by Holly Lisle
The Bontonard crouched on his blanket with his face pressed into his thighs and his arms wrapped over the back of his head.
“By all that is sacred,” Delmuirie murmured, “what is wrong with him?”
Geos glared at Delmuirie. “An entire realm of scholarship, through which many, many scholars could have gained great wealth and fame, has just fizzled into a minor study of a dead, but known, language.”
“How am I to repay my travel-study loan now, if not through my great discoveries?” Bytoris moaned. “I’ll be in debt so deep my children’s children will not be able to buy their way out of it. The assessor’s office will have my house and…” He kept talking, but his voice dropped so low Faia could not make out the words—only the tone of his unhappiness.
Nervously, Geos changed the subject. “You’ve not told us your name, girl.”
Faia quit staring at Bytoris and turned to the other Bontonard. “Faia,” she said. “Faia Rissedote.”
Bytoris stopped bemoaning his financial woes and raised his head to stare at her. Then both Bontonards glanced from Delmuirie to her, and Geos shook his head in slow disbelief.
“Then we are awash in celebrities. You are the girl who nearly destroyed Ariss?”
Faia winced and nodded.
Bytoris sat up straighter and gave her a half-smile. “Pity you didn’t get it all while you were at it.”
“I wasn’t trying to destroy any of it. I simply did what I had to do to stop the evil.”
Bytoris opened his eyes and studied her. “The Arissonese usually like their evil. I’m surprised you didn’t do things to encourage it, like the rest of your countrymen.”
“I’m not Arissonese,” Faia said dryly. “I’m Kareen—hill-folk.”
“Oh?” Bytoris smiled at her—the smile suddenly genuine. “I’m familiar with the Kareen—the hills above Bonton are full of them. Where are you from?” he asked her.
“North of Willowlake,” she said quietly. She didn’t feel like going into the details about the demise of her village, Bright.
“Why, I actually knew a man from up around Willowlake,” Geos said, startled. “An old wool merchant who came into Bonton and sold his wool in my neighborhood when I was a boy. He always brought milk-sweets and hard candy with him when he came to town.”
“My da told me all wool merchants carry candies in their pockets,” Faia said. “The children run to them, and their mothers follow. It’s easier to sell the wool that way.”
Geos watched the smoke curl out through the vent in the top of their makeshift tent and sighed. He seemed not to hear her. “What was the old man’s name? I knew it once.” He lay back, evidently deep in thought, then said, “Well. I can’t remember… but you probably knew him.”
“Probably not. I was from near Willowlake.”
“There isn’t much at all near Willowlake—and this was a memorable old fellow. You’re not so young that you wouldn’t have known him,” Geos insisted “Tall as a tree, and always knew a good joke. Rumor had it he’d fathered half the children in the Virlatch-Sodin district—my neighborhood.”
Bytoris said coldly, “Rumor-mongering is one of the Great Sins.”
Geos laughed and slapped his knee. “Bytoris is from my neighborhood, too—and come to think of it, I never met your father. Went off during the wars; that was the story. Maybe—” he began to sputter and cackle, “maybe your mother knew the old trader, eh?”
Delmuirie and Gyels laughed too. Bytoris, though, went pale. He turned his back on them, every stiff line of his body eloquent with wordless anger.
Geos stared after him, no longer even smiling. “I only jested, Bytoris. I meant no insult to your mother—she has ever been kind to me.”
Bytoris kept staring off into the distance.
Geos bit his lip. Faia could see the regret in his eyes and his posture. He took a deep breath, then in a soft voice recited.
“By Witte, your wit shall draw our doom.
For e’er the jester wears his jest
And mockery brings the Mocker nigh,
Whose truth none love.”
“That’s Terrfaire, the great Bontonard poet, from Three Lies and The Maiden,” he told Faia in a quiet aside. “Terrfaire also wrote, ‘Make thy peace or find thy grave with honor unsullied.’” He frowned and looked over at Bytoris’s back. “Dare I apologize?” Geos asked his fellow Bontonard.
Bytoris, though, didn’t answer. Instead, he lay on his bedroll and feigned sleep.
To Faia, who’d discovered the bonnechard did make her sleepy after all, sleep seemed suddenly a wonderful idea.
Chapter 17
“I’LL never take another leaf of that stuff again,” Faia muttered under her breath. During her second day of trekking through the dark, she’d had plenty of opportunity to think about the giddy behavior she had exhibited while under the influence of the bonnechard—and she’d had plenty of time to regret that, as well as the pounding headache it had left her with.
She yearned for a cabin and a roaring fire and a soft bed. Her ribs throbbed but the bonnechard stayed in its pack, untouched, in spite of the fact that in this second camp, which seemed even colder and more exposed, the ground underneath her bedroll was rockier and more uncomfortable than it had been the night before.
The tiny fire in the center of their tarp-tent crackled merrily, though, and Gyels insisted they’d gotten closer to their quarry, so they were all in good moods.
The five of them ate, then drifted as they had the night before, into talking—but this night their stories were about other places they’d seen and other journeys they’d taken.
