by Myers, Karen
The sun was casting long shadows in the camp, but there was still a body to deal with.
“We’ll build her a cairn,” Najud suggested, “Over by that old pine.”
He looked down at the corpse. “What about the chain? We can’t just leave it there.”
He told them about the fight over the chain the Voice had worn, how it had exploded, and Penrys had the surviving fragment. “She says it didn’t happen because the bearer was dead, but because someone had tried to do something forbidden with it.” Devices were forbidden, in the tradition of his bikrajab.
Khizuwi questioned Munraz. “Would your uncle come back for it?”
The young man shrugged. “If it occurred to him. If he thought he could do something with it. He might bring more of the family… his family with him.”
“The news will get around,” Khizuwi said. “It may not be safe to take it, but it’s surely not safe to leave it behind.”
His eyes turned to the one kazr left standing in their camp. “The jarghalti should take charge of it, as she did for the other one.”
Munraz asked, in a very small voice, “But how will we take it off?”
Haraq spoke up. “It’s not fitting for bikrajab to do such things. I’ll take care of it. In repayment for the debt I owe her for my lud.” He cocked his head at the kazr where Penrys lay.
Khizuwi nodded his thanks and turned to the nal-jarghal. “Munraz, the body is just a shell, it doesn’t matter. Come with me—we’ll pick a spot and start gathering rocks.”
Dinner had been a simple affair, and quiet. The long, eventful day, occupied all thoughts in Najud’s kazr.
Munraz was yawning, but not everyone was quite ready to join him. He lay in his blankets in the front of the kazr, not far from Haraq. Najud had yielded his narrow bed to Khizuwi and taken his place on the rugs next to the sleeping Penrys. She muttered occasionally—her face was warm to his touch.
Khizuwi commented, “Fever. There’s always some. Nothing to worry about if it gets no worse.”
“Are you going to change the dressing in the morning?” Najud said. “She didn’t want me to stitch her hand, said it might interfere with the healing.”
“Hmm. I was going to let it wait another day but maybe that would be a good idea. Soon as we wake up, then.”
Najud wondered what troubled her dreams. There hadn’t been time to get the story from her yet, but he thought, from the distance and the injuries, that she must have been knocked out of the air somehow, and fallen. What about her wings, then? Were they broken, too?
He’d seen them bleed when an arrow pierced one. Could they get infected, and contaminate the rest of her? She didn’t seem fevered enough for that. They were devices, she thought, and he wasn’t sure just how they were connected to her body. It was beyond her understanding, and his, too.
He drifted off, holding her hand.
In the middle of the night, she spoke clearly, “Good little Dun, Dundun, my Dunsiedun. I’m just one of your mares, just another horsie. Keep going—don’t stop.”
It trailed off into silence, and Najud understood how she’d hidden from the qahulajti as she’d followed her back to the camp.
He wiped her face dry with the cloth he’d kept handy for the purpose, and picked up her hand again. I have her back. He hugged the thought to himself as he settled back into sleep.
CHAPTER 50
A strange plucking sensation irritated Penrys until she couldn’t ignore it, and she opened her eyes.
She was in her kazr, on the floor, daylight streaming through the zamjilah over the stove. Something was still tickling her leg, and she tried to lift her head to see what it was, but her right shoulder was jammed by some sort of stick. When she lifted her left hand to explore, it was seized by someone, and Najud’s face swam into her view.
“What’s going on?” she said, faintly alarmed to hear the slur in her speech.
“Ah, you’re awake, bikrajti.” That was Khizuwi’s voice. “Good. You can tell me what I want to know.”
“But…” she said.
“This first. Explanations later.” Khizuwi’s voice was firm.
She looked up at Najud, and he nodded. “Do what he says.”
Khizuwi was still mostly hidden, seated by her leg—she couldn’t lift her head far enough to see him clearly. Munraz stood over him, holding a lantern.
Khizuwi held up a fragment of thread on tweezers where she could see it. “I’m taking stitches out, from yesterday. Do you remember?”
