“We haven’t passed a tree in two days, standing or naught,” Roy said. “Just hours upon hours of intense sun scorching our skin to bits.
Harvey found himself grateful for the tarp that provided his face with some much-needed shade. Even so, sweat poured down his face in torrents.
“Gnochi’s been saying it: winteryear will be upon us,” Boli said. “Doesn’t surprise me that people are cutting down trees. Their firewood has to last until the first caravans of winterbush arrive.” She lifted the hat from her head and wiped the sweat from her brow with her sleeve.
“I still say we have another year at least,” Roy said, urging his horse forward in a light gallop as if to create his own breeze. The horse reared up on its hind legs and almost threw him from his seat. “Whoa, Debs. Easy, easy.”
“What’s the matter with him?” she asked.
“He doesn’t like shifty ground. Sand, ash, water. Whoever cut these forests down burned whatever was left.”
“That’s only going to expand the desert even further,” she said, leaning forward in her saddle as if melting.
Harvey felt his skin tingle, curling like kindling at the thought of more time spent in the parched land. “I see Urtin,” he shouted from atop Typhus. Both Cleo and Roy stood in their stirrups but were unable to see over the hill blocking the city adorning the foot of the mountain.
“Can I come up on Typhus to see?” Roy asked.
“What? No elephanteer jokes to make, Roy?” Harvey asked.
After a moment, Roy answered, “No.”
Harvey made a show of thinking long over the question, then he said: “No, I wouldn’t want Typhus to knock you off. He’s not too fond of new riders. Besides, it’ll be visible once you get to the apex of the hill.”
A boy came running up from the front of the caravan. “Orders from the top,” he said. “We are stopping and camping after the crest of the hill and breaking for the day.” A few of the other riders who heard the boy’s announcement let out a breath of exhaustion. Since General had joined the menagerie, he had been pushing the troupe nearly twice as hard as Dorothea. The boy huffed before taking off at a run for another group in the caravan.
“Well,” Boli said, adjusting her hand on the reins, “I’d better go let Gnochi know.”
“Be careful around him. He’s been snippy lately,” Roy said, chuckling.
“His livelihood has been halted,” Harvey said, descending from Typhus’s back. “I don’t blame him for being a little miffed. Plus, everyone has been breathing hot coals since General has been snooping around.”
“He’s alright,” Boli said, defending her master. “He just needs to be cheered up.”
“I can think of a few ways that you can cheer him up,” Roy said, grinning.
“What?” She asked. Harvey spied her hand gravitating to her staff.
“Ignore him,” Harvey said. “Roy, don’t you have some swords to be sharpening?”
◆◆◆
Cleo allowed the caravan to amble past. When their shared wagon bumbled by, she dismounted Perogie, tying the mare to ensure she would keep pace. Fester, also tethered to the wagon, gave her an acknowledging nod.
She entered her cabin and was shocked by what she saw. Gnochi stooped over the wooden table with one arm propped at the elbow. His back stretched facing to the door as though it awaited sacrifice. With his shirt off and no leather armor equipped, Cleo was able to see for the first time, how emaciated he had become. Sweat poured down his sickly pale back. His breathing sounded faint but stung as though it blew from a shrill whistle. With each labored wheeze, his gaunt rib bones creaked apart under the pressure of his lungs and stretched the skin tighter.
On the table sat a bowl filled with a cream-colored gelatinous paste. His free hand had fingered a wad of the paste and was applying it with shoddy accuracy when Cleo entered. His leg seemed to quiver under his feathered touch. He hissed out a moan of pain.
“Gnochi?” Cleo whispered. He spun around quickly, a smile overlapping a grimace.
“Hey there, Pippa! How’s my favorite niece?” Cleo felt her heart seize. His voice sounded oddly distant. His lips quivered and his glossy eyes looked at her as though he was seeing through her.
“Gnochi, it’s me, Cleo. Are you all right? Do you need anything? Want me to fetch you some cool water or food?” Her eyes fell to the un-bandaged leg, its bruised color quite opposite to the paleness of his back. A white puss oozed from between the stitches and the wound stank of heat and sweat. Trenches of cream dragged around the wound with poor accuracy. The heat from his skin had melted the cream. It dripped down his knee.
