by Watson Davis
Thyu'fest smiled. “Uh huh?”
She raised the glass to her lips and tilted it back. The liquor burned her mouth, descending through her insides, and she gasped for breath.
A voice in the distance cried out. “Ka-bes!”
Ka-bes swung around. “Sifa?”
The doors to the saloon flew open and Sifa ran in, her arresting blue eyes wide, her blue hair falling around her horns and onto her face. “Ka-bes! Some people... some bad men, they came to the camp.”
Ka-bes dropped the glass and ran to stand before Sifa. She grabbed the girl by her arms and stared into her eyes. “Are you hurt? What happened?”
“What the hell is that?” Thyu’fest whispered.
“Men came,” Sifa said. “They laughed and threw me on the ground. I hit one of them in the nose.” She sniffed and squinted, peering into Ka-bes’s face. “What have you been doing? What is that awful smell?”
“We’ve got to go,” Ka-bes said, turning Sifa toward the door and pushing her forward. Ka-bes stopped and bowed to Thyu’fest and the other patrons of the bar. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
THE YURT LAY IN THE sand, the poles to hold up the top of the tent jutting up from the ground like ribs. Sifa’s nicest tunic fluttered in the wind, snagged by a scraggly binka bush while other pieces of clothing crab-walked across the dusty ground, some flapping against the rocks and the canyon wall.
“See?” Sifa patted the neck of the horse she’d taken from the raiders, directing it toward a pile of her clothes. “The bastards destroyed everything.”
“Watch your language,” Ka-bes whispered.
Stopping at the pile, Sifa slid off the horse’s back and grabbed at her things. A gust of wind picked up an undershirt, and she chased it across the canyon. “Where do we start? What’s our plan?”
Ka-bes sat on her camel at the mouth of the canyon, no expression on her face, just the red mark over the middle of her lips. The camel bent its head and nibbled on the scrawny grass at its hooves, pulling up a patch of dandelion flowers.
Sifa clutched her clothes against her chest and hopped to another bit of clothing, Ka-bes’s clothes this time. “We have to get our herd back, and all our stuff.”
Sifa stopped and stared at Ka-bes, but Ka-bes didn’t look at her. She sat on her camel, slumped over as though she’d been riding for days.
“Ka-bes?” Sifa crept to Ka-bes’s side and peered up at her with wide eyes, trying to attract Ka-bes’s attention. Sifa tapped her chest. “Don’t worry, I will get everything straightened up and back to normal here. Then we can go find the assholes—”
“Watch your language,” Ka-bes muttered.
“—who did this. And you will make them give us our stuff back.” Sifa nodded, turned, and strode toward the remains of the yurt, the matter now settled in her mind, a plan in place, the future secure.
The chest for her clothes lay upside-down next to the remains of the campfire. Sifa righted it and knocked the dirt and ash out of it before placing the clothes she’d gathered so far inside, closing it so they wouldn’t fly off again. Skipping across the canyon, she tracked down more bits and pieces of loose clothing, and returned them to the chest and the yurt.
The center pole lay at an angle across Sifa’s cot. She crouched, tugged the pole loose, and put it back in place, the struts holding the skins snapping back in place. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
She gathered the skins and replaced them, tying them back in their places. “I’ll have everything back to normal in a few shakes of a goat’s tail—if we had any more goats.”
Sifa righted their cots, placing them back on their feet, but their chests—the ones with their money and books and knives—were gone. She gasped and cried out, “Ka-bes!” Sifa staggered out of the yurt, her heart heavy. “All our books are gone!”
Ka-bes had not moved and still sat on Kehseho. The camel shook its head and flicked its ears.
Sifa ran to Kehseho’s side. “They stole your books. Our books! They’re all gone.”
“There’s nothing more we can do here,” Ka-bes said, a tear rolling down her cheek. “It’s all gone. Everything I worked for. Gone. We have to start over somehow. Go far away. Somewhere safe.”
Sifa put her hand on Ka-bes’s thigh. “Remember the story you told me over and over to put me to sleep at night? The story of Vellin and her patience? How the jealous councilors locked her away in a dark hole for centuries, but she never surrendered. And finally, her plans succeeded. Heroes freed her. She fought the bad people and regained her rightful throne where she will rule forever and ever, praise be to her. We just have to be like Vellin and not surrender.”
