by Holly Lisle
“I’ll trust myself,” I said. Though I did not. I did not, in truth, know if I was strong enough to hold time in place, or to fend off Ossal should he come after me again. But I had no choice. I embraced the power of the Eyes, and caught the moment within the time stream, and held on, until for me it slowed to bitter coldness and vast weight of limb and breath and blood, and then I pushed myself forward along the caravan to the front. There I found the little man who had given everyone else such a miserable time while they loaded cargo; he rested in opulent comfort in a huge carriage at the front of the caravan. I opened the door, slipped inside and made myself comfortable on a fine, soft leather seat covered with lamb’s wool, and arranged my clothes to be as presentable as I could. Draped my cloak around me, pulled my hood forward so it hid most of my face, and made sure that I was looking down.
And then released the moment that I held, and warmth and breath flowed into me again.
To the sweet sound of the outrider down the way shrieking. And the man before me sucking in air, then snarling, “How did you get here?”
“It’s how I can help you that should be of interest to you,” I said, and looked up at him, pulling back my hood.
The Eyes. They’re worth instant attention in even the most difficult situations.
“Eh … eh … eh … ,” he said.
“I can see the future. Yours, if you’ll trade me safe passage in your carriage for as far as I need to go.”
He could have scoffed, of course, but the outrider came galloping up right then to shout into the carriage window, “There’s some sort of witch-woman in the caravan, sir.”
My involuntary host muttered, “Right on the mark, is that Kivir. Sharp as three round rocks. A pissing genius, that lad—and if you want any pissing done, he’s your man.” And he leaned to the window and said, “Yes, then. I seem to have found her.” He waved Kivir away, then leaned back in his seat, his face turned toward me, and in a conversational tone said, “Evidently not worth much beyond the pissing, though. So. You’ll trade me my future for your passage, is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“And I’m taking it Kivir told you that you’d find no mercy from me; that I’d throw you to the road to take your chances with the scoundrels who live in these parts, is that it?”
Again I said, “That’s it.”
“Kivir was right about me.”
I sighed. I didn’t want to have to convince him.
“You’d have been better to let them have their fun with you,” he said. “This is a bad place to be stranded.”
I was going to have to convince him anyway.
Even with the sleep I’d had among the grain sacks, I was too achingly tired to do what I needed to do next. I hurt inside and outside. My short trip from the back of the caravan to the front of it had cost me dearly. But the quickest way to convince a man that he doesn’t want to hurt you is to prove to him that it is in his best interest not to.
I would be quick, I told myself. Mightily quick.
So into the cold of frozen time I leapt again, to find and catch and hold and anchor the moment. His mouth was open—I’d caught him mid-word. I fought the cold, which seemed each time I struggled though it to get sharper, more impossibly freezing. I made the two steps across his carriage to him, and grabbed the whip tucked beneath his seat. I positioned him so that I could bind his wrists and his ankles together. Then tipped him on his side, stuffed the corner of his heavy wool, silk-lined cloak in his mouth, and held the knife that I’d stolen from the guard back in Gerstaggen to his throat.
Let go of the moment, and wished I could look into his eyes and see the expression there. I didn’t like to guess.
“I won’t be getting out of here and walking to my destination,” I told him. “I know you’re frightened. You should be. I could have killed you easily while I was tying you. Could kill you easily now. But,” I let my voice drop, “I’m tired of killing. Tired of men falling dead all around me. So I think you’re going to be very quiet, and we’re going to work out a deal whereby you get something valuable for your transit—and so do I.” I put my hand to the heavy material in his mouth and said, “You don’t want to make any loud noises, now.”
I pulled the cloth free, and heard him start weeping.
“I’m not going to kill you. I wasn’t going to tie you until you decided to be a jackass.”
“You’re … most generous.”
“I know,” I told him. “If I untie you, you do understand that I can do exactly what I did before, only the next time rather than tie you up, I’ll simply cut your throat for being too much trouble to deal with.”
The silence following that was long enough that I feared he might have fainted.
“That’s it, is it?” he said at last. The words he’d no doubt meant to sound brave, but the timid squeak in his voice betrayed him.
“That is it.”
“Well, then. I’m a reasonable man. Can see the inside of my own pockets, can’t I? Can see where my profit lies. Tell me my fortune, then, and you’ll have a comfortable trip to wherever it was you wanted to go.”
He still thought that I was a charlatan. Well, so long as he behaved himself, we’d have a happy ending yet, he and I, no matter what he believed.
I said, “This takes a moment,” and sat with my face toward him. I touched his hand and let his time flow around me and embrace me. His stream was strong, full of determination and hope. He was not the man he let people think him. He had a wife and several daughters in his home, and he was heading there after this trip. I could feel his love for them, and his fear that one daughter who had been sick when he left would be sicker when he returned. Or that, perhaps, she would have died; he ached with dread at the news his wife might have waiting for him.
