Dreams of the Eaten

by Arianne Thompson

  Ah Che held out his hand. “Give me your knife.”

  VUCHAK WATCHED THE blood trickle down Weisei’s forehead, and bit his tongue. This was a terrible idea. He should never have agreed.

  But as he supervised his prince sitting there with Hakai’s head in his lap, eyes closed, head bowed, and fingers threaded through the man’s hair as if he would massage his scalp, the part of Vuchak that dearly wished to object – again – was silenced by the part that had already given its well-reasoned surrender.

  No, Weisei could not afford to take Hakai’s wounds.

  No, there was no telling what had damaged the slave’s thinking, or how badly, or even how long ago.

  But the longer such an injury was allowed to linger, the slower and more poorly it would heal... and Hakai’s mind was of surpassing value. It took years to train an ihi’ghiva, years more for him to master his crafts. He was a translator, a messenger, a sharp ear and a closed mouth and an invisible pair of hands for whoever was deemed worthy of his service. It would be a grievous loss if he died or failed to recover – and there would be hell to pay if Vuchak and Weisei were found responsible.

  So Vuchak sat there under the paltry shade of the piñon tree and watched as his marka tried to relieve Hakai of his strange, invisible wound. He hoped it would work. He hoped it wouldn’t. He had been telling himself that this was only a token effort to show their diligence, and that it was futile, regardless: Weisei’s gift only allowed him to soak up the injuries of his own people – and whatever else he was, Hakai was not a’Krah.

  But as the cut on Hakai’s forehead disappeared, and the fresh, identical gash over Weisei’s brow opened and began to bleed, Vuchak felt suddenly less confident about that.

  What if he were wrong? What if Weisei accidentally took too much – damaged his own thinking, or broke his own leg? He had to lead the horse, which meant that he absolutely had to be able to walk. And even if he just overspent himself, used himself all up on this exercise here, it would take that much longer before he or Hakai got any real help in Atali’Krah – and that was time nobody had.

  No, nevermind what they’d agreed on before: this was too risky. Vuchak opened his mouth to break his promised silence –

  – just as Weisei sat back with a sigh. “I’m sorry, Vichi. I can’t tell.”

  “That’s all right,” Vuchak said, striving to hide his relief. “You did –”

  “It’s strange, though.” Weisei looked down at the unconscious man in his lap and frowned. “His brain doesn’t feel like it’s been hurt. It’s just... used up.”

  Well, that was incisively unhelpful. Vuchak put his hands to his knees to stand. “Then maybe he’ll get better on his own. Come on, let’s finish dressing him and –”

  Weisei did not look up. “Yes, but he’s getting feverish – and see that tremor in his hands, too. What if it’s something to do with his old injuries? Are you sure Huitsak didn’t say anything about them?”

  Thus far, Vuchak had done an excellent job of keeping his attention on Hakai’s face. He did not want to contemplate that flabby, scar-puckered bare chest again, especially now that it had been re-seeded with so many fresh cuts and bruises. He especially did not want to think about whatever awful pox lay sleeping in the old slave’s bones, or what would happen if it were waking up again. “Yes, yes,” Vuchak said, hoping his irritation would finally close the curtain on those questions. “And even if you’re right, we can’t do anything about it here. We’ll give him back to Aso’ta Marhuk when we get home, and let the Eldest use their arts. Now let’s dress him: the sooner we get to sleep, the sooner we can get him home.”

  Vuchak stood and walked past the half, who had already lay down to rest, and retrieved Hakai’s shirt. They hadn’t been brave enough to untie that makeshift splint, or do anything else to his legs, but it was a simple enough thing to sponge down the rest of him, shake the earth from his shirt and shoes, wash his hair, and salve his lesser wounds. Even as angry as he was with Hakai for absconding back to the fishmen, Vuchak didn’t mind doing that much: the ihi’ghiva was in no danger of enjoying less than his fair share of suffering... or of having it relieved too soon.

  And amidst all these heavy thoughts, Weisei was just sitting there, the hair-tie limp and useless in his hand.

