Umbertouched

by Livia Blackburne

  “And the other?” asks the man.

  “Shidadi, but we know little else.”

  The man nods. “Get them ready to go.”

  The soldiers tie our hands behind our backs and march us outside, where we’re herded into a closed cart. I’m heartened to see Sarsine walk out on her own strength. The wagon is a box on wheels with a door in the back—almost like a carriage without the fine trappings. I sit down on a bench lining the wall, and Sarsine crumples onto the one across from me.

  “How do you feel?” I ask.

  Her eyes go unfocused as she takes inventory of her body. “It still hurts,” she says, “but not nearly as bad.”

  “That’s better than I’d hoped.” Now we just have to pray that it was good enough for a full recovery.

  It’s stuffy inside the wagon. A little light comes through cracks in the wood, but not much air, and the cart jostles every time we hit a bump. I strain at my ropes, but they’re too tight to slip off. I start sawing them against the edge of my wooden bench. Sarsine does the same, but then she stops and peers out through one of the cracks.

  “Were not going toward Sehmar,” she says. “We’re going north.”

  Something gives in my bindings. Quickly, I pull the ropes from my wrists. “I’m free.”

  Sarsine turns her back to me, and I dig my nails into the knots binding her wrists, working them loose.

  The cart slows to a halt. We freeze.

  Sarsine frantically casts off her ropes as footsteps approach our wagon. She pulls out a fistful of pebbles from underneath her tunic and presses them into my hands. “Go for the eyes,” she hisses. She picks up the rope that had bound her and stretches it between her hands, a ready garrote. We creep—Sarsine still a little unsteady—toward the door and take our positions on either side. I shift my weight to leap at the person beyond.

  The door opens. And I stop.

  A lone woman stands outside. Her face and clothes are obscured by a cylindrical plague veil. Only her hands show from underneath, and there’s something about them. They’re mottled into the familiar rosemark pattern, but more than that, I’ve seen them before—serving tea, plucking a harp, clutching a bowl of incense.

  The woman lifts her hands to her veil and parts it to reveal Mehtap’s face.

  All I can do is stare.

  Next to me, Sarsine, her makeshift garrote still in her hand, looks warily between Mehtap and me, waiting for my cue.

  Mehtap takes in my expression. “An imperial messenger with a secret, urgent message from Baruva to Kiran switched horses at a nearby outpost. It wasn’t hard to guess what it was about, and not much harder to fake a return messenger.” She indicates a short distance behind her, where the man in imperial purple stands grooming a horse. “Sisson used to be one of Kiran’s guards at court, and he’s very good at imitating the peacocks that spend their days there.” Now I know why he looked familiar. I saw him speaking with Mehtap the last time we saw her caravan.

  “You rescued us?” I still can’t wrap my mind around it.

  A flash of irritation crosses her face. “I’ve no great love for Baruva. The sycophant has stood in the way of all my recent efforts. It’s time something doesn’t go his way.” She pauses. “It was you who wrote that note, wasn’t it? The one warning me about him.”

  So she did find the note. “I overheard him talking about you at Taof.”

  “You should have been clear out of the empire by then,” she says. “You promised you’d leave right away.”

  “It proved to be harder than anticipated.”

  She lets out a small huff and steps back from the wagon. “Don’t you want to come out?”

  The situation feels more and more bizarre as Sarsine and I climb out. We’re still in the grasslands, and our cart is circled with the rest of Mehtap’s wagons. There’s a fire pit in the middle, and a basket of travel bread on the ground. The crew of her caravan walks between the wagons, busy with their tasks.

  “Sit, eat,” Mehtap says. She still has the same childlike face, and her rosemarks are as prominent as ever. But the differences I noticed near Taof are even more pronounced now. For one thing, she wears a torn brown travel tunic instead of the embroidered gowns she wore at home. Beyond that, though, she has an air of command that once again brings her father to mind. She’s a far cry from the tormented soul I left in Sehmar City.

  My stomach growls, and I decide that Mehtap has easier ways of killing us than giving us bad food. The bread is quite good—softer than most travel breads, with a nutty taste.

