Fallen (19 page)

Ramus smiled. “Well, so you live a little. But that's not the end of it. Marquella was only the beginning.”

Nomi went cold. A chill passed through her, resistant to the fire and the flames burning in her chest, anger and shame and . . . fear. Ramus had her scared. And a large part of that fear was because of things she had yet to tell.

I never can,
she thought.
Some things die as secrets, and that's only right.

But then Ramus's smile stretched into a grin, and she thought that perhaps this was a time for all dead secrets to be given life one more time.

“ I KNEW ABOUT
Marquella soon after my voyage plan was rejected,” Ramus said. “I knew you were somehow involved. And I never thought I was one for revenge. Such a clumsy, wasteful endeavor. But sometimes opportunities present themselves to you, and a few glasses of root wine . . . a few bad days . . .”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Nomi said.

“That's because I was always content keeping it a private vengeance. Keeping things even. But now, after this . . .” Though smiling, inside Ramus was nervous, like a boy dipping his cock for the first time. Perhaps his perceptions were still tinged with whatever had been in their meal, but this night seemed one of potential, and change, and he already knew that things between him and Nomi could never be the same again.
Remember the voyage,
he kept thinking,
and don't destroy it.
But perhaps events had already gone too far. Nomi's cavalier attitude toward her betrayal . . . her and Beko . . .

Inside, far from where the heat of the campfire could ever hope to reach, Ramus was on fire.

“Timal was no fool,” he said.

“Timal?” Nomi's face fell, going from defiant to vulnerable in a beat.

“He was good for you, Nomi.”

“Yes.”

“Appreciated the fine things, but he was also a wise young man. He can read, you know that?”

“Of course I know.”

“He's a future-seer. You know that too?”

“He told me he wrote stories.”

Ramus shook his head. “Not stories at all. Stories are tales from the past, twisted through the telling. Timal wrote projections.”

“Why are you talking about Timal?” she asked.

Ramus grinned at her, and he could see in her eyes that she already knew. How could she not? Because in reality, Nomi was also no fool. “He came to me,” Ramus said. “The night he left you, he came to me to talk.”

Nomi closed her eyes and lowered her head. Ramus looked around at the Serians, and they were all blank-faced. Not judgmental. Not yet. But everything was going to change. That frightened Ramus, but he also knew that it was now inevitable. It shamed him—the Great Divide and what may be sleeping up there meant so much more than him and Nomi—but he could not help being human.

“I was in the Bay Lee Tavern, and he found me sitting in the corner. I'd had a bottle of root wine by then, and the tavern owner had just started brewing his own golden ale. It tasted like sheebok piss but it was cheaper than wine, and it helped me travel in my mind. You know where I was dreaming of traveling right then, exactly when Timal came to see me?”

“My guess would be the Poison Forests,” Nomi said.

“Good guess. Care to guess more?”

“I'd rather hear it from your mouth, Ramus.” Nomi's voice was level and neutral, but there was something about her stare and expression that he found threatening. He had never seen Nomi violent, but suddenly the potential was there. He could see it, feel it. Drinking in the sorts of places he favored, it was something he had come to recognize.

“Then from my mouth, Nomi. Timal disturbed me from my drunken dreams of the Poison Forests, and he asked me what there was between you and me.”

Nomi blinked slowly, extinguishing and relighting the fire reflected in her eyes.

One of the Serians shifted, betraying their curiosity.

The fire burst a sap bubble and spat.

“He was suspicious. You and I spend a lot of time together, and perhaps your confidence and brashness made him . . . insecure. So I put his mind at rest. I told him we were humping. Every morning, I said, when he left your home to go to his studies, you came to my rooms and we humped until lunchtime. I told him how we did it, and what I liked. I even told him what you liked, Nomi, because I know you so well. And that's what convinced him I wasn't lying.”

“You bastard.”

“Really?”

“You bastard, Ramus!”

“You really think so? No. I think that just about makes us even.”

Nomi's calm exterior was melting. She had started to shake, her hands were fisting, she blinked quickly and unevenly.
She'll either come at me now,
Ramus thought,
or run.
Either possibility filled him with dread.

“I messed up a voyage,” she said. “And a lot of the reason is because I wanted us to travel together, learn from each other, and—”

“Learn!” Ramus said, almost spitting the word.

Nomi raised her hand. “And in return, you intrude into my life, destroy a relationship . . .” She shook her head and angrily wiped away a tear.

A shadow fell across them, Beko walking around the fire and going to stand between them. He glanced at Ramus, then looked at Nomi until she returned his stare. “It's time to bed down for the night,” he said.

Nomi was still shivering. She started shaking her head, lips pressed tightly together, and then she gave Ramus the most humorless grin he had ever seen.

“Nomi,” Beko said. “Your tent. And Ramus, you should bed down too. Daylight will ease this and make things easier for—”

“Stay out of this, Beko,” Nomi said. The Serian tensed as if about to speak, but she looked at him and shook her head. “I hired you.”

Beko raised an eyebrow. “So I obey your orders?”

Nomi said no more, but Beko turned and walked away. “Just keep your voices down while we try to sleep.”

“How's your head, Ramus?” Nomi asked.

His breath hitched, his heart stuttered.
How's your head, Ramus?
He blinked and the weight was there, it was always there, the extra weight behind his eyes that he should never have been carrying.

How's your head, Ramus?

Nomi glared at him. She looked as if she had just stepped from a cliff, and the fall would be a long, long way.

NOTHING CAN BE
unsaid,
Nomi thought.
No backing out of this one. Perhaps if Timal had come back to me after he saw Ramus, we could have undone what he said. The lies. The cruel lies.

