Bone Witch (20 page)

They made camp again, several hours later
at a spot Edulph's men had occupied earlier. It was obvious from the still
smouldering fire and the gourd of drawn water that someone had thought to leave
nearby. Several flat rocks sat beside the fire, black with the charred remains
of the last meal. Gael was already huffing from exertion and the girl had roused
twice as she lay on Barruch's back. Barruch nicked Alaysha as she went by.

"I know old man," she said,
patting his nose. "I promised you a peach."

He whinnied softly and bat at her with his
nose.

"OK. I know," she said. "I
promised many peaches." She let him graze the short clumps of weeds at the
base of a tree.

They all needed a break and sat chewing a
meagre fare of mashed nuts and dried apples steeped in water. Bodicca grumbled
to herself and eventually went off into the woods, leaving them to stare each
other in the hopes that she had gone off to find forage. When she returned, it
was with a pheasant, several varieties of mushrooms, and stalks of what smelled
like wild onion. She breathed heavily and walked slowly, but it was apparent
she was on the mend. By the time she had it stuffed and spitted over the fire,
Alaysha's mouth was watering.

Without comment, Bodicca pulled the strips
of fowl and passed them around to each. She gave Gael double what she gave
Yenic, and Alaysha assumed she understood how much energy it took to heal. Gael
bent his head to the fare silently and ate it without thanks.

Dusk crept on them and Alaysha looked
around at her companions, assessing each's state of ability. With a sigh, she
made a decision.

"I'll take watch," she said, half
expecting Gael or Bodicca to argue, but it was Edulph spoke up.

"Why you? You could kill us in our
sleep."

"I could have killed you long ago if
that was my intent," she told him. "So could we all." She didn't
lose sight of the fact that Cai was watching Edulph with a narrowed gaze.

Saying nothing more, Edulph put his hand
out to the child and touched her lightly on the hair. Thankfully, she didn't
rouse. So far, Aedus's beetles were doing their job well. Alaysha wondered how
long it would be before the girl became used to them. She hoped it would work
long enough for Theron to figure out how many of his more predictable ghost
pipe roots it would take to keep the child sleeping. Edulph leaned over and
kissed the child on the hair, eying Alaysha.

"That bit of benevolence was all
because you needed to know what I know. Now you have it. I'm in danger  unless
I have more you need."

Yenic stood and stretched, more Alaysha
thought to show Edulph the muscled litheness in his body, the strength beneath
the evident fatigue. "We know nothing, Edulph, save that you sired this
girl. You volunteer no more."

"Nor do you," Edulph returned
slyly and Alaysha stole a glance at Aedus. So, the girl had told her brother of
the mistrust Alaysha had for the man she was bound to. Cunning of him, to slip
in the mistrust now. She had to remind herself of Edulph's method of operation.
His own admission to her that what he lacked in fighting skills, he more than
made up for in craftiness and that his craftiness would win every time.

"How did you come to escape the
Enyalia, Edulph?" Alaysha asked.

He kissed the girl's hair.

"How did you come to find the
girl?"

"I told you, any more information and
you'll be done with me."

Cai's voice cut across the fire but with
bland unemotional words. "I am done with you two sunrises ago." She
smiled and Edulph squirmed.

"Even still," he said, nodding at
Alaysha. "That one may have need of certain secrets."

It's true that we all have our
secrets," she said to him, but kept Aedus's eye across the firelight until
the girl hung her head. "What we keep, we keep for self
preservation."

She turned to Theron. "But a time is
coming when we will need to be honest with each other and let go the hidden
pieces."

Theron shifted his weight and mumbled to himself.
Alaysha chose to ignore it.

"Sleep," she said to everyone.
"At first light we press on."

She got up and pulled the fur cloak from
Barruch's pack and crept away from the fire so she could hear the noises of the
forest over the cracking of wood. She found a place in good view and settled
down with the cloak wrapped about her shoulders. She suspected Cai would
pretend to sleep. Neither Gael nor Bodicca bothered to so much as lean against
a tree trunk. Edulph, however, curled next to his daughter, snicking in close.
Theron leaned against a tree. Aedus laid her head on her knees.

