Medicine for the Dead

by Arianne Thompson

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” Weisei snapped. “You will outlive yourself in the songs that will be made from your shouldn’t-haves. Now go away, and don’t let me hear your voice again until he can name everything that was taken.”

  There was only one thing to do then. Vuchak bowed, his wrists coming together to make the ashet, and went away to do his service.

  Hakai had risen to his feet, waiting to hear what was wanted of him. The half-man still lay under the wagon, perhaps for the same purpose. And there was someone else waiting too, some neglected thing –

  The shoes.

  Vuchak had forgotten to check the heels of the young man’s shoes.

  He swore aloud, softly and for his own hearing. Then he hurried to look, retracing steps in the confusion of footprints there in the middle of the camp, hunting the dust for any telling glint of brass. There would be one. There had to be one – or else Echep was still alive. Prove it to me, Vuchak thought, drowning in irrationality. If you died out here, show me so.

  There was something metallic in the dirt by Hakai’s feet.

  “Sir? What can I –”

  Vuchak seized the thing with such fierceness that half a handful of dry red earth came with it. The moon had gone behind a cloud, but still his night-eyes discerned the thin shape of the metal as the dirt fell through his fingers.

  It was a nail.

  “Sir?”

  Vuchak hurled it out into the darkness, wishing it would never find the ground again, and rounded on Hakai to force him backwards. “What did you say to them?” he hissed.

  Hakai did not step back. He only lifted his chin, disregarding the intimate breathing-distance between their two faces, and answered in a voice that smelled of sleep-fermented mucus and old corn. “‘Don’t be too hasty for revenge,’ I said. ‘This mule here shouldn’t be killed. These two will try to fool you, but he is really quite valuable, and they want to take him home to Atali’Krah to be sold. Take him and let us go on our way, so that they will have to go home to the children of Marhuk plagued by shame.’”

  Vuchak did not know much Ardish. But on hearing it again in his mind, he was sure that yes, there had been words for kill and sell and take, in addition to the unmissable names of the birthplace of the a’Krah and their divine parent.

  So perhaps Hakai had been trying to buy their lives with the promise of a valuable slave. Or perhaps his words’ ultimate effect had been his intention from the beginning: maybe he had meant to frighten the broken men away with the specter of disease all along.

  Or maybe he had been asking for them to kill Vuchak and Weisei, sell their goods, and take him, Hakai, as a freed man.

  Regardless, this shrugging insolent nearsighted slave had done more, and more effectively, than all Vuchak’s stillborn intentions combined.

  “Listen to me,” Vuchak said, low and nastily. “Until the moment we step through the gates of Island Town again, you are at our service exclusively – and if you ever make such presumptions again, I will have you scourged for disobedience. I will have Aso’ta Marhuk himself –”

  A small noise of pain came from behind him. Vuchak looked back, to where Weisei had already dug a small hole, dropped the bullet in, and just now made a shallow cut across his wrist. He milked the blood from his skin, watering the bullet to ensure that its original intentions were satisfied.

  Vuchak turned back to Hakai, but could not recall the shape of his last thought. After a frustrating silence, he was forced to abandon it. “Is this much clear to you?” he demanded irritably.

  Yes, certainly. Next time you fall asleep on watch, I will be sure to sit impotently at your example.

  That was only the imaginary, sensible reply, of course. What Hakai actually said was, “Yes, sir.”

  Vuchak grunted his forgiveness and then heaved himself up onto the wagon’s sideboard. “Good. Now what have we lost?”

  “Most of our water,” Hakai said, “and about half the food – the white meal, dried fruits, one sack of beans, and the potatoes. I don’t know about the meat. Tea and medicine are gone, and so are the shovel and the cookpot.”

  Vuchak’s gaze followed in the wreckage left by Hakai’s words. The greatest loss came from the mule-baggage: they had left it mostly still packed, which had made it far easier for the broken men to take away. They seemed not to have gotten all the way through the wagon’s contents, though: the half-man’s rifle had gone undiscovered, and Vuchak’s bow and arrows had stayed hidden under the pile of harness-parts and rope.

