Medicine for the Dead Read online

  Fours snorted. “Wanted to come and cadge a mule from your foolish old papá, you mean to say. Well, you’ll have it, but not from me. Come along, miha – let’s go and see what can be done for you.” Día followed his lead as he stood. “You’ll need a proper saddle, for one thing: Topple-Rock’s ferry is a good ten miles, and you never know where Bii’ditsa’s beached his raft. Oh, and take this.”

  Fours stopped to check his colors in the mirror, and absently plucked a garment from the desk-chair. Día stared, uncomprehending, as he thrust a filthy eastern work-shirt into her hands. “Whose is it?”

  Fours bared his teeth, adjusted his spectacles, and smoothed down the fringes of his snowy hair. “Haven’t a clue – Feeds-the-Fire sold it to me this morning. See if you can get that stain out, and I’m sure someone will want it.”

  Día held it by the shoulders, impressed less by the bile-colored stain down the front than by the remarkable size of whatever man had worn it... and began to think she had seen it before. “Yes, papá. And what about that big brown mare that Wi-Chuck brought you? Couldn’t I –”

  “Absolutely not!” Fours did not entertain the notion for even a second, but headed straight for the door. “That one belonged to Halfwick’s man. She’s got a dreadful temper, and I won’t under any circumstances hear of you...”

  Día trailed obediently along behind him, her still-fresh terror at what she was about to do softened by the sound of Fours’ ongoing lecture, and her own sly, budding optimism that her dear doting papá would soon be proven wrong about the horse.

  AND WHAT THE devil was taking so long?

  Sil, long since dressed, shelved the book in irritation and did not bother picking up another. They were useless, all of them: a room full of books, old and very old, singed and weathered and pristine, covering the most random array of subjects imaginable. But not one of them had anything to say about Sixes, or local law, or anything else that might be of practical benefit while he was stuck waiting for that stupid woman.

  Well, perhaps not stupid.

  It was a strange little room. They’d have called it a sacristy, if memory served – a modest space behind the altar, designed to act as a sort of holy supply closet for the church proper. But no salt or bells or holy wafers were anywhere in evidence now. Rather, the whole room was shelved on two sides with books, and on a third with a tray of various little stones, and pieces of animal fur too small to be practical for anything, and an antique magniscope, and skeletons of a remarkable number of fishes, and a variety of small native crafts and metal-wrought relics that Sil could not identify – and all of it curated and organized with the most scrupulous care.

  So the architect of such a space could not really be called ‘stupid’ at all.

  As a matter of fact, that more applied to Sil. Not that he was stupid, of course, but certainly he had been irritable. Impatient. Ungrateful. And he couldn’t afford any of it – not anymore. He’d already made an enemy of Fours. Nearly been murdered by smiling, two-faced Faro. And whatever friendship he’d had with the a’Krah was as dead as Dulei Marhuk.

  Which meant that this pedantic, morbid woman was the closest thing he had to a friend now... and on the off chance she wasn’t selling him out at this very moment, he’d better be the very picture of charm, sense, and gratitude by the time she got back.

  So he smartened up his sleeves and his attitude, helped himself to the fruit and cheese he found in her pantry – a crass fairytale sin, yes, but who could be expected keep a civil tongue on an empty stomach? – and neatened himself and her larder afterwards.

  But as he caught a glimpse of himself in a brightly-polished pewter mug, Sil faltered at the sight of that ghastly bruised ring around his neck.

  Not going to be snatching strangers off the street, are we? He’d wanted assurance on that point. It wasn’t every day that one went about commissioning blood sacrifices.

  And Faro had been all too glad to give it to him. You have my fullest confidence, Master Halfwick: my intended substitute will be a willing party to the contract, whose life will do more good in parting from him than it ever did in his possession — a perfect replacement for your unfortunate Elim, and one whom I shan’t engage without his full and freely-given consent. And then, without missing a beat, without anything but that same fathomless, black-eyed smile: What do you say? Shall we make it a deal?

