So he stayed awake long after the others had given in to exhaustion and sleep: watching to see that the fire did not change directions or cross over, listening to be sure that the marrouak did not find them again. He paced and squatted and rocked on his heels; he pulled his plaits and bit his knuckles. He did everything he should have done that first night, unshakably determined to show Marhuk’s thousand celestial eyes that he had seen his own weakness, and bested it.
“Would it help to have someone to talk to?”
Hakai was still lying on his side against the curved slope of the earthen hollow, and of course his yuye made a mystery of his face. There was no telling how long he’d been listening.
“Yes,” Vuchak said, after only a moment’s hesitation. Weakness would have been asking for a slave’s company. Cleverness was taking what was already offered. “Why are you awake?”
“You aren’t especially quiet,” Hakai said. “But my throat is especially dry.” Both were rendered as plain, unemotional facts, in that vexing tone of voice that stopped just shy of impudence.
Still, Vuchak was struck by the latter part. He had not failed to notice all the times Hakai had limped, tripped, or simply fallen asleep on his feet. But not once on this trip had the ihi’ghiva voiced a direct word of complaint.
And after a day and two nights without water, this was the perfect time to break with tradition. “Tie it fast,” Vuchak agreed. “I think we still have a rockmelon left. Here, let’s...”
The fruit was easily found: a wrinkled brown mass of two-fists size, hiding amidst the last of the yucca-cakes. But Vuchak’s knife was missing, and his boot could not tell him where it had gone.
“Here you are, sir.” When Vuchak turned, Hakai was sitting up, offering the knife handle-first. “I don’t think I’ll need it after all.”
Of course. Yes. He’d given it to him as the marrouak bore down on them, expecting that the slave would hide and make ready to defend himself, or at least to take his own life. He did not at all expect that Hakai would stay fast at his side, helping to guide arrows that they both knew would do nothing to prevent their deaths.
Vuchak carved the fruit while he tried to separate his thoughts into similarly clean, even pieces. “That wasn’t required of you,” he said at last, and handed him a quarter of the melon. He saved another for Weisei, a third for himself, and set the fourth in front of Dulei – which might go to the half, if it was still unclaimed by morning.
Hakai accepted his share with perfect composure – but as soon as he had it, he was devouring the pale yellow flesh with uncommon desperation. Vuchak tried to savor his more slowly, soothing his throat with the sweet nectar. It was still gone far too soon.
“I could have said the same,” Hakai said, when he had been reduced to scraping the rind with his teeth. “About both of you, really.” He tipped his head towards the half, who was lying on his stomach on the other side of the baggage-pile. He’d made a pillow of his poncho, and a patch of blood-watered earth under that gash in his side. At least it didn’t look like it was bleeding anymore.
“Hakai,” Vuchak said, after thinking back on his peculiar shirt-throwing passion, “what is his word for atleya?”
The ihi’ghiva sucked the melon-rind for a long, thoughtful moment. “I think the closest Ardish term would be harmonious equilibrium,” he said at last, “but I will be surprised if he knows it.”
Well, that was sad, but not especially shocking. It sounded convoluted and ugly in Vuchak’s ears – not a word made to withstand everyday usage. So maybe he didn’t know what he was doing, or have any concept of the subtle, fragile balances that the order of creation depended on. Maybe he had only been appeasing some peculiar appetite of his Starving God.
“Still,” Vuchak mused, “he didn’t let you burn up, Dulei. He could have bashed my head in ten times over by now, or taken Halfwick’s head and run away. Maybe he has some understanding after all.”
He was answered with silence. After a minute, he glanced over to discover the reason for it. “Don’t you think so?”
Behind his yuye, Hakai looked vaguely uncomfortable. “Ah... was that meant to be Halfwick’s head?”
Vuchak didn’t dare understand him. “What do you mean?” he demanded. “Whose head is it?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but reached over to grab the sack and untie it.
