Medicine for the Dead

by Arianne Thompson

  Vuchak followed the half’s gaze far enough to assure himself that Weisei was truly out of earshot. Then he pulled the knife from his moccasin-boot and stalked forward, rounding on him in three sharp strides.

  “Listen to me, you greasy pig-suckled bastard,” he said, satisfied by the half’s first automatic flinch. “He isn’t for you to dirty with your eyes. He isn’t for you to contaminate with your stinking evil breath. And this knife will be mine to use if I catch you speaking to him again, do you understand? No talk.”

  The Ardish words must have been right – or at any rate, the half knew when to nod, fast and frightened, at the flashing, sun-scattering blade.

  With this much understood, Vuchak shoved it back into his boot and heaved himself up over the wagon’s side to find something sufficiently noisy and attention-keeping to do with the luggage. But although he could try to cover the sounds of his marka’s distress, there was nothing Vuchak could do for the pestilence that was eating Weisei’s body – or the fear infecting his own mind.

  ELIM COULDN’T HAVE said what provoked Bootjack just then – whether he’d found something objectionable in the conversation, or had been planning to make himself clear all along, and only needed one unsupervised moment to do it.

  But Elim knew plenty well how to roll over and show belly, and had no trouble understanding the main idea speared on the end of Bootjack’s knife: there was not going to be any more friendly conversation.

  That was hard to do at first: once he made it back, Way-Say was perfectly ready to pick up where they’d left off, and didn’t seem to know what to make of Elim’s ground-watching, one-word answers. Bootjack soon took control of the conversation in their own language, and let it die as the sun climbed higher.

  The day got less pleasant after that.

  For one thing, Ax was having a bad time of it. Losing his front shoes hadn’t done his feet any favors, and his ground-pounding runaway spook yesterday had only made it worse. Elim didn’t like the warmth in his ankles, or the subtle shortening of his stride.

  For another, it was hard going: they left the highway behind late in the morning, and the new road was as old and rough as a harlot’s knee. It required considerable doing to keep clear of all the holes and stones... though even Bootjack knew better than to grouse about the time it took to negotiate them. The thought of a broken axle or a lamed horse all the way out here was too awful to contemplate.

  And then there was Way-Say. Elim didn’t think anything of it the first couple of times they stopped, but by mid-afternoon there was no mistaking it: the Crow prince was coming down with a vicious case of the backdoor trots. Which was liable to happen to anyone from time to time – it’d be a rare soul who’d never found out the hard way that he shouldn’t have taken a chance with the rusty bacon – but was always worse when you weren’t at home. As the day wore on, the stops got longer, and Way-Say’s running range got shorter. One time, he didn’t make it even ten paces – and had hardly even ripped away his loincloth before Bootjack was whirling around, advancing on Elim, shouting at him in such a sudden spit-flecked fury that it was all Elim could do to keep hold of the horse.

  But after days spent drenched in grief and fear, Elim’s courage was finally beginning to dry out. He was growing a tolerance for Bootjack’s temper. And the small part of his mind not busy with weathering that gale-force outrage in front of him finally smartened up enough to wonder about it – to resist the urge to stare at the ground, to keep his eyes on Bootjack’s face, and finally to realize what might ought to have been obvious awhile back.

  He’s scared.

  Scared, and maybe hollering to hide the awful sounds coming from his partner... but scared of what?

  That thought kept Elim busy long after they’d started moving again. He wished like the dickens that Bootjack would go away long enough to get a word in with Hawkeye. He hoped they would find that watering-hole soon, though he didn’t dare ask how far they still had to go. But the most important part got clearer with every sidelong glance at that reeking box in the wagon: Elim had already learned firsthand what could happen when a fellow overdosed on fear – and if he was going to avoid ending up like Do-Lay there, he’d better figure out on the quick side how to ease Bootjack’s finger off the trigger... or pray to God that he’d be able to get out of the line of fire.

