The moldering old woman still sat up there on her perch, presiding in mummified serenity over the carnage below. The whole place now reeked of week-old rotting flesh, the bodies on the floor lay sprawled heedlessly on top of each other, and there was blood everywhere.
“Merde alors,” Shea swore, hastily coordinating with U’ru to set Hakai down. “What is this? What happened?”
... it’s complicated, U’ru said again.
But as Shea stepped gingerly around the dais, taking care to avoid the biggest of the drops and splatters, the first startling hint of movement suggested that she’d been mistaken. There was only one body on the floor. The one on top was alive.
“Ak aku?” It was a man’s voice, thick and hoarse and heartbroken.
Shea quickened her pace to see if he was hurt, squinting against the harsh light from the open doorway – and realizing only when she was almost on top of him that she knew him.
That was Weisei – from Island Town, from La Saciadería – and the corpse he cradled was his friend – that dour, irritable fellow whose name Shea couldn’t recall.
Well, they made an awful pair now. Weisei was a ghastly sight, nothing at all like the merry drinker Shea had left behind. Thin and frail and spent, with blood smeared over his clothes and sticking in his hair, he looked up with such an abyssal mask of horror as could only belong to a living body operated by a broken soul.
It was all Shea could do to keep from flinching at his gaze. “Weisei, what happened?”
But he wasn’t interested in her. He was staring at the Dog Lady’s approach, watching her step heedlessly through the drying crimson slick, leaving eerily clean bare-stone footprints behind her.
“Great lady?”
U’ru came towards him with compassion and sadness in her eyes, and Shea could feel her domesticated heart swell with pity for this poor lost crow-child who had fallen out of the nest.
Weisei’s attention flicked back to Shea, suddenly animated by a spark of desperation. “Fishman?”
She startled as he clutched at her ankle with a hot, sticky hand, his pleading bloodshot eyes rooting her to the spot. “Help me, please. Tell me how to pray to her. Ask her to heal my Vichi...”
Thankfully, Shea was spared having to tell him the truth. U’ru came and knelt down beside him, easing him gently away from the dead man in his lap. Weisei’s expression crumpled as he began to understand.
And U’ru folded him in under her arm with the grace of ages: a mother-dog fostering a frail bird, soothing him as he cried.
It was a hard thing to watch.
Among human beings and their earthly gods, Shea would always be something of an outsider. She’d made her peace with that long ago.
But if she were human, and had some supernatural talent, she would have wished for the power to conjure other people – to fill this grisly room with everyone she had cheated and used and manipulated over the past twenty-odd years, point at the scene unfolding before her, and say, This. This is what it was for.
She didn’t expect them to understand. She wouldn’t ask for their forgiveness. But it would have been nice to show this to Fours, to Día, to the poor souls of the House of Losange whose bodies were currently drifting downstream – even to good old Henry Bon, the bounty hunter who’d given himself so lustily to the cause. It would have been nice to be able to repay them, at least in part, with the knowledge that they had helped to accomplish something of unknowable importance. They had brought back the Dog Lady, the living avatar of love and healing and the simple creature comforts that made life worthwhile… and the world had been a poorer place without her.
Instead, Shea crouched down on U’ru’s other side, her skin darkening in sympathy with Weisei’s as she settled in like a torpid newt on a sun-drenched stone, basking in warmth after a twenty-year winter. This was the U’ru she’d held out for. This was the one people would lay down their lives for. Here again at last was a joy for the joyless, the mother to the motherless, the great lady who had looked out on a world falling into war and slaughter and tried to love it whole again.
It had been worth it, Shea decided – everything she’d done over these long, lonely years of waiting and hoping and hunting for that boy. Not necessarily right... certainly not well-executed... but worth it.
She was just sorry that this moment had come at Weisei’s expense. Because although he still lived, his hiccupping sobs diminishing as he wrung himself dry on U’ru’s shoulder, Shea already knew that the person he had been was gone. A hundred miles to the east, a rowdy border-town bar was already missing its most vivacious regular, a sparkling prodigal host who had so zestfully entertained all comers – a gentle, delightful, once-in-a-generation exceptional human soul.
