Fifth Quarter

by Tanya Huff

  * * * *

  The prince crouched against the high wheel of the cart. Wheyra crouched a few feet away, just close enough so he could neither forget nor ignore her. He had no idea how long the old man had been gone, but his shirt stuck to his back in great clammy patches and the near constant roll of thunder made him want to scream.

  Instead, he drew in a long shuddering breath, dried his palms against his thighs, and said, “What’s its name?”

  Wheyra cocked her head, the movement adding curiosity to a face no longer capable of expression.

  Otavas wet his lips. “The more you know about something, the less terrifying it becomes.” He couldn’t remember who’d told him that, but anything was better than just listening to the thunder. “The baby.” He couldn’t quite gesture at the decomposing bundle in her arms. “What’s its name.” He hadn’t heard her speak, but Aver had been able to and Kait called the old man Father.

  Wheyra looked down at the remains of her baby, then back up at the prince and, to his astonishment, smiled. Her face didn’t move, couldn’t move, but he would have sworn by any of the gods contained in his mother’s Circle that she smiled. “Ty … am,” she said.

  The others knew they were dead. If Wheyra knew, she didn’t care. Otavas locked his fingers together to keep them from trembling.

  “Boot … ifoo.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The purple-gray tip of her tongue protruded as she tried again. “Boot … ifoo ba … ba.”

  He didn’t know how he could hurt so much and not bleed. “Beautiful baby.”

  “Yesss.” She smiled again, then her head jerked around to the right.

  Otavas looked where she looked and sagged back against the cart, bone and muscles unable to hold him. There were four shadows approaching through the night. He should have realized the old man had gone to replace the cousins.

  “I’ve brought us food,” the old man said as he drew near. “Take it up into the cart with you. We still have a long way to go before we’re home.”

  The prince numbly accepted the bulging oilskin bag and did as he was told. He couldn’t run, and they’d touch him if he stayed where he was. Once in the cart he turned and peered over the edge.

  A flash of lightning lit up the scene.

  The man and the woman were neither young nor old nor long dead. The rough cotton tunics they wore glistened, wet, black stains spreading out from the center of their chests. Over the constant and familiar stench of rot, Otavas could smell the sharp, coppery scent of fresh blood.

  “Iban and Hestia, my heart.” The old man’s voice drew his gaze around and he found himself lost in the ancient eyes. “They’ve come to join our family, to help us get safely home where we can start again.”

  He started to shake. He wanted to shriek, but the only protest he could force through the horror was a faint and disbelieving, “No …”

  Twelve

  “Funny,” Karlene mused, glancing up at the dawn sky.

  “What is?” Vree asked, pulling her girth tight in spite of the gelding’s plans to the contrary.

  “Gabris hasn’t sent any kigh since just past midday yesterday.”

  “Maybe he’s given up.”

  “Gabris? Not likely. Even if he can’t get me to return and he essentially trusts my judgment, he’ll want me to know exactly how much he disapproves.”

  “He’s probably trying to trap you. He’ll wait until he thinks you’ve stopped expecting the air spirits to come and have lowered your guard. Then he’ll send them again.”

  “Perhaps.” The bard swung up into the saddle and yanked the bottom of her long tunic out from under her. “But it seems just a little too military for Gabris.”

  *We did that at Oman; only without the air spirits. Do you remember, Vree? You won ten crescents from One-ball when he didn’t think they’d fall for it.*

  *You won ten crescents, Bannon, not me.*

  *I did? Are you sure?*

  She could hear One-ball cursing as the Fourth Squad breached the gate. Could feel the cold weight of the coins in her hand. But was it a memory of her hand or Bannon’s? She’d lost two crescents in a dice game, spent three at Teemo’s on a beautiful young man with ebony hair down past his…

  *No, Vree, that was me. I went to Teemo’s not you. His name was …*

  *Ahlaun.* She could remember his name, feel the touch of his body, but Bannon was right; he’d gone to Teemo’s, not her. *So you won the ten crescents.*

  *But I watched you collect.*

  *No.* But her denial had little force behind it for the edges of the memory blurred too far to distinguish which of them watched and which of them won. Searching for herself, Vree started to get lost in the kaleidoscope of images.

