"What did you kill?" Kieran whispered.
"A deer," Ash answered just as quietly.
"I dreamed you killed a ghost." Then, a little while later, "I trust you, Ashes. Did I say that before? I think I really trust you."
Ash couldn't answer. Could only squeeze his eyes shut and bite his lip, hoping Kieran wouldn't see he'd been crying. He was afraid evidence of his weakness might cause that statement to be retracted, and he couldn't have borne it.
"I don't trust those people at all," Kieran went on in the same phlegmy whisper. "Let's get out of here. Let's ditch them, okay?"
"You need rest," Ash murmured.
"I won't get it with them around. I want to leave."
Ash nodded slightly, knowing Kieran would feel it if he couldn't see it.
"Do you... like the desert, Ash? Do you think you could stand living out here for a while? Not in this --" The beginning of a cough, swallowed down. "Not here. A better place I know about. It's...
pretty lonely. I should warn you."
Swallowing down the lump in his throat, Ash managed to keep the quaver out of his voice.
"We'd have each other to talk to, right?"
"Right. So tell me. Yes or no."
"Yes. Of course yes. I'd live on the moon, if that's where you are." He could no longer hold his weeping in check. Kieran's hand tightened on the nape of his neck, then slid down to his shaking shoulder.
"Why are you crying, Ashes?"
"I'm scared. I'm tired."
"One of us hurting is enough, edeime, you don't have to hurt with me. Can't you see -- feel -- kii aveh, you're the blood that my heart beats, you're in my veins. Yena ma kii aveh. Please don't cry." Kieran's voice was failing, barely audible, and his hand slid weakly down Ash's arm.
Tangled in his hair; tugged at a curl, a sad mockery of playfulness. They were both exhausted, no longer able to protect each other, and Ash was terrified.
He reached out with his mind, groping with his empathic sense at the frustrating divide between himself and Kieran, the distance which made them separate. It seemed impossible to breach at first -- then suddenly his mind relaxed into the right shape, and warmth came welling up, concern, love, weary joy at the simple fact of his presence. Feelings enough like his own that they might have been hard to distinguish, but he had learned the flavor of Kieran's emotions now, the particular cornered hopefulness of them. There was a haven of kindness in the world after all. Just a little one. Just Kieran-sized. Not enough light to find his way, perhaps, but enough that he knew he wasn't blind. Not enough to solve any problems, but enough to remind him why he couldn't give up trying.
"I'm done crying now," Ash promised. "I'll be stronger in the morning."
"Come sleep, then. I'm cold."
Ash took his boots off and eased under the blanket. He couldn't put his head on Kieran's shoulder, because weight on the uninjured one would pull at the injured one, but he could curl up with his arm draped over Kieran's waist. "Warmer?"
"Yeah. Thanks." A gurgle of a laugh. "You know it's going to give that priest the screaming creepies, that we sleep like this."
"Who cares what he thinks?"
"Well, I never cared what anyone thought, but I didn't know if you might."
"Nope."
"Good." A long sigh, and Kieran was asleep.
Ash lay awake a little longer, listening to the sounds of the priest and Miyan working by lamplight outside. Feeling his heart swell up until it threatened to choke him. I love you, he thought at Kieran, you have to fight this off and get well, because if you die the whole world will end. He knew that in theory people survived grief and were even happy later, but somehow couldn't believe it would apply to him. If he lost Kieran, his heart would simply stop; he was certain of it.
When he slept, he dreamed a barren wasteland of sun and stone with a tiny pool of water at the center. Beside the water, he had built a little box and was growing a flower in it. He kept telling Kieran to wait a few minutes longer for his birthday present, the flower would bloom any moment. But Kieran got impatient and walked away, and no matter how Ash ran, he couldn't catch up.
--==*==--
Pain and distress woke him; he panicked for a moment when he found the blankets empty, his mind full of the agony that spiked in time with the sound of coughing from outside. As he scrambled up to go to Kieran's rescue, though, the sensation grew less acute, and the distress faded to mere disgust, punctuated by a spitting noise.
He went out into light so near the color he'd last left that only the sharp cold told him it was just before dawn instead of just after sunset. Kieran was leaning on the edge of the stone porch, taking shallow breaths.
Ash sensed his annoyance, and decided it would be a bad idea to be too solicitous. "Want a hand there?"
"Yeah, with my pants." Kieran backed away from the edge; he was holding his fly closed again.
"Damn embarrassing. Don't step in the spit, I just hocked up something that looks like a raw egg."
"Charming." Ash hopped down next to him and did up his trousers for him. "It's generally considered impolite to describe what you spit up."
"Yeah, but this one's so interesting. I think I'll name it, and drag it around on a leash."
Grinning despite himself, Ash tested Kieran's forehead, found it sweaty and warm instead of dry and burning. "You sound like you're feeling better."
"Yeah. A lot. So I'm thinking we should just go. Before they wake up."
"Oh." Ash frowned. "That seems a bit dishonest."
