Mistress of Animals

by Myers, Karen

  He looked Najud in the face. “We have three choices, and you’re going to have to make one for her. We can just clean it up and leave it like this, maybe cut the bone down even with the skin. I don’t advise it—the infection is hiding inside and will probably get worse. Just because she can heal flesh and bone quickly doesn’t mean she can’t be killed by fever. And, besides, she would be badly crippled the rest of her life, if she survives.”

  Najud nodded.

  “Then there’s the possibility of just taking the leg off, below the knee.” Khizuwi’s voice was calm and rational. “I saw her fingers, how they grew back. Can she grow a leg?”

  “I don’t know,” Najud said. “She said the fingers were the first time she’d actually lost something, instead of more ordinary injuries.”

  “So. The good part about this choice is that it would probably stop the infection and she would live. The bad part is that it would be permanent, at least for everyone else, and maybe her, too. No coming back from that decision.”

  “And the third choice?”

  “The third choice is more complicated.” He peered at Najud’s face as if to gauge his reaction. “We break her leg again, both bones. Then we cut into it and find the pockets of infection and kill those. And then we let it heal normally.”

  Najud could feel the blood draining from his face.

  “Would that work?”

  “Well, if we cut one of the tubes that carries blood, we might kill her. If we don’t get all the infection, we might still have to cut it off. But if the shock didn’t kill her, it would probably heal cleanly. It would take the longest to recover from—we’d have to hold her flat on her back until the bones set firmly and the cuts closed.”

  “But in her case, that might not be too long—maybe a few days instead of weeks.” Najud could see the logic of it, and it gave her the most certainty of a complete recovery.

  Then a thought struck him. “There’s no way to soften the pain for her.”

  Khizuwi lifted an eyebrow, and Najud explained. “You might not remember from the drinking at the durmiqa bul, but mead doesn’t work on her for long. Nothing does.”

  “That’s… unfortunate. We’ll have to tie her down, then. Can you explain it to her? It’ll take a while to prepare, and we have to be ready to cut it off if something goes wrong, to stop the bleeding.”

  Najud raised his head. Haraq was just returning from leading Penrys’s horses to the camp’s herd and settling them down with a few handfuls of the remaining grain. Munraz hovered around, waiting for more orders from Khizuwi, and Jiqlaraz… Jiqlaraz was crouched on the ground, talking to the qahulajti.

  Najud stood up and watched him. When he scanned the girl, he could see her core power had brightened. She didn’t speak, but that didn’t seem to be stopping Jiqlaraz’s one-sided conversation.

  Khizuwi followed his gaze and nodded grimly. “We’ll deal with that, after. One thing at a time.”

  “Munraz,” he called. “I need you to bring me some things. You, too, Haraq.”

  A finger stroking her cheek woke Penrys. She was lying on the ground and the first thing she noticed was that she felt… clean. It was wonderful.

  *Pen-sha, wake up.*

  She smiled to hear Najud’s voice in her mind. *Hmm?*

  A savory smell passed beneath her nose, and she opened her eyes. Najud sat on the ground next to her holding a bowl of broth. “Haraq is going to prop you up and I’m going to give you as much of this as you can hold.”

  “Sounds good.” She yawned and tried to push herself up with her arms, but strong hands lifted her shoulders from behind and Haraq pushed his crossed legs beneath them so she could lean on him.

  She managed about half of the bowl before pushing it aside.

  “No more? Well, that’s all right—you take it slow.” Najud put the bowl down beside him on the grass.

  “Now, there’s something else. I think it’s time to tap our qahulajti again.”

  She reached out to look at the girl’s core power which was starting to trickle back. Najud was right, better to be careful. Once more, she drained it into her chain, and then blinked back up at him.

  He shook her lightly before she went back to sleep.

  “One last thing…”

  She waited, but he didn’t continue. When she scanned his mind, she felt his fear. *What is it, Naj-sha?*

  “We’re going to have to work on your leg. I’m going to get you as drunk as I can, but it’s going to be bad. We’ll have to… to tie you down.”

  Her stomach clenched and she worked on keeping the broth down.

