Except the stupid llama had drunk it all, leaving Karsten nothing to enjoy but the price.
With the green, the Dowager’s gambit was simple enough. Take one of the freely offered bottles, which were available nearly anywhere, and if you escaped her magecrafted summons, you could drink it down. No fee, no encumbrances. It was essentially free ale. Fewer than one of every ten thousand bottles was said to carry her price, so most folks were happy to take the risk.
For those unfortunates who did lose, the cost was a year in the Dowager’s service at her villa by the sea, after which you’d return home and be immune to any further risk. So the beer would be free for the rest of your life. Not a bad proposition at all, which was why so many people risked it.
The gold, however, was a gamble of a different order. Nobody knew for certain how the rules changed, and the rumors about it were wild and varied, but two stories seemed consistent among them. There was no single-year limit to the time of service, and not one of the gold-bitten had ever come back.
Quite a price to pay for not even having had a taste.
Karsten raised the empty bottle now, and held it above his mouth, giving it a shake in the hope he might catch a last solitary drip, but it was as dry as winter air. Of course it was. Well, no use weeping over what the llama drank. Might as well get on with it. He now had one week to present himself at the Dowager’s villa.
Karsten turned to throw the empty vessel back into the corner of the shed, but then he checked the movement, and after a moment to consider its dull yellow-brown shine and the face of the old woman molded into it, he stooped over instead and set the bottle on the bale. Leave it for the next visitor who found this shed. Let him see it and wonder who it was who had lost the Dowager’s wager in this unlikely station.
“Damn me for three kinds of fool!” Karsten muttered as he backed the llama out of the shed. A trip to the Dowager had not been part of his plan. He cast a seasoned eye at the darkening horizon and took up the heavy travel staff he favored.
“Moon’ll be up shortly,” he said. “If the stories are true, I’d best make use of every hour.” Babette turned her head to look at him and Karsten sighed. “Still, that don’t mean you have to,” he said. “Same offer as always. Come or stay. As you like.”
Then he turned his back on the llama—and on all his supplies—and set out across the scrubby field toward the trail proper, leaving Babette to decide for herself.
A moment later, he heard the frantic swishing of her split-toed feet twitching through the grass behind him.
“Good decision,” he called out. Then he dodged hastily to one side, narrowly avoiding the wad of llama spit that was her only reply.
Once again, they had an understanding.
***
For two days they journeyed along the wider roads and High Ways that laced the empire together like rivers of packed dirt, heading steadily south, toward the storied villa at the edge of the world. There were other travelers of course. Merchants and farmers mostly, taking goods and foodstuffs to one place or another, but folks tended to respect each other’s space, so for the most part, Karsten and Babette managed to keep a stretch of roadway to themselves.
Privacy of the road, however, did not extend to the villages. Karsten had little patience for idle talk, but he purely loathed the inane chattermongers who seemed to hang from the doors and windows of every town he’d ever set foot in. Wizened little spiders waiting to spin news into power. A gold-marked pilgrim bound for the Dowager would bring them like a plague, quickly ensnaring him in their sticky little webs of gossip. So whenever a town or village loomed ahead, he would step down from the Emperor’s road and strike out across whatever field path or cartway looked to steer the widest berth, and so far, Babette had always followed.
It was on one of those detours, after they had skirted past the broad sprawl of a fair-sized village, that Babette halted at his side and raised her nose to sniff at the air.
“We’re not stopping for more stinkberries,” Karsten muttered, which was the usual reason for these stops, but his senses were on alert now just the same. The field to either side of the path they were following was tall with wild grasses, but that wasn’t where Babette was looking. Instead she was staring at the small grove of shrubs and low trees up ahead. The path vanished into its depths before emerging on the other side and climbing a small rise to rejoin the High Way.
“Bandits?” Karsten asked. He rattled the Sisters in their sheaths, primping them for the dance in case they were invited. But Babette trilled a low gargle in her throat that Karsten had always interpreted as “No, and you’re an idiot for asking.” With a grunt of irritation, she shoved past him, moving forward with her ears perked up. Karsten shook his head. She’d always been that way with him. Impatient. As though she had more important things to be doing and it was he who kept getting in her way. Stupid llama. He set off after her.
A few strides later, he caught the sound for himself. Cursing. It sounded like an angry woman. Karsten walked forward slowly toward the trees until he drew even with Babette. Man and beast shared a curious look for a moment, and then they continued forward together to investigate.
“Hello the cart!” Karsten called as they entered the little wood and the scene was revealed. It really was an old woman, apparently in some minor distress.
“Hello, yourself,” she spat irritably as she wrestled with a large box. It was lashed to the bed of her cart, which was tilted wildly to one side, owing to the shattered axle. Two halves of a broken wheel lay in the leaves beside her. Beyond the cart, an old draft pony with a deeply swayed back stood in its traces, munching on the few shrubs it could reach.
Karsten scanned the scene cautiously. It wouldn’t be the first time brigands had tried to waylay him with the hapless traveler trick, but he sensed nothing around them save for the regular hum of a thicket in summer, and now that they’d arrived, Babette seemed more interested in joining the pony at her shrubbery than anything else. She certainly wasn’t staring toward any brigands hiding among the trees. Karsten turned his attention back to the old woman.
