Hearing the raised voices, the baby erupted into harmonious cries. Roy whispered, hoping to ease his wailing.
“By the time I found him, it was too late,” Harvey said, softening his voice as much as he could. “Gnochi had already moved on.”
Cleo stood at his words, throwing her fists into his chest, though her punches, weakened with grief, came without force. She finally collapsed into his arms, weeping onto his shoulders.
Harvey watched Roy kneel before Gnochi’s corpse and say something in a hushed tone, then place the infant next to his head.
The baby’s curious hands mapped out Gnochi’s features.
When Roy stood, infant in his arms, Harvey spied tears falling from his pale eyes. Kiren also wore a mask of grief.
Finally, after drying her eyes on Harvey’s shirt, Cleo sat on the cot, next to her teacher. She clasped her hand tight to his.
One of Gideon’s pages entered the enclosure, coughed to announce his presence, then said, “Lord Gideon requests the attendance of Roy, Harvey and Mistress Cleo.” The man eyed Kiren, though made no further comment.
Harvey and Roy moved to join the messenger. Cleo looked up at them through tear-stained eyes. “Don’t worry,” Roy said, “we’ll see what he wants and come back to you.”
“Lord Gideon specifically asked for Cleo.”
“Drop it,” Roy warned. “Gideon will understand.”
The page relented, leading Harvey and Roy into Gideon’s primary chamber.
As they entered, Gideon stood and clapped. “There he is, the hero of this war,” he said. “Harvey, you did in minutes what my men could not do for hours before. And not only did you single handedly clear out the wall, allowing my men through, but you bested Jackal in combat.”
Harvey felt Roy’s heavy gaze. “I got lucky,” he said, feeling his cheeks warming. “The other man who carried the ladder with me was shot. And the only reason I was able to best Jackal is because he was distracted.”
“Harvey is modest,” Roy said.
“And I wasn’t doing it in service to you,” Harvey said, ignoring the stares from the others in the room. “I was only there for Cleo and Gnochi.”
“Yes, I heard that we are not exactly on the same terms as far as our ideologies are concerned. I know what you did to that Luddite group.”
“Yes, and did you hear how they torched a building and killed an innocent child?”
“It was an unfortunate mistake.”
“Yeah, and so was helping your cause,” Harvey spat. A hushed murmur split the room, though, as he discovered when he turned around, the murmur was not directed at his outburst.
Cleo slipped into the chambers. She had removed the wolf pelt and only wore Gnochi’s poncho over her clothes for warmth. As she shivered, tears flicked off to the ground.
“Cleobelle, you are—”
“No. You don’t get to talk,” she said. Her voice commanded the entire room.
Harvey suspected that she was using her echo, as her words felt fuzzy to his ears. He imagined that the grief empowered her.
“And you,” Cleo yelled to the numerous advisors who were murmuring. “Keep quiet.” She looked to her father and frowned. It was obvious that she was attempting to mask the sadness from her face, but it was as plain on her features as a glaring crack in marble.
“You need to leave.” She said. “Leave now! Leave Lyrinth and never come back.”
Gideon tensed as if fighting against an invisible force. “I came for you.”
“No. You’ve done nothing for me. You sent me to my death with your pawn, Bollo. The only reason you’re here is because Jackal had the nerve to go against you. So, you are to leave. Take every member of your Pantheon with you.” Cleo looked to her friends. “And I want you to formally disband all Luddite groups here in Lyrinth. The next time a building burns, a person dies, a family is threatened in the name of preserving stagnation, I’ll have every Luddite rounded up and imprisoned.”
Harvey was vaguely aware that she could not make that assertion, but her voice eased into his mind, compelling him to believe her every threat.
“You can’t talk to Lord Gideon that way,” one of the advisors shouted. “You, a nuisance child!”
Cleo leveled her eyes at the man. She licked her lips. “Walk the tundra. Don’t stop until it melts, and you have to swim. Then swim to the nearest land and lay upon it, unmoving, until the sun tans your skin to the bedrock.” Her tone remained level. The advisor lost his fight with the invisible force. He stood and made to walk straight out of the chamber.
