From Inelkel, Nirithu and Risokh took the northern road towards the palace, rather than the eastern road home. Risokh didn't argue when Nirithu insisted on carrying the tent and the water, and Nirithu didn't argue about otherwise dividing the gear equally. It rained often, but never as hard as on the first days of their journey, and bit by bit—because he couldn't find the time or energy to do it all at once—Nirithu waterproofed all of their gear that was practical to waterproof. With sunset, Nirithu would pitch the tent and Risokh would build the fire and cook the lentils and rice and whatever they'd managed to find along the road that day. Then he would retreat inside the tent and eat his share, while Nirithu ate his outside, under whatever shelter he could find if it was raining.
Apart from that, when it was just the two of them, it was easy to forget that there was anything odd about Risokh at all.
But although the roads were less well-traveled than they would be in the dry season, they weren't entirely deserted. And then, too, Nirithu and Risokh had to sometimes replenish their food supplies, and sometimes it rained hard enough to wash away the tent no matter where Nirithu pitched it, and it was seek out the nearest village or have nothing but raw herbs for the third day running, because there was no chance of lighting a cookfire.
Risokh proved an able enough assistant when Nirithu plied his trade as a physician; he handed Nirithu what he needed quickly and smoothly and was even able to hold on to a patient when Nirithu was putting in stitches, if the person held still and was quiet. But he never said a word among strangers, and he stayed close to Nirithu, and drew back when it seemed like anyone might touch him.
"He's my cousin," Nirithu would say, which was true, and, "he is a little... you know," which was likewise true, though the words stuck in his throat.
"Can't you at least give people greetings?" Nirithu said to him after a night they'd spent in a cowshed, at a farm where one of the sons had had a fever. The road was muddy and the rain was still falling and all their gear smelled of wet cow, and Nirithu was feeling annoyed with everything. "Can't you at least answer me, when I speak to you in company? We will be memorable."
"Oh," said Risokh. "I hadn't thought of that. But they're not likely to forget you in any case, are they? The young man seemed much better, I thought. It's only that they probably haven't heard of us—it's Piloru business, and they're all Walkers here, and I don't think they go to the city much."
"Maybe," said Nirithu, who'd been counting on that very thing—though he probably would have said bird-eaters instead of Walkers. For someone who refused to speak to anyone, Risokh was unfailingly polite. "But doesn't it trouble you, when they begin to speak about you as if you couldn't hear them—telling me where you might sleep, though they must have seen that you understood everything I said to you. It wasn't I who mixed up that medicine, after all. There's no call for anyone to treat you like a trained monkey."
"I am sorry," said Risokh meekly, "to be a trouble to you, Nirithu."
"That's not what I meant," said Nirithu. "You're not a trouble, my lord."
"If it weren't for me, you'd be at home with your family now. Wouldn't you?"
Nirithu couldn't deny it. "Well, but. An armor-bearer's honor is in service to his lord. The more difficult the service, the greater the honor."
"Oh, honor." Risokh laughed, then turned suddenly grave. "Since you ask, I'll tell you what troubles me. It troubles me that I can no longer comprehend the speech of angels. It troubles me that I cannot step into a crowded courtyard without feeling as though I'm stepping onto a narrow bridge in a high wind. Sometimes... when it's dark, and a light shines out and I'm not expecting it... the last year and more falls away, and I'm in my cell, and the light is my brother coming for me, and I must yield myself to him whether I wish it or not. That troubles me. Honor? I don't miss it."
It was too much—more than Risokh had ever told him before, and Nirithu couldn't compass it all at once. But he knew one thing. "You're wrong, my lord. Honor—it's the best thing. When there's nothing else, it... it's how you know you're worth something."
"Once I was worth everything to somebody." Risokh shrugged. "But I'm worthless now. Thank God!"
He was wrong about that, too, but Nirithu didn't contradict him. It clearly wouldn't comfort him to hear just how much he was worth to Nirithu. Nirithu hadn't previously seen how his own service was another burden on Risokh—and yet he couldn't do without it. Neither, God help him, could Nirithu. It was all he had left.
