Blackdog (57 page)

“Boss,” he whispered, “just wait. Um, something you should know.”

“Not now.”

“It's not a common name, Mikki, but you do hear it.”

“So?”

“But, but Moth, he called her. That's not a name at all.”

“I should care?”

“It means, um, ‘inguz.’” He used the desert word. “You know, little drab butterfly, flies around at night.”

“A moth, so what?”

“Flies into flames,” the wizard, if she was that, said back over her shoulder. Damn good hearing. Eavesdropping, too.

Varro's fingers bit her arm and Gaguush jerked away from him. He leaned closer regardless. His moustache tickled her ear, and he'd been drinking too much. They all had, come to Serakallash in one piece and safe as you could be there, behind Mooshka's walls.

“But listen, you think Mikki looks human, even?” His voice lowered to a breath. “And they say—they say Vartu Kingsbane came back—Vartu Kingsbane, you know, who killed Hravnmod the Wise, and killed her own daughter, too—they say she escaped her grave and came back and murdered the queen's lover in Ulvsness itself, oh, six score years since, and the name she wore then was Moedthra. Moth. And she travelled with a demon bear. And Mikki says his father was from Selarskerry, and nobody lives on Selarskerry, the folk of Selarskerry were pirates back so long as history remembers, and godless, and the earls of the Geirlingas cleared the last of them out long ago, a hundred years since. It's just a rock where folk go to hunt seal now.”

“Well, there's a bear in the menagerie at Marakand and when I can mistake it for a gold-haired Northron, you can lock me up with it.” Gaguush pushed Varro off with an elbow. “You're drunk. And Great Gods, Varro, what should I care? Holla's a demon, Pakdhala's that damned lost goddess or else why the hell would that thing be in Holla like a worm and why would anyone but Bikkim bother stealing her—what's another demon and a devil more or less?”

Truth was, she couldn't care. One more bloody word from any of them and she was going to…going to break down and howl her heart out, as she hadn't since she was ‘Dhala's age and all her world was taken from her. And she'd managed to hold it back, then, till she was alone and nothing but a horse and a dog to hear. She pressed fingers to her eyes and swallowed against some stupid gulping trying to rise in her throat.

“You lot!” She whirled back to the gang, what was left of the gang, almost collided with Kapuzeh at her heels. Glowered at them all, clutching spears and sabres and torches like a damned band of raiders:

Zavel battered and bloodstained and probably in need of Judeh's attentions himself, Immerose and Tihmrose hand in hand and the worse for wine, Thekla small and faded and old—Bashra, but they were all getting old, weren't they, and it didn't look tonight like they would live to get much older. Judeh was with poor Bikkim, Tusa—missing, hadn't come back at curfew, off begging hope from diviners—Asmin-Luya and Django gone on her own orders. Mooshka's folk had all disappeared, but there were lamps moving around beyond windows, some stir in his house. His problem, not hers.

“Saddle the damned camels.” Mooshka didn't keep enough horses these days, couldn't afford them or had lost them to Tamghati extortion. Well, the camels weren't rested any more than the gang was, but they'd eat the miles, loaded light. “Anyone that's going after our ‘Dhala, I want armed and mounted and ready to ride by the time I am.”

Say farewell to Bikkim first, though it wasn't likely he'd ever know. For ‘Dhala to save his life and have it come to this, treachery from her own gang. How'd she ever been fool enough to take on that sly, sleek little Nabbani anyhow? A wizard, clear enough, Holla had said it. Holla had known. He should have killed the snake then; he'd wanted to, she'd seen it in his eyes and thought him mad. No, the Blackdog had, not Holla. Holla wasn't a killer. Holla was a man who'd never lost a boy's open-eyed wonder at the world and he should have stayed home farming rather than come to this.

Someone had brought Judeh lamps. Nothing had changed in the island of light they shed. One body, curled and clutching the cracks in the tile floor, as if she'd tried at the end to draw herself away, arrogant, supercilious, I'm-too-grand-to-look-after-mere-camels Shaiveh. A damned Tamghati mercenary, it seemed she was, maybe even one of the
noekar
, the lord's vassals. Zavel had held his own, anyway, and others had come fast enough to finish her. She'd murdered Bikkim, though.

He lay open-eyed and breathing, after a fashion. Blankets piled over him, no matter they soaked in his killer's pooled blood. His throat had been cut, but he hadn't bled out quickly. Missed the arteries, just slashed his windpipe.

