by Jo Clayton
“Meie.”
Serroi blinked and sat up.
Yael-mri tapped her thumbs on the tabletop, her eyes flicking once more between her visitors. “You’ll be leaving the valley this afternoon, both of you. The Biserica will provide mounts and supplies and a little gold. Not much, I’m afraid. Dom Hern, you have named half a dozen possible destinations but you don’t seem much committed to any of these.”
He smiled amiably and said nothing.
Yael-mri sighed. “You don’t make it easy.” She pinched at an earlobe, lifted her eyes to the carving above the door—a striding macai. “I have a quest for the pair of you if you choose to accept it.”
Hern continued to look bland, heavy lids drooping over his pale eyes. “Quest?” he murmured.
“Perhaps an ally for you, Hern.” Yael-mri’s voice was dry; her mouth drew momentarily into a small pursed smile. “You don’t have many of those.”
Serroi saw a muscle twitch at the corner of Hern’s mouth; he didn’t like being reminded of how isolated he was or how bad his chances were of doing anything at all about Floarin’s usurpation.
“I’m listening.” His mask in place again, he looked sleepy and a little stupid.
Yael-mri looked grim. She splayed her fingers out on the table, stared down at them, watching them tremble, forcing them still, obviously reluctant to continue. There was a strained silence in the office for several minutes, then she spoke. “There exists a being of very uncertain nature but great power who calls himself Coyote.” She rubbed her long thumbs across the glossy wood. “He … ummm … pronouns are a difficulty. Coyote is neither male nor female nor … I’m blathering. Dom Hern, Coyote is capable of disrupting anything the Nearga-nor do. In … well, let it be his … in his own way, he is greater than the Nearga-nor and the Biserica combined. But he’s capricious and inclined more to mischief than constructive aid to either side in this battle of ours. Coyote … he picked up that name in his travels elsewhere; Maiden alone knows what he means by it, but he told me it fitted him more nearly than any other he tried on … Coyote is capricious, as I said; he is also intensely sentimental, intensely curious, inclined to poke his finger into events just to see what happens and inclined also to weep copiously over the havoc he creates. And he pays his debts, though more often than not with disastrous results. Remember that, Dom, as you decide. However, if you can find him, if you can coax him into letting you look into his mirror, if you can make the right choice among the choices he offers you, then you will have the best chance you’ll ever get to take back the mijloc. In doing this you will be, in effect, defending us in the Valley, so.…” She contemplated Hern, shook her head. Impossible to tell what he was thinking, to know if he was thinking at all, Serroi thought. She watched them both, amused at the antagonism between them—two dominants maneuvering for points like sicamars jousting for a hunting range—and startled at the embarrassment both obvious and incongruous on Yael-mri’s face each time she mentioned the oddly named character. Coyote. A strange word, I wonder where he picked that one up, I wonder if I’ll ever know. She scratched thoughtfully at the side of her nose.
Hern opened his eyes, raised his brows.
Yael-mri’s tight smile wavered. “Coyote owes me a favor.” A faint color strained her face, the tip of her nose reddened. “As the defense of the Biserica is involved you may use my name once you find him. This might catch his interest long enough to gain you a hearing. As I said, he pays his debts. I promise nothing, but I do swear to you, Dom Hern, that there is no other way that offers any comparable chance of defeating the Nearga-nor. I can tell you where he sometimes shows his … um … face when he’s not elsewhere; what you make of him will be up to you.”
Hern blinked lazily. “Both of us, you said. The meie is coming with me?”
Yael-mri stiffened. “If she so chooses,” she said after a moment, each word edged with ice. “The meie is free to accept or reject the quest as she wishes. She most certainly will not be with you in the sense you mean, not subordinated to you in any way.”
“We’ll work that out.” He smiled at her with practiced charm, then sat up, his lazy mask dissolved. He dropped his hands on his thighs, leaned forward, intent grey eyes hard on her face. “Details, please.”
