by Grace Draven
Silence greeted her. He’d succumbed to sleep, and Halani was pleased to note that while fever still raged through him, he was no longer as hot as the bread oven Kursak compared him to.
She left him then, switching places with Talen and taking the bowl with her. There was still more willow-bark tea to brew for the stubborn fever, more poultices to mix and bandages to prepare. She and Talen could take shifts watching over Malachus. Someone that badly injured required constant vigilance.
Marata visited her while she brewed another pot of tea and offered a plate piled high with food. “Thought I’d have to fight off those jackals tonight with a club just to save you a crust of bread.”
Her stomach rumbled at the delectable smells wafting from the plate. She took it eagerly, inviting him to sit by her. “Outdid yourself tonight, eh?” she said before eagerly tucking into the supper. He preened at her praise.
They sat together without conversing until Halani had cleared most of her plate, and Marata watched the wagon door as if waiting for his wife to appear. “He still alive in there?”
Halani sopped up a pool of gravy with her hunk of bread. “So far.” She popped the bread into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed before heaping additional praise on Marata’s head. “I could eat a barrel of just your bread and gravy. Did you use some of the spices you bought at the market when we first got here?”
“Aye. The good stuff the Guild was hoarding until now. I can make a horse blanket taste good if I cooked it in some of those spices.” He took over stirring the contents of the pot in front of them, testing the flavor with a quick sip. He shuddered. “Not enough spice in the world to make this swill taste less bitter.”
“I don’t need it to taste good. I just need it to work.” She handed him her empty plate. “He’s swallowed it down so far without complaint. Stay a little longer and you can walk back with Talen. I’ll trade places with her.”
“I’ll bring extra supper for your mother when she comes back from the Savatar camp.” He waved away her thanks, his expression dark. “You know Hamod will blister your ears for bringing another stranger into the camp. He’ll say we don’t need that kind of trouble again.”
And he’d be a hypocrite for saying it. Halani kept the thought to herself. Considering how he’d insisted on obtaining the bone artifact despite her warnings, he was the last person to admonish her about not borrowing trouble. “Uncle Imposing wasn’t with us at the time, and when he arrives I’ll suggest he learn the value of a little kindness and compassion.”
“You always were a softer spirit than your uncle,” Marata said.
Halani snorted. “If you’re implying that softness is a weakness or is the curse of women, I will drown you in this tea.”
He laughed. “You know better. If I believed either of those things, I would never have survived marriage to Talen.”
Talen’s shrill “Halani, come quick! Malachus is on fire!” interrupted their conversation.
“What in the gods . . .” Marata said, hard on Halani’s heels as she raced for the wagon. She leapt up the steps, shoved past Talen, now standing on the threshold, and stumbled to a halt at the scene before her. Malachus wasn’t on fire, but tendrils of smoke rose from him and the bedding. His flesh didn’t burn, not like the cauterization he’d endured under her care, but a charred smell still permeated the interior.
A powerful vibration purled under Halani’s skin, the feeling familiar but much, much stronger than any she’d ever felt when barrow raiding with Hamod. Alarm bells sounded in her skull. She bent to touch Malachus, yanking her hand back with a yelp when her fingers met skin hotter than the surface of the cauldron in which she brewed his tea.
His eyes opened. No longer muddled from sleep or the effects of poison, his gaze once more hinted at something not quite human in its dark depths.
“Get out,” he snarled in a voice made demonic by its sheer malice. Smoke poured from his lips and streamed out his flared nostrils. He jackknifed to a sitting position, unencumbered by his bandaged wounds. The edges of the bandages themselves were charred brown in some spots, and flaking away as black ash in others. Scorch marks striped the blankets he’d lain on.
Halani stumbled back and fell on her backside. She scrambled for distance, scuttling toward the threshold on hands and heels, not daring to look away from the terrifying sight before her.
