I thought I walked aimlessly. I crossed a stream and drank there, but it did little for my hunger. There were probably fish in the stream, and I thought of trying to tickle a few. But I would have had to eat them raw; I was not yet that hungry. It was too early in the year for berries, but I found a few greens I recognized growing there and picked and ate them. I recalled that once Soldier’s Boy had eaten vast quantities of the water-grass that grew along the bank. I sampled it. Even the youngest, most tender shoots seemed unbearably bitter. Another food that belonged only to the Speck Great Ones.
I left the stream and walked on, staying in the shade under the trees. The touch of sunlight on my thin skin was still uncomfortable and when I touched my hand lightly to the top of my skull I found it was still sore there. The skin was thicker over my muscles and bones today than it had been yesterday. It was not as gruesome to look at myself as it had been. So, I was healing rapidly, but not in the miraculously quick way in which the magic had healed me. It seemed obvious to me that I had a physical body, and it moved, so I could not be dead. Yet, if I was alive, who was I? What was I?
Jodoli had told me to go back to my tree. Coincidence or an unconscious intention led me back to Lisana’s ridge overlooking the Valley of Ancestor Trees. I stood for a time looking down on it before the silence intruded on my brooding thoughts. I squinted, peering at the King’s Road in the distance. All was silent there. No. Not silent. Merely bereft of the sounds that men always bring to the forest. Neither shouts nor axes rang, no wheels ground along over a rough roadbed, no shovels bit into the forest turf. Birds sang and swooped through the afternoon light. I could hear the wind blowing lightly through the trees. The leaves whispered softly to one another, but the voice of mankind had been muted.
Curiosity picked at me. Then I wondered what day of the week it was. The thought rattled oddly in my brain. It had been so long since I’d thought of days fitting on a calendar and having names. But if today was a Gernian Sixday that would explain the quiet. Not even the prisoners were made to work on the Sixday. I turned away from the Vale of the Ancient Ones and made myself walk toward Lisana and my tree.
I felt a strange antipathy to both of them. In the end, it seemed that Soldier’s Boy had stolen all that he wanted from me, and managed to keep it and Lisana, too. I felt spurned by Lisana. I had loved her, I thought, just as truly as Soldier’s Boy. But in the end, she had taken part of me, and left this part to wander. Could she have done that to me if she loved me? Or was the me who walked the earth now the parts that she had found unlovable, even useless? I opened my hands and looked down on them. How could I ever even know what she had chosen to hold fast to? Those parts of me were gone now, lost to a self I’d never know.
I thought of all the things I’d always imagined I lacked during my years at the Academy and afterward: courage under duress and the aggression needed to seize control of leadership and wield it. I’d seen other men fueled by anger or ambition, but had never glimpsed those fires in myself. Soldier’s Boy possessed a ruthlessness that had horrified me. I recalled the sentry’s warm blood running over my hands and guiltily, reflexively, wiped them on my cloak. Had he taken those things with him when he left?
Oh, useless to wonder what I had or didn’t have in me. This self was what I had left. Could I make anything of it?
I walked past my tree with its sodden pile of rotting flesh at the base of it. It hardly even stank anymore. A few flies buzzed, but I had no desire to walk closer or poke at the maggots rendering my former body down into compost. A vengeful man, I thought, would have girdled the bark around the tree. I had no knife or tool to cut it, but even more, I had no will to do it. Such vengeance would bring me no joy.
I did walk up to Lisana’s tree. Like my tree, hers had taken on new life with spring. It was noticeably larger, with glossy green leaves, and the flush of moving sap in the new tips of her branches. Gingerly, I reached out and put my palm to the bark of her trunk. I waited. It felt like a tree. Nothing more. No surge of connection. A memory stung me suddenly and I snatched my palm away from her bark. But no questing roots sought to suck the nutrients from my body. The tree was probably fully occupied with the rich soil and the warm sun of the spring day.
“Lisana?” I said aloud. I don’t know what sort of response I hoped for. Silence was what I received. I followed the fallen trunk her tree had sprung from back to where a wide strip of bark and wood still attached it to her old stump. Soot still blackened one side of the trunk, but the ashes and burned wood of Epiny’s fire had been cloaked over by spring grass. I looked down at the fallen trunk of her tree, to where she and my other self reached welcoming arms up to the day’s light.
