It searched my face, then said, "Face them... but not accept them?"
I paused. And laughed. "You have been reading too many contracts, pefna-eperu." I didn't let it go, though it remained standing, uncertainty limned in the tremor of its body. "You heard right. I'll face the consequences of it but I won't accept them. I won't accept censure for loving you. I won't accept cruelty. And they will have to kill me before I allow them to drag either of us away to be tortured. I won't close my eyes to the difficulties but I won't lie down for injustice. And Hesa... I am in love with you. I'm afraid I was falling in love with you from the moment I saw you at ke Jurenel's funeral."
It shuddered and said, "There are worse consequences than the censure of other Jokka, Pathen. Nature itself may punish us."
"If it does, it does," I said. "That too I'll face when it comes. If... you're willing to face it with me."
It looked at our joined hands. And then reached behind itself, pulling a knife from its sash: my knife, the one that had been wrested from me by the members of House Laisira when they'd subdued me.
It offered its trust with the empire's knife, offered it with the naked metal that made plain all that we risked. I put my hand on its so that our hands were joined on the haft and tugged gently until it knelt next to me. From there I pulled it all the way into my arms, setting the knife to one side, and that kiss was better than the first and all the ones shared in truedark.
"I've missed this," it whispered.
"Then you need not miss it anymore," I said, and looped an arm around its waist.
Darsi said nothing when he found us that way, walking past us to reach the driver's bench. I was gratified to see he had some common sense after all.
I spent the following day watching het Kabbanil recede, a view made possible by Hesa's positioning its wagon last in the train. The Stone Moon had not ruled Ke Bakil all my life. I'd been born in het Kabbanil in a free society, had grown old enough to enjoy the privileges and responsibilities of an adult, owing work to House Ures. It had not been an idyllic existence, certainly, for Hesa was right: our society was collapsing and even het Kabbanil, the largest city left on the back of the World, had not been immune to the effects of crop failures and falling birth rates and the increasing burden of the mind-wounded. But I had been free. Free... and ignorant, and content in that ignorance.
When Roika arrived in het Kabbanil, he had shone the light of his Stone Moon on the problems that were destroying us as a species. After that we had neither freedom nor contentment except under his law, and beneath it we'd begun to prosper. But we prospered the way rikka did in the harness, obedient to the hand on our reins, unable to break away, forced to travel the path our master decreed and bear the load he had chosen.
The Pathen who'd been born free to House Ures would have gladly died in het Kabbanil after a long life. The Pathen who'd lived to see the empire engulf the entirety of Ke Bakil... was leaving it behind. With pain, yes. But while Roika ruled, het Kabbanil was no longer my home.
From the back of a moving wagon heading north, the city was a silhouette beneath a sky like a pottery bowl, half of it leafed in copper and the other half the glazed violet of swelling night. I think it was that sight that made me promise myself that I would return. Even knowing how unlikely the prospect... still, I promised myself. One day I would set foot in het Kabbanil again, a het Kabbanil that would no longer erect public platforms for the torture of innocents. A het Kabbanil that did not hire its own emodo to police the behavior of its citizens, did not extend them like claws ready to rend. A free het Kabbanil, capital this time of a free Ke Bakil. Surely among these truedark dissidents there was a leader who could show us the path to that future. I would find that Jokkad and bring them back from the wilderness.
And then I could go home.
I stared for a long time at that silhouette and at the shape of my promise. Until night fell for true and the wagon stopped, and Hesa came to find me.
"Come," it said. "It's time."
I watched the hand-off from the side of the road. As with everything Hesa arranged, it happened with minimal fuss. There had been Jokka waiting in the shadowed dark of the shrubs alongside the road—poor work of the empire to leave them there—and the Jokka of House Laisira slid from their drivers' benches or out of their wagons, shouldering packs; some of them were the padded wooden cylinders that sheltered new hives for nascent bee colonies, the source of Laisira's silk. Many of them carried what I thought were staves until an emodo passed me close enough to see it was one of the long-handled wooden whisks used to stir the dye vats. The strangers traded places with them, tapped the rikkas' backs with the reins, and the wagons rolled on.
