by Linda Nagata
The Lutawan officer brought his horse to a skidding stop and vaulted from the saddle. Smoke grabbed for the hilt of the sword—he had to pull it out!—but he couldn’t reach it. The officer drew a long knife from a sheath at his waist—and Smoke did the only thing he could think to do. He wrenched his body down and to the side, letting the sword cut itself free. Hot blood cascaded over his back and chest. “Hauntén demon!” the southerner swore as Smoke dodged the first thrust of his knife—and then Smoke slipped away.
Nothing about him ever changed when he ran the threads, so he didn’t bleed out even though it was some long time later when he reached Samerhen. He went straight to his sister Tayval where she was reading in her room, and collapsed in a bloody heap on her carpet.
She saved his life, pinching the threads that underlay his body and stemming the flow of blood. Afterward it took her many hours to suture his severed muscles and sew his skin closed.
He learned later the officer’s name was Nedgalvin. Chieftain Rennish had lost one-quarter of her troops that night, before calling a retreat.
On the next morning Ketty woke abruptly. Lurching to her feet, she stepped past Smoke, stumbled to the door, yanked it open, and took two steps in her bare feet before falling to her hands and knees in the fresh snow. She retched up bile and a remnant of supper.
Afterward she was tired, but in the afternoon she was smiling again and she ate some soup. The next morning, though, her illness returned.
That night Smoke lay awake beside her, fearing and fretting that a winter sickness had found her. Such spirits could bide where they were not wanted, slowly eating away the sweetness of life, leaving only a wasted husk where once a laughing person had been.
He resolved to hunt the consuming spirit, but when he felt the threads it was not sickness he discovered but something small and far sweeter. “Ketty,” he whispered. Then he kissed her cheek and gently squeezed her shoulder. “Ketty, wake up.”
She stirred and looked at him in the fire’s light, her gaze puzzled.
He set his hand—very gently—against her belly. “It’s a magical thing. There’s a baby here, growing inside you.”
She set her hand over his. “Are you happy?”
“I don’t know how such a thing could be.”
A puzzled note entered her voice. “Do you not?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“But are you happy? I was afraid you’d be angry.”
“Angry? Why would I be?”
“I don’t know. I mean, it’s the way of the world that we should have children together . . . don’t you think?”
“I think it’s a magical thing.”
“Then you’re happy?”
“I think so . . . Ketty, you already knew?”
“It is the way of the world, my love. Why are you surprised?”
~
The Bidden are a mixture of Hauntén and human. It’s an unnatural blend and our children are rare. My father, the Trenchant Dehan, was the only child of his generation. He loved and married a Koráyos woman who safely bore twin daughters, but died in agony giving birth to my brother, Smoke.
My father tries to find a new wife. He’s had many lovers, but none that suit him.
I and my sister have enjoyed many lovers too.
But it seems our kind must be in love to conceive a child—a deeply inconvenient prerequisite, I must say.
A New God
Fort Veshitan was the first stop for those women who had abandoned their lives—or what passed for a life—in the Lutawan Kingdom. At the fort they were taught the customs of the Puzzle Lands. Afterward, some went on to work, and others to marry, but many—driven by the fervor of the converted—went on to train as Koráyos warriors.
It still astonished Takis how the cowed and timorous women of the south could be transformed into such fierce fighters—but then again, any woman who fled the southern oppression and made it whole to Fort Veshitan must have been born with a large helping of courage.
The new refugees had all been packed off to their barracks by the time Takis came into the mess hall with Rennish and Helvero, but many of the instructors and counselors were still awake. The cook was too, and he came at once with bowls of stew, and sliced bread.
Several minutes passed in silence as they ate. Finally Rennish leaned over, fixing Takis with a suspicious gaze. “It’s not like you to be so quiet. Are you all right?”
Takis looked up with a side-eyed resentment. “Only you could get away with a question like that.”
Rennish’s weathered face wrinkled in a smile. “I believe in making use of my advantages. This one hit you hard, didn’t it?”
Truth? Takis felt hollow, tense, confused . . . as if she’d misplaced something precious. Something she wasn’t likely to find again. She had wanted so badly for Nedgalvin to be the man she’d imagined him to be.
But what man was ever the man you imagined?
“It was the right thing to do,” Takis said in a matter-of-fact voice.
Rennish wasn’t fooled. “He was your lover.”
“The best of many.” Beside her, Helvero set his bowl down with a sharp rap. Takis ignored him. “You want to know if I regret it?” she asked Rennish. “I do. I regret the need for it.”
“Best that he’s gone,” Helvero said. “The Trenchant would go mad if it was a Lutawan general who finally fathered a child on you.”
Takis turned to him with a dark look. She’d given Helvero a chance to get her with child, and he’d failed. She said, “If I should ever have a child, no one will care who the father is.”
Helvero looked sour, but Rennish chuckled. “You’ll be all right,” she said with easy confidence. “Come morning he’ll be gone from your heart.”
Takis stood up to go. “If I find good company tonight, he could be gone before I close my eyes to sleep.”