“Get out!” he bellowed again, sweeping his arm toward her. She was out of range, but Halani still flinched, then screamed when an invisible force punched her backward through the wagon’s doorway. The world tumbled for a moment before she struck the edge of one of the steps and rolled to a stop on the muddy ground.
Chaos erupted around her. Shouts of her name, calls for spears and bows, and one clear, unwavering command that sent panic surging so hard through her, she clawed her way up the two people trying to help her.
“Kill that fucking bastard!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Malachus clutched the frame poles supporting the wagon’s sides and drew himself up to his knees, then to his feet. Smoke swirled off him as the draga thrashed inside its human prison and fought to be let out. He’d awakened it when he tapped into its magic to overpower the poison coursing through his body and save himself from bleeding to death. Halani was wrong in assuming the arrow in his side hadn’t pierced a vital organ. He’d been drowning in his own blood by the time she found him, saved only by the draga’s power and its extraordinary ability to withstand such catastrophic damage. But that power came with a price, and what he was battled to break free from what he pretended to be.
Obligation propelled him toward the wagon’s entrance, despite instinct screeching that outside another kind of death awaited him. These traders had tried to help him. He’d repaid their kindness with a perceived attack on their healer. He didn’t need to burn down their wagon as well.
He careened to the edge, blinded by a red haze that descended over his vision. Halani’s angry command acted as his guide to the wagon’s doorway.
“Put your weapons down, gods damn it! I’m not hurt. Put them down!”
Malachus teetered on the topmost step, staring at a world dyed scarlet and populated by a battalion of angry fighters armed with weapons—all pointed at him.
Halani, splattered in mud, raced toward him. He held up a hand to ward her off. The small motion unbalanced him. He pitched out of the wagon just as the warning thunk of a fired crossbow bolt sounded in his ear. He landed in the mud on his injured side, too weak to cry out when the fall sent spikes of agony through his wounds and made the draga inside him writhe even harder. He welcomed the earth’s cool, wet embrace. It hummed beneath him, a sweet song that quieted the draga by slow degrees. Its song intensified when Halani’s mud-caked shoes filled his vision as she crouched in front of him.
She didn’t touch him, but her eyes held worry instead of fear as she stared at him. “What’s happening to you?”
Malachus closed his eyes. “Cursed,” he lied.
Not so much a curse but a blessing with thorns. A draga mother’s way of protecting her offspring from the predation of humans until they were old enough and powerful enough to do so themselves. But right now, with his insides boiling like lava pools and the draga trying to explode from every pore of his body, it felt like a curse.
“Dear gods,” she breathed in horrified tones. “Who hates you so?”
You do, he thought. Every one of you standing here, ready to kill me now, and I still look like you.
“I told you he was trouble, Halani. You shouldn’t have stopped us.”
“We’re not murderers, Marata. If we killed every person who knocked one of us down, the Empire would be strewn with the bodies we left behind.”
Malachus recognized Marata’s voice. Kill the bastard still echoed inside his head. A man not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. The draga within coiled tightly, becoming more
torpid with the earth’s continuous hymn beguiling it to sleep. “Can you hear her?” he asked.
Halani drew a little closer, still not touching him. It didn’t matter. She smelled of lavender, wet ground, and camp smoke. “Hear who?” Her voice had lost its earlier sharpness.
“The earth,” he murmured, exhausted, hurting. “She’s singing to me. To you.”
Her withdrawal was instant, a cold-water splash against his spirit. Darkness closed in on him, swallowing the veil of sunlight penetrating his shuttered eyelids.
Quiet followed the darkness, with only the wordless tune of the ground beneath him still serenading him and the trader woman.
He awakened hours later, once more reclined on layers of blankets in the provender wagon. Still alive, still whole, and with no additional arrows sticking out of him. The blood in his body no longer simmered and bubbled in his veins, nor did smoke waft off his skin. He shivered under the fresh blankets piled atop him.