CHAPTER III:
THE MIJLOC
When the sun was only a promise in the east, hands shook Tuli gently awake. She blinked up into an unsmiling face whose features were side-lit by the pale red glow of the dawn. Hearing the soft breathing of her sisters, she sat up, scrubbed at burning eyes, still dazed with sleep, vaguely wondering why her mother had waked her so early. Then she remembered.
With a hiss of pure rage she shoved at her mother’s encircling arms, pushed with knees and elbows at her mother’s bending body as she fought to kick free of the quilts and launch herself at Nilis who lay deep asleep with no remorse or fear troubling her in the bed by the two windows, her traitorous mouth slack, the breath issuing in small snores through her long nose. Mama Annic grasped Tuli round the waist, lifted her kicking and struggling from the tangled quilts, somehow got a hand free and clapped it over her mouth, muffling the animal whines and squeals she made, somehow half-carried, half dragged her from the room, by a miracle waking neither Nilis nor Sanani.
Annic edged the door shut with her toe; breathing hard with emotion and exertion, she hauled Tuli down the hall to the carved and painted linen chest by the head of the stairs and dropped onto it with a puffing sigh of relief, then tugged at Tuli until she collapsed onto her lap. She held her tight, patting her shoulders, rocking her until the fit of rage passed off. “I know, bebe,” she murmured. “I know, my little fire-head, it’s not easy, not easy at all. It’s my curse too and I gave it to you. It will get better, I promise you, it will get better.” Annic continued to hold Tuli until she felt the sobbing and shaking stop.
Tuli hiccoughed herself at last into an exhausted calm. She lifted her head from the damp folds of her mother’s robe, hot with shame that she, almost a woman, sat like a baby in her mother’s lap, feeling all elbows and knees as she tried to wriggle loose from her mother’s hold. Annic smiled and shifted Tuli off her knees onto the chest beside her. “I thought I’d better wake you early.”
“She.…”
Annic’s hand closed tight on her shoulder, stopping her. “I know, Tuli. Your father left not long after you got home. I thought you’d want to know.”
Tuli’s hands moved restlessly on her sleeping smock. She stared at them, blinking, then curled the fingers under to hide the black crescents under the nails, dirt picked up from climbing about walls and digging into the earth outside the granary window. “What’s going to happen, Mama?” She twisted her hands into the thin cloth, shifted restlessly on the chest lid.
Annic sat silent for what felt like a long time, her eyes fixed on the far side of the hall though she didn’t seem to see the wall tiles. “I don’t know.” She sighed, ruffled Tuli’s, short brown hair. “Stay away from Nilis, bebe. Your father will deal with her when he gets back. The orchard needs work and it’s far enough off to keep you out of her hair.” She sighed again. “I wish I could keep her out of mine.” With a quick vigorous push of her legs, she got to her feet. “Chop away at those weeds and suckers, firehead, till the rage is small enough to hold in the palm of your hand.” She laughed softly, bent and patted the backs of Tuli’s hands, then went quickly and gracefully down the stairs.
Tuli hacked furiously at suckers growing like green whips from the roots of the chays tree. When she had them all slain, each one Nilis for her, she tossed the sharp-edged trowel aside, gathered the suckers and cast them into the aisle between the rows of fruit trees where someone else would chop them into the soil.