“No, wait!” Roy vaulted up and restrained the advisor.
“Cleo, I get your anger, but sending this man to his death will solve nothing,” Harvey pleaded, hoping that his auburn eyes showed none of the fear at mutual retribution that he felt. After a minute, the fire behind her eyes dampen.
“Fine. Forget what I told you,” she said. “Try not to be so terrible of a human being in the future.” Cleo pulled at Harvey’s sleeve and nodded to Roy, indicating that they should leave. “I expect you to be gone within a week of the ice-break,” she announced for all to hear. “So, make your preparations, and remember what I said about the Luddites here.”
◆◆◆
Cleo and her friends ate around a small fire making little conversation. They spoke of memories from their time in Blue Haven together, but Cleo had no desire to listen to the stories.
A familiar voice jolted her back to the present. “This is the saddest celebratory dinner I’ve ever seen.” Where Dorothea once worse the plain clothes of a common ringleader, he now bore the regaled robes of royalty. He stood with another, outside the warmth of the fire.
“Would you join us?” Harvey offered, his voice somber.
“I’m actually on my way to a meeting with Gideon. Something about removing all Luddite propaganda and ideology from Lyrinth. I brought someone I thought you might want to talk to, Cleo.” Dorothea gestured to the person behind him. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry to hear about Gnochi.” He retreated out of the fire’s light.
“May I join?” A voice, equally familiar, asked.
“Skuddy?” Cleo rushed forward, then stopped before she reached him. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, embracing him in a sorrowful hug. “I’m still mad at you.”
“Cleo. The whole of Nimbus weeps with you. Myself included. Gnochi was a friend. He shall be missed.”
Cleo heard his voice falter. “And Aarez. He didn’t make it.” She choked into another bout of fresh sobs.
“I was wondering where he had gotten to.”
“It was the bastards in the swamp. They wounded him and he sacrificed his comfort to keep me warm. To save me.”
“Then we have been dealt two heavy blows today. Of course, I’ll need to let Javawooga know. He came here half expecting to have another entertainer to train.”
“Wait, Javawooga is here? Like, here, here?” Cleo asked.
“Yes. He came when I called. Well, his profession demanded that he come to help the Lyrinthian army, but I did ask him to come as well. In fact, I was just talking with him not five minutes ago.”
“Take me to him.” Cleo’s voice left little by the way of choice.
“I—uh. Okay.” Skuddy led them a few minutes further from the central tent. A handful of Dorothea’s merchants set up a market and hawked their wares to the unsuspecting easterners. Skuddy stopped before a nondescript stall decorated by various pelts and stretched leathers. Two people sat by a fire. Skuddy rang a bell on the counter.
Cleo gasped. Rising from his place before the fire was Oslow, gemmed beard and all. Jean also rose. She smiled upon seeing the group.
“You’re Javawooga? But—oh. Oo,” Cleo said.
“Well, the secret is out, I suppose,” Oslow said. “Not to say that I was misleading you purposefully, mind you, but—”
Cleo threw her arms around Oslow, reinvigorated by another wave of grief.
The tanner paused, then suck
ed in a deep breath and said, “Sapphire.” He squatted before her face, his milky irises searching for her eyes. “My heart aches at Gnochi’s passing. He was as good as a son to me.” The two embraced again.
“I’m afraid I have more bad news,” Skuddy said. “The echoer I was priming for your training has also passed away.”
Oslow grimaced at the news. “Aarez. I still feel his life. It’s strong. And permeates through you, Cleo. I don’t suppose you carry his child?”
“No,” Cleo answered.
“Then he must have put his life into you. Do you remember dying?”
“Dying? I don’t think so.”
“Of course I shouldn’t expect you to remember such a traumatic experience. But it does seem as though he gave your body his life force. It proved too much, it seems.”
“Oslow.” Harvey’s voice urged caution.
“Another friend, dead to save me?” Cleo raced into the darkness, tears already blinding her eyes.
