by Sharon Shinn
“Perhaps that will convince him that we are so gentle he can murder us all in our tents one night,” Eleazar said angrily.
“That might be so,” Bartholomew said. “But I will not be able to vote for him to die.”
There was a small silence. Tirza spoke up. “I have not yet gotten a close look at this young and hostile stranger,” she said. “I have sometimes been a fair judge of a person’s heart by the outward shape of his face. I would like to look at him now, while he lies there sleeping, and then I will know how to cast my vote.” She glanced around the circle of firelit faces. “I think we should all look at his face before we cast our votes.”
This idea finding universal favor, Tirza came quickly to her feet and headed off into the darkness. She returned shortly, and Eleazar rather angrily retraced her steps. He was gone longer than she was; his face looked thoughtful when he rejoined the others at the fire. One by one, the other Edori came to their feet and turned in the direction of the sleeping man. Even Amram went, even Claudia’s daughter.
Even Miriam, though she had already had a good look at their wounded stranger. She knelt beside him and tucked the blanket a little more tightly around his shoulders, and then she dipped the cloth in the bowl of water and dribbled a few more droplets into his mouth. His fine coppery brows were drawn down in a scowl of pain; she thought his breath sounded even more strained. She hated to leave him to go back to the fire, but she came to her feet and returned to the others, taking her place silently next to Tirza. The other woman reached out to squeeze her hand and then drop it.
Dathan and Bartholomew were the last two to go take a look at the stranger. When they returned, there was a moment’s silence while everyone thought over the situation. Then Bartholomew said, “My vote is to let the man live, and to care for him as best we can to ensure that he does not die. Dathan?”
“I vote with Bartholomew.”
They went around the fire that way, name called, answer given, everyone’s voice listened to with an equal solemn attention. Miriam held her breath when Anna’s name was called, but the older woman simply bowed her head. “It is the Edori way to offer shelter to anyone who appears at their campfire,” she said in a subdued voice. “I vote with Bartholomew.”
Eleazar, Tirza, and Miriam were the last three to express their opinions. Eleazar no longer sounded angry, but he did not sound happy. “I do not agree with the tribe, but I will not vote against it,” he said. “And I will abide by the decision of the clan.”
Bartholomew nodded. “Tirza?”
“He must be allowed to live.”
“Miriam?”
She looked over at him, feeling as alien as the dark stranger, she with her bright hair and her pale skin among this cohesive and unified group. Maybe that was why she so desperately wanted to save this outsider, wanted to bring him into the warm haven that was the Edori clan—to deliver him from himself—to rescue someone else as she had herself been rescued. “I vote with the tribe,” she said. “But I will do more, if you will let me. I will tend him. You will have to help me, because I don’t know how to nurse a sick man, but I will care for him, and feed him, and bind his wound. I will help him live again.”
“So be it,” Bartholomew said, and the council came to an end.
They set up a tent around him, carefully, a small spare one that Bartholomew carried against the ever-present possibility of unexpected guests. Though no guest could have been more unexpected than this one. The wind had picked up, and its icy razor edge cut through even Miriam’s layers of clothing. She went to Bartholomew’s tent to borrow another blanket from Anna.
“You’re a good girl, Miriam,” Anna said, taking her in a quick hug. Anna was not as generous with casual affection as most of the Edori, and so the gesture caught Miriam by surprise. “Here. A bowl of broth. If you think your invalid can swallow it.”
“Thank you,” Miriam said gravely. “I think he’ll have to eat something. Eventually.”
The tent was up and Tirza was inside it when Miriam returned. There was a second pallet unrolled next to the black man, piled with its own blankets. “I thought we would take turns watching him and sleeping,” Tirza explained. “At least for this first night.”
Miriam knew better than to protest, because Tirza always did whatever she thought was right. “Thank you,” she said. “I hope you can teach me how to care for him. I’ve never tended anyone who was sick or injured.”
Tirza was kneeling beside the unconscious stranger, placing a small pillow under his head, straightening his blankets, in general trying to make him more comfortable. “Who watches the sick ones at your angel hold, then?”
