Pascolli had once told her he lost his ability to talk after a tousle with some louts at a small town hostelry. Kicked in the throat, he had barely managed to stagger away after downing his attackers. Whether it were true or not, he enjoyed boasting about it. Being guarded by Pascolli was probably more dangerous than being alone.
She sat up, tossed back the cover and swung her legs out of bed. Her arm ached where the lieutenant had gripped it and her shirt looked decidedly crumpled. Her hair stubbornly resisted being combed back by her fingers.
Wincing with each movement, Pascolli also sat up. “Next time, I will remember that, but I would still do it again. You see, my heart belongs to you.” He put one hand on his heart in a dramatic pose.
“Oh, yes?” She raised an eyebrow, relieved he was well enough to make his normal jokes. “Pascolli, um, I don’t mean to seem ungrateful for what you did. I’d just rather you thought more before you jump in. One day you might not get a second chance.”
He stared at the floor as if it had suddenly sprung a leak. “I...I will try. Next time. Though it might be best if there were no next time. I don’t think I could survive you tripping me again.”
That he would admit to needing to try was surprising. She couldn’t resist a giggle. “Sorry, I didn’t have time to be gentle.”
Blood spotted his sheets.
“Um... Thank you for helping me, anyway.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’ll take a look at your back?”
“No! It’s okay.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
She looked thoughtfully at him. Not for the first time she wondered how he had came to be where he was. For a young Andonny boy to be separated from his family was strange. The Andonny traveled, traded and even married within their families, their bloodlines pure, her mother used to say, since the beginning of time – pure conmen, traders, pickpockets and pilferers.
The first thing Pascolli had showed her – simply, he claimed, for her education – was how to deftly rifle someone’s pocket. The second was how to use a picklock.
It seemed unwise and possibly rude to ask him why he was alone.
“Ah! Thought I heard you!” Mr. Therber appeared in the doorway. “Come! Breakfast is getting old and cold.”
With her and Mr. Therber on either side, Pascolli managed to limp slowly to the next room. Ellinca had never had to tend any wound of Pascolli’s before, perhaps he was shy. Someone should look at it. Maybe the sergeant?
To one side of the room was a table laden with bowls and wooden spoons. A fire crackled in the blackened stone fireplace. Mr. Therber had not been joking. The porridge heaped into their bowls stuck to the ladle like glue and sat in the center of the bowls in one very cold lump. However the milk he splashed in was steaming. He crowned the top of each mountainous mess with a chunk of golden honeycomb, giving Ellinca an extra piece.
“There you go! I am sorry about the state of the porridge but breakfast was an hour ago.” He cleared his throat and stared at the floor for a moment, running his hand over the close-shaven hair on his scalp. Then his eyes met Ellinca’s.
“Miss, I wish to apologize very greatly for the way you were treated last night.”
This was as unexpected as it was embarrassing. She felt her face flush and began to shake her head. Besides there was an important question she had to ask. “It wasn’t...”
He held up a finger. “No. Don’t say anything. This happened on my property and I am so, so sorry. If I could lay hands on that man right now... Anyway, let us forget violence.”
“Um, Mr. Therber, how is your tuskdog today? Does his leg look better?”
“Gangar is walking about again this morning. I do not know what you did, but we are both grateful.”
She nodded. “Please make sure he gets fresh food today. There were, um, maggots in his bowl.”
“Ah. Yes.” It was Mr. Therber’s turn to be embarrassed. “That was an oversight. I was at the markets all day and, with this heat...”
“Can I see him later?”
“Of course! But I must be with you for safety. Now. Eat! Afterward the young man will have the soldier tend to his wounds. And you, miss, if it is not too much trouble...” He raised his eyebrows and held out his hands wide as though asking a favor from her. “My mother would like to speak with you later.”
“Oh. Sure.” His mother? Was that who had opened the window last night?
“Enjoy your breakfast. The wind has changed direction today, so you will, I think, find things much more pleasant. The smell goes elsewhere.”