  Bastard. In that moment, Sil would have been hard-pressed to say what disturbed him more: the bruised-necklace testament to stupidity pressed into his neck, or the faint, foreign smell of someone else’s soap lingering on his fingers.

  She must have washed his hair, too.

  The thought died unfinished with the sound of hooves on dirt. Sil waited and listened with his heart in his throat. She’d either brought a horse for him to escape with, or a man to finish him off.

  Well, regardless, he wouldn’t save himself by hiding in the bloody broom closet. With a sharp upward tug of his collar, Sil steeled his nerve and emerged.

  But it was only the woman herself – Día, as she preferred – coming in through the gaping wound in the wall, leading a packed and saddled Molly Boone with her right hand, and holding some kind of garment in her left. A brown dog followed her, wagging.

  Sil could not have been more astonished if she had conjured the Sibyl Herself.

  “Now see here,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ve brought his horse, his shirt, and his dog –”

  “He doesn’t have a dog,” Sil’s mouth interjected, even as his gaze remained fixed on that huge and hugely-improbable horse. Of all the terrific good luck!

  Día did not appreciate the interruption. “Well, I have brought his horse, his shirt, and the dog with a special affinity for it.” And yes, on closer inspection, that was the fouled-up shirt he’d made Elim strip off before that awful turn at the crossroads – and now that Día had stopped, the dog did seem to be mouthing the sleeve with particular relish.

  “Fantastic – really first-rate,” Sil said. “How do I get out of here?”

  Día gently extricated the shirt from the mouth of its curly-tailed connoisseur, and traded it for the neatly-folded horse blanket laid over Molly’s saddle. “Burials are not permitted here on the island,” she said. “And it will not be thought unusual if I am seen leaving town to inter a body.”

  Well, it would be uncomfortable and more than a bit silly, but Sil could think of no better strategy for smuggling himself out of town. “Brilliant. Let’s do it.” He stepped forward to take the blanket.

  “Wait,” she said.

  Sil stopped, already pressed by the sharp edge of impatience. “What’s wrong?”

  Día folded her arms, the blanket draping over them like a coarse woolen shield. “I will take you to Elim, because I know you want to do right by him, and because I believe God returned your life for a reason. But –”

  “But you don’t need to –” he protested.

  “I don’t WANT to,” she snapped, the bridge of her wide nose wrinkling as she all but spat the word. “But I won’t end up like you, Sil Halfwick. I will do the correct thing here at my first opportunity, not my second or fifth. And first I will have your word that you will act in good faith, accepting the help I give you and the penance that has been set out for Elim without any bargaining or duplicity, or else I will return this horse and leave you to whatever help your own wits will grant you.”

  Sil stiffened, standing straight and regal and perfectly, icily composed.

  So that was the game. She was going to play Big Sister – going to make him a charity case, a little boy to be supervised and admonished like some selfish, irresponsible infant.

  Well, then, today was her lucky day. Sil had a spent a short, miserable lifetime playing the bothersome little brother – and he’d be delighted to repay Día’s hospitality with the full five-star act.

  “Certainly,” he said with a smile. “You have my word.”

  AND MUCH TO Día’s surprise, he didn’t protest even once more.
He didn’t begrudge the delay as she retreated to the sacristy to gather her things and dash off a note. Didn’t make a sound as he allowed himself to be rolled up in a foul old scratchy blanket, tied onto a horse’s back-end, and hauled out of town like a sack of cheap beans.

  Still, Día mentally apologized the whole way: she was not much of a rider, and although the saddle was not terribly comfortable, she imagined that Halfwick’s situation was still less so.

  So when Oda-Dini’s farm was far out of sight and Día was absolutely certain they wouldn’t be seen, she lost no time in dismounting, loosing the ties, and helping him down.

  “There,” she said, “I hope that wasn’t too much of an ordeal.”

  But Halfwick was the very picture of pleasantness as he coiled the rope. “Oh, not at all. Marvelous idea you had! Really, I’m so much in your debt. Here, let me mount up first; I’ll take her head for awhile.”