The orchard was some distance from the house, planted in the wide curve of a stream that wandered through the Tar before heading for RiverCym—a dozen rows of trees, most of them long mature, though a few saplings replaced the storm-lost. Malat for their crisp red fruit and the cider
that warmed many a winter evening. Chays trees, chewy golden chays to be pitted and strung on grass twine after drying and hung in loops from kitchen rafters, chays—sweet and tart at once, best of all on cold stormy nights with long glasses of hot spiced cider. Pleche and rechedd, chorem and lorrim, bursting with juice, small round fruits, translucent garnet skin over golden flesh, long twisted oval fruits with blue-purple skins and red-black flesh, small green rounds growing in tight-packed bunches, red-cheeked waxy green fruits with hard tart flesh, fruit for drying, winter sweets, fruits for jams and jellies, fruit to ferment for wine. And all of it thin upon the branches. Shadows flickering across her face, Tuli sat back on her heels, wiped at her forehead with the back of an earth-stained hand, scratched at her nose. Nilis blew up storms whenever Tuli slipped out of the house and went to work in the fields. Man’s work, she said. Not proper for a daughter of the house, she said, scolding Mama for permitting this. Tuli snorted, wiped her hands on her skirt. Not proper, never mind that Tuli hated being shut inside, that she was useless at any kind of sewing, that she couldn’t clean anything without leaving streaks no matter how she tried. Not proper, Maiden bless, from a daughter of the house who just might’ve condemned her own father to prison or death—if he couldn’t talk his way free. Tuli had great faith in her father’s nimble tongue, if only he got a chance to wag it. She caught up the spading fork and dug vigorously around the roots, each stab a stab into her sister’s disloyal heart, easing still more the simmer of anger and frustration inside her.
Mama was right, keep away from Nilis. She grinned and dug with energy and force, clearing away clumps of leechweed, working leaf castings and storm-stripped nubbins into the sticky black earth, working slowly around the tree until it stood in a ring of glistening umber. She sat back on her heels, sniffing happily at the pungent odors circulating about her (the clean green of the suckers, the chays-smell thick as jam dropping down from the ripening fruit, the damp brown earth smell, fugitive violet and lace perfumes from the late-blooming autumn flowers hiding between clumps of grass); the tranquility of the crisp, bright morning brought her some of the same calm she found in the Maiden Shrine. She was disturbed by the violence of her waking rage; she hadn’t been so bad for a long time; even last night, even when she was actually seeing Nilis babble, she hadn’t been so lost in blind fury; if Mama hadn’t been there she might’ve really hurt Nilis and however much she might deserve it, Tuli didn’t want to have that memory nagging at her. She wiped her hands on the worn patched workskirt, wishing for the thousandth time she could wear her night-running trousers while she worked. It wasn’t possible, it would only scandalize the ties and make her life a misery. Not worth the fuss.
She looked back along the tidy row of trees, sighing with tired satisfaction. Not bad for a couple hours’ work. She spread her fingers out and frowned at the dirt staining her palms and packed beneath her nails. I’ll have to scrub with pumice. With a grunt of effort she pushed onto her feet, stretched. She twisted loose a leaf and stripped away all but the center spine, used this to dig at the dirt under her nails. Mama was right. I feel lots better. Won’t bite Nilis when I see her next. She giggled, patted her stomach. “I could eat an oadat, fur and all.” She stretched again, yawned, filled with a vast lassitude, too tired and too hungry to fuss about Nilis any longer. “Won’t bite Nilis. Poison to the bone.” Giggles bubbling out of her, she scooped up the trowel and spading fork, started back toward the house, humming a bouncy tune, singing a song in her head sometimes, aloud sometimes. Won’t bite Nilis. Won’t see Nilis. Won’t talk to Nilis. Won’t, won’t, won’t bite Nilis. “Nilis is a slimy snake, Nilis is a toad, toad, toad, Nilis is a nobody.” Nobody, nobody, nobo, nobo, nobodaddy.
Chanting under her breath, alternating her chants with giggles, she circled the tie-village, sauntered past the barns and corrals, her song dying away as she saw the hauhaus still waiting in them, though they should have been on their way to the pasture an hour since. She stopped and looked around, suddenly aware of what she’d seen but hadn’t taken note of before. There was no one about. The tie-village usually had kids playing around the houses, noisy packs of boys or girls busy at their games or fighting with each other. She remembered empty lanes. It was washday but no ties crowded the heavy grey stones of the laundry court, stoking the fires under the kettles, stirring the clothes in the boiling water, talking all the while at top speed. And no ties were taking bread to the beehive oven. Nobody at all in sight, not even Hars who was always puttering about, doing something or other around the barns. Her jubilation evaporating, she frowned at the trowel and spading fork, then hurried toward the toolshed. After a last worried glance about, she pulled the door open and stepped inside.
