The Red Country

Sylvia Kelso

Chapter VI 

I had ridden Vestar, and I pushed her hard despite the heat, keeping to the high hot hard going beyond the channels’ edge. We must have traveled a good eight miles, and she was completely blown, before I found what I sought. It was another torjer belt, spiny, shock-headed, misleadingly green tussocks that ran southeast along the arm of an anabranch as far as I could see. And the wind was north.

Sweating and blowing, Vestar waited gratefully in the shade of a low-hanging black-trunked morglin tree. I took out flint and tinder and set to work.

Burning torjer grass is spectacular. It burns hot and hard, with fearful billows of black smoke, while the resin cracks and pops above the fire’s roar, and huge banners of flame flap from the kindled tussock tops. I had lit it on a quarter-mile front, but it spread as it went, and soon the smoke was augmented by circling clouds of prey-birds, morglis, rienglis and morvallin, all alert for game that would be flushed out by the flames. My heart bled for the lydyrs that shot past with a ffft! of terror, blinded by daylight, the tiny grass birds who delayed to the last instant before they shot up into the raptors’ claws, the desert pigeons’ explosive horizontal clap! of wings, the running quail, the lizards, the very grasshoppers who were judged worth a pounce. I tried not to think about the frogs, nestlings, flowers, grass and seeds which could not flee at all. It has to be done, I told myself. Or they’ll all disappear.

The fire blazed, the smoke blew, through and over the screaming, pouncing birds. Nothing else happened. I stared till my eyes ached into the billowing black, aching to see something, to hear something, shaky with fatigue and heat and strain, jerking the bit to subdue Vestar’s nerves as I thought wildly, Come on, rot you, come!

At last I had to move my lookout to stay with the front of the fire. I cantered along the anabranch to a knoll of cracked, stratified, gray and iron-red stone so sharp that the shod Vestar flinched, and from that vantage I stared again.

Still nothing. The smoke had unrolled ahead of the flames, a black distress signal monstrous enough to read in Assharral. Smoldering ashes steamed in the fire’s wake. A whirlwind charged across them to spatter me with ash, kicking coals everywhere, and I thanked the Four there was nothing else close enough to burn. My throat was parched; I was too desperate to yield to despair. You must try again tomorrow, I told myself. It was too sanguine to expect anything so soon. . . .

The beat of hooves was barely distinguishable from the fire. When I spun round he was at the very knoll foot, a sweating foaming saddleless bridleless gray horse passaging under a blue-robed black-turbaned rider who bellowed up at me, “You started that on purpose, you bitch!”

Thankfulness erased the insult. I tumbled off Vestar and dragged her helter-skelter down the knoll after me, crying in a hoarse rag of a voice, “Oh, Zam, thank the Four you’ve com—”

The gray eyes were there, the luminance, the aedric motion. But these eyes were full of a reckless impish laughter forcefully reminiscent of Beryx’s, a laughter that was their owner’s basic response to life. I knew before he pulled down his turban, grinned at me, and said, “I’m glad I came too. But actually, I’m Zem.”

The disappointment was too much. Hot, scarlet, disheveled, ash all over me, I stood clutching the mare’s rein and stared up at him, incapable of speech.

His eyes narrowed. Then he sprang down from the mare.

“Princess Sellithar, in a lather and less a waterskin, can’t say a word, wouldn’t do this for mischief, must have wanted to find us rather definitely fast. Have a tot of this.” He thrust a water-bottle into my hand, hot from its sojourn on a shoulderstrap under his robe. “Then you can try to talk. Zam’s over on the Axairan border. Clear to Assharral. I’ll have to do instead.”

I did not bother with the water, I did not bother with speech. I thought it at him, in such a frenzy of haste that it tumbled out in one scalding mental flood.

When it was done, I stood dazedly, too drained to move or speak. All I could do, hopefully as a foundered watch-dog, was stare.