“No, no, Pips. Go tell your mother that I’m fine. I need to sleep this off a bit.”
Cleo backed to the door and eased herself out of it. She pushed it shut and leaned her head back against its wooden surface. Perogie looked up. The mare angled her head and flared out her nostrils giving a pained expression. Without further thought, Cleo dismounted the steps and took off for the elephant and his rider. She scoured the caravan, walking up and down its ranks three times before she stopped and asked Roy where Harvey had gone.
“He’s off,” Roy answered.
“What do you mean? Where is he off to?”
“I mean, he was sent off on a job with a dozen others. They travelled ahead to Urtin to see if any of our sleeper soldiers remained un-activated.” Roy then glanced around to see if he had been overheard as though he had said too much.
“He’ll be back tomorrow?”
“Yes, he’ll meet up with us at camp. Why? Is everything alright?” Roy asked.
“Just tell Harvey that I need to see him as soon as he gets back in,” she commanded, then retreated to her wagon.
Chapter 32
Cleo awoke from a nap she did not remember sitting down to take. Hearing a din of voices surrounding her wagon, she exited, walking out to a bustle of people she didn’t recognize from the staff. The midday sun scorched bright overhead. In the distance, at the base of the nearby mountains, she spied the walls of Urtin.
In her time since being in the troupe, she had not yet seen it interact with the public in the manner befitting its alias. The sight of Gnochi’s students in the center of their own shows amazed her. The nearest cluster surrounded a woman juggling a handful of small colored orbs, her upturned hat on the ground already heavy with pence. Zara walked the delicate top of her wagon with fake intoxication in her step and a longsword down her throat.
She spied a sizable crowd looming around Typhus’s enclosure, but Cleo did not see Harvey milling between the giant’s legs, regaling everyone with a tale of capturing the beast.
She made off in search of Harvey and Roy’s cabin, ignoring the prying eyes of patrons who no doubt saw her boyish frame and feminine features for evidence of some freakish human echoer. She could no longer wait for help to come to her. Gnochi had not gotten better overnight. If anything, he had worsened. His mind could not separate itself from the illusions which filled his sight. He insisted that she tell her mother that he would be over to help as soon as he finished his business in town.
Cleo had stayed by his side all night. His sleep came in fits and seemed to be plagued by nightmares, each more relentless than the last in their assault on his sanity. She also failed to break his fever at all during the night, his skin always sickly and hot to the touch. He soaked through two shifts with sweat despite the damp towels she used to cool off his face and neck.
Cleo pounded on the wagon door belonging to Harvey and Roy. She considered barging in after no response but thought against that as the color rose in her cheeks. The added blood warmed her even more than the hot sun, so she resigned herself to sit and wait on their stoop for Harvey to return. Her head lolled back and rested on the wooden door. Eyes heavy with fatigue slumped down and sealed out the light coming from the sun as it descended in the west. A warm breeze tickled the few rogue hairs that escaped from their hat-prison.
◆◆◆
“Bo
li?” A voice roused Cleo from her nap.
She stirred, massaged the crick that formed from her awkward sleeping angle, and stretched out her arms. “Where’s Harvey?” she managed to ask between yawns. Her sleepy eyes were still shut from the light of day; her mind, still cloudy from its rest.
“Hey, I’m right here, look,” Harvey said, snapping two fingers before her face to rush the waking process.
Cleo’s eyes split open, then recoiled at the light. Her gaze, after a moment, narrowed on Harvey’s silhouette. “You have to come with me. Gnochi isn’t doing well!” She pulled Harvey’s arm, ignoring the stares of several patrons. Together, they weaved between the crowds, heading toward her wagon.
“But he said he was doing fine before I left yesterday.”
“Well, I hadn’t noticed either. The man is good at concealing things he doesn’t want known. Yesterday, I walked in on him putting the ointment on.” Cleo stopped short. She turned and faced him. “Harvey, he’s haggard, feverish, and he’s hallucinating.”
“Okay, I’ve got to grab my supplies. Go to him and start making him comfortable. I’ll be right over.” He pried his arm from Cleo’s grasp.
