Stonewiser (21 page)

Every muscle on Kael's body contracted in a communal clench. “
If
you let them go.”

Orgos signaled. The gates opened. The two men watched in silence as the deck advanced down the channel and into the Barren Flats’ vastness. Then Kael and Orgos turned as one and a colorful quad of ferocious eyes fell on her, black and green, hazel and gray.

“Give her things back to her,” Kael said.

Orgos gestured with his head. Alfred, who had just returned, dumped their possessions into a basket.

“The game set too.”

Alfred scooped the snakes and scorpions into their little sack and added it to the basket.

“Satisfied, my boy?” Orgos asked.

“When the witness returns,” Kael said. “Get her out of here.”

Sariah tried to keep her bluff together. It was hard. Alfred seized her arm. Sariah stood her ground. “This is not what we agreed to do, Orgos.”

“I'd say this is better for you, unless of course you'd been planning on betraying me the entire time?”

Had Orgos known? Had she been playing his game all along? She had been a fool to believe his oaths. She might be getting out of Alabara alive and with Leandro's set, but her game was over, and it was Orgos who had won the day.

She made a last, desperate plea. “Kael, please. Some things aren't worth the price.”

“And some are.” He looked out the window. “Go.”

“Your deck, your weave, your red dye, your weapons, your game, everything you asked for is right here.” Alfred tossed the basket in the deck's shelter. “Now be nice and go.”

Sariah felt her mind unraveling, overwhelmed by a sequence of events that had gone terribly wrong. She had a vision of Kael as she had seen him last, darkly outlined against the sunset with Orgos's arms around his shoulders. Meliahs help him. She couldn't leave without Kael. Could she? She needed to stay in Alabara. She donned the weave slowly. She couldn't bring herself to clip on the deck's ropes and start pulling.

“I can't very well go out the front gate.” Sariah tried to stall. “The mob's waiting for me.”

“Never mind that.” Alfred pulled the deck forward. “Come.”

Walking alongside Alfred and his men, Sariah recognized Katrina the weaver. She flashed Sariah a crooked sneer. “Deaf and dumb, eh? What a load of dung that was.”

Kael's damn witness. When Katrina returned and reported Sariah's departure, Orgos's fun would begin. If she could only drown the woman with her glare.

“We don't really need a witness, do we?” Sariah said.

“A witness is what Orgos needs the most,” Alfred said. “He'll be waiting for Katrina, raring to go like a high-strung bull.”

Sariah choked on her bile. She swallowed an acid gulp and forced a suggestive smile to her lips. “Alfred, we don't need all these people to escort us. You are more than sufficient.”

He snorted. “You little whore, strutting your stuff, trying to get me in trouble with Orgos? I wouldn't mind trying, on account of your fine tits and your round ass, but I bet that every part of you is cold and hard like the stones.”

So much for her clumsy attempts at seduction. She forced herself to place one foot in front of the other. She pulled slowly through the settlement's tortuous basement, trying to gain some time to think. She had hoped her deal with Orgos would give her a little leeway in Alabara, enough to elude the watch and enlist Delis to mount a quick raid on Orgos's quarters. Instead, the fool had shredded her plans to pieces. Sure, she had Leandro's game, but without the excuse of wising the stones and with Delis gone, Sariah had little chance to raid anything, let alone Orgos's wellguarded rooms. She was a wiser, for Meliahs’ sake, not a runner. Worse, if she were ejected from Alabara, how would she get back into the settlement?

“This is where we part company,” Alfred said when their little group arrived at an isolated place by the settlement's back palisade. Sariah saw no evidence of a gate there, but to her surprise, Alfred unlocked a box in the ground and fumbled with a lever. Just as it had happened in Orgos's room, an unmarked portion of the palisade rolled out of the way.

The sound started all at once. The frogs’ thunderous croaks overtook the night. They seemed to rain from the sky, landing on the deck in droves, thickly coated with their pungent slime.

“Hurry up.” Katrina pulled her weave over her head and stomped on the frogs. “I hate them. I can't stand them.”

“Misbegotten freaks.” Alfred cursed. “They're early tonight.”

Sariah's attention strayed from the frogs. She saw nothing but a river of rot flowing in front of her. There was no channel or bridge to cross here, only the boiling corruption bubbling up as it surged, the frequent hiss of poison vents popping, and the occasional glow of a freshly ignited flow.

“This is not what I had in mind when I traded with Orgos.”

“Safe passage from the mob, that's what he offered,” Alfred said. “Orgos is as good as his word. I guarantee that no one from the mob is around here.”

“How am I supposed to cross the rot flow?”

“That's your problem, isn't it? Count yourself lucky. Most folks we let out this way don't even have a deck. Orgos, he insisted you have your due, just as he agreed with Kael. He doesn't want to give the fellow any reason to forsake his oath. The witness here, she'll tell Kael you had your deck, but I assure you, she won't tell him it lasted three minutes or less before it began to dissolve in the rot. We won't let Katrina here see you die, so she can be truthful to her tale. And that's all fine with Orgos and me.”

