Medicine for the Dead Page 15

  Elim thought about that.

  Be patient in adversity, the Verses said.

  Bite the bullet, the reverend translated.

  But what about the adversities other people had because of you? What if they were already chewing six rounds before you even realized what you’d done? And what if you’d been sucking up kindnesses from the bereaved for two days now, without ever once appreciating what he’d suffered on your account?

  “In any case,” Hawkeye said, “we should see to the horse while we have the light on our side.”

  Elim was about to reply that it was a little late for that – and was amazed to look up and see that yes, there was a break in the clouds. The moon was rising. “Sure,” he said. “Make hay while the sun shines, and all that. I just gotta do one thing first.”

  And as he shifted back over to his scant pile of belongings, Elim felt the floodwaters of panic receding again. He couldn’t give Do-Lay back his life. He couldn’t repay Way-Say for all his unfathomable compassion – not if he had a hundred years and a thousand dollars. He couldn’t even shake the lingering fear that maybe he’d been going around wrongheaded before he ever followed Sil to Sixes... that maybe his sinning started long before he ever picked up the gun. But he could live with that fear, and maybe – finally – start putting it to some useful work.

  IT WAS JUST as well. Or at least, that was what Vuchak had to tell himself. Dressing the deer would have taken so long, and the blood smell would have made a beacon of their camp. As it was, by the time he walked back to camp, gathered their food, hiked out again, and set the fire, most of the day was already gone.

  A generous rabbit volunteered to add itself to the meal, though, and the overcast afternoon breeze was endlessly fine. Vuchak pleased himself by working open the rabbit’s skull while the water boiled for tea. If he were anyone else’s atodak, he would have had to offer the brain to his marka. Luckily for him, Weisei had never cared for it.

  By the time he had made the tea, cooked the meal, prepared the half-man’s slop, and smothered the fire, it was almost dark. Arms weighted with pots and kettle and tripod, he did his best to step lightly, leaving the ground with very little to say about him, should anyone come looking. He would not be caught again.

  When he returned to camp, the horse had been collected and tied to the far side of the wagon. The tent-cloth was still stretched from the nearer side to the ground, and Weisei had not emerged. Hakai was sitting down and smoking. “I told you to make him do that,” Vuchak said, with a sharp nod at the insensible half on the ground.

  “Yes, sir,” Hakai said. “I’ll have him put up the pen. But I thought it would be best if we made sure of the horse before dark... and if you were back before I woke the half.”

  Vuchak liked to hear himself invoked as a protector, a bulwark against uncertainty and barbarism. He did not like having to wonder whether Hakai only did it to bribe his ego. There was something disagreeable about him, and Vuchak did not have the time or energy to think about where it came from.

  So he set the half-man’s slop pot on the ground, and put the tripod away in the wagon. “Will you eat?” he said, half-heartedly lifting the boiling-sack in Hakai’s direction. Because disagreeable or not, a slave was a slave, and a civilized man did not gratify himself without first showing consideration for his inferiors.

  Hakai dipped his head. “Thank you; I will wait.” The standard, sensible answer.

  Vuchak grunted. “Put him to work after he eats, then.” And with the formalities concluded, Vuchak kicked the half awake on his way past, and brought tea and breakfast to the opening of the tent. He set them down and reached inside the opening to pat at Weisei’s foot. “Ohei – sit up and eat with me.”

  “I don’t want any,” Weisei muttered from within.

  “Yes, you do,” Vuchak said. “I found prickle poppy for tea – it’ll please your headache.”

  That was enough to prompt stirring noises from inside. “Pour it for me,” Weisei said.

  “Yes, marka,” Vuchak said, and dropped to a squat to obey. “But you should at least sit outside to have it. The sun is gone, and the wind is friendly.”

  “I don’t wish to be seen,” Weisei said. But he consented to push back the leathered hide flap, and to sit at the mouth of the opening, where the air was fresher.

  His face was bleary with sleep, and his eyes were a pained, watery pink. Night had already found him without any silver, darkening his skin and thinning his limbs. Here in this moment, sitting slouched forward with nothing to clothe him but his hair and his breechclout, he looked as slim and miserable as a molting heron. His nose wrinkled at the breeze. “What’s that smell?”