  Vuchak sucked his teeth, evicting anger and shame and regret until he had made space enough for clear thinking. The gunshot had clearly announced their presence here to anything – human or otherwise – for at least two miles around. So perhaps their first necessity was to move again, get well away from here before they were found, and finish counting their losses later.

  But no: on reflection, moving would only be one more source of noise, and a constant, ongoing one at that. Better to let the broken men make all the clamor and distraction as they galloped away, and stay still and quiet here until morning. And in the meantime...

  “How much water is left?” Vuchak asked.

  Hakai nodded at the strewn mess where the mule-baggage had been. “Your eyes are superior to mine, sir, and may correct my counting. So far I have found three casks and four canteens, and whatever remains of what we gave the animals tonight.”

  Vuchak turned his head and spit. That would comfortably keep the four of them for only two days, even with the mule gone. “Well,” he said, as he climbed down, “certainly it won’t be difficult to carry what’s left.”

  There was a pause then, and uncommon confusion in Hakai’s voice. “On our backs?”

  Vuchak paused in kicking dirt over his saliva. “No, in the wagon,” he said.

  Another pause, this one even less welcome than the first. Hakai made interlocking forks of his fingers, holding them before his stomach as if to smother a digestive pain. “Yes, sir,” he said, his voice all caution and deference. “But how will we pull it?”

  Vuchak made no reply. In the space of three nervous heartbeats, he stalked around the side of the wagon, to the place where Hakai and the half-man had tied the lines fast to the wheel.

  The ropes and stakes were still there, but the horse was gone.

  And although Vuchak could surely ask whether it had been taken before he woke or driven off while he was distracted with Weisei, he could not have been less interested in the answer. The result was the same: they were stranded.

  ELIM LAY STILL under the wagon, safely forgotten again as incomprehensible conversations and arguments beat the air around him. He didn’t have to know what-all had just happened to know that he was damned lucky to have come out the back of it in one piece.

  So he kept quiet right where he was, hardly even breathing until long after the rest of them had left off their chatter, and he could believe that at least one or two had returned to sleep. Eventually he worked up the guts to smooth out his poncho underneath his dirty stomach, and to rest his head in the crook of his elbow.

  He lay awake long after that, though, listening to cricket-sermons as he stared out into the unrelieved darkness. All the while, Hawkeye’s voice churned in his mind.

  Don’t be too hasty. I can get you better revenge. This mule has already killed one of their most valuable men, and these two have been fooled into taking him home to Atali’Krah. Sell our goods, but let us go on our way: we will take him to infect the children of Marhuk in their own home, and begin a new plague.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE SEXTON’S DAUGHTER

  IT BEGAN AT his lips – an intense, burning pain – and then forced itself down his throat and into his lungs, a searing Sibylline breath so fiery-sharp that he would cry out, except that he had no air to scream with, and instead sat bolt upright with a deep, ragged gasp –

  – which echoed in the room as a smothered feminine shriek, accompanied by the thud of a body hitting the floor. />
  Sil put a hand to his forehead, breathing heavily. Then he moved it to smother that burning sensation in his mouth, and the nausea roiling up behind it.

  He did not recognize the cloth draped over his midsection, or the stone table he sat on, or the barren ruined remains of the church around him, the morning sun streaming in through the collapsed wall of the nave.

  But he did know that Afriti girl sprawled out in the corner, all tangled black robes and twisted black limbs, staring at him with a bloodless gray face and eyes as wide and white as tea-saucers.

  “What have you done?” he croaked, his blistered right hand moving to an unfamiliar thickness in his throat, and a tenderness around his neck, that left him awash in freshly-remembered fear.

  The noose. Pressure. Panic. Strangling.

  “You’re dead,” she stammered, making the sun wheel with trembling fingers, pulling herself more tightly against the wall.