  “What’s wrong?” Vuchak had to ask – because What’s wrong? was so much more acceptable than Why are you making this take even longer than it has to?

  Weisei’s thin shoulders slumped. He looked almost as exhausted as Vuchak felt. “I wish we didn’t have to go.”

  Oh, this was going to be a chore. Privately resigning himself to another discussion of feelings, Vuchak straddled Hakai – shamefully aware of how he had done just the same with Weisei earlier – and commenced manhandling him into his shirt. “Why?” He struggled to squeeze some interest into his tone.

  Vuchak already knew how this would go. Weisei would give some self-regarding reason next, some anxious fretting about how To’taka didn’t like him, how Penten would be disappointed in him, how nobody would want to sit with him, all of which were completely within his own power to amend, if he would only take a hard look at his own –

  “It’s going to wreck her.”

  Vuchak stopped with Hakai’s arm half in its sleeve.

  Weisei cupped his forehead as he confessed himself to his knee. “He’s her only son. She’s going to be so upset. And then she’s going to kill Ylem.”

  From the other side of the campsite, Dulei shifted in his coffin. He had been still and quiet since they retrieved him, perhaps sensing his nearness to the end – but now he stirred at even this oblique mention of his mother.

  And as it turned out, Vuchak still had some empathy left after all. He tried to assemble his thoughts as he finished with Hakai, reaching to provide his marka with some helpful, encouraging reason why those things wouldn’t happen.

  It was just terribly unfortunate that Weisei had chosen this of all moments to be right. His sister would be devastated to learn of Dulei’s death – and then she would seek vengeance. And the Eldest had no reason not to grant it: Ylem was not only her son’s murderer, but the Dog Lady’s favorite child – a rich prize just waiting to be torn from a sworn enemy. Executing him would be perfect, easy revenge.

  Vuchak sat down beside his marka, struggling to find his new, better self, the one he had confessed to the West Wind that he wanted so badly to become. “It’s not your fault,” he said at last. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Dulei’s death and Winshin’s grief and Ylem’s fate... none of them belong to you. You didn’t create them. They aren’t yours to suffer. You only have to be responsible for yourself.”

  It sounded good to Vuchak’s ears. It was the absolution he himself desperately wanted to hear. But one glance from Weisei, one look into his hollow eyes, and Vuchak could see his words’ callow, vulgar reflection.

  Don’t bother about other people’s problems. Don’t let yourself be troubled by their sadness. Just see to your own obligations, and you won’t be blamed for anything.

  And worse than that was what came after: not offense, not anger, but the sad little crease at the corners of Weisei’s eyes – the ones that understood that Vuchak was trying, and that this shallow, pitiful consolation was the best his atodak could offer.

  “Yes, Vichi,” he said. “Of course you’re right. We should think of our duty.” And he began tying Hakai’s hair back with a plain, sensible knot.

  This was progress, Vuchak told himself. This was a victory for common sense and compliance and rational, productive behavior – so much better than that embarrassing scene they’d made earlier.

  But when all the most needful things were done and he finally – finally! – lay down to rest, Vuchak closed his eyes dogged by failure, and fell asleep searching for a remedy he couldn’t name.

  IT WAS A grisly exercise.

  Now children, Shea thought as she stabbed the shovel-blade back into the rocky pile, we’re going to practice our sums. Le
t’s say there are twelve of my own kind, plus a baby-faced princess and one overfed fool of a prince. Now we take away the two that were crushed by falling rocks, the four that were buried alive in the rockslide, and the prince, who didn’t even have the decency to stay dead. How many of my kin might be left alive, and when should I stop digging?

  Actually, there was another variable, X, which would represent the unknown number of mereaux previously killed by a’Krah arrows or torn apart by an angry canine god-mother... but as weary as she was from all this sedimentary subtraction, Shea couldn’t begin to muster the energy to tackle that abominable algebra.

