Hakai was saying something to him, though he did not use nearly enough words to be faithfully rendering the message he’d been given. Not for the first time, Vuchak began to regret his insistence on taking this particular slave. Viket would have been a much better choice – strong, cheerful, and utterly stupid. This Hakai was the worst of all worlds, his mouth simultaneously his biggest liability and his sole redeeming feature. And what was more...
By and by, Vuchak remembered having a conversation. When he looked up to find where it had gone, Weisei was sitting back inside the tent, embracing his legs, and pillowing his head on his knees. His hair made a glossy blue-black waterfall over his shins, and his face was invisible.
“Forgive me,” Vuchak said. “I shouldn’t have interrupted you. What were you saying?”
Weisei did not move. “Nothing of any importance, Vichi.”
But before Vuchak could find the reason for that unexpected weariness in his marka’s voice, Weisei lifted his head, his face drawn in confusion. “I don’t hear them,” he said. “Why haven’t they obeyed you?”
He was facing the wrong direction, even if the skin of the tent hadn’t been obscuring his view, but Vuchak could see perfectly. He watched the half-man pull himself back to the canteen, and the moccasins Weisei had made for him. He hunched over in a cross-legged sit, and uncorked the canteen in his lap. It took a moment to make out the peculiar details that followed.
“Hakai is waiting on the half,” Vuchak said at last. “The half is washing his feet. And putting on his moccasins.”
Weisei nodded, as if this were ordinary and expected. “Well, I’m going back to sleep. Give him some of the tea if he wants it, and wake me up when you get tired.”
Vuchak was already tired. Exhausted, really. “Yes, marka.” He still owed Hakai his share of breakfast, though. Maybe when he was finished seeing to the horse, Vuchak could give it to him and put him on watch. Yes. That would be for the best. And as for the half...
Vuchak glanced at the kettle in front of Dulei’s box. Prickly poppy tea was good for relieving pain and inviting sleep, and the half deserved neither. He had torn his way out of some nameless native mother – surely unwelcome, surely unwanted – and stolen Dulei’s life, and was now freeloading clothing he had no right to wear. He’d taken so much already, and Vuchak would be damned if he were going to offer still more. But the stomach-burning hate behind that thought was somehow extinguished, leaving his thoughts as cold and unappetizing as the remains of the badly-cooked meal in his lap.
A hundred years ago, things would have been different. A hundred years ago, the old ways were all anyone needed. Today, though, the a’Krah had little use for idle bachelor princes, or archaic warrior-guards. They needed mothers and fathers, sons and daughters – new, modern people to replace those who were lost, and to carry out the traditions in new, modern ways. By that measure, Weisei and Vuchak were alike in their inadequacy: for entirely separate reasons, they were failures by the reckoning of the old, relics by the standards of the new, and helpless disappointments to each other.
Tomorrow, though – tomorrow they would find Yaga Chini, and everything would be better. Somehow it would. Vuchak sat up awhile longer, keeping company with Dulei, until he could believe it.
CHAPTER NINE
MASTER OF THE HOUSE
WHEN DÍA WOKE, her first thought was new puppy.
Her second thought, more sensible than the first, marveled at the hard ground and the ache in her side. Her third remembered what she’d done.
She sat up, horrified all over again at the sight of the sun rising over the eastern plains – at the fresh realization that the Etascado River was at least twenty or thirty miles away, and Island Town as well, and she had no shelter and no water and precious little time to find both before she was in real peril.
As it turned out, she did still have a dog.
She was resting on her side like a cow in a field, her tail just beginning to wag as she noticed Día’s attention. But perhaps Día hadn’t properly noticed her before: it was only there, with a top-down view of the dog’s furry brown stomach, that Día caught sight of two rows of prominent teats, and realized that she had either already had puppies, or would someday soon.
And it was only then, with Día’s first glimpse of the half-plum between the dog’s front paws, that she realized just how little she knew about her traveling-companion.
The plum was fresh, for one thing – as pristine and juicy as if Día had cut it five minutes ago. But the pit in the middle had sprouted, its tender three-leaved shoot growing skyward as if it had been striving for the sun for weeks now.
The dog dropped its jaw in a smile and wagged.
And Día, witnessing an unfamiliar iconography – the mother dog, the sprouted fruit, the sunrise – sat with folded hands, and contemplated its meaning.
Many of the gods were known to take multiple forms, and to enjoy partners of multiple kinds. In the case of U’ru, the Dog Lady, her human children had worn the marks of canine ancestry: fur and sometimes fangs, Día had heard, powerful empathy, and a gift for the healing arts. Just so, U’ru’s canine offspring had been exceptionally human: intelligent, communicative... and remarkably long-lived. Her people, the Ara-Naure, were dispersed twenty years ago, and the Dog Lady herself could not have outlived them. Still, if Día’s understanding was correct, it was entirely possible that she had accidentally befriended one of U’ru’s royal daughters.
Or perhaps it wasn’t an accident at all.
Día drew up the prayer beads that hung from her belt, her fingers counting the blessings as her mind articulated them.
