Fortune's Blight

by Evie Manieri

  Lahlil asked, thunderstruck. Jachad hadn’t stirred in over an hour; not since the pain had got so bad that Cyrrin had given him a dose of the brew she usually reserved for those she was about to cut open.

 

  Lahlil thought of the log houses they’d built for just such an emergency, and of the three leagues of lagramor-infested woods between here and there. Jachad would never make it that far, even carried on a stretcher. And as for Cyrrin—

  “Ehya, so much running.” Savion came up behind her, new grooves etched in his knobbly forehead by his scowl. He had been asleep so long that Lahlil had all but forgotten about him—but now a desperate plan began to take shape in her head. “You don’t leave without me, not owing me money.”

  She seized his shoulder and he flinched, knocking his turban askew. “Can you stride again?”

  “Now?” asked Savion. They both stepped aside as two women tried to get through the door carrying Ingeld between them. Savion blinked the last of the sleep from his eyes as he watched them go. Then he tilted his head and said warily, “Someone is coming, I think.”

  “Norlanders: the ones who want your people dead.”

  The Abroan hissed. “When?”

  “They’re already here.”

  Savion swore and backed away toward the fire. He took a deep breath and flexed his arms and legs, as if testing them out. “Ehya, I can stride, but not so far. Where can we go? No place to hide, here.”

  “I have a place. Just wait.”

  He straightened his turban, then sat on the nearest pallet with his thin elbows digging into his knees and his yellow eyes fixed on the doorway.

  Lahlil told Cyrrin.

  Her attention was completely focused on packing.

  Berril protested, and Lahlil felt the girl’s distress like the floor disappearing from under her feet.

  Cyrrin said firmly.

  The girl clutched the box in both arms. She looked as if she was waiting for Cyrrin to say something else, but after another moment of being ignored she finally left.

  When she was gone, Cyrrin stopped trying to find the lid for the jar and clapped her hands over her eyes. She allowed herself that one moment of anguish, then she went back to what she was doing.

  Lahlil took Cyrrin’s coat from the hook beside the door and brought it to her.

  said Cyrrin, waving her away, then she suddenly turned to her.

  Lahlil heard a sound out in the hall; she tossed the coat over Cyrrin’s chair and dashed to the doorway. Dust was still swirling in the open-ended corridor where dozens of people had just passed through, but in all other respects it looked like the deserted ruin it was supposed to be.

  Cyrrin finally found the right lid for the jar and looked up.

  said Lahlil. She heard the sound of metal-tipped boots coming toward them: the heavy, confident steps of soldiers. Savion sprang up from the pallet, then froze like a statue.

  Lahlil told them.

  She drew her sword as quietly as she could, then took a quick look into the hallway. Three of them were coming, stopping to check each of the empty rooms as they passed. The man in front had powerful shoulders and a helmet stuffed full of a great blocky head. The man in the middle was the only one carrying a shield, and the very young woman in the back clutched her sword with such eagerness that her arm was visibly shaking. They all had imperial blades.

  Lahlil leaped out into the hallway and ran straight for them. She hadn’t been in a real fight in a long time, but her muscles eased a little more with each step and she was as loose and supple as an eel by the time she reached them.

  The blockheaded soldier ran straight back at her, but he needed a moment to adjust his swing for the narrow hallway; before he’d figured it out, her blade had sliced into his neck. The other man stayed back and steadied himself, as she’d expected, while the female soldier was practically breathing down his neck trying to get past him. Lahlil knocked back the man’s first three blows with ease, then kicked him, taking him by surprise—effective, if not heroic—and flung him back against the wall. His shield went spinning down the hallway like a wheel.

  As soon as her comrade was out of her way, the woman leaped forward with all the fire of a great warrior and none of the skill to back it up. A moment later she took Lahlil’s blade in the left side of her chest. She hadn’t landed a single blow. Lahlil pulled her sword out and turned back to the other soldier. His helmet had slipped a bit, just enough for her to chop into his neck, sending arterial blood spurting into the air. He managed to stagger a few paces by hanging on to the wall, then collapsed into a heap.

  The young woman was still alive, but barely. She was trying to use her power over her black blade to slide it along the floor and into her hand, though she hadn’t the strength to lift it. Lahlil could see now that she was not even as old as Isa: sixteen at most. She started toward her—why, she wasn’t sure—but then stopped as the girl’s black sword gave one more shuddering lurch and then stopped. The rounded hilt rolled gently over the stone floor.