  “Vree!” Gyhard watched anxiously as she turned toward the sound of her name and her eyes found a focus on his face.

  “What?” Her tone, for all it suggested he was interrupting where he had no business being, had a hint of desperation behind it.

  Sifting through a number of responses, he dropped his arm. He’d come very close to shaking her even though he doubted he’d have enjoyed her response. “Do you think you could continue your conversation with your brother some other time?” The near panic in her expression had made it clear it’d been much more than mere conversation, but as she wouldn’t accept his concern—not that he really blamed her—he made it easier on them both by not offering it. “We’re ready to go.”

  Without answering, Vree whirled about and flung herself up into the saddle. Then she glared down at him with barely concealed impatience.

  Why do I bother? he sighed to himself as he mounted. The bard’s expression suggested that he deserved what he got and he supposed he did. I need to keep reminding myself that when she looks on me with anything but contempt, it’s safe to assume it’s her brother’s body she sees. Except that once or twice over the course of their journey, he could have almost sworn that she saw him. And at the end of that journey? The bard was right. No happy endings. He slammed his heels into the horse’s sides, and the startled animal charged away from the innyard.

  *Who stuck a spear up his butt?*

  * * * *

  Bent low over the cropped brush of his horse’s mane, Neegan ignored the shouts of those forced to dive away from galloping hooves as he ignored the pain pounded into muscles and joints by his wild ride. He’d traded the courier’s horse he’d taken from the First Army’s stables at the way station where he’d rested for what little part of the night he felt he could spare. The couriers’ horses, bred by the seven armies for extremes of speed and endurance, could half the time it took to travel from the Capital to Shaebridge.

  Even if they were riding hard, he’d be on his target by dark.

  * * * *

  “We’re closer.” Karlene whistled the kigh out of the billowing folds of her tunic and remounted. “We’re still more than a day’s walk away, but the kigh are a lot more agitated than they were.”

  “It might not be because of Kars,” Gyhard pointed out.

  “It has to be. He’s the only thing that’s ever upset the kigh like that.”

  “The only thing you know of, and you aren’t that old.”

  “This from a man who’s barely shaving,” Karlene snorted sarcastically, raking him with a disdainful glance. “You want to play elder statesman with me, you should’ve taken over a different body. In all of Bardic Recall, your Kars is the only thing that the kigh have ever been frightened of.” She waited for him to deny that it was “his Kars.” When he didn’t, she turned the information over to examine it. She’d been assuming that when he’d met Kars, the crippled bard was already an old man, but that wasn’t necessarily so. Gyhard had admitted that Bannon’s body was not the first body he’d taken. Without her quite controlling it, her free hand rose to trace the sign of the Circle over her heart. He could’ve left a hundred bodies abandoned behind him. There were a thousand questions she should’ve asked.

  Gyhard h
ad made it clear from the beginning he was after the old man, not the prince. Why? Perhaps they’d been young men together, with young men’s feelings—which would explain why Gyhard considered the old man to still be “his Kars.” But would an old love be enough with a new love, however hopeless by his side? Get a grip, Karlene, she chided herself. Write the tragic ballad when this is over.

  Based on what he’d said to Vree back in the Healers’ Hall, Gyhard agreed to go after the prince only when he became certain Kars was involved and raising the dead. Kars raised the dead by Singing the fifth kigh. Gyhard moved his kigh from body to body. If Gyhard met Kars many years and perhaps many bodies…

  Her heart skipped a beat, and she jerked around to face him, nearly unseating herself. “You taught him to Sing the fifth kigh!”

  Vree started at the sudden exclamation and a dagger appeared in her hand.

  Gyhard stretched an arm between their horses and touched her lightly on the shoulder. “I think she’s speaking to me.”

