Irregular Verbs (12 page)

“We’ll survive.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Don’t be angry,” Ayusha said, looking down. She was nearer, now: swaddled in the bulk of her jacket she looked even smaller than she was, like a child.

“I’m not angry. Not at you . . . but your people, the way they are—unfriendly and superstitious—”

A spark returned to her eyes as she met his. “Are you sure it’s superstition?” she asked, pronouncing the word carefully in Kavatai; it did not exist in her language. “You’ve felt the Lord’s power, why do you doubt his daughter’s?”

“I’ve seen what boltforges work with amber. I know that power exists.”

“And planting fruits, you’ve done this before?”

He picked up a fallen branch he’d selected as a digging stick. “No. But I’ve seen it done, by the people we buy from. It doesn’t look so hard.” Ayusha crossed her arms, said nothing. “What? You make a hole in the ground, put in some seeds, put water on it, and keep the weeds off.”

“How foolish my people must be, not to have thought of this before.”

“Not foolish. Just—uncivilized. It’s not your fault; all the people of the world were the same, before we taught them better, and we needed the Powers to teach us.” He took the digging stick in both hands, raised it, and slammed it into the black earth. It made no impression; he might as well have been striking rock.

“Problem?”

“No-one’s ever cut this soil before,” Dasatan said. He begun to spin the stick in his palms, the way he had seen Balat plant the tent pole. “It’s like baked mud.”

“Dasatan . . .”

“No, wait—I’ve got it.” He paused to let out a long breath, went back to spinning the stick. After a hundred heartbeats had passed he stopped. Less than a finger’s depth had been dug into the dirt; at this rate a single row would take him all day.

“The Lady protects her realm,” Ayusha said quietly. “I do not know what weak gods you worship in the south, Dasatan, but ours demand respect. Now, please—we have to get back to our gathering, and waste no more time on this.”

“No,” Dasatan said. “We just need something harder to cut the soil—my sword—”

“Do you want to go through that again?”

“Flame it!” he shouted, throwing the stick away into the brush. “This stupid country! With its stupid gods and stupid superstitions and stupid people and—what kind of home is this, where it’s winter for ten moons a year and you can’t even grow beans? How are people supposed to live here?”

“Dasatan, listen to me.” He had been ignoring the rising annoyance in her voice; now it was unmistakable. “All I’m asking is that you help me gather enough food to get us through this year and the winter. Then in the spring, when your people come again, you can go back with them and leave me to all this. All right?”

Dasatan laughed, knowing it would make Ayusha angrier but unable to stop himself.

“What?” she asked, her cheeks reddening.

“They’re not my people. So far as they’re concerned I’m no more a Kavatai than you are. That’s why I’m here, when all my brothers and sisters are at sea. The only reason they might try to find me is because I was carrying the—” He stopped, seized by a sudden thought. ‘You said the Lord of Lightning loves iron, that’s why I can’t touch my sword. But I know he loves copper even more—that’s why the boltforges use it in their workings—and Yavan carried a staff with copper on it all the time, and he never worried about it . . .”

Ayusha rubbed her forehead with her palm. “Can we please just get back to—”

“No—no, this is a good idea,” he said, shrugging out of his jacket. “We need to go back to the shelter, get my pouch with the amber in it. Then we need to go back to Svatyslan’s camp—my sword should still be there.”

“All right,” she said, forcing the words through her clenched teeth. “Will you at least tell me what we’re doing?”

He shook his head, stayed silent as they got his pouch and went to where his sword lay, afraid one of the gods up here—more attentive, it seemed, to mortal concerns than the ones he knew back home—might hear his plan. On the way there he pulled a handful of resin off a pine tree, tapped it between his thumb and forefinger until it became tacky.

“Now will you tell me?” Ayusha asked when they found the sword, looking around nervously for Svatyslan and any of her other former relatives.

“Watch,” he said. He crouched down over the sword and laid his jacket over it; then, carefully, he rolled the jacket so the sword was inside. Even through the thick sheepskin he could feel a tingling, and he held the bundle as gently as he could as he turned it so the sword-hilt was up. With his free hand he fished a piece of true amber from his pouch, stuck the ball of resin to it, and pressed the stone to the pommel of the sword.

