Medicine for the Dead Page 12

  There was a blood trail leading away from the carcass, though, and Vuchak knelt to inspect it. That was more promising: the blood was fresh and bright, nearly pink. A good lung shot.

  He bounded up and followed the trail, moderating his pace and his noise by reminding himself that the walk would be that much longer if he startled a still-living animal into running again... and that the sun was already sinking behind the overcast sky. Vuchak did not care to find out what happened to travelers caught out alone after dark.

  And he wouldn’t have to: the trail led him over a stony rolling hill, affording him a perfect view of his prize. The magnificent buck was dead at the bottom, lying on its side, the half-buried arrow saluting the heavens.

  Vuchak skidded down the sharper side of the hill, and finally let his thoughts turn savory again. They would make kohai’Lei while the meat was freshest. They could prepare it tonight, chop the heart and lungs and tear up the best of the fat, so that the stomach was stuffed full and ready to roast by morning. The blood would go with the white meal to make cakes in the meantime, and if they worked well and had the dressing done tonight...

  Vuchak stopped as he reached the body. It was fresh and fine – a good, clean kill. But the blood around the mouth...

  Vuchak set his things aside and looked more closely. It was ordinary for a lung-shot animal to bleed from the nose and mouth. Everyone knew that. But it was odd, with this one, to see the wet red stain over its whole muzzle, smeared almost halfway to its glassy, skyward-looking eye.

  Something glistened inside its open mouth.

  Vuchak was being foolish, and wasting daylight. He knelt down anyway. One hand peeled back the warm, pliant lip, distorting the deer’s vacant expression into a postmortem snarl.

  Its foreteeth gleamed red, their crevices clotted with strings of half-chewed flesh.

  Vuchak jerked his hand away and scrubbed it with dirt until it was clean and stinging. Then he sprang back up to his feet – even though it was dead, even though it couldn’t hurt him – and followed the blood trail with his eyes. Back across the dry, blighted landscape. Back toward the dry stream. Back to the mesquite bush, and what he had found behind it.

  “Shit!” With one furious kick, Vuchak drove the half-buried arrow the rest of the way through the carcass. It broke with a hollow snap.

  Of course the deer was infected.

  Of course it was corrupt, inedible.

  After all, he was a’Pue – born under no star, possessed of no luck – and anything that might come to him dressed as good fortune would inevitably open its garments to reveal yet another tired, spiteful cheat.

  And now, having sworn at the deer in his second language, Vuchak was left to apologize with his first. “Forgive me, please, what my anger brought you.” With a deep sigh and a glance at the darkening sky, he dropped to a squat and set about scraping up enough earth for at least a ceremonial burial.

  After all, he’d been eager enough to kill the buck. The least he could do was make sure it stayed dead.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I-PART

  FOR HOURS OR days, Shea waited at the bottom of the well.

  There was no time down there, no light to see by. There was only stillness, and the gentle bob of the water, and her weakening grip on the crevice in the rock.

  Voices roused her once. Shea stirred at the drowned sounds from up above, and blearily pulled her head far enough out of the water for her ear-holes to make sense of the words.

  “– and as cold as any stone.”

  That was Día’s voice – and of course it was. The well had begun life as a holy font, and its broken stone lip was still rooted in the narthex of the church. By the faraway sound of her voice, Día was somewhere around the altar.

  “I’m a Northman; I’m always cold!” Shea did not recognize the speaker. “Where’s Elim?”

  Her heart froze at the name.

  “He left late last night. The a’Krah are taking him to their holy city to answer for the death of Dulei Marhuk.”

  Shea swallowed, the gill-plumes behind her head shriveling. Elim. That was what they called Yashu-Diiwa now – the two-colored man, whom she would never believe was anyone but U’ru’s missing boy.

  So he was already gone, then.

  The other one, the Northman, answered back, demanding his clothes. Shea held tight to the carved niche at the surface of the water, looking up at the ragged disc of daylight above.

  And where was Hakai?