His brows had leveled, his face set; but in his eyes, absently, distantly, the imps still danced. After a moment he said with total incongruity, “Oh, dear. Tck, tck. Oh, dear-oh-dear.”

I could not help myself. I collapsed. When the hiccups began, he glanced at me and grinned anew.

“Better than swearing, which this is already past. Come on. That mare’s in dire need of watering. So is mine.” He glanced at the fire. “That can burn itself out.” For all his flippancy, he could not have told me more clearly how serious he judged my news.

We found water back in a pool along the Kemreswash. When all four of us had been moisturized, he sat me down in a huge old hisgal tree’s shade and said, “Now. . . .”

His questions were rapid, incisive, astute and plentiful. After the last he stared a long time at the sand. Then he stirred, lifted his head, and gave me that gay, careless smile.

“I’ve told Zam,” he said. “He agrees with me. With you, too. It has to be stopped. But fast.”

I came back, “But how?”

“Reason first,” he said breezily. “Not my strongpoint, but I’m here and Zam’s not. There’s talk about this wall-flattening, luckily. Else I’d be halfway to Eskan Helken myself. But now, I’ll visit your Kastir and try to curl him up with my ‘eloquent tongue.’ ” Screwing up his face, he flicked out the said tongue in such perfect mimicry of a big wyresparyx lizard that I had to collapse in mirth.

“That’s better.” He grinned in sympathy. “I can’t do with tragedy queens, even beautiful ones.” I felt my eyes pop. “Lucky you’re married and I’m virtuous, or I’d try to cut Zam out. No, don’t paw dirt at me.” As if I were an irate Holmyx cow. “When I’m provoked it’s worse.”

“Provoked? What do you—” Then I remembered the rest. “What do you mean, cut Zam out? How do you—have you—” I stopped, feeling my very ears go scarlet. Twins, twin brothers, reading thoughts from birth. If they heard other people’s thoughts, how could they not share their own?

“Zam is nothing to me.” In heat and extremity an echo of that old fury was more than impulse enough. What would he have said, what would he have thought about me? “Oh! How dared he—how dared you—! Oh, you—you—”

His brows snapped down. His laugh was abrasive as rock. “What, you think my brother wasted his time thinking—let alone blabbing—about you?”

“You damn—!” I clawed for traction to rise and caught a handful of pebbles and sand in my fingers, too good a weapon to miss. I hurled it broadside in his face.

Sand and pebbles exploded every which way except back on me. The white flare that scattered them half-blinded me but I caught his lizard-quick roll and lunge before his voice snapped, “Whoa!”

And it was another Command.

“Now don’t start foaming and swearing all over again.” He was still smiling, that impish careless, reckless grin, but now there was a diamond-glitter in the mirth. “Told you, I’m worse when I’m provoked.”

It was doubtless more than easy to read my face. His brows quirked up, and then down. “Ah, princess, I warned you. Don’t tempt me.” The grin flicked. “Temptation’s the one thing I can’t withstand.”

At whatever my face said he laughed outright. “Alas, alas, that I lack the time to wait you out, like Zam. If patience was what I do.” He held both hands up. “So I’ll eat humble pie and release you. As soon as you say you won’t do that again.” The brows rose and fell. The wicked smile gleamed. “It’s too damn hot for any Arts. Let alone Axynbrarve.”

Then he glanced full in my eyes and the glitter momentarily vanished. “And I’ll tell you, once for all, no word-of-an-aedr, but the truth. Zam never said anything about you. To anyone.” For an instant the look was a frown, starkly redoubtable. “How could you think he would?”

His eyes met mine again and held. I had no way to dodge or to resist that air-clear, too percipient gaze.

His mouth relaxed. The amusement revived, a dance like water in the sun. “And you know he wouldn’t. Yes, you do know.” He laughed out loud. “But ah, princess, you boil over so beautifully. If I only had more time!”

The Command undid. He had twitched half sideways in the sand, knit ready as a wild thing for any attack, but he held a hand up. “Truce?”