“I don’t know where else to go.” Ka-bes bowed her head, shaking it. “I don’t know what to do.”
“We already decided that!” Sifa said, a smile growing on her lips. “We go find the men who took our stuff and we make them give it back. You’re making this more complicated than it needs to be.”
“How are we supposed to make them give it back?” Ka-bes stared at Sifa, her brow furrowing. “I thought you said it was several human and orc men with swords.”
“Yeah, and probably bows and arrows too, but you can make them give it all back,” Sifa said. “You’re Ka-bes.”
“How are we even supposed to find them?” Ka-bes turned in her saddle, gesturing out at the flat desert beyond the mouth of the small canyon to where craggy peaks loomed in the distance. “The winds have wiped their tracks from the sand.”
Sifa touched her chest. “I can feel our animals. Meany-Head, Puffball, Frazzle, all of them, just as I felt you earlier today.” She closed her eyes and reached out with her mind to the feeling in her heart. She pointed in a direction almost directly back toward the town. “I know they are there, that way, over the river, out of the Ohkrulon. They are not happy, but they are alive.”
Ka-bes touched the black, sparkling necklace around her neck. “I don’t know.”
Sifa whistled and snapped her fingers. The horse she’d been riding earlier lifted its head and trotted to her side. She jumped onto its back. “What have we got to lose?”
“THIS WAY.” SIFA DIRECTED her horse onto a well-worn path lined by wood-beam fences. She followed the faint tugging of the animals she cared for on her heart, ignoring the deeper pain beneath as she had ignored it for years—ignored it because that was the only way she could think of to survive it; that ache was her father, she had realized years ago, but she could never dwell on that without crying. “They’re over here.”
“Are you sure you’re going the right direction?” Ka-bes said, her voice cascading down from her perch high on Kehseho.
“Of course,” Sifa said, leaning back in the saddle with a smile, loving the sway of the horse beneath her, the honest simplicity of its thoughts, the songs of birds in the sparse trees calling for partners and mates. She leaned over and pointed at the trenches in the dark soil. “What are those?”
“Ruts,” Ka-bes answered, her voice soft. “They got worn into the dirt by centuries of carts and wagons passing over this road.”
“Centuries?” Sifa said. She bounced on her horse, looking at the clumps of grass her horse was nibbling from the side of the road, the flowers breaking through cracks in the packed soil, the lines of trees in the orchards. She studied every detail in awe. “That’s a long time.”
“Almost as long as it’s taking us to get to where you think our animals have got to,” Ka-bes said.
Sifa laughed.
The sun melted on the distant horizon, the thin clouds stretching across the golden sky. A dry wind brushed up against her skin and died.
“Keep your hood pulled up,” Ka-bes ordered.
The road stopped at a gate with iron bars, a ranch-house just beyond nestled in a grove of trees. A barn and a stable for the horses and camels, the coop for the hens, pens for animals and lush gardens with rows of plants and herbs surrounded a central villa of white stucco. A fountain bubbled in the yard before the
house, pure water sparkling as it gurgled up from a spout and flowed in twisting ropes into a basin.
“There!” Sifa pointed at one of the pens on the far side of the stables. “See?”
Meany-Head leapt into the air and kicked out with his back feet. More of their goats trotted up to his side: Spot, Dingleberry, Ashface, and the rest. Sifa laughed and turned on her horse’s back toward Ka-bes. “I told you I could sense them.”
“Here?” Ka-bes was not smiling. “This place?”
Sifa shrugged, her laugh dying on her lips, and she pointed once more toward Meany-Head and the others, then pointed to another pen where their moo-cow stuck her head through the rails of the fence and mooed. “Can you not see our friends?”
The door to the villa opened. A man walked out, one Sifa recognized from the saloon, wiping his hands with a rag, a grin on his lips. He called out, “Bang’la? Is that you? I don’t recall inviting you to dinner but you’re welcome at my table tonight.”
Sifa whispered, “Why is he calling you Bang’la?”
“Shh.” Ka-bes snapped her fingers and pointed at Sifa. She bowed and said, “Thyu’fest. May the Empress hear you.”