“Lend you aid, Mother?”
At that, the old woman turned a frustrated glare on him. She had a familiar look to her, the way all women of a certain age began to look alike, but this one’s tongue was sharper than most.
“Ain’t your mother, am I?” she barked, but then she seemed to catch herself and quickly ducked her head. “Apologies,” she said. “I’d be obliged of another hand.”
Trusting the llama to keep watch, Karsten went over to the shattered cart. It had seen its last journey, that was certain. By working together, he and the old woman were soon able to release the bindings and lower the box to the ground, but Karsten couldn’t help noticing the agitated buzz that emanated from it whenever it shifted.
“Bees?”
“Ayup. Hospitality gift, I s’pose ye’d call it.”
To Karsten, that sounded like a daft idea. A beehive? Then the old woman leaned into a dapple of light and he got his first clear look at her. He laughed, and the woman looked up at him quickly in irritation.
“You as well?” he said, tapping his lip. Like him, the old woman bore the Dowager’s bird-in-flight below her nose, although hers was green. Rather than share his humor though, she grimaced unhappily.
“So she’s caught herself two old fools then. Least I weren’t fool enough to risk the gold.”
Karsten shrugged. “If she wants an open-ended contract from a man with little end left to give, she’s welcome to it.”
“That’s fine for you,” the woman said, “but I’ve got plans for my days and I can’t say I like having ‘em interrupted. Not even for the likes of her.” Then she seemed to remember her courtesies and gave the bounty hunter a curt nod.
“Pardon my troubles. Folks call me Gramma Wax,” she said, nodding toward the beehive by way of explaining. “I thank ye for the loan of yer hand, but you’ve got the Dowager waitin’ on ye. Best get on now, whil
e the light’s still good. Don’t want to risk her lash catching up with ye before you reach her.”
Karsten frowned. “I’m well ahead of that, Mother, but what about you? It seems you’ve been some time on your own trail and now you’ll be set back even more. We can stay long enough to help unhitch your pony and get you up on her. You’ll reach the villa in three more days.”
The old woman shook her head in refusal. “Bees have got to come,” she said. “It ain’t proper to show up in a woman’s home without some token for the hostess.”
That gave Karsten pause. She was being indentured into a year of service and wanted to bring a gift for her new master? “But, Mother—”
“And there’s to be no more ‘Mother’ talk. If you won’t call me Gramma Wax, you can call me Meerah.”
“Alright, ‘Meerah’ it is, but surely you see that your pony can’t carry both the hive and yourself?”
The old woman nodded. “Ayup. Don’t expect her to. She’ll bring the bees and sundries. I can bring m’self.”
“That’s madness, woman! You’d be a full seven days getting there, and judging by your look, that’d put you under her lash for three. Am I right?”
Meerah looked away grumpily. “A whole week, you reckon?” Then she sighed. “That’d make it closer to five days o’ the damned lash.”
“That many?” Karsten said. “Surely you don’t…”
“Don’t what?” Meerah spat. “Don’t have enough years left in me to be giving up five?”
“Better to live them, however many there are, rather than have them torn from you unspent. It’d be a damn piece more sensible to set the hive by and get yourself there the sooner.”
The old woman set herself unhappily down on the crooked cart bed and let out a sigh. “No use in that,” she said. “What difference losing a year to the lash or ten? Without my bees, I won’t last even the one year of service.” Then she looked at him slyly. “Truth to say, they’s more’n just a gift. Runnin’ a meadery as big as all that? That much honey needs bees, and any keeper’ll tell you, ye can’t never have enough different kinds of bees. So if I brings a donor colony with me, mayhap she’ll let me tend ‘em as my service for the year. That much I can do, and will do. Gladly. But without ‘em? She’ll set me to some unfamiliar work, and that’ll be the end of me. So it don’t matter how many years I give up to the lash. If the hive don’t get there, I won’t never leave.”
Karsten could see the truth of her words written on her tired face. No matter which way he left her, he’d be consigning her to an early grave. Not really his problem, of course, but it didn’t sit right just the same.
“Well, Babette? What do you think?”
The llama looked around at him from the elkshrub she’d been sampling and then stamped her feet. She was as eager to get moving as he was.
“I guess that settles the question,” he said. “We’ll just have to get you on your pony in short order then, Meerah.”
“I told you—” she began, but Karsten cut her off.
“And I heard you,” he said, enjoying the look of surprise on her face as she clopped her mouth closed. “Now, as I was saying, you’ll ride the pony.” Then he grinned. “Babette here will bring the bees.”
The llama’s head whipped up at that, her surprise a perfect mirror of the old woman’s, and Karsten felt a warm glow bubble up inside. For the first time in a long while, he’d spoken the last word against two women in the same conversation.
***
Fortunately, Meerah turned out to be more capable than Karsten had feared, and so long as she stayed atop her bedraggled pony, she proved no more hindrance to their progress than Babette was with her willful sidetrips every time she caught the scent of stinkberry on the breeze.