  “Delicious, isn’t it?” says Mehtap. “Remember Estir from Sehmar’s compound? There’s a woman in her group who makes this. It’s called Zenagua’s scales—the currants are good deeds and the raisins are bad. The baker decides the proportions.”

  This batch is markedly heavier in raisins.

  “Your weapons are in the back of the first wagon,” Mehtap says. “You shouldn’t stay long. Take what food you need to keep you alive on your journey.”

  Sarsine needs no further encouragement and rushes to the first wagon, reminding me of Dineas the way she’s so eager to get to her weapons.

  I linger. “I heard you were traveling between colonies bringing them food and supplies.”

  Mehtap shrugs. “After everything happened in Sehmar, I didn’t know what to do. I could lie down in my villa and wait to die, or I could continue the work we started. To atone for—” She looks at Sarsine and stops. “But I received news of the outbreak at Taof and that they were low on supplies. The emperor doesn’t do anything—we know that. My father had to ask a few favors, but I was granted permission to travel if we stayed to the side roads and my crew handled everything outside the compounds. I want to be useful, Zivah. I want to make a difference. That hasn’t changed.”

  Her answer shames me. I don’t know why I keep underestimating her. “Thank you. You likely saved our lives.”

  She gives a bitter laugh. “You know what’s maddening? I couldn’t even hate you. You’d betrayed me in every way. Made my father look like a fool, took our kindness and threw it in our faces. I started running this caravan to escape everything, to forget all that’s happened. But then, I wouldn’t even have thought of doing this if it hadn’t been for you. If you hadn’t shown me that I could do more than just be locked up in my rosemarked villa with my servants. So should I be grateful to you? When you’ve done so much to hurt us?”

  “I’m sorry.” I wonder if those words hold any meaning at all anymore.

  “If you’re truly sorry, you’ll tell me what you’re doing back in Ampara. Am I handing an advantage over to my father’s enemies by letting you go?”

  I hesitate just a brief moment. Mehtap may not believe me, but I have to try. “Your father’s enemies are not who you think they are.”

  Her expression flattens.

  I continue. “Remember Utana, the minister of health? He made a confession to me before he died. He’d learned that Kiran and Baruva worked together to infect your father’s troops with rose plague.”

  Mehtap furrows her brow. “Kiran and Baruva? Plotting against my father’s troops?”

  I nod.

  “No. I don’t believe it. Baruva is a craven puppet, but he wouldn’t go that far. And Kiran is devoted to my father. He wouldn’t harm his troops.”

  “Kiran didn’t mean to. The food was meant for another battalion, but there was a mistake.”

  I think I see a flicker of doubt spread across her face. “You learned all this from Utana? Why didn’t you have him tell my father?”

  “He died before I could find out more, and there were pieces I had to fill in. A woman named Kione at the Khaygal rosemarked compound told me the rest. That’s why I came back to Ampara. To find her.”

  Mehtap mouths Kione’s name. “I don’t understand. If this is true, why would Utana tell you, and not me?”

  The answer is hard to say. I hesitate, considering different words, but there’s no way to make it sound less damning.
“I’d given Utana some herbs for pain. They...make some people more forthright than they usually are.”

  Mehtap rears back. “You have herbs that make people tell you their secrets? Who else have you given them to?” She pauses, aghast. “Have you given them to me?”

  I throw out my hands, beseeching. “It was an accident. An unintended effect of the herbs. Mehtap, I would never—”

  “Spy on my people? Learn our secrets? Lie to me and my father?”

  I let my hands fall.

  She turns her head, scrutinizing the horizon. “I think you should leave now.”

  “Mehtap—”

  “These grasslands are too open. I can’t risk being seen with you.”

  “At least—”

  “I’m having headaches now, you know?” Mehtap says quietly. “My vision blurs sometimes at the edges.”

  My words die on my lips. “I’m sorry.”

