Sil stood to one side and resisted the urge to wipe his mouth. A liability, then – a god-awful liability.
“Hawkeye – come on, buddy, talk to me.” Elim took him by the shoulders, but couldn’t turn him onto his back without making an agony of the man’s leg – and the man seemed to want nothing to do with it.
He pushed forward on his stomach, reaching for a gap, a hole in the rubble – not one he’d crawled out of, Sil belatedly realized, but one he’d been digging into. “Help me get him out,” the man said in parched, hoarse Marín. “I need him.”
There was no telling what ‘him’ might be – a person or an object, any masculine thing. Regardless, ‘he’ was well buried, and had been for over a day now.
“We’re here to help,” Elim promised, perhaps having understood the first bit of that, and tried again to dissuade him from digging. “Sil, what’s he saying?”
Sil looked down at the quandary at his feet. Elim knew the fellow, so he was probably one of the a’Krah party. He was trying to dig out someone else. And as much as Sil hated to think Vuchak or Weisei might be under there, the cold fact was that anyone still buried was dead – and they had neither the time nor the tools to go finding that out firsthand. Sil had to – they had to keep moving.
Sil shook his head. “He’s delirious,” he said. “Maybe we’d do better to leave him here while we...”
One look from Elim withered that idea on the vine.
“Well then what do you propose?” Sil snapped. “He can’t walk, and we haven’t anything for his leg – you can’t even carry him with a break like that.”
Elim cast around defiantly, as if he could make a splint and bandages appear by sheer force of righteousness. Then he spotted his rifle.
Damn it. Sil watched in stifled silence as Elim reached across to the man’s far shoulder and flipped him – a quick, ruthless motion that yielded up a shriek of pain.
“Sorry, buddy – you’re gonna hate me worse in a second. Sil, hold him down.”
“Don’t,” the man begged in Ardish this time, struggling like an upended tortoise on a flat rock. “Stop, please wait – I have to get it out – I need my –”
Sil’s squeamishness vanished in a second, replaced by an urgent need to shut him up before he put any more humanitarian ideas in Elim’s head. He dropped down to a mean crouch, his knees jamming the man’s shoulders into the ground – just as Elim gave his shattered leg a hard, bone-setting yank.
The scream echoed off the mountains. When it died, there was nothing to replace it – just a wet patch on the man’s trousers, and a blanket of galled calm.
Elim had gone pale under his spots, but he didn’t relent. He slipped the rifle under the man’s leg, bridging the fracture with the widest part of the stock, and motioned to Sil. “Gimme his blindfold.”
There was no movement, no objection as Sil gingerly pulled it off the man’s face, revealing a swath of clean, honey-colored skin – and white, half-open eyes rolled back in his head.
Well, that was probably for the best. Sil watched as Elim tore the fine black cloth lengthwise, tying one strip above the break and the other below. He offered neither help nor objection as Elim worked out the logistics, finally settling on a squatting posture that would let him washpin the poor bastard around his shoulders like a hundred-and-thirty-pound human ox-collar.
And then they went on, Elim stooped and leading, Sil idle and following. Every now and again, he glanced from the dead weight on Elim’s back to the mountain’s peak high above, fixating on the task ahead until he’d managed to forget whatever they’d left entombed behind them.
BUT EVEN THOUGH Shea was the soul of courtesy just then, even though she explained the plan as thorough and plainly as anyone could want, she got nothing for her efforts but Día’s strained, wordless hesitation.
“What?” Shea demanded at last. “You can’t manage that much?” It was the simplest thing in the world: Día only needed to have a civil conversation with Yashu-Diiwa – one earth-person to another. She could persuade him to leave off his irrational hysteria and understand that U’ru and Shea had come to save him from the a’Krah. Then the whole lot of them could pack off back to Island Town together. The trip would take days – plenty of time for U’ru to make her own start on winning his trust. What was so hard about that?