Chapter 41
Days later, Cleo sat before Gnochi’s unlit pyre. She had pestered to have him buried, but the closest ground not sand or tundra was still frozen solid. She sat in silence as a small crowd gathered. Gideon had said he would force every person in his command to attend, giving Gnochi a hero’s sendoff, but Cleo turned the offer down, partly because she knew Gnochi would not want genuine sorrow on his behalf, let alone false sentiment.
The ceremony began without pomp. Harvey and Roy carried his body and placed it atop the pyre. The winterbush beneath him jutted out from under his body like icicles or swords. A hushed din ceased as they arranged his body in its final position. Harvey gestured with his hand for Cleo to approach.
“We already said goodbye,” Cleo whispered, not moving from her place. He nodded, then both he and Roy took their time resting their hands upon the brush, uttering their final goodbyes. They then retreated and flanked Cleo as though they could guard her from sorrow.
She watched with a lulled gaze as half a dozen people paid their respects, then stood back to wait for the ceremony to end.
Skuddy approached and prayed by his fallen friend’s side. As he stood, he met Cleo’s eyes. “We must discuss what comes next. I shall find you later,” he said, nodding respectfully at the three, then found a place in the crowd.
Jean ran up to the service, puffing out cold bursts of air. “I’m sorry that I’m so late with this,” she said handing Cleo the poncho.
Inspecting it, Cleo noticed that it was altered. The lengths that Jean and Oslow had trimmed off sat neatly in a folded bundle. She accepted the folded cuts, then approached the pyre.
“I said we were done,” Cleo whispered so only Gnochi’s ghost could hear. “And somehow you get the last word.” She smiled, then placed the folded bundle over his chest, weighing it down with his lifeless hands. She could not help choking back a cry as she thought of all the things his hands had done and never would again. Never again would they weave a story. Never would he again strum a guitar. He would never hold his infant son for the first or last time. Cleo swallowed her sorrow out of exasperation. She had drained her eyes of all their tears. All she had now was fatigue.
As she returned to her place, she spotted Oslow, supported by Jean’s arm. His usually rosy face looked pallid and somber. As he approached, Cleo saw that his beard was subdued, tied into one thick cord that fell from his face, the gems all hidden within. She guided his calloused hands to her face.
“Sapphire,” he said, stopping before the mound. “It pains me to see such hurt. This is a day I had not expected to see.” He turned to the unlit pyre. “You don’t need me to tell you how good of a man Gnochi was. Allow me to show everyone here how grateful I was for having known him.” Oslow held up a knife, its hilt looked rather nondescript and its blade was conservative, if not sharp. He held the blade under his chin, gripped his beard with his other hand and with one smooth motion, cut the braid close to his skin. He wavered from a sense of vertigo.
“Gentlemen,” Oslow addressed Harvey and Roy, “would you favor an old man with a wish. I should like to say goodbye to my friend.”
Harvey and Roy each supported an arm and led him to the mound.
The blind tanner kneeled, then bestowed his beard, its length stretching from Gnochi’s sternum to his lower torso. He then knelt to the ground, his head leaning into the logs and his lips moving in silent conversation. After a minute he rose and allowed Harvey and Roy to guide him to a place beside Jean.
Dorothea slipped into the crowd, trying to remain inconspicuous, though Cleo spied him and offered a weak smile. He grimaced in response. When it became clear that no further people wished to pray before his corpse, Cleo turned to face the crowd.
She felt a pit in her stomach. It started rising up her throat, when she spotted Kiren and Gnochi’s infant among the somber faces, she felt it dissolve.
“Gnochi would be the first to tire from people recounting his life’s successes and adventures,” Cleo said. “He’d probably be against this whole service, preferring to slip away into nothing. He said something to me once: ‘There was a time when the best seat by the fire was reserved for the storyteller.’”
A steady wind tore at Cleo’s hair. It also brought fat snowflakes that descended in slow, lazy spirals.
“I’d tell him that we live in a world now that saves the best seat by the fire for the storyteller. Though he hated to think of himself in this light, Gnochi was a career man.” She stepped back until she felt the prick of the first of the branches poking into her legs. “But storytelling isn’t merely any career. It is the oldest career.
