Shem’s head lulled to the side. “What did you do?”
Anna glanced up from her letters. She was halfway through writing, We are going north.
“My mother,” Shem said, tapping his throat with two fingers. “I know what you are, but how, never how. I don’t understand.”
Neither did Anna. She’d seen sigils since she was a small girl, and she’d traced them in the dirt before her father had seized her arm and forbade her from doing so, but she’d never understood. She’d never spoken to any spirits, nor heard any words in her dreams.
She put her quill to the page, scrawled out the word hayat, and flipped it toward Shem.
“Hayat, tek,” Shem nodded. “But how? How I have it?”
While the boy spoke, Anna watched his lips and tried to synchronize her new words and sounds to the twist of his tongue. She pieced together how to reply, slowly at first, then wrote, You don’t have it. You use it.
Shem knotted his brow and gave a long exhale, as though the answer exhausted him somehow. He wanted to know something, and that was a sentiment that Anna could understand. It would take years, in all likelihood, before he realized that the world liked to keep people ignorant. “I want.”
Anna set aside her paper and quill, then mouthed, “Impossible.”
“Why?” There was no anger in his voice, merely the obsession that had seized him at his mother’s bedside.
But some things were too complicated for lips alone. Anna tried for a few moments, then glanced away. For an instant she considered the pain of being normal, of being ungifted. She wondered if Shem was like her, beyond the flesh.
But he wasn’t, and he could never understand.
“Can you do it to me?” Shem’s clear eyelids flicked over his pupils but never quite hid them. “I want mark. I want rune.”
Anna’s fingers trembled. Not from fear, but anticipation. Her hands wanted to sculpt and carve, to draw the scalpel across his flesh. It was a mindless, gnawing impulse, but she had no reason to resist it. She scanned the floor for a blade.
“Yes?” Shem asked.
She wondered if the quill’s tip would be sharp enough to break the flesh and follow his sigil’s lines accurately.
Then shouting broke out downstairs. The eastern edge to the tracker’s voice stood out among the others with horrific clarity. When he had spoken to Anna in previous days, his words had seemed icy yet restrained. Now they were sharp and cruel and burning with rage. With murder.
“And where is she?” the tracker roared. His boots thudded up the stairs, drawing Shem’s attention to the curtain.
Anna hardly had time to drop her quill before the curtain flew open, revealing the tracker and his dark burlap covering. She hurried to gather her ink-marked pages and tuck them under the far side of the mattress, well out of the tracker’s reach.
“Anna,” the tracker said quietly, now looming over her. “Do you know what you did to the sukra?”
In the corner of her eye, Anna saw Shem bunching up his fists. She gave a subtle shake of her head, disarming him.
“Look at me,” the tracker said. He squatted low enough to reach eye level with Anna. “Don’t know if you understand this, but what you did was dangerous. And it was a fool’s move. Do you know why?”
Because it was the right thing, she thought, but it was wasted. Some things, like mercy, were beyond his comprehension.
“You made a mistake,” the tracker said. His drooping eyes spoke only of laziness, and the petals that he mashed and swallowed every night.
“She made saving of my mother,” Shem said.
The tracker slowly wrenched his gaze toward Shem, having almost forgotten that the boy was in the room. “You mean that she saved your mother, cretin. Where did you learn your river-tongue?”
Shem, perhaps due to his translucent skin, gave no indication of embarrassment. “You show Anna respect.”
There was a silencing impact to the words. Anna’s breaths slowed, and she wondered if she’d imagined Shem’s reply. Perhaps it had only been her desperate desire for somebody to defend her, to support her. But she could see the tracker’s eyes narrowing in their burlap pits, and the fear set in.
“How surprising.” The tracker rose to full height and turned on Shem. “And what would a Huuri boy know about respect?”
“Very much.” His voice was factual and innocent, almost eager to provide the answer that to a question he understood.