Halfway through the meal the photographer arrived for breakfast. He pulled up a chair and heartily tucked into some porridge with only a dash of milk to improve the flavor. Long strands of his wavy black hair constantly fell across his face and had to be rescued from his mouth or the bowl.
It dawned on Ellinca that his strange assortment of clothing was not, as she first supposed, the result of fashion but rather because of his absentmindedness.
His name, he told them between mouthfuls, was Bertrand Jubb, and he had been up much of the night caring for his pictures. For some reason she didn’t understand, these had to be treated with chemicals or they would spoil.
“Might I watch what you do sometime, Mr. Jubb?” The idea that the image of a person or a piece of scenery could captured on paper was astonishing.
“Why, yes.” He brightened, seemingly stunned at someone showing interest in his work. “Of course, but not today. The thiosulphate application is difficult. You must come to the encampment.” For the first time he really looked at her, as if recognizing her as only now being another worthwhile human being.
Pascolli frantically signed. “Not a good idea. What about the lieutenant?”
That set her back for a moment. “I won’t let him rule my life!”
Mr. Jubb said nothing about the events he had photographed last night. Ellinca was grateful. Perhaps nothing mattered to him much unless it was something worth putting into a picture.
“Got to check somethin’.” He shoved back his chair while still chewing, went out through a door that led to an outside veranda. Wind rattled the door to and fro, whistling through the gap. The stable could be seen in the distance. The door slammed shut.
Perhaps because she was hungry, the food tasted wonderful. It filled her stomach to bursting and a delicious warmth spread all the way to her toes. Today, Ellinca decided, as she put down the spoon, would be far better than yesterday. She looked round the room, drumming her fingers.
The sergeant must have been listening for them to finish because he came in from the veranda. He nodded to her then addressed Pascolli. “Have to check those whip marks. You’re so dreggin’ lucky I’m here. You’re an idiot. You know that?”
Startled, Pascolli nodded, his eyes round, like a ’possum caught in the light of a slit-lantern.
“An idiot! Come out ’ere in the light.”
Meekly, Pascolli followed him out onto the veranda, wincing only a little as he moved.
Directly opposite where Ellinca sat was a blue-painted door. It swung silently open. Something behind it made a series of thuds. That was the room of the mysterious watcher.
An old lady, her long hair a mix of gray and stark white, stumped through the doorway using a walking stick to feel her way. Firelight reflected as a flickering gleam in her eyes. The pupils were wide and focused on mid-air. She was blind. This must be Mr. Therber’s mother.
“Oh!” Ellinca leapt to her feet, scurrying around to pull a chair out.
The woman groped for the back of it and sat, making small noises of pain as she did so. Her bones and joints crackled with arthritis. “Thank you.”
When Ellinca sat again she saw a spiraling blue design on the crinkled back of the old woman’s hands – the sign of a seer. Mrs. Therber could see the paths of the future. What could she want with her? Uneasy, she picked up her cup of water and took a gulp.
Of all the lega
l magience professions, Ellinca had never yearned to be a seer. The idea of looking for the future in animal intestines disgusted her. A herbologist or a bio-energeer perhaps, not a needle master though. Sticking needles in people didn’t appeal to her. A trinketologist had been what she really wished for – where she’d get to work with animals.
“Give me your hands.”
Hesitantly she did so. For several minutes the lady ran skeletal fingers over Ellinca’s hands. Mrs. Therber’s grip convulsed.
Pain flared in Ellinca’s fingertip. “Ow!” Horrified, she stared.
Blood glistened on the sharpened triangular nail of Mrs. Therber’s index finger. She hauled Ellinca’s finger to her mouth and sucked once.
“Odd,” she muttered. “Young, yet already tainted by time.” Her eyeballs flicked from side to side for a minute or more.
Ellinca leaned away until her back pressed hard against the chair.
