Karavans

by Jennifer Roberson

  She brushed by him and stepped back onto the footpath, reflecting that perhaps she should not have provoked him, but Brodhi annoyed her. That he felt himself far superior to the Sancorrans had been plain from the first day of his arrival in the tent settlement, having added it to his courier route. She asked Rhuan once why his cousin was so different from him in temperament; Rhuan merely said they had vastly different sires, and that Brodhi had been so since their childhood.

  Ilona shook her head as she strode down the footpath. There were not enough years in a person’s life to waste any of them on bad moods and attitudes.

  BRODHI GRITTED HIS teeth as he watched Ilona march away. He knew her only by sight; he did not trouble himself to share the company of the karavan-masters and their hired diviners. He found himself feeling bested in their exchange, that she had dismissed him rather than the other way around. It was a feeling that left him disgruntled. Annoyed, he turned on his heel to resume walking, then halted abruptly. He had to. Or risk tripping over a child.

  That child looked up and into his face. He saw the rich blue of her eyes, the pale hair and lashes, the clarity of her skin. Human skin. Fragile skin. Brodhi could see her spirit through it.

  In a high, thin voice she asked, “Will you help us?”

  And then others were there: an older boy, an older girl; a boy not much bigger than the smallest child, who had spoken. Four hatchlings, loose without supervision.

  “Go home,” Brodhi said.

  Four very similar faces blazed into the redness of shock and indignation. Well, that was not unusual; his own skin took on varied tones dependent on his mood.

  “Go home please,” the elder girl snapped. “Or is courtesy beneath you?”

  “Ellica,” the oldest boy murmured, though he was no happier. He simply hid it better.

  Courtesy was beneath him. But amusement wasn’t. Brodhi smiled.

  The youngest, the tiny girl, was unperturbed by undercurrents. “Can you help us?”

  “He won’t,” the sister said, no more polite than he. “He’s Hecari. Why should any of them help us?”

  It shocked him into speech. “Hecari! I?”

  The older girl glared. “Well, aren’t you? Who else would be so rude as to give us orders?”

  He glared back. “I am not Hecari.”

  It was now the youngest boy’s turn. “Then what are you?”

  “Torvic, hush.” The older boy, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, reached down to gather the little girl into his arms and settle her on his hip in practiced motions. “Come. We’ll find someone else.”

  But they had, against his will, managed to intrigue him. Before they could leave, he asked, “Why do you need help? And where are your parents?”

  “Our da is at the karavan grounds,” the older boy answered.

  “And our mam,” the girl—Ellica?—interjected, “is the one who needs help. There’s a moonsick man who won’t leave her alone.”

  Brodhi’s curiosity evaporated. “Well, then go find a moonmother. She’ll look after him.”

  “And what about our mam?” the youngest boy demanded. “What if he hurts her?”

  “Why should he harm her?”

  The littlest girl, tucked into her brother’s arms, declared, “He’s a demon.”

  Brodhi’s brows rose. “Oh, now he’s a demon? First he’s moonsick, now he’s a demon? And I am Hecari?” He looked down his nose at all of them. “Such judges of others as this should be trusted to know the truth?”

  The small one stared piercingly at him. “You’re mean.”

  “Megritte!” The oldest boy turned a shoulder even as the elder sister stepped between them, as if to defend her kin.

  Brodhi said, laughing, “That much at least is true,” and went on his way.

  The whims and entertainments of human children were beyond his comprehension. This clutch was new in town; likely one of the resident children had set them on him. It was one of their favorite tricks.

  Unfair, he thought in passing, to use the innocence of the youngest in such tiresome games as this.

  AUDRUN, HER SPINE set against the sideboards and hands flattened on the wood, could smell the stink of the stranger, could mark the yellowing of broken teeth bared between blackened lips. His eyes were brown, the whites veined with blood. Grime compacted in the seams of his face.

  “You have a wagon,” he blurted hoarsely. “Oh, Mother of Moons … will you take me there?”

  He didn’t sound moonsick. Just weary. Audrun, now that her children were safe among the tents, dropped one hand to shield a belly not yet showing much of the unborn infant. Stiffly, she moved along the wagon, hitching now and again on implements roped to the sideboards, to the rump of the nearest ox, who was patently unconcerned with filthy, stinking strangers. She eased her way farther until she felt the yoke.

