Angel-Seeker

by Sharon Shinn

  He had to stop three more times to rest, and each time he grew more frightened. His breathing was shallow and his hands felt clammy; if he was cold in this hot environment, he was even worse off than he’d realized. He didn’t think he’d lost much blood, but shock was shutting his systems down. His head was swimming from the trauma of the landing, or creeping dehydration, or both. He must reach water soon.

  It seemed like hours before his hand crossed the border from hot sand to sleek grass. Now, with a grunt that sounded more like a cry, he did collapse, and he pulled himself forward by grasping fistful after fistful of that tough desert weed. The sharp-leaved plant cut the bare skin of his chest and left his hands even more raw than the sand, but he didn’t pause. He dragged himself forward the last few inches and plunged his face into the low, gurgling jet of water. It was warm and tasted of earthen metals, but he didn’t care. He drank and drank, sloppily, letting the water spill across his cheeks and down his chin. He would never be able to drink enough.

  Finally, too tired to hold up his head any longer, he placed his cheek against the wet soil and let himself rest a moment. He must sit up; he must clean his leg wound and wrap his head and torso in a covering of some sort. Water or no, he would die if he lay too long out in the relentless sun, and infection might destroy him even sooner than exposure.

  But he could not move. He could not make the effort. He lay there with his face turned into the gentle stream of falling water and did not stir again.

  Chapter Five

  Rebekah had begged to be left behind, to stay at her cousin Martha’s, but her mother would not have it. “You spent most of last week with your cousin. It is time you spared a little attention for your own family. You’re coming with me and your brothers and your father, and that’s the end of it.”

  “He’s not my father,” Rebekah muttered.

  “What did you say?”

  Rebekah lifted her head defiantly. “He’s—not—my—father,” she said.

  Her mother slapped her once across the face, not hard, an action repeated so often between the two of them that they had almost come to expect that every conversation would end in a blow. Rebekah didn’t feel like her mother’s heart was really in it anymore. It was clear that Jerusha was too tired to deal with her rebellious daughter, too taken up with the demands of a new husband and a new baby to spare any real energy for a girl who could clearly take every ounce of strength she could summon. Besides, it was obvious even to Rebekah that her mother was merely awaiting the day a husband could be found for her—a good strong Jansai man who would know very well how to deal with a willful young wife.

  “He’s the nearest thing you have to a father, and he’s the only man providing for you, so you’d best speak of him with care, kircha,” Jerusha said. Kircha was a not entirely affectionate term for an unbroken filly. “Who would feed you and offer you a tent over your head if not for Hector?”

  “My uncle Ezra would,” Rebekah said.

  Jerusha lifted a hand as if to clout her again, but didn’t have the strength to strike. She let her hand fall. “Yes, and you saw how happy he was to have us in his care after your father died,” her mother said. “That is exactly how welcome you would be in his household now.”

  “There were three of us then. There would only be one of me now. He wouldn’t mind. I could keep Martha company.”

  Jerusha gave a little sniff. “You’re not going to live with your uncle Ezra. You’re not going to stay with him while we travel to Castelana. You’re coming with us. And what’s more, you’re going to help me with the baby, and you’re not going to complain. Not one word, for the whole trip.”

  They both knew this was unlikely.

  “When do we leave?” Rebekah asked sulkily.

  “Tomorrow. So make sure your things are packed. And talk to your brother. Get his clothes ready, too.”

  “Let him get his own clothes ready.”

  Her mother gave her a dark stare, and Rebekah just huffed in irritation and left the room. She would, of course, organize her own traveling case as well as her brother Jordan’s. That was what Jansai women did—looked after the men in their family. It was only rebellious teenage girls who ever thought otherwise.

