Finding Destiny (6 page)

However, the red and purple fabric, re-dyed back to cheery brightness, was all but hidden under the brown mud coating nearly every inch of the garment. It clung to his skin, and whatever had caused him to roll on the ground left his body visibly wincing with each move.

“Here, let me help you,” Chanson offered, hurrying forward. He grunted in surprise and twisted, peering at her through the tangled opening of the neck hole. She bit back a smile at his wary look. “I think you have injured yourself. Was it a fall in the mud? Or several, to be so thoroughly muddy, both front and back?”

“Donkeys,” he grunted, struggling somewhat gingerly to pull his head free. Chanson quickly helped peel the damp, dirty cloth from his back, pulling it over his equally muddy scalp. He straightened with a rough sigh, arms still tangled in the fabric but head and torso free. “I was bringing them back in when the rains started falling heavily ... and then lightning struck a nearby tree.”

“Why didn’t you bring them in when the rains began?” Chanson asked, helping to peel the sleeves down his arms as well. The state of his arms, smeared with mud despite the cloth that had supposedly protected him, made her suck in a breath. “Ouch! Where did you get all these scratches? And those bruises!”

“I was trying to churn up the soil so the rain could penetrate deeper. It’s the northeast field, the one that dries up too fast because it’s too hard. Obado told me about the trick, and his fields aren’t much worse off than mine ... than Falkon’s,” Eduor corrected himself. “But the stupid beasts bolted, and my hands tangled in the reins. I was yanked off my feet and dragged halfway across the field, this way and that, before they darted to the side and flung me straight into the bushes. The
acacia
bushes,” he added wryly.

That
explained the scratches, of course; acacia bushes produced acacia gum, which could be used for many things, from a kind of edible resin to a binding agent for things like ink and glue. The trees were also known for their nasty inch-long thorns, which made them great for bordering vegetable fields, since it discouraged wildlife from pushing through to get at the succulent food.

Eduor lifted one elbow enough to peer at his suntanned arm. “The bruises ... well, they do hurt, and they’ll continue to hurt, but it just looks worse since I’m so fair compared to you. The scratches sting worse, right now.”

“Yes, you’ll need to get them cleaned up. You were right to come here,” Chanson told him. “Let me help you get the rest of your things off, then you go shower the mud away and scrub everything. I’ll bring some ointments for those scratches, so they don’t become infected. I think Kedle has some herbs that can be used as a poultice on the worst of those bruises.”

He kept the muddied tunic close to his chest. “Uh ...”

“Come on, everything off, Eduor. I am a healer as well as a
dyara
and priestess. Aside from your pretty hair and your pale skin, you won’t have anything new for me to see,” she reminded him. When he continued to hesitate, she added tartly, “Either you remove it or I’ll ask some of the other men to remove it for you. Acacia scratches are nothing to trifle with, and I
will
see you cleaned and doctored.”

That seemed to render him even more tense.

“You’re not
afraid
of healers, are you?” she asked, puzzled by his reluctance.

He winced. “It’s ... not that. It’s just ...”

“Just, what?” Chanson asked, beyond puzzled. Hands going to her hips, uncaring that she was getting her own clothes dirty, she cocked her head. “If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, how can I help you?”

His blue eyes, so different from the brown she was used to seeing, remained fixed on his tunic. “... I don’t like being ordered around by a woman.”

Disgusted, she sighed heavily.
And here I thought he was telling us the truth ...
Eduor looked up quickly, eyes wide.

“No! Not like ... I
told
you, I don’t believe in the Mandarite philosophies of male superiority anymore,” he asserted, though he clutched the muddied tunic to his scratched and bruised chest a little tighter. “I just ... I have bad memories of being ordered around by ... women. When I was a war-slave.”

That only confused her further. “Eduor, I have
seen
you being ordered around by the women of this village! Did you or did you not agree quite readily and willingly to help Mama Jakika get that old hen off her roof, the one she wanted to roast for her daughter’s birthing-day feast? And didn’t you agree to help Salosi carry her wet laundry to the drying lines while her husband tended to their son’s scraped knees?”

“That was clothed!” he protested, clutching—no,
spreading
the tunic over his naked chest.

She still didn’t get it. “I don’t understand. Aren’t war-slaves ordered to do all sorts of things? Manual labor and the like?”

He looked away from her. “My first ...
owner
. . . yes. I picked fruit and harvested grain, hauled wood, and took things to market. I was worked like an ox. And I was beaten like an ox. Then I heard this woman in the marketplace trying to say something in Sundaran, only the way she said it was almost a deadly insult to the other merchant, so I stepped in and explained things, and she ... Midalla was so impressed, once she learned how fluent I was, she bought me from my first owner. She promised me she wouldn’t beat me if I served as her interpreter so that she could expand her trade relations with this kingdom. But ... there are worse things than beatings.”

Chanson hadn’t thought of her life in Oba’s Well as having been sheltered. Her training as
dyara
, healer, and priestess had included ways to recognize and deal with all manner of injuries, abuses, and troubles. But the things he seemed to be hinting at made her blush with discomfort.

“Did she force herself on you? Can a woman even do that to a man?” she asked.

“She denied me food if I didn’t ... please her, first. Nearly every Gods-be-damned meal.” He wrinkled his muddied nose. The heat of the
meltimi
winds outside had begun to penetrate the shaded depths of the bathing hall, drying the mud and making it crumble. He brushed awkwardly at the side of his nose, spreading more of the dirt around rather than brushing it away.

Chanson shook her head. “You don’t sound very enthusiastic, and if a man cannot retain enough enthusiasm, well, how could you have pleased her that way?”

