Fifth Quarter

by Tanya Huff

  At the well, Vree pulled the counterweight around and spilled another bucket of water into the stone trough.

  “Bards live to ask questions,” Gyhard said as he watched the animals suck noisily. “When this one recovers her wits, what have you decided to tell her?”

  “What have I decided to tell her?”

  “It was your choice to bring her along.”

  He was being deliberately provoking. She wondered if Bannon’s less endearing mannerisms were beginning to rub off the inside of his body.

  *Hey!*

  “You bought her the horse.” The sound of the bucket dropping back into the water echoed against the damp sides of the well.

  *Come on, Vree; what do you mean, less endearing mannerisms?*

  Gyhard stroked his gelding’s damp neck. “After you convinced me she represented a resource we could ill afford to ignore.”

  *What, Vree?*

  “She reports directly to the Emperor, you know,” he continued. “I imagine he’ll be fascinated to hear about you and your brother.”

  *Come on, Vree, tell me.*

  *Well, to begin with, you never know when to shut up!* She could feel his hurt retreat, as obvious as it had been when they were children and he’d crawl under the barracks and hide if she yelled at him. But things were a lot simpler back then, and right now she didn’t have the time to crawl under after him and reassure him that she still loved him best. “We’ll trade her silence for our help rescuing the prince.”

  “You mean for the prince’s body,” Gyhard corrected with a false smile. “And silence isn’t something usually associated with bards; they see all, they sing all.”

  Vree studied him for a moment and wondered, if she asked, whether he’d tell her why the old man was so important to him. She knew the bard’s reasons for wanting to set Prince Otavas’ spirit free, she knew her own. She wished she knew his and even more, she wished she knew when it had become so important for her to know him as more than a usurper in her brother’s body.

  The horses had finished drinking, so she plunged her own face into the trough and raised it, dripping, a moment later. “The bard can ask all the questions she wants, we don’t have to answer. Right at the moment, she needs us and we need her and that makes her an ally.” Glaring across the well at him, she added, “There’ve been stranger.”

  This time the smile was genuine. “I know.”

  * * * *

  He thought he was on one of the barges that members of the Imperial Family occasionally took out on the water; that the rocking motion came from waves slapping against the polished wooden sides; that he could hear the creaking of the mast as the huge square sail filled with wind; that he could smell the faint stink of rotting fish that always seemed to drift over the river closest to the Capital; that he’d fallen asleep on deck. Without opening his eyes, he dragged his tongue across dry lips and—certain there’d be a servant close enough to hear—murmured how nice a cool glass of wine would taste.

  Bony fingers closed on his shoulder.

  And he remembered.

  “No!” Otavas jerked into a sitting position, tearing himself out of the old man’s grip.

  Rheumy eyes narrowed in puzzlement. “You don’t want a drink?”

  Heart pounding, Otavas pressed up against the side of the cart and stared frantically around. Except for the position of sun and shadow, nothing had changed. Afraid to move lest the dead lay hands on him again, he craned his neck and peered out at the road.

  They were traveling fairly quickly down one of the great roads—he recognized a mile marker as the cart rolled past—pulled by … by … It took him a moment to understand that two more of the dead ran between the shafts of the cart, their gait made horrifying by a unified precision the living could never attain. The younger of the two women had a leather brace around her neck. His stomach twisted as he realized what that had to mean.

  Then up ahead, he saw a courier in the uniform of the Imperial Army. Relief hit him so hard he swayed and had to grab the side of the cart to keep from falling.

  “Hey!” he yelled, waving an arm over his head. “Help me! Help!”

  The courier turned toward the sound, but her gaze slid right over the cart. Reining in her horse, she pulled off her helm and stared back up the road.

  “No! Here! Can’t you see me!” Voice breaking, Otavas scrambled up onto his knees. “Help me! I order you to help me!”

  They’d drawn abreast and for an instant it almost seemed as though she looked right at the prince. Then her eyes widened in terror so that the whites showed all around. An instant later, she shook her head in disbelief and crammed her helm back on.

  Then they were past.

  Tears cutting through the dust on his cheeks, Otavas turned to stare at the rider, quickly being left behind. “Help me,” he cried. “I order you to see me …”

  “I have watered wine for you.”

  He jerked around to face the old man who gazed at him with such adoration he felt it as a physical caress. His skin crawled.

  “I remembered how you preferred it over beer.”

  Otavas looked down at the offered wineskin then up at the old man. He swallowed and the sides of his throat scraped together. Slowly, fingers trembling, he reached out. Smiling happily, the old man pushed the yielding skin toward him.

  Although he shook so hard he could barely find his mouth, if he concentrated on the wine, and only on the wine, Otavas found that he could drink. The normalcy of the action helped. Clutching the leather sack as if it were the hand of a friend, he found the courage to look around.

  The two dead men at the rear of the cart stared, unblinkingly at him. Otavas shrank back but, with nowhere to go, found himself forced to confront the rising darkness. As though it issued out of another mouth, he heard his voice foolishly proclaim, “You’re dead.”

  The taller of the two blinked. “Yesss, Highnesss.”

