Exile's Return

by Gayle Greeno

  Reyphin divested himself of six youngsters, piled on his lap, clinging to his legs, or draped over his shoulders, all as darkly intense and small as their father. His wife shared the likeness, equally petite, though with lighter hair and a more strictly pretty face. Reyphin and his offspring looked foxy and chipper, the children like tumbling kits. “Yes. I’ve known Priyani since she was a toddler and came to live with her grandmother. Always room for one more to play at our house—who’d notice? Wife told me to go, do what I could that night, anything that would ease the pain. Anything,” he emphasized.

  “No, I’m not a Resonant—really. Bernard calling me a Gleaner isn’t a half-bad description. I can unravel care in a human mind—though not the way my father could—distract pain until body, soul, and mind reach a stage where they can cope, but that’s all—and it’s not much. Sort of a poultice for the mind. Nothing as to what a full-fledged eumedico can do—but they’re few and far between these days. With time and love and someone to share her problems, Yani’ 11 heal. I hope I’m there to help her.”

  “Did you rape her, Mr. Reyphin?” The question had to be asked, the man given the right to deny it, proclaim his innocence.

  A slow, emphatic head shake. “No, I’d cut off my own balls before I’d take advantage of a child like that, let alone one I consider as a daughter.” His wife chimed in, “And if he didn’t, I’d do it myself to begin the punishment a man like that deserves!”

  “Do you know who did do it?”

  A concise head bob this time, chin jutting. “I think so,” he spread his hands to emphasize his everlasting regret, “but I’ve no proof. And to accuse a man without proof smacks of malice or worse, but I would if I thought it would do any good. If your larchcat—ghatta! She told me so, tweaked my mind—can judge truth, so be it. But you and all of us need evidence as well.”

  “And you won’t speak the man’s name without evidence? Even if it would protect other children from being treated thusly?” Matty couldn’t decide if he respected Reyphin’s reticence or not.

  “Didn’t say I wouldn’t keep real tight watch over tha man until such time as Priyani can accuse him herself. Why do you think I’ve been spending so much time with her and Mother Vlaen since then? And I’ve enough children to play hide and seek with the best, canny as wee foxes at watchin and not being seen. It’s a game they play, trailing each. Oh one way or another a Reyphin will be tailing him, passin word if he makes a move he shouldn’t. ’Tisn’t what I’d like but it’s the best I can do.”

  “Even the littlest can trail, and she’s but three. They’ll worry him like a burr, but not so close he can inflict the same hurt on them.” Kharm acted charmed by the whole brood, not to mention Reyphin. “He’s testing, trying to ’speak me, but isn’t sure how. Can’t quite figure it out though he’d love time to try. And yes, he knows Osterkamp raped Yani. The first night he was furious enough to kill him, but his wife dissuaded him.”

  “Well, then, Mr. Osterkamp, Mr. Reyphin, what we reall need is some evidence that will point to the guilt of one person, be it Reyphin or someone else. Yani isn’t able to speak, but she can still help.” The wind cuffed the torches again, nearly guttering them, their light glowering across the crowd’s dubious expressions. He wasn’t a conjurer to mystify by sleight-of-hand, make their minds believe what their eyes thought they saw. But if the truth were there, incontrovertible for the eye to see? What could he prove? How? Osterkamp grinned again with savage smugness. Yes!

  “Oh, yes, I like it. So clever, my Matty’s so clever! Kharm knows truth, but Matty unshrouds it.” Relaxing her previous attack stance, Kharm almost capered with joy, encircling the girl. “They may not be as distinct as they were, it’s been three days now,” she warned, “but it’s a chance.”

  He rose and moved to Yani, close, but not too close, achingly aware of her reaction when Denellen had touched her. Doubtful any man other than Reyphin could do so without causing her to flinch, withdraw even further. Kneeling, he willed the girl to look at him, but her hair still curtained her face. Kharm stretched against her, rubbed her head under her chin, forced the still face up. Not as blank as before, but he could sense something banked inside, protected, as she hadn’t been protected that nightmarish night. “Yani, I need you to help us, help us find the man who hurt you, so he’ll never hurt you or any other children again. You don’t have to say anything, do anything, really, but I have to ask you for a favor.”

  “Can’t you leave her be?” her grandmother protested.

