Raven unveiled, p.18
Raven Unveiled, page 18
The free traders shuddered to a man. Gharek risked speaking to Asil directly, ignoring Halani’s glare. “Did you hear a voice speak to you inside your head, madam?”
Asil nodded, and the words she recited in that childish voice were bone-chilling. “ ‘Come, meat. I hunger.’ ”
Horrified murmurs of “Gods save us” and other similar remarks echoed through the group. Halani wrapped one arm around her mother’s shoulders and pulled her close. She stared across the circle at Malachus. Gharek could only guess at the wordless conversation between them, but he was sure it likely echoed Kursak’s sharp orders.
The wagon master clapped his hands twice. “No sleeping,” he barked. “We’re out of here as soon as we have the fire quenched, the pots packed, and the animals harnessed. Get moving!” He’d barely finished issuing the order before people scattered, hurrying in every direction to obey, eddying around Gharek, Siora, and Malachus like a fast-moving stream.
The draga eyed him with a curious mix of suspicion and admiration. “Good thing you aren’t welcome among us or Halani might find her place as the camp’s storyteller usurped in no time.”
Gharek found the comment odd but didn’t get the chance to ask what Malachus meant. The free traders broke down their camp with impressive speed. A life on the road rarely guaranteed long-term safety, and free traders were only tolerated in most places and fiercely unwelcome in others. No doubt this camp and others like it were practiced at pulling up stakes and leaving in a hurry when things turned unfriendly.
He and Siora stayed out of the way until Kursak returned, leading a muscular gelding, saddled and bridled. Halani walked beside him, holding a bulging pack. She passed it to Siora. “To replace what you lost in the Maesor,” she said, her smile lighting her gray eyes. “Enough supplies for two days. There are also two blankets tied to the saddle.” She squeezed Siora’s hands. “I’ve thanked you before but will do so every time I’m fortunate enough to cross your path. You helped my mother, who’s most beloved and not just by me.” Her features hardened when her gaze landed on Gharek. “My words for you are unkind, so I won’t speak them except to say I’ll pray for your daughter’s safety. Too many of the innocent suffer for the sins of the corrupt.”
Once more regret sat like a stone on his spirit. He bowed low to her. “I thank you for those prayers. And you’re right.” What more could he say beyond an echo of his apology, and he’d always known that no forgiveness would come from that quarter. He didn’t resent her for its lack. In her place, he’d be far less sanguine.
Kursak held out his hand to Gharek, not in farewell but to demand payment for the horse. When he quoted the amount, Gharek grimaced but emptied out the required number of coins from his money purse into Kursak’s palm. It left him just enough to fund a bribe and buy a loaf of bread. Thank the gods for Halani’s generosity or he and Siora would have to cinch their belts a little tighter during the last part of their journey.
“Goodbye, ghost woman,” Asil yelled as she skipped toward them.
Halani sighed and turned to head off her mother. “No need to shout, Mama. Go back and help pack the camp. I already told Siora goodbye for both of us.”
Asil nimbly avoided Halani’s grasp, the petulant jut of her lower lip warning her daughter she had no intention of obeying. “You might have told her, but I haven’t.” She grasped Siora’s hand. “Goodbye, ghost woman,” she said before swiftly looping a woven cord over Siora’s head. “A charm of good health and good earth.” Her fingers pressed the tiny clutch of dried flowers and beads attached to the cord against her rescuer’s breast. “A gift for you.”
Siora folded her hand over Asil’s and gave a squeeze. “Thank you, Asil. I will treasure it forever as well as the moment I finally heard you speak.”
Asil stepped back, switching her regard to Gharek, who for the first time in his recollection found it difficult to meet someone’s eye. The child-woman regarded him, unsmiling now, and there was about her scrutiny the judgment of one far older and wiser. “Do you love your child, cat’s-paw?”
The sudden mature tone and the question itself startled not only him but Halani and Kursak as well.