“Take care of those hands, girl, or they will take you to places you may not wish to go. I see the nearby futures but...there’s more than one...always more than one. And maybe I don’t see as clearly as I used to. Hmm. Nevertheless I think you’ll find this useful.” She placed a bracelet on the table. Silver and bronze conical beads clicked and spun against each other, strung on wire that had been wrestled into seemingly random knots.
“How? How is this to be useful?” Intrigued yet cautious, she slid the bracelet onto her wrist. Should she even trust this lady?
“I can say no more! Except...tell Hilas that Sania sends her regards.”
Hilas? That must be Hilas Frope. She wasn’t planning on speaking to him ever again. She couldn’t help smirking. From what she’d heard seers always refused to talk when they lost track of the future.
Mrs. Therber struggled to her feet. “I wouldn’t drink the rest of that.” She indicated the cup Ellinca clutched.
“What?” A fly floated lifelessly in the water. “Oh. Yuck.” She put down the cup. When she looked up Mrs. Therber had gone.
Strange. She reached to the pouch at her waist and touched the vial that held her mother’s ghost. The comfort she had once gained from its closeness seemed to lessen each day and she sometimes wondered how much ghosts could feel or be aware.
After her mother died she had found this perfume bottle in her parents’ bedroom, empty. Yet, when she put her nose to the opening and breathed in... The scent was still there.
A million flowers, warm, dizzying, sweet, and so familiar she shut her eyes tight to trap the scent in her mind forever.
After silvering the inside with concentrated afalgam she plucked petals from the tassel daisies in the flower garden and dropped them into the bottle – her mother’s favorite flowers and scent.
Then she waited, watching the garden every night at the hour of her death.
Ghosts sometimes returned to the place of their death and sometimes, sometimes, to a place that meant the most to them.
Her mother would return. She had known it with a certainty that was so sure, so solid it was as if she could touch it. Each night she waited, until the night her mother’s ghost returned and she caught it in the bottle.
No one would ever sell her mother’s ghost, no one, but sometimes when she saw her mother’s ghost spinning and spinning, held in by glass walls, she wondered how much ghosts could see, could feel. Had she done something terrible?
She inhaled sharply, recalled to the present. She hadn’t said her prayer to the goddess this morning. It could wait a little longer. They wouldn’t be leaving until Pascolli was able to ride.
That proved to be a problem. Despite the use of a salve made by a licensed herbologist – which made Ellinca wonder how the army could pay for all the medicines it used – one of the wounds on Pascolli’s back refused to stop bleeding. The sergeant decided a stitch through the deep tear was needed.
This was a good time to visit the tuskdog, Gangar. The thought of Pascolli having a needle run through his skin made her stomach clench and sweat break out on her brow. Animals she could handle; people were somehow different.
She found Gangar back in the burrow in the stable and, as soon as she set foot in the stall, he was growling again. She sat for a while talking and singing to him softly but no amount of coaxing would draw him out. Frustrating – she wanted to check the leg. Still, he was breathing well and he had eaten.
The growling lessened and stopped altogether. He began to quietly snore.
“Well, that’s better than growling,” she muttered. One of his eyes fluttered open then slowly closed.
When someone called out that they were leaving she rose to her feet and brushed off the straw. She looked over her shoulder. No one would see. She bowed deeply to Gangar. “Farewell, sir. May you heal quickly and have a long and eventful life.”
Both his eyes opened this time. She imagined she saw his head dip a little as if in answer. She grinned at her silliness and ran outside.
There were only two horses for the four of them. She rode behind the sergeant while Pascolli sat behind Mr. Bertrand Jubb. They trotted along slowly to lessen the jarring on his wound.
This was the first time she had really seen the sergeant up close. The back of his neck was thicker than her head and knotted with muscle. When he turned his head it was like watching flesh-colored snakes wrestling.
Interesting...the tiny head of a golden needle sat midway up his neck. Why did he have call for needles from a needle master? For courage? Surely not. Strength? Hmm. She’d heard one could even get resistance to arrows and other sharp things – though it didn’t last forever, which could be embarrassing in the middle of a battle.
