The Wild Road

by Jennifer Roberson

  “No need to waste your voice,” she said, sitting again. “Let me see your hand.”

  It startled him. Brows rose. “My hand?”

  She matched his expression. “Did they not also tell you what I am?”

  “The dead guide’s woman.”

  The pain was abrupt and sharp, then faded as quickly as it had come. The dead guide’s woman. True, that. But much more. And it might be enough to buy her release from a stranger. “Also diviner,” she said. “There is no need to tell me anything of yourself, when I can read it in your hand.”

  She sensed startlement and withdrawal despite that the stranger remained before her, very still. His eyes were dark in the frenzied play of guttering shadows. The hand she could see, loose at his side, abruptly closed. Sealed itself against her. Refusal. Denial. Self-preservation.

  “It is a requirement,” she told him, “of anyone who wishes to hire on with Jorda.”

  His face tightened. Something flickered deep in his eyes. She almost thought she saw a hint of red.

  “You’ll understand,” Ilona hid amusement behind a businesslike tone, “that Jorda must be careful. He can’t afford to hire just anyone. His clients trust him to guard their safety. How is he to know what a stranger intends?”

  “Rhuan,” he said abruptly.

  She heard it otherwise: Ruin. “Oh?”

  “A stranger who gives his name is no longer a stranger.”

  “A stranger who brings ruination is an enemy.”

  “Ah.” His grin was swift. He repeated his name more slowly, making clear what it was, and she heard the faint undertone of an accent.

  She echoed it. “Rhuan.”

  “I need the work.”

  Ilona eyed him. Tall, but not a giant. Much of his strength, she thought, resided beneath his clothing, coiled quietly away. Not old, not young, but somewhere in the middle, indistinguishable. Oddly alien in the light of a dozen lanterns, for all his smooth features were arranged in a manner women undoubtedly found pleasing. On another night, she might; but Tansit was newly dead, and this stranger, Rhuan, kept her from her wagon, where she might grieve in private.

  “Have you guided before?”

  “Not here. Elsewhere.”

  “It is a requirement than you know the land.”

  “I do know it.”

  “Here?”

  “Sancorra. I know it.” He lifted one shoulder in an eloquent shrug. “On a known road, guiding is less a requirement than protection. That, I can do very well.”

  Something about him suggested it was less a boast than the simple truth. “And does anyone know you?”

  He turned slightly, glancing toward the plank set upon barrels where Mikal held sovereignty, and she saw Mikal watching them. She saw also the slight lifting of his big shoulders, a smoothing of his features into a noncommittal expression. Mikal told her silently that he knew nothing of this Rhuan that meant danger but nothing much else, either.

  “The season is ended,” Ilona repeated. “Speak to Jorda of the next one, if you wish, but there is no work for you now.”

  “In the midst of war,” Rhuan said, “I believe there is. Others will wish to leave. Your master would do better to extend the season.”

  Jorda had considered it, she knew. Tansit had spoken of it. And if the master did extend the season, he would require a second guide. Less for guiding than for protection, with Hecari patrols harrying the roads.

  Ilona glanced briefly at the full tankard. “Apply to Jorda,” she said. “It’s not for me to say.” Something perverse within her flared into life, wanting to wound the man before her who was so vital and alive, when another was not. “But he will require you be read. It needn’t be me.”

  His voice chilled. “Most diviners are charlatans.”

  Indeed, he was a stranger; no true-born Sancorran would speak so baldly. “Some,” she agreed mildly. “There are always those who prey upon the weak of mind. But there are also those who practice an honest art.”

  “You?”

  Ilona affected a shrug every bit as casual as his had been. “Allow me your hand, and then you’ll know, won’t you?”

  Once again he clenched it. “No.”

  “Then you had best look elsewhere for employment.” She had learned to use her body and used it now, sliding past him before he might block her way again. She sensed the stirring in his limbs, the desire to reach out to her, to stop her. She sensed also when he decided to let her go.

  Chapter 32

  RHUAN KNOTTED THE bottom of the temple braid into a silver clasp, then pressed it closed. Gently he let go of the braid, and it swung out of his hand to dangle before her ear. “Half done.”

  She didn’t respond. Her eyes remained closed.

  “Ilona? Where have you gone?”

  She smiled faintly, eyes still closed. “Away.”

  “Away where?”

  “Remembering.”

  “Remembering what?”

  “When we met.”

  He grinned. “You’ve done that already. Remembering.”

  “It bears repetition.” Her eyes opened. “May I see?”

  He held up the cracked hand mirror. Ilona studied her reflection. “It’s quite pretty.” She turned her head to consider the beaded braid from a different angle. “I like it.”

  “Now the other.” He set the mirror aside. “And remember not to stare.”

  Ilona laughed as she closed her eyes. “No staring.”

  After a moment he leaned forward, kissed her warmly, lingered on the lips. Against them, he murmured, “I couldn’t help myself. You made me remember. I remember how you looked in the moonlight that night, when I resurrected. “

  “Rather stunned, I imagine.”

  “But you cared. You were sorry I was dead. Well, when you thought I was dead.”