Some would sleep. Some would not. It was
their decision. Yenic rose from his spot next to the fire and made his way to
where she sat, Gael's eyes on his back the entire time.

"I wish Gael would sleep," she
told Yenic when he settled next to her.

"He's stubborn. And it just might cost
him."

"And what about you?"

"I can't let the fire catch me
unaware. Best I'm away from it."

"Meaning you're afraid to stare into
it."

"And I'd rather catch my rest next to
you." He gave her a heart-stopping smile that made her open her cloak to
let him in. The darkness, the chill, the scent of him, the fire all reminded
her of the time when they'd first met and none of this business had yet happened.
But then, she'd still had been a killer. Her father's weapon, and she did as
she was bid like any good warrior.

"What did the Enyalian want?" He
asked and Alaysha had to force herself not to look in the woman's direction.

"She was tired of being kind to men,"
she said truthfully.

"Have you given any thought to marking
her?"

"Not really, no."

He put his arm around her and pulled her
close. "You need an Arm, Alaysha."

"And you don't want it to be
Gael."

"I don't want it to be any man."

"But Cai is as good as the man just
not without the worry," she guessed and he chuckled very low.

"I'm selfish. She's better than most
men, so you'd be protected and well advised."

"And you needn't fear me succumbing to
her charms."

"What charms," he laughed, then
in further response he kissed her earlobe. "It's possible," he
whispered. "You could succumb, but I don't think it likely, so I'm willing
to risk it."

"Is it really that strong, then?"

"The connection is magnified,
yes."

"But then, you and your mother..."

"That connection is paternal. She
wants me even safer than she would have before."

"And you in reverse."

He paused a moment, thinking. "For me,
it's complicated."

"How so?"

"She's the first woman I knew. Loved.
She's very beautiful." Each sentence he spoke seemed to drag out, to take
time to think over. She guessed there truly was more to it than he could
explain.

"Indeed she's all of those things, and
just as corrupt," she said in answer.

"I have no argument there."

"So this bond –"

"It draws us together in ways that are
more powerful than the intimacy of coupling. What you feel, that desire to be
closer, that primal need to be inside of each other, the ecstasy of coming
close enough that you cry out in agony of never quite making it—that's the
sense of it. Maybe not the desire, not for a parent and child, not always. But
the drive is there."

"Have you and she –"

He answered quickly, almost shocked and
ashamed. "No. Never. But I feel it, Alaysha. And you will too. So will
Gael if you mark him."

She pulled his face closer so that she
could lay her cheek on his. "I feel that way about you, despite all the
mistrust and uncertainty."

His lips touched hers briefly. "Now
you know why I'm so tortured. If you mark Gael, you'll understand it even more
fully."

"Won't I feel it for Cai?"

"I can compete against a woman like
you can compete against a mother."

It wasn't a real answer, but she thought
she understood it all the same. "Assuming she agrees," she said of
Cai.

"Oh. She'll agree. I can see it in her
eyes, in her posture when she looks at you."

"Maybe I don't need an Arm."

"A witch was made to have an Arm and
you're too powerful. Not having one might kill you."

"And then your mother will win."

"You don't understand what she wants.
She wants you dead as much as Theron wants her dead."

"But Theron doesn't want her dead. He
said –"

"He said we need to pull the god from
her. I want that too."

The way he said it, the strangeness of his
tone made her realize something. "You're afraid for her."

"Because she would pull the goddess
from you."

"I'm not sure that's true. I don't
feel like a goddess."

"My mother told me she remembered her
birth and life before it. She told me that what she had wasn't a life. It
was—different."

"I remember nothing. And what I do
recall is too painful." She didn't want to admit that she forced
everything she didn't like to think about into some dark recess of her memory
never to be seen again.

"How do you know what Theron says
isn't true, that you're Liliah in the flesh? My mother believes it. Her mother
believed it." His voice choked.

"Your family," she said,
realizing. "I took their lives. Your sister, your grandmother."

