Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (10 page)

“Oh?”

“You are no longer our prisoner. You are a guest,” the Twan says, his catlike lips pursed in disapproval.

“And this is not to your liking,” she says.

“What I like doesn’t matter. My concern is the horses,” he says.

The horses, meanwhile, smell the feed. They are poking their heads under his arms and into the buckets. Malora pushes their noses gently but firmly away. She dips her own nose into one of the buckets and sniffs, then tastes and chews a few grains. “Go back and rework the portions. Give them only half as much,” she tells the Twan. “They’re not used to such rich food.”

“Begging your pardon,” the Twan says, “but I’m in charge—”

“Actually,
I’m
in charge,” Orion says, his head looming suddenly over the top of the fence. “And I would like you to do as she says, Gift.”

Gift stiffens, his flat face unreadable. His large eyes blink once slowly. “Very well, Master Orion,” he says. “But the Apex—”

“The Apex will be happy to have Furies who are not felled by colic owing to a too-rich diet,” Orion says curtly. “Come along to breakfast, Malora, unless you intend to eat what’s in the buckets.”

Malora hesitates, wanting to stay and see the horses properly fed, but Orion has a look on his face this morning
that brooks no disagreement—from either Twan or human. Malora hurries out of the pen to join Orion, saying to Gift over her shoulder, “After they’ve eaten, can you check them for gashes and sprains?”

“As if I wouldn’t do that without being told by the likes of you,” Gift mutters.

“His name is Gift?” Malora whispers as they move away from the pen.

“That’s a dandy irony for you, isn’t it?” Orion says. “He’s my father’s newest hire. He’s wrangler in chief.”

Malora halts, frowning deeply. “He’s the one who tricked the horses into the canyon.”

Orion nods. “In fairness to him, however, he couldn’t very well
not
deliver Furies to my father.”

Malora walks on. “I
knew
there was something about him I didn’t like.”

“He has, however, a reputation for success,” Orion says.

Malora wants to hear more about this reputation of Gift’s, but they have arrived at the table. The centaurs are eating and laughing and bantering, much the way they had been at last night’s meal. At her approach, they set down their spoons and fall silent. Their finery and jewels packed away, the centaurs are dressed for travel in tan wraps and brown leather boots.

“Brother and cousins,” says Orion, “please welcome to our table Malora Ironbound.”

On either side of the table, the centaurs rise and regard Malora from under hooded eyes, as proud as two rows of stallions presenting themselves for inspection. Orion draws Malora closer to them.

“My brother Theon, you already know,” Orion says, his voice even.

“Hello,” Malora says in a bold and friendly fashion, determined to make a new start with the braying centaur who not so long ago lobbied for her execution.

Theon picks up the lavender cloth beside his plate and sniffs at it with a gusty snort. Malora assumes that Theon has finally accepted his brother’s offer of Serenity, although Theon seems more sullen than serene this morning. Over the cloth, Theon’s gray eyes slide away from her like melting chips of ice.

“This is my cousin Mather,” Orion goes on. Mather directs his haughty gaze over Malora’s head. Malora smiles to herself. It was into Mather’s tent that she crept last night. In the daylight, she sees that his flanks, a glossy nut brown, match his neatly trimmed beard.

Orion introduces more cousins—Devan and Brandle and March and Felton and Marsh and Elmon. Marsh and Elmon are also brothers; she can tell by the shape of their heads and the color of their flanks, a rich, tawny golden. They remind Malora of a pair of very well-groomed lions. The tightly curled hair on their heads and their bushy tails is nearly white. A horse with this coloration would be splendid, she thinks, wondering, fleetingly, whether a centaur would ever let her ride on his back.

None of the centaurs, Malora is interested to note, treats her to the centaur salutation. Orion may have spoken to them, but they are resentful about her new status, that much is clear to her.

“Please, sit down and eat,” Orion says to Malora, pointing to the pile of cushions next to his.

Malora sits, startled by the softness of the cushions. A Twan appears and sets down a bowl of steaming mush before her. The centaurs, having resumed their places at the table, push at the mush in their bowls and mutter to one another. Unlike Orion, who takes pains to draw her into conversation, they exclude her from their talk. She notices that Theon hasn’t touched his mush. He keeps looking at her with an expression of mingled contempt and terror. When she smiles at him, he dives for the lavender cloth and buries his face in it.

