Juhrnus nodded. “Fine.” He retreated to the table while Sodur set the pot over the fire, stirring in a handful of barley grains and a pinch of salt. Sodur already knew how Reisil was going to take his revelations. If Juhrnus was molten, she was glacial. Since Veneston she’d frozen him out of her life.
Familiar sorrow made his shoulders slump. Between one moment and the next, Reisil had stopped confiding in him, stopped asking questions, stopped looking at him. If she could have, she’d have avoided him altogether.
Thank the Lady severing our tie isn’t so easy!
He rubbed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. He missed her. After Upsakes, there had opened such a great hole in his life. Reisil had filled it generously. She’d been a friend, a daughter, a student and a teacher. And now that hole was back again, larger, more raw than before.
The stew bubbled and soon filled the room with hearty fragrance. The storm outside continued to blow. Juhrnus sat at the pitted plank table, weaving intricate braids from strips of finely cut leather he carried in his belt pouch. Sodur sat in the chair Reisil had vacated, his feet propped on the windowsill, whittling a piece of fine-grained chestnut into the shape of a gryphon.
Minutes ticked past. Each man looked to the door whenever the wind rattled the latch. At last it slid silently up.
Reisil eased herself inside, her cloak stiff with ice, her cheeks brilliant, her lips pale. Purple shadows filled the hollows around her eyes. For a fraction of a second she met Sodur’s glance. She flinched and looked away, hanging her cloak on its peg. Wordlessly she took a kettle from the mantel shelf and filled it with water, adding lemons, dried apricots and currants, and several spoonfuls of honey from a cracked green crock that sat on the end of the shelf. She bent and situated the kettle firmly in the coals before sinking down beside Esper, her hunched back to the fire’s heat.
And so they sat, the stew bubbling, the fruit brew steeping, the snick of Sodur’s knife on the wood, the gentle rapping of Juhrnus’s knuckles on the table. Outside the ice became snow, driving horizontally through the black night. Inside, the fire collapsed with a rush of sparks and glowing coals.
Sodur sat up, dropping his feet to the floor. “Should be ready.”
Juhrnus laid more wood on the fire while Reisil brought out a loaf of rosemary flatbread. She set a pitcher of water in the center of the table as Sodur spooned the savory stew into bowls. Soon they were sitting around the table in less than companionable silence.
As he ate, Sodur felt the weight of his confession press heavier. And even heavier was what he still couldn’t reveal. He glanced at Reisil’s gray cloak, the melting crust of ice and snow making a puddle on the floor beneath it.
“Did you need a new cloak?”
“I like this one.”
“The green one was nice. Didn’t Elutark give it to you? Hardly worn, really.”
Reisil glared at him and bit off a hunk of bread. His eyes traced the pattern of golden ivy unfurling along her neck and left jaw. A sign of the Lady’s blessing. Or curse. He wasn’t sure anymore. The burden of the Lady’s gift was proving very difficult indeed. And it was about to get harder.
“It won’t change anything, you know. They won’t stop wearing the green just because you have.”
“No?” Her gaze cut into him. For months she’d refused to look at him. Now she skewered him with feral intensity.
Sodur nodded, the hairs on his neck lifting. He’d been expecting ice, but the glacial mask she’d worn for months was nothing but a thin sheath now.
How do I handle this?
“You can’t hide from what you are,” he said carefully.
“Tell me, just what do you think I am?”
“You—,” Sodur began and then stopped as she bent forward, her green eyes too brilliant, her jaw jutting like an ax-blade. There wasn’t an ounce of fat anywhere on her. All that had ever been soft or young or unfinished about her had vanished, stripped away in the last year. “Hope,” he said. “You are our hope.”
Her nostrils flared, and she laughed, a short, guttural sound that echoed from the curving stone walls. “And you are not only a liar, but a fool as well,” she said. “Or is it an act? Another mask?”
There was something waiting beneath her words. A trap. Sodur’s tongue slid between his teeth and his lips. She wanted a fight. She wanted blood. His especially. “I am what I am, Reisiltark,” Sodur said mildly, trying to shake her from this mood. “And you are what you are, no matter what color cloak you wear.”
“And you think that I am hope. Which leaves us wondering—what are you?” She smiled, a humorless stretching of her lips. “Shall I tell you?”