  She gives a brave shrug. “It’s not as if we didn’t know it would happen.” She gives a caustic laugh. “You know the real reason I rescued you? I wanted to see you one last time. I knew we were on different sides, but I kept on thinking about the good times we had. Dressing up for the festival, putting plans together for Utana...I wanted to say good-bye.” She laughs, if something that wistful could be called a laugh. “Silly, isn’t it? Silly and stupid.”

  Her despondence is like a brand on my skin. “Mehtap...You may not believe me, but I didn’t want things to end this way.”

  Mehtap’s eyes turn sad. “We all wish life could be different.” She waves me away. “Go. Perhaps I will see you again in the afterlife. Maybe then we can rail together at the gods.”

  The Amparan advance slows after they take the village, but it doesn’t stop. Every day, they clear away more of the forest, and troops fill in the space that’s left. They bring in foot soldiers, tents, supply trains.

  As for us, we split our forces. The Dara fighters who’d stayed behind now join their people in the mountain camps, from where they’ll keep us supplied with food and medicine. The Shidadi stay south. We do what we can, picking off Amparan scouts, harrying the troops that clear the forest. But there are just too many of them. Our fighters retreat farther and farther north.

  Once a day, I send Slicewing to the beach where I expect Zivah and Sarsine to return. Every day, my heart sinks to see the crow flying back high and straight, not low and in bits and spurts like she would if she were leading someone. One day, she comes back agitated, chattering nonstop and ruffling her feathers.

  “What is it?” Could something have happened? The next day, the same thing happens, and the day after that, Slicewing refuses to go at all. Something’s wrong, and the crow’s not talking. I need to see that beach for myself, but Gatha’s confined me to the camp. Looks like I’m going to have to incur more of Gatha’s wrath.

  I start looking for chances to leave. I know that Gaumit’s assigned to morning scouting rounds these days, and also that he dawdles near the scenic portions of his loop and sometimes leaves it altogether. He’s never been good at staying where he’s supposed to be. That’s probably how he got the rose plague when everybody else in the tribe avoided it.

  It doesn’t take much effort to get past him. A well-timed walk and some help from Slicewing, and soon I’m safely out of the camp.

  I travel south as quickly and quietly as I can. Once or twice, Slicewing calls out a warning, and I don’t bother to check whether the soldiers are Shidadi or Amparan before ducking for cover. I get no trouble on the way down, but the back of my neck tingles as I near the beach. The sounds of the forest have shifted—not in a way I can put into words, but something’s changed. Soon, I arrive at a narrow trail that leads down the cliff toward the water. I’ve just stepped onto it when Slicewing calls, and I dive into the trees.

  An umbertouched Amparan soldier comes off the trail. His eyes skip lightly over the forest—I can tell he’s the kind of scout who won’t see anything at all before it’s on top of him. I let the leaves close around me, and he walks past, but Slicewing calls again before I can come out. Another guard goes by, and then another.

  This is strange. Could it be a passing battalion? I give up on the trail and pick my way through the underbrush to the cliff edge, peering over the side only to scramble back, biting down a curse. The beach below is swarming with soldiers. Why would they set up an outpost here? It’s far too small and rocky to do any good, but I sure didn’t imagine those troops. If Zivah and Sarsine come back now, it’ll be straight into an ambush.

  Or worse, what if they’ve already come back?

  My skin crawls at the thought. Gingerly, I creep to the edge for another look. The outpost is split between the rocky beach and the cliff overlooking it. It’s not a large camp—maybe a hundred soldiers. Sentries patrol the cliff up top. On the beach down below there’s a bonfire with off-duty soldiers crowded around. If I listen carefully, I can hear their voices drifting up to where I am. There are at least five catapults on the beach, which seems silly since we have no cities with walls to knock down. A few rowboats lie on the rocks—none like the one Zivah and Sarsine would have left Monyar in, but then, the two of them might have taken a different boat back. A big tent is set up at the top of the cliff. Could it hold prisoners? In a fit of pessimism, I scan the beach for graves or funeral pyres.

  I stay hidden in the foliage, watching the sentries pass one by one. They come in a regular pattern—one every quarter hour or so. After I figure that out, I sneak across the line toward the giant tent at the top. A peek inside reveals only a few musty cloaks and tiny bags of flour. Doesn’t seem like the most well-provisioned of larders.

