The Yeoli squeezed in. His side, pressed against hers, was hard and warm; she smelled him, hot and musky-sweet with maleness. Do I smell all right? She couldn’t sniff herself now. I washed yesterday. Can he feel my heart thudding?
“I Echera-e Lemana,” he rattled off. “Whaht name yourrh?”
“Sova. Called Far-traveller.” What was that? Eshcher, Shcheryi, Cherry? Yeolis, you call them by their first names, don’t you? She hoped so; she’d forgotten the second. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
“I you too.” That beautiful wide smile again; Sova’s heart felt like wax melting. He was missing a tooth. Oh, poor prince; but you bear it so bravely. ... “I think you arrhe, how you say? Homely. No, no!—Comely, comely, I mean. I sorrhy. Mean cahmp ... comp ... say nice thing, I mean, I sorrhy.”
“You know,” said Sova, trying not to be too breathless, “you can practice your Enchian with me any time; I’ll help you with it. And I should learn some Yeoli, really; would you help me?”
“At itai, yes,” he said, the grin widening. “I like tsaht.”
Shkai’ra walked down to the section of stream marked off for bathing; upstream of the horse watering point but down from the place where drinking water was drawn. It was a fair-sized little river, ten meters across with a bank of good sand as much again across on this bank, marking where it flowed at high-water. She dropped her clothes and swordbelt on a rock that thrust conveniently through the sand, and then walked in a careful straight line toward the water. I feel good, she thought. About three-quarters drunk, which was just right when you didn’t want oblivion, and tingly all over.
But I whiff a little, she reflected, doing a front-handstand and flopping over on her back with a thud and a giggle. Not remarkable after a day in armor under the hsun, and then fucking several hours away. Megan’s finicky. But soooo pretty; we’ll tumble till dawn and sleep in. The army was due a day of rest after the last three. There were a few other late bathers, but not many or close; it was about halfway between midnight and dawn, by the moon, which hung low in the east, casting a glittering trail on wavelets like rippled silver.
She took the water in a flat running dive and swam for a few minutes in a thrashing overarm stroke, before squatting in water that was waist-deep and scrubbing her body with handfuls of sand. The cool wet felt good on her flesh, stripping away the grease and oil. Unbinding her hair, she ducked her head into the flowing water and began to scrub at the roots. When she opened her eyes beneath the surface the strands floated in a dense mass; she gathered it in her hands and threw it back, raising her head above the surface ...
... and made the beginnings of a turn, feeling the whistle of parting air behind her ...
Black—
“Barefoot in the dark,” Matthas sang to himself, his own version of the romantic song. “All goes well if you sneak barefoot in the dark ...” Now, to take the great huge barbarian woman, now a draped load in his arms with wet hair trailing, fikken heavy for a woman, to a private place.
The usual private place, where a man and a woman would go. “Heh hen heh,” some drunken sot of an Enchian cavalryman greeted him hoarsely, with a significant look at the limp, shapely form. No suspicion; it helped that Matthas was wearing this looted Arkan knight’s helmet, plume and all, the first thing show-off savages would wear at victory celebrations, the last thing an Arkan spy sneaking around would. “Heh heh heh,” he agreed hoarsely, and passed on to Lovers’ Bushes. In a nest well away from others, he bound her wrists and ankles and gagged her Irefas-style, prepared the needle to be inserted in the standard part of the anatomy for those Irefas didn’t want to know they’d been truth-drugged, and waited for her to wake up.
“Ohhhhh, shit,” Shkai’ra mumbled; it was nearly dawn, and she was not beside Megan.
She levered herself up on one elbow. There was someone beside her on the trampled grass, still unconscious; with a three-day’s beard, smelling bad enough to affect her queasy stomach, snoring lips fluttering over a mouth with only a few snags of tooth.
“Jaiwun Allmate, tell me I wasn’t that drunk,” she muttered, climbing slowly to her feet and pushing erect with her palms on her knee. The ache in her head was as much like the aftermath of a warhammer as a hangover; the false dawn stabbed fingers of pain into her eyes as she gathered up her clothes, and there was a particularly irritating prickle of discomfort inside the cheek of one buttock. What the fuck have I been doing? The last clear memory was walking—not staggering, walking—toward the river to wash up. I am definitely getting too old for this shit.
