But she did have to think about how to make this encounter end more happily than their last one. That damned bullet was slowing her down, wearing her out – her body would kill itself trying to get rid of it – and there was no telling how long she had left. If she was going to have any chance of catching Yashu-Diiwa and the a’Krah before they crossed the river, she needed Jeté and the rest of his cohort. She could not afford to get left again.
Fuseau seemed to think so too. Its eyes narrowed at her catty indifference. “Oh, is that so? Then why did your second wizard not take you directly to your first one? Why do we still find you paddling along on your own like some helpless human infant?”
Shea resisted the urge to tell it that human infants could not swim. Instead, she remembered what Mr. Henry Bon had intimated about the virtues of civility and generosity, especially when one was holding nothing but a holstered sock. And she tried to remember enough Fraichais to make it sound good. “Wizards don’t always do what you want them to. And I thought that you-all like – would like –”
Shea felt herself withering under Fuseau’s stare. Worse, she saw herself reflected in its eyes: a pitiful old cripple so deranged from years of captivity that it could not remember its own language.
No, damn it all, that wasn’t her.
Or at least, not all of her.
Shea heaved herself further up on the rock, just far enough for her belly to keep her anchored as she re-employed her hands and arms. You-all could have killed me at any time, she signed. And I know you were thinking of my safety when you left me behind. That was a lie, but at least it was a charitable one. I appreciate your kindness, and would like to offer you mine. I asked to be taken here because I thought that if you decided to look for the wizard, you would benefit from my help... and if you didn’t, I would still be able to find him on my own. Shea cleared her throat and tried for a respectable finish. “I think we will do better if we work together.”
Fuseau did not change its colors or its expression, but there was a thoughtful pause before it replied. “We didn’t leave you for your safety,” it said at last. “We left because we could not risk you contaminating them with your ideas.”
It did not clarify its subjects, but Shea understood perfectly. ‘We’ was Jeté, and by extension, Fuseau: the prince’s voice, his closest and most-loved sibling. This was the one he trusted to represent him – to literally speak for him, now that his new body no longer had the anatomy to speak for itself. ‘Them’ was the remainder of the Many, fellow siblings whose safety and well-being had become Jeté’s responsibility as soon as they left their Mother’s manse.
Shea could not much empathize with the problems of authority. But she could certainly understand why a person who had just assumed that authority would not like to see his little sister hugging Shea like some filthy, flea-infested rag doll freshly scooped from the garbage.
“You seemed to like the wizard-hunting idea,” she said at last. “But if there are things you don’t want me to share, tell me so.”
Fuseau looked around, as if hunting for any gill-plumed head that might have popped out of the water to eavesdrop. Then it turned back to Shea and spoke in lower tones. “We know you have been infected by earthling sex-thinking,” it said, “and Faro has told us about how you like to... entertain some of its guests. We are sorry that you have become what you are. We will try not to judge you for it. But if we are to allow you to travel with us, you cannot, cannot let our cohort become polluted with such knowledge. We have been very careful not to let them know anything about your other-life, or the horrible things you’ve confessed to our prince. So if you want our help, you had better keep your hands still and your mouth shut. Do you understand?”
Shea clung to the rock, breathless with hurt. Was that what she was now? A foul-mouthed, semen-stained old witch who had to be kept away from the children?
No, of course not. She was strong, that was what – strong enough to do what needed to be done with U’ru’s child, and hold steadfastly to the cause for twenty-three long years afterwards. And she was desirable – desirable enough for Henry Bon to ride thirty miles out of his way just for a second helping of her. And she was clever, too – clever enough not to let this witless adolescent know how deeply it had cut her, or allow anything as superfluous as her own feelings to get between her and her goal.
“Yes,” she said, from behind an invisible, impervious mask. “That will be fine.”
She could not tell what Fuseau was thinking. But it apparently could not turn up any cause for objection, and finally nodded. “Good. Wait here, and when the prince has understood our discussion, I will send two of the Many up to escort you.”
