Chapter 10
It was a long walk out of the valley, made longer by detouring to pick up Edmund’s books, and the Dervish was stuck leading the mule. Edmund and Our Friend had their heads together the entire time, and Sweetness did not approve of the pillbug at all.
Dog Violet stayed close to the Dervish, but didn’t feel the need to speak, which made her the Dervish’s favorite person in the vicinity.
He felt a certain responsibility for her, which made him uneasy.
Responsibility was Angharad’s job. In the old days, when the mercenary troop had come across frightened survivors, Angharad was the one who figured out which direction they should go, or if they should stay put, the one who assigned troops to escort them out of danger if need be.
At most, the Dervish would charm someone, coax a smile out of them so that they’d pay attention to Angharad’s directions. He was a jester, not a general.
But the gnole had taken his hand when she was afraid, not Edmund’s, even though Edmund spoke her language, as if she could see that he, too, knew what it meant to be bound.
She doesn’t need you, he told himself. She’s just traveling with you until you get out of this godawful valley full of men who want to marry their fake sisters. She’ll probably be gone within a day.
He glanced up at the sky. Well … maybe two days. It was still an hour or two ’til dawn, but the sky had that strange dull tint of approaching snow. The Dervish was not looking forward to walking through it.
They weren’t making the best time, even without snow.
Dog Violet was … not limping, exactly, but the opposite.
She kept moving as if she expected her right leg to weigh more than it did, and nearly stumbling.
The Dervish was aware that he could have walked faster—mule permitting—but held his pace down to hers.
It’s fine. Now that the moon’s gone down, we shouldn’t be tearing along anyway. And she’ll hear anyone coming long before any of the rest of us, so it all evens out.
That was actually true. The gnole’s ears were not large but moved constantly, picking up sounds from the nearby woods. Once a weird cry rang out, and the gnole said, “Screech owl,” before the Dervish could do more than slap a hand to his weapon.
At least someone’s paying attention. I doubt Edmund or Our Friend would notice if someone danced naked across the road at this point. Singing. Waving a live goose.
From overhearing snippets of their conversation, the Dervish gathered that the creature’s people were largely confined to a single large swamp somewhere to the east. They had encountered humans but had only limited contact with them, until a missionary of something called the Four-Faced God had arrived.
The Dervish’s lip curled at the mention of gods, but apparently the pillbugs had been luckier than he had.
The priest had found himself unable to learn their language, but had eventually been able to teach Our Friend’s people to read his own.
The pillbugs had their own form of writing, which was apparently a great deal more complex, and so had found most human alphabets rudimentary by comparison.
The priest had brokered an arrangement, whereby the pillbugs provided rare herbs and other goods from the swamp in exchange for as many books as traders could find and send their way.
Fortunately for Our Friend’s people, the swamp formed a natural stronghold.
Only priests and lunatics ventured into the mosquito-infested interior, so no one had any desire to seize the land from its current occupants, and draining the swamp would have required a dozen lifetimes.
The two kingdoms flanking it felt that it made a superb defensive border and had no desire to drain it.
Everyone got along in a way that even the most cynical soul would grudgingly admit seemed to work fine for all parties involved.
So far as the Dervish could tell, the pillbugs had sent out a delegation simply because they had run out of reading material.
“But why come here?” asked Edmund. “Your lands are closer to a dozen other major cities, and most of them have libraries.”
“Because-we-can-talk-to-you-most-easily.”
“But if it’s just a matter of phonemes—”
Our Friend’s antennae crossed in a clear negative. “You- must-understand-that-for-many-years-yours-was-a-written- language-to-us,” the pillbug explained. “We-only-knew-the-local-spoken-language. And-it-is-tonal.”
“Ohhhh,” said Edmund. “I understand.”
“I don’t,” said the Dervish.
Our Friend twisted to look back at him. The bands of shell on its back were much more flexible than they looked.
“Tone-languages-change-meaning-with-pitch. I-built-a-version-to-accommodate-tones-but-it-was-very-large-and-difficult-to-play. This-portable-one-is-only-possible-with-a-much-smaller-range-of-sounds. Your-language-has-such-a-range.”
“You built it?” the Dervish asked. “That’s impressive.”
“I-did. It-is-why-I-was-chosen-as-the-second-of-the-delegation.” Our Friend puffed up proudly, then drooped again. “We-were-charged-to-set-up-a-new-trade-route-for-our-people, but-I-am-not-a-trained-negotiator. I-fear-to-fail-at-my-task.”