  The man followed, wavering on his feet. Ill, or drunk, or moonsick. Perhaps all three. “Will you take me there?”

  Nervously she asked, “Take you where?”

  Such a radiance of hope and longing she had never seen in a face. In that moment she was not afraid of him, but stunned.

  “Home,” he rasped.

  Now she stood at the ox’s head. They could not afford to lose the wagon, did not dare let this man somehow take from them all they had left in the world. Her children were safe. Now she must guard the wagon. “I don’t know where your home is.”

  His outstretched hands trembled. “Alisanos.”

  Audrun recoiled so hard she fetched up against the ox. She was vaguely aware of the warm bovine breath issuing from broad, moist nostrils, the butt of a heavy head as it pushed against her spine.

  “Alisanos,” the man repeated. “Please … will you take me home?”

  No one in the world wished to go to Alisanos. Unworthy folk were sent there by the gods to be punished, but no one willingly went into the deepwood. Only—

  Then she saw the hands he extended, and the breath left her lungs in a rush.

  “Home,” he whispered, as Audrun’s concentration split into tripart strands of frenzied thought.

  She gripped the amulet around her neck and prayed every prayer, made every petition she had ever prayed and made to the gods, relying on them now; saw in her mind’s eye where the wagon was in relation to the nearest of the tents; realized she and her husband would have to consult diviners as soon as was humanly possible, paying exorbitant fees, lest the taint of the stranger’s madness stain them forever and make them unworthy to cross the river into a safe and happy afterlife.

  The three portions of her mind braided themselves abruptly into a tight plait of certainty. The gods would protect her and her children against the condemned soul. They were worthy.

  Emboldened by faith, Audrun tangled nimble, unwavering fingers in a series of warding signs. “Go away.”

  The man, weeping, turned from her. Audrun watched as he made his staggering way back into the tent-city. Where she had sent her children.

  Time to fetch them back. But Audrun waited until the stranger was lost to sight amid the tents. Then she gathered up her skirts and ran, avoiding his path as she made her own.

  HEZRIAH THE BONEDEALER, bent over his stone “anvil,” looked up sharply as the sun-rotted door flap was yanked aside so violently the oilcloth tore. His mouth sprang open to remonstrate, then clamped itself closed. He found himself on his feet, hammer clutched in his hand, with no memory of rising. The nape of his neck prickled as he saw the beads, the braids, the face.

  “I beg your pardon,” the Shoia said formally, making a vague and imperfect attempt to sort out the ruined tent flap. Then he turned his full attention on Hezriah, who felt his mouth go dry. Only this morning the bonedealer had been hoping someone would kill Rhuan. And now here he was. Alive. And presumably uninterested in dying. “Bones,” Rhuan said calmly. “Shoia bones. I understand you’re selling them.”

  Hezriah had never actually spoken to Rhuan before, though certainly he had spoken about him. Everyo
ne did. “N-no.”

  “No?”

  He managed it more definitively. “No. I’m not.” Hezriah was aware of the hammer’s weight dragging at his shoulder. He closed a hand around the string of amulets hanging about his neck. “What would you have me swear on?”

  Rhuan smiled, ignoring the multitude of protective amulets. “Your life?”

  “I’ve never sold Shoia bones.” He would, had he any, but he told the truth. He had sold no Shoia bones.

  Rhuan continued to smile. “Have you sold any bones as Shoia bones?”

  “That’s deceitful!” Hezriah gasped.

  Rhuan gazed at him in the closest thing to amazement Hezriah had ever expected to see in the alien face.

  “That’s unethical,” the bonedealer went on. “I am an honest man making an honest living. Ask anyone.”

  The Shoia’s brows hitched themselves higher. “Anyone?”

  “Well, not Eccul. Eccul will lie. Eccul has no ethics. Eccul would sell Shoia bones, or bones as Shoia even if they’re not.”

  “Eccul would.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s Eccul?”