Faia listened as first Edrouss Delmuirie, then Bytoris, then Geos, told tales that were at times full of adventure, at times funny or sad, and she grew wistful—not for their stories of the open road, but because those stories roused in her memories she had long forgotten.
At last she said, “My father always talked about the joys of the road, and the wonders of travel to faraway lands.” She stared down at the fire, then looked back into the darkness again, feeling the weight of memories. Her father had loved to travel, and had passed his wanderlust on to her. When she thought of seeing new places, she thought of him, and she missed him. She recalled one of the Great Philosopher’s sayings that her father had always liked, and repeated it to her comrades. “Faljon says, ‘More friends / makes fewer miles.’”
“Faljon…” Delmuirie shook his head and said, “Are people still quoting Faljon?”
Bytoris said, “My father quoted Faljon. My mother said Faljon had been some back-country root-eater, and that he was nothing compared to Terrfaire—but I always liked his sayings.”
Faia lay back on her bedroll and tried to find a comfortable position. “I learned Faljon from my father, too.”
Bytoris smiled a tiny smile. “Faljon is the sort of philosopher fathers love, I suppose. Plenty of admonitions to work hard and avoid doing stupid things.”
Geos chuckled. “You know who I remember quoting Faljon? That same old man I thought of yesterday. The wool trader. He quoted Faljon, and told stories, and gave us—”
“Milk candies,” Bytoris interrupted. “I remember. Your entire life seems to have focused on those milk candies.”
Geos snorted. “Not so. I liked the stories, too. He always started them the same way, with a little poem—and when he recited the poem, the children would gather round.” He closed his eyes and frowned, quiet for a moment. “I remember some of it, but not the important bits. He always said, ‘Little chickies and chirries, the world goes ‘round like a ball, ‘round and ‘round…’”
He paused, drumming his fingers on his thigh. “And when one side’s up the other side’s down,” he added after a moment’s thought. He sighed deeply again, frustration written on his face.
“I can’t remember any more of it.”
Faia said quietly, “I can. It went:
Like a ball the world
Goes ‘round and ‘round.
When one side’s up
The other side’s down.
When the good side’s down,
Then evil rules,
And the world is a place
Of villains and fools.
But the good will triumph
And evil will fail,
And about it Kin Kinsonne
Will tell you the tale.
She clasped her hands together and swallowed hard.
“That was it,” Geos said. He beamed and slapped his thigh. That was it exactly! So you knew him!”
Faia nodded. A few hot tears rolled down the corners of her eye and she brushed them away with a quick backhanded swipe, embarrassed that anyone should see her cry. She caught Bytoris staring at her, and thought she must look ridiculous, brought to tears over such a silly poem. “He was my father,” she said. “I didn’t know anyone anywhere remembered him.” The tears slipped down her cheeks, hot and fat. “It’s almost like having him back, to know that someone besides me still thinks of him.”
Bytoris coughed and looked down at his hands. “Your father’s name was Kin Kinsonne?”
Faia nodded.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“I did.” It was Faia’s turn to look away. “They all died with my mother, in the plague that destroyed Bright. I’ve been alone since, except for my daughter.”
“Ah. I was my mother’s only child.” He rested the knuckles of one hand against his lips and stared into the fire. “The gods do love their tricks.”
“The gods often get blamed for what can only be attributed to blind chance,” Gyels interrupted.
Bytoris glanced at him. “I have heard some say that, but I don’t believe it.” He returned his attention to Faia. “Perhaps since you are without family now, you will not find what I have to tell you unwelcome. Perhaps.”
Faia heard unexpected awkwardness in his voice. She raised an eyebrow. “What might that be?”
“Well, some of us knew Kin Kinsonne better than others.” Bytoris glanced from Geos to her, and said “My colleague’s jibe the other day was nothing but truth, though he didn’t know it. My mother always insisted I say my father died in the wars. But Kin Kinsonne was my father, too.”
“But your name…”
“Bontonard children get their public names from their mother’s patron deity. My mother’s deity has always been Caligro Sehchon, god of engineers. She is a water engineer in District Virlatch-Sodin.”
“You’re certain he’s your father?”
Bytoris looked like he wasn’t sure whether to be amused or annoyed. “My mother seemed to be sure. And he always called me ‘son’ when he came into town.”
Faia felt sure the world was going to drop out from under her. “You’re my brother?” she whispered. The world seemed to sway beneath her.
“Perhaps I should have said nothing.” Bytoris looked away, and even by the ruddy firelight, Faia could see his face grow duskier. “Maybe you didn’t want to know this about your father.”
Faia’s heart pounded in her ears, in her fingertips, and as she took it in, she began to think she must surely burst. “I have a brother?” she asked again. “I’m not alone?”
“Then you aren’t angry?”
Faia was crying. She shook her head vehemently. “I left to take the sheep to the upland pastures for the summer. When I returned, I was alone—my family… my village… everyone I ever knew… died in that plague—”
Bytoris nodded; he seemed relieved by her reaction. “You’ll find quite a large family waiting for you in Bonton. I have a wife and a multitude of children—and I confess myself pleased to discover that I have a sister.”