  Shea’s webless fingers pressed at the wound under her arm. She’d long since stopped bleeding, but the bullet was still there. She could feel it, a misshapen lead parasite burrowed deep in her lung.

  Hakai had promised he would come back. He’d promised to take it out.

  I think you would need someone with a gift for earthworks to remove it for you. That was what he’d said. It is a great shame that there are so few left in the world.

  That was as good as a promise, wasn’t it? And she’d been faithful in helping him. So why wouldn’t he come back?

  Shea listened in vain to the voices up above. Día was saying something, but her voice was more moderate now – too soft to penetrate the distorting echo of the well.

  She should call out. Día would be angry – of course she would – but she wouldn’t let Shea die. She would... well, she’d...

  ... she’d have to go and get Fours. He was the only one who would even try surgery on a mereau. And why hadn’t he come back himself? To dump her down this well and leave her here – his own sister!

  Shea’s thoughts drifted further apart; her grip on the rock faltered.

  Hakai might have been prevented somehow. He might have been found out and punished, or else made to do more service – maybe even sent away to take the dead Marhuka boy home.

  But if her own sibling hadn’t come back for her... why, there was no second-guessing that. Fours thought she was already dead – or else he’d been caught.

  Nobody was coming back for her.

  “Help!” Shea called. It emerged as a waterlogged whisper.

  She started to draw another breath, and winced at the lightning-sharp pain in her chest. “Help!” she tried again – a feeble croak.

  “– just that I need to fetch Elim back, you see, and –”

  Panic seized her heart; pain crippled her lungs. “Help – help, meyayúda, bii’dats, m’aidez!” She slapped at the stone wall until her pale blue-white hand stung.

  “– and neither you nor I have any business interfering –”

  Día’s voice was tantalizingly close... and for the first time in her long and improbable life, Shea desperately longed for dry land – for solid ground and the warm, dense, effortless strength of a human hand.

  “... ma fille, m’aidez...”

  Her voice failed; she coughed until watery pink mucus dribbled from her mouth, and her naked body shone with agonized sweat. Any other mereau within a hundred yards would have smelled its acrid tang in the water.

  But earth-persons were not like mereaux. Even on the rare occasion that they left their dry kingdom, they had no water-feelings, no émouvre: they were skin-deaf and sweat-mute, and their occasional dampness tasted only of salt.

  Nobody was coming back for her. Nobody even knew she was there.

  The voices above faded, and Shea’s will to resist went with them. She let go of hope, and expectation, and of the little crevice in the wall, and presently let herself sink back down into the airless, blissful dark.

  WHEN SHE WOKE again, her gills were aching. Shea stirred, reluctant to return to the waking world, but there was no ignoring it: she’d been swimming in the same near-stagnant water for hours, and it was getting too thin to breathe.

  So she unfolded herself and kicked upwards, groggy, irritable – and cracked her head on solid rock.

  Merd’œuf!

  Shea clamped her hands to her skull, swearing in three languages as she struggled to get her bearings. Her eyes were useless in the dark, and at fir
st all her water-sense knew was rock – solid and unending, above and below. Which way was up? Where was the surface?

  Claustrophobia squeezed her dormant lungs. There was no current down here, and no trace of daylight either. Shea put a hand to the stone above her and swam forward, meeting no resistance. So she kicked again, harder, faster, suddenly ravenous for light and air.

  There was no sign of either. But as the stone passage narrowed, and then began to curve, Shea realized her mistake: as she slept, she must have drifted into the tunnel that linked the well shaft to the river that parted around Island Town.

  Well, that was easily managed: she’d learned to navigate it back when she’d helped dig the damn thing. Relieved and foolish, Shea swam the rest of the way with ease, until the water became fresher and richer, and the blackness before her lightened to a murky greenish-gray, and finally the tunnel spit her out into the warm, gentle current of the Etascado River.

  The sun was nearly straight overhead, brightening the water to a familiar yellow-green. Her ruined eyes could just make out the soft, rumpled carpet of pearl algae and the darting of little silvery fishkittens – a promise that down here, at least, all was well.

