I lifted my eyebrows. Apparently, the Maker wanted us to never be without our cuffs. They’d become part of us.
Ronan finished his walk around the rock and saw what I was doing. “Yours fused like mine?”
“Yes. Don’t you find it a bit … odd?”
“I’d say everything about our lives is a lot odd. The fact that we have jewelry fused to our skin and a friend who seems to think she can make the blind see is just the latest verses of the song.” He grinned at me and then turned to pull off his oilskin, wiping his forehead of sweat. Then he yanked off his own wool sweater, and I spied more skin than I’d ever seen in fifteen seasons together. The flash of a flat belly. A broad, finely muscled chest … the small hollow at the base of his neck, formed by a taut muscle and sinew …
“Andriana?” he asked.
His Adam’s apple bobbed and I finally met his eyes, then rushed to turn away in flushed embarrassment. “Yeah?” Had he really just caught me staring at his neck? Had I been that obvious?
“You okay?” he asked, coming closer, behind me.
“What? Yeah. Fine,” I said, lifting a shoulder in a little shrug, daring to look over at him. His eyes were trailing down the length of my arm, and I felt the draw within him, the heat, pulling me back around. And in recognizing his draw for me, my own mushroomed. It so stunned me, overwhelmed me — the pulse of attraction between us — that I literally froze for a moment.
“Andriana …” he whispered, lifting a hand. To touch me. To touch me!
“Hey,” I forced out brightly, walking backward as he rubbed the back of his neck — as if that had been his only intent. “Did you see anything on the far side of the rock?”
“No, I uh … It drops off in a valley over there,” he said, following me, his eyes so soulful, so yearning, meeting mine for a breath. I paused, my feet feeling stuck. He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. But the hope, the need, the want was so intense in that moment that neither of us seemed able to move. We simply stood there, staring at each other for one breath, two, three, four …
“Maybe I, uh …” he said, his voice cracking, “I, uh, I think I should go take a quick look again. You know. Over there. Scout it out.”
Fear was rising between us. Terror. And yet it was welcome, like cool rain on this crazy desert heat. Stamping out the embers of a fire on the verge of igniting new timber.
“Sure, sure,” I said. “Good idea.”
“You’ll be all right here, by yourself, for a few minutes?” he asked hurriedly as we finished our circle around the boulder and came out on the roadside again.
“I think I can manage lookout duty on my own.”
He reached for my sword, in a sheath attached to the bike, and tossed it to me, keeping me at max distance. “Out here, you can see anyone coming for miles.”
“Yeah. I can shout if I see anyone.”
“Do.” He gave me a brief, curious, searching look, then took off running, as if I might chase him down. I edged around the rock to watch him go, admiring the breadth of his shoulders and triceps as he jogged over and around the dunes with his twin swords crisscrossed on his back, heading toward the edge of a small canyon. I made myself turn back and do a long, slow sweep of the horizon again. Vidar and Bellona were sitting in the center of the highway, back to back, knees up. They weren’t as lucky to find boulders beside their lookout point.
That was close. I let out a long, slow breath, fighting the urge to peek at Ronan again. We hadn’t been that close to a moment for a couple of seasons. I’d almost decided it was all in the past, maybe even made up in my imagination. That there hadn’t been anything then, and wouldn’t be again.
But no. It was there. It was definitely there. And there’d been that second in Zanzibar when he’d had his hands in my hair … Remembering it made my heart both surge with joy and squeeze in fear.
I looked up to the sun and became aware again of its intense beams. I didn’t know if I’d ever been hot in my life. Was the heat possibly making us a little crazy? Unbalanced? I’d never seen this many consecutive minutes of the sun. To center my mind, I lifted my sword and did some stretches, making a figure-eight, turning and jabbing as if surprising an opponent, then abruptly turning and doing the same thing in the opposite direction. Panting, I turned the sword tip downward and rested my hand on the hilt.
