “Remember Devil’s Peak, when it was all clouded in and we couldn’t even see the other mountains? That’s how I imagine the sea. Like a vast blanket of clouds. Except blue.”
“Hmm. Maybe. Think we’ll get as far as the Coast?”
I thought about that. “I don’t know. It seems terribly far off.”
His dark brow rose. “I never expected to see the ocean.” He picked up a handful of pebbles and began tossing them into the canyon abyss, one after the other. It made my stomach jump a bit, watching them fall. “When the elders said we’d have a part in saving the world, I thought they meant our world. The Valley. Certainly not farther than Zanzibar.”
I quickly looked at him in stark surprise, then cocked my head. “I guess I hadn’t thought much bigger. I thought they were speaking of the Desert and Valley. Maybe the Plains. But never beyond the Wall.”
“Why do I get the feeling,” he said, tossing three rocks out, watching them for a second as if they were in a race, “that this will continue to unfold? Grow bigger. Broader.”
“Maybe it’s as the Maker wanted it. Maybe if we’d known it all in the beginning, we would have run away and hid.”
“Saner people would still run,” he said, with a jeering laugh. “Not us. Not the called.”
I turned his words over in my mind. I found them vaguely troubling. More disconcerting was the vague sense of unrest, worry, fear I felt within him.
“Hey, I didn’t mean anything by that,” he said, lying down and stretching to touch my leg. “I’m just tired.”
“Me too,” I said. But my eyes lingered on his fingers, now running through his dark hair, pushing back a tendril that had escaped his tie and wanted to fall across one brow. When he’d touched me, I’d felt all his emotions tenfold.
“Dri?”
“Hmm?”
“What is it? You’re looking at me strangely.”
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. What was this? When I touched someone, I knew their emotion all the more? It was if it became funneled, intensified. “Ronan, can I take your hand for a second?”
“Sure,” he said slowly, clearly wondering what was going on. But he scooted closer and offered his hand. I slipped my fingers into his and closed my eyes. Emotions hit me like a battering ram. Confusion. Fear. The desire to protect. Desire itself. For me.
My eyes flew open, looking directly into his. He frowned and dropped my hand. “Dri?”
I hurriedly scrambled backward, crab-like, and then rose and turned, striding over to Tressa and Killian. “Tressa, may I take your hand a moment?” I asked.
“All right,” she said, tentatively rising and offering it to me. I studied her, trying to get a read on her emotions even before we touched. Again I read fear, here in this new place. A longing to use her gift.
“All right,” I echoed her, taking a deep breath, then placed my hand in hers. Her fear became like a black cloud around me, far more intense than Ronan’s. And her longing to use her gift was like a hunger, a yawning chasm within me, growing wider
I gasped and dropped her hand, her emotions still filling me, like a dream hard to shake. “Quickly,” I said to Killian, before I lost coura
ge. “Would you mind? Take my hand for a moment?”
Killian reached out to me, as firm as if he were shaking my hand like men in the olden days did, rather than allowing me some intimacy.
He was wary. And irritated. And curious.
I immediately dropped his hand and stumbled backward, the combined emotions from all three threatening to make me feel as if I might explode. Ronan caught me, his strong arm around my waist. “Dri?”
“Wait — let me go,” I said, pulling away from him, wincing as I registered hurt at my own words and action. I closed my eyes and lifted my hands, as if fending them all off. I took several deep, long breaths.
“There’s something you should know,” I said, looking dazedly at them, feeling worn. Behind them, in the distance, I glimpsed Niero, Vidar, and Bellona, all tiny figures. “I can read your emotions. But when we touch … I can really read your emotions. It’s almost as if … they become my own.”
Ronan glanced at me with confusion, then became alarmed as he looked sideways to our companions. I followed his line of vision.
Raniero, Vidar, and Bellona gradually grew closer, and we realized they approached at a dead run. Yelling at us, but impossible yet to hear. But then we heard Vidar’s gun.
“Ronan …” I said.
“I heard it.”
He was shooting up in the air, something we’d never seen. Because ammunition was precious, and he had limited supply, and it would draw more attention to us. Make us more memorable. Niero had told him to use it only when there was no other recourse.
No other recourse.
Killian and Ronan slowly unsheathed their swords, waiting, completely still.
Raniero’s mouth opened in a shout, but we couldn’t make out what he said. He was waving at us as if he were angrily shooing us away.
“What’s he want us to do? We’re not leaving them!” Killian said, loosening his grip on his sword and then repositioning it. “Andriana, can you sense anything? Vidar?”
Season of Wonder Page 14