This was the test. He took a breath, seized the sword hilt.

Nothing.

Dasatan took his jacket off the sword, raised it to his lips and kissed the blade. “May the smith who made you forgive me,” he said to it, “but you’re a plow from now on.”

“So the two of them sat, waiting for the night to pass. Dasat began to wonder if the Night Bird’s words had been true, and watched the sky outside, afraid that dawn might come too soon.

“His heart jumped when he saw a first ray of light in the east; when he looked back a change had come over the cottage. The pot was now full of good porridge, and wild herbs and fat shining fish hung drying from the hooks. He looked over at Mokos and saw that she was now a beautiful maiden. Her skin was gold as the sun, her hair green as spring grass, dotted with wildflowers.

“‘Will you promise not to eat me till tomorrow?’ Dasat said, the words pouring out of his mouth in a rush.

“Mokos laughed, and her laughter was like summer rain. ‘That was not very polite of you,’ she said. ‘I will grant your wish, though I hope it will be asked a bit less hastily tomorrow night.’

“Soon enough the dawn came, and both the cottage and Mokos became fearsome once more. Though Mokos was angry at not being able to eat her breakfast she nevertheless kept her word, and went out of the house till sunset.”

It was easier, Dasatan had found, if you used your imagination. You could imagine that the rock-hard clod of earth that had to be broken was Yavan’s head, for instance, or that the stinging weeds that had to be pulled were Svatyslan’s lungs.

The plants he had sown—some of them—were starting to come up, accompanied by a much larger number of weeds seeking to take advantage of the earth he had cleared. He had abandoned the idea of planting berries when Ayusha told him how long their bushes took to grow, sown instead wild buckwheat, leeks and onions. Before long—not too long, he hoped—they’d be able to eat some of them.

He stood, rested his weight on his blunted sword. It had become an all-purpose tool now—weed-digger, plow, brush-cutter—but he imagined it would still cut Kamanai flesh if Svatyslan or one of his family were to come and challenge his right to farm this plot. He hoped they would.

“Dasatan!” Ayusha’s voice called from the other side of the bramble. “Are you finished with your garden yet?” Kamanai didn’t have a word for farm; garden was the word they used for the few herbs they grew outside their tents. “I found a patch of reedmace downstream. Come and help me pick it.”

“Just a moment,” he said. He drove the point of his sword into the dirt so it stood upright, and removed the amber from the pommel: the thought of a Kamanai trying to steal it without the stone drawing the lightning out made him smile. “How far downstream?” he asked.

Ayusha emerged from the brambles, holding the broad gathering-cloth they used for larger plants. She was thinner than when he had first met her, even her round face looking drawn and sharp. He knew that if he were to look in the water he would see the same in his face.

“Just past where we went last week.” He sighed. That walk down the river had taken them most of the day. “Well, we’ve got to go out further—Svatyslan has left little enough food, and we’ve picked just about all of it. If we moved the shelter . . .”

“Let’s go,” he said. “Reedmaces have lots of seeds. Maybe we can grow some here.”

“It’s not damp enough for them.”

“We can try.”

They walked in silence to the river’s edge. He wondered if another Kavatai would even recognize him now: legs covered with scars—his tunic was long gone, and there were no Kamanai trousers for him to wear—hands and nails so dirty no amount of washing would get them clean.

“Hold on,” he said as they reached a spot on the stream where rocks made a natural weir. He had built a fish trap out of branches the day before.

“Well?”

“It’s broken. I’ll have to find a way to make it stronger.”

“It wasn’t the fish that broke it,” Ayusha said darkly. “It was Svatyslan, or one of his sons. Fish are sacred to Birun; they don’t want you bringing them bad luck. Keep this up and they won’t let us stay in their grounds anymore.”

“It’s bad enough they keep trampling my plants. I should be watching them now, not spending all day picking reedmace.”

“You’re spending enough time on that as it is—working too hard, and I can’t gather enough food for the both of us.”

“Then go,” he said, tossing the sticks away and watching them run downstream. “Anyway, I’d like to see them try to make us leave now.”

“Then maybe you could beat someone else with your sword, make him let us use his foraging grounds.”