“Oh, you—”

“You don’t have time to annihilate me either, princess. Remember? Hethria?”

My face must have replied. When I sank back, he got swiftly to his feet and held out a hand to pull me up.

“Wipe your face. Dust your habit.” Wickedly, he primmed his mouth. “And don’t expect me to help with that.”

He was already turning to his horse. Silently fuming, realizing it was true, provocation only made him worse, I went to Vestar. And suddenly recalled the full sense of his plan.

“Wait! How—when—Are you sure you should do this, Kastir’s not silly, what if he—”

“Be easy, there’s no risk in seeing the man, he wouldn’t know an aedr from an elond and couldn’t hurt me if he did. We’re invulnerable, ma’am, don’t you know that?” He was laughing at me again, swaggering with a small boy’s impudent innocence. “You ought to, didn’t you prove it with Zam? Don’t goggle, it’s too much even for your looks. You turn into a beautiful frog. And don’t choke. If I have to beat you on the back, who knows what else might chance?”

I was spluttering helplessly, reduced yet again to idiocy, aware that his foolery hid a grain of truth. He rolled up his eyes.

“No, I shan’t ‘compel’ your Kastir to change his mind. Mind’s Math too, though you may not believe it, and tampering is not yet a Must.”

He considered me, head on one side. “I get this from Fengthira,” he informed me. “Like my Tck, tck. Zam gets nothing but his stubbornness. Now, you should go back first. Too many questions if we ride in together. Don’t want to muddle your beloved’s mind. You saw the fire and decided to come back, before—er—it put smuts on your nose.”

My hand flew to the feature in question, and he laughed aloud. “Imsar Math, why did you have to meet Zam first? I’d have teased you to perdition.” Without offer or request for permission, he tossed me up on my mare. “I’ll be along presently. Now, charge!”

I still have a vivid image of him grinning up at me, his blue robe sharp against the gnarled gray hisgal trunk and the dun tussocks and umber water and his sweaty gray mare. Into that background his untidy brown hair and sunburnt face seemed to merge like all desert creatures’ camouflage, so the brilliant gray eyes stood out more strikingly still. He was a part, but also the essence of Hethria.

Then he pushed Vestar’s shoulder. At the last second it became a quick grip on my knee, and his eyes were deadly serious. “Hethria’s your debtor, Sellithar. And don’t worry. It will be all right.”

* * * * *

He delayed his foray till late afternoon, by which time I was in a perfect dither and wishing fervently that he would not come at all. Surely it would have been wiser simply to sit on the Kemreswash and change Kastir’s mind? This was a superfluous risk, a gamble, half Hethria’s protection cast in jeopardy, Kastir’s reaction was unpredictable but not to be underestimated. . . . Then from the window of our lodging in Penhazad keep I saw him, a solitary figure riding blithely up out of Hethria, a gay, careless carriage that was unmistakable, cantering to the gate as if he owned that as well.

My heart did a somersault. I turned hastily from the window, striving to compose my face, wondering how he would come at us, but somehow in no doubt that he would.

Kastir was tinkering with a cartage schedule—the Gebros blocks would be hauled straight off to the site of the dam—and was pleased by my sudden interest. In truth it was all at random, I scarcely knew what I said. Thankfully, it was he who first looked up at the ring of quick, decisive feet on the outer steps.

“Who is that? But I daresay Ardis will take care of—what?” For his watchdog secretary in the other room had failed to take care of anything. The door opened and had shut before Kastir’s mouth did, and Zem was saying, “Governor Kastir, I hear you mean to colonize Hethria. But you haven’t asked Hethria’s opinion yet.”

Kastir met this sudden invasion with remarkable aplomb. He looked across the table and enquired stolidly, “Who are you?”

Zem was standing in the center of the room. Not at all like an underling, who dares not ask for a chair, nor a lord, whose dignity will suffer if he is not offered one, but lightly, balanced like a fighter poised to spring. His turban was down round his neck. He was grinning slightly, absently, and the gray eyes were vividly alive. Like Moriana, I thought, he relished a fight.