I sighed. “You both got what you wanted. I don’t suppose it matters to either of you that you left me wandering this world as a ghost.” A light breeze moved through the treetops, and when it reached the two trees, their leaves rippled in the sunlight. The leaves were deep green, glossy with health. Their trees were beautiful. I felt a moment of hate-edged envy. Then it passed. “For what it’s worth to you, I wish you well. I hope you live for centuries. I hope the memories of my family live with you.”
Tears stung my eyes. Foolish tears. The trees had no reason to hear me or heed me. They were alive and growing. I was more like Lisana’s old stump. I looked at the weathered and rusted cavalla blade still wedged there in her wood. Idly I took hold of the sword’s hilt and gave a sharp tug. It didn’t come free, but the corroded blade snapped off. I looked at the hilt and the few inches of pitted and broken blade attached to it. Well, now I had a weapon, of sorts. Peculiarly appropriate. Half of a rusted sword for half of a ruined man.
I was using its rusty edge to saw a strip from the edge of my cloak, to make a crude sword belt, when I suddenly realized that I was holding and using iron with no ill effects on me at all. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. I thought about it briefly, decided I had no idea what that meant, and went back to my crude tailoring. After I had a strip for the belt, I abandoned all caution and attacked my cloak, cutting the fabric into a smaller rectangle and making a hole for my head. I ended up with a sort of tunic, open at both sides but belted, and with a second sash to hold my rusty sword. My “new clothes” were more suitable for the warming spring day. I rolled up what was left of my cloak and took it with me as I left Lisana’s ridge. I made no farewell. I decided I was no longer the sort of man who talked to trees.
It remained to be seen what type of man I was.
Evening was falling by the time I neared the construction camp at the end of the road. Frogs were creaking in the dammed-up stream by the road’s edge, and mosquitoes hummed in my ears. As I scrambled up onto the partially completed roadbed, I squinted through the dimness at what I saw. It was all wrong.
Long runners from ground-crawling blackcap berries had ventured up and onto the sun-warmed roadbed. No traffic had trampled them flat. Grass sprouted in the wagon ruts. It was short, new grass, but it should not have been growing there at all if work was continuing on the road. As I walked toward the darkened equipment sheds, everything rang wrong against my senses. I glimpsed no night watchman’s lantern. The smells were wrong; there was no scent of smoke from burning slash piles or cook fires. The manure I accidentally stepped in was old and hard. Everything spoke of a project abandoned weeks if not months ago.
Yet when last I had looked down on that valley with Lisana, I had seen smoke and heard the sounds of men working. How much time had passed since I had “died”? And what had made the Gernians abandon work on the King’s Road? Had Kinrove discovered a new and potent dance to keep them at bay? But if he still poured discouragement and fear down from the mountains, why didn’t I feel it? I sensed there was no magic left in me; I should not have had any immunity to his danced magic.
I turned and looked up toward the darkening mountains. I could recall breaking a Gettys Sweat. It took an act of will for me to open my senses and try to feel what might be flowing down toward me. But even after I had attempted to be aware of whatever magic Kinrove might be using, I felt nothing. It was a pleasant summer day in the forest. No fear and despair flowed, and yet the work on the King’s Road had ceased. So. The magic I had done had worked. But what sort of a magic had it been?
I imagined a Gettys full of people killed in their sleep, and shuddered. No. Certainly I would have felt such a deadly magic if I had been part of it. Wouldn’t I? Had my dance driven them all away? Was I the last Gernian left in the foothills of the Barrier Mountains?
Night had deepened around me. The frogs still peeped, and occasionally the deeper bellow of a bullfrog sounded. The mosquitoes and gnats had found me as well, and my open-sided attire left me very vulnerable to them. I slung what remained of my cloak around my head and shoulders and advanced cautiously on the buildings.