  “What are you going to do?” she whispered.

  “Khizuwi’s done this before. We’re going to…”

  “Break the bones again and try to fix it right this time,” she supplied. “I thought you’d have to, when I saw what had happened.” She kept her voice cool and calm, but her skin chilled with dread.

  Her hand stretched out to clasp his arm. “It’s all right. Do what you have to do.”

  He paused. “I’ll wake you up again when it’s time.”

  Penrys was a quiet drunk, at least in these circumstances. Najud had worried that she wouldn’t be able to keep it down, but she worked on it methodically. The four men had sacrificed what was left of their mead, but it wasn’t enough to knock her out. He could only hope it would dull the pain.

  Haraq finished tying her body and upper arms down to pegs pressed into the grass to keep her from moving. The lower half of her body was already secured.

  Khizuwi had forbidden Najud the close work. Instead, he’d been assigned to trying to keep Penrys distracted as much as possible. He sat crosslegged next to her head and blocked her view.

  Behind him, he heard Haraq slip into place next to Khizuwi, an extra pair of hands. Khizuwi had tools and liquids ready. Najud wasn’t sure which turned his stomach the most—the sharp knives or the crude rock for a hammer and scrubbed stone as a chisel that would break the bones in just the right place.

  “Now, Najud,” Khizuwi said, quietly.

  Najud grabbed her hand and held it.*Here it comes, Pen-sha. You hold on to me and yell all you want, if you have to.*

  He felt, through her, the sickening horror of her skin being cut along the calf. The pain was dulled with the mead, and she tried to hold her body still. But then came the thud of the rock against bone, twice, and she screamed. Through it all her hand crushed against his, but she held her leg still.

  He kept up a low patter to her the whole time. “You’re doing fine, it’s almost over.”

  The sting of fiery liquids deep within the open leg left her gasping for breath, and she began panting. Haraq pushed him aside to make room for a long stick with a padded fork which he tucked up under her arm. He bound it to her naked torso high and low with leather straps. When he backed up, Najud saw he had a shorter stick of similar shape—but this he jammed against her pelvic bone, and bound them both on either side of her right thigh. They jutted out several inches below her foot, and Haraq bound a short cross stick across them near the ends.

  Khizuwi was bent over the calf, sewing, and Haraq helped him steady the leg. When he tied off his thread, he poured something on the skin which made Penrys’s hand clutch Najud’s again, and then he wrapped the wound round and round in clean cloth.

  Haraq tied the two stout sticks together below the knee, around the calf below the dressing, and again above the ankle. While Khizuwi shook his hands in the air to relieve them of the strain, Haraq tied a rope around her ankle and ran a twisted cord from there to the cross stick, tying it as tightly as he could.

  “Ready?” Khizuwi asked him.

  Haraq nodded and picked up a small stick to insert between the twisted cord, and twisted it further and further to pull the leg straight, while Khizuwi eyed her good leg and the broken one and felt gently along the wrapping, until he felt the bones were as much as possible in their proper positions. Then Haraq bound the twisting stick in place to maintain the tens
ion.

  “We’re done, Pen-sha. It’s all over.” Najud listened for a reply but heard only the faintest acknowledgment before she fled into sleep.

  He helped Haraq release her from the cords that pegged her down, and she didn’t move. Then there was nothing else to distract himself with, and he faced Khizuwi. “How did it go?”

  “None of the big tubes that carry blood were damaged, and that’s very good. Her foot is warm, not pale and cool.”

  “But?” Najud waited.

  Khizuwi nodded. “But… the bones had started to fuse together. Extra bone, not like a fresh break. I had to cut that away, scrape it raw…” He caught a look at Najud’s expression and stopped explaining. “Anyway, I didn’t find any loose pieces to cause trouble later, and it ought to heal fine. Unless we didn’t get all the infection. There’s honey under the dressing, and some of the mead in the wound. That may be enough.”

  He looked down at Penrys, the blanket covering most of the two sticks holding her leg in place. “We should get her indoors out of the cold. I expect her to be out for hours, and then immobile for days.”

