Medicine for the Dead Read online

  Actor answered with uninterrupted grazing and an impatient flick of the tail: as polite a reply as anyone could expect. Elim patted his way up the horse’s left side, as much to get a feel for his harness as to settle him. He belonged to the Halfwick family, but his driving getup was somebody else’s doing.

  “Hey,” he said to Hawkeye as he unbuckled Actor’s britching, “do you know how he wants them kept for the night? This one here’s good for picket-roping, or hobbles if you brought any, but I don’t know what that mule’s trained for.” He was careful to avoid using Bootjack’s name, having already forgotten whatever heathen honorific was supposed to be put before it.

  Hawkeye glanced at the mule, who was fully occupied with mowing down scrubby patches of bluestem. “I don’t,” he said, “but I’ll ask. There’s feed for them here on the bench if you want it.” And he went to go solicit the wishes of Elim’s peculiar new bosses.

  And that was handy for both of them. The blindfolded Sundowner was peculiar, all right, but that was fine: Elim would be glad to keep the horses happy, just as long as Hawkeye could do likewise for the humans.

  So Elim set to work, soaking in all of what he knew best: the intricate knots and buckles, the wet warm stink of pads and saddles pulled off of sweat-slicked shiny backs, and the comfort that came naturally whenever his world shrunk down to the size of an animal and its earthly pleasures. By the time he finished with Actor and turned to the mule, he was almost right again.

  “Hey, little sister,” he said, by way of introduction. “You ’bout ready to take off that pinafore? Reckon I could help you with that?”

  She didn’t interrupt her supper to answer him, which he would take as an unqualified ‘yes’. Elim worked carefully, taking care to give his eyes, hands, and brains an equal shot at remembering the particular combination of ties and knots they’d need to pack her up again tomorrow. “These are some fancy skirts you got yourself in,” he said, squinting in the fading light. “That cuz you’re a fancy lady?”

  Well, she was a fine thing for sure, with broad withers, a long clean neck, and a considerable helping of quarterhorse in her ample behind – all of which proved perfectly amenable to his handling. But when he leaned to her shoulder, all he got was one long brown ear turned his direction, as if she were waiting to hear a good reason why she ought to move over.

  Well, that was probably about right. “All right, little sister. Just try and be lady-like for my fella over there – he’s not as fancy as you are.” Not that he was counting on her to hold to that. He’d just scatter her supper a little more widely, so that Ax would have a chance at finishing his before she ran him off it. He was used to sucking hind-tit anyway.

  “Hey Ax,” Elim said to the horse rolling in the packed reddish earth beyond the wagon. “Try and get some extra dirt in there for me, will you? Make sure you get yourself nice and crusty, now. If I don’t gotta spend at least half an hour brushing you out tomorrow, I’m gonna take it personal.” A couple of good-sized handfuls of that dried corn of theirs would be plenty for him tonight, and maybe three for Molly, since she was –

  – no, wait. Elim glanced back at the other shape in his periphery.

  That wasn’t Molly. That was the little mule. Of course it was.

  So where was Molly?

  Elim let the feed bag drop back to the wagon bench, suddenly and awfully lost. Everything you have, you will use for this work – that was what the Azahi had said. So they’d taken Sil’s horse and gear, and everything of Elim’s too. So if they hadn’t taken his horse, then most likely it was because...

  “Mister Hawkeye, sir,” he said, before the man had even come close enough to announce his findings. “Did you see the brown mare – my horse, back in town?”

  It was too dark now to make out Hawkeye’s expression, even if he hadn’t been wearing the blindfold. “I don’t believe so,” he said. “But I thought I heard it said that she had been seen wandering loose on the northern side of town.”

  Of course. Right. Because she’d gotten loose from the corral – Elim recollected that much – and then come to see him when he’d been tied between the posts that day, and after that... after that, his world had turned into fishmen and shooting and watching Sil strangle at the end of the noose, and after that... then there wasn’t anything but horror. And he’d been so fixated on that horror, on what was gone and done and lying cold on a slab somewhere...

  “We’re to make a rope corral for them, by the way. We brought the stakes with us, and we can tie it off on one of the wagon wheels. You know how to set the lines, don’t you?”