Things had changed a great deal since the last time I had visited. The charred remains of the buildings that Epiny had blasted had been completely removed. In the fading light, I crept up on one of the replacement structures. The creaking of the frogs and the constant chirring of the insects abruptly ceased when I coughed. That was enough to finally convince me that no one was about. I entered the structure. There was no door to open; all the buildings here were temporary ones, thrown up to give the workers minimal comfort during construction and to protect the tools from the worst of the weather. Most were little more than two rough walls and a roof overhead. This one was empty. Even in the fading light, I could see that.
There should have been harness racks and tools lining the walls, but they were bare, with only pegs and an occasional worn strap still tangled on a hook. There was a central hearth where men could get warm on a cold day or put water to boil for tea or coffee. The ashes in it had gone to cold damp clinkers; it hadn’t been used in a long time.
It was the same in the next shed I visited. There were no wagons or scrapers, no working equipment of any kind. What had been abandoned was the broken stuff, tools so worn they weren’t worth hauling away. I was moving more boldly now, fearless of watchmen, looking only for what I might scavenge to give myself an easier night.
Behind a broken lantern, I found a box with three sulfur matches still in it. There was a bit of oil and a few inches of wick left in the lantern. In a very short time, I had a small fire going. A brand from it offered me an unsteady light for my exploration. I saw no sign of recent human visits. Precious little that was of any use had been left behind. Yet even garbage and broken objects can seem like a treasure to a man who has absolutely no resources. Thus I found a water flask that would work if I didn’t fill it more than half full, and a pair of dirty trousers, torn out at both knees, but definitely better than no trousers at all. A scrap of leather harness made me a belt to hold them up.
I found nothing to eat, but that didn’t surprise me. The prisoners were given little food, so scraps were unlikely, and even if there had been anything, birds and mice would have cleaned it up by now. I spent the evening turning more of the discarded leather harness into a sling, and then curled up around my hunger next to my small fire.
I awoke to light and birdsong. I lay still, curled on my side, looking at the ashed-over coals of my fire. I tried to think what I should do next. For so long, I’d wanted to see Epiny and Spink. I longed to know what news they had from back west. They’d be able to tell me what had happened here, if the King’s Road had been abandoned or merely delayed. I thought of Amzil and a small flame leapt up in my heart. Carefully, I shielded myself from it. Best not even to hope in that area. As deserted as this place was, did I hope to find better at Gettys? It might be no more than a ghost town. Best to take things very slowly. I tried to tell myself that was being practical, not cowardly.
Slowly I sat up, and for the first time let myself notice how different that movement felt. No heaving myself upright. I was as lean as when I’d been a cadet. Leaner, actually. I think the little tree had claimed every scrap of fat from me that it could.
I poked up the coals and then fed the small fire, banked it for later, and then looked critically at my hands. They still hurt from the small amount of work I’d done yesterday, but the skin was unmistakably thicker than it had been. The backs of my arms looked an almost normal color, and hair had begun to sprout on them again. I tried to think about the process I’d been through. What had Orandula done to me, that I’d emerged from my old body like an insect breaking out of a cocoon? But thinking about it only made me queasy. I told myself I was wasting the precious dawn hour and went out with my new sling to hunt. But my luck was poor, and I had to settle for two small fish instead. I roasted them on a stick over the coals. Afterward, my belly still rumbling, I washed my face and hands in the same stream where I’d caught my fish and considered my situation.
Ghost I might be, but my body told me I still had to eat. I had virtually no tools for surviving on my own. I’d been banned with salt from returning to the Specks: Gettys was my only logical choice. If it was deserted, I’d be able to scavenge. And if people were still here, I’d be able to see those I cared about. Even if I could not speak to them, I could listen in and discover how they were doing. Gettys, occupied or deserted, offered me my best chance to survive. So Gettys it was.
I made the decision. I struck out down the road for Gettys. It was a fine day. I was not as bothered by the sun as I had been the day before; I almost enjoyed its warmth. As I walked, I tried to refrain from wondering what I’d discover, but it was an impossible task. I entertained every possible scenario. Gettys would be deserted, a ghost town for this lone ghost to inhabit. The houses would be empty. No. The streets would be littered with the bodies of the dead. Perhaps Gettys would be a plague town, full of the sick and dying, finally destroyed by Speck plague. Or Gettys would be flourishing, but for some reason, all interest in building the road would be gone. In every case, I could not imagine what would happen next.