“The Serenity may take a few days to reach its full effectiveness,” Orion whispers to Malora with a sly wink.

“You could always double the dose,” she says. Orion leans into her and chuckles.

The Twani go back and forth from the cook tent to the table, refilling goblets and fussing over the centaurs. Malora notes that each of them seems to serve a specific centaur. The Twan who serves her is the same one who serves Orion. The mush is not all that much different from what the horses are eating, except that it is cooked. It is also mixed with berries and honey and goats’ milk. It is a welcome change from the strips of dried kudu she gnaws upon most mornings. The food she scrounged last night in the cook tent was also grain. Malora wonders again whether the centaurs have flat teeth because, like horses, they are meant to eat grass and grain.

When the Twan comes to take away her empty bowl, she sits back on the cushions and says, “That was delicious.”

The Twan’s pale pink mouth curls into a neat bow. His large eyes close slowly and then open, the pupils wide and black. Malora thinks that she hears the rumble of a purr. He places a hand lightly on hers. The fingers are short, the backs
of his hands covered with fur. The palms of his hands are pink and shiny and hairless. She smells the morning sun on him, a scent that is fresh and clean and pleasing.

“I’m glad that you liked it, Malora. My name is West. If there’s anything you need, you’ll just let West know.”

West’s voice is deeper, less whiny, and more sibilant than Gift’s. As he leaves, Malora swears that she feels him lightly brush up against her back. But when she turns, West has already disappeared into the cook tent.

Orion says, “He likes you.”

“I like him, too,” Malora says. “So far, I like all the Twani—”

“Except for Gift,” Orion says with a knowing smile.

“Except for Gift,” Malora says.

“I think I will have a word with Gift,” Orion says, and excuses himself, leaving Malora alone with the other centaurs. The moment Orion leaves, the centaurs resume talking, their voices loud and jolly. Malora feels distinctly unwelcome.

When, at last, the centaurs set down their spoons, Malora is relieved to see the Twani swoop in and clear the table. The centaurs rise slowly from their places, stretching and patting their stomachs. They amble off into the grass and collapse as if they had been toiling since before dawn. Malora squats at the foot of the machatu tree and watches, fascinated by the efficiency with which the Twani gather the cushions and the table. No sooner do some of the Twani remove chests and cots and tables and lanterns from the tents than others are collapsing the tents and rolling them up. Everything gets carefully stowed into the beds of two long wagons, to which teams of stout ponies have been hitched.

When Orion rejoins her, Malora says, “Your Twani are making fast work of the camp.”

“Yes,” Orion says. “They are very efficient fellows.”

“You say they aren’t slaves. Do you mean to say that they
willingly
work this hard?” Malora asks.

Orion, watching the flurry of Twanian activity, says, “I often wonder about that myself, but this is how they are. They still feel the obligation to serve us, even though the debt has long ago been paid in full. Occasionally, some upstart Flatlander will foment to free the Twani, but the Twani will have no part in it. Their place is with us. From the day we are born, we have our own Twan to look after us. They are with us until they die. Twani live nowhere near as long as centaurs.”

“Why is that?” Malora asks, thinking, in spite of what Orion has just said, that the centaurs must work the Twani to death.

Orion shrugs. “That’s just the way it is. A single centaur can go through at least three Twani before he or she dies.”

“What do the mother centaurs do if they don’t take care of their own young?” she asks.

“They enjoy the society of other centaurs.”

“Do none of you ever learn to do for yourselves, then?”

Orion says, “I do
some
things for myself. I comb my own hair and shave my own face. I prefer to wash myself, but no centaur can really do an effective job of grooming his other half. Although,” he adds, “my little sister, Zephele, tries her best. She likes to keep her Twan busy with utterly meaningless tasks while she looks after herself.”

“I think I might like your sister,” Malora says.

“She is sixteen and has taken care of herself since she was quite small. Sunshine, her Twan, would try to dress her, but our Zephie would stamp her little hoof and insist upon doing it herself, even if she wound up looking like an unmade bed. Nowadays, she looks quite presentable. Still, the whole situation is highly unusual, and sometimes Herself fears it will affect her prospects. Zephele doesn’t seem to care.”