“I? I’m warden of the Hethrian roads,” he said.

“You represent the Sathellin?” Zem shook his head. “The—er—Hethox?”

“No.” Zem’s voice acquired a certain ring. “I represent Hethria.”

Kastir frowned and sat back, abandoning his schedule. “I was not aware that Hethria had a ruler. Or—any form or government.”

“Nor does it, governor.” If Zem still smiled, it did not touch his voice. “What it has is guardians.”

Kastir’s eyes grew expressionless. “I see.”

Zem hooked up a chair with his toe, gave me a quick bow, said, “Your permission, ma’am,” planted himself on the chair and his elbow on the table, and charged.

They were all my former arguments, but they came with force and pungency, the authority of intimate knowledge and a battering ram of figures to drive them home. If reason isn’t his strongpoint, I thought as I listened to the play of this dazzling verbal artillery, I should like to know what is.

“So you see,” he concluded, “not only does Hethria have an opinion, it has a case. You are a disciple of reason, governor. I trust the case gives you reason to cancel this project while the expenses are still low enough to recoup. The longer it runs, the more money you’ll sink. If you go beyond completion, you won’t only miss a return, you’ll sink yourself along with Hethria—and quite likely Estar as well.”

“I see,” Kastir repeated. But his next question was right off the subject. “How did you get in here?”

Zem grinned. “I have my ways.”

Kastir frowned. “Perhaps you know the gate guards. They come from the garrison. But my bodyguard? Not to mention my two receivers, and my secretary. My private secretary, who has orders to admit no one without at least an appointment. How did you. . . .”

With a swirl of blue robe Zem rose and went lightly to the door. It opened to reveal Ardis seated at his desk, pen poised in midair, staring blankly at the opposite wall.

“Your bodyguard,” he said cheerfully, “are doing the same. They’ll go on doing it till I break the Command.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The Command. I’m guardian of Hethria, governor. I’m an aedr as well.”

Kastir surprised us both, I think. His eyes sharpened with interest, and he said, “Come back a moment, please. Sit down.”

Zem’s head cocked. Then he closed the door and strolled back to his chair. “I wouldn’t have gone—” The gaiety held a certain silkiness “—till I had what I came for, governor.”

Kastir ignored this. He was studying Zem as I had seen him study a strange plant or a new butterfly. “An aedr,” he said.

“I see you read your lore. And tend to believe it, too.”

“One is never wise to ignore history,” Kastir was still watching him, “though one may reserve judgment on it. Tell me—can you really read my mind?”

Zem chuckled, cocked his head again and spoke with Kastir’s very intonations. “No harm to ask, foolish to miss such a golden opportunity of conclusive proof or refutation, there may be something in it and if so the case certainly merits further study, I think I shall . . .”

“The stories are true.” Now the laughter danced in his eyes. “True as they are about Hawge.”

“The dragon?” Kastir was moved to open scorn. “There never was such a thing. The experts have proved conclusively that the bones are those of a dinosaur.”

Zem gave a snort of glee. “Try telling Beryx that a dinosaur can spit fire and fly!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He killed it, governor. The aedric way.” The laughter remained, but it had grown bleak, chillingly significant. “With his mind.”

Kastir was silent. Zem nodded.

“Your deductions are right. I do share the powers. I could kill you—if I had to. There are simpler ways, with a man. Yes, I just change your mind. I can do it by Chake, a direct Command. You have a chance to resist that. If I use Fengthir, the hidden compulsion, you’ll never even know.”

The silence deepened. Zem said lightly, “No, perhaps, to change your mind might only have you replaced and would not change Estar’s. I would have to take stronger measures, yes. It might come to killing in the end, certainly, but I’d prefer not. I dislike having to destroy innocent men doing no more than they’re told. I would prefer, governor, to convince you by reason. Then you can convince Estar for us both.”