“For you see, there was a simpler time when people hunted and foraged. And what was eaten that night was dependent on that day’s efforts. Anyone who failed at the hunt, or picked poorly, went hungry.
“That is, until one evening. A man who hunted for his tribe came back at night emptyhanded. The others, especially his mate who carried his young, looked at him with disgrace. Not wanting to disappoint, this man stood before his group as they roasted their meat, and said, ‘It’s not my fault. I did hunt. I caught big meat too. Three crawlers, I got with my rocks, and I mangled a deer by jumping on its back.’ The others looked on him with awe and curiosity.
“‘So here I was, with a huge meat pile. Lugging meat back to camp. Was going to share with my mate and all.’ The hunter smiled at the group. They had all stopped paying heed to their cooking meats, much of which burned because the group was so enthralled by the man’s tale. He snagged three pieces of burnt meat, throwing the first two to his mate and child. The others waited in anticipation.
“‘So, I said I had big meat. And today I did. Enough to fill a bear’s belly. But it wasn’t a bear that took my catch, but a pack of wolves. They came upon me faster than an owl’s descent. I tried to fend them off, but my club was no good. They stole my every drop of meat. Every scrap. Every bone.
“‘And then, they turned on me!’ The hunter yelled. A chorus of gasps sounded through his group. ‘I could feel my innards pulled out. Bones snapping. Blood drunken like a fine water. And I was sure my time was come. I imagined the sleep coming over me. Then I saw a face. Green as the grass beneath your feet. Had a woman’s features, and not a hint of hunger in her eyes.
“‘Then she opened her eyes and I swear she was looking right through my skin. I asked who she was and she said that she was the Woodspirit. I asked her if I was going to the long sleep. She said no, that she was saving me for a purpose. She said that she knew of my hunting prowess. She told me that we cannot be so greedy in taking meat from her lands and hoarding them for ourselves.
“‘But if I kill more, why should my meat go to someone who killed none, I asked her. She told me I can never know what stopped people from getting their quarry. She asked me to think of my own hunt. Would anyone believe that I had been so successful, only to lose my meat to wolves? No, I said.
“‘So, what you must do, the Woodspirit told me, is teach your tribe to share your food.
Regardless of who has the ill luck on their hunt, he’ll know that he’ll have a full belly that night. And if you fail to impart this lesson on your people, or you simply ignore my words, know that I will not save you, should the sleep come later.
“‘And then the Woodspirit fixed my bones, replaced my skin and the blood from within,’ the hunter told his tribe.
“‘Well,’ said one of the women. ‘I usually have a few extras that I wouldn’t mind sharing with those not so lucky.’
“‘And I,’ said a hunter, ‘got an extra crawler today that you’re welcome to, seeing as you lost your meat.’
“And so, our hunter came to find himself on the end of his tribe’s patience, for he never fared well in his own hunting endeavors. And each night, he came empty handed, but went to sleep with a full belly.
“One day, his tribe told this hunter that if he did not bring meat back to the tribe that evening, they would not share with him, regardless of the Woodspirit’s threat. So that day, he decided to walk further out than he ever had, hoping to find a surplus of untapped animals. It was not a rare animal that he found though, but another human, from another group. Our hunter’s mind worked fast upon seeing the bounty that this other human seemed to be having with his own hunts.
“‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you are coming to pay tribute to the Woodspirit, are you?’ The other human looked at him as though he was ill. ‘You mean you don’t know? It’s good that I caught you before it did, then.’ Our hunter quickly filled the foreign man in on his encounter with the Woodspirit. ‘You see, if I don’t take a payment of meats to it every day, it turns off the water and calls the sky, telling it to spike down with fire. You’ve no doubt seen these spikes of sun, yes? That is the Woodspirit’s work.’
“‘So, if I give you my meats, you’ll appease her?’
“‘It’s not a guarantee, but it may temper her anger.’
“‘But if I give you all my meats, I’ll have no food tonight.’
The Harbinger of Change Page 28