Medicine for the Dead Read online

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HOOVES AND FEET

  IN ANY CASE, there was only one thing to do. Día had no provisions, no water – and as she realized with a fresh pang of dread, no parasol.

  She’d folded it up and stowed it in the horse’s saddle scabbard... the very same horse that was already a disappearing dot on the horizon.

  And now there was nothing to intercede between her head and the sun.

  Her father had called it kiiswala – God through heat. He said that that was how her mother had been caught. That she did not even hear the hunters’ dogs, busy as she was following angels only she could see.

  He did not say whether or how it could be treated... and by the time Día was old enough to discover that she was indeed her mother’s daughter, he was no longer there to ask.

  The stink of burning grass roused her out of her thoughts. Día hurriedly backed up a step, leaving a pair of guilty, smoking footprints in the dry scrub.

  From her mother, she had inherited kiiswala, the strange holy heat-sickness that intoxicated her mind and drowned her reason. But from her father, from the sigil of order and faith and discipline that he’d stamped into the hot wax of her childhood, she had earned her identity – her connection to numberless ancestors and thousand-year traditions before her. Día stared at the smoldering proof of her lineage until she was sure it wouldn’t catch.

  Generations of slavery, abuse, and upheaval had diminished the gifts of the Eadan-born Afriti. They had been torn from their ancestors, deprived of their lands and languages, and stripped of a history that they were just now beginning to rediscover. It would take generations to reclaim their power. But Día was not only Afriti. She was also a Penitent woman, a grave bride who had devoted her life to the ancient ways set forth by God Himself at the genesis of the world – and it wouldn’t take more than a thought from her heat-weakened mind to set this tinderbox of a desert on fire.

  “I have to go home,” she told the dog. And then, looking up from her scorched footprints to the sun overhead: “Right now.”

  It was still an hour or two shy of its zenith. The real heat of the day was still to come. And she’d ridden perhaps an hour out from Island Town at a trot, just to be sure that even the most far-flung of the farmers would not see the Halfwick boy for what he was. So what was that? Six miles? Eight?

  Día began to divide hooves by feet, and to guess at the variables involved in setting up a pair of distance equations which also factored in heat: the heat of the body, amplified by the speed at which she might run, versus the heat of the day, intensified by the longer time it would take her to walk.

  Then she took another look at the shadeless green-peppered plains before her, and the brilliant blue bowl above her, and started walking.

  A whine split the air.

  When Día turned, the dog was still sitting there in the middle of the road. At her attention, it dropped its jaw into a panting smile and wagged. “I can’t,” she explained. “But you’re very free to follow him, if you think you can catch up.”

  The dog did not follow her westward-pointed finger, but waited cheerfully, expectantly.

  Well, she would be waiting a long time. Día could no longer be responsible for anything more ambitious than getting her own self home again before her mind melted.

  So she untied the cord from her waist, unhooked the clasps of her black cassock, and shrugged it from her shoulders. She would try to remember to put it back on before she reached Oda-Dini’s farm.

  In the meantime, her white linen smock and the golden sun wheel around her neck would have to do for modesty. Día paid no further mind to the whining from behind her. Instead, she folded her cassock over one arm, set her course east, and walked on alone.

  WELL, AT LEAST she’d set him on the right track. Sil could be confident of that much: the road was ribboned with interweaving wheel-ruts, but there was no mistaking the freshness of those droppings. And they’d be going slowly, too, if Día had told him the truth: loaded down with days’ worth of gear and supplies and a corpse besides, there’d be no sustaining anything faster than a walk, and they hadn’t even been at it for twelve hours yet, and Sil was blazing after them at a blistering gallop. He’d have them inside of an hour.

  Except that Molly was apparently having second thoughts about the venture: she slowed again, for the fifth time in as many minutes. It wasn’t that Sil didn’t appreciate the glistening sweat on her brown hide, or the foamy white lather dripping down her neck and sides. But time was of the essence here. They just had to get to Elim, and see him alive with their own eyes – that was the principal thing – and the sooner they could steal him back from those day-sleeping a’Krah, the better their chances of making it back to safety and civilization before nightfall.