She waited. Sodur nodded, uneasiness twisting in his bowels.
Reisil leaned forward until she was a scant six inches away. The wind blustered, and the chimney moaned.
“Dead. You are dead.”
Chapter 14
Sodur sat back, face stony. “Is that supposed to be funny?”
“No.”
Sodur’s mouth thinned. “A threat, then?”
“Hurt an
ahalad-kaaslane
? Oh, no. Possible rumors to the opposite, I am loyal to the Blessed Lady and Kodu Riik. No, what I said is merely unvarnished fact. Truth.
You
may have difficulty recognizing it, of course. But it remains. You are dead.”
Several turgid moments passed. The tension inside Reisil knotted. Her boiling frustration and fury were unbearable. Sitting still, doing nothing, holding it in—she couldn’t do it anymore.
“Perhaps you would explain it to me,” Sodur said, his hand dropping to Lume’s head. The lynx had come to stand at his knee, a low growl rumbling deep in his throat. “I have a sniffle, and my joints hurt. Nothing fatal, I should think. But then, I suppose I ought to be surprised to be feeling anything at all, dead as you say I am.”
Reisil’s lips curved reluctantly. Damn but she
liked
him. But even as she thought it, her smile faded. He held the keys to the locks that shackled her. They were not friends. “I went down to the Fringes today,” she said abruptly.
Sodur frowned. “Is that wise?”
Reisil lifted a shoulder. “I had been on my way to see you, actually.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.” She didn’t elaborate. “But to answer your question, the
ahalad-kaaslane
serve all of Kodu Riik, not just those who smell good. And I have done some good for the people of the Fringes on occasion.”
“Of course you have, but to go there alone . . . You must be careful. The
ahalad-kaaslane
don’t enjoy the respect they once did. And you’re not a favorite of many.”
“I wonder why.” She watched the color rise in his cheeks and felt a certain satisfaction at his discomfort. “What kind of
ahalad-kaaslane
would I be if I refused to do the Blessed Lady’s work because I was afraid of getting hurt? What kind of
ahalad-kaaslane
would that make any of us?”
“You’re talking about going to the wizards again,” Juhrnus said accusingly.
“Whatever it takes,” Reisil said. “And it is
my
decision.”
Before Juhrnus could retort, Sodur interceded. “That is an argument for later. I’d like for Reisil to get back to my being dead.”
Reisil gave a short nod. “All right. But know that I’ve decided. I’m going to find the wizards.” She chopped her hand in the air as Juhrnus began to bluster. “Yes, they might kill me. But at least it’s a chance, and staying here won’t change anything.”
“Surely you will find a way to heal the plague before then,” Sodur said. “You healed the stripling Vare tonight. You’re coming into your own at last. Even now you might be able to heal the plague and just don’t realize it.”
Reisil turned. She spoke slowly, as if to an addled child. “The plague is here. I cannot heal it. We’re out of time. And we are
all
dead.”
The two men sat transfixed. Reisil paused for a moment, gathering herself, and then plunged into the story, starting after the assassins attacked her. She wasn’t ready to tell them about that, or about the Scallacian sorcerers either.
As she described the woman’s condition, Reisil covered her eyes, pressing her knuckles against her closed lids as if to gouge out the memory.
“Incontinence, weeping blisters, bleeding in the eyes and ears and mouth, the purple rash, her arms and legs black and swollen. The smell—”
“No,” Sodur said, gripping the edge of the table. “Not so soon!”
Juhrnus said nothing, but Reisil felt him like a hungry black shadow. She hunched her shoulders and dropped her hands from her face.
“She had a broken wrist. I could fix that.”
“You’d have been able to heal her if the Lady had willed it,” Sodur said, but his words lacked conviction.
She laughed, a mocking sound that tore at her throat. “She gave me magic to heal Kodu Riik.”
Heal my land. Heal my children—human and animal.
Reisil heard the words again and felt herself cringe. “So there you are. The plague is here. You, Juhrnus, me—we’re all going to die. It’s only a matter of time. I certainly cannot save you. Unless the wizards can teach me how.”
A thick silence descended. At last Reisil slapped the table. “Why give me the power if it does no good? Why doesn’t
She
do something?”