  Matty felt he’d aged a hundred years, dirty and soiled with a knowledge he didn’t want, a view of sex as perversion, he who’d never yet managed to experience it except through Kharm’s vivid but equally innocent emotions of want. “You said that Yani was bitten and bruised? Are any of the bites still visible?”

  “Visible? You can practically see each individual tooth mark!” Her fingers were sunk into Yani’s clothes, practically daring him to rip them off. “You can’t expect her to flaunt them in public, parade them for everyone to see? Are you sick?”

  “Yani,” he addressed her instead of her grandmother, refused to forget she was there, a being, a person, listening and comprehending on some level, deserving of being consulted. “Yani, if I asked that only women surround you—no men, no men anywhere near. I’ll move them out and away from the light, if you want—would you remove your clothes so the women can examine you? And my larchcat, my ghatta, Kharm, who’s a girl just like you. Little black Tah’m over there with my friend Jaak, is a boy, so I wouldn’t even let him look. Could you do that? And then put your clothes on quick as you can.”

  “What good’s it going to do you if you can’t see the bite marks, Vandersma?” Osterkamp hooted at his back.

  He looked over his shoulder, smiled, made sure he raised his upper lip to bare his incisors, as if he were an animal, and to reveal that his were intact, no gaps. “I’m sure Kharm can give me an accurate description, and of course the women can back her up.”

  “So, bite marks are bite marks. We’ve all got teeth, haven’t we? Or most of us have. Begging your pardon, Auntie Vlaen.” Clear that Osterkamp hadn’t figured it out yet, and Matty craved seeing his expression then. But everything revolved around whether Yani would agree.

  “Priyani,” he coaxed, “it’s not just your own hurt at stake here. Some say Aron hurt you. If they think he did, you won’t be able to see your friend any more. If you can’t help yourself, can you help Aron, so his wife and family won’t lose him?”

  Her chin jerked tremulously as she fumbled under her grandmother’s arms, working at her buttons while her legs kicked and thrashed to make him go away. He backed up rapidly as the women of the town surrounded her, layers of protective encirclement to bar men’s prying eyes. But Kharm would see.

  After a time the circle broke, Yani and her grandmother returning into view, the girl nestled under her arm, half-hidden behind her but distinctly involved at some level. Her eyes followed Kharm as the ghatta trotted to Matty’s side. “Just as you suspected, my most clever, beloved Bond.”

  “Gentlewomen of Ruysdael, do the bite marks show a gap at one point, a gap on the upper right side,” he pointed a finger at his own teeth. “As if someone were missing a tooth ... about here?” Nods and murmurings from the women. “Do you good people happen to know anyone who lacks a tooth there?”

  Despite himself, Aron Reyphin grinned broadly, displaying an intact set of even white teeth. “Smile for us, Osterkamp,” he crowed, striding forward, a bantam confronting a large, red rooster of a man.

  The citizens took up the cry, “Smile for us, Osterkamp! Smile!” Grim satisfaction buoyed their voices, made them bell like hounds running down their prey as they crowded round, hands reaching to grip him.

  “Is that proof enough, Denellen?” Matty asked. “If so, you’d better intervene before he’s missing any more teeth.”

  Samson Denellen stood beside him, arms folded across his chest. “Laws and obedience to the laws are
crucial, but what Ruysdael needs more is catharsis, cleansing. Manuel’s tried to convince me there are higher laws, laws beyond human laws. Think he has, though mayhap not the way he intended.” He turned his back to the mob overwhelming Osterkamp. “An abomination of that sort doesn’t follow our laws, doesn’t deserve to be punished by them.” He raised his face to the skies, voice ringing in the night, the rain finally falling in earnest as he shouted. “Quick and neat, folks. No torture or torment. Don’t sink to his level.”

  The crowd parted, Reyphin walking briskly away from the crumpled figure on the ground and presenting a bloodied knife to Denellen. “If you’d be kind enough to dispose of this, Denny?” and handed him the knife butt-end first. “I’m afraid I slipped, fell where the ground’s muddy. Osterkamp apparently was in the way.”

  “No, ’twas me, Denny,” Mother Vlaen called. “Clumsy in old age, eyesight bad, shouldn’t even be allowed to carry a knife.” “No, must have been me.” “No, me!” The shouts rose from one person, then another—unified guilt, collective justice. Matty forced himself to look at the body, rolled it over, revulsed by the feel of the slack flesh slicked with rain, arm hair springy and rough against his fingers. As he suspected, only one knife wound showed, not multiple stabs. Crude compassion of a sort, he supposed; more than he would have exhibited, his fingers itching for the knife. So did one mercy-kill a rogue animal.