  “You killed them all,” whispered Savion, who had been watching from the surgery doorway. He looked up at her with wide eyes. “You did it so fast. They’re all dead…”

  “The blood you need to stride—does it have to be from the same person?” she asked. She raised her sword to wipe off the blood and realized her hand was shaking. She had seen other people shake after a fight, but it had never happened to her before.

  “Don’t understand,” said Savion.

  “Does it have to be from the person you’re striding to? Could it be a blood relative, instead? Someone close, like a mother?”

  “Mother?” Savion swallowed. “A mother, yes—yes, I think so. Never done it, though.”

  Lahlil told him her plan.

  “Ehya.” Savion sucked his teeth, but she saw that same hectic gleam in his eye that he’d had at Prol Irat. “Yes. Yes, all right. I hope you can swim—just in case, follow?”

  Lahlil handed him her knife. “It’s the only way out now. We’ll have to risk it.”

  Cyrrin had finally put on her coat and was trying to cross the room, but she hadn’t made it any further than her chair. Lahlil guessed she wasn’t strong enough to walk the length of the hallway, much less to the camp. Knowing that didn’t make her feel any better about what she was about to do.

  The physic stared down death every day of her life—particularly her own—and yet Lahlil had never felt her so close to real terror before.

  Lahlil reassured her. She crossed over to Jachad’s pallet and knelt down beside it. When she dug his fingers out from under the blankets they had no warmth in them.

  Cyrrin declared.

  Lahlil told her, keeping her eyes on Ja
chad’s pale face.

  Cyrrin’s emotions hit her like a brick.

 

 

 

  “We go now, yes?” said Savion, coming to stand by Jachad. He had Lahlil’s knife in his right hand and his left hand already balled into a tight fist. A single drop of blood trickled down his arm.

  Cyrrin asked frantically. Lahlil checked to make sure the physic was still holding the jar with Jachad’s medicine, then gripped his lifeless wrist a little higher up. She could hear someone else out in the hall now, coming toward them.

  She reached over and grabbed a fold of Cyrrin’s coat. “Do it,” she told Savion.

  Just as Savion pricked Jachad’s palm with the point of the knife, a woman with a bloody gash across her chest stepped into the doorway. Lahlil recognized her from the battlefield: Vrinna, by her uniform now a captain in the Eotan Guard. Her sword was drawn, but her shoulders were hunched and she looked feverish. Her silver eyes ignored everyone else in the room except Lahlil. She had found what she wanted.

  Lahlil told Vrinna as Savion’s eyes began to roll back. She watched the triumphant halo around the captain fade, replaced by dismay as Vrinna sensed what was about to happen. Just before everything disappeared, Lahlil said,

  Chapter 32

  Lahlil felt the boards beneath her almost before she had time to brace herself for the stride. Snow was falling in tiny, stinging flakes, and they were in a cove just beyond Ravindal Harbor: there was no mistaking the vine-covered towers looming over the promontory in the distance, or the frozen waterfall arching from the cliffs, or the triffons wheeling in the sky above—too many triffons.

  “Did it,” said Savion, flashing a grin before he swayed and dropped to the deck.

  Cyrrin asked, staggering.

 

  Cyrrin grabbed the front of Lahlil’s coat and pulled it hard, spinning both of them around.

  Lahlil told her, She very carefully took the jar of medicine from Cyrrin’s hand.

 

  said Lahlil,

  Cyrrin let go of her and staggered to the mast, grabbing on for support.

  Lahlil knelt down next to Jachad just as Nisha’s cabin door burst open and Grentha charged down the ladder. Doors crashed open and five other women came close behind her. Recognition crossed the old sailor’s face as her eyes met Lahlil’s—before the sight of Jachad sprawled across the deck changed it to something else entirely. Grentha instantly whirled to block Nisha’s path.

  “Meiran!” the queen was already calling out to her; she had almost forgotten her old Nomas nickname. “Sweet Amai, girl, did you drop out of the sky? What—? Get out of my way, Grentha. What are you doing?”

