Call the Rain (3 page)

Joral turned back and opened his mouth as if to say something. He closed it again and slowed his pace so that Illista had to slow down too, to a soft patter in his shadow.

“What is your name?” he asked over his shoulder.

Illista realized she had met his gaze directly again. That was not good. She quickly looked downward, willing her eyes not to linger on the V of his back, or the muscles of his thighs. Dust and grass. She must look at the dust and grass and his heels.

“Surely you have a name?”

She bobbed her head up and down while staring at his legs. The lacing on his boots sculpted the fine hide to a pair of toned calves. Her mouth was dry and her heart fluttered with fear and the exertion of her half jog behind him. “My name is Illista.”

He stopped, and she nearly tripped over her own feet in her haste to avoid running into his back. The stone around her neck throbbed hot and sharp against her skin as it bobbed with the sudden movement and for a split second she could hear the whisper of rain droplets coming on the wind. The sound was like the tinkling of a thousand crystal bells far away before it faded to the mere whistle of wind.

Joral's voice sounded funny when he spoke, soft and thick as though he were waking from a dream. “That is a beautiful name. Illista.”

The sound of her name on his lips sent a shiver down her back. Not a shiver like she felt from the cold, hard winter air on these plains. But the shiver she used to feel before diving into the lacy waterfall near her childhood home. The pool at the bottom had tasted so sweet and pure and fresh and the cool water used to tickle her skin and her hair and her imagination so that she would lose herself in its blue depths for hours.

“Thank you, my lord. The tent is here. Might I take the dishes to be washed, now?” She peeked up at his face. He looked a bit pale or even gray underneath the tanned color of his skin and his pupils were dilated.
Still hung over from last night's festivities. Still water-logged from the lake.
She stifled a snort.

“I will return them on one condition. Could you point out the...I don't know the word for it. The person, the Waki, whoever is in charge of the kitchens and the washing and all of this?”

He gestured around the circle of tents where pots and pans and herbs and various meat-drying racks and roasting pits were set.

“Nunzi is the canteen mistress. She wears a red apron.”

He handed her the basket of dishes and waited, hands poised, as she balanced them. She walked away slowly and deliberately. There was no way she was going to drop them all over the ground a second time. His gaze weighed heavily on her shoulders. She felt foolish and silly and awkward, more aware of the ungraceful waddle of her steps and the shortness of her stride than ever.

It was not until she had sorted the plates onto the work table and had begun scouring them with sand to remove all of the food particles that she breathed a sigh of relief. The familiar motions of the scraping them and rubbing them with cleaning oils and rinsing them and storing them on the drying-travelling racks soothed her.

Joral would never connect a servant, a Waki, with the incident at the lake the night before. His attentions were odd, but he was a foreigner. Most of the other Waki were mildly embarrassed for the Chieftess these past months as she had her son instructed with many of the younger boys of the tribe.

Illista took another plate, and shoved it into the basin to rinse.
She knew how he must feel. Most of the Ken Segra’s Waki workers were from the same family group. There were a few outsiders, like herself and Quarie. Yet none of them were at all like herself and Quarie. The sisters were more foreign than Joral would ever be among his Segra kin. At least he was a man among men and not an imposter.

At first, she barely noticed the sound.

The water gurgled with each new plate, choking and sputtering every time she dipped one of the wooden platters down under the surface. As the bits of leftover oil and sand clouded the surface, the sound grew more choked and wobbly. Like an old drunken man chortling through his grol.

She timidly lifted the plate out and the water let it go with a slurp. Curious. She slipped it back under and was rewarded with a single chord of half-hummed music.
She grabbed another plate, not bothering to scrape off the cleaning oils and dunked it into the water.

A sing-song burst of woozy joy trilled through the tent, and she laughed
out loud.

“Illista!”

She jumped at the high-pitched squeak that was Nunzi's voice. Illista whirled, a plate clutched to her breast, dripping precious water onto the packed earthen floor of the tent.

Nunzi's face was impassive and bland with that look that the taller folk associated with a simpleton. Illista herself once thought Waki were ever happy, ever ignorant, ever innocent. Now she recognized the tight curl of Nunzi's fingers, the set of the woman's shoulders, the tightness of her lips.

Illista's stomach curdled in fear. What had Joral told her? “Yes, Nunzi?”

“Put down your plate, child.”

Illista hurried to obey, carefully wiping the plate and setting it into the drying rack tenderly. Nunzi's fists did not uncurl.

“You have been noticed, child.” The older woman's breathy voice belied the core of stone that Illista knew she harbored. To be noticed was trouble for a Waki. To be noticed could mean much worse for Illista and Quarie.

Illista bowed her head and tried to wet her lips to speak. Even the water of her mouth escaped her now. “I am shamed.”

Nunzi's laughter was low and barking, in steep contrast to her girly voice. “It is no shame of yours. The prince is a strange one. He notices much that he should ignore.”

Illista remained still, afraid to agree with such a statement. But neither would she argue with Nunzi.

“If the request had come from another, I would have refused. But Chieftess has named Prince Joral as her heir, and we serve the Chieftess.” Nunzi sighed heavily. “He and his magic man require an assistant. And he requested you in particular.”

Illista paused outside the flap to the medicine man's tent, her blood rushing loud as a storm-whipped wave in her ears. Few of the tribespeople had ever came all the way here, preferring to meet with Zuke in one of the larger gathering tents. From what she knew, few of the Ken-Segra trusted this medicine man. None of the Waki ever used his services. They had their own healer and did not trust the tall people's medicine.

Scents of burning firewood and exotic herbs overpowered the dust and horse dung and tanned leather that were the mainstays of the rest of the camp. She touched the buttery fabric of the tent.

Silk.