Men trotted onto the porch, human and orcan, and Sifa knew one of them, had seen him at her camp. Two more emerged from the barn. Another Sifa recognized limped out from the stables: Turmin.
“And you,” Thyu’fest said, his footsteps crunching in the gravel of the carriageway. He stopped a few steps before the gate. “Although I am surprised. What brings you to my gate now? More salt to sell?”
“Men and orcs came to my camp across the river while I was in town and freed our animals.” Ka-bes gestured toward Meany-Head in the pens beyond the stables. “Through some series of coincidences, those animals have ended up in your possession.”
“In my pens?” Thyu’fest’s eyebrows rose, and he looked astonished. He placed his hand on the hilt of the dagger tucked in his belt. “Are you accusing me of stealing your animals?”
“Yes!” Sifa said, nodding her head, pointing first toward the man at the stables. “That guy, Turmin,” she pointed at another, “and that guy, and those two there. Where’s the other one?”
“No,” Ka-bes said, placing her hand on Sifa’s shoulder. “I can’t imagine that you would have stolen my animals. I’m sure they got loose and your men discovered them and brought them back here to care for them until the rightful owners came to claim them.”
A dark cloud gathered on the horizon.
Sifa glared up at Ka-bes, her shoulders slumping. “Ka-bes? That’s not—”
Ka-bes snapped her fingers at Sifa, silencing her.
Lightning flickered in the distance.
“Hmm.” Thyu’fest rubbed his chin and pursed his lips. He ambled closer to the gate, his ranch-hands forming up behind him. “That’s a fine story, but do you have any proof?”
“Proof?” Ka-bes asked, peering at Thyu’fest sideways, her eyes narrowing. “Proof of what?”
“That these beasts are yours.”
“Well, that’s Meany-Head right there,” Sifa said, and the goat leapt up into the air bleating at the mention of his name. A quick gust of wind picked at her hood and she yanked it back into place. “I know each of their names and they’ll come to me when I call them.”
“Shh.” Ka-bes crossed her arms over her chest.
“She’s got a way with animals, huh?” Thyu’fest grinned. “But calling animals to you is not proof they’re yours, little missy, just proof you’ve got a voice they find soothing.”
“Well, they’ve got our brand and we’ve got the paperwork for them,” Sifa said, standing up in the stirrups and glowering at the man. “How’s that for proof, Mister Onion-Eyes?”
“You brought your paperwork with you, did you?” he asked, chuckling and wiping his hands.
“No,” Ka-bes said. “Those were stolen, too.”
“Oh.” Sifa’s eyes widened. “You stinky bastard!”
Ka-bes snapped her fingers and then pointed at Sifa. “Shh!”
“Bang’la—or should I call you Ka-bes, like your young one?—you know I’ve got a soft spot in my heart and a hard spot on my body for you,” he said, holding his arms out wide, a huge grin splitting his face. “You have no reason to go back to being a nomad. You’ve got no tribe to back you up, as this proves. It’s not safe out in the Ohkrulon with scorpions and sandtigers and all manner of demons and ghosts. I could use another slave around the place when the nights get cold, and I’ll make a place for your brat, too.”
Lightning flashed once more, nearer, followed by a long, rolling rumble.
Ka-bes nodded and pulled her horse back, backing away from the gate. “Let me think about it.”
“Think about it?” Sifa yelled. She held up her fists, aiming them toward Thyu’fest. “We are not anyone’s slaves. I will punch you in your fat nose. How do you like that?”
“You might not be anyone’s slave, but Bang’la is.” Thyu’fest leaned to the side, his eyes narrowing. He pointed at the horse Sifa was riding. “That horse belongs to me. Unless you want to be charged with horse-stealing, you’d better give it back.”
“Give it back!” Sifa shook her head and blinked her eyes. “I took this horse from a thief!”
Ka-bes reached down and touched Sifa’s shoulder, saying, “Give the man his horse.”
“I will give the man a black eye; that’s what I’ll give him.”
Ka-bes tugged on Sifa’s arm and shook her. “Give him his damned horse.”
