Restoration

by Carol Berg

  “I thought I was going to cook in my own vomit,” said the Prince. “If she thinks I’ll do any more playacting ...”

  But of course she did. And we did. W‘Assani was very clever.

  We rode with the caravan of one Pujat Kavel, a Hollenni trader in olive oil, spices, and dried fish. Though oil and spices were immensely profitable items, the trade in them was controlled by Derzhi hegeds, the Jurrans for spices, Gorusch for olive oil. By the time Kavel paid imperial taxes, the required heged shares, and bribes enough to keep his caravans moving, he earned barely enough to support his own business in dried fish. And he knew that if the dried fish business were ever to become truly profitable, one of the Derzhi families would take it over, probably killing him in the process. Though he was not yet thirty, the hard truths of the world had already sapped his hopes, and he wore a perpetually morose expression. Even his dark mustaches drooped.

  At our first stop Malver—M‘Alver as W’Assani called him in the language of Thrid—helped me carry the basket of fox carcasses out of the wagon. The moment we left the basket to go help Aleksander out of the wagon bed, the caravan dogs were on it. W‘Assani screamed at them and threw stones, and then grabbed one of Aleksander’s crutches and beat them off.

  I suggested that it might be clever to let the dogs do the disgusting job of removing the decaying flesh from the prized bones, but W‘Assani said she could not have her precious stock ruined by teeth marks or cracks. Bad enough our urgent departure had prevented her skinning her prizes right away. The delay had likely ruined the pelt. Once the pelt was removed, we were to carefully cut away the meat and gristle. That should distract the dogs and vultures while we finished the job of stripping the bones. Whenever we made camp for the night, we would boil an earthen pot of hali—the bitter powder that the desert sun leached from bad water holes—and clean away the remaining bits from the day’s harvest of bones.

  In the midday heat, such tasks were no pleasure, but I had done much worse many times. W‘Assani would feed, shelter, and transport us for only a few days, but long after we were gone, she would ply these roads and towns, where informers would sell her life for a few zenars. To hold up our end of the deception seemed a fair exchange for her risk.

  Aleksander did not so much object to the task—he had hunted the desert since he could draw a bow, and even Derzhi princes skinned their own kill. The unpleasantness resulting from three days’ rotting in W‘Assani’s basket was only a matter of degree. But to take orders from a woman... and from a Thrid, the most despised of all races... to labor at her command while others took their leisure, and to suspect how perfectly she must be enjoying her moment’s dominance over the Derzhi Emperor-in-waiting... that left him near bursting.

  “She’s a devil.” His knife slid expertly along the inside of the fox’s legs and down the centerline of the belly, detaching the soft pelt from the decaying muscle. I had a feeling that the dead fox wore a Thrid woman’s face at that moment.

  “She’s clever.”

  “What’s she doing now?” Aleksander was sitting with his back to the wagon, his leg stretched out stiffly in front of him. To shift his position in order to observe his tormentor would be awkward and obvious.

  “Drinking ale with Malver.”

  “Gods, I’ll flog him for this. She’s laughing, is she?”

  “Not at all. She’s showing him some of her weavings.” Malver was easy with W‘Assani as I had not seen him with anyone else. I had thought him a man of few words, but the two seemed to find a great deal to talk about. I was surprised that he had revealed Aleksander’s identity to her, but it seemed to have worked out for the best. She was taking her commission very seriously.

  “You’re enjoying this.” The Prince’s glare was hotter than the sun.

  “I can think of many things I’d rather be doing.”

  Pujat Kavel strolled by, his hands clasped behind his back. He nodded to W‘Assani. “Another hour and we’ll be on our way, mezonna.” Mezonna was the honorific for a businesswoman. Though the drooping Hollenni had been willing to accept W’Assani’s fee and her story of a broken bargain with another caravan, he took care to make sure the Thrid woman was what she said. When the train of nine wagons and twenty chastou stopped to rest and eat and sleep through the hottest part of the day, he strolled by our position no less than four times an hour.

  “She’ll send Malver hunting to bring us more carrion to play with, won’t she?” said Aleksander after Kavel had passed by.