It came flooding back, and she blanched. She wiggled her toes on both feet. They seemed to be in the right place, one set next to the other, not scrunched up sideways the way it had been.
“Good. I was going to ask you to move your toes. Now lie still while I finish this.”
Najud bent over her. “I can see why you didn’t want me to stitch your hand, that time.”
She envisioned her skin growing right over stitches. “Is he too late? Is it… bad?”
Khizuwi’s voice drifted back. “It’s been less than a day, nothing to worry about. But your wound doesn’t need the help any more, so it’s time to get the stitches out.” In a lower voice he muttered, “While I can.”
She giggled. “Sorry, jarghal. Did it work, yesterday? What’re all these sticks doing?”
“Not comfortable, eh? You’ll just have to put up with it for a while. They’re holding your leg in the right place while the bones grow together.”
She tried to twist her ankle slightly against the tension to test it, and got a stinging slap on the thigh for her pains.
“Stop that. Those bones haven’t knit yet.”
For Najud’s ears alone, she murmured, “I wouldn’t bet on that.” But she held still obediently and smiled. There was a deep, dull, throbbing pain in her calf, but it was easier to bear than the original sharp agony, and it all felt alive to her.
“Don’t know what I might have said yesterday, but I take it all back. This was worth it.”
Her stomach growled. “We’ll get you some more broth when he’s done,” Najud told her.
How would she eat it, flat on her back? And then another, more urgent thought struck her, and her cheeks flamed. “Um, Najud… broth in, broth out.”
“Don’t worry, we’ve got that all taken care of. You just go ahead.”
He turned his face away, and she did what she had to, red with embarrassment. She discovered he’d made a hollow in the rugs she lay on and slid a shallow pan there. He briskly ran a damp cloth over her when she was done and took the pan away while she tried to recover her dignity.
Khizuwi distracted her with a series of probes and questions. She felt his hands working carefully over the muscles and bone. “The skin is closed and I can already feel the muscles smoothing out. The change from yesterday is… remarkable. No wonder your face never showed the bite of the wind—that’s nothing by comparison to this.”
“Were the other…” he coughed. “Were the two qahulajti with chains also like this?”
“Don’t know. Couldn’t ask the first one, but I can question the girl.” She reached out for her, to check how much of her power had returned so she could drain it again, but she couldn’t find her, anywhere—just Munraz and Haraq, outside.
“Where is she? What happened? Did she escape?” Why aren’t they alarmed?
Najud came back into her view and sat down next to her. He dropped something onto the blanket over her stomach. It… clinked. He guided her hand down to it, and when she felt metal links, she tightened her grip around it. She didn’t need to lift it to her eyes to know what it was.
“She had ears like yours, Pen-sha. Didn’t see any marks on her, but then we left her in her skins, with the knife and boots she stole, so I can’t say there were no scars anywhere.”
“But why? She was under control. She was a child! Think how alone she was. It wasn’t her fault.”
“Could she have been changed, Pen-sha?”
She opened her mouth to protes
t and stopped, remembering how damaged she had seemed.
“I don’t know. But that wasn’t my call to make. I would have tried.”
“No,” Najud said, “It was the judgment of a group of bikrajab, as it should be.”
Khizuwi said, “Jiqlaraz wanted to take her home and breed her. You, too, if he could think of a way.”
That silenced her in shock, then she chuckled weakly. “That wouldn’t have worked out very well for him.”
No one replied, then Khizuwi said, “There are ways, jarghalti, that perhaps you don’t know, to destroy the mind and leave the body. It could be done.”
She had no answer for that.
“What happened?” she whispered.
Najud told her. “Munraz revolted against his uncle and cut her throat, to thwart him and to give the qahulajti a quick death. It was well done.”
“Poor Munraz,” she murmured. “And poor girl. She didn’t ask for this.”
“It’s just us, now, with Haraq. Jiqlaraz disowned his nephew and left.”
