“Vichi, I’m here! I’m –” Weisei, now within shouting distance, had apparently just then spotted the two of them. He waved and called out – and left off the remembering song. The horse collapsed as if it had been shot, its hard gallop disintegrating into a dust-churning wreck of tangled limbs, hurling its rider headlong into the brush.
Vuchak bolted forward. “Weisei!”
But the gods loved children and fools, and Weisei was something of both: he rolled forward as gracefully as a summer clown, and bounded back up to his feet. “Vichi! I’m sorry; please don’t be angry – I didn’t mean to...” He was coming forward, walking off a limp and talking all the while, and soon that effusive fountain of speech would be at Vuchak’s ear, and this peculiar moment with Hakai would be over.
Vuchak turned back to the ihi’ghiva, disturbed at how easily and completely he had already composed himself: shirt tucked, yuye tied, hair neatly bound at the base of his neck, without a strand out of place. If he hadn’t been soaking wet, Hakai could have sat down right there and commenced taking dictation.
So Vuchak felt no guilt at all in dictating. “We aren’t going to speak of this again,” he said. “We’re going to wait for Weisei, and then carry Dulei back to camp together, and as long as we’re in public, we’re going to conduct ourselves exactly as we did before.”
“Yes, sir.” Hakai was invisible and impervious again behind his blindfold, his vulnerabilities vanished as if Vuchak had only imagined them.
“I’m not finished. When we get back to camp, YOU are going to tell me exactly what you’ve done, and what was done to you, since you left our service. And when we get to Atali’Krah, I’m going to tell Aso’ta Marhuk exactly what you are, and then we’ll see how much you’re worth to him.”
There was a flicker of something behind that black cloth – a hint of an expression, a twitch of Hakai’s lip, and Vuchak could all but hear the unspoken rejoinder: what makes you think he doesn’t already know?
But all Hakai said was “Yes, sir.”
That would have to do. With this much understood, Vuchak retrieved his knife, resheathed it in his moccasin-boot, and then turned with squelching footsteps to discover what this improbable turn of good luck was going to cost them.
NOW THERE WAS nothing to do but wait – and only one sensible place to do it.
So Porté swam down and down, following the acrid grief-taste in the water, until they sensed the grim, familiar shapes in the murky wash: two small cairns of stones at the bottom of the river, flanking a third one as long as both of the others combined. Pirouet, Flamant-Rose, and Princess Ondine. A lone figure swam lopsided circles around the three graves, around and around like a maimed fish in a bowl.
It – they – brightened aggressively as soon as they sensed Porté’s approach. Relax, même, Porté signed as soon as they were close enough. It’s just me.
Bombé’s posture loosened, but their colors softened not at all. What happened? their hands demanded, every gesture sharp with anxiety. Did it work?
It did, Porté assured them. It will.
It had to.
Bombé stared at them for a long moment – long enough to start drifting downstream, and for the rope tied around their waist to pull taut. The other end kept them tethered to the big stone in the middle of this makeshift graveyard. Then why are you here?
Porté struggled to give an answer – but Bombé didn’t wait to receive it. They carried right on as they had before: swimming and swimming in pointless, crippled circles, their tail and one good leg struggling to compensate for the one the archer’s arrow had hamstrung into uselessness.
There was no need to be so rude. There was no point in swimming to keep the nibbler-fish away, either. The greedy, covetous fingers of the Amateur – abetted by the deadly, murderous aim of that archer – had already stolen the lives of their siblings and their dear princess. Now their bodies were returning to the greater order of creation, to the cycle of water and life that had no beginning or ending but the sea... and when the current carried their essence all the way down into the blackest part of the ocean’s abyss, into the primordial volcanic heat of the Artisan’s deepwater forge, she would reshape their old souls into new bodies, so that someday they would live again in the House of Losange.
Porté did not say any of that. Instead, they swam down and set about replacing the smaller stones that the current was slowly tugging downstream, filling in the little gaps in their siblings’ stone blankets that might tempt the fish to taste them. Maybe the dead were past caring, but it mattered to Bombé. For now, that was enough.