Plucking the covers aside, he raised himself on one elbow to inspect his bandages. New bindings swathed his torso and hip. Another wrapped around his shoulder and under his arm. Neatly tied, the bandages showed no bloodstains. Underneath them, his wounds ached but didn’t burn as they had before. He smelled a mixture of astringent herbs and sweet honey, and beneath those scents, the iron tinge of blood and acrid stink of cauterized flesh.
Draga magic could heal the wounds at this point until they were nothing more than scars to add to his existing collection. Malachus dared not tease the beast inside him again. Fortune favored him. By all rights, he should be dead. Only a hymn of earth and the fierce defense of a woman with melancholy gray eyes had saved him. Best to embrace caution and the slow-healing days of his weaker human constitution. No magic, only time and the skill of a free trader healer.
With the single lamp hanging from its high hook as illumination, he had difficulty judging the hour. Malachus peered at the wagon’s entrance. The door was open, allowing a cool draft to sweep in and keep the wagon’s air from becoming stifling. Anemic bars of sunlight slanted across the floorboards and part of the door lintel. If he translated the light’s movement correctly, twilight chased the sun. He’d been unconscious a full night and day at least, unaware of being moved back to the wagon, body bathed, wounds dressed, and bandages changed.
A low rumble in his stomach reminded him he hadn’t eaten since the quick meal of Telkak’s pies. He hoped someone might appear soon with something more substantial than tea.
Footsteps clattered up the treads. A wizened face framed by gray hair appeared in his line of sight—Halani’s mother, Asil. She climbed into the wagon, carrying a cup with steam blowing off its contents’ surface. “You’re awake!” she proclaimed with such cheeriness, it made his awareness seem like a victory. “Hali thought you’d sleep right through to morning. Are you thirsty?” She held up the cup. “Hungry? Do you need to piss?”
Malachus blinked at her, stunned to silence under the bombardment of questions. “It’s good to see you again, Madam Asil. And yes to all three questions.”
His visitor edged closer to him, careful not to spill anything out of the cup. “Hali said you’re to drink this.” She sank to her knees, bringing the cup close enough to Malachus’s nose that he got a good whiff of what it contained. He drew away, upper lip curling. Willow-bark tea, bitter, black, and foul.
“I’m no longer fevered,” he protested when she thrust the cup at him.
She frowned before looking at the cup and then back at him. “She said it was for the fever, but if you don’t have one . . .”
“I don’t.”
“Then you shouldn’t have to drink it.” Her disgust mirrored his. “It tastes horrible anyway.”
Malachus decided he very much liked Asil. Her truths were simple and inarguable. He saw his opportunity to avoid the tea and get a breath of fresh air without being butchered by other free traders in the camp. “I do have to piss,” he said.
Her frown instantly dissolved into a delighted smile. “I’ll help you!”
His eyebrows shot up at her enthusiasm. Good gods, this wasn’t what he intended. She acted like she planned to guide him through every step of the process. “I just need help out of the wagon, madam. That’s all.”
Asil squeezed one of her slim arms. “I’m just Asil, no madam business. I’m also strong. You can lean on me. Stay here. I’ll be right back.” She gained her feet, returned to the doorway, and tossed not only the cup’s contents but the cup as well. She returned, a bright flare of excitement in her eyes, as if helping Malachus navigate the wagon’s narrow confines and steps just to relieve himself was a grand adventure they planned to take together. “Now I have both hands free,” she declared, holding them out to him so he could grasp her fingers and pull himself up.
“Just help me down the steps. I can take care of the rest.” If any of the traders discovered Asil trying to “help” him with more than just a shoulder to lean on so he didn’t fall, they’d kill him for sure and hang his carcass from the nearest tree. And Halani wouldn’t stop them this time.
They made it outside without mishap. Garbed in bandages and a blanket knotted at his uninjured hip to preserve modesty, Malachus imagined himself a ridiculous sight as he descended the steps, leaning as little as possible on Asil’s small but steady frame.
