Kigh - Fifth Quarter Part 38

She heard footsteps behind her and turned slowly.

Gyhard stopped a body's length away.

Birds, insects, even the liquid song of the river seemed to fall suddenly silent.

"You took away everything I had," she said. "Because of you, I broke oaths.

Because of you, I killed a friend. The moment I can, I will kill you. That is all there will ever be between us."

"There is, already, more than that."

"No." Bannon narrowed Vree's eyes and drew her lips up off her teeth. "There is not."

"You've never had serious compet.i.tion before, have you, Bannon? There's never been anyone in her life with enough allure to distract her attention from you. And now..." Gyhard spread Bannon's hands. "... you're competing, at least partially, with yourself. How ironic."

"Smile while you can, carrion eater. When you leave my body, we'll open another smile in your throat."

"Incentive to stay, don't you think?"

"You're a dead man!"

"You're an idiot."

"Sod off, both of you!" Vree snapped, yanking her body out of Bannon's control. She jabbed a finger at Gyhard. "I don't give a rebel's t.i.t for what you think is going on or what Bannon thinks is going on, either. You are in my brother's body, and I want you out of him as much as I want him out of me. Everything else is bulls.h.i.+t!" Nostrils flared, she stomped past Gyhard toward the ruined building, water spraying up from the saturated sod with every step. "I'm going to wake Karlene, and we're going to get moving before the mud bakes dry and we lose this chance."

"Slaughter it, Vree..."

"Don't push me, Bannon."

"Me push you? You're not the one who's being betrayed! You're supposed to hate him!"

"Hatred dulls your blade." It was one of the earliest lessons an a.s.sa.s.sin learned. Clutching it tightly, Vree stepped over the threshold and moved toward the fire where a small flame still danced along a partially burned stick. What point in making a stronger denial; as she felt his betrayal, he felt her guilt.

Broader wheels might not have sunk so deep- although broader wheels would have picked up more of the sticky mud with every turning. He thought of abandoning the cart, but his old bones moved so slowly that it would add many, many days to the trip home. Time enough to leave the cart when they had to leave the road.

He patted Kait on her thin shoulder, damp fabric sticking to her graying skin, and answered her slow smile with one of his own. "Keep pus.h.i.+ng, child."

"Yesss, Fa... ther." She threw her weight against the bar that joined shafts, mud churning beneath bare feet. Pus.h.i.+ng beside her, Wheyra crooned to what decay had left of her baby.

Slowly and carefully, his robe dragging in the wet, his fingers wrapped tightly around his staff, he walked to the back of the cart where the two most recent members of his family watched over his heart.

It had become necessary that Iban and Hestia push from the back-or the cart would not pull free of the mud's embrace. But that would leave his heart alone and unprotected...

He had lost his heart once before. He would not allow it to happen again. When the beautiful eyes that had haunted his dreams for longer than he could remember lifted to meet his, he said as he had said a hundred times since the turning of the Circle had brought them together again, "Don't leave me."

His horse had not gone far. Much as the storm had driven him to seek shelter, it had driven the horse under the roof of a three-sided goat pen in the fis.h.i.+ng village. They spent the night together, the a.s.sa.s.sin, the horse, and the half-dozen goats. Just after dawn, after swallowing a painfully chewed mouthful of journey bread, Neegan led the horse from the shed. The owner of the goats, arriving to check her stock, saw the Imperial uniform and, although she had no idea of what the black sunburst meant, recognized danger when she saw it. Hands out from her sides, she stayed well back as Neegan emerged from the pen, and asked no questions.

"Ya need a hayla," she said after a moment, as he checked the animal's hooves.

Neegan straightened and stared at her in some confusion, one eye swollen nearly shut. "I need a what?"

"A hayla," she repeated. "Fer ya hayd."

"A healer."

"That's what Ah sayd, a hayla."

He glanced over the cl.u.s.ter of weatherworn buildings. "Does this place have a

healer?"

"No. Shahbridge's closest."

Teeth clenched, he swung into the saddle. "I'm going the other way."

"Road's gonna be ama.s.s."

"A what?"

She sighed and spat. "Ama.s.s. Muddy."

"Thank you for your concern. I'll manage."

Her shrug very clearly told him to suit himself.

"We've got to be making better time than he is." Karlene swiped at the sweat rolling down her face with the back of her left hand, leaving a smear of mud behind. "Don't we?"

"Unless he's abandoned the cart," Vree muttered, pulling the sweat-damp silk away from her skin in a futile attempt to find cooler air.

"Do you think that's possible?"

"Anything is possible," Gyhard growled. The offer obviously covered more than the cart.

"Anything is not possible." Vree's voice held Bannon's intonation pattern.

The bard stifled a sigh. Between the brooding silences and the beating-with-ablunt-object repartee, the mood surrounding her companions was very nearly as heavy as the weather. While the latter hung weights of heat and humidity off the body, the former dragged at the spirit. And it's not like we were lighthearted to start with.