  There was no telling about the upper world, and Shea was not about to surface to find out. Human fishermen and washer-women and their stone-throwing children sprouted like weeds along the river banks here, and the last thing she needed was the attention of strangers.

  The first thing she needed was food.

  Shea hesitated, torn between hunger and fear. She’d been doing well enough to kick off her dress before the blood trail led Faro right to her, but that didn’t mean he’d given up. He worked daylight hours, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t find a way to excuse himself and hunt her down. He was vicious, but that didn’t mean stupid.

  He was vain, though... and it was a terrific pain in the ass to strip off your wig, your ears, your human makeup and clothes and all the rest, and then put it all back on after you’d finished skinny-dipping.

  Shea absently picked off one lone glued-on eyebrow, and began to feel better about things. Yes. Faro was too busy and too lazy and too finicky for any of that. She’d just stay out long enough to have a little bite, and then she wouldn’t feel so ragged and achy. She’d be able to think clearly about how to get the wretched bullet out, and what to do about U’ru’s truant two-colored boy.

  So she let her body go limp, and her skin go yellowish-green, and let the river carry her along – past the crayfish traps and the mossy wreck of the old bridge and the great piles of pottery shards that the Set-Seti always tossed in under the January moon. Past schools of bottom-feeding carpsuckers and spawning red shiner and the occasional torpid blue catfish. She floated peacefully – serene, river-colored, invisible – until a young iridescent shad swam close enough on its way past.

  A lunge, a grab, and a split-second later, she had it in her mouth. Her sharp teeth eviscerated it in one bite; her tongue relished the feel of delicate, scaly meat and the gush of fresh blood. Shad were poor fish by anyone’s standards, but after so many dreary years of bread and beans, this one was succulent, thrashing bliss.

  It was so splendid, in fact, that by the time she noticed the dark shapes looming through the bloody haze in the water, it was already too late.

  Shea froze at the sight, one needle-thin bone still hanging from her half-open mouth.

  Mother Opéra.

  Her gill-plumes retracted in horror. She could still see those long, thin fingers curling around the antique trigger. She could still hear the pop of the pistol, feel the kick in her ribs as she thoughtlessly, stupidly intercepted the bullet meant for Yashu-Diiwa.

  Now the a’Krah were taking him away to some unknown end – and as for Shea, the only real mystery was which of Opéra’s voices would sink their knife in first. Shea’s toe-stumps curled, fighting a useless urge to flee. There was no escaping them now.

  Something wasn’t right, though. That was a queen mereau, all right, her legless long tail sweeping ten-foot arcs in the water, but not Mother Opéra: she wasn’t big enough.

  And schooling all around and behind her, child-sized by comparison, were ten – no, twelve of the Many. A whole cohort of her fellow mereaux. In spite of everything, Shea’s heart ached at the sight of their smooth, supple bodies effortlessly gliding against the current... so beautiful, so nearly identical to her own. What were they doing so far upriver?

  Frightened, perplexed, and astonished beyond words, Shea let the fish-carcass slip from her fingers, and straightened her small, mutilated self into some vaguely more respectable posture.

  One of the twelve swam ahead, its blue-green back and white front mixing their colors. That had to be a voice – what earth-persons might call a herald. Shea squinted at its vague shape, waiting for it to come closer, until finally her nearsighted eyes could make out the pattern of its skin-colors: a starburst. That was a livery Shea hadn’t seen in twenty years. It was the sign of the House of Étoile-a-Sept – or had been, anyway – and the feminine shape swimming up from behind was almost certainly one of her daughters.

  The voice swam forward, its livery darkening – suspicious, aggressive, demanding an equal answer.

  Shea’s own colors faltered; she lifted her hands, though she hadn’t been given leave to speak. How to reply? What would they do, if they knew that her own Mother wanted her dead? She longed to show the clusters of the House of Marsanne, or the spirals of the House of Melisant, but that would be a gross lie.

  And she was so tired of lying.

