by Devin Madson
“It’s good to have you back.” His voice was overloud too, but it was my thoughts that shouted, writ large in thick, gouged strokes.
“It’s good to be back,” I said, the words a whisper beneath the roaring inside my head. “I missed you. Missed this.” I gestured to the distant herd gathered for the evening meal.
“Missed it so much you want to be out here on your own?”
His gaze had been shrewd but kind. Always kind. “No, I just…”
“I imagine adjusting back is hard. Do you want to talk about it?”
I closed my eyes on tears I did not want to shed, sure that when I opened them he would be gone. Who was I to have earned such care from him? Whatever childish promises he had once made my mother, he was a Sword now and I was not even a saddleboy, was nothing but a failure in the eyes of many. The boy who’d never be a horse whisperer, who had brought shame to the Torin.
The weight of his arm fell upon my shoulders and he was beside me, warm and strong and smelling of salt water. “I know what you’re thinking and you’re not, Rah. You’re not a burden or a failure. You have nothing to be ashamed of. The way of the horse whisperers is hard. Not everyone makes it. You did your best.”
“I didn’t.”
“What?”
He hadn’t moved away or lifted his arm from around me, and before I could think better of it, I was spilling my truths into the safe space he had created. I told him about the lectures and the routines and the expectations, the unquestioning obedience, the pretension and the endless, crushing silence. I ought to have been proud to serve my people, to bring honour to my herd, but every day I had lost a bit more of myself and every day I had yearned to be free, yearned to throw duty to the wind and run, whatever the shame, whatever the weight it would add to my soul. And then one day I had. Everyone had assumed I had been sent away for not being good enough, but I had run. I had just walked out and not looked back.
And now the shame of it, the sense of how deeply I had failed myself and my herd and my people, weighed upon me like a mountain.
When I finished speaking, Gideon closed the circle of his arms and held me while I cried, his head upon my shoulder. He did not run under such weight as I had, not then and not later. Not ever.
A crackle rose over the soft song he hummed by my ear. It grew louder and louder, swallowing first his voice and then his presence, only his warmth and the memory of his touch remaining.
In his absence, pain struck fists upon my body. The stink of Jinso’s wet hide was there and gone, while the patter of rain was endless. A familiar voice overhead was soon joined by others. A room spun. Sharp pain tugged at my flesh and I cried out, the sound no more alive than the rattle of a corpse.
A voice exclaimed, but I could not understand its words. Footsteps shuddered the floor beneath my head and a face appeared. A familiar face belonging to the familiar voice.
“Tor?” I punctuated his name with a cry as the piercing pain returned, shocking me to movement.
More words I didn’t understand, fast and angry, and Tor’s hand was all that kept me from trying to rise.
“Don’t move,” he said. “A girl is stitching you up.”
“Girl?” I croaked and licked dried lips, staring at him as I reached for understanding. “Why?”
Tor looked around. His face filled my whole awareness. “Sett ripped your leg open with a hoof pick,” he said, lowering his voice to a hiss like quenched coals. “Don’t you remember?”
His words tore the darkness back like a curtain, shocking the room into focus. A small room, lit by candles and a smoking fire, with meagre light creeping through an open door beyond which rain poured like a waterfall. It battered the roof and dripped into pots, and the smell of damp choked every breath. Clothes hung drying by the fire. The blanket beneath my head smelled musty. And filling the space around me was a sea of strewn herbs and little bowls, needles and thread. And the girl. Not a girl, too tall and well built to be a girl, but a young woman of similar years to Tor. She knelt, bent over her task, a few strands of damp, dark hair escaping from a messy bun caught to the back of her head. Paused with needle and thread in hand, she looked at Tor and spoke in clipped Kisian.
“What did she say?” I wheezed.
“She wants to know if she can keep stitching or if you’re going to faint on her.”
I met her sharp, assessing gaze. No pity there, no apology. The hardness of her expression only increased with impatience, waiting for Tor’s reply. “Tell her to continue,” I said, hating my dry croak. “Levanti endure.”
