by Martha Wells
From the expressions on their faces, the way they kept sneaking looks past her, the swordsman had followed her and was standing a few paces behind her again. She realized that was the third time he had moved to defend or protect her. And there was that number three again. The Infinite had been producing a large number of odd conjunctions lately. It could feel free to stop at any time, as far as she was concerned.
She said, "Well?"
Gardick, who always had something to say, said, "Can we expect more of that tonight?"
"No, not tonight."
There was an uncomfortable stirring. Firac, Dona, Vani, the others, familiar faces after all these months. They were nine in all, not very many to perform some of the more elaborate productions, but the Imperial capital of Duvalpore would appreciate the intricacy of Ariaden theater where the provincial cities hadn't. One or two wouldn't meet her eyes, others looked worried, others merely tired.
Rastim cleared his throat. "I think we all know what sad condition we would be in but for the...but for Maskelle."
She pushed her ragged hair back from her face, to cover her momentary smile. Her name still sounded odd, spoken in an Ariaden accent. More proof this land was in her blood; she had been foolish to ever leave.
Gardick said, "No one is saying different." He looked around at the others, his expression combative. "But we don't have to pretend to like it."
Maskelle laughed. Sometimes she liked Gardick. Then Gardick said, "And who's that?"
He was pointing past her, at the swordsman. Maskelle pressed her lips together. And sometimes she didn't like Gardick at all.
Rastim saved her from the embarrassing admission that she had no idea by stepping forward and saying, "Now, that's Maskelle's business, isn't it? Why don't we all get some rest? We have more travel tomorrow."
That little speech should have occasioned a revolt, if not a small riot, but the troupe had become accustomed to accepting the impossible along with the unpleasant in the past few months, and all they did was stamp and grumble, or exchange tired looks and roll their eyes.
As the others drifted back to their wagons, Rastim leaned close and out of the side of his mouth whispered, "Who is he?"
"I don't know," she whispered back.
He grimaced at her and she grimaced back. She patted him on the back and made shooing motions. Rastim went reluctantly, casting doubtful glances over his shoulder.
She turned back to her swordsman. He was ignoring the curiosity of the Ariaden and matter-of-factly studying a long slice on his forearm. The bori club must have grazed him. Well, you did tell him not to draw the sword. "Come with me, I'll clean that up for you," Maskelle said. Old Mali had left a brazier near the fire and she used one of the wicker pads to pick it up.
He gave her an odd look, but followed her back to her wagon obediently enough. She climbed in and lit two of the hanging cage lamps with the coals from the brazier, then set it in the padded holder on the shelf. He was sitting on the tailgate, looking over the interior of the wagon. It was furnished with cast-offs and hand-me-downs and oddities collected in travel, frayed blankets and cushions of faded Tiengan weaving, a battered copper tea server, Nitaran puzzle boxes. He was looking up at the curved roof where about a dozen puppets hung, their painted faces pointing down like an audience of human-headed bats, their features lifelike in the dim light. They were being stored here because Maskelle had few possessions and the other wagons were overfull. There were also pieces of scenery folded up in the chests and under the bunk. Maskelle moved a stage tree aside to get to the clean rags and salve.
"You're a healer too?" he said, somewhat warily.
"Not really." Old Mali had made the salve. Maskelle wasn't going to mention that in case he had seen the old woman outside. Old Mali's appearance didn't exactly engender confidence in her skills as a physician, and she knew the Sintane was fairly civilized for the outer reaches. She looked up and saw he was still sitting on the tailgate. She lifted a brow. "I could toss it to you."
He came further into the wagon, taking a place on the bench almost within arm's reach. But again she had no sense that he was afraid, just careful, like a strange cat that had chosen her for a companion.
She took his arm and wiped the blood away. He felt him react to the contact, just a slight start, perhaps because her hands were cold. His skin was very warm and she was more aware of the pulsebeat in his wrist than she should be. She noticed he was clean, or at least not more filthy than she was from long days of travel, then remembered the midnight swim in the baray. That didn't help her concentration any.