  Instead, she swore when she struck a damp spot – at least this one wasn’t stuck under a half-ton boulder – and set to her usual pattern of scraping and excavating around and under it. It was hard, ugly work, and there was no-one less suited to it than a wrung-out old mereau with a bad lung and a crick in her back... but it wouldn’t be right to just sit and ease herself while she waited for U’ru to return. These weren’t the Dog Lady’s people, or even her victims. This was not her mistake.

  “Ah, there you are, cousin,” Shea said in Fraichais, setting the shovel aside when she had finally shifted enough earth to get a good grip on that shriveled, dust-crusted hand. “Here, let me help you.”

  She dug and pulled and dug and pulled, freeing the body inch by morbid, desiccated inch. To say it was unpleasant would have been a laughing understatement – but this was something that Shea could do, however slow and badly.

  She couldn’t tell what was happening to Yashu-Diiwa, or how long he might have before the a’Krah put him to death. She couldn’t track Prince Jeté – that was U’ru’s task now. Worst of all, she couldn’t know what had happened to Día. There had only been that slow fading of her mind as she ventured ever farther from the Dog Lady’s awareness, and then nothing – a whole day’s worth of nothing.

  It would be all right, she told herself. It might still be all right – as long as the right people found each other in the right order. Día would find the boy before dark. U’ru would find both of them, once they made it far enough down the mountain. And Jeté… he would find some quiet corner to crawl off and die in, without hurting a soul. Was that so much to hope for?

  With one more titanic heave, Shea finally birthed her dead kinsman from the rubble. “There we are,” she said, when she’d finally caught her breath again. “It’s a shit life, isn’t it? Small wonder nobody gets out of it alive. Now, let’s...”

  Shea trailed off as she got her first good look at the body. She’d discovered a few of the Many already, along with some of their pathetic makeshift weapons – the shovel had been one of them. But this was the first one she’d found actually wearing something.

  Shea turned the body over, puzzled by the bulging sack hung around its neck. Then she dropped to a squat. “Excuse me, cousin – may I see what you have there?”

  She had no idea what to make of the tarré. It was quite a lot to take for such a short trip, and she didn’t remember eating anything with that signature smoky-sweetness. More to the point, no mereau would have had any use for that battered old tin: it looked watertight enough, but it was already rusting.

  But she did recognize the bag it came in, and the assorted novelty gems inside. They had belonged to that little shy one – oh, what was their name? The one who had been so busy collecting and sorting and re-sorting their tiny terrestrial treasures, the one who had reminded her of a young and still-hopeful Fours.

  But they had been easily the smallest of the cohort, and this one here was the biggest Shea had found yet. Tournant, perhaps, or...

  Yes, actually, Shea did recall the two of them together – the big one passing morsels to the little one at the dinner-fight, reminding her so much of herself and Fours that it almost hurt to watch. Shea looked down at the broad-shouldered body beside her, its still-open mouth choked with dirt. It could not tell her why it had been wearing its sibling’s treasures... but then, maybe she could guess.

  In that moment, Shea suspected that she would not find the little geologist in the rockslide – and that Porté had found one more way to live up to their name.

  Shea sighed. The big stevedore had carried her upriver on that first day out of Island Town. Carried her supper to her, carried more than their share of all those digging-tools – and now, apparently, they had carried their lost sibling’s legacy, all the way up until the moment of their own death.

  Shea’s own given name had never been so apt. Champagne was a fine, elegant thing, made for merriment and celebration, and her life had been anything but.

  But she was still here, naked and dirty and drying out in the dust-shrouded haze of the late afternoon sun. The young ones were gone, killed by the vagaries of a world they had barely begun to explore, and there was no-one but Shea left to look after them.

  She could manage that much mothering, anyway.

  So she put the tin and the stones back in their bag, hung the bag around her neck, and began the slow, clumsy process of pulling Porté’s arms over her shoulders – of getting enough of their withered body over her back that she could begin returning their namesake favor. Shea stooped and bent, her desiccated friend leaving web-footed trails in the dirt as she took her first heavy steps back towards the river. “Come on, même. Let’s take you home.”

  IT WAS A good plan.

