by Jasmine Walt
"Why should I? I have a lovely mat. A lovely mount to ride. A lovely..." he said no more, merely opened one eye and lifted his hand to thumb his jaw. "Let's just say I find it lovely here."
She threw a harassed glance over her shoulder. The camp would be roused soon, have a quick breakfast and then be back on the road for another day's journey. Three more before they reached Sarum. She intended the camp make it there without discovering she harbored the enemy.
"You have to leave."
"Why?"
"Isn't it obvious?"
"What's obvious is you favor Yuri to your own kin." He sat up and wrapped the fur around his knees.
"Yuri is my kin."
He snorted. "Yuri is your conqueror."
"He's my father."
"Is he?" The boulder shifted and poked at the embers of the fire. To her surprise, it leapt to attention.
"You know he's my father."
"A father is more than blood, Alaysha."
She squinted at him suspiciously. They hadn't addressed each other all night. "You know my name."
"Of course. Know thy enemy, my nohma used to say. Well, until you killed her." There was something in his face that made him look different, but then it was gone.
"I didn't—" she started to protest, but realized it was pointless. Of course she'd killed his nohma. She'd probably killed them all.
He grinned at her, and it was such a knowing, patronizing look, she had to stifle the urge to strike him.
"I'm hungry," is what she said instead and made to root out some early, unfolded fern tops and some grain heads for her breakfast. A dove egg or two wouldn't be bad either. She'd use the lovely fire he provided her with and roast them right in their shells. Never mind what happened to him. No doubt he'd get found while she was away and be taken for a thief and stoned right there.
She left him with a decided glare and shuffled off into the underbrush. He knew her name, knew she was part of his tribe, knew her father had ordered them killed...
She stopped short, a green fern clutched in her hand, ready to yield when the thought settled into her psyche like a rat bedding down for the day.
He knew she was part of his tribe. Oh, dear heaven. And Yuri knew it too. That was the secret her father kept. Yuri used her to annihilate everyone of her own tribe right down to the last man.
The realization made her straighten so fast, blackness threatened to overcome her. She felt dizzy. She'd systematically killed every one who had a connection to her. Ignorance was no excuse. She'd been bid to do so, and she'd killed without question.
All but for one. Number nineteen.
And number nineteen, who knew what she didn't, was even now lying exposed on her mat, exposed to view of the camp. If they found him, they would kill him.
She darted back, through bracken and crashing through spindly trees, back into the scented grass, and the light of her camp. She rushed, breathless, toward Barruch and shoved him aside as hard as she could so she could see her mat.
She should have known he'd be gone, but it still deflated her. The mat was rolled up and propped against a tree. The fur spread over a boulder.
The fire was blackened and dead.
She sighed.
"He said to tell you he's got a name—he isn't a number."
Alaysha whirled about to find the dirty little ferret standing with her hand against a tree, balancing on one leg uncertainly. Ready to take flight, she supposed.
She had to be careful.
"You spoke to him?"
The ferret nodded.
"Do you know who he is?"
A shake of the head, a short chew on the bottom lip.
Alaysha relaxed.
"Have you come to steal something else?"
The girl let down her foot, unshod, Alaysha could see. Just like her. She glanced down at her own feet—wiggled the toes.
"Have you eaten?" she asked the girl.
"No."
"Me, either. What say we try the camp this morning?"
The girl fidgeted. "I don't think I should."
Alaysha reached out her hand. "You must be hungry."
The girl bobbed her head in agreement. "But they won't like it."
"I know, but I'm too hungry to care."
They set out, the ferret close at Alaysha's heels but never quite abreast. Alaysha found she had to continually talk to her over her shoulder.
"Have you no family?"
The ferret nearly trod on her heel when Alaysha slowed her pace enough to hear the answer. "Careful," she told the girl.