She rushed over to her shared wagon but stopped when she saw Perogie. The mare’s eyes were wide open, alert, and staring straight at Cleo as if she was saying I don’t know where you’ve been, but I’m about ready to buck through this restraint. She pawed the rough dirt and nuzzled the wagon. She then noticed that the door was ajar. Inching forward, she rested her ear near the crevice and heard the muffled sound of a woman’s voice.
“—be at the Drunk Duckling if you’re up for round two, big boy.” Cleo heard footsteps approaching the door. Before she could move, it was opened and the woman spoke again. “Spying on two adults being intimate is not very noble of you.”
“What are you doing in there with Gnochi?” Cleo responded, her voice too confused to be angry.
A delirious Gnochi called out from inside the wagon. “Pippa is that you?”
“You’re the dove he’s been sleeping with” the woman said, more as a statement of pitiful fact and less as a question. Cleo’s cheeks had started the encounter enflamed, but at the accusation, her heat boiled over.
“You’re cute, but I get the feeling Gnochi likes his women with a little more experience,” she said, winking. “I’m off. I do hope you get better, sweet,” she said, looking back to the wagon. With that, she stepped into the tide of a crowd and was soon concealed by the convergence of bodies.
Cleo realized a moment later that she could not recall what the woman looked like, as if a cloud or haze had obscured her eyes. Harvey arrived a minute later and tore Cleo from her contemplative thoughts. He barreled through the crowd, bearing a case of herbs in hand.
“He’s inside,” Cleo said, still dumbfounded by the events that she had witnessed. She regained her wits and ran inside a moment before him. Gnochi lay shirtless under a tangle of covers on the wagon’s sole cot. His chest was slick with sweat, shining under the scarce wagon-light that sneaked through the windowpane. Sweat-sheened hair stuck to his head. His eyes held a glaze that made their normally opaque, earthy look, appear as though they were encased in ice.
Harvey retrieved his mortar and pestle, then began grinding herbs. He paused for a moment to take a feel of Gnochi’s wrist, then he peered into his mouth while listening for the bard’s breathing.
“You can fix him, right?” Cleo asked, her voice betraying her fear.
“I’m going to try,” he said, his voice smarting to Cleo’s ears as if he was annoyed at being interrupted. “I see you’ve gotten him relaxed. His heartbeat is down, and his fever seems to have broken, though it could come back at any point until he kicks the infection.”
“That’s good, right?” Cleo pleaded. “He’ll be fine?”
“’Course I’ll be fine, Pips,” Gnochi said, giggling. Up to this point, he had acknowledged their presence with neither verbal nor ocular recognition.
“I’m going to need time alone,” Harvey said.
“But I can help,” Cleo begged. “I can keep him comfortable, or run errands, or keep his temperature down.”
“No,” Harvey asserted. “I cannot have my every move questioned as though it will be the action that cures all that ails. No, I need privacy with him. Wait outside.”
Cleo created a rut in the dirt outside their wagon as she paced back and forth. After some time, she turned to Perogie and said, “Drunk Duckling. It must be an inn or tavern in the city. I’ll go and find her.” She imagined that she saw indecision reflected from the mare’s face. “No, I have no reason. But I cannot sit here, ‘Ogie and wait.” Perogie snorted as though agreeing with her rider.
After a hard gallop towards Urtin, Cleo reined in at the wall and left Perogie with a stable boy as she slithered into the crowd filing into the narrow wall’s gate. “I’m meeting an uncle who runs an inn. I’ll pay you on the way out,” she promised the boy.
Stale guard eyes probed through the crowd, but they could not hide the boredom in their stares. The wall stood a short story above the ground, level with the tops of most buildings. Bricks were missing from its edifice, and the mortar crumbled at parts. It leaned heavy on the adjacent buildings. The added weight bowed them inward. A handful of vagrant children who sat perched on the rooftops and on the eves of the wall dangled their feet into the warm evening air. The first square inside the gates teemed with merchants peddling their last wares. The light dimmed to a level akin to late dusk as soon as one ventured outside of the central square.