She took her empty stew bowl and headed to the kitchen, intending to return it to the cook, but on the way she heard a fragment of conversation that caught her ear: “There is a new god you can pray to.”
Curious, Takis walked more slowly. Two young women sat relaxed, opposite each other at a small table near the kitchen, beers half-gone before them. One looked to be Koráyos—slimly built, fine brown hair, dark eyes. The other had the dark hair and heavy accent of a Lutawan volunteer. She was the one who had spoken. Her back was turned so she didn’t notice Takis as she continued in a bold, laughing voice. “They say Dismay is a woman’s god. Make your prayers, and see what happens.”
Takis put down her stew bowl on an empty table and slid into a chair between the two young women, startling them badly. They both drew back, wide-eyed, but it was the Lutawan volunteer who recovered her composure first. “Good evening, ma’am.”
Takis met her searching gaze. “I’m curious. Who is this holy Dismay, that she deserves your prayers?”
The Koráyos woman looked as if she’d been caught with dessert before dinner, but the southerner answered with a confident grin. “My name is Priscilla, ma’am, and this is Santrel.”
“Greetings,” Takis said, and they shook hands all around.
“And Dismay . . . well, the first thing to say is that she is a he.”
Takis was startled. “A male god? But you said this Dismay is a woman’s god.”
Priscilla’s humor dried up. She looked suddenly somber and serious. “Yes, ma’am. Whether he’s a new god, or a fickle old god that comes only rarely, I can’t say, but not even two years ago he was in the borderlands. He came in answer to the prayers of the oppressed, and he dispensed a bloody justice.”
Takis had never heard talk of such a spirit before. “How bloody?”
“There was a girl. Fourteen years old. Her father was in debt, so he gave her in payment. Her master cut her sacred gate and raped her, and he forced her to work until she died not a year later. So her mother prayed to Dismay for vengeance.
“He came on a sunny afternoon. He sliced the throat of the master and cut do
wn every man on that farm. Then he told the women to take what coin they could carry and flee north. He burned the house and the barn and the silos and slaughtered the livestock that was left.”
Takis was shocked. “Who told you such a story?”
Priscilla’s gaze didn’t waver. “No one told me, ma’am. It’s my story. The master was my father. The dead girl was my cousin. The mother who prayed to Dismay—she was my aunt. I told her the stories I’d heard of the bloody god. I told her to pray to him, because I wanted to leave that place before I was sold in marriage. I wanted to become a woman of the Puzzle Lands.”
“And your aunt?” Takis asked. “What became of her?”
“She was old, ma’am. She couldn’t run fast enough when the soldiers came after us, but she told us to go on.”
“Us?”
“Myself. My little sister, and my aunt’s younger daughter. The two girls are in school now at Samerhen. They live on the coin Dismay told them to take, and what I send them from my wages.”
Takis leaned back with a sigh, wishing one of the unfinished beers belonged to her. Perhaps the cook read her mind. He came up and set a fresh glass in front of her. She nodded her thanks. But before she picked it up she turned to the Koráyos woman, Santrel, who had been silent so far. “What need does a Koráyos woman have to prayer to such a bloody god?”
“No need, ma’am,” Santrel said softly. “It was a joke. I would never pray to such a god unless I was taken prisoner by the Lutawans.”
“It was a joke,” Priscilla agreed, with a rueful look at Santrel. “Even the most annoying Koráyos suitor doesn’t deserve such a fate.” She turned to Takis, again meeting her gaze. “I hope you’ll forgive my loud talk and my tasteless humor.”
Takis nodded. Then she picked up her beer. “To your aunt,” she said somberly.
Both women lifted their glasses and, echoing her words, they drank.
The Clink of Coins
The dried bunches of herbs that hung from the thatch were almost all gone by the time winter neared its end. Ketty used a forked stick to bring down the last one, though she wondered if it had any flavor left in it other than smoke. But as she lifted it from its hook, another item was revealed behind it. It looked to be a small pouch, hanging from its drawstring.
Putting the bundle of herbs aside on the table, she used her forked stick again, to fetch the pouch. It was heavier than she expected. Full of curiosity, she took it in her hand, and at once she heard the clink of coins. She put down the stick and hurried to the door.
It was a gloomy day, with frost still crunching on the ground, but it was light enough that she could see the sparkle of gold and silver when she peered into the pouch. She forgot to breathe as she poked her fingers at the coins. There were many different sizes and colors, most that she’d never seen before. But she’d seen a silver tarling once, one of the wedding gifts when her cousin was married. That alone had been enough to buy a new plough horse, and she saw at least two silver tarlings in the pouch, and they were not the grandest coins.
“Ah, Smoke,” she breathed in wonder. “You did not tell me we were rich.”
She ran across the meadow and through the woods, to the little clearing where Smoke was scraping a deer hide. “Oh, you found the purse,” he said when she showed the pouch to him. “I forgot I had that.”
“You forgot?” she asked, incredulous.
He shrugged. “It’s not much use.”
“Not much use? But think what we could buy with this much money!”
He looked at her as if she’d gone batty. “The berry bushes won’t trade fruit for silver, Ketty. The deer won’t give up their hides for gold.”
