Moonscatter (27 page)

“What happened?”

“We got public whippings now, ain't it wonderful. Made Hihnir forge the irons and set the post himself. In the middle of the green. I tell you!” He spat. “Decsel come around to all the shops. Joras and me, we were in town for some chain, needed to fix up another hoist for the butchering. Made us go too, and us just riding in no idea what we were getting into. Got no chains, just got to see the blacksmith and his helper hung up on that stinking post and whipped bloody. Every soul in town there. Had to listen to the Agli rant about natural and unnatural till I was ready to rot. Then they marched the two of them to the House of Repentance, said they were going to teach 'em to live normal Soäreh's way. No one's seen 'em since and no one, me either, has got the nerve to ask about 'em. I don't hold with the way they lived, but sweet holy tits, they've lived here near on forty years not bothering no one.” His feet scraped on the floor and he coughed again. “I don't see where this is going to end.”

“Thing I'd like to know is what happened to Hern. He might be fat and lazy like all the Heslins but he wouldn't stand for this.”

There was silence inside for a few breaths then Tesc said, “You remember Rane the meie?” There were a few rasping sounds as the men shifted about, a grunt or two. “She said the Biserica took him in after Floarin turned the guards on him, let him live in the gatehouse.”

More silence.

“Pretty good with a sword, Hern, or so they say.” Vrom chuckled dryly. “Me, I'd cut my foot off.”

Burin slapped his hand against the wall. “What do we know about battles and such? That's what we got Domnors for. Maybe we should send someone to talk to Hern, see what he thinks we should do.”

“Could do that.” Tesc sounded tired. “Me, I can't afford to wait for him to get busy. Got mouths to fill and shelters to put up. Things should settle down, though, when the first snow falls.”

“If it does.” Vonnyr's gloom spread to the others. Again there was silence in the gutted schoolroom.

Teras sat up suddenly, his face wrinkled with concentration. Tuli stopped trying to juggle her two stones and clutched them tight in one sweaty hand. “What is it?” she whispered. “Gong?”

“Uh-huh.” He rubbed furiously at his eyes, scowled at her. “There's someone snooping about, at least I think so,” he whispered, his esses spraying in her ear. “If they heard … take a look, will you?” He got quickly to his feet. When she was up beside him, he finished, “I'll tell Da and the others.”

She nodded and started off, circling the fountain and fading into the deep shadow under the vine trellis linking the carved columns, filled with a restless energy that made her glad to be moving, whatever the purpose. She trotted through the columns, her feet dancing between and around the heaps of dead dry leaves, floating, it seemed to her, without effort or sound, feeling the Maiden peace settle over her in spite of the desolation. She felt like singing, like laughing, then she came out of the columns and slowed as she moved along the front wall to the main gate of the shrine, most of her senses tuned to the road outside. She tripped suddenly over something soft and crashed to the paving, knocking the wind out of herself, scraping her palms bloody. The noise of her fall seemed to echo louder than a gong. She jerked around, switching ends like a spooked macai, and found herself nose to nose with a familiar face. “Joras,” she whispered. She pressed her hand to his neck under the angle of his jaw, breathed more easily as she felt the strong, slow beat. She sat back on her heels.
Must've been standing watch and the sneak got to him
.

The dying vines whispered in quick papery rustles, the wind blew bits of grit over the paving. In the distance the flute song of a kanka ended on a sharp high note as it loosed its gas and swooped on a prowling rodent. She reached toward Joras's shoulder intending to shake him out of his stupor.

Leather scraped against stone. Someone out in the darkness took an incautious step, arrested the movement, but not before she heard. She sprang to her feet, looked wildly about, plunged into the columns as a dark figure came leaping at her.

