Karavans

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by Jennifer Roberson


  Chapter 32

  HE WAS NOT, Brodhi knew, truly among enemies, but he supposed the others might consider him one. At the very least they undoubtedly wondered if they could trust him, and for the first time since he had sworn himself into the courier service, he realized that it mattered.

  Dawn had broken, but as yet sunlight did not reach to all the corners of the world. It also did not reach into Mikal’s ale tent even as Brodhi slipped through the entrance flap, so that a pierced-tin lantern upon the plank bar had been lighted. With the oilcloth side panels let down and thus no freshening morning air to dissipate the odors of the night before, those inside shared a musty miasma of strong ale, smoke, lamp oil, of customers in need of washing, the memory of blood.

  One-eyed Mikal, broad and battered. Slight, almost delicate Bethid, ear-hoops glinting. Timmon, blue-eyed and tall, with lank, light brown hair, a long jaw, his bony shoulders threatening the seams of his tunic. And Alorn, curls straying from a damp, cursory taming. Four people, four humans, whose intent was to change the world. Four disparate individuals who wore commitment like a cloak, and were thus identical. A powerful number, four; Brodhi in silence told over the Names he knew in their lesser incarnation: Earth. Air. Water. Fire.

  And me? Perhaps I am the Trickster.

  But surely not. That was Ferize’s role.

  They shared a table and, by the crumb- and crust-laden wooden platter, had broken bread supplied by Mikal from the morning’s first baking, had drunk deeply of new ale. Brodhi knew too little of humans, and even less of these four—despite sharing a common courier tent with three of them now and again—to dare to make assumptions about whatever rites they may have undertaken before his arrival. They all wore cords of dangling charms around their necks—beads, feathers, bones, and other items—representative of their particular beliefs. Brodhi had never been interested in asking his fellow couriers what their beliefs were.

  He wore no such string of charms, and that possibly, in their view, made him more untrustworthy. He did not pray as they did, nor visit diviners, nor invoke his gods in laughter, fear, admiration, or anger. In ordinary days, uneventful days, he was to them a cipher, and all were content to leave it so. But no longer. These days were neither ordinary nor uneventful. Not when four folk met to discuss taking the first tentative steps toward what might become, were they successful, a full-blown rebellion.

  Under their eyes, Brodhi pulled free the heavy brooch of his office, as effective a protection as anything else a man might wear while the Hecari warlord made use of Sancorran couriers, and slipped the mantle from his shoulders. He added it to the pile of other courier mantles, identical in color, in weave, in weight, dropped across the nearest table. The ornate badges had been set upon the table the others inhabited, placed in front of Timmon, Alorn, and Bethid. Bright silver against dark wood. There was not, he noted, a fifth stool pulled up to their table.

  With a faint smile, Brodhi hooked out a stool from a neighboring table and sat down. He did not join them. He put distance between himself and the others so they might take ease in it, stilled his movements, and even schooled his expression into bland neutrality.

  He placed his badge upon his table. Quietly he said, “They will kill every single courier if so much as one breathes word of rebellion.”

  Timmon was affronted. “Who would, of us? We swore oaths. Each of us, even you.”

  Brodhi shrugged lightly. “Those oaths, when weighed against the brutality of the Hecari, mean less than nothing.”

  Timmon and Alorn exchanged startled, outraged glances.

  “Every courier,” Brodhi emphasized. “Not one in ten, intended as a lesson in numbering. All will be killed. The warlord uses us now because his attention is more firmly fixed on subjugating a province, and because it is always easier to leave in place such infrastructure as a courier service, men and women who know the roads and settlements better than he. We are of use to him, so long as we do not upset that infrastructure.”

  Bethid’s eyes narrowed. “Then tell us another way. A better way.”

  “Leave,” he said simply.

  That baffled all, but Bethid found her voice before the others. “Leave?”

  “Leave Sancorra,” Brodhi elucidated. He looked at Mikal. “You as well. Pack up this tent and your supplies, and go across the border. Get out of Sancorra.”

  The one-eyed man was stunned. “You’re suggesting we run away?”

