– yes, that was right: her father hadn’t died of old age. He had perished when the church burned. He had LOVED her.
Día turned around, every fresh recollection fermenting into anger. “You’ve been lying to me.”
Miss du Chenne’s smug expression faltered. She backed up a step. “Why, I would never –”
But Día remembered the truth, now. She was old by human standards, yes, but she wasn’t frail. She was FIERCE. She stalked forward, her flesh filling out fat and strong, her black cassock turning brown and furry, and her hands clenching in rage. “You did,” she said. “You stole him. You TRICKED me!”
Miss du Chenne blanched – an inhuman blue-white flickering of her skin – and backed up further. “No, no – of course not, no,” she stammered. “It was for your own good – I did it all for you –” She stumbled over the stove. Her wig fell to the floor. She dropped the switch and shielded herself with one arm, cowering. “I saved him!”
“YOU RUINED HIM!” And with a sharp, fang-baring snarl, Día lunged forward, and tore out her throat.
DÍA BOLTED AWAKE.
She sat up, overwhelmed by nausea, and smothered her first waking gasp.
From the other side of the camp, Weisei froze. He was sitting with a half-eaten steak in his hands, and stopped at the sight of her. “Fi– Día? What’s wrong?”
Killing, whispered the voice in her head. Grieving.
She glanced from point to point, anchoring herself in the cold camp and the hard ground and the gray pre-dawn light, and did not speak until she had mastery of her stomach. “A dream,” she said, though the word was weak and bleached of conviction. She could still taste blood. “Just a bad dream.”
At least she hadn’t woken Weisei: he was dressed in the same knee-length yellow shirt and moccasins she’d seen yesterday, finished with a handsome black-feather cloak at his shoulders, and looked as alert as if he’d been up for hours. Then again, he was a’Krah, so maybe he had. In Island Town, they kept the Moon Quarter running from dusk to dawn – though heaven only knew what there was to do out here. “Did I disturb you?” she ventured.
Weisei smiled, and set down his breakfast. “Certainly not. My Vi – Vuchak won’t sleep unless someone stays up to keep watch.” He tipped his head to the blanket-wrapped figure at his left. Vuchak lay on his side, his face turned away, but Día could see the rhythm of his breathing. She didn’t remember him braiding his hair.
“Why don’t you keep me company for a little while? My mouth has been wishing for another chance to talk to you.”
Día had no illusions about who was doing a favor for whom, but she didn’t need to be asked twice. She arranged herself to sit cross-legged, drawing the borrowed blanket around herself, and shivered as her cold sweat turned colder still. “I’d be glad to,” she said. “What would you like to talk about?”
Weisei tipped his head from side to side. “Well, I wanted to apologize for leaving so suddenly – you know, when we were doing that sad work together in Island Town. And more than that, I want... oh, pardon me, please – would you like to eat with me?”
Día had had quite enough flesh for one day. But apparently she was the only one: there must have been ten pounds left on the grill when she went to bed, and half looked to have vanished in the night. “No, thank you – but please, don’t deprive yourself on my account.”
Weisei flashed her a sheepish smile. “You’re kind to indulge me. I have a baby’s appetite these days.” Then he turned serious. “Anyway, what I was going to say was... that is, if the question doesn’t upset you, I want to ask: how did it happen with Afvik?”
It took Día a moment to recognize the name – and when she did, his hesitation became instantly understandable. He was asking about the Eadan boy, Sil Halfwick. “It doesn’t upset me,” she said, though she couldn’t meet his gaze. It had been a holy moment, a sacrament gone terribly wrong.
“It happened the morning after you went,” she explained. “He was clean, wrapped in the winding sheet, and there was only one thing left to do before I buried him. I leaned over to give him his last breath” – and she would never, ever forget the way those cold lips had abruptly opened under hers – “and then all of a sudden he... he gave it back to me.” Día shook her head, still scarcely able to believe it herself. “And you may imagine how I startled, and how he sat up from the altar slab, and how angry he was to discover himself in such a… an unfortunate state, but I swear – I can sincerely promise that I did only what was prescribed, and only with the most faithful intent.” Only then could she look back up at Weisei, hoping for his understanding.
