Stonewiser (11 page)

Something about the woman's intensity warned Sariah. “It's not like a lease, right? Because I quit my lease some time ago and I don't intend to live like that ever again.”

Delis growled like an irritated weasel. “I said no lease.”

“Watch your temper, will you?”

“Will you be my donnis?”

She had deep reservations. Delis didn't strike her with her good manners or her unwillingness to explain. “Perhaps it's not such a good idea—”

“Decide.”

Sariah's own dirk was at her throat. Delis's ties were gone. She had Sariah pinned down against the buttress roots. How?

Delis must have been working on her ties all day, rubbing the rope against the deck, taking advantage of Kael's absence and Sariah's sloppy good will. She had lessened her vigilance because she believed that, despite her claims to the opposite, the woman was grateful for her help. She had been wrong.

“Decide,” Delis said. “Now.”

The fanged dirk was cold against her throat. Sariah didn't want to swallow for fear of cutting herself. “You don't want me to swear to something I don't understand.”

“If you don't swear, you die.”

“I won't honor an oath under duress.”

“But I will.”

The blade tickled Sariah's mad pulse. A drop of liquid warmth trickled down her neck. The fog parted to reveal the tall tupelo towering above her, branches swaying with a sudden breeze. For four hundred chills the massive tree had survived the rot, defying destruction through accommodation with its lethally changing environs. Under the circumstances, it was a lesson worth noting, even though Sariah didn't think she could stomach accommodation over defiance just then.

“Swear.” The woman was shaking like the tupelo's sparing leaves. “I don't want to kill you, kitten, but I will if I must.”

Sariah saw the pain in the other woman's eyes, the ingrained sense of duty prevailing over will, the settlement with death, even when death was not desired. She knew the meaning of blind obedience. She understood duty's clash with choice.

“Please? Swear. For me?”

Despite the bile churning in her gut, despite herself, Delis's plea, her familiar pain, trumped Sariah's resolve. “Fine. Have it your way. I swear. To what, who knows, but don't expect me to like it. The blade is no substitute for a free oath, but you know that.”

“You swore.” Delis dropped the dirk. “You'll live.”

Delis hugged her, a violent squeeze that wrenched the breath out of Sariah. She planted a sudden kiss on her lips. “You won't regret your oath, my donnis. I promise.”

By Meliahs. A kiss and an oath. A troublesome combination by any measure. Just in case, Sariah grabbed her dirk from the floor and tucked it securely in her belt.

“You what?” Kael stared at Sariah in disbelief. “The bitch did what?”

“Calm down, Kael, it all has come to naught. I'm fine and Delis is happy, and we won't have to worry about her killing me anymore. Isn't that right, Delis?”

“Of course, my donnis,” Delis said, oddly adoringly.

Kael met Delis's defying stare. “You and I. Our day is coming.”

“I'm not afraid of you.” Delis bared a row of crowded teeth. “You're but an old wasp hanging about the hive seeking to gorge on honey.”

“And I suppose you're the honey bee?” Kael said.

Delis was on her feet and ready to pounce.

Sariah snapped. “Stop it, you two.”

“As you wish, my donnis.” Delis sat back on her haunches, eyeing Kael dangerously.

Kael eased out of his fight stance and turned to Sariah. “Did you really—?”

“Aye, but the oath is of no practical consequence and all is well.”

“Ah.” Kael shook his head as if dispelling a cloud of the Domain's worse gnats. “Of no practical consequence, you say? Hardly. All is not well, not with you, not with her, and certainly, not with me.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“What's a donnis, Sariah?”

“Oh, that. Well, I don't really understand the notion, but I gather it's something harmless, like a friendship oath, some trick of the Inkes’ oath order which frees Delis from her duty to kill me.”

“Harmless, you say?”

“Can't you see Delis is no longer our enemy?”

“You mean
your
enemy?”

Had the man turned daft and blind at the same time? “She's no longer a threat to us. She won't harm me. Or you. Won't you, Delis?”

“Of course not, my donnis. Not as long as you wish the old wasp unharmed.”

It was hardly an assurance, but it was better than none.

Kael insisted. “Tell me again, Sariah. Do you know what a donnis is? Do you have cause to know the ways of the Inkes?”

“Not really.”

“On both counts?”

“On both counts.”

The terrible frown lifted from his brow. His mood lightened and the wicked grin made its notorious appearance. He was acting stranger than a tomcat with burnt whiskers.

“Sit, wiser.” He pulled her down on his lap. “I won't have you kick the bitch to death.”

“She's my donnis,” Delis protested.

Kael fired his most contemptuous glare. “You didn't tell Sariah what she should have known before she swore you that mockery of an oath. And you would have killed her. That's enough evil for me.”

“Whatever is wrong with you?” Sariah said.

“The old tongue is a tricky language,” he said. “There isn't a word that fairly translates the term
donnis
to our speech. However, there is one word in our language which most people readily comprehend and does justice to such a notion. Do you know what it is?”

“Obviously, no.”

“Would you like to tell the wiser, Delis?”

Delis sank in her heels, averting her eyes from Sariah.

“Delis?” Sariah was suddenly alarmed.

“
Pet
,” Kael spat. “The correct translation for the word
donnis
is ‘pet.’”