It slumped even more, or perhaps the Dervish was simply reading sorrow into its posture. “We-were-meant-to-be-a-scholarly-delegation-but-I-fear-we-have-encountered-significant-difficulties. I-was-the-junior-delegate. —— was-a-trained-diplomat-and-our-best-speaker.”
The word Our Friend said was a rippling glissando of clicks that no human throat could begin to duplicate. Dog Violet’s ears went up in surprise and she tilted her head, looking almost exactly like a puzzled dog.
“A diplomat?” asked the Dervish, suddenly focused on the conversation.
“Diplomat-envoy-delegate? One-who-comes-to-speak-to-strangers? Is-that-not-correct?”
“Correct,” the Dervish said, feeling his heart sink. Those Sleeveless idiots killed a diplomat. And not just one from another country, but one from another species.
In the land of the Dervish’s birth, guest rights were sacred.
It probably had to do with being in a desert, where being able to go up to a stranger’s door and ask for water was sometimes the difference between life and death.
There were stories about what happened if you turned a stranger away.
They were the sort of stories that ended with “And you can still see the blasted stones to this day.”
Even if he had not come from a country that held visitors to be sacrosanct, the Dervish had been a mercenary for nearly a decade.
While some people would assume that mercenaries had no rules, the exact opposite was true.
Sarkis’s company had had very strict rules, and one of them was that you did not mess with envoys who came under a flag of truce.
Doing so was effectively a declaration of war.
Oh ancestors. Please let these creatures not be militarily minded. We have not made a good impression. The Dervish, by and large, did not care what happened to anyone outside his immediate circle, but he could picture an army of monstrous insects erupting from the ground and it made his skin crawl.
“I’m very sorry about your friend,” he said.
“Thank-you-friend.”
“Was that a name?” Edmund wanted to know. “What you said earlier?”
“In-our-language, yes. We-know-you-cannot-say-it. But- do-not-fear, friend-human.” Our Friend made an expansive gesture with its antennae.
“We-have-adopted-human-names-to-communicate-more-easily!” It leaned in, almost conspiratorially.
“It-is-a-rite-of-passage-among-our-scholars-to-craft-a-human-name-for-ourselves.”
The Dervish had a sudden premonition of disaster and covered his eyes.
“And your human name is…?” Edmund pressed.
The pillbug drew itself proudly to its full height. “I-am-Large-Francis-Building!”
The absolute silence that greeted this statement was finally broken when Dog Violet let out an explosive bark of laughter.
The Dervish felt a howl coming on and clamped his teeth in the side of his hand.
You never laughed in the client’s face. That was one of Commander Sarkis’s rules.
It was still a good rule, no matter where it came from.
Also, for all you know, you’re the only thing standing between humanity and an army of enraged pillbugs.
Edmund, to his eternal credit, did not laugh. His eyebrows and his voice both went up, but that was all. “Large … Francis … Building.”
This was too much for the Dervish. Edmund put his face in his hands while the other two mammals howled and Large Francis looked on in total bewilderment. Sweetness put her ears back, irritated.
“Is-it-not-a-good-human-name?”
Edmund shot the Dervish a fierce look, which was a bit like being bitten by a lamb. “It’s a good name,” he said.
“It’s fine,” gasped the Dervish. “No, no, it’s a fine name.
” He tried to think of something that wasn’t funny.
He eventually settled on Commander Sarkis.
Granted, the commander could be hilarious, but I still want to gut him like a fish.
When he was absolutely sure that he had himself under control, he dropped his hand and tried to refocus on the conversation.
“Why Building, though?” Edmund asked.
“We-know-that-humans-here-sometimes-use-their-place-of-living-to-differentiate-between-those-of-the-same-name,” the pillbug said. “I-live-in-a-building. But-if-there-is-no-one-to-confuse-me-with, you-may-call-me-only-Large-Francis, correct?”
Edmund’s lips twitched, but he said, very calmly, “That is correct, ah, Large Francis.”
“And-you-are-Edmund? What-is-your-place-of-living?”
The scholar sighed, sobering. “That is currently in flux, I’m afraid. If we run into another Edmund, though, you can call me ‘Learned Edmund,’ I suppose.”
“And-you-are-Dog-Violet, yes?” At the gnole’s nod, Large Francis’s eyes turned expectantly toward the Dervish.