by Jaine Fenn
“I prayed it would not come to that.”
She had known Francin was capable of such expedience, but to hear it spoken of in such a matter-of-fact way… she shivered. “But you would have done it?”
Sorne was silent.
She knew the answer, of course. He was a soldier, and followed orders, as witnessed by Breen’s fate. If he had to, he would have killed Etyan. “Did the duke think it likely my brother might not cooperate?”
“He said this was possible, yes.” Sorne was not enjoying this.
Neither was she, but she needed the truth. It was her last chance. “But Francin did not say why my brother might not come willingly?”
“No, and it wouldn’t be my place to ask.”
That was something, at least. But it got her no closer to knowing how much Francin knew about Etyan’s possible crime. “And you had drugged spirit to give him.”
“The duke advised that the young lord might be distressed or uncooperative.”
“Oh, did he? Just that?”
“Just that.” Behind them the rhinobeasts were being hitched up. “You should get to the wagon, m’lady.”
She would not get more out of him. “And you should go too, if you must.” She could not bring herself to wish him luck and turned away, her face hot. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him stride off towards the ironwood trees.
Chapter 43
In the cold pre-dawn light, the clanless paid their respects to their dead pathfinder, one at a time. Some spoke to her; some just stood for a moment; a few, including Vay, knelt down and touched Kir’s body.
Dej went last. She knew what she had done now and she wanted to throw herself down next to the dead girl and howl, I killed you. Instead she locked her knees and made herself look at Kir’s slack, dead face.
When they first met, Kir had told her skykin can’t kill animuses. That meant they couldn’t kill each other. She’d assumed this didn’t apply to the clanless, but it did. That was why her body failed her when she tried to drive the bull chakaka towards Cal: her animus had blocked her will.
And that was why Cal and Vay had needed Dej – upset and guilt-ridden, too fucked up to think straight – to give Kir the poison that finished her off. Kir most likely would have died, or at best ended up a cripple; either way she was in no state to be moved, so she’d have had to stay out here, with warriors to guard her, putting them at risk and leaving insufficient clanless to carry home the spoils of the hunt. The needs of the group came first. Had Kir known that? Had she known what was in the cup even if Dej hadn’t? Was that why she’d made Dej promise to forgive herself?
The last thing Min had done was ask Dej’s forgiveness. Dej still couldn’t forgive Min for her cowardice. Forgiving herself for Kir’s death wouldn’t be any easier.
As she walked away, not looking back, Cal strode up, a shortsword in his hand. Vay looked up from checking the load in her basket as the seer passed and murmured to Dej, “You won’t want to watch this.”
Now Kir was dead, they couldn’t just leave the animus to rot inside her. Dej asked, “Will he eat it?”
“That’s a privilege for the elder, once it dies.”
“It’s not dead?”
“No. When we die they live on for days, weeks sometimes.”
“So we take it back and give it to Mar? Is that why she’s so old, because she gets to eat the animuses of dead clan members?” Dej wanted to be appalled, but something – shock, her animus, Kir’s last words – made her accept this crazy practice.
“Yes, though it won’t keep her going forever.”
“And who’ll be in charge then? Cal?” Dej was aware of what Cal was doing now, in the corner of her eye, or possibly in her imagination.
“Unlikely. He’s got a seer’s animus, not an elder’s. I imagine there’ll be quite a contest when Mar does go. You might want to back Lih.”
“Lih?”
“She’s slept with both Mar’s boys, and whatever else, she’s no fool.”
The thought of Lih being in charge of the clanless did nothing to improve Dej’s mood.
Cal returned with a cloth-wrapped bundle; red dripped from it. “This is your responsibility,” he said, and handed the bundle to Dej.
Dej made herself take Kir’s severed head, and nod. Because it was her responsibility, in so many ways.
As the clanless were preparing to leave, a fuss went through them. People looked north, to where a lone figure picked its way down the valley. Dej didn’t remember anyone leaving the group, and from the attention this person was getting, their arrival wasn’t expected. As the figure got closer Dej saw he was all skin and bone, with a withered arm hanging useless by his side. After their initial interest, the clanless looked away, deliberately turning their backs on the new arrival.
Dej went over to Vay. Since their unspoken complicity in Kir’s death the healer hadn’t said a harsh word to her, and had even deflected Lih’s casual malice when the other girl had muttered about Dej’s basket being lighter, but stinking worse, than everyone else’s.
“Who’s that?” Dej asked.
“He has no name now.” Vay sounded tired.
Cal was walking out to meet the new arrival.
“But you knew him once?”
“Once. Now we don’t. Only Cal can speak with him. He’s dead to the rest of us.”
“He was clanless?”
Cal stood facing the scrawny skykin; everyone else save Dej was ignoring him.
Vay looked at Dej. “Yes, and now he’s nameless too. Look if you have to but remember this: you’re looking at failure, at what will happen to you if you’re not careful. Do you understand?”
“You cast him out.”
“He was disruptive even before the hunt – this hunt, five years back – when he screwed up and got trampled.”
“How does he live now?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.”
Cal must care: he was deep in conversation with the outcast. It looked more like negotiation than argument. Dej could see ulcers, or possibly grazes, on the outcast’s face and arms.