  “I would expect so. Gazelle or kayeet bones won’t fetch the same price, but someone will buy her trinkets. At least we’ll be able to cook fresh meat and eat it.” Though at the moment, with my hands buried in rotting fox flesh, eating meat was about the last thing I could desire.

  We maintained our roles carefully as we traveled with W‘Assani. Aleksander and I rode in the wagon and worked whenever the wagon stopped. W’Assani rode our horse and laughed and talked with Malver, who drove her rig. She held no discourse with the Prince or me, only commanded us where everyone could hear. Sometimes she rode beside Pujat Kavel during the day, and she spent every evening at his cook fire. Her mellow laughter echoed through the camp as we skinned and boned, cooked and ate her kill, and sweated over her boiling pots.

  My eyes would not leave her graceful form—walking, riding, speaking everything of life; they brushed her lusciously dark skin, and I imagined how it might be to loose her thick hair from its windings and let it fall about her shoulders... or mine. While Aleksander brooded and plotted strategy, I smiled to myself at her wit, and admired her cleverness, and wondered if the tales she told Kavel of her smuggling exploits were true.

  But when the night grew late and I finished my work, I lay under the stars and tried to clear my head of this woman who had no rightful place there. I had a wife. Ysanne had been my very heart since I was fifteen, everything I wanted, everything I could imagine wanting. How could I consider intimacy with anyone else? Yet the only memory I could summon of my wife were the last words I’d heard from her lips. Find the demon... bleed him until he’s dead. The wounding of those words was far deeper than the scar in my side.

  CHAPTER 18

  The caravan crawled along the Vayapol Road, a well-traveled route that led southeast from Karn‘Hegeth across Srif Naj toward the distant trading city where I had first met Blaise. Well before we got to Vayapol, however, W’Assani planned to turn our wagon south and head for the fertile wheat and barley fields of Manganar, lands that Aleksander had once called his own. The Prince had granted a number of estates to the Bek heged at the time of his anointing, as he had done for every other Derzhi family. The knowledge that the hated Rhyzka now controlled his own vast holdings had been bad enough, but to hear that Edik had revoked his gifts came near driving him mad. He saw only one bright spot. Surely the Bek and other hegeds subjected to such humiliations would join him to throw down Edik.

  Someday I would remind him that neither Rhyzka nor Bek nor Denischkar held true claim to those lands. Manganar had once had a king of her own.

  On our third day with the caravan, we heard tidings from Karn‘Hegeth. A fast moving party of Senigarans passed us on the road, and, as was the custom, rode alongside the caravan long enough to exchange news. The three were hired swordsmen, I guessed, from their confidence in traveling alone. And, too, the quality of their weapons was much finer than the quality of their dress. “We were lucky to get out of Karn’Hegeth,” said the swarthy spokesman for the three. “They’ve locked the gates and are allowing no one in or out.”

  “How’s that?” said Kavel.

  “Prince Aleksander was seen there—all over the city, you’d think—in the noble quarter, in the craftsmen’s quarter, in the market quarter. There’s rumors that he came to avenge the murders of his friends that were executed by the imperial governor. Rumors that he came to save the common folk from the new Emperor. Rumors that he’s going to kill the Fontezhi second lord. No man could do so many deeds as the talk would hav
e him doing, nor be so many places all at once. You’ve heard the story of his battle with the Hamraschi? How a winged god came and took him out? As if that wasn’t wonder enough, now they say the Prince himself can change his shape. The Fontezhi lords are furious at the talk, searching every house. They’ve vowed to gut the Kinslayer in Zhagad market and see if any god comes to save him.”

  I reported the conversation to Aleksander.

  “Everyone would be quite disappointed to see the truth, wouldn’t they?” he said.

  Indeed we were a sorry case, caked with sand and sweat, our skin and garments hopelessly stained with blood and worse. I was still without shirt or boots, and my skin was blotchy green and black with fading bruises. Aleksander’s leg was grotesque with sores, his healing wound, and patches of pale withered flesh. Later that same day, when he thought no one could see him, I watched him try to put some weight on his leg. It crumpled immediately and left him scrabbling for a handhold on the wagon. He smashed his crutch into the dirt, then leaned his forehead on the wagon side, one fist pounding on the unyielding oak.

