“I know you wouldn’t,” I told him. “That’s exactly my point.”
For a moment, things were almost companionable. I, with my arms wrapped around my knees; Rook, leaning back in the sand and staring at the sky. We were as different as different could be, yet we didn’t dislike one another. I was relatively sure of it.
“Anyway,” I concluded, always incapable of letting any silence last for too long—a weakness in my conversational skills that Rook never failed to point out to me, “those were merely my thoughts as I had them. I didn’t mean to pontificate; I only hoped to reassure you somehow.”
“Nah,” Rook said. “You were probably right.”
It was the first time he’d ever said that to me, and once again I had to remind myself that my victories could be savored later, once we had time for them. “Thank you,” I said, feeling pleased.
“Don’t get too happy,” Rook said. “It’s a rare enough occurrence that you should be thinking about all the times you aren’t, instead.”
“Believe me,” I told him, in no uncertain terms, “I often do.”
“So you think we should let that old bag give us a hand?” Rook asked, as though he really wanted to know.
I nodded. “I do. I think it’s the best lead—the best chance—we have at…at putting Havemercy to rest.” It was something Rook needed as much as his dragon did, though I would never tell that to him outright.
“And I think you want that rice pudding she mentioned,” Rook said shrewdly.
My stomach chose that instant to let out an untimely growl.
“Always were hungry,” Rook told me, as we stood up and headed back to the house. “Especially when you were little. Fat as fucking hell as a baby—don’t know how, since there wasn’t much to feed you—but ever since then all you did was eat, eat, eat.”
Sarah Fleet was waiting for us in the doorway. She nodded upward, and I followed her gaze to see Kalim’s silhouette stamped out against the moonlit sky.
“Who’s that handsome devil?” she asked.
“I’m offended,” Rook said, sounding something like his old self, “that you would ever look at another man when you’ve got me.”
“Baby, I’ve got two eyes,” Sarah Fleet said. “And if you hadn’t noticed, one of ’em points in a different direction. Don’t worry, I can handle it.” She let out a soft little laugh, and Rook ducked in past her, leaving me to follow behind. Whatever Sarah Fleet had to tell us now, we were ready for it.
I only hoped it would require much less time in the desert.
CHAPTER TEN
MADOKA
We stopped by the stream feeding the ruined village to stock up on water.
“Hey, Malahide,” I said.
She turned to look at me like she wasn’t expecting me to talk to her, and I didn’t know what to make of the smile she gave me. We weren’t friends, and I didn’t exactly beam at her like that when she tried to talk to me, but she was a magician and my impression of magicians so far was that they were all crazy as piss. So maybe that was a good enough explanation for it.
“You called?” she asked, while Badger looked on like he disapproved. Not for the first time, I was actually glad to have him with us. We weren’t having any more fireside heart-to-hearts like we’d done that first night, since we didn’t want to talk around Malahide any more than we absolutely had to, and I had to admit, I kind of missed it.
If it’d been just me and Malahide out here, I definitely wouldn’t’ve made it.
“Can I put this thing in water, do you think?” I asked, and then, because she’d probably want an explanation and I was too tired to keep hiding things from her when she was the only one of us who might actually know something, “It’s hurting.”
“How badly?” she asked. Her hands were gloved, and she took mine in both of them so delicately I felt uncomfortable just watching her. Nothing was that delicate where I was concerned, I thought, but I guessed she must’ve wanted to keep that compass pretty safe. And I guessed I didn’t blame her for that, either.
I didn’t really much want to look at my own hand anymore. Every time I did, it just got worse; if I knew that was the general pattern, then I didn’t have any reason to check it anymore. I had nightmares about it too, and I knew it was giving me this fever. Sometimes I imagined what’d happen if I just ripped it out—might make things worse, for a time, but after that it could’ve solved all my problems.
“It’s getting worse,” Malahide said.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I replied.
Badger, who had finished filling up our skins with water, came over to join us; it was a good thing he had such keen eyesight and didn’t trust Malahide for a second, though I wanted to tell him he could relax just a little bit, save all his worrying for later when it’d really start to count. She wasn’t going to try anything out on us yet, and what good would all this vigilance do if it wore him out before she chose to strike?
Soldiers, I thought. They were all the same.
“We’ve been treating it with aloe,” I said, while Malahide continued inspecting the site of all my woes, like it was a code she was trying to break or a foreign language she was trying to decipher.
“Well that’s all wrong,” Malahide said. “It might get into the mechanisms, and stop the compass from working.” She looked at my face after a moment, rolling my sleeve back up around my wrist.
“Can’t have that,” I said, with just a touch of sarcasm.
“Use your wit all you like, if it makes you feel better,” Malahide said. “But what it won’t do is help you much in the long run. Instant gratification is all well and good, but you should think ahead. To your future.”
I looked out over the desert. That was my future, I thought, and it must’ve shown some on my face, because Badger moved to stand next to me. He looked like he was starting to pity me, and if that much was showing on his face, then I really was fucked.
“Whoa, boys and girls,” I said. “I’m not dying or anything. Let’s get moving or we’re gonna be late.”