  And if Molly felt put-upon now, she’d have plenty to think about when Elim added his weight to Sil’s. “Come on,” Sil said, kicking her as he felt her slacken her pace, and then again as she whipped her head around to nip at his toes. “Do you want to see him again or don’t you? Gee up! Damn you, I said gee up!” Sil turned and slapped her backside... and in doing so, moved his boot just a bit too far behind the saddle.

  She exploded underneath him. Already twisted in the saddle and with one hand aimless, Sil didn’t even last three seconds at the rodeo: he was out of the saddle in one, on the ground in two, and three found him stunned, breathless, and praying to heaven that those huge, deadly hooves weren’t about to smash through his ribcage like a sledge-axe through a bird’s nest.

  But the heaving, bucking half-ton of rage and raw muscle above him had no sooner relieved itself of his weight than shied aside and bolted.

  Well. That could have been worse.

  Sil sat up, astonished to feel no pain, and watched as Molly ran on, surging forward with those violent full-body shrugs, jabbing the sky first with her shoulders and then with her back feet, as if she would fling off her tack and saddle too.

  She was tired, though, and soon settled about fifty yards away, apparently pleased to discover that yes, they still served grass out here.

  Sil would need to proceed very, very carefully. He climbed to his feet.

  She kept her nose in the grass.

  He ambled a little ways away from her.

  She flicked her ears, and paid him no mind.

  He turned when he had a three-quarters view of her rear end.

  Her tail swished.

  “Well,” he said at conversational volume, still a good thirty yards away, “I’ll admit that might have been a bit uncalled-for.” He started walking towards her, talking all the while. “And I believe you’ve made your point exceptionally well. So putting aside the fact that I might be a bit of a bastard, and that you have a brain the size of a grapefruit, I think you’ll find that it would be to our mutual benefit to –”

  At twenty yards, she put her head up and trotted away.

  It was just as well she couldn’t hear what Sil said to her then. He waited, feigning patience – how the dickens did Elim ever do it? – to see where she would settle this time.

  Except this time, she didn’t. She kept right on going, south by southeast, until finally she crested a gently-sloping hill and disappeared.

  It wouldn’t last, of course. Their spooks and fits never did.

  She’d come back, of course. They were herd animals, after all, not liable to go gallivanting off alone.

  But although Sil waited and waited, and waited yet more, she never reappeared.

  By and by, it occurred to him that she wasn’t coming back. So he stood there as the wind blew and the sun climbed, coming to terms with the idea that his horse was gone, and all his provisions with her. He was alone in the desert without a canteen to his name, without anything but his black hat and jacket between himself and a slow, blistering death.

  Eventually, Sil folded his jacket over one arm, set his course west, and walked on alone.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  INFECTED

  BY THE TI
ME Hakai came trudging back with Vuchak’s shield and spear in hand, things were almost right again.

  Almost.

  There was no fixing the fact that Vuchak had finally caught up with the wagon, only to find the horse casually grazing, and Weisei having already untied the half-man, squatting down beside him in the wagon’s dwindling shade, TOUCHING him – ministering to him as tenderly as a mother goat licking its offspring – and all of them carrying on as if this were as ordinary and reasonable as boiling water for breakfast tea.

  Then there was the inevitable argument: Vuchak taking issue with Weisei’s willful exposure to whatever diseases were presently seeping from the half-man’s cuts and earth-burns; Weisei accusing Vuchak of cruelty and paranoid idiocy in forcing him to remain tied in the first place, before ordering Vuchak away to set a fire, and to make the two-colored brute some of his own detestable food.

  A humiliating task, but one that excused Vuchak from pointing out that it was the half-man’s own negligence in dressing the horse that had caused the accident... and Vuchak’s quick thinking and quicker feet which had salvaged it.

  Yaga Chini. Vuchak conjured the name in his mind, and then put a pebble in his mouth to keep it there. In wisdom and mercy, Grandfather Marhuk had opened the way for them to find water, and a path forward... and to salvage Vuchak’s own inexcusable error. He would not forget that. He would not lose his grip on reason, or humility, or gratitude.