  “I ALREADY TOLD you,” Weisei said, “it’s the pollution. That’s all.” He plopped down to a weary sit beside the coffin in the wagon’s shade, and beckoned for the water-skin in Vuchak’s hand.

  His eyes were too well hidden by the yuye he’d put on that afternoon, but his voice said everything about how he felt. “Only half,” Vuchak warned as he handed over the water. “The rest is for tea.”

  If Hakai ever got back. Vuchak looked up, his naked eyes squinting in the harsh light of the sun. He’d sent the ihi’ghiva out herb-hunting almost an hour ago, though they both knew that remedies would be scarce on the ground. It was too late in the year for bluefeet, too dry for chew-pea, and nobody had seen a highland lily for years. Mesquite bark was probably the best that could be hoped for... but even that would be better than the alternative, which was nothing.

  “Anyway,” Weisei said after a long, thirsty swig, “you said yourself that you found an infected deer – and that you have a headache – and you see how distressed Dulei has become.”

  That was all true. Pollution was caused by violence and blasphemy, by evil acts whose after-effects could linger for years, soaking into the ground and poisoning the air until neither the living nor the dead were free of their taint. And although no human being could walk through polluted lands without being affected in some way, the most vulnerable by far were those most intimately related to the greater order of creation: the children of the gods. Weisei had inherited a powerful conduit to the natural world from Marhuk his father, and mortal sensitivity to its contents from Henat his mother, and whatever spiritual sewage came bubbling up in his vicinity would sicken him more quickly than anyone.

  But there was nothing unnatural about the appalling stench coming from Dulei, who had been sitting cold and unburied for five nights already... and the deer could have come from anywhere... and Vuchak’s headache was easily explained by the fact that he’d drunk scarcely one bladderful of water all day, anxious as he was to ration what was left, and had the blinding sun in his eyes all afternoon. He’d made Weisei trade yuye with him, just to be sure his marka didn’t put the one contaminated with the half’s blood anywhere near his face. Until they found water enough to clean it, Vuchak would do without.

  He didn’t say that to Weisei. He didn’t tell him that he was the reason why they hadn’t made it to Yaga Chini today, or that they would be out of water long before they got there tomorrow. Instead, he took back the half-empty skin and stowed it in the wagon-bed before it could tempt him more. “Yes, marka,” he said, too worn out to stomach even one more disagreement, “but I wish... it would greatly ease my mind, if you would not have any more to do with the half. Just for a little while – until you feel better.”

  Weisei sighed, already exasperated. “Vichi, I told you before –”

  “I know,” Vuchak said, “and I respect your kindness, and I understand that it isn’t – that his work isn’t finished yet.” He sat down beside Weisei, not daring to breathe through his nose, or to think about where he would find the energy to get up again later. “But you’ve done so much for him already, and you see how well he’s thinking his own thoughts now, and how quickly he’s understanding what he’s done, and...” ...and I need you to do this one thing for me. Put me first, just this once. “...and your atodak doesn’t like the person he is when he’s afraid for you.”

  This was said to Weisei’s knee, which received his confession with a stoicism Vuchak envied.

  “Well, I don’t like him either,” Weisei said. “He’s irrational and angry, and exhausts everyone with his temper – and he expects other people to arrange their behavior to please his disordered m
ind.”

  Yesterday, Vuchak would have taken offense at that – as if Weisei had any right to criticize anyone for defective thinking! Today, though, he’d long since been flattened, deflated by every successive mind-piercing spike of anger and fear. He did not bother to look up. “Yes,” he said, for lack of a better word. “But only because... I can’t do it all, marka. I can handle the supplies and the slaves and the camp and the watches and –” and you “– and all the rest of it, but I can’t manage all that and myself too. I’m sorry for the shame that my weakness brings you.”

  But he was more sorry for what this suggested: that Weisei, who was so endlessly sensitive to the imagined needs of a half, a slave who could not even speak two intelligible words, could be so deaf to what his own atodak was saying – asking, pleading – to his very face. That he could be equally dismissive of the brewing disorder in his own body, and the one in Vuchak’s mind. That indolent, arrogant Dulei, who had cared and cried for Echep in his sickness, could somehow be a more compassionate marka than generous, guileless Weisei.

