Don’t think like that, he told himself. You will go mad for certain if you do.
Because she was almost certainly traveling, he traveled as well. Nameless villages provided him with fresh supplies and sometimes a bit of excitement as one local or another chose to challenge him . . . and then they passed into the mists behind him as though they had never existed. Dream stuff. All of his life felt like a dream now. It was a disconcerting sensation, and he feared more than anything it heralded some new and weaker stage in the progression of his illness. And so he forced himself to pay the price of a night’s room and board at various inns along the way, and listened from the shadows to the tales of other travelers, always hoping to hear some bit of news or gossip that would give him focus again. But there was none. He listened to tales with an empty heart well into the night, and left in the morning with no more sense of direction than he’d had when he arrived.
I will not die in bed! he raged at the gods. But they were cold and silent. And the more he traveled, the less and less certain he was that he was heading toward anything other than an empty, meaningless death.
Kamala’s dreams had been bad enough that she hadn’t gotten more than an hour’s sleep the night before. Each time she put her head down on the pillow it seemed she was transported into the depths of the abyss again, and those few times when utter exhaustion took hold and she would actually slumber for a few moments, she awakened soon after with a film of cold sweat upon her skin, her heart pounding as if it might burst from her chest.
Whatever it was that was after her, it was coming closer. Or at least she feared that it was, so much so that her mind was becoming unhinged. Which possibility was more terrifying?
Two days had passed since she had spoken to Netando. One more and she would be on the road again, able to lose herself among his retinue of servants and guards. But could she bring herself to wait that long? The nightmares were running her ragged. They might stop if she left this place, if she put enough miles between herself and . . . what? What refuge was safe enough? She didn’t even know what it was that was coming after her, much less how to avoid it.
One thing was certain, and that was that hiding in her room only made things worse. In the great room at least she could distract herself, and perhaps learn a bit about the world she was now set loose in. Kamala the whore had known nothing about the lands outside her own city, and Ethanus the hermit had been more interested in teaching her the ins and outs of sorcery than the rise and fall of morati governments. Now, in this place, for the first time, the whole world was being laid out before her, but in bits and pieces that she must fit together like fragments of a vast, confusing puzzle. Nations and wars and monarchs and treaties and political triumphs and social travesties were paraded before her in dizzying array, and she struggled to assemble some kind of mental map to give them all context. She could never ask for a real map, of course, or any kind of help in understanding the shards of knowledge that were being thrown about so freely. If her youth in Gansang had taught her one thing, it was that a show of ignorance attracted trouble like rotting meat attracted flies. In this company, so conspicuously worldly, any request for help would surely draw attention to her. And attention was what she must avoid at all costs, if someone or something were truly hunting her.
Now and then she caught a glimpse of some other customer keeping quiet in the shadows of the room, as she was, and she wondered if they were equally lost, equally struggling. The men who filled the center stage did not seem to notice their audience. Or perhaps they simply did not care. Boisterous as they were, self-absorbed and progressively drunk as the night wore on, they probably imagined they were being admired by all who saw them.
When at last it seemed to Kamala that her head had absorbed as many random facts about the world that night as it might contain without bursting, and that sheer lack of sleep would soon overcome her no matter where she was, she rose from her chair and began to move toward the stairs that led to her room. The darkness waiting for her there was uninviting, to be sure, but it was preferable to falling asleep in this public place and suffering her nightmares here. Or worse.
But as she moved through the main area of the room, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, a young girl entered who froze her in her tracks.
Maybe it was the girl’s age. Maybe it was the look in her eyes, half fear and half determination. Maybe it was the awkward way in which she approached the crowd of drunken men, as if she knew in words what she wanted from them, but had not yet convinced her body to support the mission. Ten years old, perhaps twelve at the most, but Kamala could feel the tension rising from her flesh like heat from an oven.
It was like looking in a mirror. No, more accurately: it was like looking through a distorting lens, not at the present but at the past.
The girl was clean in the way that peasants were clean when they expected to be in good company: hair washed, face scrubbed, hands pink and raw, but with telltale lines of ingrained dirt any place that water did not easily reach. Had Kamala looked like that once? A lump caught in her throat as she saw the girl’s fingernails, each with a thin line of dirt tucked down tight against the flesh, where a casual washing could not easily reach. No doubt she thought herself truly clean. Kamala had once, when she had achieved such a state.
The girl came hesitantly into the great room, like a deer might enter an unfamiliar meadow, watching on all sides for predators. Yet unlike a deer she would not run, Kamala knew that. She had come to meet the wolves.
Go back! she thought to her. Unable to move or even speak, simply staring at her in pained empathy. There is nothing here worth what this will cost you. Trust me!
The girl was wearing a simple linen gown; it was probably the finest thing she owned. A line of rings had been sewn down both sides and a cord laced through them so that, by drawing it tightly, she might impose a more adult curve upon her waist. It was an unnatural illusion on so young a child, but it brought her the notice she desired. Several of the men turned to watch her as she threaded her way through their company, and the inn’s owner, normally so protective of his patrons, kept his distance as she approached, having not yet decided if she was a creature to be welcomed or expelled.
