Her attention caught on Jerani leading Gem away. His shoulders were slumped, and he was knocking his club against his leg.
He straightened when he reached his sister. “Look, Anza,” he said, “you'll be able to milk Gem. She's ours to keep now. Anza?”
The girl turned away, hiding her bandaged face from the calf. “Don't want her to see me.”
“No, look, Gem is happy to be with you.”
The calf was licking the back of Anza's neck. But the girl only shuddered in silent sobs. Jerani gripped the top of his head, looking helpless and sad.
Celaise was moving toward them before she realized it. She had no reason to go closer, but she felt drawn nonetheless.
Anza noticed her. The girl whimpered. “No, no!” She shoved with her legs to scoot away on her bottom.
The girl knows. At the strawberry scent of her fear, the Black Wine churned inside Celaise. She fought the urge to lash out, and for the first time, she was sorry to have frightened a person.
“Anza?” Jerani held the girl's shoulder. “Don't worry, Anza. She's not burning herself.”
The girl pushed farther away.
“It's Celaise. She protected the cows tonight. She's a friend. A handmaiden of the Angry Mother.” Jerani lifted Anza to hug her. The hand that he had pressed into his dyed hair left a red splotch on her clothing. “Oh, I'm so sorry.”
Celaise was no maiden of any sort, but she wanted to please and distract the girl. Shaping power into reality, Celaise strung a necklace of fire rubies around Gem's neck. It seemed fitting. The calf struck a pose, its coat glistening red from the smoldering light of the jewels.
People said the magic of beauty belonged to enchantresses only because the Oasis Empire told them to. True art came from darkness. Flecks of autumn light twinkled within the rubies. Celaise joined the others in staring at them. She did love her work.
Anza lowered her hands from her bandaged face to touch Gem's new necklace. “They're cold!”
Jerani's brother, the one with eggplant arms, trudged forward carrying a gourd. He too looked amazed at the glowing jewels. “What're they made of?”
“Me.” Celaise lifted a hand gloved with five tongues of flame.
“You destroy and you build,” Jerani said, glancing over his shoulder at the volcano.
Celaise did not like him thinking of her as some burning mountain goddess. At that point, she was not sure what she could do about it.
Wedan coughed and spoke to his brother. “Thought you…well, you might want a sip. Before you went out again. To the fight.”
Jerani tugged his gaze away from her and began to drink from the gourd.
The pudgier brother rubbed the calf's chin, drawing his hand close to the jewels but never touching them. “Well,” he said and nodded to the calf and its new necklace, “how come only she gets one?”
Jerani spluttered water. “Wedan!”
Celaise shrugged. Thorns of flame rose from her dress' shoulders.
Looking embarrassed, Jerani lifted the gourd in offering to her. “Did you want…oh, but you wouldn't, would you?”
The gesture of kindness frightened Celaise. Jerani trusts me. The thought made her sad, until an idea came to her.
He could kill the Bright Palm. She could ask him to do it. Bright Palms might not flinch from wounds that killed normal men, but if Jerani snuck up behind him and clobbered his head to a mess of bone shards, her troubles would be over.
“I will drink,” she said.
Jerani hesitated then poured into a bowl, lifting it to her lips. She could have let the water fall through her, but she decided to link herself with her center of vulnerability so she could drink. Don't want to die of thirst now.
She had to wait several heartbeats to fold her soft spot within her True Dress. During that wait she had nothing to do except gaze at Jerani, and he at her. She worried he might take too much meaning from that.
She reached out to grip his hands. His eyes widened at her flaming fingers. Celaise had forgotten about her dress. When Jerani held steady, she brushed five tongues of fire against his skin. Pressing him with heat, singeing his small hairs but not burning him. She admired his courage at her touch. He never flinched.
Celaise's lips folded over the edge of the bowl. The water clogged her throat with the taste of dust, but she got it down. Steam rose from the corners of her mouth.
With her body humming with Black Wine, she dangled another string of fire rubies. The jewels slithered out of her palm, and their gold chain latched around Jerani's wrist. Its color matched the dye in his hair.