She was uncomfortably aware that the last time she had been this close to a man had been two months ago when she had helped hold Rastim's son down so Old Mali could lance his boil. Before that...Well, she wasn't going to add up the days, but it had been a long time.
He had said nothing, and under the pressure of that silence, she found herself saying, "What's your name?"
His eyes flicked up to meet hers. Green flecked with gold. "Rian."
Caught unprepared by his willingness to give up that information so readily, she stared at him and he grinned at her, obviously conscious of having surprised her. Again. Inwardly cursing her susceptibility, she said, "Is that all? No family, no clan?" If she was remembering rightly, the Sitanese took the name of their local lord for a family name.
He turned his head and she noticed his right earlobe had the marks of at least four piercings for ornaments; she knew the Sitanese denoted rank in their warrior caste with ear studs, but she didn't know what the number signified, if anything. He had laid the sheathed siri next to him on the bench. She had thought it without ornament, but this close she could see the ring and the hilt bore deep marks and gashes—not signs of use, but places where stones or figured metal had been removed. Had he sold everything valuable during his long journey, or carefully removed any mark of rank before he left? Maybe both, she thought. He was wearing an amulet around his neck, next to his skin. She knew it must be important to him, since he had sold or otherwise gotten rid of any other ornament. It was a small disk of fine white stone on a faded blue cord, inlaid with lapis in a runic figure. That doesn't tell you much, she thought in wry self-disgust. Your education in the customs of lands outside the Empire might have been just a little better. But then she had never expected to have to wander them. He said, "Things are less complicated in the Sintane."
"If the Sintane is so much better, why are you here?"
"I didn't say it was better, just less complicated."
When she released his arm the warmth of his skin seemed to cling to her fingers. She took a tana leaf from the wrapped bundle under the salve jar. He watched with a somewhat bemused expression as she worked the sweet-smelling salve into the leaf. "You don't want to know my name?" she asked.
"I know your name. You're Maskelle."
For an instant, she felt cold. "How do you know that?" Instead of betraying any guilt, he gave her that look she was beginning to be accustomed to, the what is wrong with your wits look, and explained, mock patiently, "You answer to it when the others yell it at you."
"Oh." Idiot, she told herself. "The others are the Corriaden Travelling Grand Theatrical, from Ariad."
"But you're from Duvalpore."
"Yes." She took his arm again and laid the leaf along the cut, then bound it in place with a clean strip of cloth. She had to grit her teeth to hold back the impulse to explain that the tana had healing properties too; his opinion that she didn't know what she was doing was as palpable as the dampness in the air. It had to be intentional.
He looked at her staff. "What's a Voice of the Ancestors doing on the Great Road with a travelling Ariaden puppet show?"
"It's not a puppet show."
He looked up at the puppets suspended from the wagon's ceiling, one eyebrow lifted in eloquent comment. "It's not an ordinary puppet show," she explained, tying off the bandage and aware she sounded like a fool. And that they had somewhat strayed from the subject at ha
nd.
She looked at him. He looked back, still with that same air of ironic comment. He wasn't afraid of her at all. Careful, but not afraid. That might be ignorance, but he had called her a wizard, and if she understood what the Sitanese meant by the word, then he should have been. "Why did you follow me? You were avoiding the road, weren't you? Why come to the Sare and risk the temple guards?"
As if she hadn't spoken, he said, "If it wasn't the priests that sent that boy, who was it?" Since she had left Duvalpore years ago, no one had spoken to her with this sort of directness. If they believed her guise as a travelling Koshan nun, they treated her with the difference due a religious under the protection of the Celestial Empire and the temples. If they knew who or what she really was, they were afraid. Even Rastim and Old Mali, her best friends among the Ariaden, never questioned her like this, possibly because they dreaded to hear the answers.
No one in years had told her she was wrong, or so much as inferred that her judgment was wanting. She found herself grinning. "It wasn't the priests. One of the most sacred duties of the Koshan is to serve the Voices. That's why the head priest of the Temple of the Sare offered me hospitality, though he knew what he was letting himself in for, from his own people and from the one who sent the boy."