  “Eccul is—” But Hezriah did not finish. He caught the glint of a knife in Rhuan’s hand as he spun in place, braids flying. It seemed to the bonedealer that the Shoia somehow melted into position, confronting the man who came flailing through oilcloth, tearing down the remains of the tent flap. Startled into response, Hezriah swung up his stone hammer.

  The arrival, in soiled, crusted clothing, wavered on his feet in Hezriah’s damaged tent. Blackened lips parted the matted nest of his beard. “If I sell you some bones,” he rasped, “will you take me to Alisanos?”

  Hezriah gaped. He clenched the haft of the stone hammer even harder, but it dropped to his side. Rhuan seemed startled, murmuring briefly to himself in a language the bonedealer didn’t know.

  What Rhuan muttered then sounded very like a curse.

  The stranger’s bleary eyes fixed on the Shoia. His face turned a sickly shade of green beneath the film of grime. “You,” he blurted. More quietly, in startled disbelief, he repeated, “You.” Then cried out an eerie, descending note of anguish and denial. Of ending. Of grief.

  The collapse was slow. Disjointed. As if the bones within his flesh failed piece by piece. He fell forward heavily, face down. Hezriah, shocked to utter silence, heard the dull, wet crunch of the skull as it smashed itself against the stone block.

  Hezriah, dropping his hammer, heard also the rasp of breath through his own constricted throat. He was sick with shock and fear. A dead man lay in his tent. But worse … the man’s murderer stood right before him. Looking at him.

  “You.” Hezriah unintentionally echoed the dead man. His lips felt stiff as other words he meant not to say came forth from his mouth regardless. “You killed him.”

  The Shoia blinked in unfeigned surprise. With ostentatious resignation, Rhuan displayed his knife. “Do you see any blood?”

  Hezriah knew he was likely dead anyway, after what he had witnessed. “Spells.” He licked his lips, closed a hand around the amulets at his throat. He spoke because he could. Because he needed to, in the face of such disaster. “You killed him with a spell.”

  “I don’t do spells.”

  “You’re Shoia.”

  “I don’t do spells.” Rhuan scowled, parsing out his words with infinite care and emphasis. “I don’t do spells.”

  Hezriah couldn’t believe he had the courage to speak so bluntly to a man who had just committed murder. Without, apparently, getting any blood on his knife. “He looked at you. He recognized you. And you killed him.”

  “He died,” Rhuan emphasized; and there was a vast difference. “Why would I kill this man? … Except perhaps to rid the world of a truly disgusting stench.” He waved a hand before his face. “That is remarkably foul.”

  Hezriah had not thought before in terms of Rhuan reacting like a normal man to such things as bad odors. Or that he, who had just murdered a man with unseen spells—perhaps he had merely wished it; who knew what Shoia could do?—could speak as if he intended no harm to the human witness.

  The bonedealer glanced down at the body. He stared, stared harder, and felt sickness again in his belly, renewed prickling on his neck. “His hands.”

  “His hands?”

  “They aren’t. Hands.” Hezriah pointed, trembling. “Look.”

  Rhuan looked. He frowned. Then knelt and peeled back the filth-encrusted tunic sleeves, unveiling forearm as well as fingers. Which weren’t fingers at all, but claws, thick, long, black claws twisted back against wrists clearly scaled, not fleshed. Scaled a sickly purple-green. “This is the man Dardannus mentioned.”

  “Alisani,” Hezriah breathed. Naming the dead. The demon.

  Rhuan looked up. “Now do you believe me?”

  Jerkily, he nodded. Maybe he wouldn’t die after all. Rhuan had not killed this thing, and thus Hezriah had witnessed no murder. Merely a demon’s death.

  Or the death of a man who had been born human, but had been altered by the deepwood.

  No one killed such folk. Not even Rhuan, Hezriah believed, no matter what anyone said about him. Because then you acquired the dead’s damnation. You were banished to the deepwood, never allowed to cross the river when you died, to become like—this. Hezriah felt sicker than ever. He wanted ale. He wanted to leave. He wanted to leave to find ale; or perhaps something even stronger.

  Rhuan, still kneeling, rubbed absently at his brow with the carved butt of his horn-handled knife. “Best go get Kendic.” He sounded regretful as any human. “I’ll stay here with the body.”