  Vuchak tipped his head forward and to the right, in the half-man’s direction. “Pig meat. I couldn’t tell when it would go bad, so I cooked it all. Now he has enough food for tonight and the morning, and we only have to smell it once.” Ugh – and he was eating it like swine, too. It took Vuchak a long, voyeuristic moment to tear himself away from the sight of the half’s gluttony, and remember to pour the tea.

  “Thank you,” Weisei said as he accepted the cup. “Have you asked Dulei if he wants any?”

  Vuchak had forgotten all about it. “No,” he said, forcing himself to close the boiling-sack again, and to bury the complaints from his heavy feet and empty stomach. “I’ll just see if he wants to join us for breakfast.”

  He would, of course. Vuchak decided that much for him: Dulei needed company and conversation to stay well. “Oh, don’t sit there by yourself, marka,” he admonished. “We’ve got the whole night to ourselves, and we can’t play lucky-bones with only two people.” Still, he pushed the coffin downwind of the tent as he said it, and stopped at the outer edge of companionable speaking distance. Dulei was already four days separated from the living world, and he was beginning to realize it. “Now, here is a squash-bean stomach with rabbit. Would you eat with us?”

  It was not hard to imagine the answer. I know how you cook, Vuchak, Dulei would have said. You’ll have left the beans hard, turned the squash to mush, and eaten the best of the rabbit already. I’ll do for myself, thanks.

  “Very well, then,” Vuchak said, “but I’ll leave the tea here in case you want any later.” And through the whole exchange, he was careful to think only amiable thoughts – to be not only pleasant in his words, but loving in his heart. Such small, essential acts of kindness made food for the living, and medicine for the dead.

  “Well, that’s more for the two of us,” he said as he returned to Weisei’s side. His stomach echoed the sentiment with a loud gurgle.

  Weisei smiled at this accidental honesty. “I’ll have mine a little later. Please your appetite, Vichi, or nobody will be able to talk over him.”

  “Thank you, marka.” And having thus done his duty for the living, the dead, and Hakai, Vuchak lost no time in dropping down to a seat, pulling the wooden spoon from the bag, and helping himself to its savory, still-warm contents.

  The beans were a bit hard, actually.

  But there were plenty of them, and Vuchak got to enjoy every bite with no more distraction than the noise of the horse, the smell of the box, and the soft, intermittent nonsense that passed between Hakai and the half. Across from him, Weisei paused between sips to hold the warm copper cup to his forehead.

  By the time Vuchak replaced the spoon, the world was a calm and sensible place.

  “It’s better now, isn’t it?” Weisei said, reading his thoughts like a Set-Seti prince.

  Vuchak nodded, and stared down at the half-empty bag. “Can I tell you something, marka?”

  “What?”

  Vuchak glanced up at Weisei’s tired, sore-eyed face. “I am a really shitty cook.”

  Weisei nearly spit out his tea. His laughter escaped as a spluttering wet snort, punctuated by a hasty setting-down of his cup. “Said the mother fly to her children!” he replied in kind with a hasty wipe of his mouth – because Marín was a language made for swearing and low humor. And
then, in ei’Krah again: “This travelling-life really is vile, isn’t it?”

  “Tie it fast!” Vuchak swore. “The dirt gets in everything –”

  “– and the ground wakes you up with a wretched back-ache –” Weisei added.

  “– and the mosquitoes get roaring drunk on your blood –”

  “– and every time you squat to pay a debt, it takes half an hour to dig the hole!” Weisei picked up his cup and tossed back the last of the tea.

  Then he sighed. “You know, Vichi,” he said, “I am sorry for what my mouth said to you earlier. He was rude and ungrateful.”

  Vuchak looked down at the bag again. “No, you were correct in what you said,” he told its congealing contents. “It was – I was pleased to defer to your leadership.”

  “... You don’t mean that,” Weisei said.

  “I do!” Vuchak looked up in immediate protest. “It’s...” How could he convey it? Things were backwards between them so often – like a clever slave speaking on behalf of an incompetent master, or an adult child leading a senile parent. To return to his natural, proper role – even for a moment – was almost unbearably satisfying.