Porté snuck a glance at their distraught sibling as they swam their pointless, manic circles over the largest and longest of the three graves. More than anyone, Bombé had delighted in playing with Princess Ondine – in tying fanciful streamers to her gill-plumes, and building turtle-houses and mud-mazes with her, and camouflaging just poorly enough that she could find them in games of hide-and-seek. More than anyone but Prince Jeté himself, Bombé thirsted to have her death answered – to see that the dog-monster who had torn out her throat was found and slaughtered.
And that was why the archer had to be let go. They would deal with him later – Prince Jeté had promised that. Now and before anything else, the princess’s life had to be paid for.
Porté paused as their hand closed around something strange – a jagged, glittering rock, unlike anything else in the river-bed. Where had they seen this before?
Look what I found! The memory of Flamant-Rose’s voice was as fresh as yesterday. It’s mostly quartz, but look at this chalcopyrite crystal here – a four-way twinning! Porté turned the rock over and over, scrutinizing it in the green freshwater haze in a vain attempt to find the part that had occasioned such excitement. There were little brassy gold-looking bits studded in among the quartz, but which was the special one? At the time, they had barely been listening.
Why hadn’t they listened? What else could have been more important?
Porté dug their long toes into the sediment, struggling to stay anchored as the current pushed them relentlessly back – towards the sea, towards death, towards the place where they should be going and Flamant-Rose had already gone. The Amateur had taken an incomparable prize that night: in a handful of minutes, he had stolen a vivacious young princess, a brilliant budding geologist, and poor homesick Pirouet, too. He had chiseled out all the golden parts of the stone, and left the dross. After all, what need did he have for Porté – a lump of common quartz; a worthless, mindless hulk; a stevedore with no more talent or ambition than to move things from somewhere to somewhere else? What good were they to anyone now?
Porté’s webbed fingers closed around the stone as they camouflaged and curled over, seeping grief from every pore. In that moment, the temptation to let go was overwhelming – to loosen their toes and let the current carry them away – to follow Pirouet and Flamant-Rose and Princess Ondine out to sea and beg the Artisan to reforge them all together – to let them be born again in the same house, the same cohort – to be perfectly matched once more, as so many eggs in one innocent, immaculate roe.
The sudden presence from behind caught Porté by surprise. In the space of a moment, Bombé slipped their arms around Porté’s broad chest, copying their colors and folding themself over the big stevedore like a second identical skin – and then bit them in the neck.
Porté relaxed into the pain, waves of love and gratitude washing through them as their sibling’s teeth drew blood. This one is mine, Bombé’s bite said to the Amateur. They’re precious and special and now I’ve spoiled them, so you won’t.
It was good to feel important. It was good to remember that Porté had left home with eleven identical siblings, and nine were still here – still alike with them, still together with them, still wanting and needing them, perhaps now more than ever.
Porté turned their head, relishing the protective embrace as their sibling sucked the wound, and touched their teeth to Bombé’s nose. It
was not a love-bite, but a sharp-edged thank you.
There was no more circle-swimming after that, and no more grief-taste either. With Bombé’s tether and Porté’s toes, they held their place in the current, and shared their sameness in silence thereafter.
“AND THEN WHAT?” Vuchak’s voice sounded harsh in his own ears.
“And then they let me go.” Hakai’s patience seemed to crystallize even as Vuchak’s dissolved.
He would not give up. “And then what?”
Hands clasped behind his back, Hakai nodded in Vuchak’s direction. “And then I was rescued by your very-reverend self.”
Vuchak spat. “Horseshit!”
“Vichi!” Weisei scolded him from across the tripod of drying meat, his face half-obscured as he crouched by the circle of stones and worked at rekindling the fire. “Go to the horse if you want to swear at someone – I won’t have you saying such things to our Hakai.”
