Nori glanced at Rezuku as they passed his wagon. Like the Tamrani and other wealthy merchants, he dressed carefully. Today he’d chosen a somber green cloak with black edging and silver embroidery. He looked serious as he spoke with one of the cozar elders. How terrible about all that damage, all the injuries, and how careless the girl must have been to let such a beastie loose, and moons, but they’d been twice blessed that the Tamrani hadn’t died. Why, if he had, just think of it. His family might even hunt each one of the cozar down and destroy their fortunes in revenge. It had happened before, you know . . .
Nori looked away so that he didn’t see the anger in her gaze when he glanced at her. There had been a glint in his eye that made her think of a sly tamrin. She wondered how much gold he could make with some of those cozar out of the way of his trade. She also hadn’t liked the looks of some of the outriders who had worked the wrecks. Several of them seemed to hinder more than help the repair work. On top of which, there was a weight of rain in the clouds overhead, which seemed to slow the cozar further. By the time they passed Grimwood, both the Ell and the Hafell were up and down the line, urging the teams faster and even snapping at the message master when the old woman’s dnu wouldn’t hurry.
When Hunter joined Nori, Kettre murmured to the others, and they fell back to leave the two together. Nori scowled after her friend.
Hunter glanced at her frown. “Something wrong? Is it your wolf?”
“Condari,” she warned. She looked around quickly at the cozar on the road.
“No one heard me,” he reassured in a low voice. “And you called me Hunter when you thought I was in danger. Is it? Your . . . other?”
She said sourly, “It’s the thought of Trial, my well-bruised back, and Kettre abandoning me so obviously to you.”
He chuckled. “That last can’t be the end of the world.”
The end of the world . . . On his neck, the marks of the tano seemed to pulse, and fire seemed to burn in her blood. Memory flashed in the grey. Plague, burning in the womb, plague killing the wolves. Disease striking the Ancients down and leaving them dead as they fell. And Harumen and raiders like rats after the dead. Yellow, slitted eyes flickered, and Nori tried to pull back, but the wolf shivered into the pack. Even at their distance, Nori felt it echo. Close, too close. Death, alone, alone, fear. Lonely, wolfwalker. Need.
Hunter glanced at her as she didn’t answer. His cool green eyes narrowed. She had stiffened, and her face was tense. There was something in her gaze akin to a deep-seated fear. “Noriana?” He frowned. “It’s not Kettre who’s bothering you. That’s your—” He glanced around to make sure no one was near. “—partner.”
His words seemed to anchor her, and she shook off the sense of slitted eyes. The sense of men with the plague was closer, as if, since the wagon wreck, such men were now among them. It was crazy. She stared straight ahead until she got control of her mind. It wasn’t easy. That flash of fear had been an icy fire. The sense of plague lurked in the packsong, and she would swear it was growing stronger, not weaker as her link with Rishte tightened. It was as if the alien mother-mother in the back of her mind was using the wolves to reach her, while each moment of tension over the Harumen made her more susceptible to fear. She glanced at Hunter and grasped at the yearling for an excuse. “It’s Rishte,” she said finally. “He’s alone, away from the pack, and running through worlag country. I’m just . . . worried.”
“He’s a wolf. He’s got fangs and the speed of a wilding to back them up. Why, by the ruins of the Ponduit Bridge, would you worry?”
She fingered the reins, pulled in spite of herself to the west. “He’s barely a year old.”
“Old enough to bond.”
“Any wolf can bond,” she returned sharply.
“I don’t see the problem.”
She was almost relieved. This she could talk about. “Rishte isn’t an adult yet,” she explained. “He doesn’t have the experience of years in the woods to draw on. This is not . . .” She looked west and felt for that danger sense. Now that she knew what to listen for, she could feel it hovering on the edge of the grey. “This is not the safest place to be,” she said finally. “And judging from what’s happened in the last three days, I’m not the safest person to be around, either. Yet he’s left the pack to follow me. I’m all he has right now.”
“You sound almost . . . sad,” he observed.