I glanced toward the town below me, and the house in which Niero, Killian, and Tressa had disappeared. Back in Zanzibar, the healing had taken but a breath or two of time. We’d been here a half hour already. What if —
A scream echoed up from the town. A second later, the old woman ran out of the house, arms stretched out. She continued a long, terrified cry, turning in a slow circle outside, hands on her head. My heart pounded. What had happened?
Then she lifted her hands to the sun and dropped to her knees as my companions came to the door and followed her outward. Were they laughing? I wondered if I heard the light sound of it on the breeze. But the old woman was up on her feet again and running up the hill, directly toward me, the three goats following behind her, bleating as if they were complaining that she was abandoning them.
On and on she came, until Raniero caught up with her and offered her a ride, while Tressa and Killian mounted their own bike. They reached me in seconds, and I smiled at the utter joy I saw in the woman’s clear eyes, now like warm, polished brown granite. She got off Niero’s bike and ran past me, smiling and screaming again. But this time, I heard a name on her lips. Ignacio. Tressa and Killian raced after her, taking the same path Ronan had earlier.
“Andriana, where’s Ronan?” Raniero asked in confusion. His frown deepened as he looked over my bare arms and spied the band.
“He, uh, went to scout that area over there,” I said, feeling like I should’ve come up with another story as I sheathed my sword on my belt. Our leader wouldn’t like it that my knight left me alone, even if I was armed and the only enemy in sight was a tiny brown scorpion, his tail curved into attack mode. But then he didn’t know what had almost happened.
I strode after Niero, my feet sinking in the silky soil, sweat trickling down my back, trying to get an emotional read on him but getting nothing but a vague mix of frustration and glory. Anger at Ronan plus the joyful remains of being a part of the woman’s healing? Why was he so much more difficult for me to read than the others?
I looked to my right and saw Vidar and Bellona already on their bike and headed in our direction, up the highway. Maybe if they reached us, Raniero would sense greater safety and calm down before he reached Ronan.
I ran down the path after him, knowing the other two would know where we’d left the road and follow. It appeared the canyon sloped downward on just the other side of the saddle. But when I reached the rise, I saw that it dropped quite a ways. A narrow path hugged the cliff to the right — apparently where the goats walked back and forth. I slowed and leaned hard to my right, wishing there were handholds, my heart pounding as much from the ground falling away beneath the path at a steep angle as from my exertion.
I could hear them before I reached them. But when I turned the corner, my mouth opened in surprise. Because a young boy of perhaps a decade was hugging the old woman as they turned in a hopping circle, eyes alight, laughing. And more animals than I’d ever seen hovered about — a hundred goats occupied every single crevice and foothold in the rocks in the narrow bowl of the cliff.
Their methods were clear. Her grandson tended the goats, far from the road, where she kept a few sacrificial animals in case the Drifters came through. As a result, the Maker had blessed them, granting them a growing herd that could sustain a whole village.
The old woman leaned down and the child put a small, brown hand on either side of her face, staring into her eyes. I could sense the wonder and amazement and praise within them without even trying. Perhaps it didn’t take the gift to read such joy. After this kind of event, all I knew was that I couldn’t stop smiling myself.
At last, the ol
d woman paused, wiped the tears from her cheeks, and brought the boy over to Tressa. It was then that I saw the odd angle of the child’s foot and knew why his own hopping had been with an odd gait. The foot must’ve been broken at some point and had healed poorly, at an angle that had to cause its own measure of pain. I looked back and forth along the narrow, treacherous trail that the boy followed each day to tend to his goats. It was a miracle he hadn’t tumbled to his death long ago.
Tressa took the boy’s bare foot in her hands and ran her thin, elegant fingers over the bones, over the skin stretched taut from the odd curve, across toes pulled into what looked like a painful arc. She closed her eyes, and the wave of compassion and longing I felt from her nearly took my breath away. But it was Niero’s long, steady glance, what I felt emanating from him, that really captured me, encircled me, filled me. “Believe, Ailith,” he said to us all. “Believe that the Maker, who spoke each of you into existence, can right that which has gone wrong in our bodies, just as he is about to in young Ignacio here.”
