Bones of the Past (Arhel) (22 page)

All the way to Medwind’s house, Roba couldn’t help but notice that Thirk kept repeating, “Praniksonne lied. Praniksonne
lied
.” He varied that with, “His credibility is
gone
—hayh!”

Nokar met them at the door, and Kirgen, an expression of disbelief on his face, said, “Sir! I was led to believe you’d died in the war! I haven’t seen you since—well, since the swamp.”

Roba stared at her young lover, startled. Nokar apparently recognized Kirgen, too, for he pounded the younger saje gleefully on the shoulder. “Kirgen, lad!—you look better than the last time I saw you! Then you had mud to your ears and were sure as death the world was about to end.”

“We all thought so at the time, sir.”

“Didn’t we? But I didn’t die. I got proposed to instead—a lifetime of celibacy, and I get proposed to by the most gorgeous dying woman I’ve ever seen—when I’m almost too old to enjoy the sensation.” He waggled his bushy eyebrows and cackled. “But not quite. Not quite, boy. And she’s a good Hoos girl into the bargain. You know about Hoos girls, don’t you, boy?”

“Well, ah—not from experience—”

“Take my advice—you ever get the chance to marry a Hoos girl, you take it. What they don’t know, you aren’t interested in anyway.”

Thirk looked like someone had walked up behind him and hit him on the head with a paving stone. “You
know
him?” he asked Kirgen.

“We were in the war together—”

“We were
all
in the war,” Thirk said stiffly.

Nokar said, “Even so, but this boy and I were in the war
together
. But come on back. You’re just in time for nondes. We have hovie stew and a mess of heathen foods a man with my digestion shouldn’t even have to look at. Hummph! Hovie stew!” he snorted. “As if scaly, six-limbed fliers could be fit food for human consumption!”

Nokar set off down the breezeway at a remarkable clip, and the three of them chased after him.

Roba found herself wondering what part Kirgen had played in the war, to be friendly with someone of such rank and importance as Nokar. She wouldn’t ask again—she always had the feeling his memories were ones he would have been happier without. But curiosity was eating her.

They marched into the dining room. She was last through the doors. She saw all the people she’d encountered earlier—Medwind, the three Wen kids—and two more she didn’t recognize. The first was a tall, lovely young woman with long brown hair and freckles, who wore Kareen peasant garb as if it were the robes of a Council great. She was cutting meat for a fiery red-headed child of perhaps two or three, who had stopped herself in mid-tantrum to stare at the newcomers. The Kareen woman looked over at them, as well—began to smile politely—and froze.

She was staring at Kirgen, and Roba felt a sudden surge of jealous possessiveness.

The girl said, “Kirgen?”

He nodded, and Roba noticed how pale he looked. “Faia?” he whispered. And tipping his head toward the little girl, he asked, “Who—?”

“Kirtha,” the girl named Faia said.

Roba felt her world beginning to tilt. Kirtha was the feminine of Kirgen. The child looked just like him. Still, it might all be coincidence.

But Kirgen couldn’t be satisfied to leave well enough alone. He asked Faia, “Ours?”

And the woman nodded.

The information blindsided Roba. Like his old war stories, Kirgen had kept any stories of previous lovers strictly to himself. Roba had considered his youth and his association with the sajery, and the long hours he spent in study, and had come to the conclusion that he might not have had any previous loves.

Which was apparently as nearsighted of me as assuming he didn’t do much in the war because he never talked about it
.

She stared at the woman and the child and Kirgen, who was looking from one to the other of them without ever turning his eyes to her. Her heart felt as if it were about to burst.

Yes. His child. Their child. And where does that leave me?

Roba stepped back, so that she could lean against the wall without being too obvious. She felt sick. She wished she could leave the room, but that was a childish reaction. She was beyond such behavior. She found no satisfaction in the fact that most of the people in the room, including Kirgen, looked as surprised as she felt.

It was the disaster with Janth all over again. She’d loved him with all her heart at fifteen and been sure he was in love with her, too—until he ran off with the healer’s daughter. In retaliation,
she
ran off to join a bunch of lonely celibate women in the Daane University magerie.