He should have been the Dog Lady’s child, Shea decided. Love and healing and creature comforts, the both of them... a loss for the Ara-Naure, and a waste for the a’Krah.
Perhaps U’ru thought so too. When the last of his sadness finally dissolved into an exhausted slumber, his head slipping down to rest in the hollow of her neck, U’ru made no move to rise. She stayed, safeguarding him as he sank deeper into sleep – probably the last good one he would have. Only when Hakai began to stir did she reluctantly relinquish Weisei, easing him back down to lie with his fallen friend.
Where is his bed? U’ru asked as they rose, her distressed gaze roving over the charnel-house around them. He shouldn’t stay here.
Shea climbed stiffly back up to her feet, feeling as old as that comatose crone in the chair. “I don’t know, Mother. We’ll have to find out.”
Tonight, of course, it would be a simple thing for U’ru to scoop up Weisei and take him to a more wholesome place, or to carry him all night long, if it pleased her. For now, it was as much as they could do to carry a single broken man between them. And wasn’t that always the way of the world? Too many wounded people crying to be picked up, and no arms big enough to hold them.
THAT COULD HAVE gone better.
Sil led Elim down the road, grateful at least that he didn’t have to tell him not to gawk: the big lunk kept his head down and his attention on the ground six inches in front of his feet, as if he didn’t want to see or hear or think about one thing more than he absolutely had to.
That made two of them.
Still, the sun was up, the worst of the calamity seemed to have passed, and it was a tremendous relief to have finally emerged back out in the fresh air. By the time they reached the edge of town, Sil had mastered the worst of himself, and managed to handle their business with something approaching civility.
Not that he needed to do much. As eager as the a’Krah had been to get their claws into Día, they seemed even more anxious to be rid of Sil and Elim. Like ants establishing a supply line, the gift-bearers came, set their bounty down on the ground without ever meeting Sil’s eyes, and hurried away again. It was an impressive cornucopia: berries and corn-cakes, fresh pemmican, roasted nuts, jerky and some kind of dried fruit patties, blankets, a knife and hand-axe, flint and tinder, packs to carry it all, and skins with water enough for two days at a time – parting gifts all delivered with the alacrity of hosts whose overstayed visitors could not possibly leave a moment too soon.
In the end, their only deprivations were a replacement for Elim’s lost shoe, and his rifle. When it seemed that nothing could be done about either of those, Sil cut his losses and made ready to leave, acutely aware of the shrinking shadows on the ground: he didn’t have to know how long it would take to make it down and off the mountain by nightfall in order to know that he didn’t care to find out what would happen if they didn’t.
So he shouldered the lighter half of the load and gave Elim a nudge. “Come on, then – let’s get going.”
Elim, who had been resting with arms folded over his updrawn knees, lifted his head with a look of bleary confusion. “Ain’t we camping here?”
Sil was annoyed for all of the two seconds it took to realize that no, he really hadn’t told Elim anything. “
Er... no, actually,” he said, as kindly as he could. “We’ll camp down at the foothills. We have to be off the mountain by dark.”
Elim’s face dissolved into the horror of a struggling pie-eating contestant who’d just been served a fresh, quivering mountain of mincemeat. “I can’t,” he said – and then, before Sil could get sharp with him: “No, I mean it. I believe you, buddy – I’d do it if I could – but I spent all yesterday and half of last night running and climbing and hauling Hawkeye and dodging rocks and getting shot at and dumped on and frog-kicked into a wall and I can’t even recollect what-all else, and then with all this up here, and all that just there, and I just – I’m just used up, Sil. I can’t.”
Which would ordinarily have been Sil’s cue to start in with a righteous red-hot bollocking, full of How dare you and D’you have any idea what it cost me to get you off the hook and the perennial classic, God damn your ungrateful spotted hide...