We watched them go, all of us. I think we all felt the irrevocability of our actions. Until this moment, we had only been contemplating treason. Now... now we were committed.
Hesa drew in a breath, then turned to its House and said, "You know your routes and your groups. Go now. We'll see each other again at the rendezvous."
Immediately the Jokka splintered into handfuls and forged into the dark, leaving me with Hesa, Darsi, and three other Jokka I knew for weavers, having seen them at work often enough during my visits.
"We're missing a whisk," I observed.
"Our party won't need one," Hesa said. "We're the only ones mounted."
I glanced at the dark and saw what the shadows had obscured until then: tacked beasts grazing.
"The Jokka now driving our caravans used them to ride here, to wait for us," Hesa said as Darsi and the others moved toward them. "There's payment for them in the wagons. We need to get to the rendezvous point first if at all possible, so we'll ride."
"And the whisks," I said. "For obscuring tracks, I'm guessing."
"And as weapons, if necessary," Hesa said. "Though gods help us if we are forced to resort to stirring spoons for weapons. We have stone knives but not a great many. Buying enough for us all would have looked suspicious."
"Yes," I said, because I'd been a Claw and it would have caught my attention. "You thought of everything."
"I tried," Hesa said. "But I live in fear of what I may have overlooked." It looked up as Darsi rode close, pulling the last two rikka by the reins. "Ah, thank you, Darsi."
"You haven't forgotten anything," Darsi said. "You never do."
"That is always the last thing anyone says of someone who finally fails," Hesa said, pulling itself into the saddle.
I followed suit, eyeing Darsi. He didn't meet my gaze.
"How far are we expected to go tonight?" I asked as Hesa guided us into the shrouded wilderness lapping the road.
"Until truedark," it said, voice tense. "The farther we are from the road and everyone else, the safer we'll be."
For hours, then, we pressed on beneath the gathering night. The rikka didn't like it; they preferred traveling by day when they could see better. The terrain was a hindrance as well. The rikka were plainsbeasts, and the land near het Nekelmi was folded into deep hills that would become the Birthwell's mountains in the north near het Noidla. It was hard work pushing the beasts in those conditions, so we concentrated on doing so. My wounds began to ache not long into the ride but I made no complaint. Better to bleed than to die.
We didn't stop until nearly truedark and even then Hesa reined its beast in and paused to look at the sky as if trying to decide whether to continue.
"The rikka won't go any further," Darsi said.
"We have yew sap," it said.
Darsi sighed. "If you think it best."
It considered for a very long moment, then looked over its shoulder at the rest of us in what light remained. Then said, "We camp."
Someone behind me blew out a breath in relief and then everyone began to slide off the rikka and strip them. As I started on mine, I said, "Yew sap?"
"For attracting firebrights," Darsi said.
"Like in stories," I said.
"It works," he said, and I could hear his flattened ears in his tone of voice.
"It does," Hesa said, interrupting us. "But we'll save it for an emergency. We'll be up before dawn, though, so get what rest you can."
I checked the saddlebags after seeing to the rikka. There was food in one of them, of course. Nuts, seeds and dried fruit pressed into flattened honey cakes. We ate a cold meal, for there was no question of lighting a fire, and sat in a circle with the rikka on the outside so their vigilance could serve us. One by one, the Jokka with us finished their food and pulled the saddle blankets over themselves and dropped to sleep. I caught Hesa's hand. In the fading light, I saw a hint of surprise and as swiftly, gratitude.
I could see that convincing it of my sincerity would not be the work of an evening. I prayed I would be granted enough of them to succeed. Hesa slept in my arms that night, but no one learned of it, for the eperu was up and tacking our beasts before we'd risen. In this as in everything, it served the breeders' safety.