“Aye.” Her voice was quiet. “If I stayed near his pack, it wouldn’t be an issue. He’d have guides, mentors among the wolves to teach him what he should learn. But as long as I am on the road, he’ll be alone for the rest of his life. He’ll have no pack, only meetings with Grey Ones in passing.”
“What if you formed your own pack?”
Her gaze flicked back to him. “I don’t understand.”
“You’re running with your brother and uncle right now. The wolf can never be part of that because you have too much history among the three of you. What if you formed a new pack, new friends to ride with? He’d be part of those new bonds as they strengthened out of nothing. He would feel as if they were his pack, too.”
She had started to frown at his words. Now she scowled. “Moons, Condari. It has nothing to do with who I ride with. I could Journey with no one but the Grey Ones and still not give him a pack. It’s the link, not the pack, that matters. That’s what separates him from others of his kind, since he’s bound to me, not them.”
“Then why don’t you Journey? You can’t say you’re not qualified. You’re, what, a second? A third in Abis?”
Her face grew expressionless. “That was feeble, Condari. You know I’ve never Tested.”
“Do you want to?”
She wanted to snap, but she forced herself to say simply, “No.”
“You’re sure? A wolfwalker like you. All these open trails . . .”
She gave him a long look. To have the recognition of rank, to have the elders stop accusing her of wasting her skills. It wasn’t the first time she’d wondered what it would be like to be able to stand up to the elders with pride, instead of the stubborn shame of knowing they thought her a coward.
Wolfwalkerwolfwalkerwolfwalker . . .
She pushed the wolf down and turned her face away. She was wearing Hunter’s shirt again over her own, and she rubbed the fabric absently. She surprised herself by wanting to answer him truthfully. She liked the strength in him. She liked the way he talked to her, that he teased her like Payne did, instead of treating her like a legend. To have someone other than her brother to confide in, someone who understood? She almost answered, but behind them, Payne called out a greeting to a ring-runner who cantered past. Nori shut her mouth with a snap. The man was a godsdamned Tamrani, practically a councilman by birth, and carrying secrets in that belt of his that might tear her life apart.
Hunter watched curiously as the expressions flickered through her violet eyes. He said softly, “So you do want to Test, and you do want to Journey. I didn’t know if you hid your desire or if you were simply unsure about it.”
“You’re wrong.” She forced her words to be firm. “And I’m as sure as the sea hits the shore.”
“Ah.”
She said sharply, “What does ‘ah’ mean?”
He shrugged. “Considering what you did for me with the tano, and that you now have your own wolf to work with, I’d think, after living so long in your mother’s shadow, that you would jump at the chance to Journey.”
“Not hardly.”
“By the First House, Black Wolf, you could be anyone, anywhere in the nine counties, if you’d just let yourself take the road.”
“I already have duties—” She broke off. Moons, what made her say that?
“Ah, yes, the duties.”
“Moonworms, stop ah-ing as if you understand.” She started to rein away, then paused and looked back over her shoulder. “One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Touch me—kiss me—again without my permission, and I’ll cut y
our lips from your bones and feed them to the wolf pack.”
She spurred her dnu ahead.
The Tamrani rubbed his square jaw and watched her ride off to pace another wagon. “You have no idea,” he murmured, “how that challenges a man.”
He rubbed the thin stitches on his belt. There had been a particular tone in Nori’s voice when she’d spoken of duties, a tone under her anger, and she’d looked at his belt again. She had been anxious, perhaps even afraid, and it had not been his imagination. He didn’t think it had to do with the accidents in the train, either. She’d been too calm when they had discussed them, and she hadn’t hesitated when facing Brean or dealing with the tano. No, there was something else that worried the wolfwalker, and it was that which worried him. He wanted a scout who was focused on her duty. He couldn’t risk his family’s lives on someone so caught up in other things that she’d be no use to him. He fingered the belt and watched with a frown as she rode ahead at a canter.