“If he’s an outcast, why is Cal talking to him?”
“You need to stop asking questions, Dej. Stop questioning, obey those wiser than you, and learn by your mistakes. You make enough of them.”
Dej shut up. The clanless might not be able to kill her, but she had evidence of what they could do right there, in the form of this pathetic outcast.
Cal and the scrawny man spoke for some time. Afterwards, the outcast wandered off to look out over the valley, eyes fixed away from the clanless. Cal came over to the rest of the group, calling out selected individuals including, Dej was unhappy to note, Lih. He took them to one side and spoke to them. Dej strained to hear, but caught only the odd word – “diversion” and “priorities” and “yes, all”.
Lih returned with an odd expression on her face. Dej got out of her way and then, when the preparations to leave resumed, shouldered her backpack; she had a disconcerting compulsion to handle the basket as though it were fragile, to shield the animus in its grisly case.
She turned to face upslope once she’d fastened the straps over her shoulders. Lih called out, “Not that way.” Dej turned, confused and angry because whatever else, she knew where she was going.
“We’re not going back yet.” Lih addressed the immediate group. “We’re leaving now, and we’ve got a hard march in front of us.”
“Where to?”
Dej was glad Vay asked the question, so she didn’t have to.
“Wherever Cal and that one lead us. We need to hurry.”
Chapter 44
Etyan remained subdued all day, though alert enough once the drugged spirit wore off.
Mella and Preut were in the wagon, and Rhia recognized a handful of others from the journey out; presumably regular traders. There was a higher proportion of Zekti going this way.
When people disembarked to sit round the fire in the evening, she and Lekem help
ed her brother to the edge of the group. She settled him on the ground, wrapped in her cloak, then turned to Lekem. “We’d like some time alone now please.”
Lekem hesitated, looking between the two of them. No doubt Sorne had ordered him to keep a close eye on Lord Harlyn.
Rhia gestured to the noisy darkness beyond the fire. “It’s not as though anyone will be going anywhere, will they?”
“As you wish.”
Etyan looked up. “See if you can find us some food, will you? I’m famished and that stew looks like it’ll be ages yet.”
His peremptory tone jarred, but Lekem’s nod, before he left, was halfway to a small bow.
When they were alone Rhia sat down and said, “So, why did you leave?” She had decided, during her ruminations in the guesthouse, to try the direct approach. She had waited too long for answers.
Etyan shrugged, one of his favourite gestures.
“Etyan! I need to know.”
“Personal stuff.”
“Like what? You ran away from your home, from me–”
“I can’t face that now. I’m tired.”
“You owe me an explanation.”
“Why, because you came all this way to get me? You always wanted to see the world.”
She ignored this cutting, if accurate, observation. “This isn’t about me. I need to know why you ran away to Zekt.”
“That’s easy: the first caravan I found was going that way. Who are those men, Ree?”
“What men?”
“The two in the cart. The lummox over there and the other one – where is the other one, anyway?”
“If you want me to answer your questions, then you’ll need to start answering mine.” The conversation was following an all-too-familiar pattern: ignore her, stall her or change the subject; sometimes all three. But they weren’t talking about gambling debts or family heirlooms broken by drunken “friends”. He had to see how important this was. “Why did you leave Shen? Was it because of the girl?”
Etyan’s head whipped round. “What girl?”
“The night – no, the morning – you left, a girl was found dead in the dyers’ pools.”
Etyan’s throat bobbed. Staring into the fire, he said stiffly, “That’s a shame. Who was this girl?”
“Her father is a guildmaster in the tanners. She was engaged to a journeyman tailor; they were to be married the next month. Her name was Derry.” Though Rhia found it easier to think of her as “the girl”, that was unfair, cowardly. And perhaps making her brother consider a young life taken too soon would jolt him into opening up.
“That’s very sad.” She knew that tone of fake unconcern; he was upset but refusing to show it. “Ree, people die all the time in the lower city.”
“This girl was a guildmaster’s daughter. And she didn’t just die, Etyan. She was murdered. She was stabbed, then her throat was cut; she may have been… assaulted… too.”
Etyan kept his gaze forward but from his expression, she had shocked him. Finally, he said, “I need to rest. Please, I want to lie down before I eat.”
Rhia huffed out a breath, conceding defeat. For now. “All right.”
Etyan pulled the cloak tight and lay down on his side, shoulders pulled up to his ears. When Rhia looked up she saw they had become the centre of attention. She wanted to drop the humble pretence and tell the other travellers to mind their own business. After all, they were on the way home. She was among, if not friends, then at least people who meant her no harm. But she had thought that in Mirror-of-the-Sky.
Lekem had found a handful of dried fruit; Rhia told him to give it to her for now.
Etyan roused when the stew was served. He sat in silence, miserable and withdrawn, but ate everything put in front of him. When Rhia gave him the fruit afterwards he nodded vague thanks then looked away.