... but he couldn’t miss the cracks in Elim’s voice, or that look in his eyes. It was the frightened expression of a downed animal, one every bit as aware of the circling vultures as it was powerless to rise.
He wasn’t, though. He wasn’t. Elim had walked down this very road not even an hour ago, with no difficulty at all. He hadn’t broken his leg or stepped in a bear trap – he was just overwhelmed thinking of how far he still had to go.
Sil groped for a new tack, a new angle to use in cajoling him up to his feet. This would be so much easier if he could just provoke Elim back into that... that monstrous thing he had been before. No shortage of strength in that fellow.
Well, never mind that: how had this mixed idiot found the energy to get himself up here in the first place? He was just as poorly back when Sil had found him in the foothills, and there hadn’t been any balking then. Why, Elim himself had led the charge, nattering on about how they were cursed men, how he had to go finish settling up for Dulei. He’d even taken it upon himself to go haul a half-dead man out of a mountainside.
Yes. That was it. That was the problem here. There was no Dulei anymore, nobody needing to be rescued or found or dug up and toted about like an oversized chew-bone. Elim didn’t have anyone left to help – and apparently helping himself didn’t count.
“Sil?” Elim was staring up at him, fear settling into confusion at this uncommon silence.
Now there was a capital suggestion, inadvertently proposed by Elim himself.
Yes, that might just work.
“Sorry,” Sil said, hurrying to spin out a convincing line. “I was just thinking – just realizing, actually. You don’t have to go anywhere. You can stay here and rest, if you like.”
This was a dangerous gambit, not to mention a flagrant lie: the a’Krah had commanded them both to be gone by dark, or else.
But Sil could see the relief on Elim’s face as the weight of necessity dropped off him, and pressed on. “It’s just me they don’t want here, and I was only hoping – you know, as dangerous as it was on our way up here, I would have felt safer for having you with me on the way back down. That was all.” And he shouldered his pack again, as if to see himself off.
Elim frowned. “What? Why? How come you can’t stay here?” He nodded back towards the temple. “It ain’t like they can hurt you...”
Trust me, it hurt like hell.
Sil bit back his first sharp remark, sidestepping around the crack in his composure. “I know, but they could still keep me in prison, or – or do violent things to me,” and oh, God, the light in that woman’s eyes as she’d gutted him, “and I just... honestly, Elim, I just want to go home.”
That last bit started out as a convenient way of salting the oats, confessing something for himself that he knew would resonate with Elim’s own motives. Still, there was more of the truth in it than Sil had expected. He was restored, yes, hale and hearty and apparently unkillable... but he also hadn’t slept in a week and a half, and there was no telling how much time he had left – no way to know when his miraculous second-life might expire – and when it did, he wanted to be at home, in his own bed.
Maybe Elim understood that more than Sil had given him credit for. He rose to his feet, swallowing down some faintness or nausea as he did. Then he picked up his pack, an effortless weight now that it belonged to someone else, and committed. “Sure, buddy. Sure, I understand. Let’s go take you home.”
And that was all it took. Elim, who could do for others what he would never manage for himself, fell in line behind Sil, who could make a breadcrumb trail of his own wants long enough to stretch from here to Hell’s Acre. The two of them shared a glance, just long enough to draw on the last dregs of their own peculiar talents, and then headed down the trail: borrowed time escorted by lent energy as they started off in search of an ending.
EVERYTHING WAS A bit of a blur after that.
Día had enough sense to follow the a’Krah graciously as they escorted her out. She had enough presence of mind to ask about Weisei, while managing not to imply that the rest of them were heartless savages for leaving him there alone with the body. And she had just enough prudence to listen to Penten’s double-sided answer: her words were kind, assuring Día that he would only be left long enough to compose himself and share a private moment with his companion, and yet her tone evoked an exasperated parent whose child had embarrassed himself in public, and was now being left to finish his tantrum alone.