It was obvious Pascolli was still in pain, wincing with every rough step his horse took. There was nothing she could do except pray for smaller holes in the road. There was a deity for travelers, and she rattled off a plea for a smooth journey. Mr. Jubb seemed to notice very little, wrapped in his thoughts. She decided to take him up on the offer. The lieutenant would not rule her life.
When Mr. Jubb spotted her watching him, a deep frown marked the center of his forehead. She waved but he looked away.
Although there was no sign of any trouble the sergeant had a small crossbow strung and several times he loosened his saber in its scabbard. The rumor about the strange creature, the bludvoik, returned to the top of her mind. There had been so many terrible things happening it had faded into the background.
Never had she thought life would be an easy business, but the last day had been the second worst ever... Third worst – her father, her mother...and now this.
She sighed. She would be glad to get back to Kurt and Beth – no matter how much she was scolded for drawing trouble down on the company. As the youngest of the tag-along traders, and with Beth having taken a shine to them, they had been half-accepted as regulars. Returning to this life was like putting on an old shoe with holes in the sole. There might be a few discomforts but it fit, mostly.
Chapter 5
Photographic Evidence
With every hoof fall Ellinca’s stomach tightened a little more. Why, she could not say, for no branches rustled unexpectedly and nothing jumped out at her, She scented no blood or smoke... At that thought her skin began to crawl. Ah.
That was it. It was the lack of things happening that was odd. Most times a few stray curs slinked about near the campsite, and the turnoff to the clearing was just up ahead. There seemed to be fewer bird and insect sounds too. Did she imagine this? She held her tongue and said nothing, just clung onto the sergeant’s waist. He was alert and looked tough enough to take care of most emergencies.
What if something had happened, some catastrophe? The lieutenant might have run amok and slaughtered them or that creature might have attacked or... So many horrible scenarios ran screaming through her head.
One day, she told herself, she’d suffer because she was afraid of appearing stupid. Ellinca cleared her throat to speak and Jerome stepped out onto the road waving madly, a monstrous grin on his face.
“You’re okay!”
She flushed. “Yes.” They had been missed. “Of course we are, Jerome!”
As if a dam had been broken everyone else appeared. Beth, Kurt and several of the tag traders flooded onto the road, talking and calling out, then helping the groaning Pascolli – over-acting, she decided – down from his horse. Only one trader shot them a sullen look and spat to the side.
At first it looked as if Kurt would haul the sergeant off and thump him – a very risky and nigh impossible task. Kurt never used his fists when words would do.
Ellinca hurriedly stood in front of the sergeant’s horse. She found herself explaining everything, and that took a lot of words. She felt so...so in command.
There was a stilted silence as the story sank in.
“Oh my goodness, you poor children!” Beth twisted her hands together.
Ellinca held her tongue. It wouldn’t be polite to say that they weren’t children.
The sergeant barely said a word in all this but from the way he reddened and the stiffness of his movements, he was thoroughly bewildered.
As if someone had poked him, he spoke a few gruff words. He had to return to the encampment, he said, or they would declare him a deserter.
Someone tapped her shoulder.
“Might I have a word with you, Miss Ellinca?” Mr. Jubb stood to one side, clutching a small folio of papers.
“Yes, of course! Is there something wrong? The invitation, I’m sure, it would be for you also.” Well, she was presuming, but the excitement was infectious.
“No. Thank you but no, miss. I have work to do. The Finder, Mr. Frope, always inspects my newest developments... In fact, that’s what I need to speak to you about.” The folio in his hands bent as his hands clenched. She stared.
“What?” He glanced at the folio then cleared his throat. “Oh! I’m a little nervous. Not used to talking to young... That is... Here.” He opened the folio, pulled out a sheet and gave it to her. “It’s...a photograph.”
“Why, thank you.” She had never seen a real photograph. They were rare things, meant for the extremely rich. This was like being handed a sheet of gold. The picture on it showed her kneeling beside the tuskdog. “Thank you, Mr. Jubb, it’s so much like me! So real!”
Magience: second edition Page 4