“I do,” he replied. “More than life itself. She’s everything to me. The reason I still breathe.” Even if he didn’t still hope. Siora’s hand rested on his arm, a reassuring touch, though he didn’t take his eyes off Asil.
She maintained that same measuring regard, a different woman altogether in that moment. “Then do better. Make her as proud to be your daughter as you are to be her father.”
Siora’s fingers tightened on his arm. Gharek struggled for a reply that would do justice to such straightforward wisdom that allowed no excuses and took no prisoners. “You’re wise, madam. I can’t remake the past but know I’m truly sorry for what I did to you and Halani.”
She sniffed. “Just don’t do it again or to someone else,” she said, and the youthful timbre had once more returned to her voice.
“I won’t.”
Halani didn’t look nearly as convinced of Gharek’s sincerity as her mother did. “You’ve said goodbye, Mama. Let them go. They have a long ride back to Domora.” She coaxed Asil back toward the wagons and the hive of activity there.
Gharek helped Siora onto the horse’s back first, then mounted behind her. Malachus had joined Kursak to see them off. He gave their gear a last check before stepping back. “You won’t lose much time riding double. Suti here is a solid mount, and Siora isn’t much bigger than that satchel Halani packed for you, so it won’t stress the horse.” He studied them for a moment without speaking. “I’m glad you didn’t kill Siora when you found her.”
He and Kursak both grinned when Gharek and Siora said in unison, “So am I.”
Gharek reined the horse toward the road, Siora’s slight frame hot against his chest. He didn’t mind. In fact, he savored it. A thought occurred to him, and he nudged the horse back to where the two men stood watching. “Before I go, draga, tell me something.”
A shuttered expression passed over Malachus’s features and he visibly stiffened, as if he knew what Gharek was about to ask and braced for it. “What is that?”
“How did the Spider of Empire taste?”
Kursak guffawed loud enough to make others in the camp turn and stare. Malachus’s sigh was long and pained. He pinched the bridge of his nose with finger and thumb and closed his eyes for a moment. “I hear this question in my dreams sometimes,” he said in a resigned voice. He opened his eyes to settle a wry gaze on Gharek. “I wouldn’t know. I didn’t eat the empress.” He pointed to the road. “I suggest you don’t delay before I change my mind about what I prefer for supper and put cat’s-paw on my plate.”
Siora shook against Gharek with silent laughter. He held back his own amusement, gave a nod of farewell, and turned the gelding onto the road leading back to Domora.
He kept the horse at a canter, with breaks into an easy trot so as not to fatigue the animal. The moon was bright enough for now to see any obstacles or pitfalls in the road, but the clouds thickened above them, dimming that brightness. They’d have to stop soon. He was disappointed but traveling in heavy darkness risked riding over dangerous ground and laming the horse he’d just bought with almost every belsha in his possession. He relayed the news to Siora.
Instead of a protest, she offered a suggestion. “There’s a well-used drover path not far from here and a wet-weather stream just off the path with shelter in the trees and grazing for the horse. We’ll need to leave at first light or keep company with herders and their livestock.”
She continuously surprised him. “You’ve camped here before?”
Siora nodded. “Many times when I was younger. My mother and I moved from village to village to shade-speak. Often it was safer to camp than stay in a town and sleep on the streets. Sleeping in a tavern or its stable was too expensive most of the time anyway. The place I mention was one of our favorite spots.”
He followed her direction, guiding the horse into a section of overgrown pasture dotted with clusters of trees tangled in underbrush but still passable enough for the horse to navigate without struggle. They found the stream Siora described and a place to camp under the lacy drape of a willow tree’s branches.
Gharek took care of the horse, tethering him on a long lead rope to graze nearby and drink from the stream. He brought saddle and horse blanket with him to where Siora set up their camp for the evening. It wasn’t the comforts he’d seen in the free trader encampment, but it was a huge improvement from the bare ground and knotted ropes that was the hospitality Zaredis had offered.