  “Obviously I’m not,” Sil snapped, albeit half-heartedly.

  The balcony. Looking out over the rail. Faro’s smile. The rope dropping over his head. The shove.

  “You are dead,” she repeated, more steadily this time, “and as cold as any stone.”

  “I’m a Northman; I’m always cold!” he barked, her nonsense beginning to unnerve him.

  Elim.

  “Where’s Elim?” A stab of panic dissolved his anger as he realized he had no idea how long he’d been out, or what state Elim had been in whenever they finally went to cut him down.

  The Afriti slowly took her feet, some of the color returning to her dark face. “He left late last night,” she said. “The a’Krah are taking him to their holy city to answer for the death of Dulei Marhuk.”

  Sil let out a breath, awash in relief and chagrin. So Elim was alive, and at any rate well enough to go sightseeing... though god only knew what they’d do to him when they got there.

  But that was all right: he and Elim were alive, both of them, and everything past that was manageable. Sil would get him out of his mess, somehow, ride after him and get the a’Krah to see a better, more lucrative option...

  Oh, but the pearls were still up in his room, still scattered all under the bed, and Faro had lured him right out of it – had tried to kill him – had undoubtedly torn through the place to find them. And if he hadn’t quite succeeded on the one count, he surely could not have failed on the other.

  Sil swallowed, unable to coax his hand from his neck as this new reality seeped into his mind. He’d been robbed, hanged, nearly killed. He was alone and penniless now, alive only through sheer miraculous accident – and only for as long as Faro remained none the wiser. Sil would have to get himself out of here before he could do Elim any good.

  Which would be considerably more feasible if he weren’t sitting naked on a slab.

  Sil looked down again, the residual heat in his mouth and the chill of his bare flesh against the table suddenly taking on new and horrible connotations. “Where are my clothes?” he demanded. “What have you done?”

  As if he didn’t know. As if the swept-out wreck of the church around them and that tatty old robe she wore left any room for doubt. She must have declared herself a grave bride, a cloistered Penitent woman... and here in the sanctified ruins of her lair, she would have already taken unspeakable liberties with his body.

  She stiffened, her fear warming to indignation. “Everything which faith, decorum, and hygiene prescribe for the recently deceased, including the washing of your clothes. They were soiled when you died.”

  “For the last time –” Sil began, but stopped on realizing that he was raising his voice. The new order of business was vital secrecy.

  It needed a different, altogether more difficult tack. “What is your name, miss?” Grave bride or no, he would not call her Loving.

  She was taller than he remembered, though this was without a doubt the very same Afriti girl he and Elim had blundered into... what, two days ago? Three? At any rate, there was no mistaking her black robe and bare feet and those thick, years-long dreadlocks that flaunted her status as a free woman – or that unimpressed expression on her broad-featured face as she tacitly declined to bow for him. “I would ask that you call me Día.”

  “Día, then,” he repeated, pressing gratitude from his voice like whey from cheese curds. “I... appreciate you looking after me. And I’m sorry for taking such a tone just now. It’s just that I need to fetch Elim back, you see, and –”

  Día’s eyes narrowed; she folded her arms. “Elim has killed an innocent man. He’s confessed it and freely accepted the consequences of his actions, and neither you nor I have any business interfering with that.”

  Sil could have sworn sharply enough to bleach her face again – but not yet, not just yet. “Well, then – then the only correct thing to do is to let me go with him,” he said. “I was the one who brought him here and left him here, and I’d told him to watch the stock – that was all he was doing, you know, guarding the horses for me – and I can’t go back alone, regardless, so I may as well join him.” And that part was the truth: it was more than Sil’s life was worth to go back home and tell Boss and Lady Jane what he’d done with their store-bought son. “After all, surely consequences aren’t so scarce on the ground that he and I can’t share them between us...?”

  She kept that same look on her face, which Sil found irrationally infuriating. As if she were judging him. As if she, a barefoot god-mumbling leftover, had anything to say to him! But he held his gaze and his tongue until his silence finally won out over hers.