  “I know that,” Vree snarled, sheathing the blade. “Do you think we’re stupid?”

  “I think you’ve got highly trained responses,” he began, but Vree cut him off.

  “Don’t patronize me,” she said wearily. “It doesn’t help. Answer the bard.”

  Gyhard closed his eyes for a moment and remembered how simple life had been when it hadn’t mattered what anyone thought of him—only what they thought of the body and the identity he wore. How fortunate that I don’t care what the other one thinks. “The bard didn’t actually ask me anything. I believe she was making more of an accusation.”

  “And I’ll make another one!” Karlene’s horse danced sideways under the prod of his rider’s emotions. “You’re responsible for … for everything!”

  “For everything?” His voice, arrogant and cynical, mocked her intensity. “You grant me too great an influence. I may be responsible for bringing the fifth kigh to Kars’ attention.” And I may have hastened his descent into madness by doing it. “But I am not responsible for the rest.” And he would not accept responsibility for it either. “You lost the prince.” The bald accusation, contemptuously delivered, rubbed salt in a wound he knew she kept raw by self-flagellation. “Try to remember that, without me, you’re not likely to get His Highness back.”

  Karlene ground her teeth together, as angry as he’d meant her to be. “If you were not an abomination creating other abominations, His Highness would never have been taken!”

  “If you hadn’t encouraged the prince to pant after you—oh, yes, we heard the rumors while we were in the Capital—then he wouldn’t have been where he could have been taken.”

  “If you both keep shifting blame so loudly, we’re going to attract some unwelcome attention,” Vree growled. “Try to remember that we’re on a public road, that we’ll be stopped if we’re identified, and we’ll fail if we’re stopped.”

  So close to Shaebridge the road held more traffic than at any time since they’d left the Capital—the back of a brightly enameled carriage could be seen up ahead; two merchants were approaching, loudly arguing about something as they walked alongside the mule who pulled their heavily laden cart; a servant carrying a basket hurried toward the city on a path that ran just off the edge of the dressed stone, safely out of the way of horses and carts. The country villas of the middle class lined both sides of the road and behind them were farms and orchards.

  Karlene grabbed hold of her anger and dragged her voice down to an undertone. “Do you think anyone heard?”

  “No. If they had, I’d have killed them.” When the bard looked aghast, Vree sighed. “It’s a joke.”

  *It’s not very funny.*

  *Who asked you?*

  “If you ask me, there’s nothing the gods can do for those two now. What I want to know is what kind of sick person leaves a pair of decomposing bodies lying in the middle of a Great Road.”

  As though they were pulled by a single string, all three heads turned to stare at the approaching merchants.

  “Maybe it’s a tax protest.”

  “Yeah? Well, it’s our taxes paying for the cleanup.”

  “Excuse me,” Karlene lengthened her horse’s stride and rode forward to meet them. “But did you say there were a pair of decomposing bodies left lying in the road?”

  The younger of the two merchants looked annoyed with such a blatant admission of eavesdropping, marked her for a foreigner, and decided to make an exception for barbaric manners. “That’s right. Two of them. And no one local’s claimed them. There’s a whole herd of priests out from Shaebridge trying to decide what to do.”

  “What to do?”

  “Well they can’t just leave them there; can they?”

  * * * *

  Herd of priests, while somewhat irreligious, was accurate enough. Men and women in every color robes imaginable chanted, prayed, evoked, and argued with each other in a loose circle around a covered mound lying by the north side of the road. Incense burned in censers and braziers and in the beard of a priest of Quindarin, god of metalworkers, the scented smoke filling the immediate area with an oily blue-gray haze. A number of people in the surrounding crowd sneezed continually. While it remained possible to go around—not even the representatives of the Empire’s gods dared defy Imperial law and completely block one of the Great Roads—most travelers had stopped to watch, joining the curious who’d journeyed out from the city and in from nearby farms. At each of the compass points stood a knot of soldiers—Third Army from the garrison in Shaebridge—sent to keep the peace.