He laid the saddle blanket on the ground. His legs would hang off its edge, but it served to keep his back and flanks dry while he slept. He stepped aside to let Siora spread the blankets Halani had given them onto the saddle blanket. She smoothed the wrinkles with small hands and brushed her palms together, satisfied with her efforts. Her mouth turned down in a small frown. “Are you willing to share? It’s wide enough for both of us.” Her question carried a hint of challenge as if she waited for him to say no, in which case she’d most likely tell him he was more than welcome to enjoy his bed of grass then.
Gharek chuffed and allowed a smile to curve his mouth. “I don’t know why you bothered asking. It isn’t as if we haven’t done this before.”
He looked forward to it. Her presence was greater than her physical size and offered a comfort he hadn’t known before. When they’d shared the bed in the brothel, he’d wakened to her pressed to his back, her arm draped over his torso so that her hand dangled just below his chest. Gharek had lain still for longer than he should have, savoring the press of her body against his, watching that delicate hand, browned by the sun and marred with scrapes and scratches. Two of her nails were broken, one nearly to the quick, and he’d struggled against the temptation to lift that hand and bring her injured finger to his lips.
She hadn’t wakened when he eased out of the bed and quietly dressed. Nor had he commented on their closeness as they’d slept. He’d told her nothing then and said nothing now of those oddly sweet moments or his hope that he might experience them again in the brief hours they waited out the night under the willow tree.
They sat together on the blanket and shared a few of the foodstuffs Halani had packed in the satchel she’d given to Siora. Gharek had no doubt she would disapprove of Siora sharing with him, but he was grateful for the food.
He peeled an orange, handing half to Siora. “Still no visit from your father?”
Her eyes glossed with tears for a moment before she blinked them away. “No, though I truly believe I’d know or sense if he were in jeopardy. Whatever those creatures were roaming the Maesor, they aren’t a danger to ghosts even if they serve a more dangerous master’s will. The living though . . .” She shuddered.
Gharek understood the fear too well. His mind went back several times to the creature stalking the now empty Maesor, the weirdly extended limbs and featureless face except for the crimson stain of a mouth with its eel teeth. Worst of all was the sound it made; a whispering, chittering noise hovering just above a background gurgle, as if rats had chewed their way out of a bubbling fountain of blood. The sound was the fuel of any nightmare and sure to haunt his worst ones for many nights to come.
The last tendrils of silvery light that turned the nearby stream into a metal ribbon disappeared behind a swath of clouds. The night turned black enough to cut with a knife, and he no longer saw Siora beside him. The gelding snuffled nearby as it leisurely grazed on the lush grass growing around them. The willow sighed a lullaby. It was another world compared to the seething tension of a crowded Domora as it waited for an inevitable siege or the silent horror of the Maesor with its otherworldly wolves and only the memory of those who once traded there. For a moment, Gharek wished he might never leave the tree’s shelter but stay enrobed in its green peacefulness with the stream’s laughter to serenade him and a small woman of unshakable fortitude and steadfast honor to keep him company. There were nightmares like Midrigar but dreams like this as well.
He lay on his back and stretched out his legs, lacing his fingers behind his head, and stared into the tree’s shifting shadows above him. The rustle and twitch of blankets next to him told him Siora was settling down as well. He couldn’t see her, but even if she’d made no noise, he’d have known she was there. Her presence tickled the edges of his spirit as much as it thrummed along his skin.
Her voice was soft, close. “Why did you ask me if I had children?”
The question puzzled him until he recalled their previous conversation when she wondered why he’d go to such lengths to change Estred instead of accepting her as she was. It might have been no more than curiosity on her part, but a part of him had sniffed out its underlying criticism, its judgment. He’d bristled instantly and lashed out at her.
Hers was a hard question to answer because it forced him to reveal a part of his history, what he viewed as his failure as a husband and a father. He was a private man by nature, happier to cut out his own heart, or at least the heart of the nosy person who dared intrude on that privacy, before offering a sliver of information. Shame and the loss of hope burdened him, along with an icy rage that hollowed him out year by year, hour by hour. If not for Estred, he’d be more dead than the ghosts Siora spoke to and saw.Tell her, a small voice coaxed in his mind. Tell someone.