For the next few days we rode at a pace that would have punished the most practiced of riders. There was almost no talk on the journey; we saved ourselves for the task at hand and when we had an easy stretch we kept silence out of habit, and from a sense that we were hunted. We stopped only briefly to stretch and for necessities, which did not include eating—we ate in the saddle. And we rode long past nightfall.
It would have seemed paranoid to anyone else, I supposed. But I had been a Claw and I knew what we were fleeing. The empire was at least as obsessed with finding the source of the truedark kingdom and punishing the seditious Jokka who thought of breaking contract as Hesa was with our escape, and unlike Hesa the emperor had unlimited money and entire companies of Claws to throw at the problem. He'd become fixated on the rumors of the truedark kingdom following the sentencing of Ajul, the errant Head of Rapuñal, and from what Suker had told me the searches were only getting broader and better financed. So I approved of Hesa's measures, even as the journey grew more grueling. I wondered where the eperu was leading us, though, and what we would find there.
I asked, four days into our flight, as we were falling asleep. It was lying with its back to my chest. The fit was comfortable; I was taller, its shoulders narrower.
"Not long now," it said, tired. "Two days, maybe. We'll be met."
I wrapped an arm around its chest and murmured, "All right."
But Hesa was wrong... wrong in the worst possible way. The following afternoon we heard the swift staccato of running rikka approaching us, but from the west, the direction we were heading, not the east. Before we could evade, two Jokka rode up out of a furrow and the one in the lead called out, "Gods, gods, go back, go back! They've found us, they've destroyed everything!"
"Barit?" Darsi whispered, startled. And then louder, spurring his rikka on. "Barit!"
Hesa hissed a curse and rode after him and I, I followed.
The strangers were two emodo, both spattered in pale blood and sweat and dirt. Their rikka were in similar condition and exhausted as well, panting the moment the two slowed. The male Darsi had hailed was reddish-brown beneath his dust, and there was more than desperation in his face. There was grief, too, a crazed grief. And this close to him I could smell something else: soot.
"No," the stranger cried. "No, don't stop, not for anything! There's no time!"
"Barit!" Darsi said. "What happened?"
"They found us," Barit said. "And left death behind."
Hesa reined up alongside and said sharply, "Are they following you?"
"We don't know," the second emodo said. "We think we lost them—"
I heard the pursuit first, the beating of feet on the ground. I pulled my knife from my sash. "Go, I'll catch up."
"Pathen!" Hesa exclaimed.
"Will you leave him to betray us?" Darsi cried.
"Go," I said to Hesa, ignoring him.
Hesa met my eyes so that I could see the fear in them... not of me, but for me. And then it grabbed Darsi's reins and dragged the other around, and they pelted away. Where, I didn't know; I should have thought of that. But I didn't. I waited on the back of my stolen rikka for the inevitable.
I didn't know the two Claws who rode over the fold by name, but we recognized one another. Enough for them to pull up short, surprised.
"Hold!" I said. "You're looking for the dissidents?"
"Yes?" one of them said, studying me. "You're out of uniform."
"I know," I said. "It was the only way to convince them to take me in."
That put their ears back. Then the first said, startled, "You've infiltrated their organization?"
"It was ke Suker's idea," I said. "You'd heard about House Laisira's audit?"
Now I had their attention, for my audit of House Laisira was infamous not just among het Kabbanil's citizens, but in the Claws as well. Everyone knew that one of Suker's Claws had been dogging the principals of House Laisira; most of them thought it was because they'd been suspected of the same sort of transgressions that had seen the Head of House Rapuñal enslaved. No one but Suker and my subordinate Ukeñe had known that what I'd suspected them of had been something far worse. Which was fine; their ignorance served me.
"Don't tell me he was planning this that far back!" the second emodo exclaimed.
"Why else?" I said. "I was supposed to gain their trust by telling them I'd been sent to investigate them but chose to protect them instead. And it worked. Did the rest of the operation go as planned?"
"Perfectly," the first emodo said, satisfied. "We found their settlement and razed it. Most of the rebels are in custody but a handful of them used the confusion to flee, including their leaders. We chased one of them up this way but we appear to have lost him. Unless..."