That evening, no one lingered at dinner, and fireside was a jumble of unease. It was crowded, too, and not just from the other three cozar trains who had to share the circle. Almost every cozar from Ell Tai’s train was there at Trial, including children and chovas. Lookers-on from the village had ridden in, along with locals and messengers. It wasn’t often one saw a full cozar trial, and this would be severe. Tai had had to borrow four elders from the other caravans to make up the panel of judges.
A line of elders made up one half of the innermost circle of the stone amphitheater. The judges ringed the other half. Mian’s advocate, the old Ell himself, sat in the midst of the elders, with the girl silent beside him. Nori watched Fentris frown at the tight ring of men and women. He was across fireside from Hunter, ignoring the taller man while trying to check out the cozar. The wolfwalker hid a wry smile. She understood his confusion. If she hadn’t known who the elders were herself, Tai and the others would have looked like just more white-haired men and women nodding off at fireside. They wore little to indicate rank. Ell Tai wore just a thin braid of brown, almost invisible on his worn cuff. It was a standard joke that a Hafell was known by the cuff that had no braid. Even the judges wore no robes, only simple stoles with small, heavy metal pins of the oldEarth scales of justice. It was a reminder that they were not above the law themselves, and that the weight of law was a burden, a responsibility, not a power to be used for themselves. They were not gods who passed judgment from the cold distance of legal words, but members in a community who struggled to keep it intact for every one of their folk.
Nori wondered how welcome she would be if they knew she was linked to the enemy of the Ancients, the ones who had passed judgment on all humanity and then had sent the plague. She felt an echo of the dread she’d felt years before when she herself had stood Trial.
It had started with a chance meeting of a scout who had seemed simply friendly. Then the man started turning up, watching Nori at the university, following her to classes. To her relief, he’d disappeared for a while, but then he’d returned, this time trying to get her alone. When he’d tried to touch her, she’d backed away. When he’d attacked, she’d struck back hard. Then he’d turned up dead.
Yellow eyes flickered in the back of her head at her thoughts. There was a sense of satisfaction in the gaze of Nori’s mother-mother as Nori remembered the Tumuwen elders, and she tried to stifle a chill. For her, Trial had been an exercise in hiding a truth that could break the counties apart. She remembered every word, every truth she’d swallowed, and her dread as her uncles were questioned.
Yes, Wakje and Weed had noticed the man stalking Nori. No, she had not gone to them for help. Yes, they had warned the man off on their own. The scout had left town, but he had returned. They had seen his assault, and they’d seen Nori hurt the man badly and nearly destroy herself.
Did the man even get Trial?
Wakje had answered, “He was taken to the trial block, he spoke for himself, he was sentenced by his peers.”
Nori had tried not to blanch at that, and the elders had looked at Wakje sharply. “Did you punish him?” they’d asked.
“No,” he’d said.
But Nori had not imagined the flicker she’d seen in his flat, blue eyes. She knew that look. She had it herself every couple of years when she faced her mother-mother.
“Did you take him into the forest?” The elders had asked.
“No.” Wakje had answered.
“What did you do with him?”
“Nothing.” Wakje’s voice had been remarkably expressionless.
“Then how did he die?”
“Looked like worlags to me.”
The elders, dissatisfied, had turned to the other uncle, Weed, but the answers had been the same. Both uncles had been seen in town the night the stalker disappeared, and Nori had been in a coma. The elders had recessed, then called Trial back. Both Weed and Wakje had been sentenced to guard duty one day a ninan for a month. It was a token punishment that had grated on the ex-raiders even as it had relieved them.
Nori remembered waiting for her own sentence, her stomach a cold knot as the elders finally spoke. Even though she had had nothing to do with the man’s actual death, it had been her silence about the stalker that had put her uncles in the position of having to commit violence to keep her from greater harm. The judgment—that she would work four ninends for the poor, tending to their livestock, another token punishment, since she already volunteered for that duty each month—didn’t change the sick fear she’d had of waiting for it to be spoken. She would have had nightmares about Trial for years, but there was something worse in her mind.