Her eyes strayed to Wedan. She wanted him to know she could create more than one necklace.
“They won't last.” This she said to Jerani. “Nothing wonderful ever does.”
Jerani held his arms out in front of him. On his right, a treasure of rubies. On his left, a copper shackle.
The sight of the bracelet scraped away all pleasure from adorning Jerani. Its crest of the Sun Dragon mocked her hopes. I can't trust him. Nothing would arouse their suspicions faster than her asking for the death of a Bright Palm.
She shoved her center of vulnerability away from herself. Jerani rubbed his hand where she had touched him. The brightness of the rubies filled his eyes.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice quiet and intense. “Thank you for what you did to the Rock-Backs.”
“Jerani!” The tribesmen had gathered, and one motioned for him to come.
“Wait,” Celaise said. She had thought of something that would arouse less suspicion. “Earlier tonight, you asked if I wanted anything.”
“Yes?” He began to smell of artichoke. Celaise decided it was a flavor of anxiety.
“Sometimes I watch your tribe during the day. From far away. With magic.” She waited until he met her eyes. “There's a woman with a twisted foot. I feel bad for her.”
“The outlander.” He tried not to, but he cringed.
“Would you watch over her? Make sure she isn't hurt.”
“For you,” Jerani said, “I will do it.”
Worry and relief crashed against each other in her chest with a woozy rushing. What if he figures out who I am? What if he saves my life? She told herself she was not trusting him, not really. She would not tell him the nature of her magic, of its hunger. Not ever.
Celaise covered her face with her cape. Her dress folded in on itself, and she stepped backward into shadow.
Wedan blinked at the spot she had stood, and then he poked Jerani in the shoulder. “I think she likes you.”
“Why? No—no she doesn't.” Jerani glanced from his brother to the leaving tribesmen. “I have to go.”
“Don't try to kiss her,” Wedan called after him. “She'll burn your lips off.”
Celaise wrung her hands in the darkness. She had remembered something Wedan had said last night. She had believed she had heard wrong at the time, but he had called the Bright Palm something that had sounded like “father.”
She recalled where she had heard the name Gio before. A tribesman had said it to the Bright Palm, the day he had murdered her brother Feaster.
Her limbs trembled with pangs of fear as she sank into a crouch. The Bright Palm's his father! And she had almost asked Jerani to kill him.
Celaise had never seen the two speaking, plotting, but she wondered if they did. Now that she thought of it, she found it more than suspicious that Jerani had never mentioned his father. Jerani might have been spying all this time, only pretending to be kind and sweet.
Some Bright Palms hired people to track Feasters. These Hounds attuned themselves to their feelings and could point the way for masters who felt nothing. Is Jerani a Hound? What upset her most was that he had somehow tricked her into giving him the copper bracelet the first night, in order to get closer to her.
True, he did not fear her as much as a normal person would if he knew she was a Feaster. As a Hound, Jerani would know how to suppress his fears, from years working with his Bright Palm father.
Her Black Wine boiled her suspicion into certainty.
Never trust. Never again. Never ever.
She thanked her wisdom, was grateful for the warning of the copper bracelet.
When Jerani offered help, she would refuse. From him, and from everyone.
Jerani pushed himself up from his pallet, and his shoulder throbbed in hot aching bursts that spread over his chest. The muscles in his legs felt shriveled and ready to snap.
He wondered why he felt so sore. Then he remembered last night.
The Greathearts had run from tribe to tribe, fending off waves of Rock-Backs. Without Celaise, they had trouble killing the domes of plated teeth, and no sooner had they driven another wave into the night then they heard cries from a neighboring tribe.
Staggering to his feet, he began to plod off to find milk. Wedan handed him a gourd. Between delicious gulps of freshly drawn warm milk, Jerani realized that his brother had never gone out of his way for the family before.
“Um....” Jerani had not spoken to him much since the Rock-Back had mauled him. “Are you all right?”
