Bones of the Past (Arhel) (21 page)

Roba remembered her awe of the old man. She wasn’t convinced by Medwind’s denial of his talent. “He fooled me.”

“Yeah, well—he’s had lots of practice. He has the fishermen around here so nervous they tack trinkets on our gate before they go out to sea, thinking to appease the mighty magician Nokar with them.”

“But,” Roba protested, “he wears the Eye of the Infinite. He must be brilliant to have earned that.”

Medwind sighed and scooted back to an upright position. “He’s one hell of a fine librarian,” she agreed. “Superb researcher, too. Pretty decent linguist. And he can transport himself and a roughly equal mass simultaneously without ending up in the middle of solid objects—” The Hoos woman shrugged and made a dismissive gesture. “That’s about it.”

Roba wanted to be more impressed. “He can keep rain off someone.”

“So can a rainjacket.”

Roba gave up. Obviously, she had been duped. “All right. So—I was suckered, and I was spied upon by snot-nosed village kids.”

“So you were. It happens.” Medwind tossed her rows of braids back out of her face. Her pale eyes flashed and the dangling bit of gold she wore in her nose jingled. “And still you haven’t told me what you’re doing in this hole at the end of the universe.”

“Chasing after frogs by trying to walk on water, I suspect.”

Medwind laughed. “That sounds frustrating.”

“Mmmm-hmmm. Worse, since I suspect all I’m going to get out of the ordeal is a soaking—a soaking, I might add, I richly deserve.”

Roba quickly told Medwind about Thirk’s fascination with Edrouss Delmuirie and her decision to join the Delmuirie Society so she could get a desperately needed raise, and finally, about the fiasco with the cobbled-together hoax of a new Delmuirie theory she and her young lover had devised. As she described Praniksonne and the tablet, however, and the events that led up to her hurried flight to Omwimmee Trade, she sensed a shift in Medwind’s mood. It only made sense, she supposed. Medwind had always had a place in her soul reserved for ancient history, just like Roba. It was part of the reason they’d remained friends.

But Medwind was suddenly on her feet. “Praniksonne,” she muttered. “I don’t know that name, but—” Her attention shifted to Roba. “Come look at this,” she said, and beckoned Roba to a workstand draped with cloth. “Is this anything like what you saw?” She pulled the cloth back, and Roba looked.

The University instructor felt the world beginning to shift and spin around her. The tablet lay gleaming and white, seemingly suffused with a light of its own, impressed deeply with the First Folk script. She reached out and stroked it lightly, almost afraid, at first, that it might crumble to powder at her touch. It was cool and smooth and beautiful. It looked newly made, but had about it the feel of great, patient age. “Yes,” she whispered. “That’s it. So you also have found these deformed offspring of the First Folk? You have seen the things Praniksonne spoke of?”

She knew she sounded hopeful and probably childish in her yearning after the things of another time. But she couldn’t help it. Perhaps Thirk Huddsonne was leading her on a fool’s race—but that didn’t change for a moment the fact that there were
real
wonders to be found at the end of the race.

Medwind shook her head, though, in firm negation. “That isn’t what we found at all.” She grinned then, and in that grin, Roba could see the bared fangs of a hunter.

“Praniksonne lied. He stole that tablet. I have the kids who brought both of them out of the jungle here in my house.” The Hoos woman’s grin became broader, wilder—Medwind’s teeth flashed in the reflected light and Roba saw traces of the barbarian and the warrior the Hoos had once been. “And I hope that when the sajes find out Praniksonne stole that tablet and lied to them, they rope him to the bell tower at midday and set fire demons to dancing under his skin.”

“Could happen,” Roba muttered.

Softly, Medwind added, “We have everything ready —we’re going after the real city of the First Folk in the morning. You were planning on going into the jungle anyway—do you want to come with us?”

There was no question in Roba’s mind but that she would be going along.

* * *

Seven-Fingered Fat Girl twisted an end of the heavy braided belt she’d tied around her waist. She knelt inside Medwind Song’s b’dabba beside Dog Nose and Runs Slow and Kirtha. Dog Nose was tense and unhappy.

“They’re going to take our city away from us. It won’t be our place anymore—it will be their place, and when they get tired of us, they’ll make us leave.”

“No,” Fat Girl said. “We told them it was our city—that we would let them come to the book place, but they could not stay. They agreed.” She leaned closer to Dog Nose, her body taut with the uncertainty she felt. “They
promised
.”