  From horseback it was possible to see over the heads of the crowd and right to the mound at the center of the circle. The worn sole of a leather sandal that stuck out from under one end of the covering canvas defined the objects beneath.

  “Why don’t they just dig a grave and bury them in it,” Gyhard muttered. He disliked funerals; had never, in all his lives, attended one. To make such a fuss over death gave it a validity he wouldn’t allow.

  Vree stared at him in astonishment. “Just bury them? Without knowing what gods they worshiped? Or what rites to perform? You could deny them the rewards of their life. Condemn them to eternity as a … as a …”

  *Carrion eater.*

  “… carrion eater.”

  *He should know about that,* Bannon snarled.

  “That’s a load of superstitious crap and you’re too intelligent to believe it,” Gyhard told her bluntly. “The only thing you’re denying these two, now their kigh have left, is the chance to rot in private.”

  “You don’t know that. You’ve never died.” She dropped her voice. “And we don’t know that these are two of the dead we’re looking for.”

  “Who else would they be? I don’t believe in the kind of coincidence that would put two other unidentified corpses in our path.”

  “If they are who we think they are, then they have family back in the Capital who want them returned,” Karlene said quietly, reins draped loosely over the saddle horn, arms wrapped tightly around her body.

  Gyhard rolled his eyes. “They’re meat.”

  “Their families aren’t.” She drew in a long shuddering breath and exhaled slowly, then dropped to the ground and handed the reins to Vree. “I’m going to go have a look.”

  Reaching out and grabbing her shoulder, Gyhard leaned down toward her ear. “What about catching up to the prince?” he asked.

  She twisted around, just enough to meet his gaze. “Maybe we already have.”

  “I think someone in this lot would know him.”

  “Would they? After what he’s been through?” Teeth clamped on her lower lip, she fought for composure. “Maybe they would, but I have to be sure. Now let go of me before I have the kigh shove you out of the saddle.”

  “You’re not supposed to do that.”

  “You’re not supposed to exist.”

  After a moment, Gyhard released her and sat back. Together, he and Vree watched her make her way through the crowd.

&nb
sp; “Will she command the priests to let her in?” Vree wondered.

  “She probably won’t have to; bards usually get their own way.”

  Vree looped Karlene’s reins around her saddle horn and rubbed her palms lightly against each other as Bannon glanced over at Gyhard from the corner of one eye.

  *I wonder if she had her own way with him?*

  Vree jerked her gaze back to the crowd. *She thinks he’s something that crawled out from under a rock.*

  *So. She knows he’s in my body. He must’ve told her that night they had their little talk. Maybe she’s after my body, not him. You think you’d recognize that, sister-mine? Or maybe you wouldn’t.*

  Her head felt as though it were trapped between a pair of battering rams. *I don’t know what you’re talking about.*

  *I’m talking about you and him.*

  *There isn’t a me and him. There’s me and you. There’s me and your body. That’s all. Just like it’s always been.*

  A layer of silence spread over the chants and the prayers and the speculation, separating her from the world. *Bannon? Are you there?*

  He snorted. *Where the slaughter else would I be? I was just thinking about what we really have is us and my body.*

  *No, Bannon.* She should have expected him to keep pushing. He was used to getting what he wanted.

  Again the silence. Then, *What happens if this is the prince? Do we go back to the Capital with his body, or do we keep following Gyhard and mine? He doesn’t need us to find the old man, so I wonder why he hasn’t tried to slip a knife under our ribs some dark night. I wonder why he hasn’t tried to get rid of two of the three people who know his secret.*

  She could feel the slow pulse of his anger.

  *Do you wonder, sister-mine?*

  * * * *

  “I’ve just come from the Capital where tombs have been opened along the East Road and bodies taken from them. If I can see these bodies, I might know who they are.” Her words pitched to carry over most of the crowd, Karlene used just enough Voice for them to believe her. Then she waited, shifting from one foot to the other, while the priests of Shaebridge’s five dominant temples discussed the implications of allowing a foreigner access.