  And with his tongue silenced and his hands busied, Vuchak smoothed out his temper as the slave-shaped blot in the distance took its time in growing.

  Well, let it be.

  “Does he hurt when I do this?” Weisei said in Marín.“No? And what if we move him this way? Oh, very good! Do you know ‘good’?”

  “Good,” the half-man repeated in his turkey-gobble accent. He stared stupidly at his wrist as Weisei bent it this way and that. His white parts were dirty enough that they nearly blended in with his brown spots and patches, and his face was a filthy, bewildered mask.

  Weisei looked up, and Vuchak hurriedly put his attention back to the fire. The burning rabbitbrush made an acrid, revolting stink.

  “Now, I know your wound will be angry with you, but we have to clean him so that he doesn’t get infected. I’ll be very gentle. Are you ready? Do you know ‘ready’?”

  “Ready,” the half-man repeated.

  Vuchak looked back over, just to make sure he recognized and could avoid whichever cloth Weisei was using... and was appalled to see him wet down the end of his blindfold, and apply the delicate black cloth to the half-man’s oozing wound.

  Vuchak and the half-man winced in tandem as the cloth made contact with raw, filthy flesh.

  Then Vuchak turned away again, rolling the pebble in his mouth. Weisei was spiting him. That was all. There was no other reason to use his own yuye for such a vile task.

  Well, that was his privilege – but Vuchak would not satisfy him with a reaction. He pulled the tripod from the wagon-bed, and the small moon-pot, and the gray linen sack that the two foreigners had brought with them. The tripod was easily set, and the blue-glazed pot filled with water and hung over the fire. And as for the sack...

  Vuchak had not quite made up his mind about opening it when the shuffling rhythm of tired footsteps in the dirt saved him from decision.

  “Hakai!”

  The half-man flinched at Weisei’s sudden, strident call.

  Weisei apologized with a hasty pat on the knee and then bounded up to his feet. “I’m sorry – we should have come back to find you. Are you hurt?”

  Hakai tipped his head, left and right. “Only my feet, and they haven’t had anything new to say since yesterday.”

  He had a knack for sideways complaint, this Hakai. Still, he flipped the spear to point at his own abdomen, and Vuchak came forward, putting his two hands on either side of Hakai’s one. The blindfolded slave then let go of the magnificent leather-wrapped haft, and thereafter handed over the shield as well.

  “Tie it fast!” Weisei emphatically agreed. “In fact, I was saying exactly as much myself: everyone is tired, and the horse is spent, and the sun is so close. It would be much better to rest here for today, don’t you think?”

  Vuchak, who had already made his opinion clear, said nothing. He brushed the dust from his painted rawhide shield until the yellow water-dancer on its face was clean and bright, and the all-seeing eye could watch for danger with unclouded vision. Then he went to return it to the soft skin bag in which it slept.

  “A fine idea, sir.” Hakai was no fool: if his temporary master was offering him a day’s ease, he would take it two-handed. “It would only cost us half a day – and we’re quite fortunate that we didn’t break an axle, or worse.”

  Yes. Vuchak’s thoughts darkened to the color of snake bile. Very fortunate that some invisible, unnamable force had intervened on their behalf.

  “Well, see Ylem here before you say that – there is our ‘worse’!”

  Vuchak did not turn around. He snatched up the gray sack again, angry enough now to forget his fear of contamination, and dug through its contents. Oats. Peas. Wheat flour. Salted pig-meat. And something wrapped in coarse cloth, dense and heavy like a yucca-cake...

  “Ah, yes. I do see.” Hakai’s voice was oddly diffident. “Will he improve?”

  One whiff had Vuchak recoiling, raisin-faced with disgust. Great-Grandmother’s nether-teeth – was that cheese?

  “Certainly not if we keep using him as we have! Now be sensible, Hakai: don’t you agree that it’s unseemly to keep tying him up like this? Won’t it be shameful if we arrive at Atali’Krah with him looking like something the Starving God spit up?”