  “Then you don’t mind Osterkamp’s fate?” A sniff of surprise from the ghatta, followed by a damp sneeze. “That this ending, this death was just and right?”

  “I don’t know, mayhap I’m becoming bloodthirsty in my old age. A part of me’s sorry that I didn’t wield the knife. ” He walked away as his father came and knelt by the body, rain pattering on the tonsured, bowed head, beading brows and lashes, clasped hands. “But some acts are righteous, just in a way I’d never envisioned. What would you have done?”

  “Ghatti claws are very sharp. And ghatti sometimes torment their kills.” That was the last they said about the matter.

  “Doyce! Doyce!” Francie’s voice echoed sharp as flint as she beckoned with her cane. “Come on, hurry! Cady’s back.”

  Shaking her head to clear it, Doyce concentrated on the scene around her, still blinded by the night torches of Ruysdael past, the snarls of the crowd as they flung themselves on Osterkamp. Child molester. Brazen as could be until he’d been caught out. What sort of human being could so torture a child? Mouth dry, hands trembling, she gathered her cloak around her as she rose, Khar tumbling free of the folds.

  “Might have warned me,” she groused as she tongue-licked fur into place. “I was just as lost in the past as you. Astute of our Matty to solve the case. Truth almost always leaves a tangible trail, doesn’t it? Once you know where and how to look for it.” But Doyce, she realized, hadn’t heard a word, walking with grave deliberation toward the broken surrey, her face a rigid mask of grief. “What, love, what? What is it, what’s the matter?”

  “Why did it happen in Ruysdael? Why did it have to involve a child scarcely younger than Davvy?” Jaw clenched, she began to hurry, leaving Khar to catch up at a roly-poly lope. “I’m so scared about Davvy, as if something terrible’s about to happen to him. Silly, I know. ” She manufactured a little laugh and Khar shivered at its falsity. An afterimage of Yani floated in Doyce’s mind, blonde instead of black-haired, her hand reaching out ... to Matty? ... to Davvy? Khar blinked. What in the name of the Elders was Doyce obsessing over now?

  “Do you think it some sort of premonition, an omen?” This part of the human mind no ghatti had ever been able to comprehend, the ability to believe a totally different and distinct thing had attributes capable of influencing a completely separate incident. That that was, was. And that that is Now is distinctly itself, for good or for ill. The ghatti way made much more sense. Khar stopped short, sank to her haunches. Then why, by the Elders, why did she think that Doyce would benefit from learning about the past, might find links between Then and Now to serve as signposts toward the Future ? Because of the Spirals, the circling up and up, Past coiling by Present, Future coiling alongside Past, the Spiral turning? If only Saam or Rawn were here to ask, or Terl. Hoisting herself up, she ran after Doyce, bewildered but thinking furiously.

  Cady set the brake on the most dilapidated hay wagon Doyce had ever encountered, and pulled, surprisingly enough, by a pair of white mules. She started to scratch one under the chin, but F’een planted himself in front of her, fixed her with an imploring stare. “Wouldn’t touch, if I were you. They’re the most nasty, ill-tempered brutes I’ve ever met. Likely to snap a finger off. They kick, they stamp, they bite—then deafen you by braying.”

  “Was this the best you could do?” Snatching her hand clear, she heard the critical sting in her voice, reproach at being jerked into the present.

  Cady’s nostrils tightened as she gathered her hair behind her head, let it fall free, her expression constricting as if to absorb a blow without flinching. “I stopped at every house and farm along the road, took every side road if I could see a house in the distance. No one home. Apparently everyone’s decided to make a day of it, go to Ruysdael.”

  “Except Mr. Adderson.” Inez gave the right-hand mule a stinging swat on the nose and it looked at her tenderly, nuzzled her while she scratched its ears. “Only one I know anywhere near who keeps white mules. Aren’t nearly as ill-tempered as he is.”

  “Sorry I didn’t make his acquaintance, but meeting his mules was pleasure enough.” Cady was shifting gear from the surrey to the wagon—the food hamper, a few blankets and pillows, and Inez’s carry-all, crammed with who knew what. From the past Doyce remembered hard candies, ointments, bandage rolls, extra buttons and pins. Always prepared, that was Inez. “I finally gave up, left a note and took the wagon and mules. Threw in as much straw as I could because we can’t all fit on the seat.”

