Part 26 (2/2)

”The kigh.”

”All right, our kigh...” The foreign word felt unbalanced in her mouth, like a borrowed dagger. ”You said they look away from the dead. Maybe baby spirits, baby kighs, haven't been around long enough to get attached to their body. Instead of looking away, they run.”

”And the babies die,” Karlene murmured.

Vree nodded. ”And the babies die.”

”It makes sense.” Relaxing, Gyhard s.h.i.+fted position, sending a wave of rapidly cooling water to lap at Vree's chin.

For the first time since they'd peeled off sweat-stained clothing, Vree turned to look full at him. ”This is the only death we've run into on the road; I think he stopped here. If it only took the dead pa.s.sing by, we'd be knee deep in bodies by now.”

He played with a bit of loose plaster as he considered it but found himself considering her instead. That she was both dangerous and dangerously loyal, he'd known from the beginning. Adaptable, beautiful, ruthless; he'd discovered that on the road. Since she'd challenged him over the bard in the Healers' Hall, he'd seen that a strong intelligence lurked beneath her single-minded intensity. She was capable of such intense love that she'd agreed to lay her sanity on the line rather than have her brother die. All at once he found himself wondering what Kars would have thought of her.

Kars. He closed his eyes for a moment and wondered if this new love, if it was love, had somehow called back the old. He'd lived too long to believe in blind chance. When he opened his eyes again, Vree was still looking at him. ”You want me to find out why he stopped?”

She nodded. ”The more you know about a target, the better your odds of success.”

”He's not a target, Vree.”

”No?” She locked her gaze onto his. ”Then what is he?”

Gyhard flushed, but before he could answer, Karlene pulled her leg from Vree's grip. Sucking the moist bathhouse air through her teeth, she pushed herself forward and onto her feet, the water rippling around her hips. Her nostrils were pinched tight and her voice trembled. ”We have to catch up to him before he stops again. We have to catch him before more ba...” She looked fleetingly surprised, then her eyes rolled up and she collapsed.

The water itself caught the bard and eased her back onto the ledge.

Vree stopped her forward dive so suddenly her muscles locked. Blood roaring in her ears, she glared at Gyhard, silently demanding an answer.

”Water kigh,” he said softly, pulling himself up and out of the bath, the quick economy of his movements in direct contrast to the matter-of-fact tones in his voice. ”She must be very strong in that quarter for them to manifest without a Song.”

”Water spirits?” Vree could feel her skin crawling under the caress of the warm liquid. All the tension the heat had dissipated returned. Between one breath and the next, she stood dripping on an ugly mosaic of cavorting G.o.ds that adorned the floor.

Focus on freeing the prince, she told herself, crouching to slip her hands into the bard's armpits and haul her up out of the bath. The rest of this doesn't matter.

”She's got great...”

”Not now, Bannon.”

Gyhard reached for a drying cloth and shook his head. ”And you thought this would be less complicated than just you and I,” he said mockingly.

It was getting dark. Otavas licked the peach juice from his fingers and pressed his spine hard against the rough side of the cart. They'd stopped three times since they started again in the late afternoon; once for him to relieve himself, once to fill the empty skin with fresh water, and once so that the dead could change places between the shafts of the cart. They were not going to stop for the night.

”We have to get home,” the old man told him earnestly. ”So we can start again.”

”I'm not who you think I am!” Over the course of an impossibly long day, the prince had shouted it, whimpered it, wailed it, but every time the old man had merely smiled.

He was losing track of how long he'd spent within the confines of the cart, pa.s.sing unseen and unheard through the lives of those who lived or moved along the Great Road. Muscles ached from the constant pounding as the high, narrow wheels slammed into every imperfection, every pothole in the stone.

He flinched as the old man lightly stroked a warm, dry finger down the length of his arm.

”It's late, my heart. It's time to sleep. Dawn comes early this quarter.”

This quarter? Otavas twisted to stare through the dusk at the wizened face. The countries to the north, Shkoder, Cemandia, and Petrok beyond that divided their year into quarters; the Empire did not. ”Who are you?” He wondered why it had never occurred to him to ask before.

Rheumy eyes filled with tears. ”You'll remember everything, my heart, as soon as we get home. But now you must sleep.”

Sleep. The prince glanced toward the end of the cart where the dead sat. Not the men this time, but the two women. He guessed that the younger, Kait, was thirteen or fourteen and Wheyra his age or a very little older. To his disgust, the old man had introduced them just as though they were people. Kait had stared past him, unblinking eyes locked on the old man's face while Wheyra ignored them both, crooning to a desiccated bundle that crawled with flies. No, he couldn't sleep, not around them. Pity may have tempered the horror, but the horror remained. Bad enough to be trapped in this waking nightmare-worse to be plunged time after time into the terror of darker dreams.

”No.” He shook his head, sable hair flinging lines of shadow against the night.

”Yes.”

Something in the old man's voice drew him around. Something in the old man's eyes held him.

”Sleep.”

”Yesterday, around noon, an old man came into the village and got food and a cotter pin-didn't pay for any of it, just asked and, for some reason no one I spoke to is clear on, they handed it over.” Gyhard straddled the bench and leaned an elbow on the tabletop. ”No one saw where he went.”

Vree glanced toward the group of four travelers at the other end of the common room who were speculating on the prince's kidnapping and making their own loyalties loudly clear. She leaned forward so as not to be overheard should any of the four suddenly stop talking. ”No one was willing to look where he went?”

”Very likely.”

”What's a cotter pin?”

”Among other things it's used to hold a wagon wheel on the axle.”

”He has a wagon?”

”Or a cart.”

”s.h.i.+t on a stick.”

He smiled at her expression. ”Don't worry about it, nothing's really changed; his

horses are going to have to rest as often as ours.”

”Oh?” Her brows went up and she drummed her fingers against the table. ”What if the dead are pulling it? the dead who never need to rest. The old man can do everything but s.h.i.+t in the wagon and how often are they going to stop for that?”

”Not often,” Gyhard admitted. He swung his inside leg out over the bench and leaned back against the table. After a moment's thought, he said, ”Perhaps the other wheel will fall off.”

”Yeah, maybe.” Vree jerked her chin at the stairs leading to the loft. ”This is going to really upset her.”

”Then maybe we shouldn't tell her.”

It could have been Bannon sitting there, offering to share a secret with that exact glint in his eye. Just between you and me, Vree... But it wasn't Bannon. She shook her head, uncertain of what she was refusing.

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