Though he still smiled, there was steel beneath. “Not a good idea to call for help, governor, even in the least dramatic way. Your zealous minions would only join your—er—two receivers and your private secretary. Nor would I suggest treachery. You could agree to all my demands, then arrange to have me murdered before I leave Penhazad—” A faint leaden tinge entered Kastir’s cheeks “—but I also have the aedric sights. That door behind you leads to your bedroom. The bed has green and yellow hangings, there’s a greenish carpet on the floor. Quarred work, I should say. . . . And I can see behind me too.”

Kastir’s shoulders seemed to slump. Zem said thoughtfully, “And I don’t think I would give my consent, then tell Estar it was extracted under duress, claim it wasn’t binding, and continue with the project. Farsight isn’t affected by distance. Even when you can’t see me, I’ll be watching you.”

Kastir bowed his head. Then he sighed deeply. Then he turned both hands upward on the table and Zem nodded approvingly.

“Very wise. No, you needn’t make a speech. Remember? I can read your thoughts.”

He stood up. His eyes flicked to me, merry, teasing, saying with perilous clearness, I told you so. And Kastir lifted his face and said, “Very well, it is settled. You have my word, whatever value you choose to set on it. However . . .”

He paused. Zem waited.

“Apart from this business of Hethria,” Kastir said, “you see I am interested in all natural facts. You appear to be a most surprising—for want of a better word—fact. Can I not persuade you to stay a little longer, to describe if not to demonstrate your powers?”

Zem’s eyes twinkled. “I’d be happy to assist your enquiries, governor—willingly”—it was slightly stressed—“but I have urgent business in Hethria.”

Kastir nodded. “Very well. Then in token of our agreement, will you at least stay long enough to drink a cup of wine?”

There was a long pause, while they probed each other’s eyes. Then Zem said lightly, “Oh, yes; I’d be glad to delay for that.”

Kastir turned to me. “My dear, since Ardis is—er—occupied, could you tell Ozym?” The major domo, who had been Kastir’s first servant in Everran. “And might I ask you then to go down and just take a look at the second shift’s foreman? I’m doubtful of his competence, and I would value your views. It need only take a moment, you’ll be back in time to farewell our guest.”

Though astonished, I was so thankful for a pretext to escape I never thought it odd he should speak as if the work would go on. I could see Zem later, less riskily, and I was in dread that if I stayed longer my face would betray something, fear, elation, the merest nuance showing our acquaintance. Kastir’s time in Estar had taught him to read facial language like a written page.

“Of course,” I said.

Zem opened the door for me, bowing as I passed, which let him send me a mischievous upward glance as he remarked, “Not only beautiful but intelligent. Governor, I envy you.” So I had to choke down laughter and literally run away.

* * * * *

Having found Ozym, I went out to the wall. Now I knew this would soon be stopped it was quite easy to assess the foreman impartially, and I took my time, expecting that any moment Zem would emerge from Penhazad’s gate, a little nervous that he might recklessly ride over to tease me in earshot of the workmen. But he did not appear. The sun was low, the shift would soon be over, and still he had not come. At last I walked back toward the town.

The uproar inside was sharp as an explosion, clashes, crashes, yells, thuds, screams of human terror and of a horse crazy with fear and rage. The gate leaves, half-shut for evening, flew violently open under some impact and the missile came tumbling to my feet, a guard with blood all over his gray Estarian uniform and nothing left of his face. Another pair reeled after him and something burst between them like a hurtling boulder that became a horse’s chest and was gone on a flash of mad white eyes and foamy jaws and bloodied teeth as it flared away into the desert fast as a flung javelin. A gray horse, unsaddled, unbridled. And riderless.

Perception, deduction, reaction burst in me swift and devastatingly as the noise. I must have hurdled half a dozen casualties in the gatehouse passage but my mind retains only a blur of white or bloody faces and nothing at all of the street, the keep gate, the two flights of steps, the inner door that my shove sent crashing back into the wall.