She yelped, but didn't bother screaming. Her father and the others knew about the prowler, no use alerting the town. She twisted and turned through the pillars, trying to get around him and back to her father, gasped with horror as a dark shape came round a column and fingers caught her arm. She jerked loose, panting, sweat breaking out all over her, her heart thudding in her throat, plunged again into the darkness under the columns. She was intensely angry, but it wasn't like one of her rages, more like Sanani's bitter anger that was cold and mind-clearing. She was afraid but in her body and her mind was the memory of the guard in the clearing folding slowly to the ground, killed by a stone from her sling. She slipped a hand into her pocket, felt the stones and the long strips of leather. She made one last desperate turn, ran flat out for the middle of the court of columns, hearing his feet slapping on the bricks, his breathing hoarse as he labored behind her. Sling in one hand, stones in the other, she skidded into the processional aisle, flew along it and out into the street, skidded about again and ran round the outside of the wall toward the grove behind the shrine. Halfway there, she stopped, whirled, stood shaking and unsteady, eyes burning and blurred, gulping in great bites of dusty air. Still shaking a little, she thumbed a stone into the pocket of the sling and started whirling it about her head, her eyes on the corner.

The acolyte came plunging around the corner, stumbled to a stop, then started for her, triumph stretching his mouth and glittering in his eyes. His exertions had knocked the hood back from his head. She saw with a clarity that startled her the polished gleam of his shaved pate, his ears standing out like handles on a jug.

The sling whirred over her head. He was a half-dozen steps from her when she loosed the stone. His last step aborted, a look of surprise in his one remaining eye, one hand starting to lift toward his face, he crumpled to the pavement and lay in a heap, the wind playing with the folds of his robe.

Tuli waited. He didn't move. She lifted a hand grown leaden and pushed the sling into her jacket pocket. The wind sang eerily along the wall, tugging at the flattened folds of his robe, pressing the cloth against his bony length. She longed to run to her father and feel safe in his arms. Her stomach churned. She rubbed her sleeve across her eyes, realizing with some surprise that she was crying. She looked up. Nijilic The Dom was riding heavily across a crack in the yellow clouds, his light touching a Maiden face visible above the top of the wall, lovely, serene, compassionate, seeming to smile at her. She walked past the fallen boy (he couldn't be more than three or four years older than her), walked past the black heap, her eyes fixed on the gentle face, the forgiveness she read into it helping her to forgive herself.

She flattened her hand on the wall, walked along it, turned the corner, her hand slipping over the rough stones, the tension flowing out of her back and shoulders as soon as the body was out of sight. She went through the gate, her feet scuffing on the bricks.

Joras was sitting up, breathing hard and poking at his head, cursing softly but with great feeling. Vonnyr was propping him up, his mobile face squeezed into a scowl of rage and concern. The other taroms, Tesc with them, clustered around him, throwing muttered questions at him that he'd given up trying to answer.

Teras was the first to see Tuli. He started toward her, calling her name. Tuli tried to smile at him, couldn't, brushed past him and threw herself at her father, shaking all over as reaction hit her a second time.

“Tuli?” He smoothed his broad hand over her hair, patted her shoulder. “What's wrong?”

“The acolyte. He was listening. He came after me, chased me. I killed him. Out there.” Her face pressed against her father's well-covered ribs, she waved a hand awkwardly at the street. Her words muffled and indistinct, she said, “Around the corner.”

With a muttered exclamation Burin shifted his heavy body into a light-footed run and disappeared out the gate. He was back a minute later. “Dead all right. Little one here, she whanged him good with her sling. Wonder how much he heard?”

“Enough to get us all proscribed.” Kimor dropped his hand on Teras's shoulder, smiled at Tuli. “Terrible Twins just saved our necks.”

Vonnyr helped Joras onto his feet. “You all right to ride?”

Joras smiled at his father, a small twitch of his lips, his face sweaty and pale. “I can stick in a saddle.”

“With the sneak dead, we got time and room to move.” Vonnyr looked anxiously at Joras. “Take it easy. We can haul the body off with us, bury it somewhere.”

“No,” Tesc said sharply. Tuli stared up at her father, startled to see him so grim. He shifted her around until she was standing beside him, his arm curled protectively around her shoulders. “No,” he repeated. “You want the Agli to call him from the grave to tell the tale of what he heard?”

Vrom gaped. “Huh?” Vonnyr looked uneasily around, his eyes drawn to the silent street visible through the gate's elegant arch. The others shifted with the same lack of ease.

Exhausted by what she'd done and the tumult of her emotions, Tuli leaned against her father's side, watching them, hardly taking in the import of her father's words.

“You heard of Necromancers,” Tesc said.