Risokh was right, at any rate, that he and Nirithu would be memorable whatever they did, and easily identified by anyone who heard their descriptions. So they stopped at farmsteads and villages only when they absolutely had to, and as the days went by and the rain became less frequent and less severe, they had to less often. About a month after they set out, the rain stopped altogether.
Then they had a different problem, because it had been possible to avoid settlements, but there was no avoiding the other travelers on the road. Merchants and tradesmen, beggars and bridal parties—as the road dried out it filled up with them. Nirithu and Risokh ate before dawn and Nirithu neglected his prayers and chose narrow and unfriendly places to make camp, and still one evening well after the sun had set, another group of travelers began to set up camp on the same strip of land between the road and a barely-drained rice terrace.
They were pilgrims beginning to make the rounds of Gudikel's shrines in the time between the end of the rains and the beginning of the summer rice harvest. One or two colorful fabric tokens dangled from each man's rope belt. Nirithu had seen so many of them in the past few days that he was starting to recognize the colors and symbols of the individual shrines, and easily picked out the traces of rope sandals from those of more practical shoes or boots. It seemed that those who'd neglected their pilgrimages for years were making up for lost time, now that the Keeper of the Shrines was back in favor with the crown, and that the Sword of God, the famous bandit king, was said not to attack pilgrims.
Though this group looked prosperous enough that they could have ridden, they were on foot as their custom demanded, but they made enough concession to comfort to have several mules to carry their gear. Three mules, half a dozen men, two women in head-to-toe veils, four boys and a girl of various sizes. Nirithu could hardly see how they would all fit into the small space, but the pilgrims simply began unpacking their gear and building up their cookfire, and somehow or another found space for their shelters and sleeping-mats and animals. One of the men, wiry and middle-aged, claimed a bundle for himself to sit on, and took no more part in the unpacking, though he looked around all the activity with a general air of supervising it. He acknowledged Nirithu and Risokh, engaged in clearing away their dinner things and setting up for sleep, with a seated bow, and they bowed in return.
"Blessings on those who walk, and blessings on your footsteps," said Nirithu, dredging up the phrase from a half-forgotten lesson on bird-eater courtesies, imparted before he left for his first war season and barely used since. He hoped he'd gotten it right.
If he hadn't, the man didn't remark on it, but his expression in the quickly-fading light remained wary. "And on yours," he said. His eyes lingered on Nirithu's waist, and then his feet. The boots Nirithu wore were still too fine for the rest of his clothing, and for the character he was assuming, though no one had subjected them to close scrutiny since Khippush-Jilh. "But you're not walking the shrines, I see."
"Oh... no," said Nirithu. "I'm a physician, and I go where I can find my living."
In the meantime, the other men had finished setting up the camp, and two of them wandered over to where Nirithu and the older man—their father?—were having their conversation.
"And your companion?" said one of them, the taller and leaner of the two. "Doesn't he speak?"
Nirithu looked over his shoulder at Risokh, unsure if it would be better or worse if he broke his silence now. In either case, he didn't. "Not much," said Nirithu. "But he helps me."
The other young man, shorter and broader and with the beginnings of an impressive belly, grunted. "Well, it's a meritorious act to heal the sick, certainly, though I don't see that it's incompatible with penitence. You cannot be finding much in the way of a living here. What did you say your—"
He was interrupted by the young girl, who came tripping up from the campfire where one of the women was heaping up coals around a few covered dishes and the other was making loaves on a flat stone. "Ammi says to come eat," she said. "And bring the strangers."
"Of course," said the older man. "Will you share our table?"
A smell was rising from the covered dishes, something like meat but not precisely, and Nirithu's stomach revolted. The loaves looked good, but he couldn't confine himself to them without raising questions, or invite the angels to drink with him without definitively answering those questions. Risokh, of course, wouldn't eat at all, which under the circumstances seemed like the safest course of action. "Thank you," said Nirithu, "but we've already eaten, and I wouldn't like to put you to any trouble."
"It's no trouble," said the older man. "We have plenty. And are we not all brothers?"
"Perhaps they're not," said the shorter young man. "Perhaps they're idolaters."