It didn’t seem right, but Día couldn’t risk putting a foot wrong. She went quietly thereafter, full of grace and gratitude as Penten showed her to a small one-room house, and promised that she would have every comfort provided to her before they met again tomorrow morning. Día had no difficulty hearing what went unspoken: she was a guest of the a’Krah now, and she was not to leave her room unescorted.
Perhaps the proper term for that was ‘house arrest’... but at the moment, she didn’t care.
When the door finally closed on the last pleasantries and promises, Día stood still for a bit, assuring herself of the door and the walls and the flue and the lone westward-facing window – mentally marking off her new perimeters.
Then she sat down in the middle of that small, safe, quiet space, and let out the breath she’d been holding for a week.
She would be all right here. They recognized her as a representative of the Azahi, an indispensable ally. They had no reason to treat her poorly. And she trusted the Dog Lady not to leave without her.
So for the first few hours, Día was content just to dwell there in that peaceful little pocket-world. She admired the fine stonework of the diamond-shaped walls, and the beautiful multitude of eyes painted upon them. She ate the strange but savory food they brought her, and drank sweet, clean spring water. She wrapped herself in the great pile of furs and blankets that dominated her snug quarters, having never in her life lay in such luxury. And when the afternoon sunlight began to disappear up the eastern wall, and the modest warmth of the day ebbed away again, she took a cord of fresh pine from the generous stockpile beside the pit, and made herself a fire.
But even though she had been confined to a room scarcely ten feet square, her thoughts now had infinite space to expand, evaporating and diffusing like an uncorked bottle of ether.
She shouldn’t have shouted at Elim like that.
She should have said something to Weisei.
She was going to be in trouble when the a’Krah found out that the Azahi hadn’t actually sent her – that he didn’t even know she was here.
And as for Halfwick...
Día had been blessed to wake up in the Dog Lady’s arms and see her faith rewarded – to imagine the hand of God working to bring U’ru and Marhuk together for her own personal restoration... even if the bloodbath in the temple had thoroughly disproven Marhuk’s interest in any single human life.
But it was impossible not to see the direct, divine intervention that had brought Sil Halfwick to radiant immortality without feeling... what? Jealousy? Bitterness? Disgust?
Regardless, it was a t
erribly selfish, unhelpful sentiment – and yet impossible to ignore. Why on earth should such a miracle be manifested for one of the most obnoxious, least-deserving people she had ever known? What could he possibly have done to merit that? He’d been arrogant and useless from first to last, compounding every error and sometimes contriving to inflict new ones. He hadn’t even saved Elim: Marhuk’s verdict had done that for him. In the entire tenure of their very-short acquaintance, Halfwick’s singular accomplishment had been a string of gross, protracted, seemingly effortless failures to die.
But as she sat and stared into the flickering light of the fire, this prideful exercise opened a much darker doorway. Because if Halfwick had been superfluous – why, Día had been completely useless.
She hadn’t restored the Dog Lady at the end of that long walk through the desert, nor saved her from the fishmen. The landslide had done that for her.
She hadn’t rescued Elim, as she’d so staunchly promised U’ru and Miss du Chenne. Far from it: she’d had to be rescued herself.
She hadn’t even helped Halfwick finish his life, as she’d promised Weisei she would. If she hadn’t stopped to help him there as he dangled from that ledge, why...
... why, he would have fallen, just as he had anyway, and God would have restored him in His own good time, as He did anyway.
Día pressed her hands over her mouth, stunned.
All of that, all of this – for nothing.
She could have kept right on walking.
She could have spared herself all that pain and trouble.
She could have saved her hair.
Día ran her hand over her plundered skull, but there was no miraculous restoration there for her – not even a quickening of the follicles.
She’d cut away her life, her strength, her connection, for a boy who’d taken one look at them and shoved her off a cliff – and for his trouble been raised up by the hand of God Almighty.
And now he was gone.
Día sat there for a long, long time afterwards. The sounds of a distant human world carried over the breeze as night fell, and Atali’Krah woke up.
Dreams of the Eaten Page 37