All the things he did, he did for them. He took every precaution to get his caravans through, he counted every piece of silver that crossed his palm, he bargained and struggled and saved and scrimped because he had half a dozen dowries to finance if he hoped to see each of his girls happily married to decent men.
I had not wanted to like him. I’d wanted to find that he was the sharp-tongued, miserable creature I’d thought him. He had clouds in his future that suggested his love for his family would make problems for me, but I could not see what those problems were, or how I could avoid them. I could, for the moment, work to both our benefits. I could, perhaps, find ways to be well away from him before those clouds began to rain on me.
“Your youngest,” I said. “She can either get better or she can die, depending on what you do. She will still be sick when you arrive, and her chances will seem poor. But if you will do what I say, you can save her.”
“I’ll do anything I must,” he said.
“Take a horse and go home immediately. Your home is actually not far from here, though out of your path. Send away the healer you’ve hired for her. The man is a pretender with no knowledge of healing, and no intent to see her healthy again. Everything he does is to keep her as near death’s gate as he can get her, because while she is ill, his wants are all met—he has your money, your food, your roof over his head, and his eye on your second daughter as well.”
“I’ll kill him,” the man snarled.
I shrugged. “You’d save more lives than your daughter’s if you did. Take away from her all the medicines he’s been giving her. For three days, give her clear water and fresh green foods only—no meat, no milk, no cheese, no grain, no wine. She’ll grow stronger, but the cause of her sickness is in her lungs. To clear them, you’ll have to force her to get up and walk, and you’ll have to make her cough until she looses all the poisons and coughs them out.” I paused. “To test my truth and know it for what it is, when you get home, ask first for the little dog your daughters love.”
“Ippe?”
“It died yesterday. It was killed chasing a cart from your courtyard. If you ask first of this and find it to be true, you will know all else I told you is true as well.” O
racles rarely gave such proof, but this time, the life of an innocent was the only thing at stake. No kingdoms, no greedy kings, no matters of questionable ethics. This was a simple problem, with a surprisingly simple solution.
“I understand,” he said. “You’ll come with me.”
“You won’t need me.”
“No. But I know who you are, and what you did—and I’m willing to help you greatly if my daughter lives.”
“I have little time to tarry. I have a place I must be, and the hours run through my fingers.”
“You have a place you need to get?”
“Yes.”
“Then if what you tell me is true, I can get you there faster that any other means. You can spend three days in my home, and still arrive with time to spare. If you know how to ride a horse.”
“It’s been a while, but I was born to the saddle.” I sighed. “I’ll come with you.”
39
Hawkspar
We rode hard, on two tough little horses, with two replacement mounts trailing us. He had us stop regularly, cool his beasts, change tack to the more rested animal, then ride hard again. Even so, I did not think the horses would survive such brutal treatment.
He had a groom, though, who ran out to greet us and took the horses away, and Beckgert’s wife came running out the door as we crossed the walled yard. She threw her arms around him and clung to him, weeping, and he embraced her, then led both of us into his home.
As I had instructed him, he asked first about the dog. It had died in the manner I’d stated. Beckgert grew grim.
He bade his wife stay where she was, and led me through his home. I could feel the spaciousness of it, and smell flowers everywhere.
Beneath the sweet perfumes, though, lay the stale, rancid odor of sickness. Of heavy drugs, and oiliness.
“Back this way,” he told me, and his hand moved over the pommel of his dagger. “Cover your head with your cloak, keep your head down. I want to see this, I want you to be there, and I want him to think you are a weary abbethe of the Lady traveling in disguise.”
“What do I need to say, then?”
“Say nothing. They don’t talk, except to speak offices for the dead and to sit by the roadsides or in chapels giving the messages of the Lady.”
“Well enough. I know how to be silent.”
I hid my head beneath my hood and walked behind him, head down.
At the door of the sickroom, a man slight of bone, tall of stature, with little muscle to give him presence, met us. “Master Beckgert, good sir, she has been restless and in pain, crying out in confusion. I have managed only moments ago to get her to sleep. I fear that for all my care, she worsens.”
“We share the same fear,” Beckgert said, his voice curt. “You have been giving her medicines to get her to sleep, have you?”
“Certainly, good sir. The best medicines. I have withheld water from her, for she cries when she swallows it. I have made sure to bleed her once a day.”
“Bleed her.”
“It is the newest thinking, Master Beckgert. That ills of the blood, which she clearly has, are best dealt with by letting the blood out.”
“How much have you … let out?”
“One bowl per day. The recommended amount.”
There was little left of the girl in the bed. I touched her hot skin, felt it dry as paper beneath my fingers. She had wasted to nothing. I could hear her labored, rasping breathing, and the wetness in her lungs, and every time she exhaled I could not believe she would find the strength to breathe in again.
“You have no need for an abbethe here yet, Master Beckgert.”
“Brother Danrgard, I believe I have. For this abbethe, in any case.”
Beckgert called down the hall to his wife, shouting, “Lebettis, go and get Vardie for me, please. And run. I must know something.”