Nirithu's mouth went dry. He tried to say something, but he couldn't think of what, and found himself edging closer to Risokh.
As for the older man, he turned to the younger one who'd spoken as if to rebuke him for his rudeness, but then he looked at Nirithu again and narrowed his eyes. "Are you?"
"We are... we are sons of the Gmou Pilor," said Nirithu. "And we seek no quarrel with anyone."
When his father said it, it was a threat. When Nirithu said it, it was almost a plea, and it wasn't just because he and Riskoh were only two, and unarmed except for the plain knife Reghir had given Nirithu, designed more as a tool than a weapon. If only he could have kept the quaver from his voice. But the young man stepped closer, emboldened, until Nirithu could smell his breath. The others, seeing the altercation, gathered around, cutting off any line of retreat. The taller of the young men pushed the girl behind him, as if Nirithu and Risokh were a threat to anybody. "Naturally not," he said. "When did a sell-sword ever stand firm in the face of—"
Nirithu didn't quite see what happened then. Someone pushed Risokh, or simply approached him too closely, and Risokh grabbed him and threw him to the ground. And then all the bird-eaters surged forward, and Nirithu's knife was out—it wasn't quite comfortable in his hand, and had until now mostly been used for slicing roots and peeling the bark off branches, but it was sharp enough, and it drew blood.
"Nobody touches him," Nirithu panted. Someone landed a blow to the side of his head, and he staggered, going down on one knee, but still kept his grip on his knife.
"Have a care for your own skin, little fighting cockerel—that great idiot can look after himself," said one of the men.
And another voice, cutting through the tumult: "That great idiot is the Commander of the Gmou Bim. The idolaters will pay well for these two."
For the space of a breath, the bird-eaters hung back, undecided what to do. Nirithu tried to push himself to his feet, felt his source stir against his chest, and the earth beneath him, replete after a season of rain. He raised his knife-hand, the hilt toward Risokh where he stood over Nirithu. "Cover me," he breathed, "and be ready to run."
"I can't—" Risokh stammered. "I can't—"
"You can," said Nirithu, "if you must." Risokh's hand closed on the hilt as the bird-eaters pressed in again. Nirithu let go, one hand on his source and one sinking into the earth, his awareness of the men around him fading, overwhelmed by the dark ancient life of the soil.
Flood, Nirithu thought. Slide and swallow, fire and feet and hooves together…
When he came to himself, Nirithu's legs were moving of their own accord, in great stumbling strides with mud sucking at them at every step, and his arm ached from where Risokh was hauling on it, pulling him along. He was also calling Nirithu's name, quietly but with increasing desperation.
"Yes, I—" Nirithu started to say, but his lungs and stomach both failed him. He felt sick and dizzy, and it was all he could do to keep moving.
"Oh, thank God," Risokh said. "Where are we going?"
"You've been leading. Don't you know?"
"Just—away. Across the field, because we might be too easily found again on the road, and it was hardly more sodden than anywhere else. It was very slow, but worse for them. They were swamped. You—and I stabbed one of them! Just glancing across the ribs, but—how did you know I could?"
Risokh was laughing, and he hadn't loosed Nirithu's arm. Nirithu took a breath, and another one, and felt steady enough to draw again on his source. The ground grew firmer beneath his feet. "I've fought you, my lord. I know you remember how. But, in truth—I knew you must. I hoped you could."
"So." There was still a note of elation in Risokh's voice; Nirithu wished he could see his face. "Tell me, Nirithu. Have you ever lied to me?"
"Not yet, my lord. You redeemed my word for me."
"I suppose I did," said Risokh. "But we've lost all the supplies your friend got for us—we have nothing again."
Nirithu judged it safe enough to stop for a minute, remove his boots, and feel what the land had to tell him. They needed somewhere dry, flat, not too exposed, tenanted neither by people nor by dangerous beasts. There were no very clear indications, so he chose a direction and hoped. "Well, in this weather I'm just as happy not to be carrying a tent. As for the food, I hope they choke on it. I will miss the bedrolls," Nirithu admitted with a sigh. "Still, Reghir would have no cause to be ashamed of me this time." He felt around his shirt, taking inventory. "I still have my source, and tinderbox, and scalpel—and you have the knife, yes?—and nearly a hundred Goblets in silver and copper, though we'll have to take care how we spend them. We must travel a little leaner, that's all. Gudikel Town is less than a month away."