There was a quick, furtive shake of the ferret's head, her muddied plaits leaving fresh trails of dirt on her tunic front. It made Alaysha wonder if the dirt was applied fresh each morning rather than just being the result of the girl's unwashed state.
"No relatives at all?"
Another shake. A few quick peeks over her shoulder and to the sides. "I had a brother once."
"Once?"
"Yes. A few months ago he left."
Alaysha thought it over for a second. There was something unsaid in the girl's tone. "Escaped, you mean."
The girl stopped a few paces away. She hung her head.
"You're one of the captives of year sixteen, aren't you?"
"Year fifteen by your timeline; we don't—we didn't—measure time the same way."
Alaysha nodded. "I don't imagine." She sidestepped to dodge the round of dogs loosed for their morning forage. The great Yuri never fed his warrior's dogs—only his own—and so each morning they were sent out to hunt for themselves. She watched them run through the bracken and disappear into the underbrush. Their being awake and loosed would mean the camp was up, awake, and setting about the packing routine, ready to travel.
"If you were captured during year fifteen, why are you free? Why aren't you serving in the scouts households?"
Alaysha remembered that campaign; or rather, she remembered the smell of death, the taste of the water she thirsted from every living thing within her killing zone. She thought of the pouch of seeds from that battle, lying nestled in a dirt hole at the back of her room beneath the ground in Sarum, covered over by thatch and then rocks on top of that. She never tried to remember much more than those things. Remembering the people the seeds belonged to was too painful. But that particular battle had been difficult. The village had sent out wave after wave of men, trying to wear her out little by little rather than sending them all at once. She'd had to send the power out over and over again.
"Are you listening?"
Alaysha's gaze refocused. She must have been lost in thought to have missed what the girl was saying. "I'm listening."
The girl shuffled her feet through the turf. "My master—the one who—the one who took us in after the conquest, he worked us hard." She fleeted a look into Alaysha's eyes, and there was a peculiar intelligence within, something pitiful to waste on manual labor, which is what all those from that campaign were used for: kitchen slaves, horse muckers, stone cutters.
"And?"
"Well we didn't mind hard work. Where I come from, labour is not a harsh thing, but it was the—master—of the house more than the needs." The girl let her gaze drop to her feet.
It took a moment to sink in, and the realization made Alaysha's stomach turn.
"You mean the master—"
The girl held up her hand as though she couldn't bear to hear the words.
"Oh, sweet Deities." Alaysha said. "Sweet Deities, you poor thing." She reached out to touch the girl's filthy plaits. "So you ran away. Are you all right? Do you need to see a medicine woman?"
The girl seemed confused. "I'm fine," she said. "Just hungry."
"But you said—"
"I said my brother couldn't take it anymore and we ran away."
"Your brother?" The mosaic was coming together a little tighter, and Alaysha couldn't say the picture was any prettier than what she'd originally thought.
The girl nodded. "At first we went together. But the maste
r is on the trail a lot and we couldn't stay together without fear one of us would be found, and so then, the other. He left nearly a full season ago and told me to stay with the camp when it travels, on the fringes, stealing food, and then when we were back in Sarum, to stay close to his dog's quarters. I could get more scraps from them—you know the dogs are so well fed, they often have most of what's left."
"But how could he leave you like that?"
The girl glanced up sharply and the look she gave Alaysha sent a shiver down her spine. "He hasn't really left forever—he's coming back. And when he does it will be with an army."
Alaysha wanted to say something, but they'd reached the beginnings of the camp and a horrible keening wail had begun that replaced the shiver running down Alaysha's spine with goose pimples. She darted to the left where a small animal skin tent had been erected amidst trees with long horizontal branches. One of the laundresses, obviously. There were always about half a dozen of them each time the camp struck out, always pitched their sites closest to the outer edge so the warriors could strip off their blood-soaked linen armor as soon as possible and leave it at those washes—then pick it up on the way to battle.