“I may never know,” she said aloud, and regretted it, wincing as she began walking very carefully through the sleeping camp, buckling on her swordbelt and stepping into her boots but leaving the rest of the clothing over one shoulder. Her skin was clean, but the clothing was smelly and clammy to a degree that Megan had trained her out of tolerance for.
Normally there would be a fair amount of activity at this hour, but not after a major victory and a celebration like the one the night before. The fires had died down to ash and embers, and the tents were silent. From the figures sprawled about, you might have thought that it was the Alliance who had been slaughtered two days before. A company coming in from night patrol passed her, half Moghiur and half Royal Enchian. The Moghiur were in their usual motley of fur and leather and bits of metal; one wild-looking woman with hawk feathers in her black braids and a blue cape gave her a mock-smile and an awwwwwww of false sympathy. The Enchians were like some mural of ancient Iyesi; tall slender men in chain and graven steel on fine horses, armed with rapiers and lances and bows, which did not prevent them from catcalling amiably as they passed. “Fuck you very much too,” Shkai’ra shouted back; the sexual words were pretty much the same as in trade-Enchian.
The guards around the Elite section were offensively sympathetic, and Shkai’ra passed them with a growl. That turned into a full-fledged scowl as she reached her tent and found Sova standing with the tall Yeoli boy she had been spending a lot of time with tonight, the two cuddling close beneath a single cloak and murmuring to each other in the light of the last pale stars. “Hmmmf,” she grunted, dropping boots and clothing and racking her weapons and drinking from the water-bag beside the entrance before crawling in beside her wife. Megan stirred sleepily and muttered before settling down again.
At least we can sleep, Shkai’ra thought. The thought of a day’s march was unbearable.
So. Matthas read through his notes again. Some people get so loquacious as truth-drug takes effect. The big fighting-wench had propositioned him, of all things. “Such a nicely turned bottom you have, ahhhhh ...” A moment’s image came of being in bed with her, in those gristly arms that were such perverse imitations of men’s, and those massive tree-trunk thighs with the dank, dark nest of impurity between them. A touch of nausea came, too. They don’t wash ...
He read the notes again. Megan’s link with Mikhail Farsight and Brahvniki-Yeoli dealings was far more tenuous than he’d expected; well, all right, might as well say it out. Nonexistent. At least as far as the big woman knew; but he’d made sure to ask, “Does she hold you in entire confidence?” To which Shkai’ra had answered, “Yes.” No, there was nothing so calculated. For Megan and Shkai’ra, this was not even a vendetta—surprising for them—but a family affair. Megan wanted to rescue a son, enslaved long ago, and for her there was no other way into Arko.
Shit, he thought. And it was such a beautijul conspiracy theory, too. Am I losing my touch? No, he realized, the conspiracy was happening, but elsewhere, through other agents; he’d chased a red herring and had no idea where to pick up the real trail. All the way to Setzetra, smoothly infiltrating the Yeoli camp, he thought, all for a shennen bad lead. With Eforas making me personally responsible, and I can hardly pin it on him, can I, when it was my fikken theory. Maybe I am losing my touch. Shit shit shit.
He paced his tent, kicked his lap-desk, and for a time wallowed in totally self-indulgent self-pity.
That’s e
nough wallowing, he forcefully told himself after a while. Discipline. On to the next step, of rational thought, planning and action. Only one rational thought came: Now the fuck what?
Time passed. He read his notes ten times over again. He paced some more. He ran over his old principles of spy-craft, hoping to squeeze clues out of general inspiration. He ran over the principles he’d added to the list himself, from his experience in foreign lands: Brahvnikian intrigue and dealing techniques, Zak protocols of deception, Yeoli strategic philosophy with its elegantly naive, sweeping rules—perhaps not so naive, he reflected, as practiced by these Yeolis. The path unconceived, he thought—a Yeoli concept, that when faced with an impossible conundrum the general must find an answer outside of what appeared possible and was therefore conceivable. Yes, thats what I need now.
He catnapped on it. He slept properly on it. He drank a flask of wine on it. He turned it over and over in his head. Some faceless Brahvnikian, Mikhail’s hireling, money-bag runner. How in Hayel am I going to find him, in this obscene sprawl of a barbarian camp? He fought off despair. Celestialis, none of it matters.