  Najud watched Jiqlaraz still talking to the qahulajti and said, “And then we need to deal with that.”

  CHAPTER 49

  Najud and Haraq improvised a carrier out of the low worktables from each kazr, bound end to end, and used that to bring her into Najud’s kazr.

  “Leave her on it?” Haraq suggested to Najud. “Easier to tend her that way.”

  Najud shook his head. “Too hard to lie on for long. We’ve got room in here—let’s just stretch some canvas on the rugs and put her there, then stash the tables in the back. I’ll take care of her.”

  He scanned her mind—she was asleep, almost unconscious. That was the best thing for her. He made sure she was warm enough, and then left her there.

  As soon as he emerged back into the afternoon sunlight with Haraq, his eye fell on a tableau of Munraz arguing quietly with his uncle. Jiqlaraz had a cup in his hand and had just been crouched down giving the girl a drink. Her hands had been rebound in front of her.

  Najud felt Munraz’s distress easily, and he gathered up Khizuwi to finally put a stop to this fascination with the qahulajti.

  He walked directly up to Jiqlaraz. “Convinced her to go home with you yet, bikraj?”

  Without a particle of shame, Jiqlaraz answered him. “She’s harmless now, even you will admit. What’s the point of killing her?”

  “A hundred or two people dead,” Khizuwi commented. “Isn’t that enough of a reason?”

  Najud probed her. Enough of power had trickled back that she could mind-speak. *What’s your name?*

  *That’s what the female wanted to know, before you cut her. She gave me a name, Vylkerri. What does this male want? He won’t talk to me like this. Only babbling noises.*

  It gave Najud pause, to have her speak in his mind, her face still expressionless.

  *He wants to breed with you.*

  The girl turned her head to look at Jiqlaraz and pushed him away with her bound hands.

  *Tell him I refuse.* She turned her face from him with what dignity she could maintain, seated on the ground and tied like a prisoner.

  “She’s a child,” Jiqlaraz said. “Look at her, sulking. Couldn’t your bikrajti just, oh, burn it out of her, make her safe? We’d give her a home, in my family. Give her a useful life.”

  Munraz looked at him with horror on his face and Najud spat at his feet.

  “Or do you begrudge me one, now that you’ve got one of your own?” Jiqlaraz said.

  Haraq intervened to grab Najud’s shoulder before he’d even realized he’d taken a step forward with his fist clenched.

  Jiqlaraz continued to taunt him. “If you think she’s so unredeemable, why do you keep one, yourself? Or if you reconsider, now that she’s damaged, I’ll be glad to take care of her, too.”

  “Enough!” Khizuwi glared at them both. “It is forbidden, what you propose, Jiqlaraz, and for very good reason. You cannot let a qahulaj survive.”

  Reluctantly, Najud told Khizuwi, “I’m not sure any of the deaths were quite intended, though. They all seem to be the by-product of gathering the herds or just finding out about people. The worst she seems to have done on purpose was the trampling of Umzakhilin.”

  He glanced at Haraq apologetically as he spoke, then continued. “You could ask her about it.” He tapped his forehead.

  Jiqlaraz was quick to seize the opening. “Your bikrajti has deliberately killed more people than this poor child. No one would want the girl to roam freely, of course, in this dangerous way, but there’s no reason to harm her, surely.”

  Khizuwi was unmoved. “Any bikraj is a danger. It’s the assertion of their own will over any other consideration, an indifference to the harm it causes, that marks a qahulaj, and that usually leads directly to death—in this case, many deaths. This girl is clearly such, whether she understands the connection or not.”

  He cast a look back at Najud. “And your bikrajti is not.”

  “Not yet,” Jiqlaraz muttered darkly.

  More loudly, he said, “And what of any children she might have? They’d be innocent, wouldn’t they?”

  Munraz backed away from his uncle, shaking his head. “Is this really what you wanted, uncle? Anything for the bloodline? And who would you give her to?”

  “Does it matter? If she’s not to your taste, I could manage. She’s a little young of course, but think of the children she would have. She doesn’t have to remain a danger if she’s only needed for breeding.”

  The girl’s incomplete comprehension of their dispute turned Najud’s stomach.