The wizard, or devil if she wanted to believe Varro, was kneeling beside him, Judeh beside her, looking sick. A man who called himself a leech, even if it was only to camels, shouldn't feel everything so. He looked up, saw Gaguush. “There's nothing I can do,” he said. “Just—watch him die. But, um, Moth says—who is she, anyway?”

“Something Holla-Sayan found in the desert, I guess. Claims she's a wizard.”

“Where is Holla?”

“Gone after Pakdhala.”

“Won't be much left of Ivah for the rest of us.” Judeh sighed. “I don't understand. She must have been mad. Anyone could see Ivah fancied the girl, but to kill Bikkim over her…”

The wizard was feeling delicately over the dying man's heart. “He was defending the goddess?”

“What goddess?” Judeh asked.

“The girl. Pakdhala.”

“Seems our ‘Dhala's the avatar the Lissavakaili lost when the Lake-Lord came,”Gaguush told him, and watched Judeh's face.

“Ah.” It was a sigh, as if something had been explained, before he answered Moth. “Of course he was defending her. We all would have, but he was here with her, watching her. She wasn't well. He loved her. She saved his life, this spring. He would have died then, I couldn't have saved him, but she brought him through.”

“Worth loving, is she?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“Worth dying for?”

“Moth,” Mikki said, almost a growl, and Gaguush flinched at his sudden presence behind her.

The rest of the gang had followed. “Stay with Bikkim, Judeh,” Gaguush ordered. “As long as he has. Don't leave him to die alone in the dark.”

“He's not dying yet,” muttered Moth and looked up, over Gaguush's shoulder at the giant. “It's not necromancy,
byornling.”

“Did I say it was?”

The wizard's hand wandered to the fluttering gash in the man's throat. “I think even a master surgeon might save him, if the wound didn't fester. A surgeon-wizard, probably. Lacking that…What's his name? You, Gaguush: his name, all his names.”

“Bikkim.”

And Kapuzeh added, “Battu'um. The only sept-chief of the Bat-tu'um left alive.”

“Lacking a surgeon—what?” Mikki prompted.

“I do what I can. Bikkim Battu'um, earl of the Battu'um, you hear me? Keep breathing. You, Judeh, hold his head. Let him know he has a friend here.”

“He has plenty of friends here,” Gaguush growled, meaning a warning. But she added, “What do you need? Water? Judeh's needles?”

“Nothing,” Moth said, knife in hand. But she only ripped down the front of Bikkim's shirt, exposing his chest. She glanced up at them all. “You can't help. Stay out of the way.”

The woman had a point. Gaguush looked around. “Damn, did I tell you lot to stand around gawping? If the woman's a wizard, let her try. None of you can do Bikkim any good, but we might catch that treacherous bastard Ivah.”

“What about…Holla?” Zavel asked.

“He'd damn well pray I'm in a better mood when I do catch up to him.”

Immerose laughed nervously, but nobody else did even that much. They moved away, though, becoming more purposeful. Gaguush lingered, squatted down and picked up one of the clay lamps, holding it high to spill light over Bikkim rather than the floor. Moth didn't tell her not to, at least. She and Mikki murmured to one another. Should have kept Varro by, to eavesdrop and translate in turn. She had a few words of Northron but couldn't catch any she knew here.

The woman was dabbling her fingers in what streaked down Bikkim's neck, pooled in the hollow between his collarbones. Gaguush opened her mouth on a protest, closed it again. Northron wizardry was all about blood, they said. Moth began writing on his chest, sharp-angled letters in blood. Northron, probably, though some looked almost Nabbani in their complexity.

Fire, pale and glowworm green, trickled down her arms, traced the writing, flowed into the gaping wound, and stilled for a moment Bikkim's obscene laboured breathing, the fluttering of the sliced edge of throat skin. Gaguush caught her own breath and Judeh grunted some protest. Heavy hand on her shoulder, on his.

“Trust,” Mikki said, a bass rumble.

That close to, he didn't smell like a man. More grass and animal muskiness than male sweat.

“Talk to him,” Mikki said softly. “Tell him he's going to be all right.”

Judeh gave a jerky nod. “Bikkim,” he said. “Don't worry. You're hurt but you're going to be fine. There's a wizard…um, a wizard. And Pakdhala, we're going to get Pakdhala back, never doubt that. You ever thought about getting married? Might make Holla happier if you do. You know how he worries. ‘Course, then you'd be stuck with him for a father…” Babbling. “He's not breathing,” he interjected, fool, if Bikkim could actually hear.

