Dragonfly

by Sylvia Kelso

  “So ye did.” His lashes fluttered. “How if I say, I’ll not sell?”

  I could not restrain Two, let alone Azo. My hands clenched on the sword hilt and Hvestang came to guard with a hiss I could almost hear.

  “Aye, aye, belay there, ye catamount.” Angrir flapped his hands in a mockery of terror. “Ye’ll be cleavin’ us all in twain. A hundred, then? That’s y’r best?”

  “Give me yours,” I said between my teeth.

  “I’m the seller.” He flashed his dog’s teeth at me, white and glistening. “T’is for ye to offer. An’ me to choose.”

  And he would go on choosing, Two told me with vicious clarity, as long as he found amusement in the game. Or until he thought he had plumbed my resources and my need to their foundations. And then reject whatever I offered, and let the pack’s greed, that I would myself have kindled, settle the rest.

  “I said, one price.” It sounded overloud, even among the scream of gulls and whuffling wind and now, against the seal-fur, the first patters of rain. “One.”

  “Ye’ll not give me a choice?” Angrir flashed his smile again. “One hundred or naught?”

  Azo almost did it for me. But I shifted my hands on the sword hilt, and then I smiled too. And said, quite softly, “This puts an end to dispute.”

  He knew the tag. For an instant mockery, taunting, cruelty, all collapsed. But then he was laughing again, more harshly now, with a snap under the play.

  “A cruel choice, that! Have ye not thought, then?” He flipped the dagger about and jammed its hilt quite casually into Therkon’s ribs. “What y’r price’ll buy for him?”

  Therkon gasped and I had taken another pace before I knew. “Let him alone!”

  “So I will, then; but he’s hangin’ here, every minute ye delay.” The white eye-teeth, the slitted blue eyes glinted at me. “Kind, d’ye think?”

  He’s baiting you, Azo’s voice said, crystal cold to my inner ear. That’s all.

  But this is impasse, I had no time to cry back. How can I make it break?

  For Angrir the pause had been incentive enough. The fine brows rose. The smile dazzled.

  “Or d’ye not know what ye’re buyin’?”

  He took one sidelong pace, gave a tug at the breech-clout and swept up his dagger blade. The severed rags tumbled at Therkon’s feet.

  Distantly I heard that magpie voice taunting, “Ye think, we’d best take a look?” It was lost in fog where white-shot images burnt in flame: the velvet touch of belly-skin under my fingers, Therkon’s averted face in a film of vomit and sweat. His scrupulous courtesy on Phaerea, separate rooms, screened beds. Not merely courtesy, but ingrained modesty. The crown prince of Dhasdein, of high Quetzistani blood. Worlds that shunned, tabooed, abhorred

  nakedness. For women and men alike.

  Angrir was still laughing, he had not yet drawn breath. Therkon might not have moved. Perhaps the rags were still tumbling to earth. My hands had already driven Hvestang point downward and whipped the wrist-knife from its sheath.

  It took Angrir full in his right, laughing, bright blue eye. And it went home with the whole weight of skill and muscle and fury behind it, to the hilt.

  He never had time to speak. He hardly had time to choke. His hands rose. His mouth gaped. The other eye shot wide, surprise, the death spasm. His hands beat the air once and his dagger went tumbling. Angrir made a wordless noise and fell full-length at my feet.

  * * * *

  As on the cliff-face, time went both fast and glacier-slow. There was space for reflex, to shake the other knife loose, back a pace, make room for the next assault. Time to hear Angrir’s last choking breath and half-see the way his body slumped, and the determinedly not-seen shape of Therkon beyond him, instinctively trying to curl up and cover his nakedness. The tall cross of Hvestang upright between us. And the faces of the pack.

  They had been stunned beyond thought. Motion. Speech. That time stretched out and out through the sough of wind and rain-patter and gull-scream, a living bas-relief of loutish features, dropped jaws, bulging eyes . . .

  Then real time snapped back: the mouths closed, the eyes focused, the faces moved to sentience, understanding, purpose. They knew what I had done. What I had cost them. We all knew what they would do next.