  Brodhi suppressed a sigh of disgusted impatience. “Is it running away to go to a safe place? No. It’s expediency. If all of you persist in believing that you can successfully rebel against the Hecari warlord, you might consider moving across the border to another province.” He paused, noting an array of expressions running the gamut from shock to anger. Invoking extreme patience, he said, “The warlord would not necessarily expect a Sancorran rebellion to germinate in another province. And he is so busy now establishing his hold on Sancorra that he can’t afford to deal with another province … at least not yet. In time he’ll take them all, if he isn’t stopped.”

  “That’s the point,” Bethid said sharply.

  “Of course it’s the point,” he agreed. “In the meantime, consider taking yourselves elsewhere. We are not so far from the Atalandan border, and there is a shortcut.”

  “What, do you mean the road that runs beside Alisanos?” Mikal shook his head. “Only a fool would take it. I realize these three couriers, being but children in their twenties, have no memory of the last time Alisanos moved, but I do.” His mouth jerked. “I was not so very old, but I recall it. For more than a year my family lived in fear that we would all be swallowed up.”

  “And therein lies the choice,” Brodhi said. “Remain here and risk another culling; or go to Atalanda and risk Alisanos.”

  “An ugly choice,” Bethid declared. She flicked a glance at Mikal. “It’s true I wasn’t born the last time Alisanos moved, but I have heard the tales. I find it far safer to stay here in Sancorra, even if the Hecari return with another culling party. We are couriers, Brodhi … that buys us time. Provides opportunity. For now, the warlord doesn’t bother us—but Alisanos might.”

  Brodhi inclined his head in graceful concession; he would not maintain a debate when his points were ignored. “Do as you will.”

  “We would work better from here,” Mikal persisted. “This place exists because people are leaving Sancorra. People who are fleeing one place are not expected to rebel. Only to run.”

  “Do as you will,” Brodhi repeated. “I merely offered an alternative.”

  Bethid’s expression was hard. “Last night, when I spoke of this plan, you told me I was a fool.”

  “No. I said it was a fool’s quest. And so it is.” He let that settle a moment, noting simmering anger, annoyance, and frustration among the others before he continued. “But without fools undertaking such quests, many things in the world would not exist.”

  Timmon’s brows met over the blade of his nose. Straight light-brown hair brushed thin shoulders as he leaned forward. Sharpness shaped his tone, lent intensity to blue eyes. “Be very clear with us, Brodhi—is this some sort of Shoia jest?”

  Brodhi raised his brows. “I think it would be fair to say that among you all I am never inclined to jest.”

  At that, Alorn laughed softly. “Among other things.”

  “The warlord would not expect couriers to be the heart of the matter,” Brodhi continued. “He knows us merely as servants. We own no dwellings or farmsteads, nor the horses we ride—” he gestured, indicating the table with its weight of blue wool, “—nor even the cloaks on our backs. All belongs to the Guildhall in Cardatha. Even all but a few coins are kept for us at the Guildhall, because we are fed on the road by those who hear our news.” He glanced at Mikal, who was nodding in agreement; no courier was required to pay for food or the drink accompanying it, only when he or she drank for pleasure after duty was discharged. “It would be far more likely that couriers might turn rebel if dismissed from
the service and left to fend for themselves. When we are fed, clothed, horsed, and housed at no cost to us?” Brodhi shook his head. “The risk lies not in the warlord suddenly assuming couriers have turned rebel, but in a courier who thinks he—or she—may be well-rewarded for betraying our confidence to the warlord.”

  “So?” Bethid said. “How would you have us begin?”

  “Sow your seed,” Brodhi answered. “As we four have shared a common tent here, you also share courier tents in other settlements. Or in the cities, when we share rooms in the lesser Guildhalls.” He nodded at Bethid. “You said it last night, that we as couriers are in a better position than anyone to learn without prejudice what others across the province feel. But you must not put your trust in a person simply because he or she is a courier. First, you must learn their hearts. Earn their hearts. Any courier may say a thing simply because of the moment, but when put to the question, does he mean what he says? Truly? Enough that he will risk his life? Put your trust only in those whom you know without question would never take money to sell your names to the Hecari.”