“And what is that worth?—the promise of peknu. As much as the promises of the Silk People, who say they will trade us good silks for the meat we bring, and then trade us dyed ragcloth?”

Fat Girl made a rude noise. “These are not the Silk People.”

Dog Nose sat straighter. His face was angry, his lips tight. “You are our fat. Your word is our word—the word of Four Winds Band. But, Seven-Fingered Fat Girl, remember that your life rests with us as ours does with you.” He stared pointedly at her maimed left hand, and forced her to recall the debt she owed him. “Remember who your band is.”

He stood and stalked out of the b’dabba.

Kirtha looked at Seven-Fingered Fat Girl and Runs Slow with concern. “Dog Nose mad at?” she asked in Arissonese.

Fat Girl bit her lip and nodded to the little girl. In the peknu tongue, she said, “Dog Nose mad at. It not matter. His mad go away.”

“Kyadda,” Kirtha said, crossing her tiny arms over her chest.

Fat Girl winked at the little girl and forced herself to smile. “Kyadda,” she agreed. That was a Hoos word, one that Fat Girl had picked up quickly. It meant “everything is as it should be.” With Dog Nose angry at her, she didn’t see how everything could be fine—but Kirtha looked happier thinking it was.

Runs Slow and Kirtha raced out of the b’dabba to play in the garden—Fat Girl sat in the lonely goat-felt tent after they were gone and drummed softly. Maybe she had been wrong to lead her tagnu away from the Paths. Maybe their villages would have started giving them better trades. Perhaps, if she had stayed, the rest of her tagnu would still be alive.

Were these new people, these peknu, her friends?—or were they, like all the people she’d ever known (except her tagnu, she thought), just waiting for a chance to take away from her whatever little bit of goodness she got for herself?

She quit drumming and rested her face in her hands. How could she know what was right? How could she be sure she made the right choices? She had no answers.

* * *

Choufa sat in the swaying upper branches of the sharsha tree with several of the older girls. With their mottled green-on-tan skins, they blended into their surroundings like jungle snakes and hunting hovies; they lurked high in the treetops, imagining sending down deadly thunderbolts on the Silk People they hated.

The air was cool, the sun was setting—visible for a few moments under the heavy clouds, and the girls were as somnolent as the just-fed Keyu. Choufa swung her legs off the branch and chewed on a leaf stem.

Thedra, a much older girl, whose hair fell to her shoulders, and whose belly was round as a marshmelon, pointed down at a Silk Woman who walked on the dirt below them. “I can make her drop that basket,” Thedra said.

Choufa was surprised. “Really? By shouting at her?”

“No. Watch.” Thedra pointed one slim finger at the woman, and closed her eyes.

Choufa could suddenly “hear” Thedra, the same way she could hear the Keyu. The girl was telling the basket to fall, as the Keyu had told the jungle beasts to drive the peknu toward them. She seemed to be touching the Keyu with her mind—for a moment, she seemed to be one with the Keyu. Choufa “saw” how she did it and wondered if she could do the same.

And the basket fell. The fruits, gifts of the Keyu to their people, splatted into the dirt or rolled away in all directions—and the girls up in the branches laughed softly.

“Oh, that was good,” Maari said. “How did you do that?”

“She talked to the Keyu,” Choufa said. “Didn’t you hear her?”

“No.” Maari, a stocky girl with stubby black hair, shook her head. “That isn’t the thing I can do.”

Thedra said, “Most of the time, I wish I couldn’t talk to them, either.”

“Me, too.” Choufa wrinkled her nose. “They think awful things. They ate all those peknu—”

“
Peknu
,” Maari snorted. “It could have been worse. It could have been us.”

“It will be us,” Thedra said, her voice flat and hard. She grimaced and pressed her hand to her belly, and Choufa, fascinated, watched ripples roll across the tight-stretched skin.

“The baby—?” she asked.

“It
kicks
,” Thedra said.

“Leth put a baby in my belly,” Choufa offered.

Maari shook her head. “You haven’t been here long enough to be sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have to miss your bleeding to be sure—do you bleed yet?”

Choufa felt her stomach turn. “Do I do
what?!
” She thought of all the awful things that had happened to her—apparently there were a few she’d missed. “I
don’t
do that! I don’t want to, either.”