Thank you for the day, Master, she began. Thank you for your blessings. Thank you for my life, my help, my reason, and your love. Please help me to understand all that you’ve given me, and use it for your greater glory.
When she had finished calibrating her moral instruments, Día stood up. “Well, Mother Dog – I’m very glad you’re still with me. What shall we do with this garden you’ve started?”
The dog stood up likewise, stretched, shook herself, and wandered off to sniff a creosote bush.
In the spot where she had been, there was a hole – and not even a hole, but a little shallow dip in the ground, as if some ground-dwelling bird had nested there long ago. If the sprouted plum had not been left lying so near, Día would not even have noticed it.
Now, however, it could not be ignored. With one more glance at the dog – now rolling and scraping happily along in the brush – and another at the fruit, Día picked up the juicy orange miracle. It was one of the big, specially cultivated kinds – probably too delicate to survive in the desert. She was ravenously hungry. And there was no reason why she couldn’t eat the fruit and plant the pit.
It smelled divine.
But no, no... it hadn’t rained for ages, and if the little greenling was going to have a chance, it would need all the water it could get.
And if Día was going to prove herself worthy of the help she had been given, she could not fail to give generously in return. She hurriedly set the half-plum in the hole, skin down, and began scraping hard-packed earth over it before she could change her mind. She did not stop or look up until her fingers were sore, their nails caked with dirt, and nothing was left exposed but the one single leafy shoot reaching skyward from the dust.
Día stood back and waited, her hands absently wiping themselves on her cassock as they waited for the next great sign. The child in her desperately longed to see something wondrous: a giant vine erupting to the sky, or a rose made of fire, or a baby growing from a seed-pod. She waited, prayerful, hungry.
Presently, the dog ambled back over. She sniffed with passing interest at the sprout, then squatted over it and eased herself.
Well.
Día squelched a sigh, and presently hunkered down to do likewise, albeit on less sacred ground.
So perhaps their work here was done. “Thank you for waiting,” she said at last. “Are you ready
to go?”
The dog tipped its ears forward at the sound of her voice.
That would do for a yes. With that, Día turned and set off east again, toward the rising sun. This time, though, she would not use it for a compass-point. This time, she would not lose herself in the heat – or rather, she would make sure that losing herself didn’t mean getting lost.
So Día focused instead on a distinctive, sharply-angled spot on the eastern horizon, training her thoughts on it exclusively. That would be her anchor today, the lodestone that called her home like a single lost nail.
By and by, though, she felt more single than she had before – and when she looked back to see why, the dog was gone.
She halted in her tracks, paralyzed by fear... but no, the dog was back where she had left her, a prick-eared blot against the morning sky.
Without a single rational thought, Día turned back. She walked fast and faster, insuppressibly anxious to get back before her odd brown traveling-friend abandoned her.
When she was two hundred yards away, the dog stood up.
When she was one hundred yards away, the dog turned.
When she was fifty yards away, the dog ran off.
And Día ran after her.
She sprinted like a hound after a hare, her bare feet leaving a staccato trail of spit-up earth in her wake. She wasn’t prepared for it – she wasn’t used to it – but the fear of being left alone consumed every complaint from her legs and lungs, until she tore through empty space like a candle-flame knocked into a muslin curtain. “Wait!” she called. “Please wait!”
The dog stopped at the sound of her voice – and that gave Día time enough to put on one last burst of speed, lunge forward, and tackle the dog to the ground.
Or try to.
It ended in a spectacular miss, Día clutching nothing but air as she hit the ground hard enough to leave her breathless, teary-eyed, and tasting dirt.
She was still deciding whether to breathe or spit first when she felt a friendly whuffling at her ear. It licked her neck twice, and then receded.
Día forced herself up, sucking air, desperate not to be left again. The dog was heading off west.
“Wait,” Día croaked, and swallowed on a dry throat. “Please don’t leave me, Mother Dog. Please – I’m scared to go by myself.” In a few hours, the heat of the day would catch up with her again, her reason would fail, and who knew where it would find her again? “Are you going somewhere?” she asked, crawling forward on hands and knees, desperate to keep her there by any means necessary. “Are you looking for something?”
The dog sat down, panting. “Uh, uh, uh...”
“Let me come with you,” Día said, and staggered up to her feet. “I’ll keep up. I promise. Look, you see,” and she hastily untied her rope belt, holding it out for the dog’s inspection.
The clicking of the beads attracted some interest – enough to let her slip the rope around the dog’s neck, and tie a generous knot. “There. That’s not bad, is it? Now I’ll hold on to this end, and follow wherever you go.” And though Día didn’t say it, her anxiousness to keep the dog from struggling had meant leaving the collar loose enough that she would be able to pull out of it, if she really tried.
She wouldn’t, though. Día chose to have faith in that. U’ru’s daughter could have left her at any time yesterday, or during the night, or in the midst of this tremendous, fearful foolishness just now. But she was still here, sitting and idly chewing the makeshift leash as if it were the drollest novelty.
“Mother Dog?” Día gave an experimental tug on the line, her confidence faltering. “Was there somewhere you wanted to go?”