  On our fifth day out of Karn‘Hegeth the hunters came. The caravan had stopped at Taíne Dabu, a lush green sink with a well so prolific it merited a long stop, though the hour was earlier than usual for a rest. Aleksander and I were grateful, for not only was it a somewhat cooler part of the day for our bloody work—a sand-deer to dismember on this day—we could actually have a bit of shade to ourselves. And deception or no, desert custom or no, I was determined to have a wash.

  Most of the caravan halted near the well, the easier to tend their beasts and fill their water barrels. But we pulled W‘Assani’s wagon away from the other wagons and set up under a spreading tamarisk outside the lip of the green sink so our activities could not foul the well. As I cut into the deer and cast a small enchantment to keep the dogs and vultures away until we were ready, I heightened my hearing to listen to the gossip throughout the caravan. I had gotten into the habit of doing so to make sure no suspicion attached to W’Assani or her bondsmen. As always, the chastouain were cursing their recalcitrant beasts. The leather merchant was beating his slave for spilling a cup of nazrheel on his new haffai. W‘Assani was telling Kavel how she had smuggled a load of untaxed nazrheel through the gates of Zhagad itself on a dare. The two were sitting by the well beyond a grove of nagera trees, and I let my investigation linger there for a while. Old Talar, the guardian of Ezzarian purity, would have been horrified at such use of my gifts. But because I had indulged my fascination and left my hearing sharp, I heard the Derzhi horsemen coming well before they reached Taíne Dabu.

  “Riders!” I said to Aleksander, then I whistled long and loud, a prearranged signal to warn W‘Assani and Malver of nearby danger. I leaped into the wagon to make sure that Aleksander’s sword belt, ring, and telltale boot were safely hidden in the false bottom of W’Assani’s basket, then returned to the Prince. Aleksander had wound his haffai scarf around his hair, and I did the same, making sure it drooped over the scar on my face. Nothing else to be done. We went back to work.

  “Who is the gonaj here?” demanded the Derzhi officer as the five warriors rode up, their horses kicking dust all over our fresh meat.

  I ducked my head and pointed toward the well. “Pujat Kavel of Hollen, your honor.”

  Aleksander kept his eyes on the sand-deer, but his hands, bloody to the elbows and gripping his knife, were very still.

  The riders proceeded down the path into the sink.

  “What heged—?”

  I motioned Aleksander quiet and listened to the questioning. The Derzhi spoke of reports that the Kinslayer had been smuggled out of Karn‘Hegeth. All the roads were being scoured. Every wagon and cart must be searched. The villain prince is supposedly in company with three men, one of them Derzhi, the other two of unknown race. The Fontezhi first lord has added five thousand zenars to the price of the murderer’s capture—but only if he is taken alive. And, oh yes, the Prince has been injured. He wears a thick leather boot on one leg, such as nobles wear for a broken limb.

  “Nothing new,” I said. “They’re going to search the caravan.” I dragged the sand-deer pelt over Aleksander’s scarred leg and crutches and cursed myself for not thinking to hide them earlier. What if the soldiers had noticed? “No need to have anyone wondering about you.”

  Aleksander shifted awkwardly. “I don’t like this.”

  I felt the same. Sitting with our backs exposed. Unable to run. Unable to fight to any good purpose. I could perhaps take on five Derzhi if I had a sword in hand—as long as none of them struck me in the right side. But there were at least twenty men of fighting age in the caravan, and fifteen thousand zenars would let a man and his family live like lords. Even had I been willing to sacrifice W‘Assani and Malver and fly away with Aleksander, I could not carry him far enough to see him safe. Nor would stealing a horse help us, as it was so difficult for him to mount, and no horse in the caravan was good enough to outrun those the Derzhi rode. So we sat. Waited. Pulled bleeding muscle from bone as if it were important that it be done right.

  Half an hour passed. I considered enchantments. Paraivos and walls of fire needed time and concentration to prepare, so I tried to come up with some smaller working. I dared not do anything that would draw attention unless we had no other recourse. Better to let this storm pass over us.

  “You’re ruining my cloth, you flea-brain,” W‘Assani yelled, running up to her wagon as a ham-handed Derzhi clambered in and started dumping her chests and baskets. No mistaking the crack of a solid blow on flesh.