Miriam shrugged. “Angels are never sick. The rest of us—oh, Esther acts as apothecary, and some of the other mortal women take turns doing the nursing. I don’t know. I was never sick, either.”
“Well, I’m not sure there’s much we can do for this one except keep him warm. I’ve ground up a little manna root to spread on his wound. That ought to ease his pain a bit. Bartholomew said you’d given him some water?”
“Yes, and Anna gave me some broth. If you think—”
“Well, he hasn’t spit the water back up. Let’s try just a taste of the soup. It will be a good sign if he can take it.”
Miriam held the man’s head up while Tirza tipped two spoonfuls of broth down his throat. He choked a little, turning his head from side to side, and Miriam felt a moment’s panic. But then he subsided, sighing as she laid his head back on the pillow.
“Good. If he keeps that down, we’ll give him some more in a couple of hours,” Tirza said. “Let’s take a look at the wound.”
She peeled back the blankets and studied the ugly burn for a few moments. She very gingerly spread its red edges with a thick white paste, then just as carefully covered him back up. “Maybe that will help,” she said. “But it’s going to take some time for a burn like that to clear up.”
“Is he going to die?” Miriam asked fearfully.
Tirza looked over at her. She’d lit four big fat candles and set them all around the tent. They didn’t supply much warmth, and their light was unreliable, but it was enough for Miriam to see Tirza’s face by. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know how his body is built and how much he can withstand. I don’t know how deep the burn went, or what vital parts of his body it might have wounded. He is alive now. So we will help him as much as we can.”
“You sleep first,” Miriam said. “I will watch him.”
Tirza nodded and lay on the second pallet. She had a gift that Miriam greatly envied, the ability to fall asleep within minutes, no matter what the hour or temperature or situation. True to form, she appeared to fall asleep instantly, her breathing as soft and regular as the stranger’s breathing was uneven and cluttered. Miriam sat there, knees updrawn, body very still, listening to the interior sounds of the tent and the exterior sounds of the camp, until there were hardly any sounds at all.
She moved very little for the next couple of hours, only rearranging a ragged blanket underneath herself to keep away the chill of the ground. When the wounded man stirred, she leaned forward and squeezed a little more water down his throat. She thought his lips looked dry, so she fished a little container out of her pocket, filled with a balm made of fat and herbs that Anna had given her, and she smeared a little across his mouth. She laid her palm gingerly across his cheek and thought his skin felt hot. But maybe the heat was generated by the intense dark pigment of his flesh, a color so rich and deep it made her think of Manadavvi soil and the onyx quartz mined near Luminaux. She wondered if he had a fever. She wondered if there would be anything Tirza could do about it if he did.
After Tirza had been asleep for just over two hours, Miriam dipped her rag in the bowl of broth. It was harder to feed him all by herself, but she edged around in the small tent until she was kneeling at his head, and then she carefully lifted his head and laid it upon her knees. She dripped a little of the broth down his cheek, but he took mo
st of it, not seeming to cough or choke so much this time. She thought that was a hopeful sign.
Miriam had already decided she would not wake Tirza when her turn came, but the Edori woman woke on her own about an hour after that. “How is he?” she asked in a low voice, pushing herself to a sitting position and seeming to be wide awake on the instant.
“A little restless. I gave him more broth about an hour ago.”
“And he kept it down? Good.”
“And I just gave him a little more water ten minutes ago.”
“Excellent. Why don’t you lie down now? I’ll watch for a while.”
Miriam wanted to protest—she wanted to be the one to care for this stranger, this violent, helpless, unwelcome creature sent into their midst. But she was so tired she did not think she would be able to keep her eyes open much longer. She and the Edori woman traded places, Miriam snuggling with a certain sensuous delight into the blankets warmed by Tirza’s body.
But before she closed her eyes, she had one more question. “Tirza. What happens tomorrow?”
“What do you mean?”
“When we move out. I don’t think he’s well enough to travel.”