The Herd
SIFA SPREAD HER HANDS, her heart hammering in her chest, standing on the steps leading up to a temple. Above them the bronze doors swept up to a sculpture of Vellin’s calm, inhuman countenance. “But—”
“No,” Ka-bes said, turning to Sifa. She tugged at the girl’s hood, dragging it further down over her face and positioning it the way she wanted. “Keep your head down. Do not talk unless I ask you something.”
Sifa tried to pull away, but Ka-bes caught her by her shoulders, her hands squeezing Sifa’s arms, pulling her close and hugging her. Sifa closed her eyes and let her head rest on Ka-bes’s chest. The woman’s steady and sure heartbeat comforted Sifa. Ka-bes’s hand pressed up against the back of Sifa’s head.
“Be quiet,” Ka-bes whispered. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Sifa pulled away, grinning and sniffling. She rubbed at her eyes with the backs of her hands and said, “I won’t let anything happen to you, either.”
Ka-bes tugged at the girl’s hood, pulling it down again. “Don’t let her see your eyes.”
“My eyes?” Sifa’s brow furrowed. “What’s wrong with my eyes?”
“Or your hair.” Ka-bes touched Sifa’s nose. “Keep your head bowed at all times.”
“But—”
Ka-bes reached out and put her finger on Sifa’s lips. “Forget it. Just wait outside and try not to get into trouble.” Ka-bes whirled and pushed the giant door open by six hand-breadths. The doors creaked, and Ka-bes slipped through without looking back.
Sifa gulped and followed. The necklace around her neck flashed as she tiptoed through the doorway.
The arched ceiling rose into the air supported by a stone framework like a spider’s web, with soaring windows and ethereal magelights drifting back and forth on unseen and unfelt currents. A red velvet carpet ran from the doors through the center of the basilica to the far end, where steps led up to a rough-hewn jade altar stained black in places by the dried blood of centuries of sacrifices. Five candelabras stood around the altar with unlit candles, the golden wax hanging from the sides having dried mid-drip. The place stank of brimstone and rose-scented soap, of old blood and ancient fear.
A thick book sat on a podium by the altar, and a priestess stood by it, wearing the garb of a rector. A magelight hovered around her head as her long fingers skimmed across one page and then the next.
“What took you so long, Dabeh?” The rector looked up, her eyes turning to Ka-bes and
Sifa. She squinted, her lined face pinching as she considered them. “You are not Dabeh.”
“May the Empress hear you.” Ka-bes bowed a deep, obsequious bow.
Sifa struggled to match Ka-bes’s depth and grace, tugging at the top of her hood, stumbling after Ka-bes, placing her hands together to mimic Ka-bes’s pose.
“She listens,” the rector said, her voice thick and full, with a delightful depth and resonance that filled the basilica, reverberating from the stone walls. She stepped down from the altar, clasping her hands behind her back. “Strangers? Are you from a herding group? Dre-nanks left us over two weeks ago.”
Still bowed, Ka-bes said, “We are but simple goatherds, searching the Ohkrulon desert for a patch of grass and a drop of water by the Empress’s grace.”
“May Her love smile upon you then.” The rector stopped before Ka-bes, and touched Ka-bes’s chin, lifting her head, raising her back up to a standing position. She touched Ka-bes’s lips with her forefinger. “Not such a simple goatherder, I think.”
Sifa stood upright and stretched her back, grunting a little bit.
“We come seeking the Empress’s mercy and justice,” Ka-bes said.
“Where did you study?” the rector asked, her hand going to Ka-bes’s collar, shifting it out of the way and exposing the obsidian band around Ka-bes’s neck.
“Those times are best forgotten.” Ka-bes shook her head. “I come now to lodge a complaint with you, Rector Idemi, against one of your citizens.”
“An ex-priestess, disgraced, disbarred, and enslaved, comes to lodge a complaint with a child in tow.” Rector Idemi crossed her arms over her chest, her brow wrinkling. “I am intrigued.”
“Ex-priestess?” Sifa said, her head shooting up, her gaze going to Ka-bes with a newfound sense of curiosity and wonder. She tilted her head. “Enslaved?”
Ka-bes snapped her fingers, her right hand shooting out and pointing at Sifa. Sifa bowed her head, staring at the red carpet beneath her feet.