“Come here, and we’ll see what you remember.” The tracker curled his hands into bony fists.
Shem slanted his head again. “I remember all.”
The curtains parted once again. Galipa barreled through the doorway with both hands raised, breathless. And despite his best efforts, he couldn’t conceal the trembling in his arms or the chattering in his jaw.
Beyond the curtains, Emine sobbed. A quick and foreign hush from Galipa forced her into silence.
The tracker cast a glance over his shoulder, eyed the herbman from head to toe, and laughed behind his burlap. “Now you come to bargain, I suppose. Is this how they handle their business in the north, Galipa?”
“She didn’t mean to do this,” Galipa managed. “It is a good thing, and I am glad, but—”
“But you’re content to profit from her gifts.”
“No!” He stared at Anna with wounded eyes. “She is a child, no? She is a blessed child. An act of kindness should be rewarded.”
“To the proper owner, maybe.”
“She has no owner,” Galipa said.
“She is mine,” the tracker said. “You can ask her, if you like. We made a fair bargain.”
Memories of Julek’s bargain turned over in Anna’s head, but she pushed them away. If she could’ve spoken for herself, she would’ve said something, anything.
“You cannot have gifts,” Shem said.
The tracker cracked his knuckles, still facing away from the boy. “Those gifts are labor, you know. If she provides labor, I need to be paid. That’s honest business, Galipa. Now, you’ll pay me properly, or I’ll bloody this floor.” He stepped forward and towered over the herbman.
Shem looked to his father, but the herbman shook his head defiantly.
It was maddening.
Anna scrambled to her feet and wedged herself in front of Galipa. She felt the tracker’s warm, sour breath leaking through the burlap, the bloodshot tendrils worming in his eyes. But it wasn’t enough to make her move.
“Step out of the way,” the tracker said softly.
“Anna,” Galipa said, laying a hand on her shoulder. “You should not be here.”
Still, she did not move.
“Come, now,” the tracker whispered. The tight weave of his burlap showed its age and fraying as he bent down toward Anna. “I’ll go right through you, and I don’t want to have to do that.”
“Kill me,” she mouthed. And it was true, she thought, now that the feeling was settled in her stomach. She would sooner die than move. She would rather be a meal for the hounds than the same girl who’d given up Julek.
If the tracker wanted to get to Galipa, of course, it was simple enough to shove her aside. But he wouldn’t lay a hand on her, not out of violence, anyway. Instead he stared down at the girl and tore into her eyes with that lifeless gaze, trying to flood her with fear.
Fear was just a word.
Finally the tracker stepped back. “Oh, how I endure your antics.” He looked past Anna, studying the herbman evenly. “Fine. No coercion, then. I just want my fee, and I’ll stand by it.” Rage had evaporated from his words, but hatred remained.
Galipa patted Anna’s shoulder and stole shallow breaths, trying to regain some sense of composure. He sighed. “And if I cannot pay?”
“I’ll kill the boy,” the tracker said.
“No coercion,” Galipa hissed. “I earn hardl
y enough to put wood on the fire, vesh? And you come here—you want to take more than I have?”
The tracker laughed like distant thunder. “You were paid very well for our room and board. Now, I don’t know what you saw in the north, but the mark on your wife’s neck is worth something here. It’s worth more than your life in any sense, Galipa.”
“What does she want?” asked Galipa, a renewed fire in his voice. He stepped to Anna’s side and furrowed his brow. “Look at this poor girl. What does she want, huh?”
“Do you really think it matters?”
“Of course.”
“Well, she’s free to speak up at any time.”
Anna glared at the tracker, but his eyes offered nothing in return. She broke away from Galipa’s hand on her shoulder, walked to the sheet, and gathered up her quill and paper. Their eyes were on her, but she wouldn’t let the fear bleed through.
“What’s this?” the tracker asked, glancing at Shem. “What did you do?”
Shem looked to Anna. “I teach her.”