“Not my ... not
that
,” he denied, shaking his head. “She said she was too old for that. Too old,
period
, if you asked me. But nobody did.” A shudder rippled through him and he closed his eyes. “No, she wanted the
other
thing.”

“
What
other thing?” Chanson asked. “If she didn’t want you to couple with her, and didn’t ask it of you, and if you wouldn’t have been able to anyway out of sheer disgust ... I’m sorry, Eduor, but I don’t understand.”

Opening his eyes, Eduor drew in a deep breath to brace himself, then stuck out his tongue. The tip dangled below his jaw for a moment, then he curled it up until the tip reached the
middle
of his nose. Not quite to the bridge of it, but definitely curling over the point of his nose by a thumb-width. He retracted it with a grimace as Chanson stared.

Noise from outside broke their tableau. Blinking, she cleared her throat. “... Well. Rest assured I won’t order you to do
that
for me. Not unless
you
want it, of course.”

That earned her another wide-eyed stare, but two of the village men entered the bathing hall at that moment. Grateful for the interruption, and for the sun-dark skin of her tribe that hid the flushed state of her cheeks, Chanson changed the subject back to the one at hand. Right now was
not
the time to explain—even to herself—why she had said such a thing.

“You need to finish stripping off your clothes and bathe every inch in the showers. Since you are injured, and do not intend to use the
mikwah
bath, you don’t have to confess your sins first. Not that I think you have any to confess,” she added, hoping he caught on to the subtle message in her words, that his suffering at the hands of his Natallian owner wasn’t a sin in her eyes. “I’d also like to send Jimeyon to help you bathe. It’s about time he took some of his lessons in the theory of healing injuries and started applying them in the practicality of it. I’ll go fetch him, and the salve for your scratches, then see what we have on hand for making bruise poultices—oh, the donkeys, where are they?”

“They snapped the traces when the plow tangled in the acacia bushes. Last I saw them, they were browsing in the olive orchard north of the field I was in,” Eduor admitted, relaxing enough to lower the wadded protection of his tunic a little. “The last time the female got loose, she came back by nightfall. I hurt too much to chase after them right away, so I figured they’d come back in by then. If not, I’d go looking in the morning.”

“Falkon’s donkeys are fairly good that way,” one of the two men stated. He ignored Chanson’s presence as he removed his rain-damp orange-and-brown
thawa
, then stripped off the matching brown loincloth underneath. “They might stay out overnight if enough rain puddled in the ditches to drink, but that’s the
meltimi
wind out there.”

“Everything will dry up over the next few days, and they’re smart enough to know where their watering trough is—please do send
dyarina
Jimeyon in,” said the other man, acknowledging Chanson with a dip of his head. “My wife insists I suffer the sin of nightly flatulence, and must therefore confess and cleanse myself before coming to bed tonight. If farting’s a sin, I figure I’ll get more sympathy and a lighter penance from a fellow boy than from a girl.”

Caught off guard by his quip, Chanson threw back her head and laughed. Waving her hand at the men, she took herself out of the bathing hall.

FOUR

“You,” Eduor said, enunciating his words carefully, “know how to hold a party.”

Chanson’s nut brown eyes, slightly glazed from the date wine they had been drinking, followed his every word. Chin already propped on her hand, she leaned over a little more and sighed. “Yes ... A party.”

She wasn’t actually watching his lips. He was sure of it.

“A lovely party,” Eduor added, flicking his tongue on each
L
.

“Lovely ...” She sighed.

Lovely, indeed. I see my tongue is getting me into trouble again.
If the wine hadn’t dulled some of the pain at that thought, if her beautiful but very, very different face hadn’t thwarted thoughts of anything a paler golden shade, if it hadn’t been far from either wrinkled or petulant, he might have shuddered at that thought. As it was, the village vintner, or whatever it was they called the person who made the local wine, knew how to craft a very potent brew from the fruit of all those date palm trees. Eduor was drunk enough that such considerations were few and mild and faded quickly from his thoughts.

In fact, if he hadn’t been so comfortably drunk, the tiny remaining sober corner of his mind knew he would never have done what he did next. Picking up his glazed cup, Eduor drank some more of the sweet-spicy wine, then licked the near edge of the rim with his tongue, catching the stray droplet that tried to slither down. Her eyes glazed over a little bit more, following the sinuous flicks of his tongue as if entranced. He wasn’t even displaying half of it this time, either.

Definitely getting me into trouble,
he repeated silently, finishing off the dregs in his cup.
At least it’s just with words ...

“Doesn’t it get in the way?” Chanson blurted out, chin sliding off her hand so that she could gesture vaguely with her fingers.

“Mmm?” Mouth buried behind the solid safety of ceramic, Eduor gave her a questioning look.

She glanced around quickly, making sure they were more or less alone. While there were still several other villagers about, laughing and chatting and celebrating the odd but cheerful Festival of Mid-Dry, held twice a year during the middle of what passed for winter and summer each ... no one was within easy hearing distance. It helped that three of the original seven musicians were still playing quietly off to one side, though their music was more for listening now, and not the long, wild, exuberant dancing tunes from earlier.

Apparently believing they were almost alone enough, but not quite, she scooted around the edge of the trestle table, one of many set up in the temple courtyard. Slipping onto the chunk of palm tree trunk that served as a seat for the end of the table, she leaned over the corner separating them and whispered, “
You
know. Your tongue? I’ve tried, but I just can’t stop thinking about it.”

This close, Eduor could smell the spicy-sweet perfume she had bathed in before donning her elaborately brocaded blue
thawa
and jewel-pinned turban for the festival. This close, he could see how her own pink tongue snaked out to moisten her lips, full and soft-looking. This close, he could see she was nothing like the last two women to get this close to him ... except that she, too, was fascinated with his tongue.