The Prince of Shadow (35 page)

Waiting sounded like a good idea to Llesho; he needed his friends working and thinking together when they went after Adar. He didn't have the energy to persuade them to go to the capital city of Shan anyway—didn't think he'd have much luck trying when he couldn't stand up under his own power. But he wasn't sure that they could stay where they were either.

“Do you think Kaydu is coming back?” he asked, and meant not,
Has she betrayed us to our enemies?
but,
Has she been captured?
and,
Do we have to run now, before her captors find us, and while I am not yet sure which world I live in let alone what route we should take to freedom?

Lling frowned in a way that made Llesho think she had figured out the shades of meaning in the questions he was really asking.

“We're as safe as we can be,” she said. “Or we have been, until now.”

Until now. Llesho wondered about that. Lling answered his frown without waiting for the next question: “We are still free, more or less, though Mara—the lady healer—hasn't had much chance to betray us to Lord Yueh. She has stayed with you night and day since she brought us here.”

Thus the “until.” Whatever Kaydu's fate, Lling didn't think she'd give them up to Master Markko or Lord Yueh. The healer, Mara, however, could be reporting them to authorities in the village at this very minute. Those local officials might hand them over to anyone happening by with a provincial government badge on his cap.

“You don't trust her?” They both knew which “her” he meant. Llesho wasn't sure he could ride yet, but he could send his companions on ahead, out of harm's reach, if he had to, and find his own way out of Lord Yueh's trap. There was always the one final escape open to him, though he regretted the pain and exhaustion he had already invested in recovering from his injury.

Lling wouldn't meet his eyes, but raised her eyebrows in question at Hmishi, who hesitantly took up the answer.

“I think she would do anything in her power to keep you from harm,” Hmishi began, “but she's not Kwan-ti.”

The first part of Hmishi's answer surprised him. Llesho had already figured out the second part for himself. “Has she told you who she is?” He didn't mean the name, of course, but Hmishi repeated it anyway.

“Her name is Mara, and she says she is local to the village, and only uses this house when she is foraging in the wood for herbs and fungi to use in her medicines.”

“But the house had all the signs that someone had been living in it recently,” Lling observed. “No dust on the tables, the bed made with grasses still green from the plucking when we arrived. And there were fresh fruits and vegetables in the bins.”

“She had the medicines she needed for your wound right to hand,” Lling added.

Llesho did not look happy, but he admitted, “I know it doesn't make sense, and you've both seen a lot more of the healer than I have, but I trust her.” He glared at his companions, defying them to contradict him. “It was something about her touch—I could feel it. I think that's why I mistook her for Kwan-ti. There was something about her touch that just felt like a true healer.” They couldn't object, however; they had all grown to like her, and for many of the same reasons.

“At first, when she cut out the arrowhead, I thought we'd made a mistake,” Hmishi said. “She seemed as cold as her blade, and even more unbending. I couldn't even watch, but she didn't flinch once, not even when you screamed that horrible scream and only the cloths tying you down kept you from rising right out of the bed.”

Llesho remembered that part, dimly, and it still had the power to turn his stomach. His companions seemed to feel the same way, for they had turned matching shades of green.

“And when she did that thing with the—” Hmishi couldn't finish, just shuddered in revulsion, and gestured loosely at the bandages. Llesho remembered that part, too, and was regretting that he'd drunk so much of the healer's potion so recently. He had a feeling it wouldn't be pleasant on the return trip.

“I'd heard Little Phoenix mention the use of the carrion eaters as a battlefield treatment for rotting wounds,” Lling interrupted, “but I'd never actually seen it done. Hope I don't again.”

Hmishi shook his head. “I don't have to like it, but I can accept that it was necessary.”

Llesho knew he wasn't in the best shape for logic, but even he could see that Hmishi was making a better argument for distrusting Mara than for trusting her. “So you like her, even though you don't trust her and think she might be trying to kill me?”

He didn't like the sound of that, but it was how his tired brain chose to phrase it.

“It was afterward,” Hmishi said. “She bandaged you and then gave us all instructions for keeping you cool. She told us what to say if you cried out in your sleep, and asked us to watch you while she cleared her mind. And then she went outside.

“We were all nervous then,” Lling said, “because we thought she had gone to find Lord Yueh's men, to hand us over.”

“So I followed her,” Hmishi admitted. “I would have killed her before she gave away the location of this house, but she only went as far as the trail. She brushed away the marks of our boots and the horses' hooves, and scattered fresh branches to erase all the signs of our camp. She was angry. It took me a few minutes to realize that she was praying while she worked, and that she was addressing heaven in that tone of voice mothers use when you leave the gate open and the goats get loose in the vegetable garden.

“She was furious because you'd been so hurt—I've never seen a healer threaten the gods before, but that's what she seemed to be doing. So, I don't think she is going to turn us over to Master Markko, or to Lord Yueh's soldiers.”

Hmishi shrugged, unwilling it seemed to explain why he would trust their safety to the curses of a madwoman. “I wasn't sure of her skills as a healer until yesterday. Your fever broke, and today you woke up. I don't think she is likely to poison us, not after spending so much time on making you better. But I don't know how safe she will be, or us, if the villagers tell Lord Yueh's men about this house.”