  Elim would just settle down and pretend to nap long enough for Bootjack and Way-Say to fall asleep. Then he would pilfer some provisions and be off again, down the trail and all the way back down the mountain, if he had to. He’d go get Sil, or whatever was left of him, no matter what.

  In fact, it was such a good plan, and he did such a good job of pretending, that when he finally opened his eyes again, the sun had already slipped down behind the mountain.

  Shit.

  Elim sat up with a start. He’d lost hours. Sil had been lost for hours. His partner was somewhere in pieces at the bottom of a cliff, and Elim had dozed off.

  And he was starving again.

  Elim could have kicked himself – if he’d had the time. But the others were still asleep. He still had a chance. Elim silently picked himself up, grabbed a waterskin and filled it from the little seep, and then retrieved a perfectly-good steak from where some moon-touched fool had left it lying on the ground. He brushed off the dirt and the ants and shoved it into his waistband.

  Then he glanced back at Bootjack and Way-Say – a matched pair of cloak-bundled Sundowners sleeping back-to-back under a wizened old tree. Elim lingered on the sight of the crow prince and his knight, reluctant in spite of everything. They weren’t his people, he reminded himself. They weren’t even really his friends. They would be fine without him. And now that he’d delivered Hawkeye –

  He stopped short, scouring their tiny campsite. Hawkeye was gone.

  Elim’s heart seized; his gaze flicked to the rocky edge of the clearing, and the empty air beyond it. Surely not. Surely, surely not.

  He couldn’t look – couldn’t even make his feet move the two steps it would take to discover the truth. Elim stared straight down at the ground in front of him, willing his heart to slow and his mind to think clearly and the universe to prove that it wasn’t just a collection of random, pointless cruelties – that all his efforts hadn’t been in vain.

  The ground between his moccasins gave him no such assurances. But it did suggest what he probably should have guessed earlier: a lamed man dragging a rifle-splinted leg cut a mighty distinctive track.

  Elim caught up to Hakai about a quarter of a mile down the trail. The poor bastard was crawling, if you could even call it that, reaching out with both hands and then pulling his good knee up underneath him, inch-worming along slower than frozen snail-snot.

  Which maybe they actually had out here: it was just past afternoon, and already the shadows were getting chilly.

  All the more reason to get the man back to camp on the quick side. “Hey, Hawkeye – where you going, buddy?” Elim c
alled ahead, keeping his tone and pace gentle and easy.

  Hawkeye stopped and briefly turned to regard Elim with those strange, unfocused dark eyes. “I think that’s fairly self-evident.” Then he was back at it again, his breath coming in labored little puffs of steam.

  Elim quickened his pace. That sounded an awful lot like the Hawkeye he knew. “Yeah, I expect it is,” he said as he caught up to him. “But Bootjack’s gonna go on the warpath if he wakes up and sees we already left. How ’bout we head on back?”

  This time, Hawkeye kept right on going. “You know as well as I do why that’s a bad idea.”

  Oh, that sounded wonderfully like the old Hawkeye – even if Elim didn’t have a damn clue what he meant. “Well, you’ll get down there a whole lot faster if you let me take you. Here, why don’t I –”

  Hawkeye recoiled from his touch. “Leave me alone, emi – I can do it myself!”

  Elim withdrew, and blew out a slow breath. No, Hawkeye’s brain hadn’t miraculously unscrambled itself. He was just a more articulate kind of addled. And as tempting as it was to let him crawl on and trust that Bootjack would fetch him eventually, Elim had already watched one friend drop off a cliff today. He couldn’t live with himself if he let it happen again. “All right,” he said, his hopes of finding Sil crumbling like brittle straw. “Maybe I’ll see you later, then.”

  He walked on another ten paces, and then sat himself down and waited. Sometimes you could turn a contrary horse around, if you just let him alone long enough to forget what you’d asked him the first time.

  Still, this one made a grim picture. The others had done a fair job of cleaning him up, and except for his missing blindfold and wrecked leg, he looked pretty much like himself again. Which made it all the harder to watch Hawkeye, probably the smartest man Elim had ever met, crawling along like an opium-dazed baby, lost in a world only he could see.