“Smoke, you know what I mean. We could go to Nefión—”
“No.”
“And buy all the—”
“No.”
“Even make a new life—”
“No! Our life is here. Everything we need is here. Our baby will be born here, and she’ll be safe here with us and no one else.”
“Smoke, we can’t stay here forever alone!”
“Yes, we can. And we will.”
“Then what are we going to do with this money?” she asked in exasperation.
“I don’t care. Throw it away. Throw it in the brook—”
“Are you crazy?”
“Because there will only be trouble if we go to Nefión.”
“Trouble?” She held the pouch close to her chest, as if someone might steal it. “What kind of trouble? Are you afraid my father will find me?”
“I’m not afraid of your father.”
“But you’re afraid of something. That’s why we live here, isn’t it? So far from anywhere. You’re hiding and hoping trouble won’t find you.”
He didn’t answer, just went on scraping the hide.
“So we hide here in the Wild Wood, rich with money we can’t spend!”
He spoke without looking up, his voice so leaden with anger it didn’t sound like his own. “What do you want to buy, Ketty? Tell me, and I’ll lay in wait along the forest road and murder every traveler that passes until I’ve collected what you need.”
She backed off a step. “Don’t speak to me so.”
Smoke looked up at her, his emerald eyes gleaming. “I will do it. It’s nothing to me.”
She took another step back, speaking softly. “Don’t talk so, and I don’t believe you anyway.”
“But why not? You should.”
“Smoke, please. Just listen to me—”
His temper snapped. He threw down the bone scraper. “I won’t, Ketty! I won’t listen.” She quailed at the violence in his voice. She hadn’t seen him so angry since the day they’d met, when she’d rejected him as a “bloody-handed servant of the Bidden.” And then when he saw her fear, he grew angrier still. “Your mother named you right, Ketty of the Red Moon. You must have been born to argue.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He stooped to pick up the scraper again, his face flushed and dark. “Just go. Go, before I—” He bit off whatever he had meant to say. “This hide is to be a dress for you. So leave me to work in peace, or scrape it yourself.”
She took the purse back to the cottage and hung it again from the rafter, but it weighed on her mind. As the days passed and spring brightened the forest, she would often take it down, spilling the coins out on the table and sorting them, examining each one before hanging the pouch again on the hook.
“Where did you get all those coins, anyway?” she asked Smoke one evening as they sat together by the hearth. “Was it your pay, when you were a Koráyos warrior?”
“No. We took coins off those we killed in battle. It was a game, to see who wound up with the most. I won often, because I killed more men, and I always tried to kill officers.”
She stared at him, unsure if she believed him. After she thought on it awhile she decided she did not, knowing she’d be happier that way.
And still she could not stop thinking about the coins.
The snow had long since melted and the forest turned lush and green in the spring, but Ketty was not content. All that day she’d wandered the forest with Smoke while they foraged together for fungus and roots. It seemed to Ketty they had walked for miles and miles. In the midafternoon she sighed and pressed her hand against her growing belly. “We’ve gone so far today! Have we come almost to the forest road?”
Smoke’s smile and the glint in his eyes told her she had said something foolish.
“What?”
He grinned. “Your head is always turned around. Don’t you know we’ve come in a wide circle?” He pointed in a direction that she guessed was east. “Our home is there, maybe half a mile away.”
She was annoyed with herself. “Why am I always lost?”
Smoke laughed. “At least I know you’ll never be able to runaway to Nefión.”
Ketty looked at him in surprise. Nefión was a forbidden subject, but he had brought it up. She wasn’t going to let her hurt
pride get in the way of questioning him further. “How far do you think it is to Nefión anyway? Twice as far as we’ve walked today?”
“You’re not going.”
“But it would be fun if we went together. There’s no hurry. We could walk ten miles a day. Wouldn’t it be nice to buy some flour? It’s been so long since I’ve had bread! And if we stayed a night or two we might even hear music, or storytelling.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t even get angry, so she was fairly sure he wasn’t listening. She prattled on anyway. “I’d so love to have a nice measure of cloth for a summer dress.” She stroked the doeskin shift she had sewn for herself, smoothing it where it draped over her belly. “This is fine leather, but it’s so hot.”
He caught her hand, his eyes glittering emerald green. “You can run naked. I wouldn’t mind.”
Ketty gasped in shock. “Is that what you think of me? That I’m such a poor, stupid girl I should not even have clothes?”
Smoke’s teeth flashed white as he grinned, his eyes half-closed.
“You’re imagining it, aren’t you?” Ketty demanded, outraged.
“Why shouldn’t I?” He tugged her into the circle of his arms, spinning her around so that her back was pressed against his chest and his hands were suddenly exploring her breasts and the curve of her belly. He spoke into her ear, sending a shiver running through her. “You’re beautiful with clothes or without, and your voice is more beautiful than any minstrel’s, and if it’s stories you want, I know many.”
She stiffened in surprise. “You do? But you never tell me stories!”
He kissed her cheek. “Most stories are sad, and I’m not sad. I’m happy.”
“I’ll be happy if we go to Nefión.”