Shea watched the voice disappear under the choppy, wind-blown surface of the water, and had no difficulty entertaining herself while she waited. If Big Brother Jeté thought she was too much for his wide-eyed innocents to handle, he was going to choke on his own tongue when Mother U’ru arrived.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
NEITHER GODS NOR MEN
A FEW HOURS later, they found the smashed remains of somebody else’s camp. Bugs and varmints had already done for most of the fresh food, but there was still a sack of beans, some dried fruit, and a basket of squash that the coyotes hadn’t gotten into. Best of all, there was water.
Elim caught the peculiar gourd canteen that Bootjack thrust at him in one second, had the stopper off in three, and drained it in ten. Bootjack and Hawkeye did likewise with theirs. Nobody said a word about fair sharing, or saving for later. Nobody said much of anything.
They made their own camp a couple of miles down the road. Bootjack saved one water-skin for Way-Say, and directed Elim to pour the rest for Actor. Elim obeyed, and carefully neglected to tell him that Ax had had a pretty good drink already. Then he cut up a squash on his own initiative, partly because wet food would help to stave off the colic you were asking for anytime you deprived a horse of water, and partly because anybody who’d hauled that load on sore feet all day long deserved a treat.
After that, there was nothing but a cold supper and silence. The three of them sat there – Bootjack, Elim, and Hawkeye – and made a business of not talking about that other camp, or the seven blankets they’d found scattered downwind of it. This important non-discussion was interrupted just once, when Way-Say leaned over the side of the wagon to throw up. Then he went back to doing just as he’d done since they left the water-hole: lying beside Do-Lay in the wagon-bed, wrapped up and shivering in his cloak and his blindfold, not saying a word to anyone.
Elim would have apologized, if he’d had the words. Instead, he lay down and watched the stars come out, listening to the soft hooting of an owl and promising himself that tomorrow would be better. At least Ax wasn’t cribbing anymore.
VUCHAK SAT AWAKE long after everyone else had gone to bed. He was desperately tired, but nobody else was going to keep the watch. Weisei wasn’t well enough. The half wasn’t trustworthy enough. And Hakai would be asleep behind his yuye five minutes after Vuchak turned his back.
So maybe it was time to admit that there wasn’t much point to trying anymore – that anything that really wanted to rob or kill them in their sleep was going to do it, whether anyone saw it coming or not. Whatever lived out here had easily taken those seven Ikwei, and probably Echep too. Three exhausted men and a sick god-child would be no challenge at all.
But if they were going to die, they would do it quickly, with their souls intact. Vuchak had made sure of that. They would not become like the infected deer, hungering for the flesh of their own kind. They would not become like the survivors of Merin-Ka, who had traded their single moment of weakness for a life worse than death. They had stared into that deathly pool, felt the temptation of that cannibal thirst, and Vuchak had made sure that they resisted it.
Even if nobody else recognized his efforts.
Even if he had defied Grandfather Marhuk.
Even if he had betrayed his marka.
Vuchak leaned his
head back against the wagon wheel. Everything was disordered. Everything was filthy. Their bodies, their clothes, their dishes – Vuchak could have persevered in spite of everything, if only he could be relieved of that rancid, oily weight in his hair. “Dulei,” he said, “would you keep the watch for me, please? I think I’d like to rest now.”
There was a shifting from somewhere up in the wagon bed. It was probably just Weisei, turning over in a fever-dream. But Vuchak lay down in the hope that he had been heard, and that there was still someone willing to watch over him while he slept.
IN THE DREAM, Pipat ground the ball of her foot into his groin, ever-so-pleasurably massaging his fruits with her toes. Vuchak was all too eager to return the favor, lapping greedily at the warm, feminine juices of her second-mouth. She was so sweet – so delicious – and he was so thirsty...