Noon came and went, and I hadn’t seen anyone on the road. Of course, no one had any reason to be there unless they intended to continue building it. For all intents and purposes, it led nowhere, except to a king’s frustrated ambition. When I reached the place where a wagon track diverged from the road and headed up to the cemetery, I halted. I was hungry and thirsty. My old cabin was in the cemetery. When I’d fled, I’d left a sword there, and other possessions. If they were still there, they were still mine. And I’d never had more need of them than now.
I trudged up the hill. I thought there were faint but recent wagon tracks, but it was hard to tell. The hoofprints were more distinct. A number of mounted riders had definitely been here very recently. When I crested the rise and saw the familiar rows of graves and the little cabin beyond them, I felt a wave of almost nostalgia. Despite the macabre surrounds of a cemetery, this place had been my home, and returning to it felt very strange indeed. As I drew closer, I listened for sounds of human habitation, but heard nothing. A faint trickle of pale smoke, a ripple in the air, rose from the chimney. If the caretaker was not home now, chances were that he would return shortly. I’d be wise to be cautious.
The place was more neglected than it had been when I’d tended the cemetery. The grass was longer on the graves, and the pathways not maintained. As I approached the little cabin that had been mine, I noticed that a window shutter hung loose and weeds had sprung up all around the entry. Yet a pair of very muddy boots outside the door gave notice that the place was not abandoned.
I ghosted up to the window and tried to peer in, but the shutter was not that loose. All I could see was darkness. Well, it was time to find out. I stopped outside the door, took my courage in both hands, and knocked.
There was no response. Was there no one home? Or could no one hear the knocking of a ghost’s hand? Desperately, I banged on the door again. “Hello?” I shouted. My voice came out as a rusty creak.
I heard movement from inside the cabin, perhaps the thud of a man’s feet hitting the floor. I knocked again. In the interval between my knocking and the door opening, I had time to think how peculiar I must look. My hair hung lank around my ears. I was unshaven and dressed raggedly in the makeshift cloak and discarded trousers. I looked like a wild man, a creature out of a tale. I’d shock whoever opened the door. But only if he could see me. Recklessly, I banged on the wood again.
“I’m coming!” The voice sounded annoyed.
I stepped back from the doorstep and waited.
Kesey dragged the door of the cabin open. He looked as if he had just wakened. He had on a gray woolen shirt that was only half tucked into his hastily donned trousers. He hadn’t shaved in at least a couple of days. He stared out in consternation and my heart sank. Then, as he looked me up and down, “What are you?” he demanded, and my heart leapt.
“I’m so glad you can see me!” I exclaimed.
“Well, course I can see you. I just don’t understand what I’m looking at!”
“I meant, I mean, it’s so good to see a friendly face.” I halted my words before I accidentally called him by name. There was no recognition in his eyes, and yet it was so good to see someone familiar that I couldn’t stop grinning. I think my smile unnerved him as much as my strange garb. He stepped back, stared up at me with his mouth hanging open, and then demanded, “What are you? What do you want?”
I replied with the first lie that popped into my head. “I’ve been lost in the forest and living rough for months. Please, I’m so hungry. Can you spare me anything to eat?”
He looked me up and down, and then stared at my skin shoes. “Trapper, eh?” he guessed. “Come in. I don’t have a lot, and what I got, well, you may regret asking for a share of it, but I’m willing to give it to you. My da taught me to never turn a hungry man away, cuz you never know when you’ll be hungry yourself. So the good god says. Come in, then.”
I followed him hesitantly. My tidy cabin had become a boar’s den. Dirty cups and glasses crowded the table and the smell of tobacco smoke was thick. He shut the door behind me, closing out the bright day and plunging us into dimness and the smell of stale beer. Clothing hung from the bedpost and the hooks on the wall; none of it looked clean. The smell of old food predominated. Despite my hunger, my appetite died. Kesey stood looking at me and scratching his chest through his shirt. What remained of his hair stood up in tufts. He yawned widely and gave himself a shake.
