31. Yet More Loss
31
YET MORE LOSS
They halted some distance down the hill. Ari found she could half jump, half fall out of the saddle while Keners was busy helping Hannixe and Darjeth struggling with his own dismount. The blond man hit the ground hard, staggered, and his chestnut equine gave a restless tail-flicker.
“What is it?” Hannixe bustled to his side, though Keners looked like he wanted to restrain her. “Darjeth?”
“Not much,” he said, and caught the chestnut’s reins with a wince. “Not so wide as the Keep’s door, but deep enough. I have some time before it becomes serious.”
Bright red spattered his side, his leather jerkin and blousy shirt bearing a ragged slash. Keners dealt with the equines while Hannixe and Ari helped the blond man to sit on a boulder; carefully, the grey-haired woman folded blood-drenched cloth aside, hissing quietly through her teeth as she saw the wound. Ari wondered briefly that these attractive, graceful creatures bled the same way she did.
It hadn’t seemed possible.
The edges of the slice were blackened, veinlike branches spreading. “A claw-touch, not a bite.” Darjeth craned to look down, eyeing the cut as if it belonged to someone else. “The same happened to my husband not long after the misfortune, and I was forced to grant him peace as it spread. I have some little time before I must ask a friend for a likewise service.”
Oh. The words sank in, and Ari shivered with a mix of sudden comprehension and sympathy. Oh, no.
“Some athelen , or estel- leaf,” Hannixe said. “Keners, will you find?—”
“Soft, my lady.” Keners was busy with Ari’s equine. “The beasts have been ridden hard, grant me but a moment to tend them.”
“Your waterskin,” Hannixe said, urgently. Darjeth handed over his leather canteen; she shook it, and her expression grew grave. “I must make certain, this is from near the Keep, aye? Purified by our lady Moon herself?”
Ari stared at the wound, her own ribs aching in response. Her fingers curled into fists, released—she was useless, unless Hannixe needed a thoroughly uneducated assistant.
“Of a certainty. There was not time to fill it at the Mere, more’s the pity.” Darjeth kept his arm lifted awkwardly, sweat-darkened blond tendrils clinging to his forehead. “You should keep it for your use and hers, though. Don’t waste the gift on me.”
“’Tis no waste,” the Grey Lady snapped, and busied herself with uncapping, then dribbling a little on the slice.
The water foamed immediately, like peroxide on a lanced boil. Darjeth’s head tipped back, teeth bared and eyes half-lidded; he looked like he wanted to swear and only refrained by sheer force of will.
Ari winced again, shivering even harder—Mike always thought her empathy was stupid and hilarious, putting on horror movies just to see her squirm. Hannixe poured a little more; the bubbling intensified. Darjeth’s eyelids fluttered, his lashes pale at the base, darkening at the tips.
Keners finished with their mounts and approached, hand resting on rapier-hilt. “Behold the mark of the faithless accursed,” he muttered grimly, no doubt for Ari’s edification. “It will spread until the metal shows, and then he will be the Bright King’s creature.”
“I will endure,” the blond man hissed. “And I will never bend to the traitor’s foul Law. Ever .”
“It’s an infection, right?” Ari looked from one man to the other, then at Hannixe, whose mouth turned down as she cleansed the slice. Foam receded, dripping down his jerkin, dyeing the leather dark. “There has to be something, some medicine, that will?—”
“Oh, aye.” Hannixe exhaled softly, and peered at the foam. “There are ways to slow it and those faithful to the Moon may resist for some short while. But the only true cure is the Bright King’s death. Look, clean water has arrested the rot.”
Bright King’s death. Okay . She didn’t see how such a small band of resistance fighters could pull that off, but there wasn’t much of a choice. “And that’s what the…” She almost said the chained man , but that probably wasn’t proper etiquette. “The prince. He can do that, so long as we reach this Bright King during the Conjunction? When is that?”
If anyone was capable of making all this stop, it was him . Or at least, so Ari had to hope.
“Tomorrow, our lord prince said. He did not wish to say in your hearing, my queen, thinking you would worry as the time grew short.” Darjeth shrugged, relaxing slightly as the bubbling ceased. He lowered his bent arm a bit, and peered up at her. “But he will be riding in search of you. He will not waste a single moment in confronting the traitor if your safety is in question.”