  Two and Azo were screaming calculations so fast the whole scene blurred. Fifteen or sixteen of them advancing, the hands grasping for or already gripping weapons, cudgels, belt-knives, a short ancient sword. The heads down, grim as a military phalanx, the purpose black as murder in each look, I had one knife in hand and I had to throw that, I must not get to close quarters, and after the knife remained only a too-big, clumsy sword.

  Two was over-screaming that with ancient images of night and a fiery necklace of distant lights, shouts and beaten weapons before us, the tumult of a roused palace behind. Something gripped, long as my forearm, a pyramid of triangles in my hands. The statuette of a woman in a long wide-hemmed skirt, arms raised, and in her hands, a crossed pair of thunderbolts.

  And the bolts streamed fire white as lightning, stretching

  before us in a single deadly beam.

  I had no time to reason. To wonder, to deny. The knife was in my grip. I sprang back and again back and as the image of Therkon’s nakedness seared across vision and memory the knife lit like a veritable light-gun in my hand.

  Light blazed outward, that searing, impossible white. The Skall men bawled with fear that became sudden outrage, and

  instead of shrinking back, they charged.

  I swept the beam before me as I could not have swept Hvestang. Pure, intangible, lethal as no solid weapon could be, as it had been in a multitude of weapons, ever since Amberlight learned to work with qherrique.

  The beam’s traverse took the left-hand side of their charge out, waist-high. Slicing, physically cutting human bodies in half with a hideous unchecked facility, severed torsos tumbling before ever I caught the stench. Before a one of them could scream.

  I screamed though, louder than I ever made a sound before, all but tearing my throat.

  “Stop!”

  They froze. At the sound, at what they already knew. The noises, the stench, the half visible motion beside them, their packmates crumpled, some of the severed bodies still writhing, too little blood but too many vital organs tumbled round them, on the sere wet grass.

  My heart was clamouring in my ears. My hand was a claw on the knife. The tip still pointed upward before me, bearing that terrible white fire. The live men were frozen. It is too feeble a word for the faces, the color of milk, of clay, caricatured terror in the silently screaming mouths, the white-ringed, lunatic eyes.

  Then with a wordless wail the man nearest the dead melted down in a prostrate heap, trying desperately to pull up his hood, and failing that, to wrap both arms over his head.

  The rest fell after him. Some cried out. Some threw gear clean over themselves, as if, not seeing me, they could become invisible.

  I was alone with my killing blade of light, the only human creature upright and free on a hillside of groveling men and fallen dead.

  Two moved me. Two did not care about the bodies: Two had seen worse, at the final sack of Amberlight. And these bodies would have harmed Therkon.

  Two took us to him in a handful of strides, swooping vengefully as an eagle that turns to cherish fledglings, having rent their foes. Two swept the light-beam once above his head and the rope parted. Therkon crumpled more silently than the dead.

  Two pushed the knife back in the wrist-sheath and unfastened Nouip’s cloak.

  Therkon was curled almost as tightly as the living Skall men. When the sweep of fur and silk floated down over him, he too flinched.

  I fell down on my knees beside him and laid my hands on him less for his than for my own sake, and it came out a whisper, a prayer, a thanksgiving, a plea.

  “Ther
kon?”

  * * * *

  It was five minutes, Two estimates, before I gave up. I had called him by name again, by title. After the flinch at my first attempt, I had not dared to touch. I merely knelt there, while Two and Azo and my own memory beat on me more and more fiercely, crying, There are dead men here, hideously destroyed by your own hand. And live men with them, and you cannot expect superstition to paralyze them much longer. You must get out of here, now. But if your prize cannot hear you, cannot bear the touch of a hand, how can you force him to go?

  I swept one desperately shrinking glance over the corpses, the crouched figures, the sopping, bloodied grass. Angrir lay beside me, face up-turned, the expression of pure incredulity blurring under fallen snow. The wind speared straight through my Iskardan cloak. In minutes I would be unable to move at all.

  Then grass rustled suddenly behind me, a voice made some appalled exclamation, and another voice demanded deep and fiercely, “Lass?”

  I whipped round on my heels, Hvestang suddenly under my palm. Rathi stared down at me, instinctively holding hands out and up, signaling, I am weaponless. I mean no harm.

  Though behind him his massive tiller-second Segil gripped a pair of belaying pins, and a short sword was buckled at his own belt.