Tor repeated my words, and the young woman’s lip curled cynically. But she turned her bright gaze back to her task, once more sticking her needle into my leg. I gritted my teeth, clenched my hands, and stared up at the flicker of light upon the ceiling. It was no new sensation, but Yitti had always made it easier with banter and old stories, with food and drink and good company.
Tor crouched at my side like an animal prepared to flee. “I am sorry for having to accept the help of these people,” he said. “But I had no choice.”
“Who are they?” I didn’t turn my head again to watch her, but the young Kisian woman filled the corner of my vision. And footsteps behind me meant there was at least one other in the room, possibly more.
“They were dressed like soldiers,” Tor said, throwing a wary glance at the woman. “They are well armed, but I don’t think they are who they say they are. The peasants who own this place bowed to them a lot, so it’s possible the man is a lord.”
I winced at the awful feeling of thread tugging skin. “And where are we?” I said, trying to take my mind off the deep ache in my leg that seemed to cut to the bone.
“I don’t know.” Tor grimaced. “I found you on the side of the road and I was sure Sett would send Swords after me, so I just kept riding.” He forced a brittle laugh. “Damn but these Kisian horses are poor brutes.”
“Jinso?”
“In the barn. He’s fine. I’ve even brushed him and made sure he has dry hay.”
More questions clogged my mouth but I could not spit any of them out, fearing the answers. Silence fell, tense and fragile. Only the rhythmic prick and tug of the needle broke the string of my thoughts, a relief though it made my gut churn.
A deep voice spoke from behind me. Kisian again. The young woman answered without looking up. Tor looked from one to the other as the conversation continued, then perhaps catching my confused expression, he said, “They are talking about you. She says it seems you may survive after all and he is warning against optimism. Such wounds, he says, can still fester.”
The young woman ended their conversation with a shrug and a few final words, which, only after I said “Well?” did Tor translate.
“She said that would be a greater waste of her stitching than—I am not entirely sure of the word because we were not taught finery, but I think she is making reference to…” He made a vague stitching gesture as he hunted words. “Cushions? Pictures stitched on cushions. Like our embroidered saddle blankets.”
No one spoke again until she had yanked the thread tight for the last time and snipped it free.
“Can you sit up?” Tor translated when she spoke to me for the first time. The young woman pursed her lips as she waited, and never had I wanted to understand their language more than in the face of such impatience. “She says it will make the wound easier to bind. And there is water. And meat. And rice if you feel up to eating.” He offered me his hand, but I did not take it. With shaky arms I forced myself upright, sending the room spinning once more. The young woman snatched something out of the way as I almost knocked it over, but apart from clicking her tongue in annoyance she said nothing. Her companion, a middle-aged Kisian with a scarred and expressionless face, passed her a handful of linen strips, their ragged edges recently torn. The man met my curious gaze, but he too said nothing, and soon went back to tending something by the fire.
“These are Kisians,” I said, finally giving voice to
what was bothering me. “We killed and burned and conquered our way through their lands and took their capital. Why are they helping us?”
Tor handed me a ceramic cup painted with tiny flowers. I sipped from its chipped rim, afraid I might break it with hands that seemed suddenly far too big.
The boy didn’t answer.
With my leg propped upon her knees like a stool, the Kisian woman began to wrap my wound. Curiosity got the better of me and I looked down before she could cover it. Yitti had always been good at his job, but she had achieved double the number of tiny stitches he had ever managed and left it cleaner. With the same deft hands, she soon had it tightly bandaged.
I looked up at Tor. “Why?”
“They want to know what happened. In the city. They thought we were hired soldiers. I promised to tell them everything if they helped you. It seemed a small enough thing to offer.”
It was my turn not to answer. Every part of my body ached and I wanted to sleep, but for the second time in as many days my stomach growled its sick hunger. This time I picked at the food they gave me, sure I would be ill if I ate any faster. The only thing that could be worse than the woman’s impatience was her disgust.