  “Did well, girl. Did fine.” Inez made her way around the wagon, inspecting it. “Pretty is as pretty does, and as long as it does get us there, this is fine.”

  Francie clung to the wagon’s high, slatted side, only her face and hands visible. “I’d best stay with the surrey and the team then. Don’t think I can climb into this.” No pity, simply a matter-of-fact assessment of the situation, all too commonplace in her straitened circumstances. Being left out, shunted to the side, was second nature to her.

  But Cady swung athletically into the wagonbed, fumbling under the straw. “Thought of that. Someone drop the tailgate?” and Doyce awkwardly obeyed before her mother or Francie could try. A broad plank snake-tongued out. “Knew it would be hard for Miz Marbon as well as you, and Doyce’s not all that graceful herself at the moment. If you can’t climb the slant with me steadying, I borrowed some sacking as well. Sit on it, and I’ll scoot you up.”

  “Thank you!” Francie’s face glowed, and Doyce wondered how often she’d been left behind before. “I want to claim my fair share of scolding when we find Davvy.”

  “Then can we get on with it, please?” Her disquiet built, all patience eroded no matter how she tried to control it. And the two childish figures in her mind bravely walked toward some indistinct fate, and she was unable to move, run after them and save them. Her actual body felt equally weighted, rooted, and she realized the baby had sunk downward like a stone. At least for the moment it wasn’t kicking, but the weight was a foreboding sign, and with good reason. A horrible suspicion that labor impended, and sooner rather than later. “Just stay put, stay steady, little one, ” she mentally begged the unborn child. “You’re important to me, but so’s Davvy, and we can’t let him down, can we?” Damn Jenret for not being here to help find Davvy, be with her when she needed him! Not that he’d meant to be captured, but why did he have to be so damned inconsiderate! She kicked the wagon wheel, grabbed a handful of straw, and knotted it. So there, take that!

  “If you’ve gotten that out of your system, we’re ready to go. There’s time—if you don’t let your fears conquer you.” Khar peered ov
er the wagon’s side. “Want to march up the plank or have Cady boost you to the seat?” The ghatta read the twinges and shifts in Doyce’s body and commenced a prayer to the Elders.

  With as much dignity as she could muster, Doyce marched to the wagon’s front and climbed aboard. Someday it would be nice to see her feet again, and someday was approaching sooner than planned.

  Cady slapped the reins on the mules’ backs and they brayed with displeasure as they took off. “Doyce,” Inez knelt behind Cady and Doyce, steadying herself on their shoulders. “Did ye remember the chamber pot from under the back seat of the surrey?”

  “No, Mother, I did not.” Each evenly spaced word sounded a reproach. “There are more important things on my mind right now.”

  “Like whether Davvy’s safe and sound. I know.” Inez sighed. “Oh, I know. But you won’t find him any faster with the press of a full bladder. Any rate, I made sure I stuck it in the corner.”

  “Thank you, Mother.” But all her frantic thoughts wheeled around lurid visions of Davvy hurt, lost, in danger—from what she didn’t know, but it grew stronger, dread coming to fruition, ready to burst. Oh, reason enough to be worried, but the black mood was growing, overwhelming her vision, as if her fears for her unborn child had transferred themselves to Davvy. “Oh, please, Blessed Lady, let him be safe!” Whom could he be walking hand in hand with? The girl in her fading vision wasn’t Priyani.

  “Be dark by the time we reach Ruysdael,” Inez muttered thoughtfully and sank back beside Francie.

  Violet, pink, turquoise. Apricot, apple green, buttercup yellow. Stretched on tiptoes, swaying in time to the globed paper lanterns that decorated trees, upper story railings, eaves, torchère posts, Lindy searched for more hues, upturned face bathed in soft pastels. There—that one, orange as a pumpkin! And over there, lonely amongst the richer purple cluster, a pale mint. The candle flames pulsated, the colors veering, colliding. Gorgeous, a fairyland fit for a king. More lanterns pearled the dark as it thickened, a myriad of food scents perfuming the air, reminding her she was hungry. She pressed a hand against her stomach to quell its protest but didn’t rub—that would be unladylike, and tonight she’d be a perfect lady awaiting the King of Marchmont’s arrival.