  “Rathi!” I nearly wept with the shock, and then the relief. “He’s here but he’s hurt and he—I can’t move him, and they—!”

  He took one look across the shambles and went white-eyed. His growl shook like a flicked-tight rope. “Aye. ‘They’.” He switched his eyes to the fur-covered heap beside me, and his own captain’s reflexes cut in.

  “His head’s sound? No bones broke? We’ll carry him. An’ quick about it. Nay, lass.” With one white-edged glance about that said the rest. “We’re no’ lingerin’ here.”

  Not trusting the seal-furs’ strength, they bundled him into Rathi’s own weather-canvas. My heart bled for the flinch when they touched him, the smothered cry. But I managed to sheath Hvestang, and lay it beside him, and they were strong, active men. They carried him swiftly if awkwardly between them, straight back down the hill.

  I had to retrieve Verrith’s knife. Almost the worst moment of all. Then I hurried, less like a guard-dog than a mourner, at their heels.

  The old man was gone from the fort step. The street was empty. Not a door opened at the thump of feet, the men’s hard breathing, the occasional swallowed curse. Like ghosts we skidded over the stones, toiled up the little slope to the crest. Essayed the seaward path.

  Recollecting myself, from the crest I glanced back, once. The street was still deserted. Behind the tower, the slaughter-field was out of sight.

  Until we crossed the beach rim Therkon had been mere dead weight. I still thought him unconscious as they eased him onto the pebbles and Segil helped me work him off Rathi’s weather-canvas, while Rathi himself snapped orders and the rest sprang to the ship. Cables were cast off, retrieved, stowed, hands to the gunwales ready for the heave: they meant to take her off sternfirst, the way pirates might after a raid, Rathi was coming swiftly back to me, with quick, anxious glances over a shoulder: not to the ship, to the sky beyond. The wind, burnt-in experience told me in an instant’s attention, was already colder, stronger.

  And shifting to the north.

  “Get aboard, lass, an’ him with ye, we’ve no’ a minute to waste. Segil’ll give ye a lift.”

  Segil stooped to get an arm under Therkon’s shoulder. Therkon shrank, but when I put my own arm round him he seemed to understand. At least, he tried to help himself stand up. He even levered up his head.

  Then he must have seen the ship.

  He froze in our hands. Then he dug both bare feet in the

  pebbles and threw his whole weight backward as if he were still on that rope.

  Rathi checked, stared. Cursed. Caught past me at a shoulder. “Lad, come on—!” And Therkon snarled at him. Wordless, mindless, high and ferocious as an over-frightened dog.

  “Tiran keep—” Rathi bit it off. “Lad. Y’r sister’s here. D’ye not know her? Come on, then. The wind’s turnin’. We’ve got to go!”

  Therkon bared teeth through the elf-locks. A madman’s glare, a madman’s face.

  “Lass?” Rathi swung from him to me and back in more than exasperation. “Move him, can ye? Or we’ll have to wrestle him. Whatever damage that . . . Talk to him. Be quick!”

  My heart was choking me, beating like a bird in my throat. But he had raised his head, looked round, reacted, if with seeming madness. Recognized a ship. He might remember me.

  “Therkon? Therkon, it’s Chaeris. I found you. I’ve, we’ve, freed you. These are friends, we’re getting off Skall. Just come aboard and we can launch. We can get away.”

  His head half-cocked. I dared to reach out, to touch his bruised, filthy hand.

  “It’s me. Chaeris.” I dared not ask, Do you know me? “Can you hear?”

  The ship was ready. The crew had stilled, waiting. Rathi was all but gnawing his beard. The wind and the birds screamed round us, and Therkon blinked.

  For one moment sanity looked through those eyes. Recognition. Then he saw the ship past my shoulder and threw himself facedown on the pebbles with a thin frantic wail.

  I flung myself beside him, an arm over him before I could stop myself. “It’s all right,” I was gabbling, “my dear, my heart, it’s all right, it’s all right.”

  But he was babbling too, whimpering it into his hands in complete abjection. “Not again, not again, please, no, not again. Please, no, no more . . .”