He cleared his throat. “I’ve taken him on as nal-jarghal, if that’s all right with you.”
She thought of the young man, blood on his hands and exiled from home. She didn’t like the death, but she understood their reasoning and couldn’t disagree with them.
It might be a while before she stopped picturing him standing over a chained girl with a bloody knife. But if he hadn’t sacrificed his family ties that way, what would have happened?
It was too hard for her to sort out now. “As you like, Najud.”
Two evenings later, Penrys was in revolt.
“I’m getting up and sleeping in my own bed if I have to unstrap all this myself.”
“Six weeks to heal a broken leg, bikrajti.” Khizuwi’s patience was wearing thin. “Even for you, three days is not enough.”
“I’m not planning to dance on it. I won’t put any weight on it at all. But I don’t need this… maddening contraption on me any more. The bones are knit, if not yet strong. All they need is reinforcement and padding, and all I need is a crutch. And clothing. And some of whatever that is that smells so good on the stove, upright, like a civilized woman. And a good night’s sleep.” She could hear her voice rising.
She couldn’t see their faces, flat on her back—they had a maddening habit of staying out of her sight—but she felt them all. Amusement from Haraq and Munraz, concern from Khizuwi. And from Najud?
Najud surprised her. “Everyone out,” he said.
She felt the air movement when the door opened, and even Khizuwi left without further objection.
“Here you go, Pen-sha. Let me get that off you.”
She almost wept in relief. “I was afraid you’d keep me caged up forever like this.”
“Not me. I know how long your memory is. You’d pay me back eventually.”
Her laugh was shaky. He released the twisting stick that held her leg in tension, and the tug on her ankle relaxed. She twisted her foot left and right for him.
“See? It may take a couple of weeks to be usable, but it’s working again.”
“I’ll unbind the braces, but you will sit there until I find you some clothing or I’ll tie you up again.” Najud untied the straps where he could, and cut them where he must until they were all gone.
“That’s wonderful. Such a relief.” She raised herself up on her elbows and cracked her neck, watching Najud poke through her packs. “There’s not much left,” she warned him.
He laid out her last pair of breeches, a shirt, and her oldest tunic, along with underclothes, and pulled her up on one leg to support her over to her bed, and help with the awkward bits. When she was all assembled, she sat there, one leg braced on the floor and the other just lightly touching, and leaned on him to recover from the effort.
“Thank you,” she told him, and touched his arm.
“What, for treating you like someone who knew what they could handle?”
She snorted.
“Now be nice to these men,” he said. “They’ve been listening to you snore for two nights, and no respite in sight.”
She punched him lightly in indignation, and he threw an arm around her.
“I do not snore” she said, her voice muffled against his chest. “Now go away and let them in. I’m hungry.”
CHAPTER 51
Penrys wasn’t able to sit easily on the ground, so she perched on the edge of her bedframe, her weak leg wrapped between knee and ankle with cloth bound around two pieces of the shorter stick that had pulled it straight, all of it resting on a pack that Najud had maneuvered into place. She couldn’t eat much of the dinner—chunks of squirrel, fresh killed, and the ever-present cabbage—but the luxury of handling her own bowl and her own spoon was very welcome.
After the meal, Haraq whittled on the longer of the sticks she’d discarded, and presented her with the crutch she’d demanded. He’d reduced the fork at the top to a flat stub, thoroughly padded, and once he’d held it against her to check the position, he bound a hand-grip into place, stout and easy to hold with a gloved hand.
“Help me up,” she told him. She placed it under her arm and tried a couple of steps, away and back, and then kissed him on the cheek, to the amusement of all. He backed away, his face flaming and his eye on Najud who smiled benevolently.
She got herself up afterward to go out, and Najud went with her. She eyed him as he followed her to the doorway but forbore to comment. “I’ll just wait here,” he said, after they got outside. “You’ll let me know if I’m needed.”