  “The rumors of your family are true, I see.” He was no longer furious, only disgusted.

  “We get stronger with each generation. What have your people accomplished, in clan Zamjilah?”

  Najud forced calm upon himself. He didn’t respect this man enough to let him provoke his anger, or so he tried to tell himself. Ignoring him he turned to Khizuwi. “One of us will have to take turns watching her, and we’ll have to monitor her to make sure her power stays low enough.”

  Munraz stared at them and shook his head incredulously. “You don’t understand, do you? He’ll free her tonight and leave—you don’t know him. Might even make a try for your bikrajti, while she can’t fight back. And then it will all be to do over again, and more people dead.”

  He sputtered to a stop and confronted Jiqlaraz. “Our own family, this time, uncle, once her power returns—or don’t you care?”

  Najud could feel the wrath seething in the older man, though he kept it off his face.

  “There are ways to make her safe,” he hissed. “Would you betray your family?”

  “Worse than that,” the young man said. He pulled the knife from his belt and stepped behind the girl, then with a smooth motion he bent down and drew it across her throat before anyone could react. He dropped the bloody knife with a sob. “No more monsters, uncle. Not this time. Not even she deserves that.”

  At least it was quick. Najud was too shocked to think of anything else. Khizuwi shook his head, but didn’t seem surprised.

  “I sanction this killing,” he intoned, “Though I would have waited for a more proper judgment.”

  “And I,” Najud said, following the traditional formula.

  “Not me,” Jiqlaraz spoke through clenched teeth. “You are no family of mine, Munraz, son of no one. You are dead to us, dead to our clan, dead to our tribe.” He spat on the ground three times and turned on his heel.

  Haraq moved aside to let him pass, and he vanished into his kazr.

  Najud exchanged glances with Khizuwi. What now? I’ve never heard of dissension like this over a qahulaj.

  He walked over to the corpse and cut her bonds to lay her out decently. He cleaned Munraz’s knife and gave it to him, avoiding his face and giving him the privacy of his tears. Then he returned to the girl and knelt beside her. Brushing her hair aside, he found the same small, fox
-like ears that Penrys had, and the other qahulaj she’d killed, in Neshilik. Khizuwi witnessed it, and he let the bloody hair fall back.

  A stir at the doorway to Jiqlaraz’s kazr drew Najud’s eye, and he watched the man stump around angrily, untying the knots that held on the roof canvases.

  Haraq raised an eyebrow to Najud, but shrugged and walked over to help him disassemble the kazr.

  The three bikrajab stood around the body and watched in silence as the kazr melted away. Eventually everything was stacked neatly, ready for the pack horses, all except for Khizuwi’s possessions, and the personal packs of his nephew, which sat forlornly off to the side, unwanted.

  Haraq went with him to the horse herd and helped him bring back his horses, seven of them. Munraz commented under his breath, “Left me my riding horse, anyway. And whatever I brought with me that’s mine, which isn’t much.”

  He wiped his face and snorted. “What’s he going to sleep in? My old kamah, all the way home? He can’t raise a kazr by himself.”

  Khizuwi cleared his throat. “You acted correctly in difficult circumstances, nal-jarghal. I would be pleased to take you as apprentice, but we are neighbors with your clan.”

  “My ex-clan,” Munraz said.

  “Yes. Well. It would be source of contention for both our clans all your life,” Khizuwi said

  “But not for me,” Najud said. “I am new as a jarghal and hadn’t looked to take an apprentice for many years yet. But if you don’t mind someone without the experience of Khizuwi here, or of your uncle…”

  Munraz spat at the mention of his uncle. “I would be greatly honored if you would accept me, jarghal, if your lijti will also permit it.”

  “We’ll ask her later, but I’m sure it’ll be fine. Khizuwi, what do you think?”

  “It’s a good solution,” Khizuwi said. “I’ll spread the word.”

  By now, Haraq had helped Jiqlaraz load his pack-string, and he led the six horses away from the camp, following the trail broken yesterday by the Kurighdunaq survivors. He never looked back or bid any of them farewell, not even Haraq.