He turned to the healer, walked over, and rested a hand on his shoulder. “You have done so much for us, Brother Danrgard. But I think it is time to let the girl find her way to whatever end she may have.”
“No,” the healer said, and I could hear the edge of despair in his voice, and in his next words, the taint of something sly. “No, Master Beckgert, you must not be willing to give up. For does not the Lady of the Plains demand that we abjure despair. That we embrace life and reject death until death comes for us.”
“Death came for my little Peppika long ago,” Beckgert said. “We’ll deal with him today.”
And into the room ran another girl, this one full of life, strong and solid. “You sent for me, Appa?”
Beckgert said, “I did. Brother Danrgard leaves us today. An abbethe of the Lady has come to speak words over Peppika. And I wondered if you had any idea how we might reward him for all he has done for her. He fancies you, you know.”
The pause that followed this statement stretched on.
Danrgard cleared his throat and said, “I had … not thought my … affections … common knowledge. That I had … ah … hoped … nay, dreamed to … ah … marry Vardie.”
“Marriage. Is that how he sought to sell this to you?” Vardie said with loathing in her voice. “Marriage. There has been no talk of marriage. He sneaks up behind me and pinches me,” Vardie said. “Tells me how he would like to have me between his sheets, or maybe flopped over the bales in the barn. How we could do it right on the floor in here, because Peppika would never know.”
“Meant respectfully,” Danrgard said, voice rising in pitch. “It doesn’t sound as well said as she says it—a man fancies his wife not always primly dressed in her bedgown … and …”
“Quiet, please, Danrgard. If there have been any misunderstandings, I’m sure we’ll sort them out.” And to Vardie, he said, “So he touched you, then—”
“Respectfully,” Danrgard insisted.
“—without your invitation or consent?”
“Yes, Appa.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Danrgard said. “Would you take the word of a mere woman over that of a healer? A professional man?”
“Yes,” Beckgert said, and there was no humor or patient deception left in his voice. Now he was angry.
“Then if I am no longer wanted, I’ll have my fee, and be on my way.”
“I think not. I think you’ll be staying with me for the sum of three days. The woman I brought with me will take care of Peppika, using her methods. And while we watch Peppika’s progress, you will watch, too. You’ll be under my roof for the duration, in the tower rooms for now. You can keep company with the watch while they’re up there.”
“You’re … imprisoning me?”
“I’ve been given cause to believe you have been hurting Peppika with your treatments, rather than helping her.”
“Who would have told such a foul lie about me?”
I turned away from the girl on the bed.
“I would have you meet the Oracle Hawkspar,” Beckgert said.
I threw back my hood and turned my face to Danrgard. And heard his gasp. “Your eyes … ,” he said. “You’re not an abbethe of the Lady.”
“Not even a little,” I agreed. “I see things,” I told him. “The future. The past. It’s an ugly magic, obtained at an ugly cost and with much pain, both in the getting and in the keeping. Still …” I reached behind me and from a shelf full of vials pulled the one he had depended on most. The one that my Eyes had told me was, more than all the others combined, making Peppika sick.
I handed it to Beckgert. “Have him drink the whole vial.”
“No!” Danrgard shouted. “That’s medicine for the sick. It’s no thing for a well man.”
“Have him drink it,” I repeated.
Beckgert said, “I’ll hold it for three days. And if Peppika does better in three days under your care than she did for nine months under his, he and I and a few of my men will go out back and spend a little time with this bottle. And, perhaps, other things.”
“You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do,” Danrgard said,
and the words hadn’t even completely crossed his lips when the sickroom filled with big, muscle-dense, bone-heavy bodies. Beckgert’s wife had evidently called more than Vardie to the room.
“Upstairs with him,” Beckgert said. “Lock and bar the door.”
Feet thudded on the heavy board floors, and up solid wood stairs, and with them went the wail of Danrgard, who was still shouting protests.
I turned back to the girl. Peppika.
“Water first—cold water for drinking, and hot water for bathing. I’m going to need a lot of it.”
I would have given anything to have one of the Moonstones with me right then.
40
Aaran
In Aaran’s dream, Hawkspar sat beside him, her hand resting on his chest. “Your heart beats more slowly than mine,” she told him. And then she leaned over him and kissed his lips. “I love you, you know.”
“I know,” he whispered, and in whispering, woke himself up. He was alone. On the wrong ship, away from his own men, away from work that could distract him. And all he could think about was her. In two more days the Ker Nagile would make the South Current Convergence Point and meet up with the other ships. Aaran would tell the other captains the news, that the one they had most depended on had fallen by the wayside. He would tell them that before she died, she told him they should keep fighting. He would never tell them all hope was lost, that the entire Tonk people were on their way to their deaths. He would not pass that on, because it would not change what they did. They would still go into battle.
They would simply do so with heavy hearts.
It is better not to know the day of your own death, he thought.
Aaran rolled out of the bunk and landed lightly. He stretched and yawned. No light came in through the porthole—night still held sway over this part of the world.