"The Jokka I'm with know the location of their final hiding place," I said. "My task is to follow them there and wait until the last of the stragglers arrive. Then I'll steal down to ke Suker and tell him where they are." They wanted to believe me, I knew, so I lifted the knife, the sickle-knife that only Claws carried. "I don't suppose either of you have a fresh binding cloth for this. Riding around without a shirt is making the handle chafe my skin."
That won them to my side. As the second handed me a spare linen, I said, "I am Pathen Ures-emodo. Tell me your names so I can give them to ke Suker... he'll want to know who met up with me to share information on the operation."
The two Claws who left me on the hill were satisfied, very well satisfied that I was who I'd said I was. I watched them go, feeling cold beneath the summer sunlight. It had been far too easy to be that person again.
Hesa was awaiting me an hour's ride back the way we'd come with the second of the strangers. When I rode over the crest of the hill I saw its shoulders ease from a distance; I spurred the rikka to a canter and joined the two of them.
"I've convinced them not to follow," I said. "But there may be other parties searching. We should make haste."
The stranger glanced at me, uncertain, but Hesa said, "Let's go," and that was enough for him. So many conflicting webs of trust: the dissidents trusted Hesa, so they trusted me. I trusted Hesa, so I trusted them. And... the empire trusted me. And that meant... what, precisely? I turned the knot of it in my head as I fell in behind the others and kept a look-out for ambush, for betrayal, for signs that we were followed. We weren't, of course. I was Suker's spy, who had dogged House Laisira to notorious effect, who had been the one to uncover Ajul Rapuñal-eperu's perfidy and see him to justice. Among the Claws my deeds were irreproachable.
The journey to the truedark hiding place took two days, two hard days climbing north into mountainous territory. On the second day we met up with Darsi and the others as well as some of the remainder of House Laisira. The further we went, the more people we found on the track, until at last we led our rikka up a narrow trail and into a tunnel, one that opened into a series of caves. There we found a handful of Jokka awaiting us, but not as many as I would have expected given the size of the settlement Hesa had said we'd be joining. The Jokka of Laisira were easy to tell apart from these strangers,
for they were not dirty, bloody or streaked with ash.
At my side, Hesa was stiff until its seeking gaze found someone. "Ilushet?"
"Ke Hesa?"
From among the refugees rose a neuter, and a more distinct example of an eperu I had never seen, lean and hard and sexless in a way I suddenly realized Hesa was not. Ilushet was beautiful the way the World was beautiful, like a beast, like a mountain, like something unchangeable. That made the tear-streaks on its chin seem like desecration.
"Ilushet," Hesa said. "What happened?"
"They found us," Ilushet said softly.
We sat in a circle, six of us, in the back of the cavern: Hesa and Darsi and I and three of the truedark Jokka: Ilushet the neuter and Barit, the male who'd warned us, and his companion who'd been awaiting me with Hesa when I returned from warning off the Claws. They'd left someone in charge of directing the few remaining Jokka into the tunnels so we would be free to talk without distraction.
"First, this male... we don't know him?" Ilushet said, glancing at me.
"Pathen," Hesa said. "An ally."
"He has one of their knives," the second Jokkad observed, frowning.
"Because I was authorized to carry one," I said. "I was a Claw... but I have defected."
Silence then as the three of them stared at me.
Ilushet said to Hesa, "You trust him."
"I trust him," Hesa said.
Ilushet looked at me again. I said nothing, letting it. And then it sighed, ears flipping back. "I don't know how they found us, but they came in overwhelming force. There's nothing left of the settlement... nothing at all. They burned it all. And... Hesa..." It closed its eyes and could not continue.
"We're done," Barit said. "What you see in this cavern is it. All that's left of us. A double handful, maybe, if we're lucky. And that includes the Jokka of your House that you sent ahead. The rest of us have been taken for slaves or slain; all our supplies are destroyed or confiscated. It's over."
A Bloom in the North Page 3