  They knew who he was. They were dead and they knew who he was. His leg muscles jumped painfully as his body fought to run while his fear of having them touch him again held him in place.

  They were dead, and they knew they were dead.

  The world seemed to pause while Otavas realized what that meant. His heart started beating, his lungs pulled in air, terror became laced with pity. They were more dreadfully trapped than he was.

  Wordlessly, he offered them the wine.

  Equally wordlessly, they shook their heads.

  “The dead have no need of drink, my heart.” He whirled to face the old man who smiled at him. “You and I alone must share a cup.”

  “Did you …” Otavas wet his lips and tried again. “Did you do this?” A wave of his hand made it obvious what he meant.

  “Of course I did, just like you taught me.” The old man’s smile moved past him to touch the dead. They leaned toward it.

  “I taught you?”

  The ancient eyes filled with moisture. “Did you think I’d forget?”

  He’s crazy. He’s not just old, he’s crazy. Wiping his palms on his shirt, the fine cotton already damp with sweat, the prince lifted his chin and made an effort to sound like a son of the Emperor. “Listen to me, please. I’m not who you think I am. I am Prince Otavas and my father will send the army out to search for me. They’ll tear the Empire apart and when they find me …” He stared over the back of the cart, hoping to see some sign of pursuit. “When they find me …” But the courier had looked right at him and ridden on by.

  The cart turned suddenly and thudded down into wheel ruts cut alongside a field of grain. “We’re heading for a small grove of trees,” the old man explained, patting the straw basket between them. “We’ll eat then, you and I, and have shade to protect us from the heat of the day. When the sun is less dangerous, we’ll go on.”

  The scent of peaches rising up from the basket brought a rush of saliva and his stomach spasmed. He’d never been so hungry. “How long was I asleep?” The old man ignored him. “Where are you taking me?�
��

  “Home,” the old man told him with a longing sigh, one gnarled hand holding the necklace of bone, the other reaching out to lightly touch the prince’s cheek. “Home, where we’ll start again. And this time we’ll get it right and you’ll never, ever leave me.”

  Ten

  “We won’t catch them before dark.”

  Karlene turned her head just enough to glare at Gyhard through bloodshot eyes. “How do you know?” she demanded.

  “As long as you are able to Sing the kigh,” he told her, speaking slowly and just on the edge of sarcasm, “our quarry is at least a day’s travel away. You Sang the kigh at the last milestone, and unless I’m greatly mistaken there are still kigh around you now.”

  “How can you tell?” Her thoughts trailed one another around in pain-filled circles and could come up with no reason for his certainty. For all their strangeness, neither of her new companions were aware of the kigh.

  Gyhard exhaled noisily, impatiently. “Your hair keeps blowing into your face and yet the breeze is from the opposite direction.”

  “Then if we’re still a day behind them, we can’t stop.” Teeth clenched, Karlene straightened out of the slump she’d been riding in for—she didn’t know how long, it seemed as though she’d spent her life in the saddle—but before she could drive in her heels, a slender brown hand closed over her wrist like a vise.

  “No.”

  She turned. Her protest died unvoiced at Vree’s expression. Short of chopping it off at the wrist, Karlene couldn’t move the hand; the hand’s owner would not be moved at all. “No,” she repeated wearily after a long moment, her tone making it an agreement.

  *Vree, what difference does it make? Let her gallop off into the sunset if she wants.*

  *Much more galloping and she’ll kill herself.*

  *So?* He sounded sulky.

  Vree recognized the question he was actually asking;

  Why are you paying so much attention to things that don’t concern me? He’d asked that question too many times before in too many different ways for Vree to mistake it now. Bannon had always basked in her attention—needed it, she realized suddenly as much as she’d needed him there to give the attention to—and now, when her attention was all he had … Guilt gentled an impatient response. *Without the bard, we can’t track the prince.*

  *That’s bullshit. The prince is with the old man, the carrion eater’s going after the old man, and we’re sticking close by my body.*

  *Gyhard isn’t certain where we’re going, and he has problems of his own right now.*

  Bannon was silent for a moment, then he sighed. *And you care about his problems, sister-mine?* His voice hardened. *I want that carrion eater in my body to die, Vree. I want him to die, not me, with or without honor. I want my body back and we are doing nothing to take it!*

  His rage sizzled through her arms and legs, and Vree snatched the hand around the bard’s wrist away before it could spasm closed tighter still.

  *Honor’s easy for you,* he sneered, *you’re living. I’m existing.* Then abruptly as it rose, his rage subsided and his voice, when she heard it again, sounded close to tears. *I’m sorry, Vree. It’s just … I mean, I want …*

  “Vree?”

  Fighting her way up out of Bannon’s despair, she discovered the reins were sliding lose through her fingers. Her gelding, taking advantage of her momentary absence, had swerved for the edge of the road and dropped his head to snatch a mouthful of the coarse grass. The bard, physically exhausted by the day’s ride and emotionally shredded by the reason for it, appeared not to have noticed, but Gyhard stared at her, his expression looking very much like concern. A heartbeat later Vree decided she had to be mistaken—she’d fallen a little behind so he’d had to turn and face the setting sun. It was a squint. Nothing more. Because it couldn’t be anything more.