If he had any, he was holding it in reserve. “And there was nothing peculiar about him before that moment? Nothing strange or stinking?”
Día was not sure how literally she was meant to take that last word, apestoso. Perhaps the a’Krah equivalent had a different connotation. “No,” she assured him. “Well, almost. You remember how cold he was when we washed him? He stayed that way, all through the night and into the morning. It seemed odd, but he was – he’s a Northman, the first one I’ve met, and I thought it might be a death-sign common to his race. Like the way mereaux dry out.” She mentally extricated herself from those cold limbs all over again, and returned her attention to the wholesome, living present. “Does that remind you of anything? Have you ever heard of such a case?”
That might have been too forward: just because Weisei was a’Krah didn’t mean he had any supernatural insight... though that black-feathered cloak at his shoulders was a potent reminder of Marhuk – Grandfather Crow, the earthly god of the a’Krah – and his reputation as a mediator of life and death.
Weisei finished a bite, and shook his head. “I haven’t. I was going to ask you the same thing. But I’ve been thinking about it since we met him again yesterday, and I wonder if he might have gotten a bit... stuck, somehow.”
“Stuck?” Día echoed.
Weisei made a peculiar hand sign, though not the same one she’d seen yesterday. “Well, you know how vulnerable things are during their in-between times. When travelers aren’t at home or safely arrived, and pregnant women aren’t maidens or mothers, and right now, when the world isn’t day or night.”
Yes, Día thought, though it certainly is beautiful. The sky had cleared sometime during the night, and the eastern horizon was warming to a pale, orange-tinted pink. It was a lovely, fragile time of day, when timid creatures risked their lives to venture out for food and drink, and people were apt to pass away in their sleep.
“And I think of Afvik, and how he died on the island between two lands, at the time between day and night, when he was between the age of a boy and a man, and how he might be a little bit, eh... stuck, you know?” Weisei finished the last of his cold meal, wiped his hands, and then turned them one over the other. “Like an infant turned the wrong way around, who can’t see anything but the womb he’s always lived in, and doesn’t know how to finish being born – who might not even realize that he NEEDS to be born.”
Día thought again of the purpled flesh on Halfwick’s back – pooled blood-marks so plain to her incredulous eye, and yet perfectly invisible to him. And she had seen enough animal carcasses to imagine what a few days in the desert heat would do to a human body. “And you believe he needs to be ‘born’ sooner rather than later,” she said.
Weisei nodded, and his eyes were dark and serious. “Very soon. And I would have invited him to come with us yesterday, you know, so we could ask Grandfather to help him, but we couldn’t...” He jerked his chin up, at the still black shape lying nearby. “The horse couldn’t take more than the two of us, and Vichi doesn’t want to think of anything else until we find my – find Hakai, that is, and we’re already so far away from our plans, and it’s just...” He pressed his palms to his eyes, and then pushed his fingers through his hair until they met behind his head. “Everything is a little bit ruined right now. And so I was hoping that you had come to help make things right. I was hoping that
the Starving God had sent you to help Afvik finish his life.”
If they were going to have any kind of lasting association, Día would have to find a moment to ask Weisei not to use that term. He was ‘God’, nothing else.
This was not that moment.
This moment was for considering what he had said, and wondering again what she might have been brought here to accomplish... because after everything she’d done, after every mystery and horror and blind, brutal miracle, Día absolutely had to believe there was a reason for it. She closed her eyes. The smell of smoke and the taste of blood lingered in her senses, clinging to a growing suspicion that the dream had not been entirely hers.
Lost puppy, came the whisper from the west.Ruined puppy.
“I do want to help,” she said at last. “And that’s what I meant to do, when I brought him out of Island Town. But ever since he left me, I’ve been drawn in this other direction.” Her hands clenched around the edges of the blanket in her lap. “What do you know about the Dog Lady?”