She couldn’t take it in. “I have a brother again,” she whispered, over and over. “I’m not alone.”
“You are very much not alone.”
Even after the fire guttered down, after all the others in the tent were sleeping soundly, Faia lay watching the stars that crossed the little smoke hole at the top of the tent. Sleep eluded her—her thoughts circled wildly and would not quiet, no matter how she tried to calm herself.
One part of her was elated that she had a living brother, though Bytoris shared no past with her. She had grieved for her family, and in Bytoris she could see resemblance to her long-dead brothers and to her sister. With him alive, they seemed to her not so completely lost. Another part of her, however, was deeply unhappy. By the simple fact of his existence, Bytoris had taken away from Faia pieces of her past that she had clung to, and made lies of some of her memories. Her father was not the man she had thought he was. Bytoris appeared to be older than her, but younger than her oldest brother or sister. So there was no question that her father had kept his two families at the same time, in violation of even the liberal Kareen laws of public bonding.
Bytoris is my blood kin, she thought. Blood kin should matter; Bytoris should be someone to rejoice over, not someone to regret.
But she lay there remembering her own brothers—her real brothers, she thought—and how it was growing up with them. Playing in the hayshocks; stealing handpies from the cooling racks; climbing onto the back of the neighbor’s giant plowhorse as it ambled past the fence while it grazed, and sitting astride it pretending to be riding from town to town, selling wool.
She closed her eyes.
And all the towns we imagined were Bright. Over and over, endlessly—our world consisted of one tiny village repeated in our minds a thousand times, the back of a fat plowhorse, and the stories we told each other.
Mama and Da loved us; we had homespun to wear and good food to eat; we knew Bright would make room for us when we grew up. That was enough, and we were happy.
To give Kirtha the family and the childhood and the way of life I knew, I would have given up my magic, my accomplishments, everything I have ever had in the world until this moment.
And now I find that my world was not as perfect as I thought it; that if I had given Kirtha my childhood, I would have given her a lie.
Faia lay in her bedroll, watching the flickering lights of the fire and hearing the droning snores of the men. The world of memory held her while she searched through all she recalled of her own past, looking for signs that would explain the place where she found herself, and the truth she had discovered.
Chapter 18
“UP! Hurry! We must pack and leave, quickly, or the thief will get too far ahead!” Gyels untied the first of the tarps from the supports, so the icy mountain air blew across Faia and the rest of the sleepers.
Again.
She’d lost track of the number of camps they’d set up, and had no idea of how many actual days they’d been pursuing Thirk. Faia felt like she’d been hiking forever; the journey got worse daily. First they’d run out of the First Folk road, and then, for no apparent reason, Thirk had turned east toward steeper, rougher terrain before heading south again. He seemed to have picked the most dangerous, horrible route he could come by. Faia wondered how he was even surviving—but then she’d think of the chalice. He had magic—of course he could survive. His pursuers, meanwhile, struggled endlessly, becoming too weary to think or to question or to do much more than just put one foot in front of the other, plodding in the wake of the hunter Gyels.
They camped on cliffs and slopes so steep each of them pitoned loops of rope into the stone and slept with the loops wrapped around them. They ate sparingly—their rations got slimmer the further Thirk led them from the lowlands, and they became daily more aware that they could run out of food long before they reached the gentler climes of the lowlands. Gyels killed a mountain goat once, and they all ate from that for several days.
Hardship piled on hardship. Faia’s ribs got better, but her nerves got worse. Once an avalanche nearly buried all of them but Gyels, who was—characteristically—far ahead, tracking. They heard the rumble barely in time and ran forward, slipping and sliding. The torrent ripped past them, only handbreadths away, tearing rocks and scrawny trees from their beds and roaring dow
n the mountainside with the debris.
Then at nondes, the night they ate the last of the goat, something above kicked rocks down at them; they got a bad fright, though only Delmuirie was hit, and he was lucky. The rock that struck him was small enough that it only bruised his leg instead of breaking it. Gyels went off looking for the cause and reported back that a goat had knocked the rocks loose—but Faia wondered. The rain of rocks had been so regular, and had felt so intentional.
What worried Faia more than starvation, more than danger, was the inescapable feeling that they were being watched.
She’d mentioned it to each of her fellow travelers. Gyels scoffed—he was, he said, as keen-eared as he was keen-eyed, and if anyone had been spying on them, he would have discovered it. Geos and Bytoris didn’t believe it simply because neither of them could imagine anyone but themselves lost and wandering through the mountains in the endless, awful darkness. Edrouss Delmuirie listened to what she had to say. He didn’t say what he thought, or give any indication whether he believed her or not—but he did listen, and he did start watching behind the group as it traveled.
“Onward, already,” Gyels growled. He’d come up behind Faia and the rest of them while they finished eating a light antis; he was in a miserable mood, as he had been the past few days. He’d begun to make his advances toward her more obvious, and Faia had found his pushy certainty that she would come to her senses and fall into his bedroll sooner or later increasingly less attractive. At last she had flatly rebuffed him—and the entire expedition was now paying the price, by being forced to live with his foul moods and the increased pace at which he drove them forward.