  “Dulei...” Weisei’s knee shifted as he addressed his nephew. “Do you really think my Vichi would feel this same way, if he weren’t so upset for you?”

  Vuchak glanced over at the coffin. Dulei, who had not yet been given the respectful treatment owed to the dead, had to be treated as one of the living. Because if they really were crossing polluted ground, it would be that much easier for him to slide into that terrible place between life and death... with dire consequences.

  So Vuchak considered the question as if Dulei himself had asked it: was he acting out of honest fear and concern, or were they only a pretense for hate?

  Vuchak sat forward to rub his face. It was maddening, not having even enough water for a bath. He could handle everything else, if only he didn’t have to live with that awful greasy feeling in his hair. “I don’t know,” he said to the dead man. “I miss Echep. I know you do too. It’s hard not to think of him – to keep wondering whether he’s still alive, and to have to hope that he’s dead, so he won’t have to find out what happened to youwhile he was gone. And the thought of being like him – of knowing that Weisei died, because of something I should have protected him from... it’s eating me.”

  If Dulei answered, Vuchak could not hear it. Still, his shoulder was gratified to feel a warm, living hand. “You can’t protect me from everything, Vichi. But if it will protect you from yourself, I’ll do it.”

  Vuchak sat up. “You will?”

  Weisei’s brows furrowed above his blindfold. “Only until I’m well enough for you to understand that Ylem is not poisonous. After that, I don’t want to hear anything about it.”

  “Yes, marka,” Vuchak said at once, and made no effort to conceal the relief in his voice. “Yes, of course – and I promise I’ll be fair with him in the meantime. You won’t have any shame because of me. Watch, and you’ll see.”

  Weisei nodded, his face serious. “I’ll be looking for it. And I expect...” He faltered, and made the sign of a vengeful god before stumbling up to his feet. “... I’ll be right back.”

  And he was off again, leaving Vuchak alone to grapple with the invisible fist clenching around his stomach.

  Yes, Weisei might be sick from pollution, if someone had committed some especially heinous crime nearby. A murder might do it, if it were very recent or exceptionally depraved. Vuchak reminded himself to be particularly vigilant in arranging the watches, just in case. On the other hand, though...

  Vuchak’s gaze drifted to the sight of the half, his over-large shape spilling long shadows across the ground as he tended to the horse.

  There were two kinds of poison. The slow ones, like alcohol, worked their damage only by degrees. If the half’s nature was toxic, if every interaction with him spread the evil he had festering in his soul, then Weisei had only to abstain for awhile, and he would soon be well again.

  But then there were the other poisons, like tlimit, like royal hemlock, whose potency was so terrible that a single exposure could be fatal. If the poison was in the half’s body – if he carried sickness in him like a rabid bat – then Weisei had long since been contaminated, and would only get sicker as the plague seeped through him, and there was nothing anyone here could do about it.

  Well, that was not quite true.

  Vuchak watched the half, his eyes narrowing in the red light. He might not be able to do anything about plague, but a plague-carrier would be another matter entirely.

  “I KNOW,” ELIM said, as Ax blew into his empty water pail. “It’s a hell of a thing, ain’t it?”

  That was an understatement. It was worrying, that was what, and dangerous, what was more. Elim reckoned that Ax had had about five gallons that day, but that would barely have satisfied a stall-kept horse, nevermind one who’d spent all day hauling a load with the sun soaking into his bleached black hide. Elim was half tempted to turn him loose and see if he couldn’t find them a creek... and three-quarters afraid that that would be the last they saw of him. “Just hang tough for one more day, all right? We’ll find us that watering-hole tomorrow, and then you can have a big drink and a kick-back. Promise we will.”