He stared at her. She knew she had had the satisfaction of finally really startling him, though she wasn't sure how. He said, "Are you a nun?"
"Once. Not now." She adopted a bemused expression, though she hadn't much confidence in it.
"Are Voices celibate?"
"No." She had actually opened her mouth for an explanation of the Koshan Order and how the Voices were lifted above it when they were chosen, when he kissed her.
A persistent rapping at the side of the wagon interrupted them. Maskelle sat back from Rian and saw an eye peering cautiously at them through a gap in the partly closed flap. Rastim's voice said, "Excuse me."
Maskelle got up and tore the flap open. "What, what, what?"
Rastim stepped back, pointing across the compound. "The guards are still watching us," he whispered urgently. She looked past the wagons toward the post and saw several of the guards at the bottom of the stairs, apparently in idle conversation. Stepping out onto the tailboard, she could see the flickering lights of small handlamps around the compound between the Mahlindi's wagons and theirs and also at the edge of the trees and up at the road. Rian leaned on the gate beside her and pointed out, "They would have to be moon-crazy not to watch us."
"That's true," Maskelle said, trying not to be distracted by the warm presence next to her thigh. "They'll keep anything else from coming into the camp tonight, Rastim."
"I did realize that, thank you both very much," Rastim said through gritted teeth. "But there's something else."
Damn Ariaden anyway, Maskelle thought, resting her forehead against the rough wood. "Just tell me, Rastim, really."
Rastim cast a worried look at Rian, then lowered his voice and said, "It's knocking."
"What's..." Maskelle frowned. "Oh. It." Of course it was knocking. The damn thing had an instinct for when to cause trouble.
"I'm afraid they'll hear it," Rastim elaborated.
"Yes, I've got the idea now."
Rian looked from one to the other. "Hear what?"
She let out her breath. "All right. Let's go do something about it."
Rian jumped down from the wagon behind her and followed them over to Rastim's wagon. Within a few steps, Maskelle heard the knocking. If it got any louder, the post guards would hear it, too.
Firac and Therassa stood near the box where it hung beneath the wagon. Maskelle folded her arms and contemplated it with annoyance. The knocking was slow and paced evenly, with a funereal quality. She glanced at Rian, who stood at her shoulder. She wasn't sure if he had seen its performance during the play or if he had already left to stalk the river creature by that point. She said, "It's a puppet."
Rian frowned at the box, then looked at her again. "It's moving."
"Well, they don't in the normal course of things, that's true," Rastim said, sighing in resignation and scratching his head. "It's..."
"Under a curse," Maskelle finished, knowing how long it could take Rastim to get to the point. Some of the provincials the Ariaden performed for had seen so little of puppets they hadn't yet grasped the fact that the wooden constructions needed a human actor to move; she had thought the Sintane would be among them, but evidently Rian knew better. "We need to shut it up." The knocking was getting louder already.
"We could wrap blankets around it..." Therassa suggested. "Or bang the drums, that would cover the noise."
"And wake everyone? Again?" Rastim asked. "The traders would kill us—and who could blame them?"
"Maskelle, can't you do something?" Firac asked, worried.
"The puppet that walked out by itself during the play?" Rian persisted.
"Yes." Maskelle rubbed her forehead. If she used her power, it would just draw more unwelcome attention from the spirits of the river and the jungle, and there was too strong a chance of other attacks tonight as it was.
Rian folded his arms. "If you tell me why it's cursed, I'll tell you how to stop the knocking."
They all stared at him. Maskelle raised a brow and looked at Rastim, who shrugged doubtfully. It was obvious he didn't think Rian could fulfill the bargain. She said, "They were performing in Corvalent and had heard stories of a man called Magister Acavir their whole way through the province. He had a reputation as a penurious tyrant."
Rian looked at Rastim, who muttered, "I thought it was just a myth."