“That may not be the worst of it,” Sodur said, letting the words go reluctantly. Reisil jerked around, and Juhrnus grunted.
“All right then. We’ve eaten. Get on with it.”
Reisil’s gaze flicked back and forth between the men, her brow furrowed. Juhrnus ignored her, settling a heavy, belligerent gaze on Sodur.
Sodur rubbed his hand over his mouth, staring into his empty bowl as if scrying in the drippings. “One of the
nokulas
came to Koduteel about a year ago.”
He waited, head down, his scalp shining like an egg through his thinning hair. The meaning of his words first sidled past his two listeners, made benign by their quiet tone and Sodur’s blunt telling. Then it circled back, biting from behind like a starving dog. Juhrnus leaped to his feet.
“Here? How? Where is it?” When Sodur didn’t move, Juhrnus sank back down in his chair. “A year. It’s been here a year. Why didn’t you tell us?” His voice was dull with anger.
Or was it fear? Reisil couldn’t tell.
“It’s not as simple as that.”
Reisil glowered. That was just what he’d said in Veneston. And he was right. It wasn’t simple. But he’d never given them a chance.
“The creature was here before we knew it for what it was. As for why we said nothing—after Upsakes, we dared not trust anyone. With the peace so new and delicate, we feared what could happen.”
Sadness washed his voice and pulled down the corners of his eyes and mouth.
Didn’t trust even us, Reisil added silently.
“And you’ve seen fit to enlighten us at long last.” Juhrnus’s voice had turned ugly. Not just from fear or anger, Reisil decided. It was helplessness.
Juhrnus began to hammer Sodur with questions. Reisil let the sounds flow around her, a wrongness slowly taking shape out of her swirling emotions and torrential thoughts. At length Juhrnus rumbled to a halt.
She spoke in the sudden silence, her voice uninflected. “What else?”
Sodur cast her a sharp look and drew a deep breath. “There’s a lot you don’t know about the
nokulas
. We hadn’t even heard of them until three years ago. Then
ahalad-kaaslane
on circuit started disappearing, mostly in the mountains between here and Patverseme. We thought it was the war—it seemed obvious. But then there began to be sightings. One here, another here. Then more often. Nothing definitive. The reports described ghostly beasts that could chase a mounted man down at full gallop. They had teeth like daggers, slaughtering whoever they encountered. It was hard to credit the stories. Village superstitions. But we sent
ahalad-kaaslane
to have a look anyhow. They confirmed the villagers’ accounts. But you know how things are. Few at court listened to us.
“Then the war heated up, and we needed everyone to fight, so we curtailed our investigation. Meanwhile, the
nokulas
spread through the mountains. Some thought it would keep our borders safe from the Patversemese.”
“That’s worse than stupid,” Juhrnus said, shoving up from the table to stalk restlessly across the room.
“Sure, and that’s what we told the Arkeinik. They didn’t want to hear it.”
“But the
ahalad-kaaslane
don’t answer to anyone. We do what needs to be done, no matter what anyone else says.”
Sodur laughed hollowly. “You’ve been here long enough to know better, Juhrnus. With the Lady’s leaving, the
ahalad-kaaslane
no longer have the means to enforce what we say. And the nobility know it only too well. We have had to change the way we work in order to protect Kodu Riik. We have organized a council to correlate information, to send
ahalad-kaaslane
where they are most needed, to organize ourselves efficiently and to greatest effect. If the Lady won’t tell us what to do, we must plan for ourselves.”
Juhrnus stopped his pacing and turned to stare, hands dangling at his side. “What? Since when?”
“For a while.” When Juhrnus only continued to stare, Sodur said, “since we returned from Patverseme.”
“And you never told us.” Juhrnus glanced at Reisil. She shook her head. “Are we the only ones?”
“Yes.”
Reisil slumped in her seat. Said out loud and so baldly, it was like a fist in her gut. It shouldn’t have been shocking. It was only reasonable after Sodur had gone to so much trouble to make everyone despise and distrust her. Of course they wouldn’t want her to know anything that would help her plot against Kodu Riik. And Juhrnus, he was her friend. He wouldn’t have kept secrets from her. But knowing it and hearing it were two different things.
“Why?” Juhrnus pressed.
Sodur glanced at Reisil. “It was deemed prudent.”