  She stormed up the stairs to the hot, still warren of tiny rooms on the second story that she shared with various aunts and cousins and even more distant relatives of her stepfather. Jordan and the baby both had their own rooms on the cooler, more spacious ground level of the house, and naturally her mother shared quite a pleasant suite with Hector, also on the bottom floor. As the woman married to the head of the household, Jerusha had free run of the entire house and was responsible for overseeing the cleaning and upkeep even of the rooms where only men were allowed. Of course, whenever Hector had company—men who were not related to him—Jerusha kept in the women’s side of the building, not wanting to show her face where it should not be seen. The rest of the women kept to their own part of the house at all times, except during the common meals that allowed the sexes to mingle when there was only family present. Rebekah had never seen half of the rooms in this house.

  Throwing open her bedroom door with a crash, Rebekah flung herself onto the brightly colored mattress on the floor and buried her face in a soft, expensive pillow. Well, she had to admit their lives had improved—materially, at least—since Hector had married her mother. Ezra’s house was bigger but filled with many more people, and Jerusha’s family had had to be content with the cast-off clothes and furniture the other women of the family no longer wanted. Rebekah had shared a room with Martha and worn many of Martha’s clothes, so she had not suffered much, but Jerusha and Jordan had always looked a bit tired and ill-dressed during the three months they had lived with Ezra. But they had had no place else to go after her father had died in Raphael’s company when Gabriel brought down Mount Galo.

  Rebekah turned over onto her back to contemplate the blank ceiling. Truth to tell, she had not cared much for her father, either, who had been a scheming, tightfisted, somewhat brutish man. Jordan had hated him; but then, Jordan had spent much more time with him than Rebekah had, since Jordan was a son and therefore his father’s heir. Jordan had been happy enough in Ezra’s crowded household, cast-off clothing or no, but he seemed even more content in Hector’s. Hector treated him like he was a man—which, at fourteen, he almost was—and allowed Jordan to join him on business trips and some social outings with the other men. In vain did Rebekah point out that Hector was stupid, mercenary, loud, and coarse. Jordan would shrug.

  “He’s nice to me,” her brother would say, and that was all that seemed to matter to him.

  As it happened, Hector wasn’t cruel to Rebekah, either. He did, as her mother said, provide her with good clothes and costly jewelry, and he spoke to her civilly if without affection. But she could tell he watched her with a weighing air, as if gauging how much she might be worth when he arranged a marriage for her with some fat Jansai merchant. She had turned twenty last month. If she was not wed within the next year, she would be practically unmarriageable. Which would mean she would be a burden on her stepfather for the rest of her natural life.

  Rebekah was very sure Hector would find a husband for her within the next year. It was a prospect that filled her with faint misgiving.

  She had just flopped back over on her stomach when there was a knock on the door. “Bekah? Are you in there?” It was Jordan.

  She sat up. “Yes. Come on in.”

  He slipped inside the room and let the door bang shut behind him. “Jovah’s bones, it’s hot in here,” he said, as he always did. His own room had windows that allowed in whatever fresh air the city might muster by day’s end.

  “We’re leaving tomorrow, did you know?” she demanded.

  He sat on the floor near her mattress and stretched his legs out before him. He was a tall, lanky boy, exactly her height, and they looked a great deal alike: They both had large, expressive brown eyes, masses of curly brown hair (though his was shorte
r), and fair skin of a creamy texture. Jordan’s skin had been baked brown by exposure to the sun, but Rebekah’s, always hidden under a veil when she walked outside, was still a luscious white. She was a little vain of her complexion, she had to admit. Even Martha envied it.

  Jordan was nodding. “Yes, Mother told me. You’re supposed to help me pack my things.”

  “I don’t understand why a relatively intelligent, though admittedly lazy, young man can’t figure out on his own how many tunics and leggings he might require to make a ten-day trek across the desert, which he has crossed at least eight times a year since the day he was born—”

  Jordan laughed. “I already threw all my clothes in a bag. I only have about five clean outfits anyway, and two pairs of boots. I’ll just bring everything.”