“He’s not. We’ll make camp here for a few days.”
“Good,” Miriam said drowsily, and let her eyelids droop. But a new thought almost immediately flicked them open again. “But Tirza,” she said more urgently. “What if his friends come back for him? They might. I would. If we’re still here, they’ll find us for sure. They’ll set the whole camp on fire!”
Tirza was running a wet cloth over the man’s cheeks and forehead. Obviously, she thought he was too hot, too. “If they come looking for their friend, they’ll find him right here in our tent. And I don’t think they’ll set us on fire if they want him back.”
“But Tirza—”
“As the god wills,” she said with calm certainty. “They will come or not come. They will burn us or not burn us. We cannot move until he is well enough to travel. Yovah will abide by his plan.”
Miriam closed her eyes, but she was not entirely reassured. This was the same god who had let other tribes be scorched to ashes. She was not convinced he was watching over all of them as carefully as he might. But Tirza was right. There was nothing they could do about it, tonight, anyway. She turned over on her side, put her hands beneath her cheek, and slept.
In the morning, Tirza looked exhausted and the stranger looked no better. His skin was so dark that it was hard to tell if he was either flushed or pasty, but somehow he did not look right. His breathing, which had smoothed out during the night, was labored again, and his skin was so hot to the touch that it was impossible not to worry about fever.
“You should have woken me,” Miriam said remorsefully as she looked at Tirza’s weary face. “I meant to only sleep a couple of hours.”
Tirza shrugged this off. “I think we’ll need some hells-bane to try to bring his temperature down,” she said. “I don’t know who might have some. There is none in my stores, I know.”
“He needs plague medicine,” Miriam said.
Tirza smiled in a tired way. “Such as the angels pray for? I hear there are all different kinds and the god always knows what to send.”
Miriam shrugged. “He sends what you ask for. There are different prayers for different medicines.”
“Well, I suppose we could run up a plague flag and see if an angel drops by in response,” Tirza said. It was an attempt at humor; the Edori never asked the angels for help. “Though I don’t know if they would be as willing as the Lohoras have been to aid an enemy.”
“No,” Miriam said, unable to think of a single angel from any of the three holds who would not view her with horror if she stepped out of an Edori tent here by the Galilee River. “We don’t want angels here.”
Before Tirza could respond to that, the tent flap folded back and Anna stepped inside. “How is he? I’ve brought some mashed fruit. He might be able to eat that.”
“He might,” Tirza agreed. “He’s done very well with your broth. But he seems worse this morning. I don’t know that he’ll be able to take anything at all.”
Anna’s sharp gaze went from Tirza’s face to Miriam’s. “You two go back to your tent,” she ordered. “I’ll sit with him this morning.”
“No,” Miriam protested. “I’m the one who said I’d watch him. I meant it. It’s my duty.”
Tirza had already gotten to her feet, and now she picked her way past the sleeping man to place a hand on Miriam’s head. “And it was a generous offer to make,” she said kindly. “But no one person can do all the nursing for a sick man. We will take turns. We always do. You can just take more turns than the rest of us.”
“Now go back and get some sleep,” Anna said gruffly. “You can come see him as soon as you’re rested.”
They stepped outside into a dull sunlight that was still brighter than the murky tent, and Miriam had to squint for a minute until her eyes adjusted. The air was incredibly crisp, sweeping down from Mount Galo with fresh armloads of snow that it was considering dropping. Miriam took a few deep breaths, emptying her lungs of stale air and candle smoke.
“I’ll come to the tent in a moment,” she told Tirza. “Right now I have to go down to the river and bathe.”
“You bathed yesterday, don’t you remember?” Tirza asked with a tired grin. “You coming back from the river is what saved us all.”
Miriam smiled back. “Then I should bathe every day that we are here so that our luck holds just as good.”