Having finished her task, she disappeared into a second, curtained-off room. I heard her moving around over the crackle of the fire and the pelting rain.
While I ate, Tor talked.
“—and blood was going everywhere, I really didn’t think you’d make it,” he was saying when I drew my attention back. “I thought maybe you’d fallen from the saddle and smacked your head, because you were so slow and limp, but I guess with having been locked up and starved and all, well… But we’ll strengthen you up. You’ll be riding again soon.”
He paused a moment, then pushing back his long hair, went on, “I wish I’d known he meant to do it. Sett. I could have stopped him.”
I laughed around a mouthful of rice. “Stopped him? How?”
“Threatened to leave. He needs me, you know. I don’t know what he’s going to do now he has no one to translate for him.” Tor gave a short, satisfied laugh. “I was going to leave anyway, but I’m glad I waited.”
“So am I.”
Between the wound and the starvation I would surely be dead had he not come along, might even have been killed by my own Swords had I fallen within sight of the city walls.
At the memory of that line of torchlight, the rice turned to a sticky mass in my mouth and I could not chew. I put the bowl down. In the silence a drip from the leaking roof fell into a pot with an overloud plink.
“You’re lucky you didn’t hurt yourself more when you landed,” Tor said after a short pause, but the words meant nothing beneath the recollection of how completely my Swords had turned against me. How completely I had failed them.
You’re not a burden or a failure. You have nothing to be ashamed of.
If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine the weight of his arm across my shoulders.
“I’m sorry we got stuck here,” Tor went on. “I’d heard whispers that a group of Levanti had left after Gideon claimed the city and were setting up a camp in this area. I tried to find them, but I was worried you wouldn’t make it if I didn’t find help.”
He scowled. “It would have been better if I’d found them.”
His inability to do so seemed to be preying on his mind, and thinking of Gideon I dredged up enough effort for a wan smile. “You did your best to look after me, and no one could do more than that. Thank you.”
It was nothing to what Gideon had given me just by being present that first evening back with my herd, but it was all I had and it lightened Tor’s scowl.
“Well, we can find them when you’re—”
He broke off as the young woman pushed the curtain aside. She had changed out of her wet armour and into a plain robe. It was worn and faded, and yet she wore it with a fierce pride that dared anyone to think poorly of her. She moved toward the fire without glancing at us, and now standing with her companion I could see they were of a height, both built like fighters despite Tor’s doubts. The woman even held a bow, which she indicated as she spoke, glancing every now and then at Tor.
Her companion growled an answer, also glancing at Tor, but though I could have asked him to translate, I stared at the bow instead. At its blackened arms and great, tall curve. I had seen it before.
“When you’re strong enough to ride we can find the camp,” Tor went on, lowering his voice. “Then go home.”
Home. Without my Swords I had no reason to stay, and yet the idea of riding away from all this sent a chill through me I could not explain.
The Kisian woman’s approach saved me from having to reply. She addressed Tor with the directness of a command and annoyance clouded his face. I heard my name. Heard Gideon’s name. A question. Plaintiveness in her look if not her voice. Her companion joined her, standing a step behind and beside—a protector. Tor eyed both him and the woman’s bow with disfavour as he replied.
Whatever he said did not please. Again I was gestured to, glanced at, more object than individual, and never had I hated my lack of understanding more.
“What does she want?” I asked.
Tor broke off what he was saying. “She wants to know what happened at Mei’lian.”
“Then tell her.”
“But we cannot leave yet. Once they get what they want they will take our horses and kill us if we try to stop them.”
The Kisian woman looked from me to Tor as he spoke, her sharp scowl returning when I said, “Ask if that’s their plan.”
“They will deny it.”
“Just ask.”
Tor did so, and while he spoke, I watched the woman’s face. Her eyes widened only to narrow, lines hardening around her lips. And when she replied the words were curt and she held herself stiff, hands clenched upon her bow.