The link between Nori and her mother-mother had always been strong, and those yellow eyes had reached into that coma with images even harsher and stronger than usual. After the coma, it took nights of waking with screams on her lips to realize that what she’d been seeing was not solely in her imagination. Nor had it been dreams like the nightmares she’d grown up with.
She had always dreaded sleep. Day or night, she would close her eyes, and in that half-sleep state, when the mind is open to odd connections and to images in the unconscious, she could hear her mother-mother. She could feel the slitted eyes, the icy breath of the sky-chipped mountains, the hatred of humanity that lurked in other birdmen. She saw memories of walls that twisted in on themselves, blasts of light, collapsing heat, and patterns that fractured in coil after coil and disappeared into nothing.
After the coma, there was something else in that nightmare state of sleep. She saw clear, crisp memories from her mother-mother that had nothing to do with the mountains or light or icy winds or patterns. And she could feel a sense of herself in the memory, as if she had tainted her mother-mother’s telepathic mind as much as the birdman tainted hers.
For years afterward, she saw her mother-mother each night in nightmare dreams. A white, feathered arrow striking down, tearing the stalker from the callused hands of Wakje and Weed. She looked through slitted, yellow eyes and heard the scout scream in his coarse human way as she locked her claws into his shoulders. Saw him clutch at her smooth, scaled legs. Saw him dig in to hang on as she hovered over the worlag pack like a farmer holding a frantic grasshopper over a flock of hungry chickens. The Aiueven’s hands had been like her own, and she’d felt the soft squidiness of human flesh pierced by her finger-long talons. She’d felt the stale coverings of leather and cloth as they slipped and tore in her grip. There had been a futile bite of dull human nails. And then she had released the man, and Nori had watched him fall, fall, tumble and flail in the cold, dark air. And the worlags reaching up with their claws before he hit the ground.
She took a breath and let it out carefully so the cozar wouldn’t notice. It had been a terrible risk, for both the Aiueven and for Nori. Since the time of plague, there had been an uneasy truce between humanity and the birdmen, and almost no contact between them. One hint that the birdmen had left their mountains to kill another human, and the counties could rise up in terror of anothe
r plague and attack the breeding grounds.
She had always feared the demon inside herself, the taint that erupted with her fear and fury, and which could kill at a single touch. What she dreaded even more was the alien who had defended her daughter-daughter. The taint, the link between the two, could destroy what was left of her world.
Someone jostled her elbow, and she flinched. Then Payne caught her attention with a sharp gesture. She shook off her dread. Someone else had death on their mind. Someone close among the cozar.
She located her uncles, then Kettre and Hunter. The citymen and Sidisport chovas were easy to see. Almost all of them wore some sort of rank or House symbols. Guild men wore guild signs, Tamrani had their crests, and the chovas pinned the bars of their rank onto their inside collars. Fentris had the most complex knot of all, in silk, of course, not chancloth, and its two-toned iridescence caught the lamplight like luminescent moth wings. She wasn’t the only one to notice. The slim Tamrani had just turned to a woman who seemed to be complimenting his fancy war cap. The Tamrani didn’t turn a hair as he offered a compliment in return, and the woman preened and fingered the cuff of her cheap blouse where the crest of her trade guild had been unevenly embroidered. He must have asked a question, because the woman launched eagerly into a description of some sort of trade, while on his other side another merchant waited impatiently to interrupt.
The oldest elder finally came forward. People quickly seated themselves, and the crowd quieted as the circle of judges adjusted their stoles.
The old man used a cane to steady himself as he walked, and a girl walked at his elbow with the basket he could no longer carry himself. As the old elder stopped in front of each judge, he reached into the basket, drew out one smooth, red stone, and placed it on the curved table. There would be four stones in front of each judge in the end: black for absolution, green for punishment. White for banishment, red for death.
As the elder set down each smoothly polished, blood-colored stone, he murmured, “May your judgment be careful, made without self-righteousness, without hubris, without hate, without haste.”
Wolf in Night Page 37