Moth began talking to herself, muttering some wizardly working, perhaps, but it didn't sound Northron to Gaguush's ear and her man cast her a sharp look, brows lowered. Words that hissed and sparked like water, rang like ice, and managed to sound not like magic, but like someone indeed talking to herself, anxious and angry, uncertain of the job in hand. Maybe that was all it was.

“Moth?” Mikki asked. “All right?”

But the lad was breathing, quietly, through his nose, the worst of the gaping wound closed, the surface only still an ugly open cut.

Moth shook her head, silent now. Gaguush thought she was hardly breathing herself as she drew the upper layer of the wound together with lines of flame rather than thread. Great Gods save them, the flame ran all through her, as though it flowed in place of blood, as though her flesh were cloudy glass. She looked up, and the red fire dying last of all in her eyes was not any reflection of the golden lamplight. “So.”

Bikkim was already stirring feebly, like a sleeper in nightmare. The eyes that had been staring blind closed and trembled, blinked open again.

“’Dhala!”
he croaked, and rolled to hands and knees, striking away Judeh's attempt to hold him. “Where's—” He looked around and his gaze found Shaiveh's body. He levered himself to his feet with a fallen spear. “Ivah's taken her.” He rubbed his throat, the livid scar, leaned swaying on the spear. Not much voice left, hoarse and faint. An imperfect miracle. Gaguush caught his elbow.

“Ivah's taken Pakdhala, yes, but I sent Django and Asmin-Luya after her on Mooshka's horses, and the rest of us are following. Are you fit to ride?”

Bikkim stared at her, a hand back to his throat. “I thought I was dead. Boss—”

“This is Moth, apparently. She's a wizard or something. And Mikki. Shall we go?” She caught the wizard's eye, grey like a storm-cloud, human. “Can he ride, is he well enough? He's not about to pass out on me or anything?”

Moth shrugged. “Ask him.” She climbed stiffly to her feet, stretched. “I hope that wasn't yet another knot to delay us. He's been deflecting us for years. Always something…though if I thought Holla-Sayan had any chance of catching up to Ivah and getting himself killed I wouldn't have waited.”

“This was right and necessary and nothing to do with Tamghiz Ghatai,
minrulf.
You want to talk these folk into staying here, though?” Mikki quirked an apologetic smile at Gaguush. “No point you all thundering up there to get killed.”

“I don't abandon my folk.”

“I'd have to scare her worse than I have yet to keep her here,” Moth said, as though Gaguush weren't there and listening. Gaguush snorted. She didn't need the condescending respect of some arrogant…monster.

Moth heard the snort and shrugged, still not bothering to address her, not even the politeness to switch languages so her condescension wouldn't be obvious. “I'll be ahead of them—I'm going after the Blackdog. You try to keep them out of trouble, keep them from getting slaughtered before they begin?”

“Ya.”

“Bring Styrma. Don't let them toss him in a dunghill.”

“Ya.”

“You're not going to catch up with that—with Holla-Sayan on that heavy horse,” Gaguush said grudgingly, as the gang, seeing Bikkim walking unsteady into the yard on Judeh's arm, swarmed about the pair, camels abandoned. “There's a couple of desert-breds left. Take Jerusha Rostvadim's stallion. She'll skin you when she finds out, but it's the fastest beast here.”

“I'll fly,” Moth said, sliding past, wolf-slinking again. The blue roan whickered, catching sight of her.

Gaguush had surely misheard.

“But thank you,” Mikki added. Used to smoothing tempers in his woman's wake?

“What, for telling her to steal a horse? What did she say she was going to do?”

“Fly,” Mikki said. “Northron wizards, you know.”

“In
tales.”

“Like trees, tales have roots.”

The wizard caught Varro by the arm, was giving him what sounded like orders in guttural Northron. He didn't look half-apprehensive enough for Gaguush to believe he believed his own suspicions. He hadn't seen what she saw under the gallery. Moth unharnessed her horse, and Varro, willing servant now, what it was to have hair the colour of raw silk, began bundling up harness and all her gear, loading it on Holla's red Sihdy—there were more camels harnessed and grumbling there than they needed, the gang already expecting the strangers to come, or planning ahead for when they had their fellows rescued. Sometimes she didn't need to do their thinking for them.

Moth buckled her second sword over her back, shook out something—shifting, shimmering, lifting in its own wind, even draped over an arm. Grey silk and feathers, feathers gleaned, it looked, from a hundred moulting birds, soft cotton-white barred with black, ash-grey, blue-barred, eagle's black.