The Revenants (14 page)

With that he turned away to leave Jaer alone for the rest of the long day. They came into the port of Hynath late that same afternoon, the sailors suddenly swaddled in orbansin with the loose folds anchored at wrists and ankles to keep them out of the way and with their customary loud talk stilled into an occasional mutter. The quiet had a quality of prudence about it, echoed by Medlo as he gave Jaer low-voiced instructions.

‘Observe that these leather-lunged toilers of the sea moderate their manners in Hynath. They do it because they have been in Hynath before and because they want to get out of it this time. When we leave the ship, remember what I tell you. Walk three paces behind me with your eyes
down
. If someone approaches you, say nothing. If someone puts his hands on you, say nothing. Leave it to me. It is unlawful in Hynath Town for women to speak in the presence of Temple staff, and half the town is in the employ of the Temple. One sound out of you and you’ll be taken and sold. If I stop, for any reason, keep silent and keep your head down. Understand?’

Jaer nodded, too confused to be frightened at his serious tone. She hated the feel of the orbansa after the few days free of it, and she hated the feeling which flowed outward from the port and the look of the black-robed figures which flapped back and forth along the docks like great, shabby birds.

They laboured down the way under packs and bedding rolls into which the jangles had been packed. She kept a careful distance behind Medlo, mimicking his carefully modest demeanour, head well down. They had no sooner assed the huddle of warehouses than two armed men ore down upon them, bared faces hard in the clear sunlight, an acolyte scuttling between them, his chins swinging and little hands clutching at nothing, eyes eager and hot.

One of the men ran his hands over Jaer’s body, lingering over her breasts. ‘Well, ‘tis a girl. Here, girl. Where are you going?’ Jaer held her breath, heart hammering and fingers twitching toward her dagger. Medlo turned back, obsequiously.

‘Well, they gave her to me, sir, to see could I heal the strange disease of the skin the woman has. Ugly eruptions they are. She has already infected three of the sailors. Woman, I told you to stop scratching yourself.’ Medlo slapped at her twitching hand.

The guards drew away, the acolyte baring his teeth over a high, querulous question. ‘Would you bring disease to Hynath Town?’

‘I would not. No, Holy One, indeed not. We turn south to go down the coast. I think the disease can be cured, and until then she does well enough to carry the wood and fetch the water.’

The acolyte turned away angrily. Medlo set off toward the crossroad, drawing Jaer into the shadow of a building as soon as they were hidden from sight.

Jaer muttered, ‘What did they want?’

‘Only to make you say something, anything. Then you would have broken the law, and they could have taken you as a slave for any purpose they liked. But there is no market for women with skin diseases of the nastier kinds. There is no real market for old women, either. Could you walk like an old woman?’

Jaer remembered Ephraim’s last days and did her best to totter along as he had done, still three paces behind Medlo. Robed figures passed them as did other guards with bare faces. Hostility and anger breathed down the narrow alleys and all eyes were suspicious. Jaer concentrated on being old, old, old. No one touched her again.

The line of warehouses seemed endless, the constant suspicious glances needled at them. They hobbled on, and on, and then as they went through an open space among huddled buildings, Jaer heard the grating voice of someone talking to a crowd.

‘Still young, still useful, round and firm as a ripe melon, with good teeth and other useful parts….’

Against the wall, on a chest-high platform a woman crouched at the feet of the speaker, half naked, her robes drawn up over her shoulders to display sweat-streaked thighs and dirty ankles below the curves of shining belly and breasts. Chains glinted in the sun, and Jaer stopped, staring, head up. Medlo looked back, followed her gaze in irritation and fear.

‘What? No. No. Don’t tell me.’

Jaer’s voice trembled slightly, but she was matter-of-fact. ‘It’s a chained captive, Medlo. Will you buy her for me?’

‘With what? A song? I emptied my purse buying passage on that-’

Jaer was tugging at her waist. ‘I didn’t see fit to tell you, but I have gold enough. Here. Buy the woman.’

‘Buy her yourself,’ he hissed. ‘I need not be party to this foolishness. Why should we add another female to our party to raise avarice among the acolytes? By the Powers, birdling, have some sense!’

‘I will buy her myself. But to do so, I will need to speak, which will attract attention.’