But that wasn’t all. That couldn’t be all. Vuchak held his tongue and forced his fists to unclench. He would apologize – but not to a servant. “I’m sorry, marka. It’s just – I can’t understand how that could be true. I can’t understand why they would take hostages from us and then simply return them, with no message, no demands, no vengeance of any kind.” And though he didn’t say it, the evidence echoed loudly in Vuchak’s mind: Because I know I killed at least one of them.
Neither of the others had seen that part. Weisei had been unconscious, on the brink of death, and Hakai had been knocked down and stolen at the very beginning of the fight. But Vuchak still remembered drawing back the bow, taking aim at a living, reasoning creature, and unleashing each steel-pointed arrow to seek a new home – in a chest, a throat, a heart, a head. He still remembered that meaty whunk, and the almost-human cry of pain that followed, as one of his arrows sank to the fletching into a fishman’s eye. How could there be any forgiveness after that?
“Well,” Weisei said with a dismissive wave, “they wouldn’t dare to offend Grandfather Marhuk at his own doorstep. Now strip down and hang up your clothes, both of you, before you freeze.”
Vuchak and Hakai exchanged a blindfolded glance. They had trudged all the way back to camp in shivering silence, carrying Dulei’s coffin between them, mindful not to distract Weisei again as he revived the horse and led it back at a walk. All the while, Vuchak had watched the sodden, shifting folds of Hakai’s gray shirt, and thought of the private horror that lay beneath it. And now that they were here, and conversation was inevitable…
... well, Vuchak had said that he wouldn’t reveal anything about Hakai. He’d never promised to make excuses for him.
“Thank you, sir,” Hakai said smoothly, “but I don’t have the gift of your dark skin, and the sun is unkind to mine. I would prefer to remain as I am.”
At another time, Vuchak might have enjoyed watching Weisei offer a blanket and Hakai craft an excuse not to take it. But Hakai was clearly well-practiced at hiding what he wanted to keep unseen – and Vuchak couldn’t afford to let him bury the truth about the fishmen. “So you’ve explained how they questioned you, and how you told them everything you know – but you haven’t explained why it took you two days to do it.”
There – let him try to talk his way out of that one.
A light breeze cut through their damp clothes. Hakai shuddered, and began to pace. “It didn’t. It took them two days to believe me.”
Moved in spite of himself, Vuchak sucked his teeth. That carried some grim implications.
Which weren’t lost on Weisei, either: he stopped feeding the fire and bounded up to his feet, overcome with dismay. “How awful! Vichi, isn’t that awful? Hakai, what did they do to you? Wait, no – you don’t have to tell me. Come here, come sit right here and warm yourself, and I’ll get you something to eat. You can have anything you want, as long as it’s venison.”
“Thank you, sir,” Hakai said again, “but I wouldn’t be so rude to the meal as to spoil it with conversation. We should satisfy your atodak first.”
Vuchak bristled, hot words boiling up from his throat at this naked challenge – as if he were the impediment here! “You –”
No, no – this wasn’t right. Vuchak pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, too tired to think straight. Hakai was a liar, but he wasn’t a traitor. He’d been the one to spot the fishmen’s ambush that night. If he were working for them, all he would have had to do was stay silent, and let Vuchak and the others walk into the trap. If Hakai was hiding anything, he was doing it to save his own pitted hide... and Vuchak hadn’t helped that by threatening him. He had to get around that somehow, move past all this petty sniping and figure out the fishmen’s next move.
“... you better us with your diligence,” Vuchak said at last, and forced himself to mean it. “Now I would have you better my understanding. Did they say anything to you about what they intended? What were they going to do after they released you?”
Hakai tipped his head, as if pleased to receive this much civility. “I believe they’re going upstream to look for the monster. They could not seem to consider anything else until it was destroyed.”
Weisei snorted. “Well, they’re not going to find her there!”
For a moment, Hakai paused his slow, circular ambling around their pitiful camp, his tone just a little too interested. “Oh?”