He woke in the night, tossed and turned, wanted a boy, an herb-pipe, another wine-flask, to grab and cling to. Outside wind flopped the canvas, near and far, on a thousand tents. Someone passing outside murmured in a barbarian tongue, Yeoli or Lakan or who knew what—a barbarian tongue on Arko’s own sacred land, paid for with its blood, in the inviolate Empire. Shefen-kas, son of a whore and a dog, is probably having no trouble sleeping right now, he thought.
He woke again, before dawn; not even a paling showed through the tiny holes in the tent’s seams. More rested now, his thoughts were not so tinged with jitters; his body felt warmer, and all did not seem lost. And then it came shining into his head.
Matthas crawled up and lit a lamp, chortling; following the original conception like the river after the first burst in the dam, the details filled themselves in. He drew a pigeon-paper out of the compartment in his lap-desk and uncapped his finest pen.
Patappas is in the City, down on his luck since he lost the arm, and Frenandias, compromised in that Srian matter so he’ll never get trade work again, living off that fancy lover; there’s Moras, too. They’d wrestle demons in Hayel for a tenth of the gold we’d get for this ... And what I’m asking is nothing, easy. He chortled some more, and began to write. That’ll knock the heart out of this misbegotten barbarian host; they’ll fall apart, into easy cuttings, in an eight-day. So much for the great threat; and Arko, despite itself, will be saved. The path unconceived ... Hah! I found it.
What would Kurkas give to its savior? The man who arranged what I’m going to? He paused to chortle louder, imagining the elevation ceremony, the mantle with the coat of arms he would be permitted to design, the deed to the estate, the speech ringing with words in his praise. No one had ever been elevated two rungs at once before, fessas to Aitzas; but for what he would do, it was not impossible, nor unreasonable to expect.
* * *
X
Didn’t I get tired when I was fourteen? Megan thought, watching Sova’s ash-blond braid bounce as she tossed bits of hardtack to a swooping Fishhook.
“Here kitty kitty kitty!” she chirped. “You actually like this stuff, so here you go!” The girl’s set of manrauq-fused meshmail made a rustling chink as she moved, weapons and the helmet hooked to her belt clanked with each hop. She swung up onto her pony easily. Megan wiped sweat from her brow and cursed, kicking her feet free of her mount’s stirrups and bringing her knees up to spare the calves. I’m one of the only people I know who could be over-horsed on a fish-gutted pony. Still, she’d got enough used to riding now that she could concentrate on other things. Especially on this old beast, that was like a living chaise longue—the most mild, sedate, half-asleep horse she’d ever dreamed could exist. She wondered where Shkai’ra had found it.
The Thane-girl’s mood seemed to change as afternoon wore on; she stopped starting conversations, and her round face, flushed with heat, turned pensive and closed.
When Megan saw it, that was; more and more she found herself facing the braid. After I made Shkai’ra give her a day off squiring so I could get re-acquainted, she thought.
“Ha-a-a-a-alt!” The command came from the head herald, in tuneful Yeoli, and traveled away down the line behind them, relayed in mutiple languages until it faded away in the distance. Rest-break. They sat in the shade of an olive tree and passed the canteen of unfermented apple cider between them. Though all shade tended to get filled immediately with people, it was a small tree and they were alone. Megan propped her chin in a cupped hand, bracing her elbow on her knee.
“You prefer riding with Shkai’ra, Sovee? Or are you just tired?”
The girl blinked in surprise. “No, I’m not tired. And I don’t ... I mean, riding’s easier than walking, but ... I like being with you.”
Megan leaned back against the tree, closing her eyes for a bit. “I always preferred walking, myself. I ...” She hesitated, then opened her eyes, looking down from the bright stabs of sun. I find myself looking into a face I’ve told myself I should know, then realizing that I’ve been assuming a Halya of a lot. I keep falling over those assumptions when we’ve been less than close. “Something on your mind, then?”
The girl looked as if she were deciding how to answer, then said, “Ya.” Education had smoothed Sova’s Zak, but never rooted out the back-of-the-throat Thanish accent, something which had never stood her in good stead in F’talezon.