  “Of course I was sorry you were dead! Would you expect otherwise?”

  “I was a stranger.”

  “That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t feel badly if you—if a stranger—died.”

  Wind roared, set the wagon to rocking. Wood creaked, canvas cracked. For a moment an explosion of lightning illuminated the interior of the wagon. Thunder came swiftly behind it. Rhuan waited it out, then said, “I had been an annoyance to you in Mikal’s tent.”

  Ilona frowned. “Of course you had. You meant to be, and you were. But those are not reasons to wish a man dead.” She opened her eyes. “Are you going to weave the other braid or not?”

  He smiled, took up a wiry lock of hair, and slowly began to braid it, to weave into it glittering treasure.

  IT BEGAN NOT far from Mikal’s tent. Ilona had heard its like before and recognized at once what was happening. The grunt of a man taken unawares, the bitten-off inhalation, the repressed blurt of pain and shock, and then the hard, tense breathing of the assailants. Attacks were not unknown in settlements such as this, composed of strangers desperate to escape the depredations of the Hecari. Desperate enough, some of them, to don the brutality of the enemy and wield its weapon.

  Ilona stepped more deeply into shadow. She was a woman, and alone. If she interfered, she invited retribution. Jorda had told her to ask for escort on the way to the wagons, but in her haste to escape the stranger in Mikal’s tent, she had dismissed it from her mind.

  Safety lay in secrecy. But Tansit was dead, and at dawn she would attend his rites and say the words. If she did nothing, would another woman grieve? Would another woman speak the words of the rite meant to carry the spirit to the afterlife?

  Then she was running toward the noise. “Stop! Stop!”

  Movement. Men. Bodies. Ilona saw shapes break apart; saw a body fall. Heard the curses meant for her. But she was there, telling them to stop and for a wonder they did.

  And then
she realized, as they disappeared into darkness, that she had thought too long and arrived too late. His wealth was untouched, the beading in the braids and fringe, but his life was taken. She saw the blood staining his throat, the knife standing up from his ribs. Garotte to make him helpless, knife to kill him.

  He lay sprawled beneath the stars, limbs awry, eyes open and empty, the comely features slack.

  She had seen death before. She recognized his.

  Too late. Too late.

  She should go fetch Mikal. There had been some talk of establishing a Watch, a group of men to walk the paths and keep what peace there was. Ilona didn’t know if a Watch yet existed; but Mikal would come, would help her tend the dead.

  A stranger in Sancorra. What rites were his?

  Shaking, Ilona knelt. She did not go to fetch Mikal. Instead she sat beside a man whose name she barely knew, whose hand she hadn’t read, and grieved for them both. For them all. For the men, young and old, dead in the war.

  But there was yet a way to know what was required for his rites. She had the gift. Beside him, Ilona gathered up one slack hand. His future had ended, but there was yet a past. It faded already, she knew, as the warmth of the body cooled, but if she practiced the art before he was cold she would learn what she needed to know to give him the proper rites. She would make certain of it.

  Indeed, the hand cooled. Before morning the fingers would stiffen, even as Tansit’s had. The spirit, denied a living body, would attenuate, then fade.

  There was little light, save for the muddy glow of lanterns within a hundred tents. Ilona would be able to see nothing of the flesh, but she had no need. Instead, she lay her fingers gently upon his palm and closed her eyes, tracing the pathways there, the lines of his life.

  Maelstrom.

  Gasping, Ilona fell back. His hand slid from hers. Beneath it, beneath the touch of his flesh, the fabric of her skirt took flame.

  She beat it with her own hands, then clutched at and heaped powdery earth upon it. The flame quenched itself, the thread of smoke dissipated. But even as it did so, as she realized the fabric was whole, movement startled her.

  The stranger’s hand, the one she had begun to read, closed around the knife standing up from his ribs. She heard a sharply indrawn breath, and something like a curse, and the faint clatter and chime of the beads in his braids. He raised himself up on one elbow and stared at her.

  This time, she heard the curse clearly. Recognized the grimace. Knew what he would say: I wasn’t truly dead.

  But he was. Had been.

  He pulled the knife from his ribs, inspected the blade a moment, then tossed it aside with an expression of distaste. Ilona’s hands, no longer occupied with putting out the flame that had come from his flesh, folded together against her skirts. She waited.

  He saw her watching him. Assessed her expression. Tried the explanation she anticipated. “I wasn’t—”

  She cut him off. “You were.”

  He opened his mouth to try again. Thought better of it. Looked at her hands. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “No. Are you?”

  His smile was faint. “No.”

  She touched her own throat. “You’re bleeding. Here.”

  He sat up. Ignored both the slice encircling his neck and the wound in his ribs. His eyes on her were calm, too calm. She saw an odd serenity there and rueful acceptance—perhaps that she had seen what he wished she hadn’t.

  “I’m Shoia,” he said.

  No more than that. No more was necessary.

  “Those are stories,” Ilona told him. “Legends.”

  He seemed as equally amused as he was resigned. “Rooted in truth.”

  She was highly skeptical, and she let it into her voice. “A living Shoia?”

  “For now,” he agreed, irony in his tone. “A moment ago, dead. But you know that.”