Llesho could feel the smile stealing over his face. The sunlight would never make
sense,
but perhaps there was a
reason
for the eternal morning. “I don't think anyone will find this place unless she wants them to.” Still smiling, Llesho drifted into a peaceful sleep.

Chapter Twenty-one

LLESHO rose out of troubled dreams to find that the sunlight had faded into evening. He'd missed another afternoon and so, apparently, had his companions. Hmishi and Lling lay asleep on the rug by the fireplace, tucked up close to each other as if to ward away the cold.

“What time is it?” he called. “Is anybody here?” It gave him a moment of satisfaction when the sleepers started up with foggy expressions of guilt on their faces.

“Sorry. Fell asleep.” Hmishi rubbed his eyes in an effort to look more alert. “Do you need something?”

“Have you noticed something strange about this place?”

Lling gave him a slow smile. “I like it here,” she said around a yawn and a stretch. “It's warm, smells nice—”

“Nobody whacking at us with swords or pikes,” Hmishi added.

“What about the missing afternoons?” Llesho would have asked the question but a commotion at the door drew all three Thebins to their feet.

“Home! And not before time, as I see.” Mara entered the cottage trailing a dirty and bedraggled Kaydu, who looked around the little house with suspicious, darted glances out of eyes that seemed charged with feral nerves. Little Brother crouched on her shoulder, his arms wrapped around her neck, but made no sound.

“Kaydu—” Llesho began, just as the healer spoke up, chiding him with a “tsk” in her voice.

“You should be resting. I thought you two had sense enough to keep him lying quietly.”

“We did.”

Llesho slumped back on his feather bolster, more wary than ever but resigned to wait until they were alone again to discuss this matter of lost time. It seemed more important now to find out why Kaydu looked like she'd been on the Long March and why she slumped onto the three-legged stool with relief when her glance fell upon him propped up in his bed.

“I couldn't find you! I thought you must be gone, or dead—”

“None of that!” The healer interrupted Kaydu's stammered plea with a sharp order, “Out! Your father taught you better than to track mud into a house where the injured are healing.”

Kaydu took a deep breath, as if she wanted to argue the point, but no words came. Taking belated notice of her disarray, she shuffled out the door again, Little Brother still clinging to her neck, while the old woman's tart promise followed: “You can talk all you want when you've had a wash at the pump.”

When Kaydu had gone, Mara shook her head, as if in disapproval of the returned scout, or at some news from the village that troubled her. She hung her bonnet on its hook and took up her apron with a reverent hand, stretching and sighing with a shake of her head as if she was setting her day aside with her cap. After completing the little homecoming ritual, she dragged the three-legged stool over to Llesho's bed and dropped down onto it. Her smile couldn't hide the weariness that deepened the lines between her eyes, but she seemed genuinely pleased at his condition. “You look better, Llesho. Did you behave yourself today?”

“If you mean did I sleep the day away, yes. I didn't have much choice about it.”

“I don't suppose you did. But you needed the rest, and I wanted to take no chances that you would do something foolhardy while I was away.”

Until she said that, Llesho had not suspected the delicious drink his friends had pressed on him all day. When he realized that she had drugged him, he blushed, a little angry at her for tricking him, but more at himself for not suspecting the potion. Adar had taught him long ago how foolish it was to judge a medicine by its sweetness. But Kaydu's anxious glances needed his attention now.

“What happened to Kaydu?” He asked. “Have Yueh's soldiers found us?” His companions, at least, might escape—

“You are safe for the time being.” The healer made a sour face. “No one has seen any soldiers in the village yet, though some of my patients reported strangers creeping around asking questions about comings and goings at the crossroads. I didn't tell anybody you were here with me, however, not that they would have talked to the spies if they knew. We are not a trusting people hereabouts.”

Llesho kept to himself the reminder that Lling had gone into the village to seek help in the first place, and that Mara herself had trusted his companions enough to bring them into her home and heal his wound without question. He figured she had ways to protect herself.

Something had unsettled Kaydu's mind, which not even Yueh's surprise attack and their flight under cover of darkness had managed to do in the past. He didn't want to know what had put her in this state, but suspected that, in the absence of the enemy, she'd run afoul of the protections of the healer. She had left to find the pump easily enough once she'd assured herself that Llesho was safe, though. He didn't think she would have done that if Mara posed a threat to them, but he wasn't quite ready to give up his own suspicions yet.

“I did hear a strange tale about a bear cub,” Mara continued. “The villagers say that the creature takes careful nibbles of food offered from the hands of small children, and that he says, ‘Thank you' when he is done, but one can't believe everything one hears.”

She tilted her head in a question, giving him the opportunity to come clean with his story, but he wasn't ready to grant her Lleck's secret yet.

When he said nothing, she added, “The village elders didn't believe the story either, having their own experience with bears. They were gathering a hunting party to find him and kill him.” She saw his look of dismay and her smile developed a wry pucker. “Fortu nately, this particular children's story followed me home.”

Llesho tried to rise from his bed, torn between chagrin and the need to see his teacher, even in his new form. But the healer pushed him down again. “He's outside. Master Lleck's manners, like those of your guide, currently leave much to be desired. You must trust to the forest to keep him safe, at least until tomorrow.”

“You don't mean Kaydu to sleep outside as well!” he demanded.

“Of course not, child! I am sure she will be her usual self as soon as she has had a good wash, and then she may come in and visit you and sleep by the fireplace or in the loft as she chooses.”