My armband hummed, growing even warmer under the heat of the sun — or no, now from within. Vidar abruptly turned and stared hard at Niero, his dark eyes searching our leader from head to toe, his forehead wrinkling in confusion, eyes blinking rapidly, and again I felt a wave of an emotion I was trying to name in my heart —
Ignacio cried out as Tressa brought her other hand to his foot, closing her eyes and lifting her face to the sun.
“Ahyeeeee!”
The old woman cried out too, out of terror, even wonder, at the same moment the emotion from Niero and Tressa reached me as well, enveloping me as clearly as if I might be wrapped in a cocoon. Vidar was looking up, above us, to the edge of the cliff, eyes wide as if he could see something else, but all I could really focus on was the amazing sense of peace and love that was flowing from Raniero and Tressa and surrounding all of us.
And then it was done.
Ignacio yelped, his big, round eyes wide in his thin face. He smiled, his teeth spread in wide gaps. But my eyes were on his foot. Because there, in Tressa’s hands, it was at the correct angle again, as it was meant to be.
And it was perfect.
CHAPTER
12
Why do you stay here?” Vidar asked. “In this place, so far from any others?”
“We have been trapped for generations,” the old woman, Zulema, said. “Beholden to the Drifters who come each week and bring us just enough supplies to make it through, and take everything else. Even my daughter and her husband. Ignacio’s sisters too. They only left me Ignacio so that we could continue to make the cheese.”
We were all silent a moment, stricken at the thought of repeated kidnappings and loss.
“But they haven’t taken your goats,” Bellona said at last, gesturing toward the canyon where the herd remained.
“Ignacio is good at hiding them,” Zulema said proudly. “They’re well aware that there must be more, for every week we give them a few to take with them. Though as long as we have a few ready for them, as well as rounds of cheese, they leave the rest alone. They call it a tithe.”
“You are prisoners, in a way,” I said.
Zulema’s dark eyes met mine. She nodded once, and in the lines of her face I saw countless weeks, months, years of fear and trial, and a price extracted from her that was deeper than imagination allowed. Ignacio was clearly the last of her family. What had happened to the others?
“How long until the Drifters come to collect their next tithe?” Niero asked.
“Three or four days. We never know for certain. We are only to be ready, always ready,” she said wearily.
Niero searched the skies, where gray storm clouds gathered. “Your time of captivity is nearly over, sister,” Niero said. “Come the end of Harvest, we shall return to you and take you with us to the Valley.”
“Wait?” she said, blinking slowly. “I don’t think so. We must go now.”
Niero dropped his chin and stared at her a moment. “I believe you are right, though it will be dangerous.”
“Life is dangerous,” she said. “But I have my eyesight and my little grandson a good foot, do we not? The Maker will see us through.”
Niero smiled. “Gather a week’s supplies and your goats and find the most hidden trails possible through the canyons until you reach the Central Desert. If you can avoid the Drifters and cross that flat land at night, you will enter the sanctuary of the forest by morning, and in the Valley our bretheren will keep you safe. There you must teach our people your talent in keeping such a herd alive.”
“And growing,” Zulema said proudly, sliding a crooked and age-spotted hand across Ignacio’s shoulders.
“And growing,” Niero said with a smile.
“I hope those goats like Mudhorse Weed,” Vidar said, crossing his arms.
“Do you joke? My goats eat anything,” Ignacio said.
“You must tell no one of what has occurred,” Raniero said. “Speak not of your healing, nor of meeting us. Do you understand?”
Zulema and Ignacio nodded, their faces betraying their fear, confusion. I knew they wondered why they must keep such secrets — about wonders that had brought them such joy. But I also knew what Niero was after — our safety. If word got out about such signs and wonders, of Tressa’s high gift, we might be mobbed by those seeking healing. Worse, our enemies would have no difficulty finding us.
“Travel at night. Not during the day,” he said, touching her arm as if she were a treasured aunt, and frowning in concern. “When you reach the Valley, tell them that I sent you and you will be looked after.”