  Alorn’s damp hair had dried into its customary wiry, dark curls. “No courier would do such a thing!”

  Brodhi looked at him. “What convinces you that I never would?”

  Bethid frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “You know my name and my race,” Brodhi answered. “Nothing more. Is it enough to convince you, to make you believe in your heart of hearts that, offered something I wanted badly—and, suffice it to say, you have absolutely no idea what I might want so badly—I would not betray you?”

  Timmon’s expression was unsettled as, in deep thought, he repeatedly traced with a fingertip a crude, cross-hatched pattern carved into the tabletop. “I see.”

  “In fact,” Brodhi continued, “as I now know your intentions while you know so little of mine, you would be wise to kill me.”

  Bethid’s tone was exquisitely dry. “How many times?”

  He ignored the pointed sally. “Would you do it? Could you? None of you are killers. I’d wager what fighting skills you have are with words, not knives, not garrotes. Nor even hands naked of weapon. You must be certain—sure that every courier you speak to of your plans will make the same commitment you have, even to being willing to kill one of his own.” Brodhi looked into three troubled faces. “You may argue that you are couriers, and so you are; that you have sworn an oath to the service, and so you have. But that oath binds you always to be truthful with the news you give or receive, to remain neutral and dispassionate, and to carry, word for word, the messages others entrust to us. That is an oath we must honor to remain in the service, and so we do. But is it worth dying for?”

  “We wouldn’t be dying for the service,” Bethid answered. “We’d die for Sancorra. Just like the lord did.”

  “He was a lord,” Brodhi said matter-of-factly, “and it was known from the moment the Hecari crossed over Sancorran borders that, if captured, his life was forfeit. But we are merely couriers carrying word of his death; we are not expected to do more than that.”

  Bethid stared at him a long moment. Then she took up the courier’s brooch she had placed on the table before her, and set it down decisively in the center. “My pledge,” she declared.

  Timmon and Alorn, following her lead, tossed their brooches to clink against hers. Mikal, with a wry hook to his mouth, slipped off his eye patch and dropped it atop the pile of brooches, baring the puckered, twisted lid of his missing eye.

  Brodhi rose then, gathering up his courier’s mantle and brooch; the humans would wish to discuss his words without his presence. “Anyone you doubt, anyone at all, once you have spoken of your intentions, cannot be allowed to live.”

  Alorn’s expression was outraged. “We’re not assassins!”

  “Then would you have yourselves be martyrs?” Brodhi shifted his gaze briefly at Mikal, then at each of his fellow couriers. “This is not what you were meant for, this rebellion. You have not the training that soldiers or mercenaries do, let alone the Hecari. But if you believe it worth the doing, then see it through.” He looked at Alorn. “And remember, when you speak of your plans to another courier, when you commit yourselves to a course that could end in your deaths …it is easier to die than it is to kill.”

  DARMUTH SAID, “YOU can bleed yourself dry, but it changes nothing.”

  Rhuan didn’t question how the demon could have come upon him unaware as he stood behind the wagon, absenting himself from the karavaner’s death rites. Darmuth did that with great regularity, even if no one else could. And at the moment, his body afire with the humming vibration, he doubted he would hear anyone’s arrival. Not a safe thing, but for now there was no surcease.

  “Not to change,” he said tightly. “Delay. Misdirect.”

  “Stop it, Rhuan.” But there was no urgency, no censure in Darmuth’s tone as he leaned a casual shoulder against Jorda’s wagon, bare tattooed arms crossed. Merely resignation. “If you’re not careful you’ll bring down Brodhi on us; you and he renewed the blood-bond, remember? And I suspect he will have far fewer polite words for you than I do when he finds out what you’re trying to do.”

  “This has nothing to do with Brodhi.” But even as he said it, Rhuan knew Darmuth was correct. He flipped his left hand palm up, then curled fingers and thumb into a fist. After a moment the blood stopped flowing. The cut closed. “When they invoke the gods in this kind of ritual, they tempt Alisanos.”

  “A man died. It’s the human thing to do, is it not, to see him across the river?”

