The Broken Tower--A Novel, page 28
Judah almost laughed, despite everything. Nasty, swearing, fighting Cleric—oh. Right. Cleric. And he had been a guildsman, once. “Cleric is only the name he uses,” she said. “He’s a healer. I’m Judah. This is Lukash.”
“Onya,” the girl said. “Might as well relax. They won’t treat you too bad, other than locking you in here. Hells, they can be nice, even.”
“So nice, they’ve got us all in chains,” Lukash said, and Onya did laugh.
“So nice, indeed,” she said. “The trick gets us in here, and the chains keep us. But you’ll see. They’ll be back as soon as you quiet down, sweet as pie. Keep telling me I can come out as soon as I agree to join up.”
“So agree.” Lukash sat heavily down on the floor, too. “Then run.”
Onya shook her head. “Tried it. Didn’t work, but maybe you’re a better liar than I am. To hell with them, anyway. Me and Inek will get away from here sooner or later.”
“Who’s Inek?” Judah said.
“My brother. Only five years old, but they took him, too.”
“Why?” Lukash said.
“They say we’ve got power, and it’s not safe for us to live among regular people. Power, hah! I’m blind as a new kitten, practically, and Inek’s barely got the power of wiping his own butt.”
Lukash seemed to be thinking all of this through. “They said I had no power,” he said. “They said I could leave.”
“Then you should have,” Onya said.
“They’re delusional,” Judah said. “All of them. You’re not powerless.”
He turned on her. “You certainly aren’t. They were all but setting up altars to you, Daughter of Maia.” He spat the words with contempt.
Judah wanted to shrink back, but there was nowhere to shrink back to. “They’re especially delusional about me. But I’m not one of them. I never even heard of them until—gods, less than a year ago.”
“So you say,” Lukash said. He was looking at her as if he didn’t know her, as if she were a stranger he already disliked. Which was terrible, not because she was afraid but because he had been—had he been her friend? Almost. She would have been very lonely, not to mention very dead, had Cleric and Lukash not found her in the Ghostwood. Lonely enough to even welcome the Slonimi, had they been the ones to find her. And she’d been right; they’d been looking. She remembered Nate telling her that for Slonimi, finding power was like following a song to its source. All of those watching multitudes she’d sensed in the purple—it hadn’t been chance that she, Cleric, and Lukash happened upon Merrit in the desert. Merrit had been waiting for them. Waiting for her.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Lukash said. “Everything, this time. The whole truth.”
Across the dark caravan, Cleric’s eyes were fixed on her through his hanging hair, glittering with hatred and rage. Was the hatred and rage for her, or for something the woman Pavla had put in his mind? There was no way to know. “They sent—an agent, I guess you’d call him, to Highfall. He tricked me into thinking he was my friend. He said I was one of them, and they’d arranged it so I would grow up where I did. He called them the Slonimi. I didn’t know that word Merrit used for them, or I never would have let us come here.”
“Why did they care where you grew up?” Lukash said.
“So I could kill my foster brother.” She raised her hands, and let them drop. “Don’t ask why. I don’t know. Nate—the agent—was pretty crazy by then. He wasn’t making much sense. He called it the Unbinding, said it would bring the world back to life. I refused to do it. I still refuse to do it.”
“How did you end up in the Ghostwood?”
This conversation felt like an interrogation. “I don’t know,” Judah said, wearily.
“Like you don’t know how you’re able to make the knives.”
“Yes.”
“Can you break these chains?”
She looked at the chains. Iron, heavy, old. “I don’t think so.”
“Try,” Lukash said. It wasn’t a threat, but it wasn’t exactly not a threat.
Onya was watching, curious. Judah tried to ignore her. She put her hands around the chain that bound her to the wall. Closed her eyes, which felt right. The metal felt clammy and rough. The links of the chain were hand-forged, not machine-made. She focused on the white, and reached inside. Pulling metal out of soil or impurities out of water had felt—what had it felt like? Like gathering wildflowers, or herding chickens into a flock. The chain felt orderly, the substance of it lined up in stern, featureless rows. There was nothing to gather, nothing to collect. If the neatly regimented metal could have looked down its nose and scoffed at her, it would have.