"The Ariaden treat their rulers with less deference and it's very common to make fun of them at public plays and festivals. A sense of humor is considered very important in any high official. So one night, to please a balky audience, they substituted the name Magister Acavir for some bumbling court official in one of their Ariaden plays. It worked, the audience did love it. And guess who was there in the very town they were performing in."
There was some feet shuffling and Therassa sighed. "The knocking?" Rastim prompted.
Rian shook his head, as if reconsidering his association with them. "Put the box underwater. It'll muffle the noise."
Maskelle rubbed the bridge of her nose. Good. Now I feel like a fool, too. Rian didn't realize the full efficacy of his suggestion. Water wouldn't only muffle the sound, it would provide a barrier that the curse's power couldn't penetrate. "Not the river." Running water would be best, but she didn't want to see Magister Acavir's curse and the river in its current state brought together, and they needed to be able to move quickly. Stagnant water would eventually lose its power to seal the curse in, but it would buy time to get away from the post before the creature thought of a way to bring the guards down on them. "If we unloaded one of the bigger puppet's boxes, and filled it with water, we could put Gisar's box inside it." All the puppet boxes were proofed with tar and lined with padded silk to keep water out; they should keep water in just as well.
Unpacking one of the larger puppets and hauling out its box presented no problem, but filling it with water and lowering Gisar's box into it was problematic, or at least the Ariaden thought so. The water trough allotted to their camp was about twenty yards past their wagons, in the direction of the post. The oxen had been watered earlier and were hobbled nearby.
Rastim and Gardick carried the large box over to the trough and filled it. The others brought Gisar's box, singing to cover the increasingly frantic knocking inside, Firac banging on the lid in apparently impromptu accompaniment.
Maskelle stood in the shadow of Rastim's wagon, shaking her head. If the post guards thought the inhabitants of the Ariaden camp more than a little deranged, now they had ample proof to support their opinions. Rian leaned against the sideboard next to her. "They're overdoing it just a little," he commented. It was too dark to read his expression, but the sardonic note in his voice said everything.
"They always overdo things. It has something to do with
being actors."
"Why are you with them?"
She glanced sideways at him. "I met them in Corvalent." Firac and Killia pretended to stagger, and Gisar's box tipped into the larger box, splashing Rastim and the others. The guards, watching from the steps of the post, didn't react except to exchange glances. Probably struck dumb with amazement, Maskelle thought.
"The performance that Magister Acavir objected to?" Rian asked.
"Yes. I was in the audience too." Acavir hadn't wanted to listen to reason and Maskelle had had to frighten him a little to discourage him from violence. Another small violation of her oath. Perhaps the Ancestors would consider it small, as well. And perhaps it had escaped the Ancestors' notice how much she had enjoyed it. Not likely. Rian was still looking at her. "He wanted to kill them. The curse was a compromise."
The Ariaden were carrying the large box back to the wagons slowly, ready to burst into song if the knocking was still audible, but the water muffled the noise admirably. Maskelle knew they would have a needlessly elaborate story to explain their actions if anyone asked. She glanced briefly upward in wordless appeal to the Ancestors. Who are probably laughing themselves sick, she thought. "They've made too much out of this since it happened. You'd think a cursed puppet was the end of the world." She needed to stop trying to think of a way to lure Rian back into her wagon and focus on the present situation. The continued interest of the post guards was a problem, considering the activity of Gisar the puppet. Putting it in the second box was a good stop-gap measure, but it would only work until the creature thought of something else.
"Why are they going to Duvalpore?" Rian asked.
"To get the curse on the puppet removed." She watched him carefully, and added, "I'm going to Duvalpore because the Celestial One asked me to."
Rian shifted against the wagon. "And you thought no one would look for you in a troupe of play actors."
"No one did, not all the way from Corvalent, and I had had a great deal of trouble before then." She let out her breath. The dark spirits that hunted her had been confused by the presence of so many other living beings around her; they had been long used to her travelling alone, and it had taken them until now to find her again. She added, "So I'm dragging them along with me for their own good and mine, whether they like it or not."