  The ship. The sea. Thralli, talking about running into port for a healer. Having to heave to at night. Had he thrown up all the way to Rostack? Had he landed in Eithay, empty as a purged dog, and been left so? What had Angrir fed him, in the ceat, or at sea, for those interminable seven days?

  I could feel the tears stream, but I did get my own head up. “Do you,” I gulped at Rathi, “do you have any, any imperial spice?”

  “Imperial what? Lass, are ye—Oh.” His wits were redoubtable, especially in the moment’s pressure and haste. He almost groaned. “Nay. Nay, lass. We don’t carry such. We—” He came closer, bent closer. “Is that what he—sea-qualm? Ah, Tiran’s curse.”

  We might never get him aboard. It might kill him if we did. I could understand Rathi’s feelings all too well. But I could not let Anfluga go, either. We had no escape but to leave Skall. Now. On this ship.

  Two flung the other memory like a javelin. Frotha’s second remedy. Even without the spice, that might be sufficient palliative. Enough to get us off this beach.

  If he dies on the way, someone neither Two nor Azo knew was insisting coldly, it’ll still be better than what awaits him here.

  I snapped at Rathi, “Turn your backs.” Then I scrambled in as close as I could to Therkon and groped for the edge of Nouip’s cloak.

  I heard Rathi grunt. Start to protest. But the tone worked: I had no time to absorb the bizarre, the all but comic sight of eighteen hardened seamen fretting and fuming and fixedly looking the other way on a spume-wet beach. My hands were inside the furs.

  “Hush, my dear, listen. Listen to me, clythx, caissyl.” Heart, sweetness, the words my mother spoke to my fathers. I used the endearments without thinking, concentrating on the tone, the only message that might transmit. “Hush now, hush, it’s all right, caissyl, it’s only me.”

  My hand found ribs, far too prominent, the curve of waist and belly slope. Recalling bruises and abrasions I slid my palms lightly as I dared, without losing track of where I was. Muscles quivered and contracted, that dimple was a navel, this ridge the crest of the iliac bone. Warm under my touch, despite everything, still, despite everything, a shadow of that velvet-smooth skin. Therkon gasped but he did not jerk away or cry out or try to hit me. I shut my eyes to protect us both, and began Frotha’s slow, circling

  motion with my palm.<
br />
  Therkon went completely still. The sea rumored, with a rising emphasis every fourth or fifth wave, the wind was freezing my ears. The men must have been chilled to the bone.

  But the muscle under my palm had begun, fraction by

  fraction, to relax.

  I opened my eyes. He was looking at me, through the hair’s black tangles on sleek grey-black fur. Eyes like caverns with deep-dwellers in them, blades of cheekbone sprung from the too-sharp nose, the rest blurred with beard and haggard as a famine-

  survivor. But it was Therkon, behind the face.

  The tears dripped down on my fingers but I did not let my hand stop. I did whisper, not looking at him, “It’s going to be all right.”

  In a minute more his own hand moved. Shakily, tentatively, as if testing that it was in his control. Fingers rough with dirt, and more than dirt, closed like claws over my wrist. He drew breath. I expected, hoped, prayed he might complete his return by speaking. Instead he sighed, almost soundlessly, and shut his eyes.

  In perhaps another five minutes Segil and the brawny

  starboard stroke tiptoed over. We edged Therkon, cloak, sword and all, onto my own weather-canvas, they worked him aboard as if moving egg-shells, I scrambled to meet them by my packs. The wind was screaming over us, louder in the almost entire absence of human sound. But I felt the heave and grunt with which, at the impetus of men’s shoulders, Anfluga began to move.

  * * * *

  They were rowing when I surfaced again: all twelve oarsmen and two of the ropemen, the starboard one’s shoulders almost in my face. No need for a timekeeper to get their backs into it. Rathi’s profile above us, etched years older by tension, said it all.

  The wind was still making, still swinging northward. If we could not clear the Gnufe fast enough, we would be leed against those deadly southern cliffs.

  Spray and spume dashed over us, mixed with snow. Rathi had not bothered with a sail. It would lose time to tack. He had simply pointed Anfluga as far off the cliffs as he dared and trusted to his rowers.

  And he was pointing her closer and closer into the wind’s eye, almost at right angles to the shore.