She opened her eyes, shook her head. “No good. It’s already what it is. I can’t make it something else. I could try forcing it, but—”
“But what?”
“But I’m not strong enough. And I don’t like forcing things,” she snapped.
“It’s metal. It doesn’t feel,” Lukash snapped back.
And that was wrong somehow. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. She even thought he felt it: his words, lying in the middle of the dirty caravan floor like a sludgy puddle of wrong.
“Hey,” the girl, Onya, said, and Judah turned to look at her. “You’re the one they were all losing their heads about, aren’t you?”
Probably. But Lukash said, “What do you mean?”
“When they first took us, seemed like there was always someone in here with me, talking at me, trying to tell me stories or get me to play cards or something. Trying to be my friend. Then all of a sudden—nothing. Like they’d forgotten about me entirely, except to throw a roll in once or twice a day. If not for Inek I probably would have starved. He said they were all excited and busy, because somebody special was coming.” Onya looked at Judah. “I guess it was you.”
“How long ago was this?” Lukash said.
Onya frowned. “Ten days, maybe? Hard to keep track, in here.”
Ten days. Where had they been ten days ago? The winemaker’s?
Gavin, I brought food.
Judah despaired. It hadn’t mattered whether she tried to contact Gavin or not. They had noticed her, the moment she’d made contact with him. They would have found her no matter what she did. Her hand strayed to her wrist then froze. The Slonimi had her, but they didn’t have Gavin. As long as she didn’t know where he was, they never would.
“You aren’t one of them,” Lukash said to Onya.
“Me?” The girl laughed. “No. They came through my village about a month ago. Traveling show, right? First night there, this boy offers to buy me a pie. I should have known, then. You never can trust the pretty ones.”
“He kidnapped you?” Lukash said.
“He got me out walking on the moors with him, was what he did. Tried to dazzle my brain. And it almost worked. All, run away with me, my precious darling, and we’ll have so many beautiful children. But I didn’t want to run away. And children! There are ten in my family and my pa died last winter. If I wanted children I could stay at home. So I said no. Fine, he said. And off I go home to bed. But when I wake up, I’m here and my mouth tastes like flowers.” In the darkness, her voice was sharp with anger. “Inek thinks he’s on a fun little larkabout. They told him I’d been bad and that was how come I had to stay in here. Used to bring him to me every day, so he could tell me how he wished I’d be good so I could come play. And at first I said, sure, I’d love to play with you, Inek. I’ll be good. Thinking I could wait and then grab him?” She leaned her head against the wall. The gesture was tired and hopeless and sad. “But they knew I was lying. The one with the tattooed face, the one who sold the pies at the market—she told me ever so kindly that it would need to be real, but not to worry, I’d get there.” Then, bitterly, “Did she ever make it sound wonderful. But there’s three boys for every girl in my village. I know plenty about people making things sound wonderful.” She nodded at Cleric. “Whatever they did to your friend sure doesn’t look so wonderful.”
“It can be,” Judah said, reluctant. “You see what people feel. You know what they know. But it’s how you use it. Like anything, I guess.”
“You can do what they do?” Lukash said, with disbelief. “See inside my mind if you cut my arm?”
“The cutting part might be superstitious bullshit,” Judah said. “Otherwise, yes.”
“But you say you aren’t one of them.”
“I’m not one of them. I’m not who they think I am.”
“Who do they think you are?” Lukash said.
Judah leaned back, like Onya, against the caravan’s dirty wall. “They think I’m a miracle,” she said, disgusted.
“And who are you, really?”
That, she couldn’t answer.
* * *
They sat in the caravan for hours, the passage of time marked only by subtle shifts in the color of the light, and its movement across the walls. The caravan didn’t move—Onya said it hadn’t, for at least a week—but they could hear the camp moving around them. They heard creaking wagons, snuffling horses, someone whistling as they passed. They smelled campfire smoke and, eventually, the charred rich smell of something roasting. For all Judah knew, the Slonimi were very quietly burning each other alive outside. That would be satisfying.