  “Well, you don’t make it seem that way,” Weisei said, frowning at his knees. “Or maybe I’m only listening when you tell me that what I want is wrong.”

  That’s because what you want usually IS wrong. Vuchak would not say it, but he couldn’t keep from thinking it. In his mind, he re-drew the holy shapes in the sand, and tried to find that peace again. “I’m sorry, marka,” he said, and meant it. “I shouldn’t frustrate you. It’s just... it is hard to know when you want me to make the decisions.”

  Well, hard out here, anyway. Easy enough in Island Town, where Weisei could play the spendthrift clown, and none of his proclamations had any weight or consequence. There, he and Vuchak both served at the pleasure of Huitsak, in whose fist they were as weak and equal as a pair of fledgling birds. There, it was easy for Weisei to carry on as if he and Vuchak were both still children – as if everything they did was merely practice, preparation for the moment when they would assume real responsibility.

  That moment had long since come and gone. Only one of them had risen to meet it.

  Weisei threaded his hands behind his head, locking his elbows between his updrawn knees, and stared at the ground. “If I could decide that, I wouldn’t need your help in deciding anything else.”

  “You don’t, though,” Vuchak said, but carefully: he was already walking a steep slope. “You make very good decisions, when you think through them first. You have generosity, and reason, and selflessness –”

  “Was Afvik selfless?” Weisei’s voice was quiet, almost swallowed by the evening air. He did not look up.

  So that was it. Vuchak already knew that Weisei’s interest in Halfwick had been born of infatuation, even if it – he – hadn’t lived long enough to turn to lust. The pretty foreign boy would probably still be alive, if it weren’t for his clever mouth and hairless face and fatally fine smile. But Weisei couldn’t have known that.

  “Faro put the noose around his neck,” Vuchak said, loudly enough for the West Wind to hear. “He dropped the rope over his head, pushed him over the railing, and broke my eye when we tried to help, and none of that is your fault. And besides,” he added, in a much lower tone, “you weren’t wrong to want a friend. It’s... it’s understandable that you would feel lonely sometimes.”

  That was it, really. In Island Town, it was easy to feel contempt for Weisei for being an embarrassment – for his irresponsible wastrel ways, and his flagrant appetite for men, and his utter lack of craft or guile.

  Out here, though, thirty miles from the nearest fire, it was easier to take the long view. To remember how much it had cost the a’Krah to aid other, lesser nations in resisting the Eaten. To recite the names of the nineteen sons and seven daughters of Marhuk who had died with their cloaks on, singing to bring new life and hope to others. To imagine how tempting it might be, a generation later, to remain a child – an innocent person who could not be sent to an unwinnable war, nor asked to take an unwanted wife.

  The clouds had parted by then, revealing a heavy yellow moon. “I don’t think you should speak to me about loneliness,” Weisei said, as if telling a hard truth to his feet.

  Vuchak’s brows furrowed. “Why not?”

  Weisei refused to look up. “Because you don’t know anything about it.”

  Vuchak could not have been more surprised if the bag in his lap had burst into flames – and his anger flared just as quickly. “What don’t I know?” he snapped. “When I am allowed no wife, and can parent no children – when my life is given exclusively to you –”

  “– and yet you have no trouble keeping your penis warm,” Weisei hissed, his voice as soft and sharp as acid, “and he knows no loneliness longer than the time it will take you to get back to Island Town and give Pipat her usual home-coming gift.”

  Vuchak’s breath died on his lips.

  There was that old story – the one about Spring’s daughter, who stepped on a poisoned nettle and died instantly. Now, as then, there was no remedy: the wound was fatal.

  “... Vichi? She is still waiting for you, isn’t she?”

  Vuchak said nothing. No sound he made then would befit a man.

  “Oh, Vichi, I am so sorry – I didn’t know.”

  Of course he didn’t. He couldn’t. Vuchak had said nothing about it... just as Pipat had said nothing to him. She had only continued to roll the mealing-stone back and forth, as deaf to his entreaties as the stone in her hands, crushing him as skillfully as the sunflower seeds underneath.