“‘Leave off doing graces for Dulei’s murder and fetch me the head of the white man responsible.’ That was what Huitsak said to me. And I had it from a very reliable source that –”
Vuchak reached in for a fistful of blond hair and tore away the cloth underneath. A familiar face stared back at him in everlasting, slightly-shrivelled surprise.
“BRANT?” Vuchak could have swallowed his own tongue. “You killed Brant?!”
“As I was saying,” Hakai continued, his tone just a touch defensive, “it was explained to me that the half came in to La Saciadería looking for Halfwick, and Brant made entertainment by forcing him to drink at gunpoint, and to play parlor-games with the patrons who gathered to watch. And, as it was explained to me, although it is true that the half would not have shot Dulei if Halfwick had not brought him to town and left him unsupervised, it is equally true that this would not have happened if Brant hadn’t left him senseless with fear and alcohol. So depending on how one chooses to interpret the idea of responsibility...”
Vuchak had long since stopped listening. He sat there with one hand holding Brant’s stupid, useless head, and the other clapped incredulously over his own mouth. “You clever, weaseling bastard,” he said at last. “You couldn’t get close to Halfwick’s body, could you? That snake-haired grave woman was lying with him, and you knew you couldn’t get to him while she was there, so you decided to twist your orders to your own liking, and went to get the next best thing.” Vuchak all but choked on a whoop. “Hakai, do you have any idea what you’ve done? Huitsak is going to shit! Addie’s going to have his plaits hung on her belt, and his fruits fed to the fishmen!” Vuchak laughed himself breathless, helplessly delighted at the thought of Huitsak squirming and fuming and stammering in the face of Addie’s wrath – all while the guilty party sat holed up in a ditch, a hundred miles out of his reach.
“I’m glad to afford you so much pleasure,” Hakai said stiffly, far too offended to enjoy the moment.
That was all right, though: Vuchak would enjoy it enough for both of them. And at the end of the day, it didn’t make a bit of difference: Winshin Marhuk would still have the life of the half-man who had killed her son, and the head of the white man – a white man – who was at least nominally responsible.
IT MIGHT HAVE been the sun on his face that finally melted the last of Elim’s sleep. Still, it wasn’t his face that was complaining. That was the throbbing pain in his side, and the one in his head, and in the big fiery streaks running up his back, which had used to be sunburn blisters and by now had festered into God-knew-what, and...
God.
Elim’s eyes snapped open.
He was alive.
He was alive, and it was morning. No, not even morning – well past noon, now, though Elim would excuse his mistake. The sun was nothing more than an especially bright red spot, its light dulled by an endless gray haze, as if the whole world had been swallowed up into one of Mad Martha’s cataracts.
Elim sat up and twisted around, every bodily complaint smothered by this strange new sight.
In the Verses, of course, the smoke from Aron’s fire had gone up to heaven, and God had made it rain, and the rain had melted the city of salt back into real, living people. There was no rain here – not even a breath of wind – and probably the dead people were all still dead... but that wasn’t to say the Almighty hadn’t exercised His will on the world.
There behind Elim, just across the road, was a whole ocean of scorched earth – blackened as far as the eye could see. But here on this side of the road, as dry and ugly and living and ordinary as ever, was the real world: Elim and his trio of blindfolde
d Sundowners, all three of them passed out asleep in their earthy scrape, and the piled-up remainders of their things...
... and Ax.
Will’s black gelding was resting himself not even fifty feet away, as calm as a newborn foal. Elim’s first surge of delight was tempered by his first glimpse of that ugly wound at Actor’s shoulder – a huge, horrible hole, as if he’d fought off a cougar in the night – and the memory of his ungodly bellowing screams. Which horse was he looking at now? “Ax?”
But he wasn’t twitching or sweating or shivering now. He just turned his ears forward and answered with a nicker, as if to say Yep – that’s me.