Cleric still hadn’t spoken. She began to worry that whatever Pavla had done had broken something in him permanently, the way the poison Theron had been given had broken something in him. Lukash didn’t speak, either. He didn’t ask her any more questions and she was glad, because the answers were all unpleasant and difficult. Onya disappeared into the silent place where she spent most of her time, head leaning against the wall, eyes unfocused and faraway. They actually were unfocused, Judah knew. She and the girl had spoken a bit, after Lukash had stopped interrogating Judah. Onya hadn’t been joking about being blind as a new kitten. She could see their outlines, but would have to be in good light and very close to actually distinguish their features. From what she’d told Judah, she’d spent her short life taking care of nine children she could barely see. Judah wasn’t surprised that a few weeks in a Slonimi caravan hadn’t managed to break her.
This was not acceptable. None of this was acceptable.
Finally, when the light had faded almost entirely, the bolt on the door thunked open. Two huge Slonimi men entered. They unfastened Judah’s shackle from its chain, taking care not to touch her. Cleric didn’t even lift his head as the men pulled her to her feet. Lukash said, “Where are you taking her?” but not as if he were particularly invested in the answer.
The outside air was beautifully fresh and sweet smelling. There were easily twice as many wagons now as there had been when they’d arrived, and the people to go with them, all milling about a giant fire. The crowd was eerily quiet. Judah could hear the soft music of the breeze in the long grass, the crackling and popping of burning wood. A horse whuffed. The men pulled her toward the fire, where some sort of beast was roasting. Only one voice spoke.
It belonged to a woman with snow-white hair and dark skin. She was standing a bit forward from the crowd, her chin up and her stance angry and strident. “—was our best healer,” she was saying. “We have her journals, but her knowledge is gone. My friend is gone.” Tears glistened in her eyes. When she saw Judah, she stopped talking. The mix of raw emotions in her face was difficult to look at. Grief and awe and helplessness and—fear? Was that fear?
Daniel, who also stood forward, looked at Judah, too. For a moment, the clearing was silent except for the pop of flame and the hiss of fat dripping from the roast onto the fire. The two men holding Judah’s arms let go; there was nowhere for her to run. The bonfire was surrounded by a circle of bodies many layers thick. Judah saw Merrit, and Pavla, and the man named Kendzi. Somewhere in the circle was Onya’s brother, and somewhere else the pretty boy who’d bought the blind girl a pie.
The silence grew and swelled, and the fire crackled, and finally Judah said, “Well? I’m here. Tell me what you want or let me go.”
“Welcome, Daughter of Maia,” Daniel said.
“Quit calling me that. My name is Judah.”
A murmur went through the crowd. “The judah vine is an ignoble plant,” Pavla said. “Those who gave you that name did not love you.”
“As opposed to you, who chained me and my friends in a wagon,” Judah said, and the murmur doubled back again, colored now with surprise and dismay. The dark-skinned woman shook her head.
“This has all gone wrong, Daniel,” she said, hopelessly. “All wrong, and we’ve lost so much. So many.”
“It has not gone anywhere yet.” Daniel turned to Judah. “This is Gerda. She leads one of our oldest caravans. Tell her, Gerda.”
“The Clares traveled with us,” Gerda said. “Caterina, our healer. And her son, Nathaniel.”
Judah went tense and still. “You know Nathaniel,” Daniel said, and Judah said, “I know he’s insane, and a murderer.”
“He was not always so,” Gerda said, at the same time that Pavla said, “He made many sacrifices for the Unbinding.”
Which might have been true. In Highfall, in another life, Nate’s mother had shown her the Nate she’d raised, and the merry-looking young man she’d shown Judah had looked nothing like the wan, worried magus Judah knew.
Wait.
Caterina, our healer. My friend is gone.
“Did something happen to Nate’s mother?” Judah said to Gerda.