Wedan's hand strayed over his belly. He wore blue clothes that were too small for him, and the scar crested over the top of their folds. “It'll make an amazing warrior mark, someday.”
“Yeah. Someday.”
Jerani thought he should say more, but the water of his mind's spring seemed dry that morning. If it's morning. Day peeked around the corners of the ash cloud to the east and west.
The Holy Woman was wrapping a new bandage over Anza's eye, and Jerani knelt to hold his sister. She squirmed her shoulders.
“She's to be well soon, you'll see.” The Holy Woman secured the bandage with a bone pin.
Jerani wished he could believe her. He felt sick to his stomach for Anza, even wondered for a moment if his brother had given him bad milk. His sister shuffled away on her hands and knees, and the Holy Woman spoke to Jerani.
“How're you getting on with the kantress?”
He lifted his arms, but the red jewels were gone. Just like she'd said. He rubbed where they had tingled his wrist, wishing he could still have them for the whole world to see. Another gift from the gods. The copper bracer on his other arm was dull and scratched again. At least the burned hairs on his hand had grown back already.
Thinking of the pissing story the Holy Woman had told Celaise last night made him itch and smart all over. He had expected Celaise never to speak to him again.
“Why'd you tell her that? About my father and my—”
“She'll be hearing it sooner of later, once you're married.”
“Oh no! Not you, too.” Having Tall Tachamwa chafing him on this was bad enough. The Holy Woman always got what she wanted. She was like an old tree root digging through boulders on its way to water.
“You may be young. But she needs to be a Greatheart.”
“Haven't you met her?” Jerani thought of her face glistening amid bursts of fire.
“All people need to belong. Don't matter what they look like.”
“But she's not a…” His breath caught, and he remembered Celaise had said she sometimes watched him during the day. Or did she say 'watches the tribe?' He hoped now was not one of those times. “What if she's a handmaiden? Of the Angry Mother?”
“Must be why she doesn't want Gem. No place for her in the hot tunnels under the mountain.”
“What about me? I can't swim in lava.”
He felt the breathless heat from the summit, where he had seen the goddess' blood glow with terrifying power. Her yellow sweat had caked every rock. His eyes had dried and stuck open, and he had lost his voice for days. He imagined a burst of the same pain if he tried to kiss Celaise. Her fingertip-touch had been all he could bear.
“She'll be taking you into the sky.” The Holy Woman lifted her hands as she always did when telling stories. “The Handmaiden Dejia carried her man so they could tend the herd of star cattle in the night's tall black grasses.”
“What about Anza? And Wedan? I shouldn't want to leave them.”
“Sometimes it has to be what the tribe wants, not what you want. And the Greathearts are needing Celaise and her Mother's fire.”
Jerani had always wanted to visit the great dark fields in the sky, to meet the cattle that shone so brightly. It would be an honor to protect them, and the thought of running through the chest-high grasses with Celaise thrilled him. The long shoots would caress his sides and tickle his toes while he laughed and held hands with Celaise. She said she couldn't touch, but I felt her. A painful warmth. He rubbed the spot once more but found no sign of a burn.
He wondered if he would ever see his sister and brother again, and the thought made him sad. Then he felt foolish. He could not imagine himself asking Celaise to somersault over a bull's horns with him into marriage. A seedling of doubt told him that he should not ask her, that something terrible would happen if he did.
“Maybe she doesn't want to be a wife,” he said.
“Are you listening?” The Holy Woman grabbed his ear, her yellow fingernails scratching and pinching. “Every woman is wanting a man.”
“But you didn't, did you?”
“I am the Holy Woman. She a Holy Woman? No, she is not. You're thinking like a fly, around and around and doing no good.”
Jerani did not let himself cry out in pain as she curled her finger inside the rim of his ear for a better grip. He would not cringe like a boy, even if she treated him like one.
“Now, you'll be promising to ask her. To wed.”
His throat dried, and his breath scraped his chest. He did not even know why he should so fear to ask, or why being around Celaise felt like juggling coals. Maybe it always feels like that when you like someone more than sunrise and green fields. Or maybe it's the dress.