Teras was there, waiting for her. “Been pulling weeds with your teeth?” He reached out, brushed at her cheek and nose. “You all right?”
“I’m cool.” She thunked the fork and trowel between their holding pegs. “What’s happening? How come you’re here, not with everyone else wherever that is?”
“Wanted to talk to you before you went in.” He dug with his boot heel into the hard-packed dirt floor. “There’s a Decsel and his Ten inside.” He balled his hands into fists and shoved them in the side pockets of his tunic, then shouldered the door open. “Don’t want to talk here.”
She followed him out, pointed at the garden wall ahead. “Over there?”
“Uh-uh, not yet anyway.” He scuffed ahead of her through dry tufts of grass, kicking angrily at small pebbles not caring where they landed.
“Where we going then?”
“Haymow.”
A loaded wain was drawn up before the haybarn; overhead the loading fork swung gently from its pulley. Teras caught hold of the fork rope and began wriggling up it, climbing with a bumpy ease that Tuli watched with jealousy biting at her. She kicked at her skirt and went through a small side door into the barn.
The interior was dark and dusty except for the bright yellow light thronged with dancing motes that streamed down from the high haywindow where she saw Teras loom higher and higher, an ebon shade with opaline edges, until he stood upright in the window. With a sudden bright laugh he used the rope to send the fork trolly rumbling inward along its track, then pushed off from the window and rode the rope across the open space to drop into the high-piled hay. A moment later his head appeared over the binding stakes. “Come on up, Tuli. They’ll be out looking for us sooner’n we want.”
“Hold your hair on, I’m coming.” She tucked the hem of her skirt into her waistband and started up the ladder nailed to the side of the interior mow. At the top she pulled her skirt loose, then crawled across the slippery straw to her brother and stretched out on her stomach at his side. She started to ask him about the Decsel then changed her mind. “Mama said Da was gone off.”
Teras worked a stem from the hay and chewed on it a moment, his eyes squinted to cracks, the misty light igniting the sun-bleached ends of his light brown hair into a shimmering glow about his head. “He was getting ready for bed.” He looked down at the straw, then tossed it away. “He looked so damn tired and worried, Tuli. Ahh, Tuli … how he looked … I could …” His hands closed tight on the hay making it squeak a little and his face was strained and tense. “It was hard to tell him, Tuli, worst thing I had to do since Hars made me tell him I was the one who let the hauhaus get into the grainfield and mess up half the crop.” He sighed, shifted onto his back and lay picking bits of straw off his tunic. “He threatened to tear the hide off my behind if I ever did anything like that again, specially taking you along, I had to tell him you were with me but he knew before, I think.”
“Ummm.” She rubbed at her nose. “What did he say about Nilis?”
“He said to leave her be, he’d see to her when he got back.”
Tuli sighed, pulled lengths of straw from under her, tied the ends together and began twisting them into a crinkled braid. After a moment she narrowed her eyes, turned her head, gave him a long questioning look. �
�You haven’t said anything about the Decsel. And where are the ties?”
“In the house, even the kids. Nilis. It’s all Nilis. Soon as the Decsel showed up she sent her pet viper Averine out and ordered them in, said Mama wanted them, but I don’t think so. I was out with Hars in the pasture so Averine missed me first time. Not the second, oh no, but Hars told him to get away or he’d break off one of his skinny arms and feed it to him. He ran out of there like we’d set fire to.…” He broke off, his nose and ears suddenly purple-red. “Hars told me I should get hold of you and warn you what’s up,” he mumbled.
Tuli closed her eyes, dropped her head until it rested on crossed forearms and she was inhaling the scratchy sweet smell of the straw. After a few breaths she exploded up, too restless to sit still any longer. Feet sinking deep into the loose straw, she lurched about the top of the stack. “I’d like to switch Nilis all the way up the steps to the top of the watch-tower ’nd shove her off ’nd see if she can fly.”
“Me too, but that wouldn’t help Da. Or Mama.”
“Would me.” She staggered to the stakes, wrapped her hands about one and stared through the haywindow. “Teras.…”