For two full days they proceeded in a companionable fashion, sharing their provisions freely at meal stops, each growing a little easier with the other as their journey wore on. To pass the hours, Meerah told stories of her life as a bee granny, and even risked a few rather bawdy tales as she grew to trust him. By listening between her words, Karsten knew that there had been a husband some time back, and a child, but most of her anecdotes were from her life after that and he saw no point in digging into her pain.
Meerah, however, had no such misgivings, and asked him constantly about what she saw as the dangerous and exciting life he led. “Nearly as exciting as the tales of heroes.”
That had caught Karsten unawares and he snorted in disagreement. “Only in the seeming,” he said. “Most days are filled with waiting. Or walking, like we’re doing now.” Then he chuckled. “By that measure, you’re as much in a tale of heroes as I’ve ever been. Can you feel the glory?”
Meerah laughed. “Depends,” she said. “That what you call all this numbness in my tail feathers?”
“Ayup. That’d be it.”
And so their conversation flowed, like two chance-met warriors in the common battle against time, touching on everything and nothing, but humorful just the same.
By the morning of that third day, the road had begun its long, slow climb toward the bluffs of the coast, and shortly after high sun—a full day ahead of the lash for Karsten, although Meerah would not say how long it had been for her—the bounty hunter and his companions found themselves approaching a well-kept villa overlooking the sea.
All day their road had wended its way between the endless fields, each another square in the enormous quilt that sprawled across the countryside for miles in every direction. There was a pattern to it all; one that drew you in, and up, toward the great villa that now stood before them, and then swept away beyond that to vanish at an abrupt line, leaving nothing in the distance except gulls wheeling in a sea-colored sky. Rumor said that the Dowager dwelt in beauty, drawing her power from the very edge of the world, but Karsten had always thought that to be just fanciful talk. Seeing this place though, he could see that it might be true, with both the beauty of the land and the power of the sea in perfect balance.
Power, however, made the bounty hunter uneasy, and he called to Babette, who reluctantly abandoned a clump of melonsuckle at the edge of the road and rejoined the rest of the party.
“Now, for one time in your miserable life,” Karsten said, “you be quiet here. Keep that disrespectful tongue of yours inside your head.”
In response, Babette stuck the tongue in question out at him and gargled some insult or other in llamish. Meerah laughed, having seen the two of them like this many times already, but Karsten could only shake his head.
“Be that way if you like,” he growled, “but I can’t shield you from the Dowager. If she orders you chopped for her breakfast pot, I’ll ask for nothing save that she spare my saddlebags and the Cousins. I won’t be able to protect your sorry carcass in a place like this, so I won’t be trying.”
Meerah raised an eyebrow at that, but if Babette was in any way offended, she gave no sign and strode confidently along the roadway beside him. The pony took no notice.
To either side, the fields that flanked them now on this final approach were bursting with flowers set in alternating rows. Mareslip, evening lily, melonsuckle, lovers’ knot, all known for their honey production, according to Meerah. Karsten had never had much interest in decoration and ornament and wouldn’t know a cactus from a cucumber, so he took her word as truth. Between the rows, at scattered intervals, laborers knelt or squatted in the soil. Some looked up as the foursome passed, but seemed entirely disinterested and after a casual glance, bent quickly back to their work.
“Probably get a few like us each week,” Karsten muttered. “We’re hardly worth a spit, I’d wager.”
For some time now, he’d expected to be halted by the Dowager’s guards, who would demand to know his purpose and probably wouldn’t believe even the evidence tattooed to his lip when it was pointed out. At the very least, he would be disarmed, so he’d spent some time earlier that morning, rearranging the Cousins until he was confident that a few would be left undiscovered.
<
br /> In the end though, there had been no sign of even a token force anywhere along their path, and to his utter surprise, they walked straight up the last stretch of road and right to the front of the villa itself, without so much as a grumbling nanny to stop them.
The old bounty hunter looked around, more out of curiosity than trepidation. What now? Meerah just blinked at him from the pony’s back, clearly leaving the next move to him. With still no sign of anyone paying them even the least mind, Karsten shrugged and strode up to the large door, knocking on it loudly with his staff.
“Just a moment,” called out a young voice from within. He could hear the shuffling of feet and the sound of something being shoved across the floor. Then a heartbeat later, the great doors swung out and a young farmwife appeared between them. Pushing a wisp of sweaty hair back up under her kerchief, she cast a quick eye over him, and then she looked up at Meerah.
“Found him then, did you, my Zah?”
That’s when Karsten realized why Meerah had looked so familiar. He had seen her face before, or at least, a much younger version of it. Formed in the amber glass of the bottle that had brought him here.
Meerah was the Dowager herself.
***
“Come, let me show you my estate.”
A stable boy had come and taken the pony away, although Babette had refused to be treated like simple livestock and now followed along behind them. The old woman led the way out from the main building and onto the field of flower beds. Karsten followed, as instructed, but he was still trying to reassemble the world and silence weighed heavily between them. The carefree conversation of previous days was now gone. Eventually though, even he could sense the strain of his silence.
“The Dowager’s name is not Meerah,” he said. Everyone knew that the wife of the previous Emperor had been Empress Ayini.
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