It was longer than that in the end, because they avoided the road from then on, and that made travel slower, and even with his source Nirithu couldn't help getting them lost now and then. And they did travel lean; though they didn't starve, Nirithu was constantly hungry, and Risokh never complained but his cheeks and eyes grew hollower. More than once they had to dispute for their campsite with wild dogs or snakes, and more than once they ceded the field. Still, they reached the Umbesh River crossing before midsummer, and after that they had to give up caution. Another three days' walk brought them to Gudikel Town, with the white walls of the palace shining splendidly on the hill above the town.
If you left out the palace, it wasn't quite as large a city as Khippush-Jilh. But there was enough traffic going through the gates that they attracted no notice even though their invisible clothes were long gone. Once inside, Nirithu asked one of a group of urchins lingering near the gate where he might find a tailor, a cosmetics merchant, and a bathhouse. The directions were confusing, but although the urchin seemed willing to lead the way, Nirithu simply gave him a brass gram and kept walking. He would rather not trust a stranger with his and Risokh's business more than he had to. Also, the boy would doubtless require more than a single gram for his services as a guide, and Nirithu was loath to part with any of his carefully hoarded Goblets. He would need them for the new clothes, and the face paint, and the bath which would make them presentable enough to petition the queen. Afterwards, who knew what would happen?
Nirithu made the purchases. Risokh still said nothing, but Nirithu saw his eye caught by a length of leaf-green cotton, and some slightly-faded embroidered panels that had probably once adorned a richer garment, and Nirithu stretched his budget a bit to have Risokh's new robe made out of those. It wasn't as fine as what they had left behind, but Risokh would look good in it, and they needn't be embarrassed in court. Another couple of Goblets persuaded the tailor that he could have the things ready by the next morning, but no sooner than that—and it was getting late, in any case, to attempt the palace.
The pigments were another serious outlay, although Nirithu confined himself to three—green, white, and yellow—and a small box with a single brush, sponge, and comb.
Afterwards, they went to the baths. It ought to have been a luxury to soak in a hot pool after so much hard travel, but Risokh couldn't relax, and neither could Nirithu. There were too many people, and they themselves were too defenseless. Nirithu couldn't even bring his source in to bathe with him, not that it would do much good in the water. So they bathed as quickly as they decently could and left in a hurry.
Even so, the sun was setting when they came back out. Making his way through the market streets, trying to spot a friendly-looking inn, Nirithu began to see knives of Gmou Bim make worn at the waists of some of the passers-by, to catch glimpses of women at work in courtyards wearing half-veils or none. There was something undefinably familiar about the houses, the shapes of the windows and the carvings on their shutters, the designs painted on the tiles set into the walls. They were in a Piloru quarter, then, but the residents didn't seem to be under siege as Nirithu's experiences in Inelkel, and later with the pilgrims on the road, might have suggested. Women—fully veiled, outside their own homes—as well as men walked the street freely, and the reason Nirithu could see into the courtyards at all was because the gates had been left open. Maybe things had calmed down, or maybe the violence had never intruded on the capital.
When he suggested as much to Risokh, though, Risokh shook his head. "Or, well, maybe," he said. "But that's not why." He pointed to the darkening sky, where the faintest sliver of a moon was rising above the buildings.
"Oh," said Nirithu, stricken. "I forgot. How could I just forget?"
"It's easy to forget," said Risokh, "when you have nothing to remind you."
He would know. And yet—well, it was true enough that one didn't need to remember new moon at home. It happened, whether you remembered it or not. Guests began showing up at the gates, expecting to be fed, and if you didn't look busy or make yourself scarce you soon got drafted into the preparations. There would be music, and light all along the rafters, and a smell of roasting lamb much like the one wafting through the nearest open gate.
"We could walk right in," Nirithu said, half to himself. "There would be nothing strange about a pair of vagabonds showing up at new moon, and likely we wouldn't be recognized, even if the news of our flight has reached Gudikel Town."