“Sorry to have wakened you,” I told him.
“Aw, I should have been up hours ago. But the fellows came out for cards last night; just about the only place we can play anymore is in the graveyard! They brought a jug, and stayed late, and well, it’s hard to roust out of bed when there’s no reason to roust out of bed. Know what I mean?”
I nodded. Cards with the fellows. Gettys wasn’t dead then. I tried to control my madman’s grin. He had crouched down to the hearth and was poking up the few remaining coals. He scratched the back of his head. “I got some coffee we can warm up. And there’s some corn dodgers left in the pan. That’s all I have out here. Usually, I eat in town, but the cook don’t make corn dodgers. I learned how to make them from my ma. Toasted, they’re not bad. Substantial, you know. Filling stuff.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
“Sit down, then, and I’ll warm them up. So you been lost, huh?”
My two chairs remained. Habit made me sit in the big one. It was very roomy now, despite the jacket and the grubby dungarees that hung from its back and arms. Kesey was building up the fire with bits of kindling. Once the flames set the wood to crackling, he put a blackened coffeepot over them. Rising, he went to the food shelf and took down a pan covered by a stained cloth. In the pan were cornmeal dumplings that had been fried in lard. “I can toast ’em, or you can have them as they are.” He offered the pan to me, and I took two. They were greasy, heavy, and unappetizing. I took a bite, reminded myself that it was food and my stomach was empty.
“So you’re not from around here?”
Chewing the dumpling was an exercise and swallowing it an act of will. “No. I got all turned around in the forest. It was only by luck that I struck the King’s Road. When I saw it through the trees, I thought sure there would be a work crew who could help me. But it was still as death out there. What happened?” I took another bite of the corn dodger. No. Familiarity didn’t improve it. But it felt good to have food inside me.
“King decided to pull the work crews off. He’s got more important things for them to do.” Before I could ask what, he said, “So you said you’re a trapper?”
Actually, he had said it, but the lie worked as well as any other. I filled my mouth with half a corn dodger and nodded.
“Yeah?” He looked skeptical. “What happened to all your gear, then? How’d you get lost from your trapline?”
I swallowed the greasy bread and hastily backtracked. “Well, I thought I was going to be a trapper. Thought I knew more than anyone else about it. I did a lot of trapping, back west in the Midlands. But it’s getting real settled there, and I’d always heard the best furs came out of the Barrier Mountains. So I thought I’d go take some. Everyone warned me, but, well, I thought I had to try. The fear wasn’t too bad when I went in there. You know, I thought I could take it, get some good furs when no one else could. But then the fear come down, and—well, I didn’t think I was going to stay sane, let alone live. I got all turned around, lost everything I had, and I just couldn’t find my way out.”
Now he was nodding sagely. “Oh, yes. I think we’ve all known what that feels like. But lately, it’s slacked off. For a while there, it was gone, then it come back worse than ever, and now it’s gone again. Likely that’s why you could come to your senses.” He sighed. “I still don’t trust it to stay gone. I don’t go any deeper into that forest than I have to. I get my firewood along the edge of it. But I don’t walk under the trees. No, sir.”
“I expect you’re wise. Wish I’d kept the same rules. So why did the King give up on his road?”
Kesey grinned, enjoying being the bearer of big news. “You ain’t heard nothing about doings in the Midlands?”
“Who would tell me? The trees?”
He laughed. “Big gold strike back east. And I mean big. Some fool daughter of a noble family sent the Queen a bunch of rocks, saying she thought she’d find them interesting. Well, she surely did! King claimed it all for the Crown, but that don’t stop some folks, you know what I mean. They swarmed the place. The King pulled the prison workers back from the roadwork to put them to digging for gold instead of chopping trees, and pulled most of the troops back to keep the prisoners busy at what they were supposed to do and keep other folk from doing what they aren’t supposed to do. It’s huge, my friend. Fellow told me that the newspaper says there’s a whole city sprung up near the diggings, in just a couple of weeks!” He sat back in my chair and laughed at me. “I can’t believe you ain’t heard nothing. Bet you’re the only man in Gernia who hasn’t.”