‘Oh, Lords,’ stormed Medlo in hushed fury. ‘I no sooner get us out of one trap than you get us in another. Give it to me.’ He went off toward the auctioneer leaving Jaer to twist her feet in the dust and pray that no guards come upon her with their sneaking hands, for she would surely kill the next one. In a few moments Medlo returned, leading a figure hastily shrouded and clutching assorted bundles to itself. ‘Walk on south as we were going,’ instructed Medlo, his voice strained. ‘Don’t stop to say anything. Walk, tum-te-tum-tum. Dead march. I think they’re coming after us….’

Indeed, several of the Temple people were following them, but as Medlo turned away to the south, the bare faces stared after them only for a short time before turning away. They trudged away over the first long hill before Medlo handed Jaer her purse, unlocked the chains on the woman’s arms and legs to let them drop into the dust, all the while venting fury upon Jaer. ‘Stupid, idiotic, showing of gold in a place like that with no story thought up to explain it and half the town looking over my shoulder with greedy eyes.’

The woman stood, gazing at them from her eye holes, saying nothing.

‘Well,’ Medlo said. ‘You wanted her. You’ve got her.’

‘I wanted to free her,’ Jaer said uncertainly. ‘The quest book said …’

‘I read it, remember? Hokum!’

‘What you think doesn’t matter….’ Jaer’s girlish voice broke.

The woman turned toward her. ‘You be womankind?’

Medlo snorted. ‘Oh, she be anything your heart desires, slave girl.’

‘I have a name, scornful. I am called Jasmine.’

Medlo snorted once more, and the three stood glaring at one another, three featureless robes on a dusty road, unread and unreadable. Finally, Jaer sighed deeply. ‘Jasmine … I brought you because I have taken oath to follow a certain quest, and my guide book says that three captives must be freed. This man, Medlo, thinks I am silly, or stupid, or mad. Maybe I am. Now that you’re here, I don’t know what to do about you. You can come with us, if you choose… unless there is somewhere you would rather go.’

‘She was going into slavery, birdling! She was going to be some dirty old man’s bathmaid, or some nasty woman’s tiring girl. Or she would have been sold to a Hynath Town brothel. Do you know what a brothel is?’

Jaer snarled at him: ‘I know well enough, Medlo. The old men did not neglect my education. They knew well enough what dangers I would run, and they cared enough for me to warn me against them. I know what they were selling her for, but she may still have somewhere else to go.’

Jasmine interrupted. ‘I have somewhere else to go, but my way to it is closed for now. If I go back to Hynath Port, a woman alone, they will take me and sell me again. No. For a time I will go with you. I have no choice.’

Even Medlo could think of nothing to say after that.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE CITY OF BYSSA

Year 1168-Winter

Jaer insisted, of course, that they go east. Medlo pointed to the cliffs and tumbled stone in that direction, the impassable wilderness of pinnacles and piled rock left over from some ancient lava flow. ‘Sud-Akwith might have come here to find his fabled sword,’ he snarled at them. ‘But lesser men have trouble walking there.’

‘Well, then,’ said Jaer reasonably, ‘find us a better way.’

‘There is no better way,’ Medlo said. ‘In order to go east, we must first go south to the mouth of the Del, and then up the river as far as Byssa. Byssa is one of the worst places to go in a time when bad places abound. These last years there is more harrying than ever before. The black wagons are everywhere. As the weasel waits at the burrow, they wait. They scare me.’

‘You didn’t act scared when we met,’ Jaer said.

‘I wasn’t travelling toward Byssa when we met. I did not have one female with me, much less two. I had a simple trip planned, north up the River Sals through Sorgen. Not to Byssa. Never to Byssa. Not with a creature like you.’

He stalked away, leaving Jasmine to whisper at Jaer, ‘What does he mean, a creature like you?’

Jaer tried to explain, only to encounter questions which she could not answer, which led to more questions. At last Medlo stopped them.

‘If you are going to talk, talk, talk,’ he said, ‘then let us have something hot at least to wet our gullets.’ He went off to find driftwood, leaving the two behind a sheltering dune half covered by razor-edged grass. Jaer took her orbansa off, threw it upon the sand and sat upon it. When Medlo returned with an armload of wood, he stopped to stare at her. He saw a plain, rather broad face, with wide brown eyes and a large mouth. The skin was a medium tan, the nose unremarkable. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’re not particularly appealing, but you are unmistakably female. Not pretty, but girlish enough.’

‘I’ve been pretty sometimes.’ Jaer shrugged.