Gerda’s jaw grew stiff. “Yes. She is gone, Daughter of Maia.”
The dismayed murmur was quickly becoming a rumble. Daniel held up a hand to still it. “Please,” he said to Judah. “Tell us what happened in Highfall, at the beginning of last winter.” Judah said nothing, and he added, “If you don’t remember, Pavla can help you. She’s very skilled.”
Judah glared at him. “I saw exactly how skilled she is. My friend still hasn’t spoken.”
“Pah. You keep bad company,” Pavla said, dismissive.
“Perhaps keeping bad company kept her alive,” Daniel said, and then turned back to Judah. “We sent Nathaniel and a few others to Highfall to find you, open your eyes to the Work, and undo the wrong that Elban’s ancestor did. He succeeded in the first two tasks. He failed in the last.”
“So what happened to his mother?” Judah said.
It was Gerda who answered, her grief rippling her words, tearing at them. “A great wave of power moved through all of us. When it was over, Caterina’s body was empty. She is not where she should be. She is utterly gone.”
Judah felt a pang. She’d only met Caterina in the Work, but she’d liked the woman a great deal. The healer’s love for her son, and his for her, had been like a small, private sun that shone only for the two of them. Still, she said nothing.
“Pavla thinks you tried to destroy yourself,” Daniel said. “Did you know the tower would save you? Did you know it would come at the cost of three other lives?” He shook his head. “No action is without consequence. To save you from death, the tower needed a great deal of strength. So it pulled that strength from all of them: Nate, his mother, and the two others we sent with him. Derie Kulash and Charles Whelan. We think Nate survived because his own power was drained, so the tower used him as a conduit. But now his connection to us is broken. The others are lost to us forever.”
I will not feel guilty, Judah thought, hopelessly, remembering the wavering tip of the knife Nate held out to her. Gavin frozen on the floor, tears pooling in his eyes. She’d never heard of Derie Kulash, but the name Charles Whelan tugged at her memory—and then, suddenly, she remembered a handsome, ravaged face, sitting in a plain kitchen. Bleeding to death, tidily, into a basin. Not her memory; Nate’s. Nate had watched Charles die.
“Charles Whelan didn’t die with the others,” she said. “He killed himself. I saw it, in Nate’s memory. Something was wrong with him. Nate just watched.”
The murmur died out entirely. The clearing was so quiet, then, that Judah could hear the wind in the grasses again.
Somebody in the crowd made a noise. It sounded like a sob.
“Poor Charles,” Gerda finally said, and shook her fine head.
A short, slender man, his dark hair shot through with gray, stepped forward. “I want to know, Daniel. What will happen after the Unbinding, to those of us who have lost branches of our bloodlines?”
“Nobody knows what the world will be like then, Jasper,” Daniel said mildly.
“Power will still be power. And there she stands, blazing like a torch with it.” He pointed to Judah. “My son is gone. My caravan deserves a child out of her bloodline for it.”
Judah blinked. “My what?”
“Your son is still alive, Jasper Arasgain.” Pavla sounded exasperated.
“But of no use to us,” the man named Jasper said.
“Arguably, he was never of any use to us,” Pavla said.
Gerda scowled and raised a finger to point at the tattooed woman. “Don’t speak ill of Nathaniel, Pavla. I may be old, but I can still break your nose. That boy grew up in my caravan, not Jasper’s. A good heart, he had, before Derie got hold of him. If anyone’s to be compensated for his loss, it’s us. And we lost Caterina, too. Haven’t we earned a replacement?”
“Replacement?” Judah said.
But Daniel was nodding. “It’s fair. The first to Gerda’s caravan, because she lost the most. Jasper, your group can have the third. Let’s agree to leave the second open, for now. Who knows what the world will be? Her line is valuable.”
“We choose the fathers,” Jasper said, and Daniel said, “Agreed.”
A sick feeling welled up from the center of Judah. They couldn’t actually be talking about what they seemed to be talking about, could they? The replacements, and the fathers—they had nothing to do with her.