He turns to her. “We’ll let the others get underway, and then we’ll follow with the horses. I persuaded Gift to let you handle the herd, at least for now.”

“Thank you,” she says.

The centaur cousins, walking in a group, take the lead, followed by the two wagons. One Twan is at the reins of each wagon, while the rest drape themselves across the cargo, curl up, and fall fast asleep. Traveling just far enough behind not to be tasting the dust of the wagon wheels, Malora rides Lightning, abreast of Orion, with the herd at their heels. Glancing back at them, Malora can tell from the way they carry themselves, with heads low and tails lank, that they are exhausted from yesterday’s ordeal. It’s just as well that the centaurs and wagons ahead of them are moving at a tortoise’s pace.

But Malora feels far from exhausted. She feels a tingling sense of anticipation. She has made up her mind that she is going to a new place where she will meet more centaurs, ideally all of them just like Orion. Malora thinks that her life, razed to the ground by her mother’s death, is perhaps starting to build itself back up again. She is hopeful in a way she hasn’t been since the morning the men rode out on their last hunt.

Orion lifts the cloth to his nose again and sniffs.

Curious, Malora asks, “What does that smell like?”

He hands the cloth up to her. She places it beneath her nose, as she has seen the centaurs do, and inhales deeply from it.

A picture enters Malora’s mind and comes into such sharp and sudden focus that it almost hurts. She sees a room with a vaulted ceiling sparkling with golden tiles, an orange sun flaming at its center. Beneath the sun, there is a big bed draped with a decorative canopy of dark blue. The canopy is sprinkled with golden stars forming pictures that shift and change as a gentle breeze blows in through an arched window at the foot of the bed and ripples the fabric.

Looking through the window, she sees the most beautiful garden. The flowers are bigger and brighter than any that blossom on the plains. Small, colorful birds flit about in fruit trees whose crowns are perfectly spherical and dotted with ripe fruits. Malora hears the sound of running water. She looks back into the room and sees her father’s black-and-white rope hanging in a coil on the wall by the bed.

Malora shivers with pleasure and a strange feeling of relief as she lowers the cloth and holds it to her breast.

“Are you quite all right?” Orion asks her.

With an effort, Malora blinks and shakes her head. As she hands the scented cloth back to him, the picture fades from her mind like a dream upon wakening. “What
is
that?”

“This? Let’s see: sweet almond oil, Rosa damascena, hectorite …” He itemizes on his fingers. “Clover leaf extract, Althaea officinalis root, citronellal, benzoate resin as a fixative, but it carries its own scent—burnt honey, I’d say. Raspberry seed oil, and, let me see, what else … oh, yes! Kalanchoe extract! I call it Homeward Bound. Do you like it?”

Malora nods dumbly. Then, because Orion is looking at her so eagerly and because she feels she has to say
something
, she says, “Homeward Bound smells good.”

It
does
smell good, she thinks, but it is a good deal more than a pleasant scent. Nevertheless, Malora keeps her thoughts to herself.

“I would very much like to mix you a scent of your own,” Orion says earnestly.

Experiencing the scent has unsettled Malora. “I don’t think so,” she says, raising her hand. “Thank you very much, but I need to keep my head clear … to smell predators.”

Orion lowers the cloth from his nose and looks worried. “Oh?” he says. Hastily, he tucks the cloth away in his wrap and shakes his head with vigor, imitating her. She wonders if, even with a cleared head, he would know the smell of lion if he were sitting on top of one.

“Why didn’t you have a scented cloth with you last night?” Malora asks.

He frowns. “I never use them at night. I find the scents of the night—particularly out here in the bush—are ravishing
enough as they are. The very early morning is fragrant as well, before the sun bakes the essence from the plants and the trees,” he says. “It has something to do with the way the earth cools after the sun sets, and then in the morning, before it rises high. It’s similar to the process that occurs in the distillery. Honus calls it evaporation.”

Malora has no idea what he is talking about. “Who is this Honus you keep mentioning?” she asks.