While she was off in the cold southern wastes, someone had changed all the rules. She came back to Ariss to find she was free to seek love again.

And like a fool, I did,
she thought.
I ran out, and found myself another handsome young Janth. And now I’m going to get my fool heart broken all over again.

Well, that’s what I get for loving him.

* * *

The atmosphere around the nondes table was tense enough to give Medwind indigestion. She’d seen Roba with Kirgen when they walked through the door and had realized the same man Faia identified as Kirtha’s father was also Roba’s lover. She could feel trouble brewing, though she was unsure where the outburst would come from or when it would come. The suspense made the fried hovie in her stomach slide around perilously until she regretted even tasting it. She watched the interplay of glances and glares between Kirgen, Faia, and Roba, by turns morbidly fascinated and appalled—and she waited.

Kirgen had seated himself across from Faia and Kirtha. Faia occupied herself feeding the little girl, who didn’t want or need to be fed—the hill-girl didn’t eat anything herself.

Roba looked miserable sitting beside the too-talkative saje who was her department head. When prodded, the mage delivered a few one-word comments on scholarship and the search for First Folk artifacts and, with a wince, Delmuirie. She played with her food, but Medwind suspected she swallowed nothing but her tears.

Kirgen stayed silent throughout the meal, and Medwind noticed he ate little. She suspected his stomach was probably in the same shape as hers. She could just imagine long days and nights in the company of these same people, and weeks of sitting to table together playing out the same delightful mealtime rituals.

I ought to be back down to my fighting weight in no time,
she decided.
On the other hand, it doesn’t look like the added mouths are going to require many more supplies than we needed before.
She wished fervently that she hadn’t invited Roba and her associates on the trip.

When Kirgen finished not eating, he sat, fumbling with his dinner knife. He started to speak several times, but faltered. Finally he blurted out, “Have you—um, both of you—been well?”

Faia traced spirals in her remaining food with the point of her knife. Thirk and Nokar’s noisy discussion of library politics at Faulea, drifting from the other end of the table, covered the awkward silence. Finally, the girl said, “It is hard sometimes, but my friends help.” She looked up at him and smiled carefully. “We have enough to eat, a place to sleep, and I have work I can do—we are both well.”

He smiled back, but when his glance drifted from Faia to Kirtha, the smile faltered. “I didn’t know.” He stared down at his hands. “I wish I’d known.”

“I am sorry. I did not know myself until after the war—until after I left the city. Then, I did not dare try to find you, and I was not sure you would even want to know.” Faia sighed. “Nokar told me to the best of his knowledge you had survived the war—I thought perhaps some day I could risk going back to the city to show her to you. But I am not truly welcome there—you understand?”

He nodded. Medwind watched him and noted that he could not take his eyes off his daughter’s face. “She’s very beautiful,” the young saje said softly. “She looks like you.”

Faia blushed and laughed. “Your red hair, your freckles, your brown eyes, and she looks like me? Hardly.”

At the other end of the table, Nokar bellowed, “You don’t mean that twittering ass Virven Sharsonne is up for the head librarian position?!”

Thirk laughed. “Practically uncontested. He’s claiming he was your heir apparent—and after Timmesonne tried to launch an open-to-the-public policy, the reactionaries are willing to believe him.”

“Virven’s a ninny.”

Kirtha yawned, and Faia turned her attention to the child. “Sleep-time, Kirthchie.”

“Not sleepy!” Kirtha protested.

“Ha! That is what you always say.” She scooped the little girl into her arms and rose. “I plead pardon.” She excused herself and headed for the room she and Kirtha shared, then stopped in the doorway. “But maybe your da would like to help put you in bed tonight?” Her face was a picture of doubt, and her eyes focused on Kirgen.

The young man gave her an uncertain smile. “Could I?”

“Of course.”

Kirgen made his own excuses and disappeared into the breezeway after her.

Medwind returned her attention to the other guests. Roba sat at the far end of the table, her face a mask of indifference. Her eyes, though, glittered suspiciously bright.

Thirk, next to her, sighed. “Isn’t it wonderful,” he said, “that the two of them have found each other after all this time. Ah, young love.” He elbowed Roba. “Not the sort of thing you and I are ever going to have to worry about again, is it?”