  The only way down to the beach is by that single trail down the side of the cliff. There’s no plant cover on the trail at all, and in a camp of a hundred soldiers, stealing an Amparan cloak wouldn’t be enough to blend in. Is it worth the risk to go down there? I don’t see any places where they could be keeping prisoners, but it kills me to leave without knowing for sure whether Zivah and Sarsine have been here.

  Another sentry approaches, one who prickles my sense for danger with the way he scans the forest. He’s a big man. There aren’t many soldiers that size. I make a mental note of escape paths through the brush, just to be safe. And then the sentry comes closer, and I freeze.

  It’s Walgash.

  I stare at his face, waiting to see if it shifts into something else, but it doesn’t change. He has his bow slung over his shoulder and his sword at his hip, and I can see a slight frown on his face as he looks around. Walgash has sharper eyes than any of us, and I know better than to underestimate him.

  Gatha would have my head, but I can’t walk away. Why did he spare me in that battle on the bridge? I can’t simply pretend that it didn’t happen, or that the past year didn’t happen.

  Well, no one’s ever accused me of exceptionally good judgment. Who knows, maybe he has news of Zivah.

  I start to trail him, doing my best not to crunch the dirt underneath my feet. Slicewing trails behind me, flitting from branch to branch. Finally, I duck behind a thick stand of bamboo. I take my bow off my shoulder, careful not to brush any plants, and nock an arrow before calling out.

  “Walgash.”

  He whips his sword out of its scabbard and scans the forest. “Who’s there?”

  “A friend. For today at least.”

  “Dineas?” There’s disbelief and a bit of anger in his voice. He takes a careful step in my direction, and I loose an arrow toward the ground in front of him.

  “Don’t come any closer.”

  “Who’s with you?” He holds his sword high, clearly expecting an ambush.

  “It’s just me. I come as a friend.”

  Walgash snorts. “Just like you came to the capital as a friend?”

  “I mean you no harm, Walgash. I swear it on my sword. That’s a sacred vow to our people.”

  He spits on the ground. “I’m not well versed in the vows of northern barbarians.”

  I
nock another arrow. “Why didn’t you shoot me on that bridge?”

  “Because once in a while I’m a sentimental idiot.”

  “I’m glad you were sentimental this time.”

  He sweeps his head from side to side, scanning the trees. “Don’t read too much into it. I serve my people, just as you do yours, and someday we’ll kill each other like good soldiers.”

  We’ve both lived war long enough to know the truth of his words. “Maybe, but today I’m just looking for Zivah.”

  He stops short, and I can tell my question has caught him off guard. “Your fellow spy?”

  “Have you seen her?”

  “Should I have? And why should I tell you if I did?”

  “She’s not a soldier. I just want to know if she’s safe.”

  “For someone who’s not a soldier, she sure did a lot of damage.” His gaze starts to narrow in on where I am. “And why would you think she’s been here? Did she leave the island? For some ‘not soldierly’ purposes?”

  I should know better than to underestimate him.

  “She’s saved countless Amparan lives,” I say. “She may even have saved yours when Neju’s Guard fell ill in Monyar.” I pause. “Have you ever wondered if you’re serving the wrong lord, Walgash? Have you heard the rumors about Kiran? How he was the one who poisoned Neju’s Guard? They’re true.”

  Walgash whips the bow off his shoulder and aims an arrow right to my hiding place. “You really are a shameless liar, aren’t you?”

  I step to my right. His aim follows me, even though I thought I’d made no sound. I’m beginning to see downsides to my brilliant plan. “Think about it, Walgash. You know Kiran’s always wanted to expand the empire. He just needed an excuse.”

  “Get out of here,” Walgash growls. “Or I won’t miss this time.”

  He’s serious. I didn’t live this long without learning to tell when someone’s ready to kill me. “You may not believe me, but I took no joy in deceiving you and the others. Knowing that I betrayed you haunts me still.”