He gave her a squeeze. "You didn't.
They sacrificed themselves. There's a difference."

"The question is what does Edulph
know. That's why I held him under my mother's pretence. She tortured him for
the info. He never gave it."

"Because the girl is his daughter and
he loves her."

"Or he still hopes to prevail against
us. We'll see when we get to the Highlands, I suppose."

All this talk of secrets and honesty and
here she was keeping something from Yenic that could make a difference to how
he felt about her. It needed to see the light, finally.

"Yenic. I need to tell you something.
I already have a connection to Gael."

His hand left her thigh and he tensed.
"How close?"

"Close enough that I understand the
drive you speak of."

She held her breath, waiting for his
response, hoping she could weather it when it came. She couldn't justify it or
try to explain it. A warrior made no such excuses.

"All the more reason to mark the
Enyalian," he said softly and stood, taking great care to wrap her
carefully back into her cloak.

"Go back to the fire, Alaysha, and
rest. I'll never be able to sleep tonight. I might as well take watch."

Morning brought grumpy but better rested
comrades. Alaysha hadn't slept as well as she'd hoped, Yenic's words crept
through her thoughts most of the night. As they packed up camp, Gael fashioned
a comfortable seat for the child that he could hoist over Cai's beast and eased
her up behind Bodicca and in front of Theron. Alaysha discovered the best way
to get Gael to sit Barruch was to offer him to Yenic. With a curse, the large
warrior lifted Aedus onto the horse and sat behind her just so Yenic couldn't.
She could tell from his expression that he realized his mistake even as he
settled in.

That left Cai, Yenic, and Edulph to walk
with Alaysha: the hardiest of the group, but all spent even so. One night
wasn't near enough rest to restore the energy they'd lost. She noticed that
while Cai walked on the other side of Edulph, she adjusted the blade on her
belt to rest just beneath her dominant hand. It seemed she trusted Edulph about
as much as Alaysha did.

"Tell me, Edulph," Alaysha said.
"How did you escape the raiding party?"

He gained some of his before-Sarum flair
for commanding tone. "I waited till they thought me too exhausted to care,
then I chopped off the hand of one when she came near me with food."

"That doesn't explain the
others," Cai said and Alaysha heard the fury in the woman's voice.

He nodded to the child lying on the beast
ahead. "They found me."

"Quite a coincidence," Alaysha
said.

"She's remarkable." Edulph's
steps lengthened as he worked to outpace them. Alaysha let him go.

"Do you believe it, Cai?"

"I believe only that men think they
are too smart for any woman. We've proved them wrong too often."

"You think he's lying."

"Of course he's lying. But for what
purpose?"

"Indeed," Alaysha said.

An entire fortnight: that was the length of
time it took to gain the Highlands. By seven Sun cycles, the trees had
thickened and not just in quantity, but in girth. At times, Alaysha played a
game with Aedus to see how many sets of arms it took to encircle the biggest
tree. By day ten, it took all of them to do so; by day twelve, there weren't
enough of them to wrap around it.

Aedus and Gael did well keeping the toddler
asleep, searching for beetles and mashing them down into the liquid it took to
fill the quills. Theron tended her with a peculiar compassion that had Edulph
hovering over him in a strange measure of respect. Both of them were silent as
much as they were anything else. All of them were. The tension was a heartbeat
Alaysha used to gauge the passage of time.

Gael wouldn't speak to her. Cai was merely
tolerated by the men, and Aedus took to sleeping between Alaysha and Yenic
because Edulph wouldn't let anyone near the child at night except for Theron.

The one bright spot in each day was
mealtime. Bodicca always managed to hunt or scavenge something delectable,
seeming to prefer the solitude of foraging to the company of the group.
Secretly, Alaysha believed she was still in mourning and left her be. It was
one sore spot she didn't think either of them wanted to open.

To keep the child nourished, Bodicca and
Theron came up with the way to boil down bits of meat and bone into a watery
broth that Aedus and the shaman dribbled into her mouth and turns. While the
child didn't fatten, at least she didn't waste away.