  “They’re ignorant of what such rituals can do at this particular time,” Rhuan insisted. “They’re opening the door to an enemy far worse than Hecari warriors.”

  “Yes,” Darmuth said, “but you are not to interfere.”

  Rhuan closed his eyes before the red haze slid across his vision. Blind, he nonetheless still retained a voice—and an opinion. “It’s not your place to command me.”

  “And so I didn’t. I merely reminded you. It is my place to do that. If you like, I’ll remind you again: You are not to interfere.”

  “I’m not.” But an inward wince underscored his awareness that such words sounded childish. “These are innocent people.”

  “So innocent that one of them attempted to rape Ilona.”

  The haze faded. Now Rhuan contemplated his healed hand. “I suspect perhaps he, too, was innocent. Oh, he did indeed attempt to rape her, but it’s entirely possible that Alisanos, as it wakes, is beginning to affect people as it prepares to move elsewhere. That it’s warping how they think.”

  “As it affects and warps any human who winds up in Alisanos.”

  Rhuan nodded. “Exactly.” He cleaned the blade of his knife and returned it to its sheath at his belt. “I have but a few human months left to me. Can’t it wait that long?”

  “Alisanos waking has nothing to do with you,” Darmuth declared flatly. “It’s simply grown bored with its current location after forty years—forty human years—and is taking itself elsewhere.”

  He gritted his teeth. “And it kills people, Darmuth—or, perhaps worse, takes them into itself. Makes them of itself.”

  “It does what it does. Opening your flesh changes nothing. Letting blood changes nothing. Alisanos, for the moment, has no awareness of you whatsoever.”

  Rhuan glared at him.

  Darmuth remained unperturbed. “What you’re feeling isn’t sent to afflict you personally. It’s simply a side-effect of the waking process. As you have told the humans many times, you’re sensitive to such things. So is Brodhi. But to assume you are being specifically targeted is to claim yourself important. To claim yourself worthy of attention.”

  Bitterly, Rhuan said, “And I am neither, is that it?”

  Darmuth laughed. “Oh, very much neither!”

  “And if I go closer? If I accompany the farmerfolk on their journey via shortcut to Atalanda?”

  The demon’s laughter died. “Then you would be as a mouse wa
lking very near the rousing cat. And the cat, upon waking after a forty-year nap, will undoubtedly be hungry.”

  Rhuan stared into the distance a moment, then lifted one shoulder in a slight, lopsided shrug. “I’d be a tough morsel to swallow. Too much gristle.”

  “For Alisanos?” Darmuth’s toothy, gem-sparked grin faded into incredulity. “Rhuan, you can’t seriously be considering this!”

  “I can. I am.” Rhuan met the demon’s pale eyes. His own, with effort, held steady. “You are not the arbiter of the tests I face. You’ve not even been told what is and isn’t related to my journey. How can you know this is not another test? You overstep your bounds to counsel me against accepting the task.”

  “Because too much risk is involved,” Darmuth replied promptly, “and it may be sheer whimsy, not a test. Yes, you may face several options at any given point in time, but this one? I think this option is entirely of your devising, not necessarily a true part of your quest.”

  “You should remain at the settlement,” Rhuan told him abruptly. “This doesn’t require your presence or assistance.”

  “Don’t be childish,” the demon snapped.

  A joyous laugh bubbled up from deep inside. Rhuan gave way to it, mouth falling open, and was pleased to see the concern in Darmuth’s face. It wasn’t often he could so deeply discombobulate the demon, and it gave him intense pleasure.

  “Don’t do this,” Darmuth said. “You have invested too much of yourself … your time here is nearly done.”

  “But you don’t know,” Rhuan said plainly, “that this decision isn’t part of the quest. One of the tests. Do you?” He loosed a lazy grin. “You are, in accordance with the terms of engagement, an observer. Nothing more. You have no insight as to what tests I face.”

  Darmuth’s eyes flickered between the rounded human pupil and the vertical slit of demonhood. For the barest moment, the tracery of a ruddy-colored scale pattern stained the flesh of his throat.

 

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