  Well, that was sensible: Día was quite poor on horseback, and Halfwick would know better how this one expected to be handled. “Thank you,” she said as he hefted himself up in the saddle, and then reached up for his help in mounting likewise.

  Halfwick did not take her hand. He walked the horse forward, out of her reach, and touched the brim of his hat with a smile. “Much obliged, as they say. Have a safe trip home, now – I’ll give your good regards to Elim.”

  “Wait!” Día cried, lunging forward – but he had already jolted the horse into a trot. “You gave your word!”

  “I did!” he called back. “And you can frig yourself rotten with it, you filthy scorched whore!”

  She had no chance to reply: in a whirlwind of dust and thundering hooves, Halfwick galloped off to the west, and was soon nothing more than a disappearing black dot on the horizon.

  Which left Día and the dog standing alone, miles from home, under a blistering blue sky. After all her careful weighing and planning and soul-searching, she’d just unleashed a monstrous, hateful child – the Sibyl’s own son – to do as he pleased.

  Filthy scorched whore.

  Día stood there on the empty, windswept plain, fists clenched, eyes burning, as the dry scrub grass began to blacken and smolder beneath her feet.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ATLEYA

  IN THE DREAM, he was running. Running and running. His bare foot ached, his nose and ears hunted for the herd, and all the while the face in the sky watched him: hateful, grieving, with white tears spilling down her night-colored cheeks.

  Elim woke with a start, though he couldn’t have said why. From his cramped place under the wagon, the thin slice of sky said that it was just about dawn.

  So apparently he was meant to live through to morning after all. God only knew why. Those road agents had stolen the animals – had stolen Ax. Which meant it was all finished now. When the little fair-going expedition had set out from Hell’s Acre, they were two men, two grown horses, and twelve yearlings. Now Sil was dead, and every last one of the horses had been lost or sold or stolen. There was nobody left but Elim, struggling to stay sandwiched between the rocks digging into his back and the axle three inches from his face – because lying there cramped and aching was painful, but the thought of getting up again was downright horrifying.

  “Ohei!”

  There was a sharp call from one of the Sundowners, and an answering stab of fear in Elim’s gut.

  They might decide to keep on with the wagon. They might abandon it and carry its contents instead. Regardless, somebody was going to have to shoulder one hell of a load – and Elim would bet a virgin dollar that these brown strangers would waste no time replacing their stolen four-legged mule with the two-legged spare they’d left hiding under the wagon.

  Elim closed his eyes, nauseous at the prospect. He wouldn’t. He’d just lie right here and wouldn’t, that was all.

  It was a solid notion, and Elim held fast to it. He kept at it when Hawkeye called for him, and when he felt a hand reach under to pat at his leg, and when the hand was replaced with a stick’s prodding. He even kept at it when the wagon was rolled away, though he did slip and open his eyes then.

  Standing there above him, an ugly silhouette before the purpling sky, was Bootjack. Some of his hair had come loose from his pigtails, and he didn’t have his silver cuffs anymore. He did still have his spear, though, and a look on his dark square-nosed face like he was just itching to use it.

  “Move up,” he said in thickly-accented Ardish.

  Elim returned his dark-eyed glower. Make me.

  Bootjack leveled the point of the spear at Elim’s throat. “Move UP,” he said again.

  Elim loaded his gaze with forty-caliber indifference, and packed it down with naked contempt. I wish you would.

  Then there was movement, almost too sharp and quick to see, and the side of Elim’s head burst into pain.

  Bootjack drew back the butt-end of his spear, and whatever he said was drowned out by the answering snarl. Elim lunged up and forward, hell-bent on grabbing that oversized stick and beating its owner to within an inch of his worthless part-timing life –

  – and then his knees failed. His legs buckled, screaming at him like a scalded hen, and he stumbled forward into an awkward kneeling crouch.

  By the time he looked up, Bootjack had turned his weapon again, the point hovering not two inches from Elim’s left eye. “Move. Up.”