He blessed the obscuring darkness, afraid of what he might see once he told her what she wanted to know.
“If servant gossip didn’t already inform you, Estred’s mother left Estred in her sister’s care, walked out of the house, and never returned. I was a soldier in the Kraelian army at the time, serving in General Ceder’s battalions. We saw many battles in the Huzuran Archipelago. My wife, Tanarima, was pregnant when the general marched and then sailed us to conquer the islands. I didn’t return home until a few years later, when Estred was three. I found our hovel occupied by someone else and no idea where my wife and daughter had gone or if they were even alive.”
“The servants only spoke to me when necessary. How did you find Estred?” Her voice was a caress as seductive as her touch.
History was a merciless taskmaster, its memories more brutal than any Maesor wolf. “I found Tanarima’s sister, Odigan, first. As poor as we were, she was in worse straits. She had six children of her own and had been made a widow shortly after Tanarima left Estred with her.”
A soft gasp and then, “That’s a huge burden placed on anyone’s shoulders. Poor woman. Was Estred cared for?”
He smiled in the dark, even as recollections best left buried hammered into him. She offered sympathy to his wife’s sister. It had taken years for his own hatred for both women to chill to indifference. “Estred wasn’t there. I think Odigan almost followed her unfortunate husband into the deathlands from fright when she found me standing on her doorstep wanting answers as well as my daughter. I was a different man then. Were I then what I am now, I would have snapped her neck once I learned what she’d done.”
“What did she do?”
The dark revealed a great deal in a voice, and he didn’t mistake the underlying dread weaving through Siora’s now. Old fury he thought snuffed out after so much time threatened to reignite within him. “She sold Estred to a grind show for a nice sum. It seems my daughter’s lack of arms made her into what’s known as an animal-girl. Exotic, not quite human. I don’t think I slept more than an hour a night for six months as I searched the Empire for that show. I finally found it. They kept Estred in a cage. Either she learned on her own or someone had taught her to eat with her feet and play a few notes on a whistle with her toes.”
“Oh, Estred.” Siora’s voice had thickened with tears. “I am so sorry.” Neither of them said anything, and while Gharek didn’t remember what it was like to shed tears, he listened to Siora’s sniffles and sorrowed inside. “I’ve heard her,” she finally said on a warble. “She played for me a time or two. I thought you taught her that skill.”
“No. I only encouraged it. Something bright should come from such darkness.” And the darkness nearly drowned him then. “The show master made up some crazed story of how Estred was the whelp of a sailor and a snake woman. They’d painted scales on her skin and taught her to wriggle on her belly like a serpent. The crowds loved her. I tried to buy her from the show master but he refused to sell her. I then offered myself in exchange. He used me for a night, then threw me out of the encampment without Estred.” Her hand on his arm offered comfort, but he jerked away from her touch, horrified at the idea she might find him pathetic. “Save your pity,” he snapped. “I’d fuck every Kraelian soldier from the piss bucket boys to the generals themselves if it meant keeping Estred safe. I think that might be why Herself never showed interest, though she sometimes complimented me. For her, sex was power and power was subjugation. As her cat’s-paw, I was already subjugated to her.”
“What challenge is there in a willing victim?” The revulsion in her words wasn’t for him but for the empress and echoed his own at the idea of sharing a bed with the Spider of Empire. Her favorites hadn’t been so lucky.
“Just so,” he said.
“How did you manage to save Estred?”
“I slunk away, pretended I was defeated, and waited three days until the show master felt assured I was gone and no longer a nuisance. I returned in the middle of the night and cut his throat while he slept in his bed. I then strangled Estred’s caretaker or guard, whatever you want to call him, and took the cage keys. After being treated like an animal, my daughter was almost feral. I lured her out of her cage with sweets, then bound and gagged her before wrapping her in a blanket. I then unlocked every other cage there and set the supply wagons on fire before I fled with Estred on one of their horses.”