  She drew her knees up and propped her chin on them. “I don’t want to go,” she grumbled.

  “To Castelana? Oh, it’ll be great. Why not?”

  “I want to stay here. Martha’s having her birthday party, and all her girlfriends are coming, and Uncle Ezra’s buying special foods from Luminaux, and I wanted to go.”

  “I’ll buy you some fancy foods from the market,” he offered.

  “It’s not the same. I want to visit with all the other girls,” she said petulantly. And then, after a pause, “But thank you. You’re a good brother.”

  He grinned. “I just don’t want you to be grouchy for the whole trip. That’s no fun.”

  “Who else is going, do you know?” she asked.

  “Simon and his wife and his sons. And I think Reuben and his wife, though Reuben might be still deciding.”

  Rebekah nodded. This was both good news and bad news. Good news, because the other wives would keep her mother company, and they would all share in the cooking, so that Rebekah wouldn’t have much to do except watch the baby. Bad news, because there would be no other girls her age along on the trip. Which meant the only people she would have to talk to would be Jordan and the older women. She would not even be allowed to be visible while the other men were around, since no man could see her except the members of her family. She would have to skulk in the hot wagon while the others sat around the campfire to take their meals or talk over the day’s travel. She would be so bored she would be practically unable to endure it.

  “Don’t abandon me,” she said. “Don’t go off with Simon’s boys every day and leave me there by myself.”

  He grinned again. “Well, maybe not every day,” he said. “But I like them! They’re older than me, but they let me hunt with them. Isaac let me use his bow last time we were out, and I brought down some grouse. I want to do that again.”

  “What’s Isaac like?” she asked.

  Jordan shrugged. “He’s smart. Asks questions all the time. He can look at a pelt or a weaving and tell you how much it’ll go for in the market, and he’s always within a few coppers. Hector says he’ll be one of the great peddlers because he understands merchandise and he likes to travel. Mother says he’ll be rich one day.”

  “Our mother thinks Hector might want to marry me off to him.”

  Jordan looked over, an inquiring expression on his face. “Really? That wouldn’t be so bad. You might like him.”

  “You think so?”

  “Well, he’s not mean. You always said you didn’t want to marry a mean man.”

  “He’s not mean to you. The way men treat their friends and the way they treat their wives are two different things.”

  They had had this discussion a thousand times. Years of whispered conversations with her cousin Martha and Martha’s friends had yielded all the young women of Rebekah’s acquaintance with a fairly unnerving picture of married life. Their mothers and their older sisters would appear from time to time with unexplained bruises or reappear after the absence of a few weeks looking frail and starved. Most of the married women made a big show of downplaying the evils of their situations when talking to the younger girls, but every once in a while they slipped; they dropped a few details about a beating or a humiliation. Not every Jansai wife. But enough of them that Martha and Rebekah and their friends looked ahead to married life with a touch of trepidation.

  Rebekah turned on Jordan, coming off the bed to kneel before him on the floor. “You have to be kind to your wife,” she said fiercely. “You can’t ever hit her or scream at her. And you have to be kind to your daughters, too. Marry them off to gentle men. It’s really important, Jordan.”

  “I know,” he said, seriously enough for a fourteen-year-old boy who couldn’t really envision the day he’d have someone else’s well-being entirely in his hands. “I remember. I’ll be good.”

  She sat back on her heels. “You better be. Now tell me more about Isaac. You think he’s going to be rich?”

  Jordan grinned. “That’s what Hector says. Uncle Ezra, too. And you might think he’s good-looking. Our mother says he is.”

  “But then, she married Hector,” Rebekah snapped.

  Jordan laughed. “Maybe you can get a good look at him on the trip and decide for yourself.”

  “Maybe.” Rebekah sighed. “There won’t be much else to do on the road.”