She would have given anything to know what had happened while she lay asleep and oblivious. Two years in the Capital have really dulled my senses. I've got to get out on the road more. She'd asked them both, using the morning's travel preparations to get each of them alone, but neither would talk. Vree had closed her lips with an emphasis that suggested she was preventing Bannon from speaking, and Gyhard had coldly informed her that it was none of her business.

Perhaps not, but she was in the middle of it and couldn't let it go.

Gyhard loved Vree. Vree was, at the very least, physically attracted to Gyhard. Although Vree should hate Gyhard because he was in Bannon's body, it would've been difficult to consider him an enemy and her reactions to him would've been skewed from the beginning. How far skewed? And what would Bannon think about that? Actually, that last question wasn't hard to answer.

Karlene shook her head, trying to shake the mess down into some kind of clarity. It didn't help.

"I'm going to Sing," she announced suddenly. It wouldn't help straighten out the tangle, but it would make her feel as though she was actually doing something instead of merely being carried along by the turning of the Circle.

"You Sang a while ago," Gyhard pointed out as he squelched from one hummock of gra.s.s to the next, dragging his reluctant horse along behind. "Don't you think you should save your energy?"

"It was hours ago, and no." Karlene drew in a deep breath of the clammy air, and Sang the four notes that would call the kigh. A few moments later, she frowned and Sang them again. Then again.

Vree turned toward the bard and found herself staring across her at Gyhard, who'd mirrored her turn.

Steadying herself on the bay's shoulder, Karlene spun around and pointed back the way they'd come. "There! Look!"

In the distance, they could see the willows by the river bending and straightening, first one way and then the other, as though they were being brushed by a giant, invisible hand.

"That's as far as they'll come. We're only a day's walk away and that cart's hardly moving!" She Sang a brief, explosive grat.i.tude, then let her head fall against the warm, solid, living flesh of the horse. He shoved at her with his nose as a few hot tears-of relief, of exhaustion, of anger, Karlene wasn't sure-squeezed out onto his shoulder.

Vree and Gyhard stared past her a moment longer then, abruptly, both turned away, a silent question hanging between them.

What happens when we catch up?

He stopped suddenly, c.o.c.ked his head, and listened to the silence. He could hear... He could hear... No. Nothing. But just for a moment, he thought...

The cart rolled by him, one laborious inch at a time. He turned as it pa.s.sed until he faced back the way they'd come. In cities and towns and villages, where lives were crammed in close together, he could sense only life. Out where lives were spread across the land, he could sense each one. He sensed a small cl.u.s.ter of lives up ahead and to one side. He brushed over the lives of his companions, each one bending toward him like flames in a breeze. And he touched, like a whisper in the distance, four lives following behind.

The mud made a soft wet sound as he poked his staff into it. This was a road. People traveled on roads. Who was to say that these four lives were not just simple travelers, as he was; simple travelers going home.

But there was something about them, something that made him remember old pain...

"They are demons, Kars! They are not enclosed by the Circle!" The teacher raised the rod again and again. And again. "Sing to these demons and remove yourself from the Circle! Or surrender your voice to the truth!"

He surrendered his voice to the screaming, the only truth that he could find.

"Fa... ther?"

He turned to see Kait staring at him from her new position at the back of the cart, a shadow of concern lying over her face. "I'm all right, child," he told her, managing to find a rea.s.suring smile. He let it drop when she lowered her gaze, and he looked past her at the young man by her side.

He remembered staring deeply into those incredible, luminous eyes and seeing love stare back. He couldn't see it now, but he would as soon as they were safely home. He knew he would.

"They're out there now, looking for me. They'll find me."

He didn't know who they were but he wasn't going to lose his heart again.

"Why are we going up here? This is a way station..." Otavas swallowed hard. A way station meant soldiers. Young ones or old ones at a station so far from a Great Road-but soldiers. If he could catch their attention. If he could just make one of them see him.

The cart rolled out of the mud onto the slightly higher ground of the way station's yard, and the old man ordered the dead to stop pus.h.i.+ng.

The prince started toward the building and found the old man in his way.

"Wait here, my heart. There are things in this place that we need."

Otavas glanced at Iban and Hestia who were bracing the shafts. "Like what?" he demanded, then he flushed as his stomach growled loudly.

"Like food." The old man smiled indulgently.

An elderly soldier came out of the station house, and peered toward the road.

The three sunbursts on her uniform tunic matched the three on the flag hanging

limply overhead. "Who's there?" she called, one hand on the hilt of her short sword, the other shading her eyes.

"Help me!" She was so close, Otavas could see the corporal's stripe circling the

hem of her kilt. "You've got to help me! Please!" He leaped forward and was dragged back by cold fingers gripping his arms. When he froze, the dead hands lifted away, but he knew they'd be on him again if he moved.

The corporal frowned. "As.h.!.+ Get out here!"

"Corporal?" A chestnut-haired boy, old enough to wear a uniform, young enough for this to be his first posting appeared in the doorway.

"Did you hear anything a minute ago?"

"Ah heard you."

The old soldier sighed. "Did you hear anything besides me?"

"No, Corporal."

"You don't see anything over there by the road?"

For a heartbeat, Otavas was sure the boy saw him.

"No, Corporal."