Día’s mind was somewhere else. Her expression didn’t even flicker. “No, it’s not that,” she said. “But I don’t think it will work. Elim isn’t... he doesn’t like me very much.” This, with the lap-knotted hands and guilty downcast eyes one would expect to accompany a confession of some abortive schoolyard romance. At any other time, Shea would have laughed aloud.
Today, however, she needed Día’s cooperation. More than that, she needed her enthusiasm: U’ru would pick up on any unvoiced misgivings, and who knew what she would do with them? “Nonsense,” Shea said. “Of course he does: I saw you talking with him only last week.”
Día looked up. “Saw us? Where?”
Well, Shea hadn’t meant to advertise it, but nevermind: “Just south of Island Town, when you were picking your little flowers – right after he and that other fool nearly ran over you.”
Día rose straight to her feet. “You were spying on me!”
Shea couldn’t match her height, but she was more than capable of answering rudeness. She swung up out of her long-legged squat and tossed the masticated lizard-carcass aside. “I was watching out for you, and a good thing, too – those corn-pone clowns could have killed you! And just look at this mess you’ve gotten yourself into, wandering out here like a sleepwalking moon-calf: if I’d been watching you then, you’d be home right now!”
Shea couldn’t see well enough to make out Día’s expression. But there was a little well of silence, like a poked hole filling up with groundwater, and when Día spoke again, her voice was nothing like what it had been before.
“If you’re so wise and righteous, why does everyone hate you?”
That stung. It wasn’t true, of course. There were plenty of people who didn’t... why, she could name at least...
Well, for one thing, Faro didn’t hate her – he was content to use her. And there was that bounty hunter a few days ago, though technically Shea had been using him. And besides which... well, and besides which, what did she have to prove to anyone anyway?
Shea snorted, and tacked into the wind. “Depends who you ask. You hate me for leaving you, while your dear papá resents me for spending all these years chasing after that useless mongrel boy. The boy, meanwhile, detests me for rubbing his nose in his heritage – which may have involved some less-than-sporting use of the local flora – while his mother despises me for stealing him away in the first place. Take your pick.”
This time, the quiet was as short and sharp as a whipcrack. “You WHAT?” Día’s voice could have cut paper. “Are you telling me you’re the one who... all this is because of YOU?”
“Of course not!” Shea snapped. “I’M not the one who decided to start torching houses and trampling children in the street! I’M not the one who thought it would be a good idea to lead my cohort on some damned silly suicide mission! I’M not the one who –”
Water Dog, be quiet!
U’ru was coming back. That was probably for the best, as it wouldn’t be prudent to say the last part aloud: I’m not the one who threw away my whole nation for the sake of one missing child.
She appeared at the lip of the little stone valley: a plain brown dog with one more hapless furry thing in her mouth. On seeing Día awake, she hurried down to deposit the dead prairie dog in the pile of provisions, and then wound happy, wagging circles around her newest puppy’s feet.
It was a clever strategy. Bound to just one form during the daylight hours, U’ru had this time chosen the one best-suited for finding prey – and not coincidentally, the one most likely to encourage Día’s affections.
U’ru did not share whatever she said to the girl, but Día knew how to play her part a
s Shea had instructed: she smiled and clasped her hands before her favorite furry friend. “Good morning, Mother Dog – I’m very glad to see you again. Shall we go out again today?”
It was all part of the plan, and yet Shea folded her arms, irrationally embittered by U’ru’s fawning delight. What had Día ever done for the Dog Lady? For any of the Ara-Naure? When had she ever nursemaided a rambunctious litter of half-grown heirs, or translated for a milk-faced stranger, or washed the bedding after one of those wild three-day trysts? Really, who did she think she was?
“Thank you very much for my breakfast,” Día was saying. “I couldn’t finish it all, but I’ll look forward to having more later. Miss du Chenne was just going to return my knife, and then I’ll be ready to go.”
