All the same, he was glad to have lived through another stupid night, and absent gods of the Unsunk Kingdom willing, there’d be a good many more to come.
CHAPTER
13
The snow had burned off the ground and they had left even the chill behind, an unseasonable temperateness draping itself over the western bank of the Heartvein, but the cautiousness that winter inspires in all sensible mortals stayed with Sullen even as they entered the deep wood northeast of the Witchfinder Plains. He couldn’t help but wonder if they would have arrived here a week or more earlier, if he had just stood up to his doubt and trusted in Hoartrap’s compass from the outset… but if they’d done that they never would’ve met the Procuress and received the weighty, wobbly carven log that all agreed came from a marginally more trustworthy source than the Touch. Just to make sure, they routinely double-checked the post against the compass, and between these two tools working in perfect harmony and Hoartrap’s detailed map, it seemed certain Maroto was cutting way to the north from the Cobalt camp, probably to throw pursuers off his track before arcing east to Diadem. They might have caught him already, if they’d made better time, but Diggelby’s promise to buy horses in Thao had proven as hollow as the pasha’s pocketbook; he belatedly realized he had packed the jewelry case containing his collection of interesting snail shells instead of the box with all his money, and nobody else had enough to cover the difference. At least when it was their turn to carry the mystical pylon the tapai and the pasha quickly became too winded to jabber, but alas, it was Sullen and Keun-ju’s shift when they entered the gloomy wood that Purna and Diggelby kept calling the Haunted Forest in warbling voices.
“Bewaaaaare the Hauuunted Forrrrrrrest!” said Purna.
“Beeeewaaaaare!” said Diggelby.
“Be quiet!” said Keun-ju, shifting the post around on his sweaty shoulder, and Sullen found himself nodding in silent agreement with the Immaculate youth. Something about the bald cypresses and wide pools covered in dead leaves instilled a solemnity that he was loath to break, even to chide his companions for their noise. Besides, Sullen had learned admonishments did little good; he had grown hoarse from vainly telling them to shut up.
“Beeeewar—” Diggelby crowed louder than ever, but Purna thumped her companion in the chest, and said, “Knock it off, Digs, can’t you see we’re scaring them?”
Keun-ju had learned not to engage the pair when they were acting like this, so instead of taking the bait he rolled a sympathetic eye at Sullen.
“They should be scared,” said Diggelby, taking off the silly orange admiral’s hat he had traded one of his turbans for back in Thao and crushing it to his velour-ruffled breast. “This isn’t the Wonderful Wood or the Glorious Grove, it’s the Hauuuuuuuunted Forest!”
“Haunted by knaves and loudmouths,” grumbled Keun-ju as they paused to let their pony drink from a still pool.
“Ooooh, that’s a good one,” said Purna. “I’ll be feeling that burn for weeks!”
“Wherever did you come by your wit, Keun-ju?” asked Diggelby. “It’s as sharp as Sullen’s wardrobe!”
Try as they did to make Sullen self-conscious of his unbuffed boots, armored skirt, greasy wool tunic, and opossum-torn bandolier, he didn’t give them the satisfaction of even acknowledging their words. He wasn’t about to take fashion advice from a man who looked like a dead clown or a girl who couldn’t make up her mind if she wanted to dress like an Imperial prince or a Flintland trapper. The cobalt cape Ji-hyeon had insisted Sullen take with him only completed his ensemble, as Diggelby would say.
“I checked the map and there’s not even a woodland by that name on it,” said Keun-ju. “So you can stop making up stories anytime you want.”
“It’s not on the map because we’re not on the map,” said Purna, finally talking at a reasonable hush. “The Haunted Forest is everywhere and nowhere, materializing to lure in unwary travelers, who wander forever in its shaded depths.”
“They say once you enter, the only way to leave is as a ghost,” said Diggelby quietly, and looking out over the tranquil, leaf-strewn surface of the woodland pool, Sullen shivered.