Kastir was backed against the window, looking bewildered, shocked, appalled. On the table stood a wine jug and two cups, one full. The third had rolled across the floor, tracing a crimson ellipse of wine. Zem lay within its arc, face down, twisted half sideways, elbows out and hands under his face, utterly, terribly still.

I think I screamed at Kastir as I ran. “You’ve killed him!” probably. I skidded to my knees, tore a wrist free, groped for the pulse, it was not there, I doubt I could have found it if it were, but my perception needed no proof, any more than my conclusions needed reasoning. I came off the floor and I do know what I screamed that time.

“You filthy treacherous murderer, you poisoned him, you poisoned him with the wine!”

“The wine, I—no, I assure you, it was—I cannot believe this—how can it—” If Kastir was acting it was the most convincing performance imaginable. “Good heavens, this is frightful. Sellithar, I swear I never—how could you think—”

Ozym came through the open door. He was a thin, efficient, taciturn creature so colorless as to be almost invisible. He glanced indifferently at the scene, then addressed Kastir.

“You asked me to say to you, sir, ‘The wine is drunk.’ ”

He went out softly, closing the door. Dumbstruck, I saw life wake in Kastir’s eyes.

He shook his head a little. Then he saw Zem. Slowly, very slowly, with the utmost satisfaction, he smiled.

“I told you, my dear,” he said, “that my plans for Hethria would go ahead.”

My blood turned, vein by vein, to ice.

“I think you remarked that my plans allowed for every contingency you could think of. Actually, there were a couple you missed.” His satisfaction deepened. “You see, even among the Sathellin, I have my spies. Distasteful, but invaluable. They warned me of the ‘warden.’ ” As he looked back to Zem’s body he was openly gloating. “So I prepared for that contingency too. I doubted the existence of aedryx, but the wise man allows for the improbable. I read my ‘lore,’ as he noticed. And I spent much time, as much as on my costings, to devise a foil for a creature with such extensive powers.” His look grew almost regretful. “It’s a pity the remedy had to be so drastic, but he himself made it clear that nothing less would do.”

He turned back to me. “Of course you want to know the method?” He was positively pluming himself. “Ozym was my assistant, and a most efficient one. If anything like the—er—immobilization of my guards occurred, he was to prepare a cup of poisoned wine. We chose aspnor root, it’s claimed to be relatively painless. Accurately so. If you told him to bring wine, rather than my summoning him as usual, he was to bring the poisoned cup for the guest.”

He chuckled. “The neatest part, I feel, was the counter for that disconcerting telepathy. Had I known the plan, he would have read it in my mind. So I had myself hypnotized. I erased all thought of the plan, knowing only that if I were bested, I must give him wine before he left. And Ozym had the password to wake me afterward. The final precaution, my dear, was to remove you from the scene. There was no telling what such a creature might do in his final spasms. I was ready to risk myself, but I would not hazard you.”

My stomach turned clean over. I actually clapped a hand to my mouth. He had wanted to protect me. He.

The spasm passed with the speed of thought; the grief’s agony followed it, the shock boiled away, the overpowering fury for revenge was under control. I’ll stab him, I thought coldly. Here and now. Just let me come at a guard, a dagger will do. . . . A couple more minutes, a pretext to summon them, a little more deceit—as I looked down at Zem my throat locked, my eyes went blind. He had been so merry, so gallant, so teasingly charming, so sure of his strength. And he had died so vilely, by treachery, by poison—a new thought touched me like a red-hot iron. What was I to say to Zam?

That nearly undid me altogether. It must have shown, for Kastir stopped smiling and came hastily to take my arm. “My dear, forgive me, you should not have seen this, I know your sensitivity. . . .”

My flesh crept as if he were a poison spider; I never fought such a battle as to refrain from tearing free, or flying at him with nails and teeth.