‘Oh. Then the change is not just from Jaer, boy, to Jaer, girl. You change more than that?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Are you a virgin?’

Jaer flushed, aware of the meaning of the word but unsure of its application. ‘I – don’t know.’

Medlo grimaced. ‘I’m only curious. The boy Jaer from the inn in Candor was appealing. He looked rather like someone I once knew well. Now you look like no one who interests me. Still, I remain curious.’

Jasmine leaned forward with questions of her own. ‘When you change, do you…’ She asked an astonishingly intimate thing.

Jaer flushed deeply. ‘I – don’t know. I suppose I do. Please, I’d rather not talk about it.’

Jasmine cocked her head. ‘Only curious. Don’t worry about it, girl. For the love of the Goddess, it’s nothing to blush about.’

Medlo, as embarrassed as Jaer, changed the subject by asking Jasmine about herself, and this led to a long monologue which both Medlo and Jaer followed with interest, though it was an ordinary enough tale. A girl, born third daughter to a poor family in Lakland, where marriage without a dowry is impossible. A dowry scraped together for one daughter. The farm left to the second. The parents dead before Jasmine could be provided for. Then work as this and that, a little dancing, a little singing, a little acting, a tall young soldier who stayed for almost a winter before he left with the troops. And then a child, Hu’ao, stolen by the Eldest Sister of a Temple of the Goddess.

‘And now you are here,’ said Jaer, ‘and your child is far away.’

‘Yes.’ Tears gathered in her eyes and dropped into the mug of tea which she held. ‘When I return from my quest,
if I
return, she will have forgotten me.’

‘Please don’t cry.’

‘Oh, I cry or don’t cry. It is better to walk with you than to be sold as a whore-slave in an evil town. The farmwife in Lakland would say it thus: “I come long here, mister, missus, ’thout ary tear, lone as high hawk. Now I sit cosy as mouse in winter nest. Twas cold there, warm here, so natural I thaws a little and t’runs out t’eyes.” ’

Both Jaer and Medlo laughed, and she went on in still broader accents letting them be cheered by the nonsense. At length, Medlo asked Jaer,

‘You are still determined to go east?’

‘I told you on the ship. I showed you the map.’

‘And you took oath.’

‘I did.’

Medlo shook his head, scratched at the dune soil with a grass stalk. ‘I was sent on a quest, too, birdling. It was supposed to be my death, though I was not expected to learn of that. Since this quest is not even yours, we may assume it is not designed for your death, but it might turn out so. Why run after danger when we might as well travel to Orena, where your old friends came from?’

Jaer was stubbornly silent, and Jasmine took up the argument. ‘It is not as though they asked you to go.’ She stared at the quest book and its maps with troubled eyes. It had taken her a year to come from Lak Island to Hynath Town. Now the map showed the River Del winding back eastward toward Lakland, and she thought of the weary miles with loathing.

Medlo went on. ‘Ten years I’ve walked the narrow ways, making music or being silent, speaking this tongue or that. Hiding sometimes. Running often. There were fountains in Methyl-Drossy in the town of Rhees. There were gardens and green lawns and the smell of hay. Though the gardens may have been only a face painted over shame and greed, still I long for the lawns of Rhees. Do you know what I am saying?’

Jaer nodded, spoke past a painful lump in her throat. ‘I long for the steps of the tower, warm in the sun, where we sat early in the morning.’

‘But you will not seek a place of safety where there may be sun-warmed stones and the feel of peace?’

‘No,’ said Jaer. ‘I will not.’

Jasmine murmured, ‘Let come as comes. Nor morn nor dark but comes as comes. ’Twilln’t hasten f’thee.’

‘Oh, Powers.’ Medlo heaved himself to his feel. ‘If we may not have reason, we may as well walk as talk.’ And he led them away down the coast toward the mouth of the River Del.

Two days later they passed the Separated village of Delmoth at a safe distance, stopping only to purchase water from a guarded well where it cost them too much to fill their flasks. Jasmine carried two, a battered old one of metal and a larger skin bag, but she filled only the skin bag at the well, cursing the robed water seller as she did so.

‘Did you make the water? Did you put it in the earth? To charge such prices for the bounty of the Goddess is sinful. I don’t think you even dug the well.’ The water seller did not answer, merely leered at them through his eye holes and bit the coins they gave him. Jasmine tried to shake off her ill humour but could not. They were actually turning east, and the miles stretched endlessly before her. She wept beneath the orbansa.