But Weisei was full of satisfaction at having gotten the fire going, and took no notice at all. “Yes,” he said as he set about swapping out the jerky-strips between the upper and lower tiers. “And she’s not a monster at all. She’s U’ru, the Dog Lady, and she –”
Vuchak couldn’t think quickly enough to justify it, but something in him wanted to keep the grave-woman and everything she’d brought with her out of the discussion. “You don’t know that,” he said. “We don’t know anything about her. Now, Hakai, why did you –”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Hakai said, in a tone that begged nothing at all, “but if our prince has received a vision, I’d like to hear it.”
Vuchak said nothing, momentarily speechless with surprise. Had this impertinent menial just interrupted him?
Weisei suffered no such hesitation. “Oh, it wasn’t a vision at all – it was Día! She’s a servant of the Starving God, the one who lives in the burned church in Island Town, and she’s also the one who used her fire to save us from the marrouak those nights ago, and she –”
“– promised her service and then left us –” Vuchak broke in.
“– to go and help the Dog Lady, as I told her she should!” Weisei finished.
“Or so she says.” Vuchak should have been kinder to his marka. It would have been easier without itchy wet clothes crawling up his crevices.
“Do you want to find out?” Weisei retorted, gesturing rudely at the roots of the Mother of Mountains. “Shall we go to the trailhead and see for ourselves?”
“No!” Vuchak snapped, propriety dissolving like snowflakes in mud. “Do you know why? Because now we have Hakai, and you, Dulei” – this with a deferential nod to the coffin – “and Ylem and the Dog Lady are Marhuk’s problem now. They can camp out at his doorstep from now until the end of the World That Is, if he will tolerate them: our job is to take ourselves home with no more delay.”
It was absurd, really, to think how badly their plan had crumbled. Huitsak had sent them from Island Town with instructions to make Ylem a peace-offering to the fishmen, and give Halfwick’s head to Dulei’s grieving mother. Now Ylem was gone, the fishmen had become mortal enemies, and Halfwick’s head was still attached to his festering unnatural body – and the less said about that little mix-up, the better.
Weisei had no good answer to that. “Well, you can’t just... I don’t... Hakai, you are making my eyes dizzy! Won’t you at least sit down and have a smoke?”
Hakai stopped. For a moment, he didn’t say anything. “... later, sir – perhaps a little later.” His voice was peculiar, weighted by a strange, unfathomable strain. Had he lost his pipe, o
r drowned the herbs? Why not just say so?
But Hakai consented to sit, cross-legged and straight-backed at the edge of the little fire, and to place his hands on his knees with perfect composure. “Still, I would be equally comforted, if I could ask you one question.”
Weisei sat down too, his face drawn with concern. “Anything. I’ll answer you honestly, and my atodak will be silent.”
Vuchak hardly needed prompting. He folded his arms.
“I don’t fear the fishmen,” Hakai said. “I believe what they told me. But what if the Dog Lady decides to punish us for taking her son? How will we protect ourselves?”
“Oh, Hakai!” Weisei said, overflowing with the same light-hearted compassion one would use for a child’s sincerely-confessed fear of toenail-gobblers. “You don’t need to worry about that. Marhuk won’t let anything happen to his own people, on his own land, and...” A belated realization crept across Weisei’s face. “... well, and of course we’ll keep you safe, too. Look, you see,” and he jerked his chin up at the matched pair of hills behind his left shoulder. “We know from Día that the Dog Lady is camped between the Red Brothers, so if she comes at us from that direction, she’ll have to cross all these wide-open fields, and certainly we’ll be able to see her coming. If that happens, I can wake the horse and take you to safety while Vuchak and Dulei placate her in Marhuk’s name. Does that satisfy you?”
Hakai bowed his head in gratitude. “Completely, sir. Thank you for explaining it to me.”
Weisei glanced up at Vuchak. “And you, Vichi – do you have any sound reason to object to our camping here for the remainder of the day?”
Vuchak did – he was sure of it. Something wasn’t right here. Even if the fishmen wanted to destroy the Dog Lady first, they had no reason to return Hakai and Dulei. Why give them back? What were they going to get out of this?
Dreams of the Eaten Page 7