"We didn't promise to babysit them."
"True, but... all right, but we'll only take one of the horses, and leave them most of the deer. And some of the other supplies. I promised Miyan one of the rifles."
"Fine, whatever." Kieran's hand closed hard around Ash's arm, and his look was as close to pleading as he ever got. "I just want to get away from them."
Puzzled, Ash nodded. "What's wrong, what's bothering you so much? You seem really --"
"I heard them talking, when you went out yesterday. That priest was telling his innocent little girl all about the various tortures and punishments that God has planned for 'perverts and sodomites'
both on earth and in Hell. Really filthy stuff -- red-hot iron up the ass kind of stuff. And she was just listening and nodding, like none of it mattered to her." He paused to breathe, looked as if he might cough but managed not to. "And then you came in and you were like clean air all of a sudden, and I just want to go, all right? Things will never be simple with people like that around."
Ash couldn't refuse him. "Let's go where things are simpler."
As quietly as he could, he brought the packs outside and sorted them. He took all the food that he and Kieran had brought with them, except for the canned goods and the can opener. In exchange, he took a bag of raisins, which he thought was a fair trade. He took the notepad and pencils he'd grabbed from the priest's private room, but left the coded journal. Kept one of the two kitchen knives they'd brought from the mission, left one of the rifles and a handful of ammunition. He carved a flank from the deer hanging up outside and rolled it in salt in the bloodstained tarp, packed up saddlebags and backpack and bedroll, filled canteens and divided the remaining horse feed. While he worked, Kieran watched him with silent interest, slightly smiling.
He chose the mare as he'd done for the past few days, because her sturdier frame was better able to stand their riding double. He didn't mount behind Kieran yet, though, wanting to spare the animal's strength as long as Kieran was able to ride without help. The gelding whickered plaintively as they left him behind.
Kieran directed him by a meandering route that had a general westward trend, and was never straight or level. As the sun climbed higher, as they crept across the pale-yellow hugeness of the desert, Ash began to feel free in a way he never had before. It was a little frightening, this freedom, knowing in his bones that no one could judge him or change him. Not even the tiniest pretense could survive out here, in this emptin
ess. He was only himself. Kieran was only Kieran.
The sky was emptier than he'd ever seen it.
They talked a little, from time to time, about small things. Ash talked more than Kieran did.
Kieran would ask a question, then sit back and listen while Ash babbled. He said he liked listening. Contentment radiated from him; tainted though it was with pain and the constant current of wary anger that always ran beneath the surface of Kieran's mind, it was nevertheless a good feeling. And for all his worry and weariness, Ash was filled with quiet joy to know that Kieran was happier for his presence.
They saw no sign of pursuit, nor in fact any indication that human beings had been here within the past thousand years. Kieran sometimes pointed out small carvings on solitary stones, sigils so weathered that Ash would not have known they were made by human hands unless Kieran had told him so.
Several times during the day they halted to rest. Though Kieran was more alert than he had been most of the time since he'd been shot, he was nevertheless bone-tired and hurting. They found water mid-afternoon, just a seep where Ash had to dig for it; Ash had Kieran drink off all that was left in their canteens, then took his time filling them again. Kieran took a nap while he did this. Insects shrilled and rustled, a wandering breeze stirred the dust along the ground without raising it into the air, and overhead an eagle circled on an updraft as if it were out for pleasure rather than business. Ash let Kieran sleep for about an hour; watched over him, listened to the thick sound of his breathing, thought kisses at his pain-pinched face but did not touch him. Then they moved on, to where the hillsides grew rockier and steeper, more often cut to the bone by wind and water, and at last became canyonlands indistinguishable from the others they'd walked or ridden through in the past days.
Kieran was able to dismount without help when they stopped for the night. He even helped a little with the cooking, stirring the pot of venison stew so it wouldn't burn while Ash took care of everything else. Ash fried thick slabs of flatbread, and dusted them with sugar this time, contrary to custom. Kieran protested the weirdness of putting sugar on flatbread, but ate five pieces anyway.
When it came time to change the bandage, he helped, using his good arm to ease the injured one out of the sling, holding it carefully in his lap. His chest looked lopsided. Ash worried about how to get the pad of gauze unstuck from the wound, but when he undid the strips of stronger fabric that held the pad in place, the stained square of bandaging fell off into his hand. It was so wet it felt heavy, and he nearly dropped it in disgust. The stain was brown at the edges and pale at the center, and it smelled. Not like rotting meat, thank god, but still not pleasant.
Kieran's shoulders were uneven. The left one showed clearly the angular structure of bone and muscle that Ash found so delicious; the right was smoothly swollen, all shape drowned in a fatness of engorged flesh. The wrongness of the sight made him want to gag. Something watery was leaking out around the stitches.
"That's pretty damn disgusting," Kieran said mildly.
"It's... it's part of the healing process."
"Don't bullshit me. I might not be an empath, but I can see the look on your face."