“Legend has it, the Haunted Forest springs up on the hundredth anniversary of a great tragedy, and won’t go away again until it’s drunk innocent blood,” said Purna, squatting down and washing her hands in the rust-colored shallows. “Each tree was once a lost soul, just like us.”
“This place feeds on the mulch of mortals,” whispered Diggelby, his voice carrying in the stillness. “Our only hope is to find the tranquil clearing at its heart, and petition the spectral wardens of the Haunted Forest to release us.”
“Even then they will still demand a sacrifice,” said Purna, nodding her horn-hooded head toward Keun-ju. “One way or the other, the Haunted Forest will claim some of us… maybe even all of us.”
“Is this true?” said Sullen, his hackles good and raised now, the point of the ensorcelled post shivering with potency against his shoulder blade. Perhaps he had been too hasty in dismissing the carefree words of these friends of his uncle; they had faced real horned wolves in combat and jumped right in against a devil queen Sullen himself had balked at battling, so maybe they just didn’t take anything seriously, even mortal danger. Now that he was on the lookout, the high tips of the cypress branches seemed to move, though he felt no wind, and the hoary grey clumps hanging from the trees that Keun-ju had called Azgarothian moss looked almost like tangled human hair…
Purna and Diggelby shrieked in unison, seizing one another for balance, and for the first time since he’d left the Cobalt Company a genuine laugh escaped Keun-ju’s blue satin veil. They were laughing at Sullen. At his gullibility. He turned his attention to the placid surface of the water, so they couldn’t see the pain on his face—he felt just as small and worthless as he had back on the Savannahs, all the other kids jeering at their simple playmate. Old Black’s toes, but people could be nasty. As Sullen looked out across the reddish water with its reddish film of leaves and reddish cypress knees and reddish sunset above, he struggled to make himself as flat and muted as the landscape, to not give them the satisfaction of seeing him crack.
“It would hardly be the strangest place in this Star, even if every lie you two fools told was true,” said the last person Sullen would have expected to stick up for him. But then Keun-ju was even less amused by the fops than Sullen was, so it probably just came from a desire to shut them down before their high-pitched giggles became unbearable. Or even less bearable, to be strictly accurate. “I propose we make camp here. There is fresh water, dry ground, and these two can scout ahead to make sure we are alone in this quarter of the wood.”
“Much as I would relish a rest,” said Diggelby, “we all know who gives the orders around here, and it’s not you, sweet cheeks.”
“Do not call me sweet cheeks,” said Keun-ju. “And it wasn’t an order, it was a proposition.”
“Ooooh, Keun-ju’s propositioning Sullen!”
“Quiet,” said Sullen, considering the twilight. It was true Ji-hyeon had put him in charge, but Sullen was frankly relieved to have someone else weigh in on their course of action. He was fit for many roles, but playing leader made him feel a bit like Little Hook when she was put in charge of organizing the sea queen’s feast… in over his head was the idea, and curse him for a baby to always be spinning himself songs instead of thinking normal adult thoughts. “If you don’t see anything for a good mile, come back with kindling. Those hares I caught need to be cooked or we’ll all get rabbit-belly.”
“Woot!” cried Diggelby and Purna, doing one of their silly dances with their arms raised and their palms touching as Sullen and Keun-ju lifted the tamarind log off their aching shoulders and slowly set it down on the ground. Much as it quivered with intention when it was in hand, as soon as one partner let go of it the thing was just so much fancy firewood again; it took two to work the sorcery.
“What is rabbit-belly?” asked Keun-ju, who had alread
y turned his veil up at the suggestion they eat the rangy hares Sullen had caught on the edge of the forest before the others had awoken that morning.
“Never had it myself, but my mom told me stories,” said Sullen, turning back to his companions. “A real bad sickness, and you all take too long during latrine breaks as it is.”
The fading bruises that crawled out from the top of Keun-ju’s veil sharpened as he blushed, but the other two simply cackled and directed their dance back into the trees. Purna called, “You heard the boss—a roaring fire when we get back, then, and story time to boot! I want to hear all about your mother’s bun belly.”
