“That is what you asked when you first arrived,” Seawind replied.
“You said you would teach me how to kill her. But I can’t. I tried.”
“I said you would be able to kill her,” Seawind said. “That is not the same as succeeding in your attempt.”
Pernie frowned again. She knew he was playing word games with her, but she had spent enough time on the Island of Hunters to know she didn’t want to play it back. She was too tired. Her whole body ached like it used to ache in the early days when she’d first come here, the days when she’d spent all that time running and climbing, trying to keep up with the hunt hopelessly.
She looked at the elf sitting there, so calmly, the absolute image of deadly confidence, and somehow it exhausted her too completely to contain. She simply dropped to her knees and began to cry, tears of fatigue more than anything, but also of frustration, waning anger, and more than a little broken heart.
No one came to comfort her, and so she was allowed to sit and pour it all out, the hot, salty tears running from the pools in her palms and down her wrists, soaking her elbows before running into her pants, where they mixed with the salty water that remained from her having had to swim back to shore.
When she was finished, when her sorrow and rage had finished washing out, she looked up to see that Seawind was gone, leaving only Djoveeve sitting there, just as she had been, with her feet up on the boulder still.
“Welcome back, little Sava,” she said, a smile warm upon her face.
Pernie’s lips wriggled as she got up and sat herself down across from the woman somewhat glumly. “I suppose the other elves will kill me now,” she said. “Since I killed their dumb sargosagantis.”
Djoveeve’s smile grew a little wider as she shook her head. “Oh, I don’t think it is as bad as that. And I expect they’ll all know about it very soon. It’s not easy to kill one of them without Fayne Gossa, you know.”
“They could kill it with a lightning bolt or a fireball. A big bolt of ice.”
“Sargosaganti don’t suffer the effects of fire and electricity. And elves don’t conjure the elements at all.”
“They don’t?”
“Have you ever seen an elf cast a fireball? Throw an ice spear or summon lightning?”
“No,” she admitted. Her little brow wrinkled beneath her bangs, which were plastered to her forehead by the salty sea. “But I’ve only ever been with them on the hunt.”
“Well, they don’t. And without poison, you’ve done something just short of impossible for many of them, I should think.”
“Shadesbreath could kill one with his pinkie nail,” Pernie said.
“Perhaps,” Djoveeve said. “But I certainly would never try. Not even when I was young and fast like you.”
Pernie looked up, her eyes still luminous with remnant tears, glittering in the light of the torches Djoveeve had placed in sconces on the wall. The old woman nodded, confirming it was true. Pernie shrugged and started fidgeting with her hands. The one where Master Altin’s sleeve had been throbbed miserably.
“Kettle will hate me forever now,” she said. “And Master Tytamon too. He’s back alive, you know.” She looked up then, her features momentarily alight with the thought of that. “He came back because of the ghost tree. Just like you said he would. Except that you never said he would. But he was a ghost, and now he’s real. I saw him. He even grabbed me by the neck.”
Djoveeve leaned forward in her chair, her own expression contemplative for a time. “That explains the missing tree the elves were discussing this afternoon.” But she spent only another half second on the thought before asking, “And why did the old master grab you by the neck? Caught you on at that Miss Pewter, did he?”
She nodded, looking back into her lap. “He did. And Master Altin took my pickaxe. The one that Master Ilbei gave to me. And he almost appeared right on top of me too.” She held up her hand for the old Sava’an’Lansom to see. The edge of it was swollen and puffy, a mottled mixture of purples, blacks, and blues. Most of the crusting blood had washed off, showing only a raw pair of splits where the skin had burst open to accommodate the pressure caused by the fabric of Altin’s sleeve, rents like an overdone sausage.
Djoveeve took the child’s small, battered hand in her own cracked and leathery ones, turning it slightly so she could see it better in the light. “I’ll call Seawind back,” she said, starting to rise.
“No, I can fix it for myself,” Pernie said. And she did so, though the spell nearly exhausted her to unconsciousness before Djoveeve could stop her from beginning to sing it yet again.
“You need to learn better healing magic than that,” the old woman said. “You may never be a great healer, but you can certainly do better than a child’s song. That magic, however, is one you’ll have to learn at a human school. The elves can’t teach you, and I haven’t got the gift.”
“I’m not going to a human school,” she said. “I want to learn how to kill Orli Pewter from the elves. I want to marry Master Altin, and now he’s married her. They were going to do it this very night. So now I have to kill her and wait for him to be sad for a long time before he’ll ever love me again.”
Djoveeve watched the intensity of the look that came upon the child’s face. The old woman’s expression clouded some as she did.
“He’ll not love you after, child. You won’t win him that way.”
“Yes I will.”
“Saying so won’t make it true. You can’t kill her and expect him to fall in love with you simply because she is gone.”
“But there isn’t any other way.”
Djoveeve considered that for a time, her wrinkled face wrinkling all the more. “I was told that Earth people only live a hundred years or so before they die. Their ‘technology’ is weak in that way.”
Pernie looked up at that, her face a question of hope and possibilities.
“It’s true,” Djoveeve went on. “Their ancient ones reach a hundred and thirty years; perhaps one or two make a hundred and fifty at best.”
“Who told you that?” Pernie asked, her little blonde brows drooping skeptically. “Even blanks live longer than that. Orli Pewter says her people are all blanks. Not even one of them has got any magic at all.”
“I have my sources,” the leather-clad master assassin said. “And I get more day by day.”
Pernie fell to thinking on that for a while, and Djoveeve rose and got Pernie something to eat, salt fish and a bunch of wild grapes.
“My point, dear girl,” she said as she sat back down and pushed the food at her, “is that you’ll have a better chance if you simply wait. Patience is your ally, young Sava. You’ve learned that as a hunter, both at home and here. How is this any different?”