  Of course, Elim was promising himself as much as anyone. He hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask Bootjack about staying an extra day when they got there, or to tell him that the horse was liable to colic if they didn’t water him on the quick side. He would, though. First thing tomorrow, he’d give it to him straight: whatever pagan prayer business they had would have to get done on the road, and Way-Say could hang his ass off the side of the wagon if he had to, but there couldn’t be any more stopping or dithering on anybody’s account.

  Maybe Hawkeye could help make that sound respectful. Elim looked up, squinting in the dusk. The blindfolded fellow had finally made it back, and looked to be talking with Bootjack about something-or-other.

  Well, Elim would have his chance. In the meantime, he went on pounding in stakes and stringing out rope and ordering his mind, getting himself sure of what-all needed said, so he would be ready as soon as he got room to say it.

  He would tell Hawkeye about the horse, first of all. That had to be understood before anything.

  And he would ask him about Bootjack, and how to settle him.

  And then, just for Elim’s own perfect surety, he’d ask again about what Hawkeye had said to those road-agents to get them to clear out, back on their first night. Not because he was actually worried about it – because of course anybody with an eye in their head could see that Elim wasn’t sick with anything but a mean sunburn and a blue-ribbon set of bruises – but because he was tired of wondering, and had given Hawkeye plenty of time to come up with a good explanation or a solid lie.

  By the time he finished with Ax, it was full dark. The moon showed Bootjack’s feet just sticking out from that makeshift wagon-side tent of theirs. Way-Say had spread out his blanket beside the coffin, as if the – as if Do-Lay might want company in the night. Hawkeye, apparently first on watch, sat perched and smoking on the wagon-bench. Too close to Bootjack to risk it. Elim didn’t care to imagine what he’d do if he thought there was a midnight mutiny brewing under his nose.

  Well, first thing in the morning, then.

  Elim pulled off his poncho and bedded down a respectable distance from all three of them. He was sorely tempted to pull off his moccasins and air out all those newborn blisters – but that would leave his feet to get dirty again, and this time, he had no water to waste in washing them. So he treated himself to four weak swallows from Will’s canteen and lay down. Thank you for the day, Master. Thank you for your blessings...

  SOMETHING MOVED IN the coffin.

  Elim jolted awake, unsure whether he’d dreamed it. He lay still, eyes open, gaze fixed on the dark silhouette of the box even as his imagination tore off running. Was that handprint on his chest hotter than the rest of him? And what would happen if he touched it to find out?

  He listened and listened, straining to filter out
the noise of the wind and the sawing of the cricket-songs and the idle grunts of the horse cribbing on the wagon wheel. Way-Say might have sort-of forgiven him... but what about Do-Lay? What if he was just about fed up with waiting for his living kin to get him his pound of flesh, and had finally allotted on doing it himself? He was one of them, after all: a prince, a black singer, and the Sibyl’s grandson – and that was just while he was alive. What was he now?

  Way-Say sat bolt upright with a gasp. Elim sat up likewise, heart hammering, ready to run.

  But there was no inquisitive call from the wagon – no alarm at all. Had Hawkeye fallen asleep? Elim struggled to make out the dark shapes on the other side of the camp, and finally glanced back at Way-Say.

  “What is it?” he asked, keeping his voice low and his hands planted in the dirt.

  Way-Say shook his head and rocked forward, running his hands over his hair, one after another, gathering it as if he would tie it back somehow. He went on like that for a good half a minute, gathering and gathering, like he was trying to catch up all the missed strands. Finally, just before Elim had made up his mind to ask again, Way-Say tipped forward onto one hand, the other still holding his hair back.

  The sound of retching filled the air, and seized Elim’s heart.

  He couldn’t have said what was so fearful about it. It was just something he’d eaten, or to be expected when a sickly fellow decided to rest himself in stinking-range of a dead one. Or maybe Do-Lay was angry with more than just Elim.

  Elim could just make out the swipe of Way-Say’s arm across his mouth as he finally sat back again. After a moment’s selfish hesitation, he reached for Will’s canteen and tossed it over... because everybody knew the worst part was that horrible throat-burning aftertaste.