Ari’s gaze met Hannixe’s. The Grey Lady’s large dark eyes were sad, and full of pleading. She clearly expected her ersatz bestie to have some kind of plan, but Ari’s poor overworked brain was all but producing steam through her ears at the moment.
Too bad, Ariadne. Deal . “You know how to treat it. Right?” It came out as correct , again, but Hannixe nodded.
“I can slow the rot, especially with your aid.” At least she sounded certain.
“The Conjunction tomorrow, all right.” Very well , the invisible translator supplied. “And the… the Mirrored City?” The syllables were strange and slippery in her mouth. “In the Blight? How far away is that?”
“A hard ride across the edge of the Dry Sea and then through much of the Blight itself.” Keners half-turned to examine their mounts, then swung back to keep an eye on Darjeth. “The Road will be watched. Three days at least, unless our prince is with us to urge the equines along.”
Hannixe perked up. “Or unless we go through the?—”
“No,” Keners and Darjeth said, in unison. The chorus was actually kind of funny, though Ari didn’t feel like laughing.
Not in the least. She looked around almost wildly, as if she might suddenly find a first-aid kit or emergency room, a bandage, something, anything . Nothing but hills, trees, and grass, a violet sky and a huge exhausted sun the color of the Blood Mere.
“The Spires,” Hannixe continued, brightening. The double flush of activity and hope suited her, and those dark eyes nearly sparkled. “They stand between the Dry Sea and the Blight; we must be near one of the entrances. A day at most, and if our lord prince is riding upon our trail?—”
“ No , Hannixe.” Keners was having none of this. “I will not risk you, and our lord prince will be wroth if our lady Moon is endangered.”
“And I would not have either you or our queen risk yourselves in such fashion.” Darjeth twisted to examine the wound again, tweezing aside bloody cloth and leather; the edges of the slice were red and raw as supermarket meat, but the spreading black vein-fingers were smaller and now the injury did not bleed or froth.
Guess chivalry really isn’t dead . Ari straightened and turned away, took a step. Another. She tipped her head back, staring at the sky; purple-tinted clouds hung in layers. Above a far horizon the moon lingered, a drained, perfect disc in daytime. Yet more astronomical weirdness, though she’d seen the satellite of her own home planet do the same. There was an old rhyme about it, too. And waning half the midnight knows , that was all she could remember at the moment.
Goddammit, Ari. Poetry won’t help now. Think of something.
“The prince will follow,” Hannixe insisted, stubbornly. “Or he will move along the Road to assail the Mirrored City, thinking our lady taken by the traitor. Either way he cannot fault us for seeking to save a companion in need. Nor could I do less.”
“All those mortal years you did not speak, and now you are commanding.” Darjeth’s laugh was nearly bitter as the chained man’s. “No, my dear Grey Lady. I would not ask it of you.”
“Indeed you did not,” she shot back. “’Tis our lady queen’s will we are to work, not mine or yours. So much has been taken from us, and she is to bear yet more loss?”
“Hannixe—” Keners tried again.
Come on, Ari. What were the options? She had to think, and it was difficult with them yammering away.
“And others of our number may well be suffering the same,” Hannixe continued. “Even our lord prince himself, since he is not fully proof against the contagion while he wears the last fetter. He said as much, do you not remember?”
She had a point, Ari admitted silently. Those things with their naked, bloated feet and swollen discolored hands, the weird buried metal bits in their rotting flesh, their chewing jaws…
Another galvanic shudder went through her. The zombies apparently only had to claw at someone or bite them to infect, but they used the word contagion as well. What if it was a virus, or bacteria?
Hannixe continued, her voice fading behind the rushing in Ari’s ears. Disassociating now wouldn’t do any good; the coping mechanism was only useful in certain situations. She struggled to push it away, to think through the noise, tempted to simply sink down onto long grass and curl into a little ball, covering her head and hoping for the best.
The real reincarnation of their fairy queen probably wouldn’t be having any of this discussion bullshit. Or maybe she would, nobody said a lot about her particular preferences.
Even if Ari was simply a second-rate copy, she could still do some good. She quelled another shiver, trying once more to shove the rushing noise and trauma detachment aside—there had been so many zombies, an entire Thriller flashmob.
How many of their group were now wounded? Or that horrible word, bitten ? The chained man had armor, sure, but he wasn’t immune. What if he got sick?
What if he got worse than infected?
No . The outside world spilled back in through her eyes, her ears. At first a trickle, but then a flood. Ari found she could push the disassociation away with a wringing internal effort.