The Ken-Segra used leather and furs for their dwellings, protected with oils distilled from the fat of the grazing herds of the plains to make them waterproof. It was what they had, and it made for an effective barrier to both the harsh winter winds and the unrelenting summer sun.

Silk such as this was reserved for ceremonial garments. A man-sized length of silk rope was more precious than a year's worth of fresh water. To use such fabric for a tent was as frivolous as it was impractical in this climate. She shoved the fabric aside, surprised at its heft. Not a single layer of filmy silk, this. This was quilted with some other layer in the middle.

She lifted the flap and slipped inside, allowing it to drop behind her, and blinked at the shift in light. In the center of the tent was a small red-gold fire. But it was the dozens, or maybe hundreds, of candles topping multi-armed stands that illuminated the room to a brilliant imitation of daytime. Their flames flickered a bright blue-white and, based on the cleanly scented air, they were made of costly beeswax instead of tallow. Bees were almost as hard to come by on the open plains as silk.

Illista's breath caught in her throat as her gaze travelled upwards to the brightly colored murals painted on the inside surface of the tent. Detailed depictions of trees and flowers and stone fortresses and water filled the entire surface of the conical dwelling. Across one swath she recognized the distinctive patterns and wide arching wings of the gulls native to the shores near where she was born.

She gulped.

“Do they scare you?”

Illista jumped at Joral's voice. He sat on a cushioned chair on the far side of the fire, his long hair unbound and loose. A snowy white shirt hung from his shoulders, unfastened at the chest. She blinked. With his foreign garments and the chair he had nearly blended into the exotic scenery.

He stood, his height dominating the space. Illista shrank backwards.

“Don't be afraid, Illista. The drawings are not real. Not even magical. Nothing up there can hurt you.” He smiled with a friendly openness that made her belly warm.

No, not friendly. Paternally.

She dropped her gaze immediately to the floor. Color could not flood a Waki's cheeks, but she felt ashamed anyway. To think, even for the briefest of moments, that a tribesman would treat a Waki like an equal was ridiculous. To admire his eyes and the breadth of his chest and the way a small bit of golden-brown hair curled at the neckline of his open shirt was beyond absurd.

“Zuke. Wake up. The Waki is here.” Joral nudged a pile of furs with his foot, and the furs groaned and rolled over.

“I was not asleep. I was meditating on your illness.” The voice from the furs was thick with sleep.

Joral chuckled. The rumble of his voice resonated through Illista like the melody from a well-tuned drum. “Up, lazybones. Our guest is here.”

The bundle of furs parted, revealing a wiry man whose age Illista could not guess. His hair was shiny and the deep brown-black of a man in his prime, but his eyes were old. Old like the sea or the mountains or the skeletons of trees out on the plains, dead from lack of water and withered by the wind into dusty sticks. He assessed her, staring frankly at her person, and she shivered under the attention and had to restrain herself from grasping the stone at her throat. To restrain herself from revealing its magic by foolishly trying to hide it from his eyes.

The medicine man smiled, and pushed himself to his feet. Unlike his piercing gaze, his smile was warm and welcoming and it calmed a few of the wild birds that swarmed in Illista's belly.

“You usually work in the kitchens, correct?”

She nodded, trying not to notice how one of his legs was shorter than the other, twisted somehow. He didn't seem to notice her furtive glances or didn't care. He walked to the far side of the tent with a sweeping gait that dragged his lame leg on every odd step.

“You are competent with cooking?” he asked over his shoulder. He knelt beside a wooden box. For all the twisted lameness of his legs, his back looked strong and his shoulders broad. She wondered what kind of life he led before he and Joral arrived in camp this summer past.

“Y..yes.” she said.

“Excellent. Come here, don't be afraid. I am glad to have an assistant.” Zuke waived her over, and then tossed something through the air to Joral. “Make yourself useful, too.”

Joral caught whatever it was, and Illista stared at the casual way that the medicine man addressed the prince. They treated each other as brothers or friends, not master-and-servant. Interesting.

The prince knelt beside the fire and unwrapped the bundle in his hands. He effectively blocked her path to Zuke. If she tried to go around the other side of the fire, she would have to climb over assorted boxes and items. She gulped and made her way toward Joral, conscious of how her steps rocked and her fat feet scuffled along the ground.

She could not keep from brushing against his tunic as she passed. From the folds of finely woven cloth, she smelled cedar and pine underneath the sour remains of the meem of today's banquet. They were the scents of the woodlands of her childhood. Places with
tree trunks that soared upwards to tickle the clouds and soft sweet moss to cushion her feet. Places teeming with life and sunshine and streams generous with their waters.

A loud hiss broke her reverie, sending icy shivers up her back. “What was that?”

Zuke looked over her shoulder curiously. “Can you smell it?”

Illista shook her head. The hissing sound turned to a glug, greedy and smug with tiny whispers that curled up and around through the air. She steeled herself and tried to ignore the pleas from the water in the bowl in front of Zuke. It was a cry of help, she realized. There was something in that water that was dark and foul.

“How about you, Joral? Smell familiar?”

The prince finished opening his leather wrapped bundle and spread the cloth out on the ground in front of him, revealing an assortment of small metal implements. “No. Should it?”

Zuke waved Illista over, and she hurried the rest of the way to his side. Her eyes were drawn to the contents of his stone pot like iron to a lodestone. The water was deceptively calm and clear. She eyed it askance.

“Care for a sip?” he asked.

She backed away.

Zuke laughed, the sound merry and loud and startling. “Excellent. Never eat or drink anything in this tent unless you are absolutely certain it is food. I think we shall work very well together.”

***

Joral watched as Zuke showed Illista his collection of powders and herbs. Her naïve face was rapt with attention as the medicine man explained each item. He felt a pang of jealousy for the attention his friend paid their small helper and for the attention she paid to his friend.