  I dropped a half-stripped leg bone and leaped to my feet. Aleksander clamped an iron hand about my ankle. “Sit down,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “What kind of witch are you?” The Derzhi held up a handful of kayeet bones. “My lord! The Thrid savage has got a basket of bloody bones in here! Animal bones, I think.”

  A rider approached the wagon. “Has someone paid you for your devil’s magicking?”

  “I fashion bone ornaments, good lord, as well as weaving cloth,” said W‘Assani, rubbing her bruised face and showing them her necklace, bracelets, and rings. She made a good show of defiance subdued... until she opened her mouth again. “My bondsmen strip and clean the bones, but even such dull-wits as they know to keep the blood from off my cloth.”

  “We care naught for your trinkets, Thrid witch,” said the rider, a noble, so said the fine cut of his clothes. “We hunt the coward Aleksander, and I would strip your black flesh from your bones if it would find him.” Something was vaguely familiar about the nobleman’s voice, but I was looking into the sun and could not recognize him from the back.

  “If these bones are those of your royal father-killer, you may have them and good riddance,” said W‘Assani. “Even Thrid savages do not bleed their fathers.”

  The Derzhi in the wagon grabbed and twisted W‘Assani’s hair, pulled her head close to his mouth, and growled at her. “Mind your barbarian tongue, witch.”

  The noble snapped his reins. “Let’s be off, Durn. Nothing to be found in this pitiful lot.”

  The Derzhi riders galloped past Aleksander and me on their way back to the road. I was almost ready to breathe easy again, when the last rider slowed, reversed direction, and walked his mount around us. I kept my head down and my knife moving. Aleksander did the same. After a moment the rider, the fair-haired young noble, moved on after the others, and we both glanced after him. We could see him clearly now. “Hadeon,” we said as one.

  “We’ve got to get away from the caravan,” I said. “This young lord is not stupid. He saw the Prince’s leg and crutches before I covered them. Once he thinks about it, he’s going to be back. Then you’ll die, W‘Assani. If he believes you know where Prince Aleksander is, he’ll force you to tell him.” Of all the damned bad luck to have the proud young Mardek be the one to see Aleksander’s grotesque leg.

  “And where do you propose we go?” said the woman, pressing a damp cloth to a cut on her li
p.

  “You paid me to get you out of Karn‘Hegeth, not to die for you. Not to have my whole trade ruined.” The wagon was a mess. At least half of the lengths of colored fabric were ripped, stained with blood, or dropped into the muck where the horse and donkeys had been watered. The spilt bones were no matter, save the fox bones and tails that were safely tucked away with Aleksander’s sword. W’Assani needed the fox tails to prove the value of her stock. But she needed her life to enjoy her profits.

  “We go to the Bek,” said Aleksander. “Sovari is waiting in Tanzire. We just leave the caravan early—tonight instead of tomorrow.”

  “We must go now,” I said. I could not speak my urgency. Hadeon had seen Aleksander’s damaged leg. He would know. And both Mardek and Fontezhi had messenger birds.

  Malver nodded. “Kavel plans to stay here past midday. His chastou are dry and need the time. But everyone is down at the well, so if we leave now, no one will miss us until he reassembles the caravan. If we could just cover our tracks . . .”

  “I’ll see to that,” I said, glad to have something useful to do.

  W‘Assani was not convinced. She stood in the wagon bed frowning, her hands on her hips. “You can’t erase ten leagues of wagon tracks, and there’s no wind today. I’ve seen tracks last for thirty days in summer. So they’ll know we ran away and be able to follow us. Better we keep to our story and stay with the others. The emperor can hide in the basket if needed.”

  “Seyonne can take care of the tracks,” said Aleksander, “but I’d advise you to keep your haffai wrapped tight.” Then, in a move that surprised even me, who thought I had seen all of Aleksander’s surprises, he bowed deeply to W‘Assani. “I regret we must disrupt your trade further, madam. Someday, when I am in a better position to do so, I will demonstrate my gratitude more fully. For now I can only tell you that you are as fine a player of deception as I have ever encountered. In fact,” he added, standing up again and hitching his crutches under his arms, “I think you should give lessons to Seyonne. Your tricks involve a great deal of blood, but so far, none of it is his.”