Part Forty-Three

9 days out of Altaruk - late night

I'm starting to wish I could sleep on kankback. The ground in camp is pocked with sharp, jagged rocks buried in sand and silt, tough to spot and murder on the feet. I was pitching stones for near an hour before I had a space big enough to spread my bedroll. Wedged a brand from the fire between two rocks so I could inspect my scrapes after my watch. Fate knows if I'll manage enough rest to clean them up tomorrow.

This morning Humbel led us through the twisting, turning canyons and gullies that wind between the mountains and the southern shore of the Forked Tongue. In the afternoon we began to veer towards South Ledopolus, and the badlands dwindled to barrens as we got down out of the foothills.

We're near enough to Ledo to see the watch-fires on the escarpment, but we shan't go any closer for fear Tsalaxa will catch us in town, or get news of us after we pass through. Max judges we've enough food to make it to a village called Cytril, a day across the salt flats to the south, where Humbel and Dar are well-known and we'll be welcomed.

Humbel and I spoke of taking the flats at night till Kaylene reminded us we were the only ones who could see in the dark. "Well, Houri can see in the dark, too," I said, weakly, while Unok pounded me on the back and snickered, and Humbel stared at the fire in embarass-ment. She's right, o'course. We don't know what kind of creatures may walk the flats at night, and anyway we can't be leading everyone around on a rope like a bunch of blind men.

11 days out of Altaruk - morning

Starting out late this morning, as we're all worn to the bone from the nightmare trek across the flats. In the darkness before yesterday's dawn they were innocuous enough, just a glimmer of white in the starlight, smooth and so featureless I figured on kicking our kanks into their best pace, and maybe make up some of the time we'd lost when Dar got hurt. So I soaked my spare tabard and put it in my pack for Borys, and wound my sash up over my face, and thought no more about it.

When the sun came up, I found out quick how foolish I'd been.

The sky over the flats was a vast, alabaster bowl, faded by the sunlight till it was all one color with the ground. Faint veins of salt blossomed from the wind-scoured earth like the pressed ghosts of flowers; thin, ragged clouds fled before us across the white sky. The air was full of hot, pale dust, flouring our faces in masks of white, broken only by the dark holes of our eyes and the brackish blood seeping from chapped lips and nostrils.

You couldn't tell the position of the sun without looking for it in the sky, for its heat came back so fiercely from the salt that we were baked all over our bodies like pots in a kiln. My nose bled all day long, like a sullen child who could not stop crying, and every bit of skin I failed to keep covered has cracked and crusted over with a thin, flaky film of raw salt. Once I chanced to look down a crack the width of my outstretched arms and saw salt compacted at the bottom, twenty feet down, so dense it was like shining marble in the sunlight. I can't imagine where it came from. It must grow in the earth, like iron.

I still can't fathom how we managed it, though Humbel says we skipped across the narrowest part and scarcely felt its fury. Nothing could live on the salt. Nothing. The damned Dragon would die out there, if he wa'n't dead and gone to bones already.

12 days out of Altaruk - evening camp

Camped a day from Cytril, and I can smell the olive groves on the warm evening breeze. Scrub plains now, yellow tallgrass rippling in long, hissing, knee-high waves before the wind that rips towards the Silt Sea when the sun goes down. Here and there I can see clumps of brittle-brush and the occasional scraggly, gnarled tree. We've already passed the farthest Balican plantations, and seen their carru herds and the outriders guarding them on big-boned, heavy crodlu, and off in the distance spotted a couple of tiny siltside villages crouching warily on the shore of the Tongue.

Two days to Balic, no more. The Wavirs are spirited because of it, joking and roughhousing each other. The rest of us are quieter, 'cos we've finally found out what was going on with Micha and Petronia, and none of us can say how it'll fall out once we get to the city.

I was eating some kind of stew Humbel put together in honor of our last night on the road, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed Unok and Micha off by themselves, out by the kanks. I got up and collected a couple of bowls, but by the time I got there Micha had hopped up and gone back over to Petronia, and Unok was looking at me like I was going to feed him something nasty.

What's up? I asked, and sat down uninvited, figuring I'd get it out of him one way or the other. Something the matter with Micha? Unok just grunted, and took a bowl, and ate a few bites without much enthusiasm. No, he said. Then he shook his head and put the bowl down, and sighed real heavy. Yes, he said. It's Petronia. What about her? I said.

"They're married," he said.

I choked on a mouthful of stew. "They're married?" I said, coughing. "Since when? Kaylene didn't--"

No, said Unok, it was in Tyr, before we left. He gestured at my bowl, and only after I'd picked it up and begun to eat again did he relate the rest of the tale. Micha's been involved with Petronia for nearly a year. A few months ago they married, in secret, and planned to run off together before her father found out about their affair and put a stop to it, and probably to Micha too, if Petronius had his way. But then Tsalaxa snatched her and ruined their plans, and Micha convinced Tanix to let him go on the mission to get her back.

All right, I said. So they're married. Who cares? We figured it was something like that, didn't we? They don't have to worry about Lucius Petronius any more--he's way back in Tyr, what's he going to do about them? Why can't Micha just go off with her after we get her back to Balic?