“I was just thinking about ... the old place, that’s all.”
Home, she had once called Schotter’s house in Brahvniki, where she’d been born and raised by her natural parents until twelve, in the very rare times she’d mentioned it. She no longer did.
“I went riding then. I mean, nothing like how much I ride now, but that’s where I first learned.” The girl’s hand fidgeted at her sword-hilt, one nail scratching one of the quillons, a nervous habit she’d acquired after the first fight she’d been in on the river. The hand looked awkward, a little too large for its arm, like a not-quite-grown-up puppy’s paw. “I wonder sometimes ... what happened to them.”
Though she was careful not to show it, Megan flinched inwardly. It seldom came up, how Sova had been adopted. Then, I just didn’t care if Shkai’ra took both Thane-brats and drowned them. I forgot that they were human. I forgot what it was like to be sold off to a stranger when I was twelve. Megan looked down at the rough skin around her claws where she’d bitten at the cuticles. Until it was done; too late.
“I can understand you wondering. If you like, when we get home, I can start inquiries—”
“No!” For a moment the girl’s fresh young face flashed a flat anger too old for her age, before the eyes dropped and the words subsided into formal stiffness. “I mean ... I wouldn’t impose on your time, zhymata.”
Koru, how do I get through that? Shkai’ra’s taught her to hide behind that blank look. Suddenly it came to her why the girl had refused, and that she’d been damned insensitive not to see it. “It would be more than impolite for me or Shkai’ra to try and find your parents, wouldn’t it?”
The girl took time, putting it into words. “Well ... Fater is a Thane. Even if you were as nice as Elder Brother to him, it’s ... it would almost be a worse insult to his zight, if he considers himself having any left. It would be like pity. As for khyd-hird, I wouldn’t want her to get on the same side of the world as them. If they’re alive, even.”
“Ah, Sova ...” Megan’s sigh was barely that, a faint breath. “If you or a neutral party wanted to look, I could aid in that way.”
“I do, and I will, when I can,” the girl said. Her chin lifted slightly, firmed. “Without your help.”
Megan shrugged. “It’s up to you. Sova ...” She heaved a sigh. How to say what I’ve wanted to say? Somehow there had always been other things in the way, other things on her mind, or Shkai’ra too busy with the girl. This hurt almost as much as thinking of he
r own old hates and troubles; but she nailed her feelings down like a slug under one of her claws. “To my mind I owe you. I can say it was Shkai’ra, not me, who took you, but I stood back; I know.”
The girl’s face stayed stony, but her hazel eyes blinked, as if through the eye-holes of a mask, the only part of her true face showing. “You owe me?”
“I owe you honest answers to how you feel, at least. If it hurts me, so be it; I pay for my own action, or lack of action.”
“Form u-u-u-up!” From all around came muttered curses, as the army hauled itself to its feet. By the height of the sun, it was probably the last rest break of the day; next stop would be for camp, and bed. War ... Always the demands of the many came first, before love, hate, hunger, fear, any need or wish of the one. They found their place on the road, and Megan massaged the insides of her thighs. “Forwa-a-a-a-a-ard march!”
The girl glanced forward and back as they heeled their ponies into a slow plodding walk, scanning for anyone who might understand Zak. Satisfied there was none, she asked,”Why did you stand back?”
Megan took a deep breath. “Some part of me hated you just for being Thanish. Another part of me saw what you’d done to a friend of mine, though it was your father, really. I was wound too tight into my own troubles to care. I wish I could go back and change things. But I can’t, Sova.” She looked at the backs of the warriors riding ahead of them.
“I know.” The girl gazed down at the poured stone road.
“Anything more you want to say?” Megan said, as if it weren’t as obvious as a painted nose.
The girl kicked a foot clear of the stirrup, crossing it over the pommel, to better face Megan. Another trick she’d picked up from Shkai’ra. “Zhymata ... you’ve been nice to me. You say you’re sorry.” She gazed ahead, putting her foot back in the stirrup again. “But she never has. And never will, I know.” Shkai’ra. “She isn’t sorry; she thinks she did me and Francosz—Francosz and me, I mean—nothing but good. She doesn’t care what I feel, just what she thinks. She doesn’t care what anyone feels except herself and you. And not even you, sometimes.”
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