“Our target has traveled far, on horseback,” Malahide told us—a cheerful prospect, indeed, and I’d’ve thanked her if her words before hadn’t hit home just a little bit. “We haven’t much chance to catch up with him on foot; we can only hope he stops to rest somewhere in the desert.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked. “And why’s that?”
“Because my impression is that he is traveling to the sea,” Malahide said. “And I do not believe you have much time to waste.”
“I ain’t getting on no boat,” I said, almost like a reflex. I’d never spent much time thinking about the sea, and as far as I was concerned, I’d be real happy if things stayed like that for the rest of my life. The desert was one thing. The ocean was just out of the question.
“I didn’t imagine you would,” said Malahide, as though the idea’d been right out of the question from the beginning. “But my own interest in this matter is…sadly, quite tenacious. And if it were to come to that, I myself would have little choice in the matter but to continue my pursuit.”
Not for the first time, I wondered who Malahide could possibly be working for. Or what kind of person would hire someone like Malahide, who looked more like a ghost from the hills than a real person: a distant spirit, with no particular ties to the real world. She looked part fox—and for all I knew, she was. I’d grown up with the idea that you couldn’t trust people who lived without ties. Meant they were free to do whatever came into their heads, whenever it occurred to them, with no caution and no caring. My mother’d always told me people like that were dangerous, and now I was beginning to see why.
“We must leave quickly, in that case,” Badger said, and for a minute I thought he was going to put a hand on my shoulder, but he changed direction midstream and scratched his chin instead. “So that the sea will not become an issue.”
Just like a soldier to think he could get around something as big as all that water.
“That’s fine,” I said, squaring my shoulders. “And I’m fine, for that matter. Ready to go when you are.”
That turned out to be a lie, but I was damned if I was going to admit it to anyone but myself.
The problem with my fever wasn’t that it was particularly intense, or painful, or causing deliriums left and right, or knocking me off my feet, or anything like that. Those kinds of fevers burned hot, then went out, whatever was causing it seared from your body with the heat of the disease itself, or whatever. But this was low-grade, like shackles around my wrists and ankles. I could move, but it was slower going than usual. And among the members of our makeshift party, I was definitely the slowest. That pretty little snake Malahide was crossing the sand like she had camel blood in her, and Badger moved like a soldier, which meant he’d march at exactly the same pace until the clockwork in his back ran out and he had to stop for the night. Or the day, I guess, out here. By comparison, I was lagging, and I wasn’t used to being the weak link in anybody’s chain. I’d won every footrace in my village hands down, boys and girls.
It was all due to this damned hand, and I was too tired even to be really angry with it anymore. It was what it was. And now it was a part of me.
Every so often, Malahide would stop to smell the air, like a trained dog hunting down its prey. I’d thought she’d been pulling my leg about that whole smell-magic thing, but either she was really dedicated to the act or she’d been telling the truth after all. Now and then she’d switch course, and I’d check the compass to find she was going the right way. It was a damn good show.
“Do you know what sand smells like?” she asked one time when she caught me watching her.
Badger raised his eyebrows but didn’t comment, which was a real big help. I had no idea what sand smelled like and wasn’t about to stick my nose in and take a big whiff.
“The sun?” I guessed. Baked things, the way the hot stones in the old woman’s oven had smelled when she didn’t have anything cooking. It was the smell I associated with heat, and though it might not have been the same—I didn’t know shit about the desert—I thought it was a pretty okay guess, all things considered.
“It smells like the most boring thing you could possibly imagine,” Malahide informed me. “All flat, dry, and utterly colorless. There’s no flavor to it at all. Now, the sand by the seaside is a completely different tale, but that has moisture to give it flavor. Not to mention countless delightful little organisms living and breathing and expiring on the beach. But yes,” she added. “There is the occasional hint of sunlight, I suppose. And it is unbearably pedestrian.”
“Aha,” I said, because what the hell did anyone say to something like that? She was smiling, sure, and she hadn’t stuck anything into my hand yet, so she had one up on the other magician I’d had the privilege of meeting, but she still wasn’t doing much to discourage me from my theory.
“It’s the most wonderful thing for tracking in,” she elaborated, picking up the pace. Badger moved when she did, and I was forced to scramble after them. “Like a blank slate. It holds the scent of our quarry because it has nothing of its own to retain. See, just here, the nomad group paused for rest. It positively stinks of sweat—both camel and human. And, underneath that, metal. They must’ve been feeling very pleased with themselves, attacking an impoverished village. And they certainly do not expect anyone to follow them now. Who from that village would be strong enough to demand revenge? No; they were not expecting us.”
I saw a flash of something like anger in her eyes, and at least that was something I could get behind.
I was glad, anyway, that we didn’t have to use my hand any more than was strictly necessary—just anytime Malahide wanted to double-check her directions, mostly—because that meant I didn’t have to look at it as often as I used to. I couldn’t exactly ignore it, since it hurt too much for that, but I could put it out of my mind, at least for a few hours at a time. Take a backseat while someone else held the reins for a while. I was no follower, but I knew when I was in over my head.