  Hezriah nodded stiffly. Kendic would want to know. Kendic was head of the Watch, such as existed.

  “Now,” the Shoia suggested pointedly. “Or do you want this poor dead fool to remain here all day, stinking up your tent?”

  Hezriah did not. He went.

  Chapter 5

  GRANDMOTHER MOON LAY in wait for the sun to dip beneath the horizon, surrendering day to night. The west was ablaze. Ilona, squinting against the brilliance, ducked beneath pierced-tin lanterns dangling from the carved, curving ribs supporting the domed oilcoth covering of her wagon sitting amid the karavan grove not far from the ocean of tents. She had taken up the rugs, beaten them, and was sweeping out the painted floorboards when a shadow fell across her line of vision.

  She glanced up: a man. Tall, thick in the shoulders, yellow of hair and beard, blue of eyes. Ilona read him at once even without seeing his hand, merely by marking the set of his shoulders and the tension in his face.

  Standing at the top of the folding steps, clutching her broom, she opened her mouth to give him the ritual greeting of a hand-reader. Then realized that was not his goal. “Yes?” Ilona, like anyone else, had to rely on verbal answers in such things as were unconnected to the rite of divination.

  Even his tone reflected weariness. “I have tried all of the karavans, asked all of the masters. None of them will take us. Someone sent me here … but your master also says there is no room.” Belatedly, color staining his face, he added, “My name is Davyn.”

  “Ilona. Hand-reader, though that you know from the glyphs.” She gestured briefly, indicating intricate symbols painted onto oilcloth and plank sideboards as the faintest of sunset breezes stirred charms and chiming bells suspended from the roof-ribs over her head. Regret pinched. “It’s growing late in the season,” she explained, as if it would matter. “Most of the karavans have gone on already. Now those folk who were late to decide all wish to leave at once.” She reflected the last was not particularly tactful; likely he had been late to decide as well. But when left to herself as a woman, not a hand-reader, her tact often departed.

  He nodded, seemingly unoffended. “Is it—is it me?” He lifted a broad hand and displayed his calloused palm. “Something here?”

  “Ah, no.” She blurted it without thought, looking away at once from the hand; brushing her head, charms rattled, bells chimed. Ilona had
learned there was often pain from seeing only portions of the truth. Either she did a full reading, or she did none.

  But he took it badly, color peeling away. “Is it so terrible?”

  Ilona turned back sharply, attempting to rectify what she had begun so badly. “No! Oh, no—I’m sorry. That isn’t what I meant. Please …” She glanced aside, then made a warding gesture. “Turn your hand away. If you wish a reading, certainly I will do one. But I dare not even see you sideways.”

  That baffled him. “Sideways?”

  Ilona set aside her broom. It was difficult explaining to those who were not gifted with the art. “If you see a man sideways, you know very little about him. Yet you may judge him by what you see, and judge him wrongly. Therefore to be certain of who and what he is, you should see all of him.” She paused, looking into his tired face for comprehension. “Would you buy a horse without looking at its teeth?”

  “Ah.” That he understood; she saw the faint smile. It altered him tremendously. There was some handsomeness in him, beneath the worry and weariness. “I have a family. Four children, and my wife is to bear another. We have decided to go overmountain to her grandmother’s land in Atalanda province. Yes, we decided late—I decided late—but should we be punished for it?”

  That, too, pinched. “It isn’t punishment,” Ilona told him honestly. “It just is.” She knew that was no help—once more her tongue failed her outside of a reading—and tried yet again. “It isn’t required that you join a karavan. If the road is well-traveled—”

  But his face had gone white. His mouth was taut. “Too close.” He clipped his words. “Too close to the—borderlands.”

  Ah. That, she understood. No, they dared not go on their own; and only one road went so close to the borderlands. It was folly to risk Alisanos alone, lacking the protection gained by sheer numbers and the presence of Jorda’s three diviners.

  Ilona drew in a breath. To break the moment, to change the tone, she sat herself down on the doorstep of the wagon, arranging the split tails of the knee-length leather tabard worn over baggy, summerweight trousers. She rested feet in scuffed boots upon the next to last wide rung, asking with carefully calibrated inquiry, “Might you go elsewhere?”