  His words were undercut by the faint sound of hoofbeats – of somebody coming up at a full gallop.

  “Vuik! Vichi, vuik!”

  Bootjack and Elim both turned at Way-Say’s call. It was still too dark to make out much more than a single black blot moving in from the western horizon. Still, Elim’s eyes were sharp enough to notice that it wasn’t making a beeline for them, but coming in on that side-eyed, roundabout curve that usually meant the horse was doing the driving.

  A familiar whinny split the air. By that time, Elim hardly needed Way-Say’s next excited shout to confirm it: that was Actor all right, returning miraculously free and unescorted.

  Elim sighed in selfish, bottomless relief. He still had one friend out here, then – one ton of hardy horseflesh to save him from being yoked up and loaded down in Ax’s place. He was free.

  But free to do what, exactly?

  To get up on legs too stiff to bend, that was what. To stagger out barefoot into the rocks and the weeds to catch that horse. Halter him. Brush him out. Pick his feet. Get all that harness back on, since surely nobody else here was overly burdened with the want or the will to do it themselves. Hitch him up. Pack his gear. And then, if Elim was good and diligent and got all that licked in a timely manner, he’d be tied and invited to walk a couple dozen miles closer to judgment and death.

  “Move.”

  Elim’s gaze drifted back to the spear-point leveled at his eye. He matched the Sundowner stare for stare, struggling to keep his focus on Bootjack’s face, and his mind on mutiny.

  A man could walk a fair distance with one eye.

  Then again, he could do it altogether more comfortably with two.

  So maybe he’d be kind of stupid to start throwing away his parts for nothing-especially.

  Elim sighed, lowered his head out of easy skewering range, and surrendered. He put one hand to his knee, and reached up with the other to use the wagon’s backboard for leverage.

  Hauling himself up was apparently painful enough for Bootjack’s satisfaction: he turned the spear back upright and jerked his chin at Actor, who had planted his face in a clump of bluestem about twenty yards away. “Make.”

  Elim wiped his face, sick at the thought of walking even that far. “Yeah. Sure thing, chief.” He turned away and helped himself along the side of the wagon, careful to keep from imagining anything bigger than the very next step.

  Catch the horse. All he had to do was catch the horse.

  Halter. Lead rope. Corn feed. Elim licked his lips, and presently mustered enough spit to whistle. Actor raised his head, and looked to be wondering whether the regular rules still
applied out here.

  Elim whistled again. “Come on, you pie-biter,” he called. “Don’t make me come get you.” And even though it was a poor habit to get into, he made a show of tossing out a handful of corn, just to ante up on the deal.

  That was apparently good enough. Actor came barreling in, and all but forcibly thrust his face into the halter. Which was as it should be, because God knew you couldn’t breakfast naked. Elim buckled the crown, and let him put his head down to eat. His free hand slid over Actor’s drying sweaty back until he was all but leaning on him, the urge to put his head down on those warm friendly withers just about more than he could stand.

  Rub down the horse.

  All he had to do was rub down the horse.

  “All right, buddy,” Elim said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  “– AND WE CAN’T make supit without squash, and we can’t make corn mush without the cookpot, and there aren’t any – look at me, Vichi!”

  Vuchak belatedly took his gaze from the half-man. Weisei was shaking out blankets and folding them up, as if to spare them from the sound of his own voice. His holy crow-marks were fading as the sun rose, and he had already put his cloak as far out of sight and memory as possible – in this case, next to Dulei’s coffin in the wagon-bed. He crammed the resulting empty space in his mind with words and more words, packing them in as if he would retain the proper shape of his thoughts by stuffing the missing part with straw. “– and we’re certainly not going to get any more potatoes at this time of year, so unless we take turns cupping our hands and pouring them full with ash-meal and water, I can’t imagine what we’re supposed to cook with now. Here, give me that.”

  Vuchak handed over the worn leather satchel, his thoughts splitting again between the present, useless conversation, and the one that would need to follow it.