She stumped off with her crutch in the moonlight, delighted to be left in such privacy as this was, and when she returned, Najud stopped her before she would have reentered the kazr.
“Now might be a good time to look at your wings,” he suggested. “There’s enough light for the basics.”
“I… haven’t dared to look. I don’t remember hitting the ground at all.”
She remembered vividly what it had been like falling through the sky not knowing where the ground was.
“That’s what a bump on the head can do.” Najud’s quiet voice calmed her. “Don’t you think it’s time?”
“Yes. You’re right.” She stepped up close and faced him, thinking that she might need something to grab if she were suddenly struck by the pain of a crumpled mess, and invoked her wings.
They swept out of nothingness with a flap, and there was no sensation of injury. She stretched them to their fullest, and spread the tail to match, and felt nothing wrong at all.
A weight she had hardly been conscious of was lifted from her mind and she beamed at Najud. “Look at them,” she said, pleased with the exotic look of the feathers, banded like an eagles and silvered by the moonlight.
“Wish I knew how they were made,” she commented.
When Najud didn’t reply, she realized just how worried he had been, too, on her behalf. “It’s fine, I’m fine,” she told him tenderly. “Or I will be, soon enough.” She wrapped the wings around him in that way he loved, and he held her tight for too short a while before releasing her and stepping away.
“Time we went back,” he said, his voice hoarse.
He preceded her through the doorframe, then stood aside to let her in. She stepped over the threshold and stopped. In the few minutes they’d been gone, the whole kazr had been tidied. The spot where she’d been stuck for days was now indistinguishable, the scraps of leather straps, the shavings from Haraq’s work—all gone. The air had lost some of that musty feeling of long occupation, there was a lingering sharp scent of something pungent, and all the surfaces were clean.
The three occupants were back in their places as if they’d never moved at all, their expressions bland and innocent.
“I see the little folk from Ellech have been here.” Her voice was dry, but her eyes were damp. “Too bad I haven’t any milk to leave for them.”
Haraq looked up casually and said, “Just a small bit of respect to our hostess.”
“An
d it’s grateful she is,” she said. She picked her way carefully to her bed and lowered herself back down to the edge of it. Najud dropped to the carpets at her feet and leaned on the frame.
“I have a question,” she asked, after her muscles stopped quivering from the unaccustomed exercise and the strain of maneuvering on the crutch. “How long has it been since Jiqlaraz left, and how soon might he return, with others?”
“He’s been gone three days,” Munraz told her. “I think he’ll come back, and I don’t think we should be here to meet him.”
“That wouldn’t be wise,” Khizuwi agreed. “It’s fifty miles or so, the way we came, to the point where the trail from the Dhajtawhaz zudiqazd met our path, and another sixty or so miles from there to his people.”
“So we need to get to the junction and head north before he returns, if he does, and then he’ll have to choose whether to come after us, or come here to see what he can find, yes?” Penrys shook her head. “We should leave in the morning, should have left already.”
She looked directly at Najud and declared, “I can travel now.”
He pursed his lips and nodded. “We go in the morning. What’s the count of the horses, Penrys?”
She scanned the herd, glad to slip back into her old duties. “I make it twenty-six.” Her heart sang when she recognized her little herd of five that had brought her out of Silmat.
“That’s your four, Khizuwi, and four for the rest of us to ride, and eighteen to pack with, a superfluity considering there’s just the one kazr now.” Najud was clearly deep into his role as zarawinnaj now, Penrys amused to see.
“There’s almost no grain left, so the horses will suffer,” he said, “But we can take it in easy stages, and they won’t have much of a load. Have to be sure to camp where Jirkat didn’t, so they can still find grass under the snow.”
“How far to the Kurighdunaq zudiqazd?” Khizuwi asked.
“Maybe a hundred fifty miles, the way we came, but Ilzay was going to take the survivors directly, and we’ll follow his trail as long as the weather is clear and we can see it. He thought it would be more like a hundred ten or twenty, that way.”