“Probably so,” I agreed. My mind was whirling. I put the last piece of corn dodger into my mouth and chewed thoughtfully, then followed it with a mouthful of the very black coffee. Gold. So that had been Professor Stiet’s game. When Dewara had dragged me home, I’d carried off an ore sample with me. Caulder had stolen it, then I’d given it to him, he had shown his uncle after his father disowned him and his uncle had adopted him, his uncle had recognized what it was, and now my little sister had started a gold rush by sending more ore samples to the Queen. I tried to sort out all the threads. Was this magic, this complicated chain of happenstance? Had that been what the magic intended all along, that I start a gold rush to drain the Gernians away from the Specks’ territory? I had a hazy remembrance of thinking that the flow of population responded more to pulling than to pushing. I hadn’t shoved Gernia away from the Speck territories. I’d pulled it back toward the Midlands by appealing to its greed. King Troven would not have hesitated. A gold mine in the hand was worth several prospective roads to a seacoast he’d never seen.
“Shock, isn’t it? Gold. You can bet that the Landsingers are singing a different tune now. I heard they want to do a lot of trade with us, and are offering some pretty favorable terms. I heard some of our nobles are saying, ‘Hold out for them returning our coastal provinces to us.” Wonder if they’ll cave that far.”
I was still trying to put it all together. “So what’s that done to Gettys?”
“Well, hard to say if it’s done us good or bad, but it’s about what you’d expect. There ain’t much of Gettys left to tell about. When word about gold got here, most all the townsfolk who could pull up and go, went. Then the orders came to bring the prisoners back as a workforce. That took the prisoners out of Gettys, and a’course their guards went with them, plus some of the regiment to escort them. My regiment was already at low strength from disease, death, and desertion. But now we aren’t even a regiment. The commander and most of the high-ranking officers packed up and went west when their orders come through. Only two companies left here now, just a token force to keep the place from falling down, and our highest-ranked officer is a captain. It’s like they went off and forgot some of us here. Told us to ‘hold the fort.’ Didn’t tell us how.”
“So…” I said, and wondered what to ask next. Would Spink and Epiny and Amzil and the children have gone west with the others? “But you’re still here?”
“Guess I been soldiering too long.” He took a bite of the corn dodger in his hand. With a finger, he poked it to the back of his mouth before chewing it, and I recalled that he’d always had problems with his teeth. He made noises as he ate now, trying to move the food around to where he had teeth to chew it. When he spoke, his words were muffled with food. “Obeying orders went past being a habit with me a long time ago. It’s in my bones now. Me and most of the old dogs, we stayed. Sit. Stay. Guard. That’s us. Played havoc with our chain of command when so many officers went back west. There’s some kind of new law, some priest thing back west about nobles and their sons. Evidently a lot of them noblemen lost their eldest sons in that plague bout they had, and they didn’t like it too much. Some of our officers that were born soldier sons heard they might get jumped up to heirs if some new rule gets approved. Sounds unnatural to me. A man should be what he’s born to be and not complain. But it’s going to mean a lot of changes if men that were supposed to be officers suddenly have to go back west and be their fathers’ heirs. ’Course, there’s a few we wish would leave! That fellow in charge now, I don’t think he could lead a troop of new recruits into a whorehouse, if we still had a whorehouse, but we’re stuck with him. Captain Thayer isn’t what you’d call beloved by his troops. But we’ll still obey old stick-up-his-arse, because he’s got the shiny bits on his uniform that says we should.”
“Captain Thayer’s the commander now?” Nausea roiled through me.
“You know Thayer?”
“No, no. I meant, Captain Thayer is running the whole regiment?”
“Well, I told you, the most of the regiment left. Only a couple of companies left now. And they didn’t have much choice as to who to leave in charge. He was ranker than most, as the saying goes, so he got it. They’ll probably jump him up in rank to make it appropriate when they get around to it. I just hope that when they do, he doesn’t think that means he has to get even more straitlaced than he is now.”
“Pretty narrow-minded, is he?” He was the same old Kesey as ever. It only took a few words of encouragement to keep him talking.