The dog seemed not to have the least idea of anything... at least, not until Día made a hopeful turn back to the east. Then, with one sharp jerk, the lead was yanked from her hand as the dog took off running, west by northwest, just as before. With a cry of dismay, Día bolted after her.
Thank you for the day, Master, she prayed as she ran. Thank you for your blessings. Please help me to understand all that you’ve given me, and, if it meets with your wisdom, not to die of thirst and exposure and foolishness in the meantime...
The dog paused, just long enough to glance back and see how Día was enjoying the game. Then she was off again, a joyful brown streak trailing a lead rope and a string of prayer beads through the golden desert morning.
And Día, whose first half-hour of wakefulness had very definitely included a test of faith somewhere in there, would have to consider later whether her present circumstances meant that she had passed or was failing spectacularly. For now, she would be doing well just to keep up.
SIL WALKED FOR hours – for days, actually. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t afford to. He was within minutes of Elim, was going to see him just over the next rise... and the next one... and the next one.
In any case, he was lucky that his nerves were keeping him going, or shock maybe, as he wasn’t tired or even thirsty. He felt almost no discomfort at all.
But he wasn’t right – wasn’t quite right. For starters, the afternoon sun was still far too hot, yet he broke no sweat, suffered no shortness of breath, and his insides felt queer – bloated, kind of foul. He stopped just once, tried and failed to alleviate that full, greasy feeling in his gut.
He told himself that it was nothing, merely the consequence of his extraordinary circumstances over the past few days. That he should be so lucky to have that, alone on a hard march to nowhere, as his only complaint.
But that was how it had started, years and years ago.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH your breakfast?, he’d asked, on noting that she hadn’t finished her kippers.
And Mother smiled an indulgent smile, as this was exactly the question that he always had from her when he didn’t especially relish the remainder of his boiled egg and soldiers. Don’t fancy it, she said, in exactly the way that he always did. May I be excused?
And since Father had left even before sunrise to see to his business in Mercery, that meant that Sil was the master of the house – as certainly Mother and Nillie couldn’t be expected to manage things by themselves – and therefore it was his prerogative to decide what would and would not constitute suitable behavior.
So he swung his legs from his high chair, and considered how to pass judgment. On carefully weighing the facts of the matter, including how much she’d left uneaten and how she had thus far comported herself, he decided that yes, she should have one more bite, and then be excused from the table.
And after this pleasant little reversal, he didn’t give it another thought. He was the master of the house until Father returned, after all, and there were certain things that had to be seen to: Eddings had to be told when the luncheon should be brought up, and Alfric instructed on the order of the lessons, and Nillie’s presentation given a rigorous once-over to see that she was respectably dressed before she went out calling.
And all of this was such a great thrill, gave him such a tremendous feeling of responsibility and importance and departure from the ordinary, that some slight irregularities escaped his notice. He might have heard more than the usual number of coming-ups and going-downs at the stairs, or noticed Cady going past with fresh linens even when it wasn’t the proper time for making the beds. Certainly he did remark on Mother’s absence, as it was generally her custom to come and take luncheon with him in the nursery. However, hearing that she wasn’t entirely well occasioned no alarm: he simply did as any fond son would and had his bottle of camphor and spirits sent to her, along with an order that she have the window opened and a mustard poultice applied and not be allowed any excitement or visiting until she was well enough to sit up for supper. With that seen to, he considered the matter finished, and thereafter put his mind to recitation and spelling.
Perhaps his mistake was in letting his child’s mind become too absorbed in that – in letting himself fixate solely on the shape of the C and the variable arrangement of the I and the E without taking care to see that all th
e other household matters were still proceeding by order.
At any rate, the next time he lifted his thoughts from the slate, it was to ruinous surprise. There was an unseemliness to the volume of voices downstairs, and then someone pounding up the stairs. Sil had hardly sooner got up to put a stop to it than was met at the door by Nillie of all people, who was far too well-bred to go charging about like some thundering common fishwife. But he had hardly even opened his mouth to tell her so before she had grabbed him up like a helpless infant, her face flushed and her corset creaking as she hurried down the hall. He had hardly opened his mouth to reproach her before she was fairly shouting at the servants again, melting his anger into actual fear, as he couldn’t understand what she was going on about, save to know with positive certainty that she had never, ever acted that way before. Finally, she set him down at the master bedroom, and pushed open the door.
A strange, unwholesome smell wafted out to meet them. It wasn’t exceptionally powerful – just a faintly sour fish-odor – and yet its novelty provoked more alarm than any ordinary stink. Hardly any wonder that their poor mother should be unwell, if that was what they gave her to breathe!
It was neglect, that was all: she had been made the victim of brutal and spiteful neglect, and Sil’s every step towards her exposed more of the servants’ monstrous cruelty. Those witless layabouts, whom he had entrusted with her care, had all taken leave of their senses: the washing-up water in the bedside basin was foul, not even fit for rinsing out bedpans, and the window was letting in all that peculiar odor from outside – he wouldn’t have ordered it open if he’d known! – and Lettie had apparently taken it into her head to put rice in a chicken broth for Mother’s lunch, but why it should be served by the gallon, and in a great nasty bucket on the floor, was beyond understanding.
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