  And of course it was too late now. Even if these Sundowners forgave him for shooting their boy, even if by some miracle he escaped and ran clear back to Sixes, she would be long gone. Probably she had already been caught and sold. Probably she was already being ridden out of town, her vast brown backside swaying just that saucy little bit as she moseyed along, amiably wondering when the stranger on her back might take her back to her barn.

  “Sir?”

  Elim put a hand to his eyes. He’d shot that Sundowner boy. Picked up his gun for who-knew-what drunken reason and pasted his brains all over the barn’s far wall. And then he’d let Sil get himself killed trying to get him out of it. And now he’d just plumb forgotten about his best and oldest friend. Forgotten about her.

  And somehow that was worse than anything yet.

  “Sure,” he heard himself say. “Sure, I can do that.”

  And he did. He rigged up the corral. Scattered their feed. Watered them, and himself. And when he was done and had permission, he made a mat of his poncho and Actor’s blanket, and finally, finally dropped to the ground and lay there, his every living part fatally exhausted, his will to live rotting inside him.

  Nevermind about escape. Nevermind about whether he could get home or how. The real Elim, the right Elim, was already gone. And the only hope worth having was that soon, somebody sensible would take a second look at the brutal, thoughtless carcass he’d left behind, and put it out of its misery.

  “BE STILL!”

  Vuchak’s head jerked up, his eyes’ first opening showing him three important things.

  It was night.

  He had fallen asleep.

  And there was a gun in his face.

  Vuchak sat still, but his gaze moved quickly. There were three of them. The young man stood over him, leveling a rifle between his eyes. The old man had a blanket drawn around his shoulders, and a pistol trained on Weisei. The white man was loading up three mangy ponies, the staff on his back a gnarled guarantee that he could smash anyone’s skull without the noise and expense of a bullet.

  Vuchak’s attention hunted for his own weapons, and found his spear under the young man’s foot. His shield lay at his side, its front kissing the ground. And his marka was watching him with pleading, helpless eyes.

  Behind him, Hakai sat hunched forward, his hands clasped obediently behind his head. Where was the half?

  “Off them,” the young man said, the rifle’s end gesturing at the thick silver bands around Vuchak’s wrists.

  Vuchak unclasped them, keeping his gaze on the young man’s face. There was something wrong with him. He spoke bad Marín, but not enough yet for Vuchak to place his accent. He had no visible marks. His clothes were expensive, mismatched, as if he were wearing prizes from half a dozen robberies. Eastern pants. Washchaw necklace. A shirt from one of the builder nations – Ohoti Woru, probably. Set-Seti shawl. A’Krah moccasins.

  Vuchak stared at them, his stomach winding tighter. The split tongues, the side-fringes, the upturned cuffs... he strained his vision, suddenly desperate to know. Echep had paid Lavat handsomely to have his daughter crimp little brass cones onto the heel-fringes of his new moccasins – happy acknowledgment of his spendthrift ways, and a joke that was reliably told every time he earned a woman’s attention. They only follow you around because you leave money in your footprints.

  “Off!” the man repeated, and jerked the
rifle to strike Vuchak hard under the chin. His head snapped up with the force of the blow, pain and anger welling out from his eyes.

  He tossed his silver bands far and ahead, closer to where Hakai sat watched by the white man pilfering the mule-baggage. If only the young man would turn to retrieve the jewelry – just long enough for Vuchak to see the heels of his shoes, and learn whether it would be worth his life to try killing him.

  But he only prodded with his rifle at Vuchak’s calf, eager to find more where that came from. “Feet,” he said.

  Vuchak reluctantly unfolded his legs, willing the young man to come close enough to take one more a’Krah moccasin, this one to the face.

  This he did not do. But he did spy the knife sheathed in the side of Vuchak’s boot, and called out to his elder.

  Vuchak could not understand what the old man said in reply, or why the two of them suddenly decided to trade places. The older one moved to keep Vuchak’s attention with his pistol, while the younger one backed up and moved to inspect Weisei – who no longer looked to Vuchak for help, but obediently put his feet out from under his black-feather cloak, and waited for everything to be over.