Since Alaysha had been going on conquest with her father, those laundresses had less blood-soaked linen and more sweaty tunics to clean. Still, they clung to the old ways with a tenacity borne of needfulness. Should they become extraneous, no doubt the great Yuri would find some other use for them—less favorable, if he found tasks at all. He had said more than once how he hated having to feed an army.
Still, the pile of rags the woman moaned over was so small, so insignificant, it made Alaysha wonder what could possibly be so horrible. It was then she saw the true shape of the rags. Formed around a tiny body. A little flax-spun cap atop its head.
She caught her breath and found she couldn't exhale. She should have known. She should have known she couldn't stop the power.
She cast harried glances around her. Laundry stiff as it hung from branches, stretched-out spruce roots forming a drying line. The ground beneath her feet was crackling moss—dried to straw. The woman herself was un-stooped with age, but her lips were dry and her weeping was horribly tearless.
Oh, sweet Deities. They would know. They would all know.
The strength nearly left her legs; she had to force herself to back up. She knocked into the little ferret.
"And what could they do about it if they did know?"
She hadn't expected the girl to speak. She looked down at her, trying to focus on her mouth. "What?" she asked her.
"I said what would they do?"
"You heard that?"
"I've ears, haven't I?"
"I thought I—"
"You thought you weren't speaking." The girl shrugged. "They'll have figured it out by now." She pointed to the water station where several warriors were tipping clay jugs over and over, finding only puddles of water within to slake their thirst.
"It's why they're afraid of you?"
Yes. It was why they were afraid. Still, this was the tribe that had brought her up. She couldn't stand to see the suffering. She had to do something. Surely she could bring rain. So what if she'd only killed a few and thirsted out only surface water. It wasn't right.
"I have to do something." As much as she wanted to go the other way, she forced her feet toward the laundresses and her dead baby. How old must it have been? Weeks, surely, it was so small.
She stepped close enough to stand over the woman who held the tiny corpse in her arms. Alaysha could tell it hadn't been dried out completely. The eyes were closed, but they were still round beneath the lids. The tiny hands hanging from the swaddling blanket were gray and lifeless, but not brown and leathered.
Maybe she hadn't thirsted the life from it; maybe she wasn't responsible for all of this.
The woman must have felt her presence. She glanced up, pain streaking her features. Within a flash that pain transformed to rage when she saw Alaysha standing there.
"You killed her." The lips, dry and crackled as they were, had a hard time forming the words, but the tone was unmistakable.
"I didn't mean—"
"What good can come from suffering a witch in camp, in the Emir's reach? Living in fear you'll lose control. Well, go on; drink me, too. Send me to my babe."
"I can't."
"You won't." The woman would have spit at her, Alaysha knew; if she could have gathered the fluid.
"You think I don't know you? You think I don't know what you are, about your kind?"
"My kind?"
The woman would say no more. She stared ahead for countless minutes and then went about moaning aloud again, rocking over the form she held. Her grief was so painful, so personal, Alaysha had to hug her stomach to keep from vomiting.
A dry hand took hers, and she looked down into a pair of muddy, concerned eyes.
"Come on," the girl said. "We have to leave her."
A tug, and then a deliberate pull so Alaysha's arm stretched up and out.
"We can't do anything for her," the girl said.
Breaking her fast didn't seem appropriate now. The two staggered to the camp, searching for, and finding subtle notices that the power had indeed begun its work.
Thankfully, however, there were no more deaths: only dry gazes from the tribe and desperate, futile searches for water. The ground was dry—no morning dew—but other than that, it was clear the camp had weathered the worst of the drought.
Alaysha was relieved until she caught sight of Drahl making a deliberate path toward her, his bear skin cloak sailing behind him from the force of his stride. She had a feeling her father's morning brew had been drunk of its liquid, leaving the bitter, psyche-strengthening dregs of herbs behind.
She reached out to grab the girl's hand but clutched at air instead. She wasn't gone exactly, just had wandered aimlessly toward a tent smelling of cinnamon and oats. Probably scouting for fare easier to get than Cook's stomach-fortifying roasted boar slabs.