But not this.

“Does it ache?” she asked.

Every beat altered things, but this was when the world changed forever. For both of them.

“Have nightmares that don't feel like yours?”

His shock cut her, but the pain in her soul was not bad. It didn't feel like vengeance, not exactly. But the guilt she had suffered was breaking free, being shredded and whittled down by what Ramus had revealed to her.

“Something heavy, Ramus? Behind the eyes?”

But this all happened before Timal,
she thought. She drove that down. It didn't matter. The vagaries of time had no place juggling with such sins.

“What do you know about what's wrong with me?” he said slowly, quietly.

Nomi sensed the Serians listening again, and she glanced right through the heat haze above the waning campfire. Beko was there, and the way he looked at her now was nothing like earlier.

“Nomi!” Ramus shouted. He stepped toward her and she stumbled back, expecting a blow that did not come. “What do you know?”

“I think you know already,” she said. “You're the one with the brains.”

He frowned, putting his left hand to his temple as if to question the thing growing in there. The cancer. “You gave me this?” His frown smoothed out, his hands fell to his sides and he grew terribly still. “How?” he asked. Not why, or when, but
how.
Ramus, ever the seeker of knowledge.

“I caught it from a steam vent in Ventgoria,” Nomi said. “I was tracing the track of an old vine-hanging field when the vent erupted. No sign of it one second, and the next . . . an explosion. Mud, rock, steam and gas, and something else from the ground. I didn't see or sense it at the time, but later I heard about these things from the Ventgorians. They're the eggs of giant mind-worms, things that twist up and down from and to the heart of Ventgoria. I . . . didn't understand. Still don't.” She was aware that she had an audience, but her words were only for Ramus. And herself. Expressing what she knew, putting it into order, made real what she had been living with for two years. It was like dragging a ravenous beast from the depths of a black pool and up into the sun. Revelation, realization and perhaps understanding. But at the same time, its full horror would be appreciated.

“You told me you were ill,” Ramus said.

“There was a woman—a shaman—and she used magichala to tend wounds and treat illnesses. They kept me in one of their highest stilt houses, fed and watered me, and they wouldn't let anyone come to visit. Not Beko, not anyone.” She looked at the Serian captain to make sure he heard every word, because this was a confession for him as well.

“Go on,” Ramus said.

He lost me Timal,
Nomi thought. But her anger had suddenly drained, and she felt hollow and devoid of emotion.

“The shaman woman came to me morning, noon and night for three days. She made me talk about my dreams and nightmares, and gave me potions. I had no idea what was in them, but she wanted to help me. Even though I wasn't Ventgorian . . . It was as if she was ashamed that I'd caught such an illness there.”

“What was it like?” Ramus asked.

“Something inside me that shouldn't be there. Growing. A cancer, but fast. And as my eyesight began to fade, the shaman told me there was only one way to save my life.”

Ramus nodded, a terrible acceptance. “Pass it on to me.”

“She came with a doll made of mud and reeds. No features, just a torso with arms, legs and a head. She pressed it to my chest and said it had to feel my heartbeat for a night. In the morning I would imagine a person and name them, and the shaman would pass the sickness on.”

“You're lying,” Ramus said. “You know there's something wrong with me—I don't know how. And you're sick that I ruined it with Timal, so you're trying to go one better. Make me believe you're responsible for this.”

“You have nightmares that aren't your own,” Nomi said. “That's because they're mine.” It was a stark statement, making her feel so exposed.

But Ramus's face dropped and he believed. His anger simmered behind his eyes, but still he wanted to know. Perhaps he wanted to kill her . . . but not yet. He was Ramus the Voyager, Ramus the explorer, and here was something beyond his experience and knowledge.

“How . . . ?” he muttered.

“Someone I knew well, the shaman told me. Someone whose soul I had felt. And all our differences aside, you were the only one.”

She could see Ramus trying to work things out, casting through the dates in his mind, and she knew that it would make sense because it was true.

“You cursed me to die,” he said.

Nomi's tears came. This was revenge of a sort, but she was cursing herself as well. “It hurt so much, I didn't know what else—”

“It's your fault that I'm going to
die.
”

“You took Timal from me,” she sobbed.

“
After
you did this to me!” he screamed, slapping at his head as if to loosen the illness. “That's nothing! I didn't
kill
you! I didn't
doom
you!”

“The shaman said—”

“She said you'd die?”

“Yes,” Nomi whispered. “In great pain. Soon. And I'd only just met Timal, and I didn't
want
to die.”

Ramus's anger had withered and now he looked lost, alone. He looked shrunken. He glanced around the camp at the tents, the rapt Serians and the quietly nodding horses.

Then he looked back at Nomi and she realized his anger had not vanished at all. It had simply grown so cold and concentrated that it had taken on the color of night.

“Neither do I,” he whispered. And he went for Nomi.

The change was startling. The camp went from motionless to chaotic, and even the fire seemed to leap and spark. Nomi stumbled back as Ramus came at her, his hands reaching for her throat. She tripped and fell, and as she went down she kicked out, her right foot connecting with Ramus's wrist. He grunted and let his momentum carry him forward and down, sprawling onto Nomi and crushing her into the heather.

Nomi let out an involuntary laugh. This was so ridiculous, so unbelievable, it could not really be happening.

Ramus's right fist crashed into the side of her head and knocked aside all such thoughts. The fire illuminated his face, his wide eyes, his mouth drawn into a savage grimace as he struck again, fist glancing from Nomi's shoulder and head.