  There was something telling about the switch, but Vuchak had no chance to dwell on it. Already the young man’s probing hands had discerned Weisei’s ankle-wraps, and felt the artificial hardness underneath them. Already he was ordering the cloth strips untied.

  Vuchak forced himself to look away – to fix his attention back on the old man, and see how he might be taken advantage of. There was no telling what his free hand was hiding in that blanket at his shoulders, though, or why...

  The thought died in place. Understanding came suddenly, with Vuchak’s first full look at the old man’s face.

  The a’Krah had called them Night-Faces, but their self-given name was ‘Pohapi’. They were the children of the Gracious Maiden, who had taught them how to count the stars and please the winds – how to revere the changing sky, and read in it the shape of things to come. Constellations of tiny white spots dotted the old man’s flesh, glowing faintly in the light of the crescent moon: the Maiden’s marks, and proof that he had lived the ways of the Pohapi. He would have given his sweat to help in building the winter lodges, notched his arrows in his wife’s family-pattern, smeared his corn cakes with hot blueberry sauce and beaten songs of praise out of his drum to help hide the cries of a woman in childbirth.

  Vuchak’s gaze drifted down to the blanket that hid the old man’s arm.

  And if he had done all that, there was every chance he had also gone to war when the white settlers came. Fought, surrendered – sick and starving – and knelt in the snow as the soldier’s axe came down. Watched as his right hand was thrown into a pile of nine hundred others and left for the camp dogs to eat.

  The Pohapi had sent riders to Atali’Krah in their last days, pleading for help in resisting the Eaten. They had returned alone.

  Vuchak glanced back to where Weisei was surrendering the bright silver bands around his ankles.

  Things were about to go very, very badly.

  “Wait,” Vuchak said by way of distraction. “Be sure to search him as well,” and he nodded at Hakai without moving his hands. “Take everything you need – we will buy our lives gladly. We will –”

  The old man hissed. Vuchak stopped talking.

  “Bi-kerful.” Hakai spoke up – in Ardish, for some reason. He nodded at the wagon... and as Vuchak belatedly realized, at the half-man lying wide-eyed and still underneath it. “Dón-leddim tuchu.”

  The old man and the white man turned at his words. “Hu?” the white man demanded. They hadn’t seen the half yet.

  Vuchak did not need to understand what was said in order to know that this would be his best chance to rise up and knock the pistol from the old man’s grip – but it was already too late.

  “Yahwah!” The young man’s accusing cry came with a finger pointed at Weisei.

  The Pohapi were not alone in their gifts or their marks. Grandfather Marhuk had taught the a’Krah craft and subtlety, and the art of fashioning silver to hide their lineage, so that they could walk freely in unwelcome places. Now that Vuchak had been deprived of his silver wristbands, a careful eye might have noticed that his skin had darkened to its night-time shade. But Weisei Marhuk was a half-divine son of the god himself... and no eye could now mistake him for anything else.

  Already his thin limbs had grown thinner still. Already his dark skin had darkened further. Without the silver bands that kept him from changing at sunset, Weisei’s vast black eyes and the blue-violet luster in his hair showed themselves for exactly what they were: perfect, natural complements of the crow-feathered cloak at his shoulders, and divine proof of his parentage.

  “You fucking crows!” the young man cried. He kicked Weisei square in the chest and instantly rounded on Vuchak. “Where were you?” he snarled, jamming the rifle’s end to Vuchak’s forehead, demanding his fear. “WHERE WERE YOU?”

  I wasn’t born yet. Vuchak’s first naked, unthinking answer spoke in a small voice. Please don’t shoot me.

  There was little hope of that. Vuchak could see it in the young man’s pinched, doughy face. He probably hadn’t been born yet either, when the Pohapi surrendered and were Eaten. He had probably never seen his homeland. Home for him would have been a poorly-made shelter on worthless rocky soil. He would have grown up eating lard and sugar and that unnatural gray wheat flour, had his hair cut and deloused with less than a sheep’s dignity, spent his days hunched over a slate in some lightless stuffy room as he strove in terrified compliance to speak and write the praises of the Starving God.