And then there was no damper on Elim’s delight. He’d done the right thing, saved Do-Lay and paid his penance, and now God had given him his own horse back again. “BOY am I glad to have you back! How ’bout we have us some breakfast, huh?” Elim leaned forward to dig through the last of his luggage, past the tack and the horse tools and the little satchel of bullets that would have come in mighty useful last night, and the corn sack maybe had been forgotten and burned up, but that was all right – he still had some oatmeal left, and who would say no to that?
Ax stayed where he was, as if he had just had an especially fine roll in the dirt, and hadn’t quite decided whether he was done yet. But Elim staggered up to standing, beating off the surge of dizziness that came with it, and walked forward by sheer force of enthusiasm. “Here, come get you some,” he said, once he’d made it to level ground, and poured out a heaping handful. “You’ll like ’em. They’re like your oats, just washed n’ squashed.”
Whether he understood Ardish or just the sight of Elim doling out morning rations, Ax definitely took his meaning. He heaved himself up to his feet, took two steps forward –
– and then went right back down again.
Elim’s enthusiasm turned to ash. “Ax? What’s up, buddy?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, but went to go find out – carefully, of course, as you were liable to scare a downed horse if you just went at him like a wolf going in for the kill.
By the time Elim was close enough to kneel down beside him, he understood his mistake. The backwards turn of Ax’s ears, the tension in his jaw, and the narrowing of his eyes said it as plainly as speaking: pain was eating him alive.
And something else had tried to do likewise. Elim had heard his agonized screams last night, though he couldn’t see for beans in the dark. Regardless, the fire must have chased off whatever-it-was before it could finish its work. That was a good-sized hole it had torn out of Ax’s shoulder, but the wound wasn’t deep. Worse by far was the terrible warmth in his pasterns – so hot and inflamed that the poor critter could’ve hatched eggs between his ankles.
By and by, Elim realized that God had indeed given him his own horse back: one that had been marched barefoot on hard ground for the better part of a hundred miles... one that was now sensible and right-minded enough to feel pain again.
Elim didn’t want Hawkeye to be right. He didn’t want to be sorcerous, or to believe that it was anything but honest barnyard friendship that had inspired Ax to come back to him. In this moment, though, he would cavort with every devil in the Sibyl’s nest if it would save one foundered horse.
“Aw, come on, boy,” Elim said. “Don’t give up on me now. Look over there, see – we burned up that bad old wagon, so you don’t have to pull it any more. And Bootjack says it ain’t but a couple miles more to the river. Here, how ’bout we just stand up for a little bit, get our legs all woke up and working?”
Ever the leader-by-example, Elim stood and dropped an enticing two-foot trail of oats. Ever the opportunist, Ax stretched out his neck, his head, and his enterprising hairy lips to snatch every last flaky morsel... but after he had sucked up everything within his reach, he made no effort to get up. He only sniffed at Elim’s moccasin-shoes, and gave an experimental nibble to the nearer toe.
Elim backed out of his reach, his encouraging tone crumbling. “Come on, hoss – get up. Git. We ain’t got time for any more of this lyin’ around shit. I said get up!” He lunged forward, clapping his hands in front of Ax’s face, making himself as big and dreadful and unpleasant as a man could possibly be.
And Ax answered as meek and fearful and obligingly as a horse possibly could. With a low, throaty nicker, he lowered his head, turned back his ears, and pawed at the ground as if to try and tuck his back end even further out of the way of Elim’s displeasure. But he didn’t get up. He didn’t even try.
And that was intolerable. “God dammit,” Elim swore, senseless with frustration, lunging and stamping in one last, futile effort to scare the horse up to his feet. “What’d you even come back for, then? What’d you even come back for, if all you wanted to do was lie down and die?”
He didn’t get an answer, of course – at least, not in people terms. But when Elim had finished raging and Ax had finished cowering, there was just that same lingering look in the horse’s eye – the one that said, well, I guess you better get on with it, cuz I’m stove in.
Elim dropped his arms, his voice terrible in his own ears. That was no kind of question to ask – especially when he already knew the answer. “Ax, buddy... are you sure?”