“You would,” said Diggelby, and then they pranced off together, leaving Sullen alone with Keun-ju yet again. They looked at each other, then both looked away, trying to find something, anything, to occupy their attentions.
“Is it all right if I bathe?” Keun-ju asked as the darkness settled in. “I’m disgusting, and cold as that pool is it’s probably a bit warmer than the snowmelt we’ve been trudging through.”
“Not a bad notion,” said Sullen, the prospect of washing the past few days’ grime off his body the only obvious upside to the recent change in weather from comfortably chill to cloyingly clement.
“Do you mind if I go first?” said Keun-ju, and Sullen stopped stripping, Ji-hyeon’s cloak limp in his hand. “Until the others return it might be safest for one of us to stay with Princess, weapons ready and watching the other’s back, rather than both of us romping naked in the spring? Or we could wait for them to come back, if you would prefer.”
With that damn veil it was impossible to guess what Keun-ju’s actual mood was—the words themselves sounded almost flirtatious, but Sullen wasn’t so thick as to think that was their intention. The Immaculate boy was probably just shy or something, or perhaps repulsed at the idea of seeing Sullen in the nude.
“Yeah, sure,” said Sullen. “I’ll get that fire started while you do.”
“Is that wise?” Keun-ju hung his cloak on a tree and began unbuttoning the shoulder flap of his starched Immaculate coat. “Don’t you want to make sure the others return to tell us it’s safe first?”
“I want cooked meat and a fire to warm myself once I’m out of the water,” said Sullen. After considering it for a moment, he decided to try making a joke again. “If you’ll feel safer I can offer a prayer to the Old Watchers that any monsters take their time eating Purna and Diggelby, so we can at least have a wash and a meal before our fire attracts them.”
“Riiiiight,” said Keun-ju, who obviously didn’t have a sense of humor, either. Sullen gave the priss his privacy, gathering downed wood in the gloaming. By the time he’d got the damp fire hissing to life with Diggelby’s coalstick and the hares staked out around it the evening had fallen into full dark, and Keun-ju returned to the firelight dressed in a fresh linen veil, frog-buttoned shirt, and skintight trousers, his long hair wrapped in a soft-looking length of cloth. A towel was what they’d called it back at that weird bathing complex of hot pools that Keun-ju had treated them to in Thao, after circumstances mandated that Diggelby’s generosity remain strictly theoretical. “No sign of the others?”
“WoooooOooo!” came from nearby in the darkness, and meeting each other’s eyes, Sullen and Keun-ju shook their heads.
After Sullen had bathed in the silty pool, he excused Purna and Diggelby to do the same and tucked into one of the hares. It was so lean as to hardly be worth the effort, but the gamey flesh and the juice running down his chin was its own reward. Watching Keun-ju shave tiny scraps of meat off the tiny bones with a tiny dagger he called a quill-knife and then pass them under his veil, Sullen supposed he must look like a real barbarian to the Immaculate… but then why argue with your nature? Ji-hyeon seemed amused rather than condescending about Sullen’s habits, so it hardly mattered that her paramour got so wide-eyed when he watched Sullen eat. What kind of person observed another dine, anyway? That was just asking to be disgusted.
“Okay, look,” said Sullen, because a hoot and a loud splash from the nearby pool told him Purna and Diggelby might be gone some time. “Ji-hyeon.”
What little color he usually had fled Keun-ju’s face, and the hand holding the hare’s drumstick began to tremble. The one holding the blade didn’t. In words so clipped they couldn’t have been pared finer with that quill-knife, he said, “What about her?”
“You need to know…” Sullen’s mouth suddenly felt as dry as if he’d chiefed a beedi all to himself, but he hadn’t taken a puff since the morning with Ji-hyeon by Grandfather’s bier. “You need to know I didn’t try to queer things between you two. I won’t lie to you, won’t say I don’t fancy her, but I never said a weak word about you.”
“Oh,” said Keun-ju, looking away from Sullen as if he were ashamed. Sullen knew how that quick look-away went from personal experience. “Well… I cannot blame you for anything that happened between Ji-hyeon and I. I… I did an excellent job queering things all by myself, and even if she had not met you while we were parted, I am sure that when I returned it wouldn’t… well. My mistakes are my own.”