  Weisei forgot his modesty, and abandoned the opening of the tent. He clambered across the small space to kneel at Vuchak’s left, and embraced him.

  Vuchak could not return it, of course. There were certain things, certain privileges of youth, that had to be surrendered at maturity. But inside this present moment, he was endlessly, irrationally glad that Weisei had surrendered nothing. And he was sorry, too. In another world, Vuchak would have had no shameful thoughts about his marka. In another age, Marhuk still had plenty of children... so many that one who did not wish to marry would not have needed to hide in childhood, nor bear the resentment of a people desperate to wring fresh, holy bloodlines from his flesh. In another life, there would be no shortage of love or lovers.

  Vuchak sighed, letting every other thought escape through his nose, and allowed himself comfort in the feel of Weisei’s slender arms around his shoulders, and his warm forehead at the back of his neck.

  Too warm.

  Vuchak stiffened. He straightened, pushed away, and turned to cup his hands at his marka’s broad cheeks. “Weisei, you’re too hot,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a fever?”

  “Because I don’t!” Weisei said, dropping back to a defensive sit. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t want you to know it. You’d get frightened again, and start seeing diseases everywhere, and make a club of your fear to beat the – to beat Ylem with. Now what’s happened with Pipat? It’s the savash, isn’t it?”

  Vuchak felt queasy, his thoughts festering like a bellyful of bad meat. There was Pipat, yes, and his private horror on realizing that she could, would, and did abandon him as soon as he and Weisei had been declared unwelcome among the Island Town a’Krah... and there was Weisei, who had been insistently sharing nearness with the half-man for days, and was now turning ill... and there was Vuchak himself, whose irrationality was apparently so profound that his own marka could not trust him with the truth. And all of these symptoms flowed from one pestilential spring. The World That Is was deteriorating – atleya was dying – and every small blasphemy was another hammer-blow to the deepening cracks in the order of creation.

  Vuchak pulled at his plaits, anchoring himself in the strong, virtuous pain of a scalp that would not surrender its hair. He hated not being able to wash it. “Yes,” he said, “and I’ll tell you all of it, everything you want to know, if y
ou will only promise to be honest with me. You can’t – I can’t live with less than that.”

  Weisei sighed, and his updrawn knees dropped open to make a cross-ankled butterfly of his legs. “I know. And I will. But you mustn’t misunderstand it, Vichi – you mustn’t misuse it. You are so quick to think the worst of...”

  He said something after that, but Vuchak’s ears had already turned their attention to the other side of the camp, where the half-man’s incomprehensible warbling had taken a familiar ring.

  “– weisei wasízonkl?”

  He wasn’t looking at them – of course not; his ignorant eyes couldn’t see the length of his own arms in the dark – but no, that had definitely been Weisei’s name. And what business did he have with it?

  “Hey!” Vuchak barked. “What’s he saying?”

  Hakai frowned, and pulled his pipe from his mouth. “He is asking about Dulei, sir. He wants to understand his relationship to your reverend selves, for reasons which are not clear to me.”

  Beside Vuchak, Weisei was already scuttling backwards, retreating back to the tent. “Tell him he should have thought to ask before he loaded the gun. And put him to some useful work! Look, the moon’s bright enough that even you two can tell a ripe fish from a witch’s twat. Quit smoking and stalling and put the horse away for the night – and tell that one that if he has any more such questions, I will be the one to answer them.”

  Hakai was not pleased. That was as it should be. “Yes, sir.”

  Curiously, though, the half-man did not seem to need any translation of Vuchak’s anger – or perhaps he hadn’t even heard it. He stared into the dark, hunched over and wild-looking, breathing as hard as if he’d just outrun ten of the still-living infected... or was being assaulted by the spirits of dead ones. Was he only then realizing that Dulei was Weisei’s nephew, and a child of Marhuk? Had he only now understood what he’d done?

  In a well-ordered world, Vuchak would have been glad that the half-man had come that much closer to a true understanding of his actions. In this one, however, his mind swelled with bitter, remorseless satisfaction. I hope you see it now, he thought at the filthy, wide-eyed wretch. I hope you see him in your sleep. I hope you smell him when you eat. I hope you meet him when you die.