“I do not doubt your courage, my love.” Keners’s tone was soft, reasonable, almost tender. “But the hazard is far too great.”
Darjeth wisely kept his mouth shut.
Ari was pretty sure this place would end up killing her—if it wasn’t the robots it was the zombies, if it wasn’t either it was the wildlife, and if all that didn’t manage the job this Bright King would probably get his hands on her.
If the resistance won somehow, the chained man would send her home once she wasn’t useful anymore. She couldn’t stay, so what did it matter?
But that was no way to live. She could have just let Mike finish strangling her instead of lashing out in self-defense, and the truth was she’d known what was going to happen well before she scrambled for the nightstand. The realization had arrived the moment she saw his face, heard that awful, uncharacteristic silence.
Ari had made up her mind to at least try surviving. Which carried its own questions—and consequences.
Did she want to be like Mike and his parents, cruel and selfish, or did she want to be like Mom, like the Ari she’d been before marriage? Her ex-husband mocked her habit of giving change to beggars or trying to help strays and wounded animals; every man for himself was a Hardison family motto.
Her mother’s was closer to it takes a village , and Ari’s… well, help where you can was preferable to just about anything else. Otherwise she might have left the chained man in the Keep, his sword stuck in that chunk of rock and the rest of him in an iron burrito.
How would things have turned out in that case? Probably much, much worse. Even if the chained man only cared about getting unleashed or the shadow of his dead queen, he had still rescued both Ari and Jazarl’s men, and was doing his best to protect them.
“It makes no difference.” The words came out in English, not their lovely lilting tongue. “So I might as well.”
A long pause, wind breathing softly through forest lungs. The wheat-colored grassland beyond rippled, individual blades bending under an invisible caress. Each one was weak, endlessly frail, but together…
“My lady?” Hannixe, tentatively.
Ari turned back to her companions. They watched her anxiously, even Darjeth, and a weight settled on her shoulders. The feeling was familiar, almost like coming home.
“Which way?” Her face felt strange, but at least the invisible translator was still functioning. “The Mirrored City, which way is it?”
It was Darjeth who answered. “By which route, my lady?”
“The short one.” Ari regarded him steadily, daring him to debate. “The one that takes a day.” Which should get us there in time for this Conjunction-eclipse thing . If she’d known time was so precious, she certainly would have worried; maybe the chained man had indeed been trying to do her a solid.
It was entirely like him, she decided.
“The Spires.” Hannixe’s eyes shone now, fresh hope igniting in their depths. “A brief ride across the margin of the Dry Sea will bring us to an entrance, and from there?—”
“My lady queen.” Keners wasn’t giving up without argument. “It is dangerous . The faithless accursed will be watching, and?—”
Good. “Well, if he’s busy looking for us, the prince will have an easier time getting to him.” She hoped she sounded far more certain than she felt. “Hannixe, how often do we have to treat Darjeth’s wound?”
“When it pains him.” The other woman lifted the canteen thoughtfully, weighing what remained of its contents. “Or perhaps we should leave him and Keners here, and ride swift as?—”
“I think not.” The Fox outright bristled, but he didn’t lift a hand or move menacingly toward Hannixe. “You cannot ask that of me.”
“Nor of me.” Darjeth rose, wincing. “So long as I remain myself, my lady queen, I am at your disposal. Though should I become otherwise, I will ask my friend the Fox for one last favour.”
“And I shall grant it.” Keners’s glower was nearly as fierce as the chained man’s. “If it must be done, then let us begin.”
“Wait.” Hannixe bent, and began fussing with her skirts. Fabric tore, a sharp businesslike sound. “We must bind the wound, or it will reopen as we ride.”
Well. That went way easier than I expected . Now Ari only had to deal with the crushing suspicion that she was making the wrong call.
It was too late. Hannixe ripped strips from her grey dress, though both she and Darjeth gave horrified refusals when Ari suggested giving a little of her own clothing to the cause. Keners hurried back to the equines, and Ari ended up taking charge of the canteen. Maybe they could find some more water along the way, and she could see if an imitation of their queen was good enough. She could argue the Cup had been responsible for the Mere’s cleansing, but there was the second pond in the forest near the Keep and Sarle acting as if it had burned him before she touched it.
Ari could at least try, and if it worked, great. If not, she’d figure out something else.
First, though, she had to struggle into the saddle by herself.