“Lessons, Galipa?” the tracker asked. “Is this what your mutt does in his free time, when he’s supposed to be tending to her? What sort of arrangement am I paying you for?”
“This girl cannot speak,” Galipa said.
“Right, and it was your charge to ensure that her voice returned. Have you been spinning lies with me?”
Galipa shook his head violently. “No, no, no. Shem was trying to be kind to her. She will have the speaking, this is true. But until then—”
“Until then she’ll learn nothing, because she couldn’t write her own years down if she wanted to. And if you think this lesson will pay for part of her services . . .”
Anna scowled and placed the paper up against the nearest wall, smoothing out its wrinkles with the back of her hand. She wrote with the quill’s remnants of ink, and as the sound of the scratching nib filled the air, the conversation ceased. There was only silence as she scrawled out the four letters.
H-E-R-E.
“Huh,” the tracker said after a moment. “So she learned a word.”
“I want to stay with Shem,” Anna mouthed.
The tracker wheeled on Shem. “What have you been teaching her?”
The boy blinked and looked at his father. “Words.”
“What is it, then?” The tracker cast a hard glance at Galipa. “What have you said to her?”
But Galipa had no words to offer. He stood with his shoulders drawn up, his face red and streaked with sweat. “You see? You see what she say to you? She wants something. I can take care of her here, and she can stay with my son.”
“That isn’t an option. But she wants the boy, apparently,” the tracker said, his dead eyes sweeping toward Shem. “I think she has a heart for your boy.”
For the first time, Anna looked at Shem in this light. She only wanted his letters and his numbers, and the kindness he had given her—or so she thought. There was nothing inherently attractive about him, and he was far less handsome than most of the boys she had known, but the tracker’s word resonated in her. She liked his heart.
“Shem?” It was a pained, wretched word, and it tore Anna’s attention away from the boy. Galipa’s eyes danced from one person to the next, swelling with new tears, and at last he focused on Anna. “What you mean? Please, please tell him. Tell him you want to stay with Shem.”
“I want Shem,” she mouthed, glancing from the herbman to the tracker when she could no longer bear Galipa’s sobbing.
“That settles it,” the tracker said. “Now, in addition to the boy, we’ll be needing some salt.”
Chapter 7
The debate had initially leaked through the walls in bitter snaps, broken up by bouts of sobbing or silence. The tracker’s voice had been thick and steady throughout, but it never softened, even as he suggested putting the boy in chains.
When Anna focused, she heard fractured descriptions of the north and its violence, of how Shem shouldn’t be returning, of how they’d barely fled the region. They argued about the weather, the food, the wars . . .
Every so often, Shem raised his head from sketches of cliffs and corpses. He never reacted to the argument, although Anna was sure he could hear the commotion even better than she could.
Inklings of an escape plan came over Anna just as she realized that the nearby room had fallen silent. Footsteps shuffled over the floor and the empty room’s curtains fluttered. She glanced at her own doorway, where the curtains suddenly parted to reveal the tracker, followed by Galipa and Emine. The northerners’ eyes were red and defeated, and in the candlelight, shadows etched out their swollen features and shimmers of sweat. Galipa held fast to his wife’s arm.
“Anna,” the tracker said, “come with me for a while. There are some closing matters to the agreement.”
Anna stood and moved across the room, noticing something else on Emine’s face. It was something she’d seen in Bylka, when men like the tracker had arrived and done their business in front of the children and parents alike. They’d taken the pouch of salt from the bogat’s men, but their eyes remained on their children, steeped in memory and shame. She wondered if her mother or father had looked that way in their dealings. The night before, they’d tucked her and her little bear off to sleep with warm smiles.
“Make it quick, if you would,” the tracker said to Galipa.
Emine met Anna’s eyes again. The northern woman reached up, seemingly vulnerable, and covered the rune on her neck.