Pernie’s lips set to wriggling again, which in turn wriggled her nose. That was true, she knew. And it was likely that Master Altin, as a Seven, would live very long. And Pernie was a Three. Threes lived a very long time, especially if they could heal or had close doctor friends.
But still, a hundred years was a long time to wait. She didn’t want to wait that long. She was fairly sure that was too much patience for something as important as this. Besides, what would happen if she died before Orli Pewter did? She’d almost died several times since coming to the island, after all. The world was a very dangerous place. What if she died before Master Altin finally had a chance to love her again?
What if he died? There were likely very many monsters out in space!
But it was possible. She didn’t know why, but it seemed like he must have loved her at some time, so it only made sense that he would love her again. She’d rescued him from the tree that had nearly killed him and taken off his arm. She saved him from the Hostiles out in space when he was all but dead. Granted, she had just tried to kill Orli Pewter again, so he might not love her right now. But she would make up for that somehow.
But she didn’t want to wait.
Thinking about waiting made the lower of her two wriggling lips push itself into a pout. Djoveeve asked what it meant, to which Pernie simply said, “I want him to love me before a hundred years.”
Seawind came back into the room before her words were out, and he answered as if the statement had been meant for him. “Your race hardly bonds in pairs with anything approaching exclusivity.”
Pernie looked up at him as he approached her, unfurling a length of cloth that shimmered wetly in the flickering torchlight. He took her hand and wrapped it with the cloth, which burned as if with extreme chill. She made a point of not showing that it hurt, but she jerked her hand away.
He snatched it back. “I’m undoing that butchery of a healing spell you cast. Sit still, or your hand will never work properly.”
When he unwound the cloth, her hand looked as it had before she’d sung her healing song, swollen with angry red rents and bruising over the back of the hand and up past the wrist. But it only looked that way for a moment more. As soon as the cloth was removed, Seawind took her little hand between his two larger, stronger, and exquisitely delicate ones, and, in moments, the wounds were gone. “Next time, little Sava, let me do it properly. You need that hand to fight. And to use what you will learn in the human school.”
“I’m not going to a human school,” she said. “I’m never going back. Not until Orli Pewter is dead.” She nearly threw herself back into the chair as she said it, the sneer on her face suggesting she’d just realized what she’d said, what she’d resigned herself to. She couldn’t kill Orli Pewter. It was stupid to ever think she could. Of course Master Altin wouldn’t love her after that. She should have known.
“You
are
going to a human school,” Seawind said. “We believe it is essential for you, in fact. Part of your training as Sava’an’Lansom no less.”
She looked up, her whole face pinching, her pouting lips now defiant. She crossed her arms across her chest, shaking her head. “I won’t.” She jerked her gaze toward Djoveeve. “She never did. So I’m not either.”
“Well, I did spend time on Kurr across the years, and there was much I had to learn,” Djoveeve said, but Pernie could tell by the way she said it that they both knew that wasn’t what Pernie meant.
“I’m not going back there,” Pernie said. “I won’t.” Her eyes brightened suddenly, eyebrows leaping on high with a new idea. “Teach me how to kill her so I don’t get caught.” How foolish she had been, almost sucked into their plan, whatever it was. The answer had been there all along, the very same answer she’d had when she dropped the poison into the wine cup. “That’s the school I want.”
“He’ll still not love you,” Seawind said. “That’s not how your species works.”
“Yes it is,” she spat out reflexively. But she paused, and amended with “Why not?”
“A human male will love a human female if he becomes enamored with her. The practice of ring ceremonies has nothing to do with it at all. If you truly are determined to have this man for yourself, then you must win him in the way of women of your race.”
Pernie looked down at where her arms were crossed. She uncrossed them and, after staring there for a time, looked back up at him. “But I can’t,” she said. “Not until I grow.”
“You can’t win him like that,” Seawind said. “Even your race isn’t quite so simple as that. Not all of them, anyway. Certainly not Sir Altin Meade.”
“Then how?”
He walked up to her and poked her with the tip of his finger, a single thrust right on the breastbone. “It’s not here that you need to grow, little Sava.” He moved his finger up and tapped her firmly between her eyebrows. “It’s here. This is what will secure him for you, if anything can,” he said. “That other will simply make him look.”
Pernie had never thought about that before. She supposed Orli Pewter was pretty smart after all. With all that Earth technology she had. She knew everything about the stars. She even knew about a lot of Prosperion, especially the plants. She’d even known some of them before she ever got there. She was the first one from Earth to learn their language too, like really learn it, so you could talk to her outside of the castle where there weren’t any translation spells. Pernie knew it was true because she’d been the one to help her do it.
The idea came upon Pernie then, slowly at first, like the first droplets of a melting icicle, drip, drip, drip. But then it broke loose, the whole thrust of it all at once: what if that was why Master Altin loved Orli? What if he loved her for all that Earth stuff she knew?
She looked back to Seawind and glanced to Djoveeve, then back again, her furtive eyes desperate like a cornered wolverine.
“As I said,” Seawind said. “You will be attending a human school.” He smiled as if he was looking right into her thoughts before he added, “And it won’t be on Kurr. You will go to school on Earth.”
Pernie didn’t like the idea too much, but she nodded because she realized she had to agree. Earth was the only way. And anything was better than waiting a whole century.
Chapter 54
“W
ell, you sure know how to show a girl a good time on her honeymoon,” Orli teased. She stood between Altin and Roberto, staring out the thick, narrow window in the boot section of Altin’s tower, looking through a rather violent storm at the alien excavation taking place on the surface of Yellow Fire’s new world. “Nothing says romance like howling sandstorms and watching alien construction equipment digging holes.”