Chapter 12
The land on this side of the pass sloped downward, which made the going easier. Pines were slowly replaced by oak and hickory, their branches black scribbles against the snow. The snow cover here was thinner, and the Dervish had a dream that perhaps they would leave the snow behind entirely.
He hated walking. He liked riding horses, assuming that someone else handled all the feeding and watering and scraping things out of their hooves.
Horse hooves seemed designed to pick up as many random bits of the world as possible.
It was really quite astonishing. Father’s Brother had an icon to the god of horses in an adobe niche next to the door.
The god didn’t look like a blithering idiot, so the Dervish wasn’t sure why He had created an animal with such delicate feet, and guts that swelled up and turned sideways if the horse drank water too fast or looked at its food wrong.
He’d asked Father’s Brother once, and gotten a smack on the ear for blaspheming one of the gods that actually mattered.
“Most of them don’t care what anybody says,” Father’s Brother told him.
“Sun-Beetle’s going to roll the sun up every morning, no matter what happens, and don’t let a priest tell you different.
But you don’t mess with the gods of the sea, the spirits of the oasis, or the Lord of Horses.
” He considered for a moment, then added, “Actually, none of the spirits of water. Rivers or springs or rain or the ocean, doesn’t matter.
Water has a long memory and it knows how to hate. ”
(The Dervish had discovered some years later that he was violently seasick every time he stepped on a boat and thought of this conversation often, usually while hanging over the rail.)
Father’s Brother, you were a wiser man than I ever knew. It was a shame that he’d been dead for at least a century, probably more.
When they made camp, it was by a pond with a crust of ice over the top. Edmund broke a hole through but insisted they boil the water. “Animalcules,” he said. “If I had a magnifying glass, I could show you the most amazing things.”
“I have absolutely no doubt of that.” The Dervish watched Sweetness plunge her muzzle into the icy pond water. “Anyway, there’s mule spit in it now.”
The wood was damp but Edmund coaxed a fire out of it anyway, a skill that raised the Dervish’s opinion of the scholar, animalcules not withstanding. He may be absolutely useless in a fight, but he doesn’t whine about sleeping rough. Actually, he whines considerably less than I do.
Dammit, Angharad would have liked him.
The Dervish helped gather firewood. He might be a bad person, but the gnole and the pillbug were doing it, and somehow it felt like letting down the human race to sit around on his ass.
Large Francis, in addition to gathering wood, had taken a small, polished scraper out of his pack and was peeling moss off trees and occasionally stones. He popped it into his mouth-slit as he worked.
“Is that what you eat? Moss?” asked the Dervish.
“Among-other-things, friend-Dervish. Our-males-are-small-enough-to-live-on-moss-alone-but-we-must-supplement-with-starches. I-have-brought-cakes-of-cattail-flour.”
The Dervish paused. “Your … males?”
“Yes?” Large Francis turned compound eyes on the Dervish.
“So you’re … not male.”
“Yes?”
“As in, female.”
“Somebody has to be, knife-man.”
“… huh,” said the Dervish.
Edmund came barreling through the undergrowth. “Did I hear you correctly just now? I mean—” He paused, lifting a hand. “Forgive me. Is it rude to inquire what sex you are?”
The ends of Large Francis’s antennae lifted, the tips questing back and forth. “Rude? It-is-not-rude-only-unnecessary. I-am-female.”
“Unnecessary? Are you sexually dimorphic?”
“I did that once, but we ran out of oil,” the Dervish drawled. Dog Violet snickered. The tips of Edmund’s ears went pink.
“We-are. Any-of-my-people-that-speak-to-you-are-female.”
“A bug’s males don’t talk?” asked Dog Violet, looking up from the firewood.
“You don’t need to sound so pleased by the thought,” the Dervish muttered.
“A gnole isn’t saying it would be better, knife-man. Just quieter.”
“Males-of-our-race-are-small-and-not-long-lived.” Large Francis made a set of gestures that conveyed something the size of a house cat.
“We-hatch-a-male-to-fertilize-the-eggs-and-then-they-die.” He—no, she, the Dervish corrected himself—looked back and forth between the humans, antennae twitching in the pattern he was coming to associate with anxiousness.
“We-know-that-it-is-different-among-mammals. We-want-to-be-clear-that-we-are-not-prejudiced-against-your-males.”
“Oh good,” said the Dervish faintly.
Edmund groaned. “We’ve been calling you he this whole time.”
“The-s-is-not-silent?”
“The what?”
“I-thought-perhaps-in-your-accent-the-s-in-she-was-silent.”
“No,” said Edmund. “No, we’re just fools who made an assumption. I’m sorry.”
“I-am-not-offended-friend-Edmund. Among-humans-the-difference-seems-largely-insignificant.”
The Dervish barked a laugh and put his hand over his mouth to prevent another one.