  Vuchak threw the cheese back in the bag, sucking the pebble hard enough to smother the words boiling up from his throat. No, of course it was stupid to tie the half. Of course he wouldn’t be violent or untrustworthy. It wasn’t as if anyone here was rotting in a box because of him.

  “Well,” Hakai said, “certainly we would do well to avoid soliciting any further misfortune, especially after last night’s –”

  Vuchak spat, the pebble hitting the dirt like a wet bullet as he whirled around. “After what? After my mistake? Which one? Falling asleep at the watch? Tying the half to keep him from slaughtering anyone else? Failing to personally supervise his every –”

  “Vuchak, be QUIET!”

  Vuchak halted in his tracks, shocked still by Weisei’s use of his given name.

  Hakai stopped backing up.

  And all the while, the half-man sat with his arms pinned between his knees, and cowered.

  “Nobody is talking of you,” Weisei snapped, his high cheeks and low brows drawing closer in irritation. “Nobody is thinking of you. Because none of this is ABOUT you. So if your mouth wants to help us decide the best way to get him –” his uplifted chin pointed at Dulei’s box “– and him –” and then at the half-man “– home to Grandfather as fast and safely as we can, his ideas will be very welcome. Otherwise, you had better pick that pebble up and keep him busy, because nobody here has any time to spend nursing his anxieties.”

  It was not until Vuchak had become fluent in Marín that he was able to fully appreciate his own language. In this exact moment, he was reminded to be grateful that ei’Krah so readily invited one to lay blame at subordinate parts of a person’s body, and to spare the self that operated them.

  He did want to be useful. He wanted things to be done sensibly, correctly. He wanted atleya.

  “Speaking of which,” Hakai ventured, “it occurs to me that this man here has proven to be somewhat... unstable. And that keeping his hands tied leaves him with nothing to do but think unwholesome thoughts. And that we might be better served to keep him busy, as you say – to set him to some kind of work that will occupy him, while still leaving him easily within sight.”

  Vuchak had the answer before Hakai had closed his mouth. “He can lead the horse,” he said. There was a thought: have him in front, where he was easily
watched – let him walk just as much as before, to be sure he had no energy left for escape – and let his own concern for the animal tie him more tightly than ropes. “And he can be responsible for minding it when we stop. But you, Hakai – it then becomes your task to supervise what he does, and to prevent today’s mistake or any of its relatives from finding us again.” Vuchak’s gaze stopped at the half-man, who could not understand a word of what they said, but promptly dropped his attention to the ragged holes in his trouser-knees. “And to tell him that if they do, he will be treated exactly as he was before, with no more thought given to his comfort or preference.” Vuchak looked to Weisei to finish making his case. “Does that agree with you, marka?”

  Weisei squinted in the bright light, searching Vuchak’s face for any hint of vindictiveness or ulterior motive. “... yes,” he said. “Yes, that will do. Hakai, find out whether he has any other injury, and have him help you discover the reason for the accident. Vichi, stop being squeamish and do as I asked. I want to finish his shoes before my eyes remember their debt.”

  There were times – not many, but some – when it was not all that difficult to see what kind of man Weisei Marhuk would be, if he ever stepped forward and asked to be recognized as an adult. In this moment, when he was standing tall and straight, with his shoulders set just-so and his youthful face lined with gravity and strength, it was easy to squint into the bright midday sun and see him with his hair plaited.

  “Yes, marka.” Vuchak offered his wrists and went to finish what he had begun. But as he paused to kick dirt over the pebble, his gaze kept stealing over to Dulei’s coffin. Could the death of one son of Marhuk finally bring maturity to another?

  And if it did, would Vuchak be wrong to call it a good bargain?

  THE HOLDBACK WAS undone.

  Elim stared stupidly at the strap on Actor’s right side.

  The leather hadn’t broken. The buckle hadn’t ripped free. The strap was just hanging there, like the Goodman Thomas of a man who’d finished a drunken piss and neglected to button his fall-fronts.