But before Vuchak’s free-soul could finish its enjoyments in the dream world, his body-soul dragged it back to him, full of worrisome thoughts and unsatisfiable wants. His head hurt. His mouth was dry. His marka was sick. And the All-Year River was still thirty miles away.
Vuchak rolled over, and slipped one hand into his distended breechclout. There was one want he could still satisfy. He had earned it eight times over.
But his silent, secret movements brought him that much further into wakefulness, and turned his thoughts of Pipat to ash. Would he ever taste her again? Did he even want to?
Vuchak stopped. He could not afford to let her distract him now. He could not afford the loss of vitality that even this small, personal pleasure would cost him.
So he rolled onto his back, forcing his hands up behind his dirty hair, and watched the sky. Dark clouds had smothered the dawn, leaving just a single bruise-colored tear in the heavens. From where he lay on his small, dusty blanket, it looked as if the whole world had been closed up in a sack – one whose opening was miles out of his reach.
Back home, it was simple to live rightly. It could even be done in Island Town, riddled as it was with foreigners and perverse novelties, because good men of the a’Krah still lived there.
That was not true out here. There were no other descendants of Marhuk to align himself with – hardly any human beings at all. Vuchak sweltered in the heat of pollution and isolation, his noble character softening into a sticky, waxen mass, his reason soiled and squeezed by every touch of evil.
And how could it be otherwise? How could his better-self survive without the mold of even one other rightly-made man to help him hold his shape? How could he retain the masculine patterns of honor and virtue when he was constantly pressed by slaves and murderers and woman-hearted child-men?
Who here had any right to judge him, for doing what he’d done?
Vuchak lay still, savoring the calm and the breeze and the last sounds of night. His lust drained away, leaving reason in its wake. And when he was cool enough to survive the first demands of the day, he made himself stand up and get to work.
WELL, IF THE new day wasn’t going to be better, it promised to at least be different.
Elim stared at the empty rope corral, and the horse grazing about fifty yards away. He sighed. Ax had never been a fence-jumper, but of course everybody had a first time for everything.
So he picked up the halter and lead and whistled. “All right, you pie-biter,” he called. “Quit your badness and come on back.”
Ax didn’t even lift his head.
Which maybe was to be expected: who in his right mind was going to come hustling back to get a second helping of all the sore, sweaty work he’d done yesterday?
So Elim picked up the feed bag and ambled out under the overcast sky to sweeten the deal. He was going to have to apologize for spoiling Will’s horse, once he got back. It was shameful, really, to take out a perfectly sound animal and bring him back lame, cribbing, and having learned not to bother coming in unless there were treats on the line. Boss would be appalled. “Come on, now – come get you some breakfast and let’s...”
By and by, Elim remembered the little sack with the stained red-brown bottom, still tucked away in the wagon.
Will wasn’t going to care about the horse, once he realized what else Elim had to apologize for... and that was assuming he made it back to apologize at all.
Elim swallowed, and threw out some corn.
Ax looked up.
“Come on, buddy,” Elim called, suppressing a second, separate pang of dread. He did not relish the idea of trying to catch a lone horse on foot in the middle of nowhere. “We’re gonna go find us some new water. Ain’t you coming with?”
Ax’s ears twitched. Elim tossed out a second handful. Finally – thank God! – the horse seemed to recollect that he liked corn, and came barreling in to help himself.
Well, at least his feet were feeling better... even if his manners had taken a turn for the worse. He gave Elim no chance to slip the halter on, but charged in so bullishly that Elim had to step aside to save his toes, and went straight for the feed.
“Now you KNOW that ain’t how we do it,” Elim chided him, and reached down to get the band over his nose.
A split second later, he was stumbling backwards, clutching his jaw in a blinding burst of pain.
“Ohei!”
The tiny part of Elim’s mind not screaming on the inside noticed Bootjack getting up to come after him. Elim waved him off – if Ax took off now, there’d be no catching him – and fumbled to find where he’d dropped the halter.