  And now it was too late – for everyone, really. The old man could no more restore his people than regrow his lost hand. The young man was a stranger to the Gracious Maiden, his face as soft and blank as a loaf of cheese, and nothing he stole now would ever replace what had been taken from him. Vuchak’s life would only be one more hollow prize.

  Behind them, though, Weisei seemed at last to have reached the bottom of his fear. At the sight of the gun at Vuchak’s forehead, he rose to his feet with feather-silent grace and such a rare, righteous anger in his glittering black eyes that Vuchak knew with certainty that his marka would find a way to end these broken men, even if Vuchak himself didn’t live to see it.

  “Hoah!” the white man cried, pointing under the wagon. “DeigoddaMUIL-hir!”

  Mule. That was the Ardish name for half-men.

  Vuchak had forgotten about him. He must have rolled under the wagon in his sleep or else crawled there for safety after the broken men came. Regardless, all three of them had noticed him now, and his fear was so plain that Vuchak could see the whites of his eyes even from this remove.

  Both of the Pohapi recoiled, but Hakai gave them no time to shoot. He spoke to them in Ardish, too quickly for Vuchak to recognize more than a few words – though ‘Atali’Krah’ and ‘Marhuk’ were unmissable between them. The young man began a fierce reply, but was stopped by a touch from his elder, and then begrudgingly translated the Ardish words.

  Vuchak and Weisei exchanged looks, held in place by a damning mixture of ignorance, hesitation, and the certainty that the white man at least was paying enough attention to call out if either of them made a move. Hakai was clever – Vuchak had learned that much back in Island Town – but he also had a brazen mind of his own, and Vuchak did not know him nearly well enough to guess what he might do.

  There was sharp, whispered disagreement between the Pohapi. The young man protested; the old man held firm. He did not wait for more argument, but holstered his pistol and heaved himself up onto his fly-bitten gray pony. The other two mounted up likewise, the white man leading the little brown mule beside him. And as they turned to ride off into the night, the young man shot Weisei.

  The echoing crack of the gunshot was loud enough to be heard for miles. Weisei’s single backward step made no sound at all. He had his hand over his heart, the feathered folds of the hue’yin bloc
king all view of his front. And as Vuchak’s breath deserted him, his only sensible thought was a prayer that his marka had put his arm up before and not after.

  “Weisei!” He was on his feet in an instant, there in three more – but that was time enough for Weisei to give an experimental shake of the cloak. The bullet fell to the ground.

  That was as it should be. Those were Marhuk’s feathers, after all. But the hue’yin had not been guarding Weisei’s throat or face or the far left side of his body, and it did nothing to shield Vuchak from the sudden, bowel-loosening realization that he had let his prince come within six badly-aimed inches of his own death. “Marka, are you hurt? Did it bruise you?”

  Weisei seemed to see the same thing: his black eyes stared out at the future that had so nearly happened, and his altered face was still with shock. The sound of Vuchak’s voice seemed to rouse him from his after-fear. “No, Vichi, I’m all right. But oh, I was so frightened for you! I thought you would be...”

  He heard the gravelly edge in his voice, then, and looked down at himself. Vuchak inwardly cringed as his marka took in the sight of his darkened arm, and the cloak clinging to it as if they were one flesh. His gaze drifted down to his bare ankles, their stolen silver companions already reduced to the sound of distant, vanishing hoofbeats. And then it was there, unmissable in his eyes: the realization that he was now trapped in his own, natural form.

  “I TOLD you!” Weisei howled, shoving Vuchak backwards with almost enough force to matter. “I TOLD you that you were too tired – that you should let me watch first – and you wouldn’t believe me! You and your stupid hateful pride, always trying to be better than everyone else! Well, you aren’t: you’re just meaner and more stubborn, that’s all, and I don’t – and I’m tired of looking at you!”

  In that moment, the only fact outside Vuchak’s vast and swelling shame was the realization that the half-man and Hakai could hear every bit of it. “I’m sorry, marka,” Vuchak began, his lowered voice hoping to lead by example. “I shouldn’t have –”