He filled his cup again with a mixture of black coffee and grounds. “You don’t know the half of it,” he grumbled. “Goes on about the good god every time he talks to us. Ran the whores out of town; sent them off when the prisoners left. No one could figure that out. They were all honest whores, for the most part. But Captain Thayer says now that women are most often a man’s downfall. Had a man flogged for sneaking round to see another soldier’s wife, and told the first soldier he should have kep’ his wife at home and busy so she didn’t put wrong thoughts in a man’s head. Wife and hubby both spent a cozy day in the stocks.”
“The stocks? I didn’t even know we had stocks! That’s harsh! Sounds like he’s wound pretty tight.” I was puzzled. That didn’t seem like the sort of man who would have wooed and won Carsina.
“Oh, he’s a big one fer telling us all about our sins and how they brought misfortune down on all of us. And he says that public shame is the best remedy for private sins. So we got stocks now, and a flogging post, near the old gallows. He hasn’t used them that much—hasn’t had to. Makes a man’s blood run cold just to walk by them. Captain says lust and whores and women of bad repute are the worst things that can befall a soldier, and he intends to keep us all safe. Well, I’ll tell you, we’d all like to be a bit less safe.”
“I imagine so,” I said quietly. I wondered how Epiny liked Captain Thayer as a commander. The streets of the fort might be a bit safer for the women of Gettys, but I suspected his ideas of keeping women busy at home weren’t too popular with her. I tried not to grin at the thought. Epiny had not escaped from being under my aunt’s thumb to knuckling to her husband’s commander, I’d wager.
I suddenly knew that I had to see her and Spink today, and that the risks of doing so didn’t matter. I was instantly ready to go, and then I thought of Amzil, and felt an icicle of indecision up my spine. I cared for her. Why did that make me more reluctant to go and see her? I glanced down at myself and realized the obvious answer. “I need to get some proper clothing,” I said to myself, and then realized I’d spoken aloud.
“That’s very true,” Kesey agreed with a grin. “If it weren’t for the way you’re dressed, I’d a never believed your story. I would have thought you were a deserter, maybe; you got a soldier’s way of walking and sitting.”
“Me?” I made a show of laughing to hide the little burst of pride I felt. “No. Not me. But I knew a family in the fort…well, I didn’t exactly know them. My cousin knew them and said that if I got out this way, I should look them up. But I don’t suppose I should show up on their doorstep looking like this.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Kesey agreed with a grin. He’d always been a good-hearted fellow. I was counting on that now, and he didn’t fail me. “I don’t think anything I got here would fit you much better than what you got on. But if you want, I could take a note to your cousin’s friends, and maybe they could see their way clear to help you out.”
“I would be forever in your debt,” I replied fervently.
When Kesey heard that Lieutenant Kester was my cousin’s friend, he nodded affably and said, “He’s one of the few officers we have that acts like an officer anymore. Why, he had a private supply wagon that come in way ahead of the military ones, and you know what he done? Shared it all, even though it didn’t go far, and him with a house full of children, his own child and the Dead Town whore’s brats.”
It cut me still to hear Amzil called that name, and it was all I could do to hold my tongue.
“Have you paper and a pen I could use?” I asked him a bit curtly, and he looked hurt for an instant before admitting that he wasn’t much of a reader or a writer, so had nothing like that. After a bit of a search, he reluctantly came up with one of my old newspapers. “Belonged to a friend of mine. I’m not much for reading, but I’ve sort of been saving it.”
I persuaded him to give me one sheet of it, and scratched out a crude message over the print with the burnt end of a stick. There was little room to be elegant or subtle. I printed out, “I’m back, alive. I need clothes. Follow Kesey, and I’ll explain all later.”
I signed it N.B. and entrusted it to Kesey, then watched him ride away on his broom-tailed horse.