Medwind gritted her teeth and wondered if the man was always so insensitive—or so blind.

Roba handled it better than the Hoos woman expected. “Apparently not,” her old friend said stiffly. “Apparently not.”

Conversation shifted to the expedition that would start in the morning. The Wen kids, Medwind noted, looked unhappy to be including anyone else in the trip to their city. Nokar had introduced the Ariss scholars to the Wen children, and both Seven-Fingered Fat Girl and Dog Nose had been cold and aloof.

The Hoos woman thought she understood. The Wen kids found the city, and decided it would make a good home for them. According to the stories they told Medwind, their own parents had thrown them out to fend for themselves in the dangerous jungle. They’d seen friends die, and spent years unwanted by anyone. A place that was theirs alone must have seemed like a haven—and Medwind and her colleagues were crowding that haven.

Not for long, though,
Medwind thought.
We’ll get the information we want, and move on, and leave them to their city.

Then she considered what a find like a First Folk city would mean to the rest of the scholars of Arhel. No one had ever found a First Folk library before. No one had ever located a genuine city, even a small one. No one had ever found portable First Folk artifacts before. And once the First Folk site was publicized, no matter how good her intentions, or Nokar’s, the Wen kids were going to be betrayed.

Scholars won’t abandon a find like that. Once the city is common knowledge, there will always be some mage or saje with a reason to be there—and the claim those kids have on the city will always be less important.

She stared off at nothing, saddened. It didn’t take farsight to see the shape of unhappiness in the making.

“YOU cannot seriously mean to include children in this expedition,” Thirk said.

Medwind stood outside the house in the predawn cold and stared him down. “You were invited to join
us
,” she said. “Do not think you will dictate who may go with us and who may not.”

Thirk looked disgusted. “Mothers and children. Scruffy heathens. What kind of serious scholarly journey would include them? Think what the history texts will say—that the expedition that proved the Delmuirie Hypothesis included three little jungle rats and a baby. No one will take us seriously!”

“I suppose the histories could leave off your name if you prefer.”

He glared. “Think of the danger. A helpless mother and her tiny babe—”

Medwind broke into disbelieving laughter. “Helpless!” she sputtered. “Helpless? Do you have any idea who that poor helpless mother is?”

Thirk frowned. “Faia something-or-other. Some girl Kirgen knew.”

“Faia Rissedote,” Medwind clarified. “The same woman who bested the Wisewoman Sahedre and brought the Second Mage/Saje War to an end. She can take care of herself.”

The Hoos warrior had her own doubts about Kirtha’s presence on the trip, but Faia had been adamant. The hill-girl was sick of Omwimmee Trade, and bored, and lonely, and she craved the adventure a trip into the forbidden Wen jungle promised. Faia promised she would keep Kirtha from burning down the jungle or the First Folk city. Medwind, who could understand the girl’s wish to
do
something, kept her opinions on Kirtha’s probable behavior to herself.

There were no further arguments, and, with everyone boarded and the gear packed at last, the airbox lifted silently into the still-dark sky. It banked around and soared toward the Wen Tribes Treaty lands. Within an instant, it was over the lush jungle canopy.

Medwind leaned back against the padded leather seat of the airbox and stared out the window as the bright crescent slash of the Tide Mother rose on the horizon with its cup of purple, red, and orange tipped.
To spill the blood
, she thought, and bit her lip with annoyance at her own irrationality. Hoos legends said when the Tide Mother tipped its cup to Arhel, it spilled blood on the battlefield. Medwind reflected that, since one Hoos looking cross-eyed at another Hoos was enough to spill blood on the battlefield, the old legend stood good odds of being right
somewhere
.

But, all the same, she wished the damned planet were hanging straight in the sky. A heritage of Hoos superstition sent tingles down her spine in spite of all her knowledge.

Edgy—that was the word. She felt it. They all felt it.

The two older Wen kids were fighting in the seats to her left. They were whispering very fast, and in Sropt, so she only caught snatches of the conversation. “—too many peknu—,” “—they
might
steal our food—,” and “—do not like these flying things—” seemed to make up the gist of the argument.