That scheming trollop. Shea bared her teeth in a false smile, Día returning a flat-edged version of same as she strode forward to collect her due. “Thank you, teacher,” she said as she sheathed the knife.
And that was how it was. Día had done nothing and was loved; Shea had done everything and was hated. And nobody batted an eye at this gross perversion of order as the three of them headed out in single file: the mother, the maiden, and… well, Shea wasn’t that old.
Ingratitude – had there ever been such rank, naked ingratitude?
GRATITUDE. DÍA KEPT her mind clear and her thoughts fixed on gratitude: for food, for love – even frightening, smothering, horribly misguided love – and for this fresh chance at getting home before Fours despaired of ever seeing her again.
Really, U’ru’s part of the plan was even worse than Miss du Chenne’s: the great lady meant to use her newest puppy to show her older one that he had nothing to fear from her – to teach Elim to love her by example.
Día could think of several reasons why that wasn’t going to work.
Still, she didn’t let herself dwell on any of them. She had no better ideas, for one thing, and for another, Elim had apparently started on his way back to Island Town – and that was a haywagon Día desperately needed to catch.
Even if their last meeting had been an exceptionally bad one.
Even if she’d had to tell him that his partner was dead.
Even if he hadn’t spoken to her since.
Día didn’t imagine that he would be especially glad to see her, or inclined to trust anything she said, but Miss du Chenne was right about one thing: he would be far less hostile to Día than to the mereau who’d tricked and poisoned him, or to the ‘monster’ who’d transformed him. That had to count for something.
So she followed U’ru’s curly brown tail, carefully picking her steps even as her mind filled with secondhand thoughts of eagerness and surety. Smells, her guide assured her along the way. Puppy man skin-smells. Feet. Fire. And it was as if Día herself had picked up the scent last night, followed it all the way out to the foothills, and watched her sleeping child beside his dwindling speck of a campfire, a huge maternal shadow in the dark.
There had been other smells too, though: blood and feathers and gunpowder, smoke, burning rabbitbrush, something freshly dead and something else too – something old and rotten and unbearably foul. Día swallowed at the borrowed memory. What was that? she asked.
U’ru’s answer was the vague shape of a man – a smelly, rancid man, all bloat and blisters – but she couldn’t have been less interested in the particulars. What child didn’t love finding little dead things to play with? What did it matter, when the real thrill was watching them cavort and parade with their rotting novelties?
Día had no good answer for that – and no time to find one, either. U’ru suddenly stopped and lifted her ears, her senses perplexed: she had been following the trail from last night, but now there was a new one – a fresh one.
Día looked up at this half-familiar place: there was the little narrow-mouthed cave where she’d found U’ru, and the scorch-marks on the ground in front of it, and beside and beyond it, huge, ugly, and unmissable, was the landslide that had saved her.
And somewhere inside her, the sprouting kernel of someone else’s fear.
“Mother Dog?” The old name was as dumb and automatic as Día’s concern. “What’s wrong?”
The dog – the Dog Lady – dropped her tail and whined. She put her nose back to the ground and hurried forward, following the fresh invisible second-trail up the slope, to the slumped pile of earth and then up its nearer side, faster than Día could keep up. U’ru bolted up the side, making it all of twelve feet before tumbling down in a pile of stones, but that impeded her not at all: in an instant she was back at it, choosing her path more carefully but with no less urgency, halfway to the top before Día had even found her first set of handholds. “Wait!” she called up.
The hand on her shoulder was soft and damp and wordless. One glance at Miss du Chenne’s expression sufficed: Día waited with her there at the base of the hill, still and strangely anxious. Why would Elim have returned to the mountain? He wasn’t bound to the a’Krah or the mereaux or U’ru – couldn’t he do whatever he felt like?
No! U’ru had reached the top of the heap – and in the midst of her darkening thoughts, her answer hit like a lightning bolt. Mine! She barked, a plaintive cry that ricocheted off the mountain’s face, and then she tore forward and disappeared.