  “I touched your hand, and it took fire.”

  His face closed up. Sealed itself against her. His mouth was a grim, unrelenting line.

  “I see.” She paused. “You might come up with a more believable story. And is it a Shoia trait, then, to burn the flesh a diviner might otherwise read?”

  The mouth parted. “It’s not for you to do.”

  Ilona let her own measure of irony seep into her tone. “You are well warded, apparently.”

  “They wanted my bones,” he said. “It’s happened before.”

  She understood at once. “Practitioners of the Kantica.” Who burned bones for the auguries found in ash and grit. Legend held Shoia bones told truer, clearer futures than anything else. But no practitioner she knew of used actual Shoia bones.

  He knew what she was thinking. “There are a few of us left,” he told her. “But we keep it to ourselves. We would prefer to keep our bones clothed in flesh.”

  She frowned. “But legend says no one murders a Shoia. That anyone foolish enough to do so inherits damnation.”

  “They murder us when they can. It’s simply more difficult to do so.”

  Nor did it matter. Dead was dead, damnation or no. “These men intended to haul you out to the ant hills,” Ilona said, and thought, Where the flesh would be stripped away, and the bones collected to sell to Kantic diviners. “They couldn’t know you are Shoia, could they?”

  He gathered braids fallen forward and swept them back. “I doubt it. But it doesn’t matter. A charlatan would buy the bones and claim them Shoia, thus charging even more for the divinations. Clearer visions, you see.”

  She did see. There were indeed charlatans, false diviners who victimized the vulnerable and gullible. How better to attract trade than to boast of Shoia bones?

  “Are you?” she asked. “Truly?”

  Something flickered in his eyes. Flickered red. His voice hardened. “You looked into my hand.”

  And had seen nothing of his past or his future save maelstrom.

  “Madness,” she said, not knowing she spoke aloud.

  His smile was bitter.

  Ilona looked into his eyes as she had looked into his hand. “Are you truly a guide?”

  The bitterness faded. “I can be many things. Guide is one of them.”

  It amused her to say, “Or dead man?”

  He matched her irony. “That, too. But I would prefer not.” He stood up then; somehow, he brought her up with him. She tensed, but he released her arm immediately. She faced him there in the shadows beneath the stars. “It isn’t infinite, the resurrection.”

  “No?”

  “Seven times,” he said. “The seventh is the true death.”

  “And how many times was this?”

  The stranger showed all his fine white teeth in a wide smile. “That, we never tell.”

  “Ah.” She understood. “Mystery is your salvation.”

  “Well, yes. Until the seventh time. And then we are as dead as anyone else. Bury us, burn us . . .” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Dead is dead. It simply comes to us more slowly.”

  Ilona shook out her skirts, shedding dust. “I know what I saw when I looked into your hand. But that was a shield, was it not? A ward against me.”

  “Against a true diviner, yes.”

  It startled her; she was accustomed to others accepting her word. “You didn’t believe me?”

  He said merely, “Charlatans abound.”

  “But you are safe from charlatans.”

  He stood still in the darkness and let her arrive at the conclusion.

  “But not from me,” she said. “I read true, and that worries you.”

  “Shoia bones are worth coin to charlatans,” he said. “A Kantic diviner could make his fortune by burning my bones. But a true Kantic diviner—”

  “—could truly read your bones.”

  He s
miled, wryly amused. “And therefore I am priceless.”

  Ilona considered it. “One would think you’d be more careful.”

  “I was distracted.”

  “By—?”

  “You,” he finished. “I came out to persuade you to take me to your master. To make the introduction.”

  “Ah, then I am to blame for your death.”

  He grinned. “For this one, yes.”

  “And I suppose the only reparation I may pay is to introduce you to Jorda.”

  The grin flashed again. Were it not for the slice upon his neck and the blood staining his leather tunic, no one would suspect this man had been dead only moments before.

  Ilona sighed, recalling Tansit. And his absence. “I suppose Jorda might have some use for a guide who can survive death multiple times.”

  “At least until the seventh,” he observed dryly. “But please don’t tell him.”

  She considered that. Yes, it was information a man might not want passed among others. For now, it fascinated her.

  “If I read your hand, would I know how many you have left?”

  He abruptly thrust both hands behind his back, looking mutinous, reminding her for all the world of a child hiding booty. Ilona laughed.

  But she had read his hand, if only briefly. And seen in it conflagration.

  Rhuan, he had said.

  Ruin, she had echoed.

  Chapter 33

  AUDRUN AWOKE SCREAMING. Screaming and screaming. Except she made no noise.

  A tentative hand touched her shoulder, then closed and shook it. “Mam. Mam!”

  Gillan.

  “Mam!”

  “Oh, Mother,” she gasped. “Oh, blessed Mother . . .”

  Morning. She lay limp, aching. Sweat pasted hair to her face. Gillian bent over her; Ellica and Torvic sat with Megritte on another cot. Meggie looked horrified—so badly horrified that she had soiled her shift with vomit.

  She dreams what I dream. Audrun levered herself up on one elbow. She had pleaded with Meggie before, to no avail. Now she would not plead.