He already knew the answer to that, too. After all these days and miles, hard roads and heavy loads and evil and thirst and fire, Ax had finally run clean out of try.
So Elim came and sat down beside him, perfectly ready to risk a stray hoof or a crushed leg if by some miracle Ax found the wherewithal to get up again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I hear you. Course I do. Mainly I’m just... I was just hoping you coulda stayed with me a little longer, is all.”
That was the truth. Elim looked out at that menacing, mountainous shadow to the west, so much closer now than it had been even three days ago. What waited for him there still frightened him, as it had since the beginning. But the thought of having to go on alone – the idea that maybe his penance would be paid not by a shirt, but by his last familiar, home-brought friend – was suddenly an awful proposition.
Actor’s soft lips brushed Elim’s forearm as they reached across his lap to investigate that enticing bag of treats.
And if there was any better way to thank a horse for what he’d done for you, Elim had yet to find it. “Sure thing, buddy,” he said, pouring out a pile of oats for Ax, and a handful for himself. “Let’s have us some breakfast.”
So they sat and ate together under a gray afternoon sky, Elim savoring Actor’s soft, living hide and warm, horsey smell all the while. At some point, long after they’d finished all the oats and Ax had browsed the scrub down to bare, nubbly stumps, Elim finally mustered the wherewithal to stand up and fetch the last of his tools.
THE GUNSHOT ECHOED faintly off the high desert hills, coming from somewhere off to the south.
Sil stopped, hesitating.
A trigger needed a finger to pull it. And after days spent walking in absolute solitude, he wasn’t overly concerned about who that finger belonged to, or what it was shooting at.
After a moment’s deliberation, Sil stepped off the road, and started walking south.
SHEA KEPT FAITHFULLY to the promise Fuseau had extracted from her, and did not speak with the Many, or interact with them any more than necessary. This was not difficult: she was tired and ill, her water-vomiting convulsions worsening by the day, and they had no interest in conversing with some listless old-timer.
Which wasn’t to say they didn’t entertain her. Shea herself was surprised at how much she enjoyed resting by the shore and watching them. Porté and Entrechat, easily the most enthusiastic about their current project, practiced wizard-capturing maneuvers with their dredging-nets and shovels. Flamant-Rose kept adding to its collection of interesting rocks, laying them out and agonizing endlessly over which to put back in its already-overstuffed satchel. Plié and Demi-Plié clowned around with boundless energy, throwing dirt-clods at each other and sometimes at Pirouet, who still sat disconsolately apart at mealti
mes, too homesick to muster any enthusiasm for dinner-fighting. And Bombé entertained the princess with what seemed to be genuine pleasure, braiding her silk streamers into fanciful shapes and making mud-towers with her whenever she dragged herself out of the water to be included in the earthly goings-on.
Shea had not yet made up her mind about Princess Ondine. Certainly no Mother she’d ever had would have allowed one of their daughters to venture abroad at such a tender age: earthlings were notoriously fearful of female mereaux, and unfortunately liable to shoot first and plug their ears later. But the House of Losange seemed to consider Ondine’s inclusion perfectly natural, and Shea frequently noticed the Many showing their princess interesting sights and finds along the way. Whether their intent was to educate her about the outside world or simply to afford her a freedom she would not have when she grew up and became a mother herself, her presence was clearly something deliberate.
The restlessness in the camp was less so. They had been waiting half a mile upstream from the highway bridge for a day and a half now, and there had been no sign of Yashu-Diiwa or any of the a’Krah. With nothing to do but wait and no way to know when they would be finished waiting, the cohort was quickly losing composure.
“I didn’t say HE’S a fool,” Tournant clarified, trudging back to camp through the thick gray air. “I said he’s been LISTENING to fools.”
“Then you won’t mind if I tell him you said so,” Porté replied. “I’m sure he’ll be pleased to know how little you respect his –”
By then, their voices were loud enough to attract attention. Entrechat was the first to pop its head out of the water. “Did you find them? Did you see them?”
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