“She says they will not kill us. She says we can trust her because Kisians live and die by honour, though that is something barbarian mercenaries wouldn’t understand.”
The laugh came unexpected to my lips and shook my whole body, setting off pains in places I had forgotten even existed. And while I chuckled in a way that sounded delirious even to me, the woman’s scowl darkened and she snapped a question at Tor.
Before he could translate, I said, “Tell her no silk-clad city dweller could understand why I am laughing. But I believe they mean us no harm. Tell them what happened.”
Tor was so pleased translating the first part that he didn’t refuse the second, and however much the woman looked like she wanted to poke out my eyes with an arrow, she peppered Tor with questions instead. I could only guess what she asked, could only listen for mentions of Gideon’s name, of the city and the Chiltaen leaders, of myself and my comrades. And Leo. Even as Tor told the story, I relived it. The dead blanketing the streets. The blood. Gideon sitting on the throne with Leo’s broken body tossed like refuse upon the floor. And only I had refused to bow. To kneel. To accept that this was what we had become. Schemers. Killers. Conquerors.
It had been her city. The longer I watched her the more sure of it I became. She was not just a woman deposed from her home, she was an empress deposed from her empire. The bow. The assurance. The man standing deferentially behind her like her guards had upon the battlefield. She needed only a suit of gleaming armour to be the golden dragon once more, to be Empress Miko Ts’ai. And every word Tor spoke, every detail he gave, was a punch to an open wound. Yet there she stood, proud and determined not to break.
Tor seemed oblivious, owning neither enough deference nor enough belligerence for a man who knew the truth. He had changed since Risian, a zealous light now shining in his eyes.
When at last the empress had no more questions, she turned to her companion. No words passed between them, but in that brief look they shared such pain I wished it all undone. This was not our land. Not our home. We had no right to its souls.
The silence stretched, then the empress once more disappeared behind t
he curtain and her companion poked the fire viciously, sending sparks flying. He threw a new log on, and asked a short question of Tor, who answered with a shake of his head. Sure he was moments from renewing the conversation about going home, I set my water cup aside and tested my leg. It ached, every movement pulling at skin stretched too tightly over my flesh. I set my jaw against the pain. Movement was freedom, and as Herd Master Sassanji had often said, only while we were free could we be wise.
Footsteps thudded on the stairs and all three of us tensed, eyes on the door. A Kisian man in a big cloak entered carrying a box, and both Tor and the empress’s companion relaxed. Words were exchanged and the man bowed and went back out.
“Who was that?” I said.
“The man who owns this place. They are calling him the woodcutter.”
“The woodcutter?”
“His job, I think. Chopping wood.”
“For fires? But—?” Even as I began to ask why, I thought of the big Kisian cities where no food or trees could be grown, cities that had to rely entirely on resources from outside. The city states were the same, yet still people chose to live there, crammed inside the walls like so many nuts in a crate.
Empress Miko returned from the curtained-off room. She seemed restless, flitting in and out with short words to her companion and annoyed looks at us.
“Did you thank her for helping me?” I said, drawing Tor’s attention away from the rip in his breeches he was picking at. “She seems annoyed.”
“They were travelling east and worry they are losing time.”
“Tell them I no longer need their care and they can go.”
Tor shook his head. “I don’t think you’re the only reason they’re here. They speak a lot of half-finished sentences, so I cannot be sure, but I think they don’t have anywhere else to go.”
An empress without an empire. How she must hate the very sight of us.
Whatever her feelings toward us, Empress Miko and her companion checked my wound twice before evening fell, neither appearing to find Tor’s continued observation sufficient. He rolled his eyes at this, but seemed to have decided no good would come of aggravating our hosts. They cooked more rice and let me eat as much of the dried meat as I could stomach, and slowly I began to feel a little more alive. Yet pain had settled in my bones. Exhaustion carried me into dozes, but I could not recall what it felt like to exist without the deep ache of torn flesh.