Finally she came to where all could see her, and in a voice that seemed surprisingly steady to Kamala (but how one struggled to sound fearless, when one was most afraid!) “I am looking for Master Beltorres, please.”
Some of the men laughed and some of the whores whispered, but a bearded man in an eastern-style doublet looked up at her words. “I am Beltorres. Who and what are you?”
The girl bit her lip as she curtseyed. Pain lanced through Kamala’s heart as she watched the motion. Had she looked this awkward herself when she had tried to impress Ethanus, aping noble mannerisms that so obviously did not come naturally to her?
“I am called Selti, sir, if it please you.” Again the awkward curtsey. “I have a message for you from Master Hurara.” She took a piece of carefully folded vellum out of her sleeve and offered it to him. With a smile he took it from her, brushing against her hand briefly but suggestively as he did so. The girl blushed but smiled, and did not back away. The lump in Kamala’s throat turned to a burning ember. She could feel the power inside her, angry and indignant, urging her to act in the girl’s defense. This is her moment, she told it. Her choice to make, not mine. The power was not convinced, and it roiled molten in her gut. She knew what the girl intended. She could smell it on her. She also knew where it would lead.
“Well then,” Beltorres grunted. “I suppose I may have to visit the harbor after all.” With a hearty laugh he threw the paper into the fire. “Business is as business does, eh?” He grinned at the girl; it was the kind of expression one might see on a hungry hyena. “Stay about a bit, I may want to send an answer back.”
Kamala drew in a sharp breath as one of the whores reached out for the girl, laughing softly as she did so. How many times had she looked back on her own life, wondering what s
ingle moment she could have changed to make it into something different? This was the girl’s moment. Clearly she knew it, too. Kamala could see it in her eyes. She could smell it in the room’s thick air, the fear of a girl not yet past the threshold of womanhood, the perfumed amusement of whores surrounding her, and the eager sweat of the men watching . . . it was all she could do to keep hold of the power inside her. Gods alone knew if she released it now it might do what it had done in the streets of Gansang, only ten times worse. Not because killing these men was qualitatively worse than killing a handful of ruffians, but because these men were far more likely to be avenged.
But she wanted to kill them. She really did. She wanted to kill any man that would put his hands upon a child, whether she was willing or not. And with him any woman that would draw such a girl down into a circle of whores, as these were now doing, plucking at her coarse linen dress and the body beneath with whispered laughter as one of the men reached over to feel for himself what was beneath the homespun packaging—and the girl stared at them in a daze, trembling, wanting their favor and the coin that might come of it but too young to know how to handle such attention.
“Let her go.”
The words came from behind her, shattering her mood like glass. Kamala turned about just in time to see the owner of the voice approaching. He was a young man dressed in a woodsman’s costume, simple in cut, but made of the kind of quality cloth only the richest men could afford. He was blond and fair-skinned and passably handsome, with piercing blue eyes that shone like ice as he stared at the tableau before him. They were all frozen now, looking back at him, merchants and mercenary captains and whores and serving girls and the one little girl in the center of it all, her face now leached of all color.
“Let her go,” he repeated.
The one man who had been reaching out toward the girl paused in his motion, but did not withdraw. “This is not your business.”
“It is now. Let her go.”
The man spread his hands, palms upwards, and grinned. “No one has put shackles on her. Or forced her to join us in the first place.” He looked at the girl. “You are here of your own will, yes?”
Kamala held her breath. At that age, she remembered, the only way one could deal with some things was by denying they were happening. By asking the girl to acknowledge her situation in words, to give him permission to use her as a whore, this man had just laid waste to all her defenses.
Kamala saw the girl begin to tremble. For all the accustomed hardness of her heart, it was more than she could handle. But the blond stranger moved again before she could act, crossing in front of her and spoiling her view of the group. Breath held, she watched as he waded into the midst of the painted women, reaching out to the child’s arm and pulling her out from among them. A couple of the men jumped angrily to their feet and the one that had been fondling the girl cursed loudly. But the stranger stared them down. There was fury in his eyes, and death, and in the end none of the pampered crowd had the courage to test him.
Kamala released her breath in a long, soft hiss as he passed by her again, taking the child with him. While all the eyes of the place were upon him she gathered the shadows of the room about her so that she might follow him unobserved. She also conjured a vague cloud of foreboding to gather by the door itself, and to prevent the men inside the inn from choosing to do the same. Simple spells of little substance, but sometimes those were enough.
By the time she left the inn the stranger had gone some distance from it, and had just released the girl from his grasp. She looked more angry than afraid right now, and was staring at him with angry, hollow eyes.
“Go home,” he was saying. “This kind of place is not for you.”