  “Easy, now,” the first mate cautioned as she stepped aside. The sound Nisha made when she saw her son lying on the deck almost split Lahlil in half. She made way as the queen threw herself down on her knees next to her prostrate son, pulling him into her arms and calling his name in a throaty sob. Jachad managed to grasp his mother’s hand and say some words of reassurance to her, but Lahlil couldn’t make them out.

  Sailors bundled into anonymity against the cold started bursting onto the deck. Grentha ordered four of them to carry Jachad into the captain’s cabin and they lifted him from Nisha’s arms with the wordless efficiency of people accustomed to working together in a crisis. Other women helped Savion up and urged him into the galley to warm up by the stove. By the time Lahlil had gathered her wits about her again, he had already gone inside.

  It wasn’t until Nisha found herself kneeling alone on the deck that she seemed to remember Lahlil.

  “What have you done?” asked the Nomas queen, rising and striding over the deck, her presence the force of a tidal wave as she swept past Grentha’s staying hand. “What have you done to my son?”

  “He was poisoned—I brought him here to help him.” She gestured toward Cyrrin, who was still sagging against the mast. “Cyrrin has a cure.”

  “Who poisoned him?” The prickling snow reddened Nisha’s cheeks and made the fury in her sea-blue eyes flash even brighter. Some of the sailors had clustered together by the rails and were eyeing them with distress.

  “We don’t know—someone from the Shadar, we think.”

  “From the Shadar—where you brought him,” said Nisha, but something occurred to her before she went on with her recriminations. “You’re supposed to be with the caravan, with Oshi.” Even now, the thought of Oshi softened her into the woman Lahlil remembered; the one who had pulled her down onto her lap and brushed the tangles from her hair with silver combs; who had murmured lilting songs about selkwhales and mermen. “Where is Oshi? What have you done with him?”

  “Oshi is fine. He’s with Callia.”

  “On the Dawn Gazer?”

  “No, she’s with the caravan,” said Lahlil. She had no choice; she must spit out the rest like the bitter pill it was. “Callia was poisoned, too. She survived, but her baby died.”

  Lahlil saw Nisha’s last breath stop in her throat, suspended there in a moment of perfect dismay.

  Then the Nomas queen’s rage cracked wide and she lashed out, pounding on Lahlil’s chest like someone banging on a locked door. Lahlil remained motionless as the blows rained down on her, but she couldn’t stop her head from recoiling when Nisha’s flailing fist caught her chin and knocked her eye-patch loose, or when her ring tore a gash over her eye. By then Grentha was pulling her captain away.

  “It’s not her fault,” said Grentha. “Nisha, she didn’t poison them. Think. She brought Jachi to you.”

  Lahlil replaced the eye-patch and dabbed at the blood running down into the corner of her eye. Grentha could say what she liked: it was her fault, somehow. Everything was her fault.

  “Then I’m sorry, Meiran,” said the queen, regaining her composure as quickly as she’d lost it, but not her warmth. “You said you had a cure?”

  Lahlil nodded.

  She stayed behind as Grentha shepherded Nisha to her cabin. A pool of warm lamplight spilled out from the door when it opened to admit them, and then disappeared when it clicked shut behind them.

  Cyrrin demanded, still clinging to the mast.

  said Lahlil. She could feel Jachad’s precious time draining away.

  The physic looked at her. The single, chilling word came from the black point at the center of her spinning emotions.

  Lahlil tightened her fingers around the jar.

  said Cyrrin. A gust of wind thumped against the furled sails over their heads.

  Lahlil reminded her, already skirting around a locker to get to the ladder leading to the deck above.

  Cyrrin warned, stopping her in her tracks.


  Lahlil cried.

  said Cyrrin.

  said Lahlil, throwing back her cowl, ignoring the swirling snow.

  Cyrrin commanded, pushing herself away from the mast.

  Lahlil’s jaw ached as if it had frozen in place, and the snow coming down made it hard to see the door to Nisha’s cabin. She knew the ship wasn’t rocking, but she could have sworn she heard the swaying mast creaking and groaning over her head.

  she pleaded with Cyrrin.

 

  Lahlil clenched her fist behind her back to keep from hitting something.

  Cyrrin looked away.

 

  Cyrrin sniped. She let go of the mast and started to shuffle slowly across the deck.

  Lahlil felt the Mongrel surge up inside her: a ball of flame ready to burst.

  said Cyrrin, bracing herself against one of the lockers.