"Is that wise?" said Risokh hesitantly.
Nirithu sighed. "No. You're right, of course, my lord. It was only an idle thought. We've come so far; it would be stupid to throw it all away for a taste of a crescent pastry that wouldn't even be as good as the ones Nulrin makes."
With an effort, Nirithu kept walking, and so did Risokh, until the houses began to look less familiar, and they found an inn that was cheap enough that it would leave Nirithu with something still in his purse, and yet seemed reputable enough that he wouldn't be relieved of it overnight.
The next morning, gongs from the nearby Piloru quarter woke them, and they picked up their things from the tailor's and borrowed his back room to dress. Then Nirithu got out his new cosmetics case and painted their eyes: Risokh's by-now customary moths, and his own fig leaves. He might as well have been painting targets on them, but that couldn't be helped. They could only avoid the Piloru quarter as they left the town and began the ascent to the palace along a broad, switch-backed avenue.
Guards passed them through the first set of gates unquestioningly; this area was open to the public, and to anyone who had business with the courts and officials who had offices here. It took a little hunting for Nirithu to find a clerk who might get them through the second set of gates. He gave the man his name and Risokh's, not without a qualm. But whatever Risokh was to the queen, it resulted in a different functionary, this one older and better-dressed, ushering them through the second set of gates, past more alert-looking guards, and into a small courtyard. There they were told to wait.
When they had fled the Great Court at Khippush-Jilh, Nirithu had scarcely imagined they would get this far. Now he realized that, however unlikely it had seemed that it would ever come to pass, he should have prepared for this moment better. He paced the length of the courtyard, wondering who would come for them next, and how he could persuade whoever it was to get them an audience with the queen, and what he should say to her if the audience could be obtained—
A sparrow alighted on his shoulder and said, "Your kinswoman Rushti daughter of Rolerin is dead."
"God's ways are just," Nirithu replied automatically, and the sparrow flew off.
For as long as he had known her—which was his entire life—Nirithu's grandmother had never said a kind word or done a kind action for anyone. He had never liked her, never loved her; she had only always been there. But she was very old, and if she hadn't died this month, surely it would have been the next. It was only—
Back home, Nirithu's father would be putting on mourning for his mother, and he hadn't yet put it off for his son. And Nirithu should have been there. Not here.
A mynah landed on his arm, claws catching in the fabric of his new coat. "Your kinsman Rebhu son of Dobhirri is dead," it said.
Risokh, who had been sitting on a stone bench, very still, seemed to notice that something was wrong. "Nirithu, what—"
Nirithu tilted his head back, and the sky was dark with birds.
One after another, they landed on Nirithu and informed him that some kinsman or kinswoman of his was dead. He barely had time to answer each one that God's ways were just before the next one landed. Earthquake, an unforeseen invasion, a plague?
"Your kinsman Hokhiun son of Siniu is dead," a crow told him.
"Hokhiun?" Nirithu repeated. What could kill Hokhiun? Of course, as soon as he framed the question, the answer was obvious: men, with axes and fire. But why? He was no threat to anyone and he had nothing to steal. Growing on his hill, he couldn't even get in anyone's way.
When the next bird came near, Nirithu made a grab for it, past caring about sacrilege. "What's happening at home? Tell me, damn you!" But the bird evaded his grasp. It delivered its message and flew off, and another took its place.
In the corner of his vision, Nirithu could see people coming into the courtyard: the queen herself, with a handful of guards and men who might have been secretaries or clerks. Risokh dropped gracefully to his knees and stretched out his palms on the tiles. Nirithu couldn't move.
A nightingale perched on his shoulder and said, "Your kinsman Biyubh son of Horuri is dead."
"Biyubh," Nirithu said, or thought he did. He couldn't hear his own voice, or what the queen might be saying, or anything but the rush of blood in his ears and the din of wings and names.
Finally it ended. The last bird flew away, and the sky was clear again.
"My lady," Risokh was saying, "we have fled, my armor-bearer and I, from the Great Court of the Gmou Pilor, who seek our lives. Will you take us in?"
"Always, Commander Risokh," said the queen.