But she didn’t move. The small eyes were filled with tears. “They would have paid for me,” she protested. The words were voiced in a tone of desperation that twisted like a knife in Kamala’s gut. It seemed to have a similar affect upon the stranger. For a moment he shut his eyes, and his jaw clenched visibly as he struggled to rein in his emotions. “You want to be paid?” he said. “Is that the only problem? You weren’t paid? Here.” He fumbled for his purse. “Here. I’m paying for you. Is that good enough?” He spilled out a handful of coins into his palm and held it out to her; his hand was trembling. “Take it,” he urged, and when she still did not respond he cried out, “Take it all!”
He cast the money out from him, in the direction of the road. The girl stared at him for a moment, then ran to where the coins had fallen and got down on her hands and knees to gather them up. He turned from her, too pained to watch. Kamala saw him waver slightly as he did so, and he reached out to a nearby tree to steady himself. So he was not nearly as strong as he seemed. That was interesting. The scene in the great room must have been a bluff, albeit a fierce one. The man Kamala was looking at now could not hold his own in a brawl against so many.
Which spoke eloquently for his courage in confronting them, she thought. Or else his lunacy.
She waited until the girl had collected her prize and run off toward the road to Bandoa, then stepped quietly out of the shadows. She waited until the stranger saw her there before speaking. It was a long moment of waiting, for his thoughts were clearly elsewhere.
When at last he noticed her standing there she asked him quietly, “Why did you do that?”
“Do what? With the child?”
She nodded.
He suddenly looked very weary. “What business is it of yours, boy?”
“Few men care about such things.”
A corner of his mouth twitched. It was almost a smile. “Well then, I suppose I am not like most men.”
Kamala took a few steps closer. “You can’t help her, you know. She will just come back here tomorrow. Or find another place like it.”
The truth of her words seemed to settle like a weight upon his shoulders. He sighed heavily. “I know. The words of one man mean very little in this world, don’t they?”
Something about the tone of his voice made Kamala catch her breath. He is accustomed to his words having more weight than this, she thought. Accustomed to having the power to change things.
Intrigued, she reached out to touch the fabric of his sleeve. He looked at her curiously but did not move away. The fabric was fine and smooth to the touch, such as only master weavers could produce, and clinging to it were echoes of its owner’s past history. She tasted status, wealth, and a fierce independence. He has argued with someone in authority while wearing this, she observed. Often. Beyond that were more subtle traces, unfamiliar to her, that she had to work to unravel. When she finally realized their source, the breath caught in her throat. Not even Ravi’s possessions had hinted at such a birthright of authority. There was only one possible explanation for it, and that one so outlandish, given the circumstances, she was hard pressed to believe it.
“You are not what you seem,” she said at last.
“Nor you,” he said quietly. He had been studying her while she did him, she realized. And she had been too preoccupied to take her usual precautions. Her heart skipped a beat as he reached up to the woolen cap she wore, but she made no move to stop him. He removed it. Wild red hair fell out into a fiery cloud about her face, not the long feminine locks he had expected, perhaps, but still not a boy’s style by any means.
“Now perhaps it is my turn for questions,” he said. “I shall begin with . . . what gives you such interest in the girl’s fate?” When she did not answer he said, “On the other hand, a woman traveling in boy’s attire . . . shall I guess?
She flushed. It was something she had never done in response to any man other than Ethanus, and she raged at herself for letting her guard down that much. “Guessing is a dangerous pastime.”
“Is it?” The blue eyes were no longer icy, but warm, like a mountain lake in summer. “The deer in the forest that has never known man does not fear the crossbow. While the one that has been hunted before, and wounded, warns young ones to flee at the first sign of h
uman presence.” Again a faint smile flickered across his lips; not a leering expression, or a cruel one, but oddly compassionate. “Am I wrong?”
For a moment she was speechless. “Are you likening me to a deer?”
“A wolf, then.” He chuckled. “The observation is still valid, yes? Even though in the latter case the mother would also rip out the throat of anyone trying to hunt her.”
Regaining something of her composure, she raised an eyebrow. “Am I a deer then, or a wolf? Make up your mind.”
“Women can be both at once.” He grinned. “That is why men go mad trying to understand them.”
She was about to respond when the door to the inn swung open. She saw the stranger’s expression harden and she turned around quickly to see what new trouble was looming.
It was the owner of the place. He looked about himself nervously, as if expecting trouble, which at least confirmed that her spell was working. In one hand he held a travel pack, woolen blankets bound around a bundle of supplies that had clearly been hurriedly and inexpertly tied; in the other was a small leather purse.
He glared at the stranger, then cleared his throat and spat upon the ground. “I think it best you leave now.” He hefted the bundle and threw it toward them; it raised a small cloud of dust as it fell to the ground just short of the blond man’s feet. “I pride myself on maintaining a peaceful establishment; remember that if you come here again in the future.” He threw the purse to him as well, and this time it made the distance. “Your money, minus last night’s room and board. And a small commission for my trouble this afternoon.”
His eyes narrowed in warning as he glanced at Kamala, then he went back inside the inn. The traveler hefted the purse in his hand as the door slammed shut, as if remarking upon its light weight. “I suppose it is just as well I have this back, given that I threw most of what I had at that girl.” He looked at Kamala. “I do hope I haven’t gotten you in trouble here.”