  Indeed, for the first two days of the journey, Rebekah was just as bored as she’d expected to be. She and Jerusha rode in the tented wagon, its canvas closed against dust, heat, and the eyes of unrelated men, but the dust and heat managed to penetrate, anyway. They jounced on an unsprung carriage through the uneven terrain, till their muscles were sore and their legs were tired from bracing against the wooden floor. Jerusha seemed completely serene and sat cross-legged on a bench, nursing the baby or stitching him a shirt. The baby himself seemed drugged by the heat and the motion, and only gave out faint, intermittent cries when he was hungry. Rebekah worked on the baby’s shirt now and then, just for something to do, though it was hard to keep the needle steady against the wagon’s constant motion. Eventually, she gave up and stretched out on her own thin mattress, attempting to sleep away the afternoon and the discomfort. She dozed, though she never really slept, but at least lying down required less effort than trying to sit upright in the rocking wagon.

  When they made camp on that second day, the travelers set up their wagons in a ring around the fire. As soon as the horses had been unhitched and watered, Jordan lifted the back flap.

  “We’re not hunting tonight,” he informed his sister. “Want to go off and run with me?”

  Jerusha nodded, so Rebekah leapt to her feet and made sure her soft-soled boots were laced. “Thank you, dear lord Jovah,” she murmured, and slipped out the back of the tent so none of the other men could see her. “Released from this prison at last.”

  They headed west onto the glittering gold pathway painted across the sand by the setting sun. There was little to see out here—they were miles from any narrow creek bed or friendly waterhole—but just being free of the confines of the tent put Rebekah in a giddy mood. They chased each other across the gentle dunes, found small rocks and aimed them at boulders in a fairly equal contest of skill, and came across a marrowroot bush where they least expected it.

  “Aren’t we lucky,” Rebekah exclaimed, bounding forward to strip some of the blue green leaves off the low bush. Jordan was right beside her, and each of them stuffed a handful of the waxy leaves into their mouths. The taste was gingery but not so bad once you got used to it, and this was a plant they’d been familiar with since they were toddlers. Hardy and deep-rooted, it grew all over the desert and offered a refreshing mouthful to the thirsty wanderer. There was such a high liquid content in its leaves that it could replace water, at least temporarily, in the diet of a traveler. People had been known to survive a week in the desert with nothing but marrowroot leaves to sustain them.

  “We should bring some back for Mother and the others for the cook-fire,” Rebekah suggested, so they plucked a dozen more leaves and stowed them in their pockets. They didn’t denude the bush; that would cause it to wither and die, and marrowroot was too precious a plant to treat
so badly.

  Some of their energy spent, they wandered more sedately for another hour or two, idly talking. A small creature hopped across their path, and Jordan threw a rock at it but missed. He spent the rest of their excursion bemoaning the fact that he hadn’t brought a bow.

  “I’m sure we have plenty to eat, at least these first few days out,” Rebekah said.

  “Yes, but Isaac would have been so impressed! And Hector would have been proud of me.”

  “Well, tomorrow, then. Just never leave the tent without your bow in hand.”

  They had roamed about an hour before it started to get really dark. True children of the desert, they had no fears about finding their way back to the campsite by barely distinguishable landmarks, but they turned homeward anyway. Jerusha would be worried if they were gone for long, and supper would be ready soon. And they were both hungry.

  Still, for Rebekah, the evening meal was not very enjoyable. She ate it alone in her tent, while the men gathered around the campfire to eat the food the women had left out for them. After the men had finished their food, they lingered before the flames, talking and smoking a pipe filled with a pungent weed. The three women gathered behind one of the other tents, eating their own meal and gossiping with each other. Rebekah heard the quickly smothered cries of laughter and the occasional exclamation of surprise. They were far enough from the circle of men that she could have slipped out and joined them, but she didn’t really want to. She’d had plenty of time with her mother already this day, and she didn’t particularly care for Simon’s wife or Reuben’s. No, once her mother slipped a plate to her through the back flap, Rebekah was content enough to sit there and eat her meal all by herself.