Stupid. It was just stupid, that was all. It was a horse’s prerogative to put his head up any damn time he felt like it – and if you were dumb enough to hang your own face over his, you didn’t leave yourself any room for outrage when he jerked his head up and popped you in the jaw.
So Elim forsook the halter for the time being, and looped the lead rope around Ax’s neck instead. He swallowed the taste of blood and tongued each of his teeth in turn, thankful that he didn’t seem to have done any worse than bite his own lip, and waited patiently for the horse to finish his victuals.
Still, as soon as he was sure that they were both calm and sensible again, he might call Bootjack over after all. It was shaping up to be an all-the-help-you-can-get kind of day.
“JUST A LITTLE, marka,” Vuchak begged. “Just so that your throat won’t burn if it leaves you again.”
But Weisei only lay still, ignoring the water-skin. “I said I don’t want any,” he repeated, and let his head sink back down to rest on the crumpled blanket.
Vuchak did not offer it again. He let the water-skin come to rest in his lap, and sat perched there on the wagon’s side, worrying. After days and nights of relentless, exhausting purgation, Weiseihad little left to lose. He lay curled over on his side, wrapped tightly in his cloak: a broken vessel struggling to contain its last dregs.
And the struggle was showing. The morning sun had long since left the horizon behind, but its cloud-blunted light had not evaporated Weisei’s night-marks. Vuchak could not fail to notice his black skin, or his thin, frail arm, or the edge of the feathered hue’yin that had all but melted to his flesh. Nor could he fail to understand their meaning: as dehydration took its toll, Weisei’s human half was beginning to fail, and its divine counterpart was taking over to keep him alive.
Which it would do, faithfully and well – so long as Weisei had energy to burn. Already his thin limbs were growing thinner. Already the hollows under his eyes were growing deeper. And when he was all used up, and was nothing but skin and hair and bone, he would die.
Vuchak would not let that happen. And he did not like this sudden onset of apathy and indifference. It suggested that the pollution had spread all the way into Weisei’s free-soul... or that he had decided to answer Vuchak’s mutiny with one of his own.
The wagon jostled, and Vuchak glanced up to be sure that the half and Hakai were able to put the horse safely into its traces. Then he looked back down at Weisei, and the flies that had strayed from Dulei’s box to crawl with impunity over his uncle’s feather-wrapped
body.
Two children of Marhuk lying together: one dead, and one acting the part. Two atodaxa bound to them: one missing and possibly dead, and one very much present and alive.
No atodak could outlive the god-child he had pledged to serve. And Vuchak intended to live for a long, long time yet.
So he slid forward to kneel with his knees on either side of Weisei’s chest, and snatched the yuye away from his face. He was rewarded with half a second of shocked attention before Weisei’s whiteless black eyes squinted at the light behind the clouds.
“Now tell your ears to pay attention,” Vuchak said, keeping his voice low and iron-hard. “You have every right to be angry with me. You can hate me from now until the end of the World That Is, if it pleases you. But your life is not only yours, and I WILL NOT sit down and open my wrists because you decided to throw it away.”
Weisei answered with a bitter, furious glare. “I would rather end us both,” he hissed, “than take what you’ve stolen.”
Vuchak matched him, stare for stare. But he couldn’t duplicate Weisei’s righteousness. That was the Ikwei camp they’d robbed yesterday, and they both knew it, and the fact that the original owners would not be coming back for their things made no difference. In Weisei’s mind, his atodak had looted from the very same people he’d violently refused to help, and there could be neither compromise nor forgiveness now.
Still, the anger blazing in Weisei’s eyes showed that he still had the will to hate – which meant that he still had the strength to live.
For now.
Vuchak stayed still, just until he had managed to shore up the crumbling wall inside him, and force his feelings back behind it. Then he stood to see what else needed doing before they could leave. His task was clear: if his marka had decided that the water they had was not to his liking, then Vuchak would simply have to get him new water... and fast.
Medicine for the Dead Page 27