Kimor scowled. “Norits maybe. Aglim ain't norits, just norids. Can't light a match without sweating.”

“Rane said Nearga-nor's behind this, feeding the norids more power. I don't want to take no chances.” He patted Tuli's shoulder. “No one's going to raise that body if it's ash. The twins and me, we'll dump it in the Agli's own fire.”

Burin strangled on a snort of laughter. Vonnyr beat on his back grinning. “Be damned to you for a grand fool, cousin.”

Tesc smiled, sobered. “You all take care, keep in your heads what happened tonight. We been careless, nearly paid for it.” He shook his head. “Going to be a tough winter.”

Once the taroms were safely away, Tesc walked back from the grove and stood looking thoughtfully down at the boy's body. When Tuli and Teras joined him, he shifted his gaze to the old granary across the street. The flame in the outer basin was burning low and the place looked deserted. He dropped his hand on Teras's shoulder, tapped Tuli's cheek. “Think the two of you can carry him?”

“Yah,” Teras said. Tuli felt her skin crawl at the thought of touching the dead boy, but she nodded.

“Good.” Tesc frowned. “Let me look the place over first.” He moved quickly across the weedy ground, stopped at the corner of the shrine to look up and down the street, moved rapidly across it, a bulky man walking with the silence and grace of a hunting fayar. He melted into the shadow at the base of the granary, hesitated in the doorway, disappeared inside. Tuli looked down at the dead acolyte and shuddered. She moved closer to Teras. The minutes passed slowly; it hurt to breathe.

Tesc reappeared in the entranceway. He beckoned, stood waiting for them.

Teras knelt and turned the body on its side. He looked up at Tuli, his eyes shining liquidly in the dim light from the cloud-obscured moons. The wind whipped his short hair about his face. “Grab his legs, Tuli.” He straightened, hugging the boy's torso against his side. The skinny legs trailed limply on the ground by Tuli's feet. She suppressed another shudder and forced herself to lift them. Her twin looked over his shoulder. “Ready?”

She nodded. As they moved swiftly across the empty street, she was all too aware of the cold flaccidity of the dead flesh she carried; she stared down, saw coarse black hair curling over the pale flesh, saw long thin toes, saw every crack in the horn on the heels, the stained and crooked toenails, the dusting of dirt between the straps of the worn, sweat-stained sandals.

Tesc vanished inside the granary. Tuli shivered at the change that the last weeks had made in her father. His usually amiable face was harder, leaner, angry in a way that sometimes frightened her. She shifted her grip on the acolyte's legs and looked sadly at her brother's back. Some of the same anger was churning in him. He'd always been the one to keep her steady, the sane one, bubbling with an infectious sense of fun, a quieter appreciation of the ridiculous. Like the change in her father, the change in her twin frightened her, even more, it chilled her. He moved without looking back at her. She pinched her lips together, the sense of loss deepening in her.

Teras circled the exterior fire. Tuli followed awkwardly, her fingers cramping about the thin legs of the dead boy. These new things she was being forced to learn, the killing and the capacity of people to hurt others, the things she was learning about her father and her brother, these things reached back into her memories and corrupted them. Nothing was the same. Nothing was safe. She blinked back tears and forced herself to concentrate on the present, to be alert and ready to act if she needed to.

They trudged along the curving hall that followed the turn of the outer wall, new-panelled and new-painted, stinking of the fresh paint, glistening white paint that caught shadows and images of the small lamps bolted high on the walls, caught them in its wet film like a sun-dew catches insects for its supper. The sweet sickly smell of incense came drifting back to them, mixing with the stink of the paint. When they turned into the meeting room, Tuli was fighting down nausea, concentrating so hard on her rebelling stomach that she didn't at first see what was waiting for them. Teras dropped the shoulders of the acolyte with a hiss of disgust. Tuli let the feet fall away and stood rubbing her hands on the sides of her jacket.

The Agli was stretched out on a mat, his head close beside a brazier that sent up a heavy oily smoke. The smoke moved slowly out and over the gaunt man, wreathing his still form with ragged black claws. The smell was powerful enough to make her dizzy; she pinched her nostrils together, trying to shut out the stench and the choking smoke.