It crossed Anna’s mind that it was her own fault, that her gift had done this. But maybe the tracker was right for once. Maybe she was valuable, and things had to cost something. Maybe a mother didn’t deserve a child if she would give him up so willingly.
The tracker placed a hand on Anna’s shoulder and led her toward the hanging curtain.
“Please, consider again,” Galipa whispered as Anna reached the doorway. His eyes were shimmering and creased, just on the verge of breaking. “Do not take this boy.”
But the tracker squeezed Anna’s shoulder, guiding her through the open curtain and into the cool darkness of the corridor, and she wondered if she’d simply lost too much to understand him.
“Do you know what they’re doing?” the tracker asked. They were halfway down the hall, just shy of the stairs, when he sighed. His rune glowed through the empty stitches in his burlap. “They’re using tears for tears, girl. They think that if they cry, then you’ll cry too. Just don’t let them make you feel anything. Especially not for the boy.”
Anna turned back toward her room, faintly aware of Emine’s sobs from beyond the door hanging.
“Grove knows they don’t have anything worth gevna in this place. He was a smart pick, when you get right down to it,” the tracker said as he started down the stairs. “Droby are cheap in the north, but they don’t know much beyond flatspeak. Maybe this one can learn his place.”
Anna followed the tracker downstairs and into the common room, where the dying hearth was shedding the last of its warmth. The door to the streets was sealed and barred, and all that remained on the tables was a scattering of used plates and silver. Some of the inn’s patrons rolled dice or picked apart herbs. To the far left, just in front of the curtain rows, was a circular table.
Smoke coiled out of the darkness and into the nearby candlelight. Something behind the haze shifted, and at once the hawk-eyed woman became clear across the table, inhaling from a standing pipe’s long tube. Something about her deeply copper skin and delicate motions kept her concealed in the shadows.
“If you’re hungry, you should eat,” the tracker said. He gestured to the kettles and pans arranged around the hearth without pausing in his strides. When he reached the woman’s table, he sank into one of the chairs and picked up a different tube, slipping it under his mask. “Yak shen?” he asked the hawk-eyed woman.
Anna e
yed the pots for a moment, but her stomach was churning too much. She was unsettled by the hawk-eyed woman’s stare, and despite her reservations, took the seat closest to the tracker.
“We’re still leaving tomorrow,” the hawk-eyed woman said, exhaling a ribbon of smoke.
The tracker cut his inhale short, and smoke dribbled through the burlap. “What happened to the salt I gave you?”
The woman fidgeted with her belt for a moment, then tossed a heavy leather pouch across the table. It landed in front of the tracker, hissing as its granules shifted.
“Oh,” the tracker said. He picked up the bag and tucked it away in his tunic. “You shouldn’t have come back unless you had good news.”
“All news is good news.” She ignored the tracker’s snort. “Emine consulted me during the evening meal. I know your attention has rested upon this girl, but you should remember what she is.”
Anna straightened in her chair, conscious of the fact that she’d been ignored, treated like scenery.
“She’s a scribe.” The words were buried under his breath.
“And a girl,” the woman added. She tapped on the head of the tube. “You never told her how to behave, and it shows in her actions. Do you think it wise to take her counsel?”
Anna glanced down at the tube, wondering how the smoke felt to breathe. It’d neither felt nor tasted good when she stood too close to a fire, but perhaps this was different. She reached for the tube. The tracker slapped her hand, jarring her.
“Don’t embarrass yourself.” The tracker grunted. “What’s the angle, Bora? Are you pulling for her because she feeds you?”
Bora offered no immediate reaction, but incubated the question with another bout of smoking. “I’ve known them for many cycles. They take good care of the boy.”
“Their droba, you mean.”
“Not anymore.”
The tracker huffed. “He’s Huuri.”
“They claim him,” Bora replied. “It would do them great harm to see him leave. Not only for their livelihood, but for their hearts. They would mourn him.”
Scribes Page 8