“Well, isn’t that splendid.” With an ages-old sigh, Miss du Chenne dropped their provisions and slumped down to a bandy-legged squat.
It took Día a longer time to untangle her mind from U’ru’s. When she was confident that she was herself – childless, stationary, and calm – she looked around again, casting about for something useful to do.
That might take some imagination. It was a cloudless day, bright and cold, with precious little to call attention to the quiet, barren geography around her.
For one thing, there were no crows, perhaps because there was nothing much for them to eat. Día turned and studied the rubble, failing to find even one mereau body. But there was one small area that spilled out much farther than the rest, as if it had been dug into separately, after the fact. And at its bottom was a wide, grooved pattern in the dirt, as if something person-sized had been dragged away. There were three such trails, in fact: a second one coming from a big rock in front of the cave and another from a rusty-looking spot on the ground just beyond. All three converged about twenty feet away – heading east towards the river.
Día looked down to ask about that, but then thought better of it. There was Miss du Chenne, hunkered down in the dwindling shade of that huge earthen tomb, her eyes closed and her head tipped back in some private moment of weariness or disgust. It was hard to tell with her – hard to imagine anything coming out of Día’s mouth that she would find pleasant.
But it was easy enough to observe the old mereau’s wizened, shrunken gill-plumes – a sure sign that she’d been too long out of the water – and the scabby little cuts and bruises around the scarred stumps of her toes… and the dirt caked under her fingernails.
I’m not the one who thought it would be a good idea to lead my cohort on some damned silly suicide mission.
That was what she’d said – one enigma in a heap of others. Día hoped it wasn’t literally meant – that those mereaux weren’t actually Miss du Chenne’s relations, and that they hadn’t meant to die here. Not for the first time, she wished Fours hadn’t always kept her in the dark.
Día badly wanted to ask about it. She wanted to find out once and for all if her suspicions were true: if she and U’ru really had killed one of the mereaux, if that was why the rest had to go to war with digging-tools and garden-rakes, if Miss du Chenne had known them or seen this coming.
But Día couldn’t seem to talk to her without ending up in some awful spat, and any answer she did get was liable to be unhelpful or dishonest or both, and they already had enough to worry about with U’ru. There was no sense in opening up another old wound – or rubbing salt into a fresh one.
So Día stood there, hands clasped, and tried to craft a question that
the hearer might actually want to answer. “Miss du Chenne,” she said at last, “can I help you with them?”
The old schoolteacher opened one eye, its inner eyelid only half retracting.
“With them, I mean,” Día said, nodding towards the earth-heap, and anyone who might still be buried in it. “While we wait.”
She blinked, her gaze tracking Día’s gesture. Then her colors warmed to a brief, beautiful amalgamation of orange and pink – a whole sunset of unspoken feeling. “I always said you were a promising child.” And then, before Día could recall even a single time she’d ever said that, Miss du Chenne patted her foot. “Now you sit here: let’s just have a little rest, and then we’ll get to it.”
Well, that was something, wasn’t it? Día sat down, closed her eyes, and breathed deep from the clear mountain air. She privately resolved to savor this rare moment of tranquility, and to avoid imagining whatever fresh hell would end it.
EVEN SO, IT was over far too soon. Día was roused by sadness – by huge, bowel-churning waves of distress. She staggered up to her feet, struggling to recall what she was so upset about. Something was wrong. Someone was missing.
And by the time she realized that that queasy cold feeling didn’t belong to her at all, U’ru was back, sending pebbles skittering down the hillside as she hustled down the slope, her fur dirty and bloodied and her tail tucked. Gone. She announced herself with a plaintive whine. Not welcome.
So Elim’s scent had led her up the same trail they’d walked yesterday, past the place where the crows waited, and U’ru could go no further.
Going. U’ru made an anxious circle around Día’s legs. Going. Going.
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