In the market, people sold everything from cords of wood and scrap metal to fruits and bread. A narrow cistern of refuse overflowed next to a man selling apples, the stench dissuading customers from browsing his wares. Cleo picked him for this reason.
She approached him and, making a point to lower her voice, said, “’Scuse me sir.” She grunted with an effort, picking up the drawl of others that she had heard. “Can you direct me tuh the Drunk Duckling?”
“Huh,” the vendor stammered as if he suddenly noticed the child standing before his stall. He squinted at Cleo despite the close distance between them. “You stealing from me, boy?”
Cleo shook her head.
“You’re a little young to be going to the tavern, especially this early in the afternoon.”
Thinking for a moment, Cleo said, “I’ve gutta pick up mah Pa. He’s been crashed there for a while ‘nd Ma wants him back tuh work in the fields.” The merchant once again eyed her as though he expected her to tear off with his product. He then pointed down one of the streets.
“Follow that road three blocks in. It’ll be on the corner on your left. It’s across from the wall,” the merchant explained.
“Thanks,” Cleo said, but the merchant had already returned his gaze to the fruit below the stall. As she made her way down the road, she noticed how each building had a staircase leading to the roofs, and from the sounds wafting down, those roofs held another tier of merchants. She understood why. Because of the compacted nature of the buildings and the walls, the bottom streets only received direct sunlight for a few hours each day.
Periodic flames dotted wall sconces, and large braziers pooled in the center of streets. Most of the inns on the street had opened all their windows and doors, trying in vain to catch and hold onto the scarce natural light. A few stragglers slumbered under the windows or outside of the doors from which they had been thrown.
After sweeping her eyes across the street, Cleo found the shabby sign marking the Drunk Duckling. One of the its two chains had snapped. As a result, the duck-shaped slab of wood hung tightly from the chain tacked through its neck. Sporadic paint chips blemished the surface, and rusty flakes littered the links.
Cleo entered through the open door. All five of the early afternoon patrons looked up at her entry. She paid them no heed once she spotted the woman from their wagon.
She beamed a coy smile at Cleo and sipped a chalice of some unknown liquid. Ignor
ing the stares of the four other men and serving girls, Cleo approached and seated herself across the table.
The woman’s smile deepened, and then, noticing the growing interest from the four men, said, “Don’t you lummoxes have anything better to do than listen to a woman’s business you are not privy to?” The men looked down with solemn stares into their own drinks.
“What did you do to Gnochi?” Cleo asked, her voice acidic.
“My, my. Right to the point, are we? Let’s start at the beginning, since our first encounter was you spying on two people during an intimate moment. My name is Iris, dear. And you are Cleo, yes? Gnochi’s dove? He mentioned you quite a few times during his feverish ravings. It is a pleasure to meet you,” she said, smiling and offering a slight dip in her head. “I didn’t take him for one to sniff after those still wet behind their ears, but I suppose being a Silentorian makes one do crazy things. I myself was never fond of Jackal,” she said, “so, it doesn’t surprise me that his pawns are off as well.”
Cleo gasped at the wealth of knowledge that Iris seemed already to possess. At the mention of Silentore, the quiet din in the room ceased. Two of the men who had overheard its mention hurried in their retreat out of the tavern.
“We aren’t together that way,” Cleo said. “Why does everyone assume that?”
“Poor girl. You’ve been blinded. But by yourself, or by Gnochi, I am not sure. He is absolutely smitten with you, though maybe I was wrong and the love he feels for you is entirely parental. It is hard to trust a man raving from illness.” Iris looked into her mug and frowned. “Can I get another warmed milk here, Clairent?” A serving girl brought out a steaming pitcher and filled the mug. Cleo sunk deeper into the chair, her hands knotted together on her lap.
Sensing Cleo’s brimming anger, Iris said, “He’s dying.”
“What did you do to him?” Cleo asked, tears blurring her sight.
“The real question is, what did you do to him?” Iris asked. “In his hysteria, he mentioned a sister and niece who Jackal kidnapped to barter for his services. And all three of us know at this point that Silentore knows about you.” Iris paused. “His family is dead. He’s weathering a storm of unknown proportions because he knows that you’ve killed his family, but he loves you too much to admit it.”
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