Unlike the previous day, when he’d fallen out of the wagon, no crowds lingered nearby. He heard the activity of the camp, voices conversing or calling commands, the laughter of small children, and the bleats of livestock. The scent of food cooking wafted on the breeze to tease his nose and make his empty stomach growl. But no one saw him and Asil.
The cauterized wound in his side throbbed, as if Halani had not only burned him there but punched him for good measure before binding the wound. The wounds in his chest and hip didn’t trouble him as much but still hurt enough to make him pant as he strained muscles weakened by the tears of a broadhead and the cut of a healer’s knife. He could feel the damaged tissue repairing itself, one strand at a time. Still, credit went to Halani’s skilled surgery and her sweet-smelling poultices for his improved condition.
“How’s this?” Asil indicated a section of dry ground not so treacherous as the slippery sward in front of the wagon steps. Close enough to one of the wagon’s wheels that he could hold on to the spoke for balance, it also provided a small bit of privacy with the addition of a natural screen of rye grass not yet trampled flat.
Malachus straightened away from Asil, exchanging her support for that of the wagon wheel. “I thank you, Asil.” He prayed she’d allow him a solitary moment to appease nature’s demands.
“I like to help people,” she said. “Don’t go anywhere when you’re done. I’ll be right back with Hali.” She slipped away before Malachus could reply, a spry, agile woman with a sweet disposition and a strong back.
Left alone, he adjusted his stance to lean against the wheel so he could wrestle aside the blanket. He was in the middle of restoring his covering when the squish of footsteps in mud alerted him to someone’s approach. He turned to greet his visitor, expecting Asil with her daughter.
Halani had arrived without Asil but not alone. A frown curved the corners of her mouth down as she stared at him. A woman stood next to her, taller than Halani, and leaner, with hair the color of a crow’s wing. She wore her tresses loose over her narrow shoulders, the ends decorated in tiny silver beads. She didn’t frown as Halani did, but there was a severity to her that the trader woman lacked. Halani’s eyes were soft, somber. This woman’s were dark and as hard as the banded iron striping the distant mountains.
He’d known gazes like hers before. Halani’s as well. Halani wore the look of someone who’d witnessed, firsthand, life’s worst cruelties. Her companion wore the look of someone who’d endured them.
“What are you doing?” Disapproval laced Halani’s question, as if she’d caught him with his h
and in the camp’s money stores.
Malachus gestured to his blanket-wrapped body. “Lurking here for the chance to show off my naked, bandaged glory to any passersby. It seems you’re the fortunate one today.”
The woman with the hard eyes snorted, her amusement easing her stiff features enough to reveal hints of beauty. Halani’s scowl dissolved. While she didn’t laugh, her eyes narrowed, and she tightened her lips against a smile.
“I woke up with a bladder ready to burst and a belly trying to gnaw its way through my backbone,” he explained. “Asil helped me here and left again to find you.”
Halani’s smile peeked out from the press of her mouth. “And are you still needing time alone with your bladder?”
He clutched the blanket closer, already fatigued by the short sojourn outside. “No, I’m finished.”
She left her companion to skirt around a mud puddle and draw close to him where he stood on the dry patch of ground. “I’ll help you back to the wagon, then.” She glanced down at his feet, bare and muddy. “And clean you up before you go back inside. Did Asil bring you the tea I brewed?”
His nose wrinkled at the thought of swallowing the nasty brew. “I’m not feverish.”
“You will be if you don’t drink it.”
“Even your mother agrees it’s revolting.” Maybe Asil’s opinion would soften her stance.
“My mother’s opinions regarding my drafts don’t count at the moment.” A sly expression crossed her features when his stomach rumbled long and loud. “Drink the tea, and I’ll bring you something to eat, but not a scrap until you do.”
“Don’t argue with her; you’ll lose.” The black-haired woman winked at Halani before turning her gaze back to Malachus. “I was a patient of hers once. She won’t budge, not in this.”