She had been one of the earthly gods – Día knew that much – but an earthly god was an avatar, the spirit of its people... and her people, the Ara-Naure, had long since been killed or dispersed.
Weisei squinted at the name, as if reminded of an especially nasty wound. “Ah, well...” He tipped his head, and picked up a nearby stick to poke at the coals. “Her name is not used kindly among the a’Krah.”
“Because she accepted settlers?” Día knew that had been a point of contention, a generation ago: the native peoples who shared their land with white and mixed Eadans were often attacked by those who suspected them of fostering foreign diseases.
“Because she stole our future.” Weisei’s voice was hard and serious; he tucked his hand sideways under his chin. “In the years before I was born, the wars were going badly. Our allies were falling or deserting us: the Pohapi had been Eaten, the Irsah were fleeing their homelands, leaving a trail of diseased bodies in their wake, and the siege of Merin-Ka had given our enemies a powerful hold to the south. In his wisdom, Grandfather understood that the a’Krah needed to craft a new, more powerful alliance – to stop putting our trust in weaker peoples, and find our equal in strength and numbers.”
“The Azahi?” Día guessed. Of the four Great Nations, three were left: the a’Krah in the west, the Azahi in the south, and to the north –
“The Lovoka,” Weisei said. “We had never been friends, and the locust-swarms driving them south had tempted them to replenish their supplies by raiding our towns, and replace their lost people by stealing ours.” He sighed. “But we could only afford one enemy, and nothing would have made the Eaten happier than to watch the crows and wolves consume each other.”
Eaten, of course, was a bitter twist on Eaden – so close in sound as to be almost indistinguishable. In Marín, however, the translation was harsh and unmistakable: the settlers east of the border were Devorados, the hungry children of a ‘starving’ god. It was an ugly name, one that Día was certain Weisei would not have used if he were thinking of her as one of them. So she sat still, feeling oddly like an infiltrator or spy, and went on listening to his uncensored thoughts.
“So before we could have an alliance, we needed peace between us – and for that, we needed a peacemaker. Have you heard of the Moon Singers?”
Día shook her head, anxious not to draw attention to her ignorance.
Weisei took it in stride. “You might know them by a different name. They are four siblings: Grandfather Coyote, the Maiden Fox, Father Wolf, and the youngest is the Dog Lady. Father Wolf is not a gentle god, but he has a great love for his little sister – and so the Lovoka always took care to leave the Ara-Naure in peace, and pleased both gods by feeding stray or hungry dogs.”
Día could see where this was going... and she already knew it wasn’t going to end well. “You-all used her as a go-between.”
Weisei bobbed his head. “It was easy enough to make an agreement with the Ara-Naure. They were so small, no more than a thousand, and by that time the Eaten had taken their holy land – Island Town, you know, and some of the lands to the west. It was not difficult to help them understand that by bringing together the a’Krah and the Lovoka, they would be helping us to reclaim their sacred places, and make a more peaceful world for everyone. So the children of the Dog Lady prepared a place, and the sons of Father Wolf and daughters of Grandfather Crow filled it, and all drank to finish the agreement: from then on, we would be united as one.”
“You weren’t,” Día said. It wasn’t a question.
“We would have been!” Weisei insisted. Then, with a hasty glance at Vuchak’s still-sleeping form, he lowered his voice again. “But they couldn’t agree. The Dog Lady insisted that peace could only be found by peaceful means, and Father Wolf would not be satisfied until every one of the Eaten had been killed or driven back east of the First River.” Weisei sighed. “So the Lovoka went on killing the Eaten, and the Eaten – the peaceful ones, anyway – fled to the army-fortresses or took shelter with any native people who would have them... and thanked their hosts by infecting them with the diseases they had brought. And so the Lovoka took to burning plague-villages, too: any white or two-colored person, any sick person of any color, was to be killed on sight. One band of the Lovoka even turned to apostasy, attacking the Ara-Naure to ‘cleanse’ them of the tainted people they sheltered.”