There was no time for questions or protests. Alfred seized Sariah. His guards hurled the deck down the embankment. It fell flat on the rot flow, igniting a cloud of sparks that shot up toward the sky. Sariah was still kicking when Alfred pitched her in the general direction in which the deck was drifting. She overshot the edge and slid across the deck over a slippery coat of frogs and slime. Her fingernails screeched as she dug her fingers in between the deck's logs and stopped herself from going overboard. She looked up to find Alfred's smile wide on his camel lips.

“She's free, Katrina. Say it's so.” Alfred patted the weaver's wide rump.

“I say so, lovey.” She planted a quick nip on his cheek. “Let's go tell Orgos that he can inaugurate his new boy.”

Sixteen

 

T
HE HEAT BURNED
through the deck's shuddering logs. A hiss of steam obscured Sariah's view. She grabbed for the pole. She had three minutes to find the dead waters, maybe less. Use the pole, ride the flow, aim for the outer edge. Or die. The pole withered as she planted it in the rot flow. It glowed like a fired iron when she took it out. She figured she had three pushes out of it before it dissolved entirely.

The air was toxic with the rot's breath. Her eyes burned with the vapors. Sweat drenched her body and made her grip slippery. The deck caught in an eddy and tipped to one side. Sariah plunged the pole and pushed. The deck hesitated, heaved, and moved forward, free of the eddy but still caught in the deadly flow.

Sariah squinted, trying to see the edge of the rot flow despite her stinging eyes. She spied a change in color to one side, a line of low flames, a possible indication of rot meeting dead water. Suddenly, a poison vent hissed beneath the deck. The deck lurched. Sariah thrashed in the air and almost went over the edge. Hanging on to the pole, she shoved her other hand under the twine and stuck with the roiling deck like a rider on a wild beast. She flattened herself on the logs just in time. A rush of scalding heat brushed her back and barely missed her. Around her, the frogs stuck to the deck with stubborn resolve. Sariah wished she too had tiny suckers on her fingers to hold on tighter.

A splash of rot crashed over the deck. Rot droplets blistered Sariah's cheeks, but the bulk of the wave landed on the frogs at the front of the deck. Sariah expected to see only smoke and bones left when the rot drained, but to her surprise, the frogs were there, intact and unperturbed. She didn't have time to think about it. The logs were hot to her body. The twine was smoldering. The deck was coming apart.

Sariah rose to her knees, planted the pole and pushed with all her strength. The deck responded, gaining speed and drifting towards the edge. Then it rattled and bounced down a series of drops where the rot had eaten through rock. Ahead of her, the rot flow divided into a fork. The remnant of an old boulder stood in the center. The rot flowed at increasing speeds on both sides, but to the left of the boulder, Sariah thought she saw the lighter hue of the rot dissolving into the dead water. It would take a monumental effort.

Sariah clutched her pole. Burnt and broken, it was half its original size. The deck shrieked. An entire log ripped off from the side and burst into flames. The boulder came at her quickly. She aimed, planted the pole and prayed.

Sariah lay among the frogs, her own breathing as harsh as their croaks. The tattered deck was hot, broken and scorched, but she had made it through the rot flow. Her face stung. A splash of rot must have seeped under her weave, because something burned fiercely under her arm. The stars reflected on the flats’ placid cradle. Exhaustion weighted her down, oppressive like the night's heat. She took a deep breath and ended up hacking instead. Her lungs were in no condition for deep breathing at the moment.

She closed her eyes and had a vision of Orgos's hand riding the lean muscles of Kael's thigh. She saw the marcher's tongue curled over Kael's nipple, sliding across his chest, leaving a trail of saliva as it searched for the matching treat. She could almost hear the marcher's delighted gasps at his discoveries; the smack of his mouth, nibbling at the site of the nipple's absent twin; the rustles of his tongue flickering over the fine scars that edged Kael's ribs.

She sat straight up. She wasn't going to dwell on that just now. She had always relied on her wits. Those wits better deliver right now because she needed to find an alternative to her defunct plan. She couldn't summon help. She was clear on the other side of Alabara's main gates and even if she made it there, if she somehow managed to elude the mob, she had no way of entering the heavily guarded gate until morning. Morning would be too late.

A fat frog landed on her lap, unafraid and oblivious. Preoccupied with her thoughts, Sariah toyed with the critter, nudging the consorts on its back. It was a strapping beast, she noted vaguely, and not a drop of the rot had harmed the frog or its passengers. Why?

Sariah examined the frog. How had these animals survived traveling through the inhospitable territories of the Domain? They didn't have wings, and in as much as it looked like they rained from the sky when they appeared, they were nowhere to be found during the day. Where did they hide?

It had to be in the dead waters. They must have developed some sort of protection against the rot and its brew, and at the very least, that protection was enabled during their reproductive cycles. It was worth the risk.

She smeared the animal's slime over her weaved hand. She leaned over the deck and reached out to the rot flow's nearest tentacle. She was crazy and she knew it, but better crazy than untrue. She dipped her hand in the rot, a quick in and out. A distant sensation of heat, a little vapor, but her weave, and most importantly, her hand, was unharmed.