Celaise liked him, he was sure of it. She had spoken to him even after that story about him pissing over his father as a child, had even accepted the water Jerani had poured. No other woman would have done that. She had given him a jewel filled with her fire, even if it only lasted for hours.
She was like no other woman. He thought Isafo had been wrong to ask her to wed. Maybe she must ask the man. She is a handmaiden.
The Holy Woman unclasped his ear as a large man stomped toward them. The weaving and twisting warrior marks on Melelek's skin looked like the tunnels of a broken termite nest.
“Well, smash my horn!” Melelek stared out onto the grassland, where Rock-Backs lay sprawled about, the colossus a jagged hill behind him. The Bright Palm was walking among the corpse mounds. “Your tribe never could kill so many.”
“We had help.” The Holy Woman waved to the hazy outline of the Angry Mother.
“And what's that?” Melelek's knife-etched finger pointed at the hill of dead Rock-Back. Jerani thought it looked different from last night, somehow. “You tell me what killed that.”
“Celaise,” Jerani said.
“Cel-aise.” Melelek curled his tongue to touch a fissure on his upper lip. “Who's he?”
“She.” Jerani liked saying it to the warrior who had pushed him down just yesterday. “She comes when the Rock-Backs come. Defends the herd with fire.”
“We saw the fire,” Melelek said. “It distracted us warriors. That's the only reason the Rock-Backs broke our line. The only one!”
The warrior aimed the full force of his words at the Holy Woman. Even to Jerani they hit as hard as shoves. The Holy Woman stood her ground, her wrinkled and spotty chin raised and defiant.
“The Blood Bulls don't need your help,” Melelek said. “We don't need anyone's help. It's your tribe. You're tricking us, using us. We take the brunt of the fighting while you never lose a calf.”
“The Greathearts are hurting. Last night we lost—”
Melelek gripped the Holy Woman's spindly arm. “You promised you could rip off Skin-Backs, but the neck-biters make my cows twitch and crawl into the night.”
“Celaise can do it,” Jerani said. He worried the warrior would harm
the Holy Woman with his arm-wrenching.
“Then why haven't we seen this 'Celaise?'” Melelek jerked the Holy Woman closer. “Why does she only help your tribe?”
“Let her go,” Jerani said. He tried to pry open Melelek's hand. His skin felt like a crocodile's.
Melelek released the Holy Woman to shove him. Jerani hopped out of the way. The big warrior said, “The Blood Bulls are safer on their own. We'll outrun the Rock-Backs.”
“They roll far,” the Holy Woman said. “They'll tire you out.”
“Not the Blood Bulls.”
“And when they catch you, the Skin-Backs will suck you to dry reeds and grow into Rock-Backs.”
“Sickle-hocked hag!” Melelek swung his arm at her like a long club ending in knuckles.
Jerani pulled the Holy Woman out of the way. The two backed into the wet snout of Gorgeous, with a pack of notch-horned cows behind her.
Melelek slammed his foot into the ground as he turned and left. Jerani thought the headman was not too far from having a Rock-Back mentality.
“This'll be bad.” The Holy Woman gazed after him.
Jerani could only agree. Not wanting her focus to shift back to him and any talk of marriage, he ducked under Gorgeous' horns and walked straight into the glowing hands of the Bright Palm.
“They died without wounds,” Gio said, gripping Jerani by the arm with the copper bracer. “Not spear, club, or fire killed most them.”
“Most of what?”
“The Rock-Backs.”
Jerani felt hot panic so close to those white veins. He yanked his arms away from the man who looked like his father. The bracer pinched Jerani's skin. “Celaise killed them. She dropped them into fire.”
The Rock-Backs had fallen out of sight into her dress. Over the Bright Palm's shoulder, more dead monsters littered the field than Jerani remembered seeing last night after the battle. Perhaps Celaise killed more after the rest of us left to help the other tribes. Or maybe I just didn't see everything in the darkness.
The colossus' vast plated dome seemed unbroken and not at all burnt from this angle. The scorch marks must be on the other side.
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