“Oh,” said Sullen, relieved at the answer, and kicking himself for not broaching the subject sooner. The last week would’ve been a lot less tense if he’d just grabbed the wolf by the horns at the bathhouse in Thao while Diggelby and Purna were chasing one another around, snapping their rolled-up towels with obvious expertise. “Well. Good.”
“But I will not lie to you either,” said Keun-ju, and now his eyes were back on Sullen’s, and neither hand was shaking. “I won’t give her up just because I made a mistake. I’ll win her back, if it costs my life and more besides. She is the sun that nourishes me, the moon that guides me, and if I have set the dark clouds of mistrust between us, well, rest assured they will soon be brushed away by the winds of my adoration.”
“Oh,” said Sullen, because fast as the Immaculate words had come he was pretty sure he’d caught it all. Spending so much time with Ji-hyeon had given him something more than just a bad case of the heartthrobs. “Well, we’ll just both have to do our best, then, won’t we? She deserves the best.”
Keun-ju looked about as annoyed as if Sullen had got all insecure and stupid about the matter. Maybe more so. “You love her, don’t you, Sullen?”
“So do you,” countered Sullen, “but it ain’t about what you want or I want, it’s about what she wants.”
“Of course!” said Keun-ju, right riled now. “I never said otherwise! And if you think for one moment that I would ever go against her wishes, well—”
“They’re coming back,” said Sullen softly, because he could hear the sharp snap of a rolled-up towel and the ensuing yelp. “Do you want to give them more fuel for their gossip, or do you want to let the matter go until we’re both back in her company? I don’t think either of us stands a chance of winning her favor from such a distance, so we might as well put aside our rivalry until—”
“Yes, of course,” hissed Keun-ju, even more agitated than before. “But there is no rivalry, only two honorable men seeking what is best for their beloved. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” said Sullen, who would have never guessed in a million thaws that the snooty boy would ever call him honorable. Raising his voice a little, since Purna and Diggelby were obviously trying awfully hard to steal silently up on the fire, he said, “And that’s why they call it rabbit-belly.”
“No fair, getting started without us!” cried Purna, lurching chatter-toothed out of the darkness with only a soggy towel to warm her dripping body.
“Yes yes, start from the beginning,” said Diggelby, his sodden loincloth leaving even less to the imagination than Purna’s kit. “I need all the gruesome details.”
“Sorry,” Sullen told them as he gave Keun-ju a knowing wink, “I never sing the same song twice in one night.”
“Well, tell us another one while we dress,” said Purna, yanking her towel off and drying herself by the fire as Sullen and Keun-ju both tactfully ave
rted their gaze and found each other’s. “Maroto always said the one who built the fire was the host, and the host gets the first boast.”
“He said that?” Just as Sullen had been enjoying an unusual mix of nerves and relief to have finally cleared the air with Keun-ju, the phantom of his faithless uncle arrived late as ever to spoil the mood. That the hypocritical coward would dare to speak of decorum to his acolytes was yet another mark against his honor. “Bet he sung all kind of songs about his bravery.”
“They mostly involved his fuckups, actually,” said Diggelby. “It got so soppy we started putting wagers on it, Din and Hassan and me, about whether his newest tale would be more pathetic than the last. And it got so ridiculous that Din, she… she…”
Diggelby trailed off, staring into the fire with such a sad look on his face that Sullen truly felt for the man, though he couldn’t imagine how much worse this expedition would have been if there had been four fops instead of two. But then they probably wouldn’t have appreciated Grandfather’s company, either, and Sullen would have sacrificed all his fingers and toes to have the old man for just one last adventure together. To try to lighten the unexpectedly heavy mood, Sullen decided to go against his promise to himself, or at least bend it a little, and instead of leaving all his beloved childhood tales locked up tight in the back of his skull, he’d break one out for them.
A Blade of Black Steel Page 38