As soon as he had eaten he asked to go back to the wagon. Lekem helped him, and Rhia followed. She hung back in the wagon’s doorway, using the time alone to check the wound in her side. It was healing cleanly, just a little sore. The discomfort in her chest was not going away though; she no longer felt that tight, immediate fear for her brother, but a complex and heavy knot of emotions, accumulated from a lifetime of dealing with him, had settled back inside her.
When Lekem returned from helping Etyan into his hammock she took him aside and asked, “Did Sorne tell you he was going to leave us?”
“Yes, m’lady, shortly before we reached the waystation.”
“Did he say why?”
“He did not, no.”
Well, she had to ask.
In some ways Sorne’s betrayal hurt more than Breen’s. Breen had acted according to his own code, however misguided that was. But Sorne had known Breen was a traitor, and still let Rhia go into danger, albeit danger he had then saved her from. And he’d planned to abandon her all along. She’d assumed the soldiers’ mission was to get her brother back but there must be more to it than that. She thought of all the times the soldiers had been out and about in Mirror, leaving her alone at the guesthouse. They said they were working to maintain their cover. But what else were they doing?
Mella and Preut were laughing by the fire. On impulse, Rhia went over and crouched next to Mella. The pair greeted her, and then Mella observed, “Less coming back than going out, I see.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’ve lost two of your party. But it looks like you have your young relative back.”
“I do, yes.” So the prostitute had worked it out. Rhia wished she hadn’t.
“He don’t look too well,” observed Preut from Mella’s far side.
“He’ll be fine.” This wasn’t what she wanted to talk about. “How was the last run to Shen?”
“Quiet enough,” said Preut, and Mella nodded.
“I don’t suppose the drought’s broken back home?” First help me, I’m talking about the weather!
“Heard they had thunderstorms east of the city,” said Preut, then added, “Mind you, that wasn’t from a reliable source.”
“Ah well.” Rhia looked around. Yrif was on the far side of the fire, helping scour the dinner bowls clean. Suddenly the seer looked up, straight at Rhia. “Think I’ll just…”
“You do that, then,” said Mella. She sounded amused.
The seer stepped away from her companions as Rhia approached, and sat down, following Rhia’s progress with her gaze. Rhia went over and sat next to her.
The seer said, “He is your kin.”
“What?” No pleasantries, of course. “Oh, yes, the boy. He’s my brother.” Had the seer seen the resemblance? Or somehow smelled their connection? Or was there a more mundane explanation, involving Mella’s loose tongue.
“He is why you came?”
It took Rhia a moment to realize she was being asked a question. “Yes. I came to bring him home. He’s my only living relative.”
“He is damaged.”
“Damaged? He’s been ill.”
“No. This is something more. A change is upon him.”
“A change? What do you mean?”
Yrif spread her hands; a small gesture, but Rhia thought it signified high emotion. “It is beyond us.”
“What do you mean?” She noted the use of us – was the seer drawing on the knowledge of ages, held by her animus?
“We have no experience, no comparison, for this. I would look closer, examine him.”
Rhia could imagine Etyan’s response to that. “Perhaps later. Right now he isn’t at his best.”
The skykin gave a curt nod. “Yes. Later.” For a moment Rhia thought she was being dismissed, but Yrif’s face settled back into its usual implacable expression and she said, “Let us converse, Rhia of Shen.”
Rhia got out her notebook. She had devoted some time in Mirror-of-the-Sky to preparing a list of questions for the seer.
The next day brought them to the foothills leading up into the Northern Divide. Etyan remained taciturn, though when they disembarked for the night he
said he could walk unaided. Rhia took that as a good sign. “You’re feeling better, then?”
“Yes.”
“What ailed you? A fever?”
“A fever. Yes.”
She thought that was all she would get, but then Etyan said, “How are the cats?”
“They’re fine. Jili had six kittens.” This was frivolous talk, but it beat sullen silence.
“Did you keep any?”
“One, like last time.” She needed to keep him talking. “The new housemaid is settling in, though she can still be a bit of a scatterbrain.”
“And everyone at court?”
“Much the same.” He took more of an interest in court than she did; she searched for something else to say. “The Orasians came. Alharet has worked her magic, so Yorisa’s due to be betrothed to Lord Magran as soon as she’s old enough.” And Alharet might be a traitor to Shen.
She took a deep breath, because such banality burned when there was so much of import to be said. “And Mercal Callorn has asked for my hand in marriage.”
He looked away, the ghost of a grimace on his face.
The “marriage conversation”, as she thought of it, had been one of several she had put off, or that Etyan had evaded, back home. But they had ground to make up before they could even get back to where they had been. And, after the direct approach had made him shut down, she needed to make concessions. One was obvious. “Etyan, I’m sorry for what I said to you.”
“You are?” He looked surprised; was an apology from her really so rare? “What you said when?”
“That last night, before you left. When we argued. You were drunk, so I’m not sure you remember…”
“I remember. You made it about Mother.”
“I did. And I shouldn’t have.”
“No, but… you were angry.”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “I wish I’d known her.”
“I wish you had too.”
“So tell me about her.”
He had never asked this before. When Father was alive, bearing his loss every day, it had been too painful. After Father died, Rhia had come to think of herself as the substitute parent, fulfilling both roles for her younger brother. They rarely spoke of their real parents.