After he was out of sight, I found myself at a loss for what to do with myself. I took a brief stroll through the cemetery that I had tended so faithfully. There was a new trench grave there, so recent that the grass hadn’t covered it yet. I frowned at that, for plague outbreaks usually happened in the heat of summer. Then I saw that there was actually a marker, copied from the ones I had made, made of wood with the letters burned into it. Here were buried the victims of the massacre I’d led but a few months ago. The ground would have been too hard and frozen to permit grave-digging at the time they’d died. It gave me a sharp pang to think of the bodies stored frozen in the shed until spring had softened the ground enough to bury them. Doubtless that had been a horrid task for whoever had had to perform it. Probably Kesey and Ebrooks, I realized. I turned abruptly away from the grave of the men, women, and children I had killed and started back toward my cabin.
Curiosity made me pause and look back to where my hedge of kaembra trees had once stood. Fool that I’d been, I’d hoped to keep the Specks out of the graveyard with a barrier of trees and stone. The trees had been cut down and the sections of trunk buried along with the plague victims they’d ensnared, but I saw that the stumps had sprouted again from the roots. I tried to decide what I felt about that sight, but could not. I recalled only too well my disgust as the trees had sent their roots questing into the plague bodies, but now that I understood more fully what it was to have a tree, I felt sad that they had been cut down and the bodies buried. Would it have been so bad for those people, I wondered, to live on as trees? Could they have spoken to us as the other kaembra trees spoke to the Specks? I shook my head at myself and turned back to the cabin. That world was not mine anymore. The forest would never speak to me again.
I sat briefly in my chair, staring at Kesey’s dying fire, and then could not stand the squalor anymore. I went to the spring for a bucket of water and set it to heat. I told myself that when Kesey returned, I’d tell him that I had done it as a repayment for the good deeds he’d done for me. But the honest truth was that it pained me to see that my formerly tidy little residence had become such a sty.
So I scraped and washed the dishes and pots, and then swept a substantial heap of mud and dirt out of the door. In the process of putting the dishes back in the cupboard, I came across what remained of my possessions. Kesey had kept everything that I’d left there. My clothing had been carefully folded. Even my worn-out shoes were there. I shook out one of the shirts and then put it on. It hung loose all around me, and for a moment I marveled that it had ever fit me. I wondered why Kesey had not offered me the use of these clothes, and then was oddly touched that he had not. I refolded the shirt and restored it to its place. He’d kept my things, I realized, as a sort of remembrance of me.
Trying to change clothes had shown me how dirty I was. I heated water, washed, and even shaved using Kesey’s razor. Looking into his mirror was a revelation. I was pale as a mushroom, and the skin on my face was overly sensitive. I nicked myself twice and bled profusely both times. But the real shock was the shape of my face. I had cheekbones and a defined chin. My eyes had emerged from the pillows of fat that had narrowed them. I looked like Cadet Nevare Burvelle. I looked like Carsina’s fiancé. I touched my face with my hand. I looked like my father and Rosse, I realized. But mostly like my father.
Restlessness made me leave the cabin. I felt I could not sit still and wait. I put my rags back on and went out to Kesey’s woodpile. I chopped some kindling for him, until the uncallused skin on my hands protested this rough usage. I put what I had chopped in a tidy stack by his door and wondered how much time had passed. Would he ever return? Would Spink come with him right away or would he think it some sort of bizarre prank? The minutes of the day dripped by slowly.
I paced. I walked out to my old vegetable garden to find it a patch of weeds. Nothing useful there. Using the rusty sabre hilt with its bit of blade and one of the table knives, I successfully repaired the shutter so that it hung straight again. I paced some more. My old sabre still hung on the wall of the cabin. I took it down, hefted it, and tried a few lunges. It still wasn’t much of a weapon. It was notched and rust had eaten at it. But it was still a sword. At first it felt foreign in my hand, but after a few feints and then a solid touch on the door it felt like the grip of an old friend’s hand. I grinned foolishly.
After what felt like several days, I heard the sounds of someone approaching. But it wasn’t a lone horse, or even two horses. It sounded like a cart. I hastily put the sword back where it had been and walked to where I could look down the track that wound up the hill.
Kesey was riding his horse. Behind him, drawn by an old nag, Epiny was driving the most ramshackle two-wheeled cart I’d ever seen. Moreover, she was driving it one-handed. On the seat next to her was a large basket and her other hand rested inside it. In the basket, a baby was kicking and fussing.