  Shea let her hands relax, and her colors resolve into the telltale ribbons of the House of Opéra.

  By then, the lady was close enough to make out through the algal haze in the water, and Shea was astonished in spite of herself.

  What do the queens of your nation look like? Osho-Dacha had asked her once. I would very much like to see one.

  Shea had laughed at the time. Mind your wishes, she had said in answer. They are fish from the waist down, salamanders in the face, horned-toads at the crown, and death when they open their mouths.

  That was not true, of course. It was as coarse and silly as describing human beings as the ape-faced offspring of giant fetal pigs. And if Osho-Dacha had lived to see this young lady here, he would have understood at a glance that the only monstrosity was how she had been allowed to leave her Mother’s manse.

  She was big by human standards, yes – easily eight feet long and three hundred pounds – but even the most ignorant eye would not mistake her for an adult. Her delicate out-rounded face and crested forehead were smooth, the fingers of her bony crown lacking even the telltale ridges of maturity, and if the short gill-plumes they guarded hadn’t marked her as a maiden, the colorful silk streamers she’d tied around them certainly did.

  What was this pigtailed princess doing in Opéra’s domain?

  The mereau acting as her voice narrowed its eyes at Shea, clearly unimpressed with her tardy manners. Its hands and arms moved in quick succession, their meaning unmistakable: YOU-PART LUCKY TWO-WAY-SEE MAIDEN-LADY O-N-D-I-N-E BELONG-. Which was as much as to say, You have the honor of an audience with Princess Ondine of –

  But the voice got no further before Ondine herself cut it off with a sweep of her arm. Her long, spindling fingers wove through the water with impatient grace. Why are you broken?

  And what could be said to that?

  Because my tail and toes and finger-webs were cut off, and the wounds burnt to make sure they would never grow back, Shea thought. A literal truth, too gruesome for telling. Because it was decided that I should disguise myself as an earth-person, and live among them. A more sanitary phrasing, though one that would prompt other questions. Shea flexed her fingers, nervous even before this juvenile audience. Because my Mother didn’t want me anymore.

  She was spared the decision by a low, rumbling frrrooooaak. It reverberated through the water as if the earth itself were ripping at the seams – and perhaps it was. Something huge was tr
undling upstream, plowing up the river-bed in a cloud of billowing algae and panicked fish. The Many all parted to make way for the stranger; Princess Ondine stood on no such ceremony, but whipped about so quickly that she nearly knocked her voice senseless, and darted down to meet the newcomer.

  The voice glowered at Shea as the two of them righted themselves, and bared its teeth in contempt. You have the honor of an audience with Prince Jeté of the House of Losange, it said, and paused for an unmistakable downward-pointing gesture. Show your gratitude.

  Go shit in your sister’s eggs, Shea thought. Thank you, her hands said.

  So the House of Étoile-a-Sept was now the House of Losange. That might have happened yesterday, or ten years ago.

  And floating before her, living proof of just how out-of-touch Shea had been, was this other mereau, this voice. The two of them were nearly the same size, and of such similar build that a human eye might have had trouble telling them apart, if Shea weren’t so obviously altered. But the voice was young – young enough to catch her easily. And Shea was old – old enough to know when she was outmatched.

  So she meekly parted the water with outstretched arms and swam down to the billowing green fog below.

  And your princes, Osho-Dacha had said later. Are they really man-sized frogs?

  Where did you hear such lies? Shea had scoffed in reply. They are twice as long as any man, and four times his weight.

  In this case, that was a vast understatement. The prince was hard to see through the murky clouds, but Shea’s water-sense told her what her eyes couldn’t: he was huge, leviathan, his back heaped and rounded like the giant sea-turtle in the story, whose shell had been crusted over with a sprawling coral city. This Jeté had to be positively ancient – a grandfather, and an irresponsibly fed one at that. Ondine floated before him, a slender slip of a girl by comparison, and although Shea couldn’t see well enough to tell what she was saying, the movements of her excitable hands were enough to halt his earth-churning crawl, and to give the riverbed time to settle again.