Drahl stopped a few paces from her, staring sidelong at the woman still wailing over her baby. "The great Yuri, Conqueror of Hordes—"
"Leader of Thousands, yes, I know the title," Alaysha said, sighing. "What does he want?"
"He wants the witch to stand before him." Drahl wouldn't meet her eyes we spoke, but neither would he keep his attention on the mourner.
"Has it to do with a sudden lack of water?"
He did look at her then, and Alaysha could almost taste the spit he would have sent her way if he'd had enough available to do so.
"The witch should ask him," he said.
"The witch will."
His lips worked for a while before they settled into a hard line. Without another word, he turned his back and strode off. Alaysha didn't need to follow him—she knew exactly where her father's camp was even if she'd never been allowed within a hundred horse strides of it.
Her power must have done more damage than she'd thought. She tilted her head upward, to the gathering pinkness of the dawn sky. There were clouds just overhead, thickly white and clumped like clotted goat cream. Not enough water to make them heavy enough to let go, but enough to fatten them. She believed the pitiful stream they'd settled next to the night before was probably dry, and they'd have to journey nearly a day before there was another river large enough to fulfill all the needs of camp. Hopefully, there were a few pools along the way. The skins would need bloating if they were to make it home alive.
7
Drahl left her a few paces from her father's site. It was pitched so his tent was backed into the side of a verdant hill, the more to shade him in the morning while he slept. On all other sides there were smaller tents where his guard intermittently kept watch and slept. His personal cook's tent, a short, flat-topped one made of bear skins, was in the middle of the area, a fire crackling merrily, its flames licking upwards to the rotisserie of sizzling hare. It would be cinnamoned and honeyed, that hare, its belly stuffed with wild apples and dried cranberrie
s from the last season. Bodicca, a tall, wiry woman whose prowess as a warrior was only outmatched by her fame as a savoury cook, stood over the wrought iron, ladling herbed boar fat over the back of the meat.
Alaysha's stomach grumbled.
The woman glanced up sharply, and the circlet of men's teeth she'd stretched around her forearm jangled. Alaysha could make out the weathered look of skin needing fluid. Though the woman was watching her, Alaysha couldn't meet her eyes.
"My father asked for me."
Bodicca said nothing, just set the bowl of fat down and lifted a tankard to her lips, then made a great show of surprise before she upended it over the grass.
Nothing spilled out.
Alaysha wanted to say it was fortunate the food hadn't dried to leather, that it was lucky the honey she was using hadn't crystallized beyond use—that they were all damn lucky to still be alive. But those were all the reasons she'd been ordered here in the first place, and they all knew it—and feared it—and that fear brought anger, not relief. She had no choice but to keep her tongue, and instead settled down onto a log on the very edge of her father's camp, listening to the trembling song of the flute player rousing him to audience.
Her mouth watered at the aromas, but she did her best to seem unaffected while she waited. Under the circumstances, she'd rather not appear vulnerable in any way to her father. The piper's notes grew ever more grim, and Alaysha assumed the time for Yuri's appearance—and her own punishment—was drawing close.
She watched the cook pull out a hammered silver platter and lay the roasted hare on it, then circle it with roasted eggs. Usually they would be boiled, but not this day. She topped the eggs with roasted seeds and then set the plate down next to the tankard she'd upended earlier. It seemed the lack of liquid would be as much part of her father's repast as anything else—and intentionally so. All the better to make him angrier.
Well, his wrath wasn't quite so fearsome as all that. Alaysha would just have to prepare herself for the chastisement as best she could, and remind her father of the things she'd done for him. Certainly, she'd lied about the identity of the village she'd finished, and that meant they would be traveling and searching even longer for nothing, but it also meant he might feel some wariness, thinking those he was hunting were still out there somewhere. Until then, he needed his water witch.