  “You have a suggestion?” Gyhard continued, lifting a hand to shade his eyes.

  Vree gathered up the reins and with them her control—of the horse, of herself. “I do. We stop at the next inn. If there’s a healer around, we have her head looked at …” She jerked her chin at the bard “… either way she eats and goes to bed. We leave at dawn and we ride hard before the day heats up.”

  Gyhard opened his mouth to speak, but Karlene broke in before he had a chance. “We ride until dark,” she said. “It would be stupid to waste the cool of the evening.”

  “Stupider to die,” Vree pointed out. “Much stupider to fall off your horse and break your neck. You look like shit, and you need to rest.”

  Karlene took a deep breath, the air equally scented with sweaty horse and sweaty bard, and discovered that even her lungs ached. “The prince …”

  “Will be rescued later or not at all. Your choice.” Later or not at all had been Vree’s choice from the moment she’d seen another man wearing her brother’s body.

  The bard stroked at a dark strand of mane with one finger. Finally, she sighed, surrender implicit in the release of air. “Are all assassins so tenacious?”

  *What does tenacious mean?* Bannon asked peevishly, curiosity dragging him up out of depression.

  *How should I know?* Vree lifted her chin. “We’re trained to remove anything that gets between us and our target,” she said, and because it was important to keep in mind just what she needed to remove, she looked past Karlene to Gyhard.

  He raised her brother’s eyebrow in what could have been acknowledgment.

  Chasing the dead, the three of them had ridden from the Capital much faster than Gyhard and Vree had ridden in, and they’d long passed that section of the East Road where buildings were as frequent as Imperial law allowed and stopping at an inn meant merely making a choice. They rode into the next village as the setting sun dipped below the horizon, their shadows no longer stretching out before them, leading the way, but blending back into the dusk.

  Vree lifted sweat-damp hair off the back of her neck and scanned the cluster of buildings grouped as close to the south side of the Great Road as the law allowed. Habit planned routes through shadow, marking doors and windows she could enter unseen.

  Then the breeze carried the sound of keening down the road toward them.

  The lament came from a tiny cobbler’s shop, tucked up against one wall of what appeared to be the village’s only inn. As they approached, a burly young man standing outside the shop’s closed shutters glared at them suspiciously and shifted his ornately carved cudgel from hand to hand. He watched them pass, the sound of their horses’ hooves momentarily drowned out by the cries of grief from within.

  When they rode into the inn yard and the bulk of the building cut off the ululating cry, Vree checked her weapons. “I wonder what he’s guarding against.”

  “Death,” Karlene replied dully. “It’s the custom in this part of the Empire to hire a strong arm to stand guard at the door for a day in case the body calls Death back into the house. The club he was carrying had protections carved into it. He’ll lead the procession to the grave.”

  “We don’t do that in the south.”

  *’Cause we’re not stupid enough to think it would make any difference. Death walks where she wants to. Slaughter it, Vree, we walk where we want to.*

  “In the south, you burn a sprig of parsley and sprinkle the ashes across the threshold to keep restless spirits from returning home.” Half her mouth crooked up in a humorless smile. “Bards study these things. I’m so tired of death.” She slid out of the saddle. Vree barely managed to catch her as her knees folded and she continued to drop all the way to the hard-packed dirt of the stableyard.

  A life spent in the army allowed Vree to recognize and appreciate the stream of profanity pouring out of the bard’s mouth even without knowing the language. “Come on,” she grunted, heaving the taller, heavier woman back up onto her feet. “Inside. A hot soak …” A quick glance through gathering darkness ascertained that the inn did, indeed have a bathhouse. “… and then sleep.”

  “And it’ll be better in t
he morning?” By will alone, Karlene got her legs moving toward the door.

  “No.” False promises were for children. “But you may be.”

  The common room was empty, hardly surprising as the wailing could be heard clearly through the adjoining wall. Shooting a glance that contained as much irritation as sorrow at the place where the sounds originated, the innkeeper lit one last lamp and hurried toward them. As Vree eased the bard down onto a bench, Gyhard negotiated for care of their horses, three places in the dormitory, and use of the bathhouse.

  “Two crescents every time we fill the bath,” the woman told him.

  He stared at her in astonishment. “What are you filling it with, ass’s milk?”

  “The water doesn’t heat itself,” she said shortly, her tone suggesting haggling would raise the price. “Not raise itself up out of the ground. One at a time or all together?”

  “It’s large enough for the three of us?”

  She pursed her lips, her head rising and falling as she made silent measurements. “It is.”

  Gyhard looked into his depleted purse and frowned. The bard had better have been in the Empire long enough to absorb a few of the customs she’d studied. “Then all together.”

  A speculative gaze alighted on the obvious foreigner for a second or two, then the innkeeper took his coin and jerked a thumb back over her shoulder. “Loft’s at the top of those stairs, you’ve your pick of the pallets. I don’t provide blankets, so I hope you’ve got your own.” When Gyhard nodded, she continued. “Bath’ll be ready by the time you are.”