Edmund sighed. “Unfortunately, I can’t say all humans feel the same way. Some people are, um, biased against women.” And that is putting it mildly. He thought of Brother Mornan and winced.
“But-this-makes-no-sense? Human-females-are-almost-the-same-size-as-males.”
“It’s not about the size, exactly—” Edmund began.
“Oh, sometimes it is,” said the Dervish in a strangled voice.
Edmund paused, hand lifted, bit his lower lip, and took a moment to compose himself.
“And-you-are-both-male-humans-then? Since-the-s-is-not-silent?”
“We are, yes.”
The pillbug turned to Dog Violet, who said, “A gnole is a rag-and-bone gnole,” as if that settled the matter.
Edmund stepped in, which was good, because the Dervish was just as confused as Large Francis. “Among gnoles, words like he and she and they denote caste, not sex. Rag-and-bone gnoles are referred to as she.”
“I-see. May-I-inquire-friend-Dog-Violet—”
“A gnole doesn’t piss standing up.”
Large Francis’s antennae made aimless circles, clearly confused. Well, why would she know what that means? Ancestors only know where waste comes out on her. For that matter, do male bugs even have…?
The Dervish realized that he was thinking seriously about giant-pillbug genitalia and stopped himself at once.
“Female,” said Edmund. Dog Violet rolled her eyes.
“Thank-you-all, friends. This-has-been-a-most-enlightening-conversation.”
“It certainly has,” muttered the Dervish.
Back at the fire, the water was beginning to boil.
Edmund rummaged one of the little sacks from his pack, one of the ones that hadn’t smelled like tea, and emptied it into the pot.
A rich smell rose from the liquid, which had turned bright yellow.
Bits of something floated in it that probably weren’t dried human ears but certainly looked like it.
“They’re tree ears,” said Edmund, when the Dervish asked.
“It’s a type of mushroom. Tasty and rehydrates very quickly, unlike some of them.
I wouldn’t eat human ears unless I was very hungry.
” He considered this. “Or I suppose if I was a guest somewhere, and it would be rude to refuse, and I knew that the source had died of natural causes…”
“A gnole wouldn’t bother with ears. Too chewy.” Dog Violet looked up and saw both humans staring at her. “What?”
“I suppose it isn’t cannibalism if she does it,” said the Dervish slowly.
“A gnole hasn’t done it. A gnole knew a very old gnole, was alive during hungry times, dug up dead humans. Said not to bother with ears.” She flicked hers. “Ate dead gnoles too, and harness leather and tree bark. Humans weren’t special.”
“Oh, a famine,” said Edmund, clearly relieved. “That’s different.”
“This really isn’t making me any hungrier,” said the Dervish.
“Here,” said Edmund. “While we’re waiting for that to cook, may I take a look at your injury?”
“Oh, that.” The pain in his ribs had largely faded into the general background ache of sleeping on the ground, walking all day, and then sleeping on the ground some more. He pulled his shirt off over his head.
He had one smug instant watching Edmund’s eyes go wide at the sight of his bare torso, then he realized that his shirt had been stuck to the wound and suddenly it wasn’t a background ache any longer. He craned his neck to look at the injury and grimaced.
I knew that fellow’s sword was a piece of crap. Looks like I got hit with a lead pipe, not a blade.
“It looks worse than it is,” he said. The bruising was spectacular, but the cut was more of a long scrape.
“If it was as bad as it looks, knife-man would be mostly dead,” said Dog Violet.
He shrugged. “I go back in the sword if I die. It’s not permanent.”
“Handy, yeah?”
“Not as much as you’d think.”
Edmund, having poured out some hot water before adding the soup, dipped a cloth in it and began gingerly sponging the dried blood off the Dervish’s ribs. “It’s not deep,” he said. “Not that there’s any room for it to be deep. Do your ribs hurt?”
“Yes, but more in a bruised way than a broken way.”
“Thank the Many-Armed One for that.”
“I-am-so-sorry, friend-Dervish. Keeping-your-skeleton-on-the-inside-must-be-so-troublesome.”
“Do you know, up until this moment, I never thought about it that way?”
Edmund added something to the hot water that smelled astringent and said, “I’m afraid this will sting.”
“It stings already, so I don’t know how much—ahahahshit!”
“Sorry! I’m sorry!” Edmund bit his lip. “It’s just that there’s cloth stuck in the wound and that could get infected.”
The Dervish sighed. “I don’t get infected.”
“You what?”
He spread his hands. “I also don’t get fevers, colds, flus, or the plague.”
“Really? What about werkblight?”
“Still not entirely clear on what that is.”
“Oh. Oh!” Edmund’s eyes lit up. “You could do so much good as a doctor! So many people die because they don’t get care because other people are afraid of being infected.”