Lucius Petronius is in Balic, you idiot, said Unok, and gave me a disgusted look. He left Tyr right after Petronia was taken. He was in Altaruk days before we ever got there. Weren't you paying attention to Gulliver? I rubbed my neck and admitted that I hadn't, and then Unok broke the egg: According to Micha, Petronius plans to marry his daughter off to one of the Tsalaxas as soon as she gets to Balic.

Well, I didn't believe that, and I told him so. Why would he marry her to a Tsalaxa? They kidnapped her! Wavir and Tsalaxa have been at each other's throats for years. They had to send Wavir men to rescue her... But Unok was shaking his head, and I began, slowly, to figure it out. Mahuli hired us, he said. Wavir didn't have anything to do with us. And you don't know what Wavir's plans are. They could have been negotiating with Tsalaxa for a long time. Maybe they never planned to rescue her at all. Maybe they arranged the marriage so they wouldn't have to.

So what happens when we get to Balic? I asked, and I looked over my shoulder at Micha, sitting as close to Petronia as he dared. Unok shrugged. He's going to take her away, he said. He wanted to tell me so I wouldn't volunteer to come after him when Petronius finds out. I squinted at him. Before we get to Balic? I said. Unok nodded. I stared at him. And how are we supposed to get paid, if Petronia never gets to Wavir? I said.

He raised his eyebrow. "Is that all you care about?" he asked. "Getting paid?"

"What else am I supposed to care about?"

"Micha and Petronia."

"Why should I care what happens to them?"

"Micha saved your life," he said, as if it answered everything.

"If it wasn't for Petronia, I wouldn't have gotten shot!"

"I was talking about the lirr," he said, his eyebrow climbing higher on his forehead. "He drove it away when it was dragging you off."

Now it was my turn to shrug, as I thought about it. I remembered Micha using his sling, but nothing past that... The idea that Micha had gone to my rescue bothered me more than I liked to admit.

"He was just doing his job," I said, grumpily, and Unok dropped the subject.

After a moment he went and brought Kaylene back, and told her about Micha and Petronia while I sat and sulked over my bowl. Then Micha came over, seeing Unok talking to everyone and guessing quick enough what all the conferencing was about. So, while Unok listened and I stared into my congealing stew, Micha pled his case to Kaylene. And, o'course, she swore she wouldn't tell the Wavir men what he planned, and vowed to stay in Balic if Wavir tried to send us after the wayward pair.

"What about you, Innath?" Micha asked, when Kaylene was done making promises and I was still keeping my silence.

"How do I know you're telling the truth?" I said, and at Kaylene's indignant gasp I put my hand up, fast, to keep her from starting in on one of her lectures. "How do I know you're not playing us all for fools? You could be in somebody else's pay. Maybe you've been waiting all this time to spirit her away and hurt Mahuli and Wavir at the same time."

"If I was working for someone else, I would have killed you in the fort," he said, dryly.

That brought me up short. He could have killed me and Petronia both, come to think of it, and told Tohan we'd been caught by the guards. "Maybe you want her for ransom," I said, doggedly, knowing I was just being stubborn but helpless to shut myself up. "For the girl who eloped with you in Tyr, she wa'n't keen about going with you when we got her out of the fort."

"Innath," said Unok, frowning, "you've seen them together."

"He's had the entire trip to work on her! He could have made this whole Tsalaxa thing up, to scare her into going with him, and played sweet to her so she wouldn't be frightened of him."

Unok, again, and I could tell he was getting tired of me. "Innath--"

"Why can't we have Kaylene see if he's lying, like she did with the spiders?"

Unok shut his mouth and looked at Kaylene. She shook her head. "No," she said. "I believe him. Just because you have to be so suspicious all the time--"

"Just because you're so damned gullible all the time--"

"Innath--!"

"No," said Micha, cutting Unok off. "I wouldn't do that, even if Kaylene wanted to. They used to do that to us, when..." He broke off and looked at his hands, disconcerted. When he met my eyes again, his face was grim, and he touched the brand on his temple to emphasize what he said next. "When I was a slave, that's the kind of thing they would do to us. To keep us loyal. If you won't take my word for it, that's fine. But I won't let anyone do that to me ever again. Not even for this."

So that's where we stand. Micha went back to Petronia, and the rest of us went back to our places by the fire, and did our best to banter with the Wavirs as if nothing was wrong. A few minutes ago, Kaylene stomped over to where I was sitting, and told me, rather vindictively, that she's extracted a promise from Dar in exchange for her healing: he won't speak of me to the Veiled Ones for three days after we arrive in Balic.

I guess this is her way of making me feel bad for crossing her where Micha was concerned, and I am sorry I angered her, but I'm not going to change my mind over it. What's between Micha and I is our own business, and she'll just have to live with it.

But I never thought she cared enough about me to do something like that. I'm surprised Dar agreed to it. His keepin' quiet in the face of the other employees' reports will be suspicious, but Humbel may swing enough weight with the rest of the crew to get them to edit their story for the sake of his brother, or at least hold back the information until we've gotten out of town.

on to Part 44