“You tell that Jorre at Tah Post to treat you well,” she said, sliding a baby goat into Niero’s arms. “He used to be a friend, when we were free to trade.” His pack was already full of rounds of her goods for us. If we could’ve taken them, she would’ve given us far more; the sense of freedom and excitement — hope — within her surged, making her more than generous.
Raniero smiled and turned to put the squirming goat in my arms. I wrinkled my nose at his gamey scent, but took hold, knowing how valuable he was. Tressa held another. Quickly, Ignacio showed us how to bind the kids so we could slide them into our packs, their little heads sticking out, so we need not fear they’d try and jump out.
“My goats are good animals,” Ignacio said. “I hope they find good homes.” His eyes trailed down to his foot, and he practiced rolling his toes and straightening them, staring as if he still couldn’t quite believe it was true.
I laughed, looking at the small, pale round eyes of my baby goat before I hauled the arm straps over my shoulders. “Thank you for the gift of your goats, little brother.” I straddled the bike behind Ronan and turned toward Ignacio. “Take close care of your grandmother.”
“I will,” he said solemnly. His face split in a grin. “My new foot will make me fast!”
Tah Post, where we found shelter late that night, felt similar to Nem Post, in that it was a tent village well guarded by heavily armed men. An unseen leader — the man Zulema had called Jorre — greeted Raniero in the privacy of his tent, and relieved us of both our baby goats and all our cheese. A servant showed us into a large tent to sleep for the night, and we collapsed on piles of buffalo skins, pulling others atop us as the chill of the desert night tried to infiltrate our bones.
But it was with some surprise I awoke to the sounds of children. Many children. Babies crying, toddlers giggling, older ones shrieking in play. I frowned in confusion, wondering if I was yet dreaming. I hadn’t heard the sounds of children since I’d left my village. In the Citadel, I’d only spotted two, each about a decade old. No others.
Were there families here? Women? We were a day’s ride from Zanzibar, close enough for raiders to come and take their pick.
I looked around at my companions. Only Niero was awake, the rest still wearily slumbering away. He was kneeling in morning meditation, his back perfectly straight, his face upturned, a hint of a smile on his lips. His eye
s moved beneath the lids as if seeking, seeing. I looked to the others, aware that I was staring at him, reaching out to read him, and it felt like I was intruding into a sacred space, a place I should only go if invited. My eyes ran over Vidar, on his side, one arm curled beneath his head, the other atop it. Bellona, mouth open, breathing loudly. Killian and Tressa, curled toward each other and but a foot apart. And Ronan, his face twitching, as if encountering battle in his dreams. Perhaps I’d caught up more on my sleep while in the Citadel, and wasn’t in such grave need of more. Niero and I might have to shake the other Ailith awake.
I sat up, flipping back the warm skin, and pulled on my sweater, then my boots. I slipped to the ground, to my knees, and stretched out my arms above my head, bowing deeply. Thank you for this morning, Maker. I commit this day to you and yours. Live and breathe and move through me. Make my day your own. I sighed and stretched and then rose, waiting for Niero to meet my gaze.
When he did, I lifted my chin toward the door, silently asking his permission to go and use the outhouse. He rose, already fully dressed, and led the way, apparently unwilling to let me go alone. As I stepped through the flaps of the tent, Ronan called to me in a voice heavy with sleep.
“I’ll go with her,” Niero whispered over his shoulder. “Rest.” I felt a wave of emotion move from him to Ronan, and started. What was that? Reassurance? Peace?
Whatever the man was emoting, it was all it took for Ronan. In two seconds he was breathing so deeply he was almost snoring, and I smiled at his handsome profile, his dark hair — loosed from its customary band — in a shiny, deep wave beside his head.
“Dri,” Niero grunted in irritation outside, any semblance of peace evaporating. I jumped, remembering myself, and bent to exit the short door, avoiding his eyes. “This way,” he said, pausing to let two children, chasing one another, pass before him.
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