And you let them. Día didn’t dare say it out loud. But she had heard exactly what Vuchak thought of her and her ‘Starving’ God, and could hear even more in what Weisei left unspoken: through it all, the a’Krah had held their noses and accepted that much slaughter as the cost of doing business.
“But the thing you have to understand is that it was working.” Weisei’s thin features hardened with uncharacteristic pride. “We didn’t just stop losing our lands – we started taking them back. For the first time, we had the upper hand. For the first time, the Eaten were afraid of us.”
Weisei stopped there, staring into the coals. Their embers highlighted the blue-black sheen of his curtain of hair, and he seemed to see in them another world – a different present.
“And then...” Día prompted.
He didn’t look up. “By that time, the Dog Lady was openly defying Father Wolf. The Ara-Naure were a spot, a fleck next to the power of the Lovoka – but they were a holy, untouchable fleck, and they knew it. They had been welcoming Eaten refugees, had even been – forgive me for saying it, coupling with them. The Dog Lady herself had...”
Weisei stopped. He put one hand over his mouth, and then the other.
“What?” Día asked. “What is it?”
Weisei’s hands went to the sides of his face, as if some huge, terrible idea were about to hatch out of his skull. He reached over as if to shake Vuchak awake, hesitated, and stood. “Excuse me, please – just for a minute.” And he began to pace.
Día had gotten this sort of treatment before, in Island Town: they had been washing Halfwick’s body together, and as soon as she’d asked who was responsible for his death, Weisei had been thunderstruck with some personal revelation – and bolted on the spot.
There wasn’t much danger of that now, but she was getting tired of tripping over these vast gaps in her understanding... and beginning to suspect that these two a’Krah were deliberately digging them deeper. “Weisei,” she said, nodding at Vuchak, “what doesn’t he want me to know?”
He took her meaning at once: his gaze flicked to his companion, then back to her. “Please don’t ask me that,” he pleaded, wringing his hands with a genuinely apologetic expression. “Just, ah – wait there for a moment, will you? I just have a small debt to pay, and then I promise we’ll finish the story.”
And what could one say to that?
So Día sat and waited, growing pleasantly warmer with the rising sun even as her thoughts cooled and congealed like so much leftover grease on the grill. She had been so thirsty for this, yesterday – so gratified to find other living people, and Isl
and Town neighbors besides which, and in Weisei, a kindly acquaintance who was at least half a friend. But today, it was as if the world was conspiring to remind her that she wasn’t really one of them: she might enjoy their hospitality, but she certainly didn’t have their trust.
So she would just have to get along by reason, intuition, and guesswork.
It stood to reason that Vuchak and Weisei had been chosen to take home the body of Dulei Marhuk. Back in Island Town, the master of the a’Krah had promised Elim that he would be escorted by the dead boy’s uncle and manservant. And while neither of these two young men looked anything like her imagining of an uncle, she could not think of any more likely explanation for why two Island Town a’Krah would suddenly be transplanted all the way out here... wherever ‘here’ was.
Día’s intuition suggested that something had gone terribly wrong: besides Weisei’s ‘a little bit ruined’ remark, this was not a well-supplied camp. It had been cobbled together from rocks and sticks and pieces of dead things, up to and including that hair-raising horse-carcass over there. Whatever their original mission had been, she was now dining with stragglers – survivors.
And judging by Vuchak’s strident demands to have her friends return his, she could guess that they had been attacked. That might explain Dulei’s absence, and Elim’s, and that of their other ‘friend’ – Hakai, if she’d heard right.
But by the time Weisei returned, Día was no closer to understanding why any of that needed to be a secret.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, once he was within softer speaking-distance, and sat down beside her, hardly an arm’s length away. “I don’t mean to hold you at a distance, and I know you mean well. If I were alone and responsible for myself, it wouldn’t take me even five minutes to tell you everything. But he’s so much cleverer than I am, and he thinks of things that I don’t have any idea about, and I can’t...”
Dreams of the Eaten Page 4