“You don’t beat someone with a sword,” he said. “You cut them.” He shook his head, dissolving the visions of Svatyslan’s throat blooming red as his blade cut across it. He was no warrior, but it wouldn’t be hard; for all their strength, without iron or steel the Kamanai were just brawlers, homeless savages with no more ambition than to take over another family’s foraging grounds. No wonder they sat on treasure and traded it away for trinkets.

“Mokos will get us all soon enough,” Ayusha said, though Dasatan wasn’t sure whether she was talking about his sword or their own empty bellies.

“The next night came, and again Mokos wanted to boil or hang Dasat, and again he convinced her to wait till breakfast, and again she changed for those two bells; this time she was more reluctant to grant his wish right away, still upset over his hastiness of the night before, and so he had to tease and flatter her a bit before she would promise not to eat him. So it went, he courting her to gain her promise, which came nearer and nearer to dawn each night; but always his wise heart convinced her to spare his life.

“Finally the sun outside returned and the snow melted, and when the door opened that night the smell of spring came in. When it was two bells before dawn and Mokos had changed once more, she had a sad look on her face, like the sun behind a cloud. ‘What is the matter?’ Dasat asked her.

“‘Winter is over today,’ she said. ‘Today you may ask to leave my house, and if you are wise you will never come back.’

“Dasat began to ask for just that, but found that he could not. Something was in his way; some part of him was keeping the voice in his mouth. It was his heart, his wise heart.

“In all those weeks, courting Mokos for two bells before dawn each night, Dasat had fallen in love with her.

“‘If I can ask you one boon,’ he said, ‘then I will ask this: let me stay here with you, as your husband. Then I will make this house our home and let all the men of Kaman see your beautiful face. Then they may see that there is love in this land, that it is fit to be a home.’”

“Come on. Try it.” Ayusha had to admit the buckwheat pottage wasn’t the most appetizing thing in the world, but it was certainly no worse than many of the things they ate. “Don’t worry, there’s plenty. And about time, too.”

There was plenty, plenty of almost everything Dasatan had sown; it was as if the soil, never broken, had thrown out all the life it had in it in one burst. But it had almost come too late: he had had to work it all day for the last moon, and she had had to range further and further for what little there was to forage.

Dasatan took a mouthful of the pottage, swallowed. He was so thin, now, she imagined she’d be able to see it sinking to his belly. “Too hot.”

“Sorry,” she said, and blew on the scoop.

“No—not the food. Too hot.” He reached up to wipe sweat from his forehead.

Ayusha frowned. “It’s the food,” she said. “Your body’s probably not used to it by now.”

He nodded his head weakly. “That must be it.” she said.

She carefully fed him the rest of the pottage. “You need water to go with that. I’ll fetch you some, all right?” He didn’t answer but gave a small smile. She rose, looked back at him—his eyes were closed, now, his face flushed and sweaty—grabbed his waterskin and headed for the stream. She had seen this fever before: it would pass so long as he had rest, water and food. Thank the Lady, they finally had that last.

She reached the bank of the stream and knelt to fill the waterskin, ignoring the remains of Dasatan’s broken fish-trap. They could forget about her almost in-laws, now: they didn’t need them anymore. Rising carefully—she was as weak as he was, and found she often lost her balance—she headed back to the shelter.

“Dasatan?” she called. He was sleeping, now, and looked more peaceful. Wondering if the fever had broken she put his hand to his forehead. Yes, it was definitely cooler.

She held her palm two fingers over his mouth.

“No,” she said. “No—have some water, you’ll feel better—” She tipped the waterskin; water poured out the sides of his mouth, and his throat did not move.

The reedmace had not come up, just as she had told him. It was just as well: that meant there was still a bare patch in the field. Her people burned their dead, and he had told her that his laid theirs to rest in the sea: neither one, somehow, seemed right for him.

As poor a plow as a sword makes, it makes a worse shovel; she had been working all day to cut a deep enough hole. Summer, long promised, was now fully come, and she had stripped off her jacket for the first time since the snow had come. Bees were humming among the berries, and the recently turned earth smelled of life.

He should have seen this, she thought. How high everything grew. The smell . . . he had told her, when he had first come to this place, that he could not imagine it in summer, and she had said that when it came he would not be able to remember the winter. Summer pays for all.