Nine

 

S
ARIAH FINISHED KNOTTING
the last of the thickly pleated weave warps to the lower beam. She ran her hands through the tightly strewn warps and tested them for strength. Good. They were tight and sturdy. Her hands ached, her fingers were chapped and blistered, and her fingertips were numb, but instead of taking a rest, she turned her attention to the other side of the frame where Kael had just finished cutting the notches into the side beams. She threaded the first horizontal row through the upper notch and began plaiting it over-and-under the vertically strewn warps, tightening the weft with short, angry pulls.

Kael took a long draft from his new leather flask, a gift from his friend, the forester. “That will make a fine wall for the new deck when you're done with it. Shame you'll have only shreds of your hands left for your wisings.”

“I want this damn wall finished and the deck done. We've wasted enough time as it is. At this pace, Leandro will die of old age in his atorium's bed.”

“Have a drink.” Kael handed her the flask. “It's hotter than a rot pit today.”

Sariah choked on the lukewarm ale. “Ugh. It's like drinking soup. How can it be this hot? Just a few days ago, we were freezing. I know the weather is whimsical in the Domain, but this is ridiculous.” Sariah capped the flask and returned it to Kael. “I just hope it doesn't get cold again. We need to reach Leandro with all haste.”

“We will.” Kael took a warp from the lot and threaded the next notch down from the one Sariah was working on. “The shelter will be done as soon as we install this last wall. And now that we have a good deck, we can travel faster.”

Sariah took stock of their work thus far. Three walls rose in the middle of the new deck. A half-thatched roof rested beside the frame of the last wall, now in progress. The fragrant scent of recently cut wood perfumed the air, a lovely reprieve from the flat's acid smell.

“The forester was very kind,” she said, resuming her work. “No one I know at the Guild would have given us a brand new deck and the fixings to build a shelter without a good amount of coin or a hefty debt.”

“The forester is an old friend,” Kael said, without looking up from his task. “We've had our share of adventures together.”

“Friendship, the next best thing to kin in the Domain.”

“What's the matter with her?” Kael had stopped working and was now squinting into the flats, sheltering his eyes from the sun with a hand over his sweaty brow.

“Her?” A frantic Delis was running toward them. “I couldn't care less.”

“I don't see traces of eels or rotfish,” Kael said, “and I don't smell the belch either. What's wrong with her?”

“Her head,” Sariah said crossly. “Anyone who collects you know what for a living is wrong in the head.”

“Donnis?”

“Don't even say it.”

Sariah was still furious. Kael had taken to assigning Delis tasks like foraging for food and water, keeping her away from Sariah. Surprisingly, Delis complied, eyeing her with a hint of supplication in her eyes, as if teaching her newest pet the virtue of obedience through devout example. Well, let her demonstrate all she wanted. She was no one's damn pet.

As if reading her thoughts, Kael flashed his wickedest grin. Sariah stuck her tongue out at him. He chuckled, but she wasn't confusing his equanimity with tame acceptance. Sariah was unconvinced by his behavior. Although he acted amused by the situation, he also refused to allow her to probe him. What dark emotions stirred beneath his calm demeanor?

Delis was a different story altogether. The change in her was nothing short of remarkable. She seemed free of the burden that had made her so grim before, oddly cooperative, using her well-honed survival skills to their benefit and almost happy, if such a term could be applied to a natural brooder. A part of Sariah was sorry for Delis. She was trying hard to gain her trust, attention and acceptance. Being the focus of Kael's rage was a disgrace, but bearing the wrath of both, Kael and Sariah, that had to be a catastrophe. Well, she didn't care. The woman had earned it many times over.

“Look, look!” Delis pointed at the sky, waving her full net as she ran.

“What… is… it… ?” Kael's eyes narrowed on a tiny spot in the sky.

“A long-legged crane?” Sariah spied a pair of wings in the air. “A gull?”

“Not a crane and not a gull.” Kael frowned. “A hawk, I think. A red hawk.”

Why would the appearance of a hawk cause such a fuss?

“There have been no hawks in the Domain since the rot took hold.” Kael's eyes were glued to the creature's flight path.

Delis reached them, sweating and out of breath. “Did you see it, my donnis?”

“Don't call me that.”

“A strange bird,” Delis puffed, “not of the Domain. An omen of grace, my donnis. For you. Meliahs’ gift.”

“What's in your net?” Kael asked.

“I don't know.” Delis dumped her net's contents at Sariah's feet. “See? The bird was hunting after these. But I've never seen these in the Domain either.”

A half-dozen large fish flapped on the boards. Fish were common to every puddle of water in the Goodlands, even in the keep's ponds, where Sariah had seen them rise to the surface and hunt for bugs during the long summer days. But these were the dead waters. You could hunt eel and rotfish, krill and the occasional bottom feeder. But fish?

At last, she understood the wonderment on Kael's face. As a roamer, he would have seen such creatures in the Goodlands as surely as she had. But to see not one, but two dead species return to the Barren Flats on the same day was nothing less than miraculous.

Kael was on his knees, examining the silvery fish. “Do you know this kind?”

She didn't. It wasn't the kind kept at the Guild's ponds. Kael selected one of the fish. He smelled the quivering thing and then sliced it in half and lay it on the deck, tracing the spine with the point of his knife, poking at its heart, liver, stomach and intestines with deliberate care.

“Not a faulty species,” he said. “Not a monster of nature either. Those we find sometimes. But these?”

He poked some more through the entrails and came up with a cluster of tiny black eggs on the tip of his blade. “They're spawning,” he murmured, fascinated. “Here. In the Domain.”