We stopped for a rest so that Malahide could scent out whether the man she’d been following was still caught up with the nomads, since that was something my compass couldn’t tell her. I was almost hoping we wouldn’t catch up to him, since apparently whatever he was carrying was what that rat-crazy magician wanted so bad for himself. Hell, for all I knew we were following him straight into some kind of trap.
I’d thought he needed me for tracking the dragon part. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“Thirty minutes,” she’d said, before springing off like a mountain goat to taste the air and sigh and mutter to herself. I was pretty sure I was starting to like her—or at least she was starting to be real entertaining, and making me feel better about myself to boot—but that didn’t mean I could trust her any further than I could throw Badger, which was an image that made me snicker.
“Something funny?” he asked, settling down in the sand. It was different, not having anything to build a fire with. I’d always heard that the desert was hotter than my grandmother’s oven on the emperor’s birthday, but it was actually kind of chilly at night. It was the kind of thing you didn’t notice while you were struggling to put one foot in front of the other, but now that we’d stopped, I was almost a little cold. The quick wind didn’t do anything to help that either. All it did was cool the sweat on my body and make me shiver.
“Nah,” I told him. “I’m probably just going delirious.”
Almost at once he got up, coming over to me and putting his hand on my forehead before I could tell him it was just a joke. That was the problem with Badger; he had no sense of humor to speak of. Unless it was about cannibalism, which I guess was a soldiering kind of humor I didn’t understand and didn’t care to.
“Your fever is troubling you?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I muttered, sorry I’d said anything to begin with. Me and my big mouth—story of my life, though, and not much anybody could do about it.
He kept his hand on my forehead for a moment longer, then dug around for his waterskin and handed it to me. I still had enough left in my own to get me by, but I was too tired to reach for it right now, and I didn’t want to offend him by refusing the help.
Plus, I was thirsty.
“I think,” he said, once I’d stopped guzzling, “that perhaps once this Malahide has tracked down what you both seek, we should question her further about what she spoke of: the magicians with the skill to break the spell in your hand.”
“What, you mean you don’t think our friend’ll keep his word?” I cracked.
“It is my opinion now that he assumed you would either bring him what he needed or that you would die trying,” Badger said, like he was talking about the weather and not about how I was as good as garbage. Dead garbage. “If that was all that he required of you, that is. I have come to wonder if perhaps our initial—my initial assumption may have been wrong.”
I thought about that for a minute. “So…You’re saying that even if I find this thing, he might not be finished with me then? That there might be even more crazy exciting experiments for me to be a part of?” I asked finally. I felt slow, but there were those chains again, as heavy as if they were really shuffling along behind me in the sand.
“It is merely an assumption,” Badger admitted stiffly. “I don’t pretend to know the innermost workings of a man like that. I’ve just been thinking. About our situation, as it stands. And you.”
“You sure know how to comfort a girl,” I told him, suddenly feeling the night chill a lot more than I had a minute ago. Another little desert breeze kicked up, and I wrapped my arms around my body, trying not to shiver too bad.
“My apologies,” Badger said. “I didn’t intend to be so blunt. I only thought to tell you, should that be the case, then your best chance might very well be this…Malahide.”
We looked after her together: There she was, on the top of the hill, her skinny little body like a wraith in the wind. She had
her skirts pinned up with one hand, arms akimbo, and she was stretching forward, scenting the air. Pretty fucking outlandish if you asked me, and totally insane that she had to be what I now considered my last real hope.
“I don’t trust her either,” I told him. But I was pretty sure I understood what he’d been trying to say. Couldn’t help being a soldier. And kind of an ox, on top of that. “Hey, Badger—”
“Well, don’t you two paint a lovely little picture,” Malahide trilled, tramping back toward us over the dune’s face and kicking up sand behind her with her sharp little boots.
Badger scowled, and I was pretty sure my own expression wasn’t that far off. I handed him back his waterskin and he sat down in the sand, returning it to its rightful place.
“You’re in a chipper mood,” I noted. “I was beginning to think you’d fallen asleep out there.”
“Hardly, my dear,” Malahide said, tapping the side of her strong nose. “In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I’ve detected something in the midst of all this sand at last—a change in the geography, if you will—and I’d be willing to stake my life that it’s where our quarry will stop for the daylight hours.”
“An oasis?” Badger asked.
“Precisely,” Malahide said, with a frightening glimmer in her eyes.
“So we’re catching up?” I asked. Didn’t make sense. They had to be traveling too slowly, because they had a head start on us if you didn’t count the fact that they were riding and we were on foot.
“Somehow,” Malahide said, “they don’t sense us as well as we sense them. Something is not right.”
We all stayed still for a while, trying to think about it, and I would’ve been the first to admit that, just the same as my body was lagging behind theirs, so was my mind. Being sick all the time, not being in control of your own body—it’d do that to you, faster than you’d like, and then you were worse’n some dumb pack animal, because you couldn’t even carry your own weight, much less someone else’s. I was beginning to hate myself, and the only thing keeping me from getting too mired in it was knowing I had other people to blame for my current situation. Whenever things got so bad I couldn’t stand it anymore, I just pictured that magician’s lean, ratty little face, and I was good to go again, if only for a little while.
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