“It’s not a pretty sight,” I said. My voice’s shake would be put down to sensitivity. “Kastir, how could you do such a filthy thing? To poison someone by treachery, to plan it all, to. . . . It’s despicable, abominable, unpardonable—Kastir, I don’t think I can bear you near me, I—” It was all true, and it was all false, I was using the emotion, thinking coldly through it, Just let me get outside, find a knife. . . .

He frowned. “I told you long ago, Sellithar, there are mistakes no ruler can forgive. He came here alone, putting himself into my power. Naturally, I had to take the chance of a pre-emptive strike.”

“But poison . . . !”

“Your scruples become you. But scruples are not compatible with the exercise of power.” He glanced at me. “I thought of putting the head on a pole outside the gates, as a warning to the Sathellin.” My brain reeled. “But after all, he was not their leader. The midden will do.”

I really did think I would faint. My voice came out jagged, hysterical. “Kastir, the entire civilized world would spit on you! He must be buried or burned or—or something! It’s—you can’t do that! You can’t!”

I had gone too far. He gave me a suddenly wary, piercing stare. “Just what makes you such a partisan of Hethria, my dear?”

“Hethria doesn’t come into it, it’s Everran I’m worried about and us—you.” I babbled it, all of a sudden afraid for myself. “You can’t do such an atrocious thing—not in Everran! It would make us a byword, a—a—”

He shrugged and said coldly, “You’ll allow me to decide this, Sellithar. After all, it will be no more ‘despicable’ than what I’ve already done for Everran. And for you.”

That was too much. My resolution melted, my caution very nearly followed. Pain overwhelmed me. I turned and stumbled from the room.

* * * * *

It was dark when I came round. The lamps were lit in Penhazad, and I was wandering down an alley, one hand trailed against the wall as if I were blind. I stopped. Then, slowly, terribly, memory reassembled. I screamed aloud, and began to pound my fists against the stones.

Feet ran up, voices, a flare of torchlight and bodies surrounded me, someone was saying in relief, “It’s her, here she is, thank the Four, she’s all ri—ma’am? . . . er . . . Princess? . . . Sellithar?”

I knew the voice. Perhaps it was all that saved me in that moment. I lifted my head and Karyx’s dark, raw-boned face caught the torchlight, anxiety deepened to solicitude, near to panic, in his look.

“Thank the Four,” he repeated on a short gasp. “We’ve been scouring the town for you, the governor’s beside himself—” Nausea boiled up in me and he caught my arm. “Here, steady. Drink some of this.”

A soldier’s flask, and not wine but Saeverran barley spirit, searing clear to my stomach pit, liquid fire. When the coughs eased, I knew what I had to do.

Taking Karyx’s eye, I used a childhood sign that said, I need to talk. Now.

He understood. He jerked his shoulder, the troops backed off a little. How fortunate, how grateful, I was thinking, that I got him the military command of Penhazad, for all I had forgotten it. The only man who can give me what I want.

“You know what happened today?” I said.

His face went hard and cold.

“What did they do with the—the—”

“On the midden.” He said it so viciously I knew my grief was shared. “But for you I’d have thrown up my commission this afternoon. I’m sorry to say it of your husband, but the man’s not fit to hang.”

“I know. Karyx, I want to do it properly. Bury, burn, whatever. And now.”

His reaction was soldier-quick. “Not burn, no fuel in Hethria, it shan’t be done here. Those are my own troop. Pick and shovels, I’ll send two, the rest can be pall-bearers, come on. I’ll open the gate.”

The tool-bringers overtook us at the gatehouse. Karyx said curtly, “Open,” and the guard, a squat, solid Gebrian, gave him a look under his brows and obeyed without a word. We went out into the starlit darkness, along the town wall toward the midden, led by the stench.

The most horrible part was straightening Zem’s body, which had set into the twisted attitude of his death. I think Karyx did it in the end. I had not the strength. Then they made a litter of cloaks—“Estarian color,” I heard one man growl, and spit violently—Karyx laid his scarlet officer’s cloak over all, and we stumbled off, blundering on the broken ground, straight out into the darkness where Hethria waited to receive its own.