Ash sighed. "Okay. Yeah. I guess I know better than to try to tell you pretty lies. It's obviously seriously infected, and the infection's gotten into your lungs. You should be in a nice clean hospital bed somewhere, not riding all day and sleeping on the ground at night."
"Huh. They don't let folks my color into nice clean hospitals."
"They do in Prandhar."
"How'd you plan on getting there? Fly?"
"Wish really hard, maybe," Ash returned, forcing a wry smile. "Let's get this cleaned up. You're the toughest person I've ever heard of, let alone met, and if anyone can fight this off it's you."
Kieran started to say something, coughed, spat a mottled brownish string into the dust. "Damn straight," he croaked, but with his head lolling back and his eyes narrow in pain.
Ash had boiled a pan of water before starting, and now he dipped a cloth in the pan and started dabbing away the crusted pus that had been under the bandage. Father Ilder's neat stitches had all held; the priest had known better than to pull them too tight, so the swelling hadn't forced them.
But the bullet's entry hole was a ragged star shape, and the exit wound above Kieran's shoulderblade was a rough half-moon as long as Ash's palm, hard to heal. If the bone hadn't deflected it upwards, the bullet would have torn a plum-sized hole on its way out. Ash had seen what the same caliber did to the deer's neck.
Thinking about that led by a meandering path to the more general thought of Watch weaponry, and thence to other things they could do, and from there to the idea of pattern-magic, the closely guarded secrets of ritual thaumaturgy that only government-sanctioned mages were allowed to know. Ash had once proposed, in one of his rare face-to-face meetings with a Resistance contact, that they gather what they could of thaumaturgic secrets and disseminate them as widely as possible. Even a list of which superstitions and kitchen-spells seemed to work the best would be a blow against the government monopoly, if it was spread widely enough. The contact had admitted that it would be a good idea, except that no one had been able to get hold of one book, one single page from any Watch collegium in the Commonwealth.
As for foreign material, there was a certain quantity of the stuff which could potentially be translated, though smuggling it into the country was difficult work. And it was primitive, for the most part, relying more on Talents than on pattern. Only in the Commonwealth had magic been advanced to a science. Ash's contact had also suspected the Theocracy of planting agents in foreign countries to disseminate misinformation, write books and articles that clouded the subject and advanced plausible but incorrect theories. None of it was reliable.
Now he found himself wondering how any of that could possibly matter. Magic was all sense and force; he knew this when he could feel it working. How could there possibly be a finite set of words and pictures and gestures that worked, among an infinite stretch of possibilities? Someone who really understood the way energy flowed should be able to make up his own ritual.
He set the pan back on the fire and dropped the bandage in to boil. Then he got his rifle and ejected the magazine. It took a moment to find the catch that released it; it was in a different place from the one on a hunting rifle, and the magazine was rectangular, hidden in the stock.
"Lockeart bolt-action repeater," Kieran creaked, sounding dazed. "Always wanted one of those.
Army issue. Only way to get it's off a dead soldier."
"Or a dead Watchman," Ash said while he thumbed a round out of the open-sided clip.
"One of those rifles is mine, right?"
"Of course."
"Who you gonna shoot? Not time to put me out of my misery yet."
Having put the magazine back in, now two rounds short of its load of six, Ash set the rifle aside.
"I just wanted a bullet. Look at the size of this bastard. Can you believe one of these actually went through you?" He held up the thing where Kieran could see it, fully two inches long and pointier than an ordinary bullet, its brass casing stamped with the letters ECT-LS in tiny print.
Eskarne Theocratic Commonwealth, Long Standard. Ash started combing the dust around him for a likely-looking rock.
"Whatcha doing?"
"Something stupid, probably."
"I said that to you once. Remember? Got my head kicked in."
"Different kind of stupid." Finding a pebble with the right kind of surface, Ash bent to filing the letters off the casing.
Kieran watched him for a while, then let his head sink back, smiling a little. "You're a weird kid."
"Ever heard of having a bullet with your name on it?"
"Yeah, so?"
"I got to wondering if anybody ever really did that. I mean, when they set out to hunt somebody, did anyone ever actually scratch that person's name into the bullet?"
"I never did." He coughed, sat up halfway to
spit. "Wish you'd picked up the one that got me.
Now that would be chalhia."
"Translation?"
"Lucky metal. It's usually a coin -- something you had in your pocket on a day when everything went right, drill a hole in it and hang it around your neck. I got shot point blank with -- what is that, forty-six cal? And I'm still breathing, and the fucker who shot me isn't. I call that lucky."
"Well, it looks like we're thinking in tandem this evening. Because lucky metal is exactly what I'm making here. I hope. To tell the truth I have no idea what I'm doing, but I've begun to suspect that no one else does either." He thumbed dust off the bullet, held it up to the light, and nodded.
Then he got the knife from his pack.
"Wait." Kieran raised himself on his elbow. "You gonna draw on it? Draw this." He smoothed the ground beside him, then doodled a simple little design, a chevron shape with a dot in it.
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