She took a bucket with her (never miss a chance to gather more water) and a change of clothes. After she cleaned herself as quickly and thoroughly as she could, she washed out the dress she had worn yesterday and the day before. She was so tired that the thought of walking back to camp, wet bundle in one hand and bucket in the other, was almost more than she could bear. So she sat for a moment at the water’s edge, far enough back to keep from soiling her dress on the muddy bank, and stared at the muscular, impatient river charging past.
And then she began to sing.
At first she kept her voice soft, because this was not a song any mortal should know—certainly not a song any mortal should offer up to the god, expecting the god to hear. But she had learned in the last two months that the Edori felt just as comfortable offering prayers to Yovah as the angels did offering prayers to Jovah. She had been shocked the first few times she had heard the Lohoras beseech or thank the god as casually and as confidently as the angels addressed him—as if certain he heard them, whether or not he chose to reply. And why not? He watched over all of them, did he not? He graced every dedicated mortal with the mark of his favor, the Kiss; he did not reserve that particular honor only for angels. He cared about every one of them, angel, mortal, Jansai, Manadavvi. Perhaps he even cared for this violent and misguided stranger. He had saved the man, after all. Perhaps he would be willing to do even more to make him well.
So Miriam strengthened her voice, tilted her head back, and imagined the words of her song boring up through the heavy clouds and straight to Yovah’s ear. They were so close to the Plain of Sharon, the place where, every year, the angels raised their voices in the Gloria. Surely, if the god could hear her anywhere in the three provinces, he could catch her voice from here. She came slowly to her feet, her voice even more forceful now, offering once more the simple, repetitive prayer that asked for alms of relief and healing. She could feel her thin soprano gain color and roughness as she sang the piece one more time, the notes rasping against her throat grown raw from too much music. But the song poured out of her, powerful and supplicating; her hands lifted of their own volition in a gesture of submission and entreaty. Her head was thrown back as if she would watch the sky for a sign of Yovah’s mercy, but her eyes were closed. She could feel the weak sunlight against her eyelids, sense the movement of the sullen clouds, boiling above her as if to hurl down an insult of rain. She dropped her hands and finally halted her voice, too hoarse to try for ano
ther note. But she stood still with her head tipped back and her eyes closed, as if asking to catch the first raindrops on her upturned cheeks.
And, indeed, something small and pelletlike hit her face and bounced away, and then another pellet, and then a small shower of them, needlelike and frenzied. She opened her eyes and instinctively crouched down, throwing her arms over her head to protect herself from the hail. But it continued to fall in quick, sharp bursts, a strangely colored blue outburst of precipitation—and it was, after all, not hail.
With a little cry, she began gathering up the small tablets, as many as she could find in the brown grass and the sticky ooze of the river mud, and tossing them in her shoulder bag where yesterday she had carried rocks. Yes, handfuls and handfuls and handfuls of drugs from Yovah—enough to heal the injured stranger and to allow the Edori to hoard them against sickness for months or maybe years to come.
As quickly as it had come, the shower passed. Miriam, on her knees in the dry grass, glanced up at the sky to see even the scowling clouds beginning to part and roll away. The thin winter sunlight streamed down to envelop her in a private circle of affection. She could not help herself. She lifted her arms up as if to ask for a hug, and then she laughed for the sheer joy of being alive.
C hapter T wenty-two
Never a fan of surprises, Gaaron was far from pleased when Adriel and Neri showed up at the Eyrie one day, eager to meet his bride-to-be.
It had been a relatively calm week, holding no major crises, but he had been busy almost every minute. The Velora merchants had held a series of meetings to discuss a controversial new set of trading guidelines being sponsored by the Manadavvi and the river merchants, and they had found themselves in the strange position of being allies with the Jansai, who were heartily against the new regulations. So Gaaron’s presence had been requested at all these discussions, and he had tried to devote his complete attention to the arguments and counterarguments that were presented. His best suggestion was that they bring in a contingent of Luminaux artisans and get their input, and that plan was instantly put in motion. Gaaron sent Enoch south to request a visit from a convocation of Luminauzi. He considered going himself, and swinging by a little Edori bakery to check on his sister. But then he decided against it.