Karyx chose the place. I waited a long time by the makeshift bier, hearing the scrape and clank of shovels, the thud of picks, the hard breathing and curious absence of curse or grumble at such work, while the wind blew past me, its desert breath overladen with the smell of the dead fire, under the close sharp desert stars. Then Karyx came back, breathing hard and smelling rankly of new sweat, and said very gently, “Are you ready, Sellithar?”

When they had lowered him into the grave there was a pause, and I knew they expected me to speak the eulogy that, as soldiers, they were used to make do for burial service in the field. But I could not assemble words. It was Karyx who finally stepped up beside me and spoke into the silent dark.

“Whoever you were, whatever you were, we shall remember you. We will remember you with hands, not words.”

The men around me gave a deep, savage, assenting growl. Then sand began to patter on fabric, and Karyx put both hands over my ears and pulled me away.

* * * * *

A long time later, he asked quietly, “Who was he, Sellithar?”

We had sat down by then. I looked into the dark, and felt sand grains stick to the palms of my hands. I felt drained, calm and empty, with that paradoxical dryness too much weeping brings.

“His name was Zem,” I said. “He was warden of the roads in northern Hethria. He came to make Kastir stop this—business. Kastir agreed. And then poisoned him.” I found bitterness had survived. “He was an aedr. It didn’t do him much good.”

In the darkness men drew soft, careful breaths. I could feel Karyx’s silence ask another question, to which I did not want to reply. I watched the night and thought, Don’t ask me how I know.

After a while he said, “What will you do now?”

The lights of Penhazad lay on the horizon, a bright constellation behind the burial party’s silhouettes. I looked at them a while. Then I said, “I’ll ask you one more favor. Can you lend me a dagger—or a knife?”

He shook me by the elbows. We must have stood up again.

“Listen to me—listen, curse you! Yes, I know he deserves it, I know you want to, I’d have done it myself before I threw six hundred cavalry across Kemreswash, you’re probably the only one who can get close enough, this was your—listen! It won’t stop this. Believe me, Sellithar. I’ve talked to the engineers, the construction men. This is so big all Estar’s involved—contracts, labor, money, people’s opinion, experts’ theories. Guild-masterships. Assembly-places. They’ve all put in more than they can afford to lose. It’s useless to stop Kastir. He—Zem—wanted to save Hethria, and you won’t do that by taking out one petty officer. You have to see the phalanx off. Go in there now like a Lyngthiran berserker and we—Hethria—have lost the three of you for nothing. Do you want to win this war or not?”

After an endless moment I said, “Yes.”

He drew a long, long breath. “Then I’ll ask again. What will you do now?”

I countered with another question. “Who is ‘we’?”

Karyx hesitated, then gave a wry little laugh. “That begins with you.”

“What?”

“Without you, I wouldn’t have this post. The Lyngthirans would have gutted Stiriand. This army’d be Estarian from sweeper to general and we’d be out to beg our bread.” The burial party growled again. “We don’t know what you had in mind when you—ah—married that. But we’re standing to, Sellithar.”

It was a moment or two before I could speak. When I might have done so, I was thinking. And remembering, with painful accuracy, things Zem and Kastir had said.

“There’s one thing I didn’t tell you,” I said, “about Zem. He had a twin brother. Another aedr. And Kastir doesn’t know.”

Someone whistled in the dark. Someone else strangled a gleeful yell. It was unrolling before me now, clear and simple, plain as an open road.

“If this is a war,” I said, “I won’t fight it behind the enemy lines. And I couldn’t bear to see that—that—thing—again. Karyx, I don’t want a dagger, I want a horse. I’m going into Hethria.”

“Good,” said Karyx. “So are we.”

© 2008 Sylvia Kelso

First published by FiveStar Books

http://members.iinet.net.au/~sakelso

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