  “Wait here,” she said, and turned to go. “I will consult with the Azahi.”

  Oh, for barking out loud. “But you don’t – it doesn’t need to come to that,” Sil said. Eager as he was for her to leave and let him collect himself, he was still more powerfully disinclined to trust another stranger in this godforsaken town, even and especially their chief. “Nobody needs to know that I’m here, really; I just need you to get my horse, and maybe a couple of essentials, and then I can catch up with him on my own. No-one will be any the wiser.”

  Not a chance. He could already see it in her face, her suspicion darkening to the beginnings of a scowl. “I am an ambassador here: I serve at the pleasure of God and the Azahi, and will not be seen hiding my affairs from either. And furthermore –”

  “But I’ve already said –”

  “And FURTHERMORE, Sil Halfwick, it WILL be seen that you not only brought Elim here against all better reason and left him alone and ripe for trouble, but also saw fit to pillory and abandon him in the middle of the street, in such misery as one would not keep an animal. And since it is only by God’s infinite mercy that he is still alive for us to argue about, it is not YOUR judgment that we will apply here, but that of someone who has expressed the slightest bit of sensibility and reasoned regard for his well-being.” She stepped down from the dais. “And I will return as soon as I have his advice.”

  Of all the nerve – of all the filthy, saucy nerve –

  “Give him my kind regards,” Sil spat at her diminishing back, unable to swear properly on the spur of the moment, unwilling to hurl half-formed insults to salve his savaged pride.

  Her only answer was the sway of her thick, waist-length dreadlocks as she picked up a blue parasol, stepped over a clump of weeds, and left through the wrecked wall.

  Well. It didn’t matter, anyway. He had better things to do than waste his time arguing with some daft ashy bint who couldn’t tell the living from the dead, and he was well rid of her for now.

  Sil looked down at his blistered hand, discomfited by the memory of Elim’s burning, sweat-streaked flesh. He’d been trying to save him. The huge overgrown fool was roasting to death, and clumsy as it was, Sil had done what he could to cool his blood and keep him alive. And before that, to get Elim forgiven and let free. And before that, to save the Calvert family business. Everything he’d done, even his mistakes – it was all meant for the best. Why the devil couldn’t anyone understa
nd that?

  After a time, Sil slid gingerly down off the altar, marveling at the abominable stiffness in his limbs, and went to discover what had become of his clothes.

  STILL, DÍA WAS astonished in spite of herself at the temptation to turn left on the main road: to walk brazenly through the streets of the Moon Quarter, calling invitations to the Ohoti Woru or the a’Krah or whatever itinerant hotel-guests hadn’t yet exhausted their revelries to come behold the spectacle of the nude and helpless Northman hiding out in her church.

  THE church.

  Rather, His church.

  The very same He who had seen fit to raise that disagreeable boy from the dead, for reasons Día had not yet begun to contemplate.

  Appropriately humbled, she turned to walk the path of virtue – in this case, a hundred yards down the Burnt Path and then south down the Winter Way – and used the time to consider how to present her case.

  Are you sure? the Azahi would say, once she had reported the most significant point.

  Very sure, First, she would say, and supply as many corroborating facts as he needed to believe that yes, Halfwick really had died. The shuddering. The soiling. That horrible, deep-throated gurgle. The cooling, and the washing, and the rigor that followed. Her cheek at his cold, stiffened shoulder. And now – just now – her mouth at his.

  What have you done?

  Halfwick had actually said that.

  As if he were some sort of temptation – him, the chinless, hairless, turkey-necked wonder! As if anyone but a grave bride would have taken any such trouble with him – as if any of his new-found ‘friends’ at that forsaken house of flesh and money would have sat any wake longer than the time it took to pick his pockets!

  Well, that was not quite true. There was Weisei. And Día did not have to understand why the strange young man of the a’Krah had taken a liking to Halfwick to believe that he’d found something likeable in him.

  Perhaps God had agreed.