Thedra laughed. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the Silk People. You just have to do it before you can make a baby—so you probably don’t have one in your belly yet. It’s not so bad.” She looked down at her own round stomach and sighed. “I wish I hadn’t gotten one so fast. As soon as you have it,
they
take you away and feed you to the trees.”

Choufa bit her lip. “Are you sure?”

“I can hear the trees.”

“I didn’t believe the Silk People when they said they let us go after we had babies,” Choufa admitted. “What are you going to do?”

Thedra’s laugh was flat and lifeless. “What can I do? Tell the trees not to eat me? I think the reason they want us is because some of us can talk to them.”

“Why do they want me?” Maari asked. “I can’t talk to them.”

Thedra rocked on her branch, rubbing her fingers in round circles on her stomach. “I think I know,” she said slowly. “There is a—a kind of fuzzy feeling—I get from each of us sharsha. When I close my eyes and ‘look’ at one of us, I can see a sort of glow—and I can’t see it from any of the Silk People. I think the glow is what the trees want.”

“Oh!” Choufa shook her head in admiration. “How did you think of all of that?”

“I didn’t.” Thedra pressed her lips in a thin line. “My best friend, Larria, noticed the glow first. I think she was the best of all of us at seeing that.”

“Larria?” Choufa thought hard. “I haven’t met her yet.”

“You won’t.” Thedra looked away. “They fed her to the damned trees. I heard them do it.”

Choufa saw the tears that glittered down the other girl’s cheeks. “There has to be some way we can get out of here,” she said. “There just has to be.”

“No one ever has before.”

“Well, I’m going to find a way,” Choufa said. “That’s what
I’m
going to be best at.”

Thedra looked back at the younger girl. Her eyes gleamed with tears waiting to fall. “If you do, Choufa—” She paused, and looked down at her swollen belly and pressed her lips together.

Choufa waited, but the other girl remained silent. “What?” she finally asked.

“Do it soon. That’s all. Just do it soon.”

* * *

Roba saw the two of them halfway down the street waiting for her at the main entrance to the indoor market. Thirk scowled. His arms crossed tightly over his chest, except when he gave in to quick outbursts of visible temper and pounded on the market’s doorframe. Kirgen stood as far from Thirk as he could, pretending not to know him.

Oh, no,
she thought.
What now?

They spotted her walking toward them in the deepening gloom and both charged into the thin drizzle to meet her.

“Praniksonne’s been here and gone,” Thirk snarled, “and took every great saje and scholar he could lay finger to with him.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Roba told him, but he ignored her.

“They transported in yesterday morning—
yesterday morning
!—picked up supplies and a convoy of flying carpets and took off before the sun was even fully up. He had Telrondsonne with him, and Mards from Dumforst—both of the Ralledine Bendee’s—Craysonne—gods, the list reads like a dream guest list for the Sajerie’s Condrene Awards.” Thirk’s fist smacked into the open palm of his other hand as he talked, over and over again. “That robe-kissing Tethjan bush-saje in the market nearly bepissed himself telling me about it.
He
wasn’t invited. He wasn’t mighty enough.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Roba said again.

“By the cursed bell of Conclave, woman, it
does
matter! How can it not matter? He has every brilliant mind in or out of Ariss drooling over his expedition—and who do we have on ours? The three of us.
How
can we get any respect with an expedition like that?”

Roba smiled, feeling very like the cat who gobbled the goldfish. “Praniksonne lied,” she said. “He stole the tablet and led ‘the most brilliant minds in or out of Ariss’ on a giant snark hunt. When they find out, they’ll have his hide for shoeleather.”

Kirgen gasped. “You jest!” he whispered.

Thirk gaped. “It can’t be. He had the tablet. He confirmed our theories.”

Roba sauntered. She swaggered. She wished she could think of a particularly noxious way of rubbing Thirk’s nose in her discovery. She decided blunt was best. “I found the people who found the tablet. They are setting out for the true ruins of a First Folk city in the morning. We’re invited.”

“How—how—?!” Thirk stuttered to a halt.

“The kids who found the tablet are living with my old roommate and her husband—who just happens to be a wearer of the Infinite Eye.”
How’s that for important?
she thought. “I told her I was traveling with two sajes. She said if we pack our own supplies, and the two of you help transport the trade payment for the kids once we get there, all three of us can go along.”