I awoke the next morning feeling as if I had a wild and drunken night to atone for. I lay in my narrow bed, looking up at a cobweb in the corner, and tried to make sense of my life. I failed. Then I tried to remember something that I wanted above all else, and could not discover anything. That was the lowest moment I’d had in a long time. Rescuing my sister from my father’s oppression and starting a new life here seemed like a wild fantasy for an idealistic cadet in a green jacket with bright brass buttons, not something for a fat man covered with scratches and insect bites and infected with a magic he could not master.
Spink had come out to see me yesterday. He’d left a note on my table, a very formal note from Lieutenant Spinrek Kester, saying that he was extremely disappointed not to find me at my post, and that the next time he came out to the cemetery, he expected to find me at my duties. To anyone else, it would probably look stern. To me it sounded desperate and worried. I wished he hadn’t come; I wished he were not involved in what looked to be the continuing disaster of my life.
When I eventually got out of bed, I was surprised to find that it was still very early in the day. I hauled water and washed myself, dressed in my second set of clothing (much regretting the loss of my other garments), picketed Clove in fresh grazing, and generally tried to behave as if I were starting a normal day. A normal day. That was something I could set my sights on and long for. Normality.
I cut and sharpened some stakes and with what simple means I could devise, I shot a straight line for my new fence. I threw myself into that engineering project as if I were constructing some life-saving rampart rather than building a simple barrier to protect a graveyard. I was digging my third posthole before I finally confronted the reason for my glum spirits.
I had run away to the Specks and found that even among a bunch of savages, I could not prevail. I had failed. I dropped one of Kilikurra’s poles into the hole, shoved earth in around it, and held it upright as I stamped down the soil. My bruised feet protested. I missed my boots. The low shoes I wore today were broken at the sides and worn at the soles. This afternoon, I’d have to go back to the forest and find my discarded clothing and boots. I dreaded it. It seemed that now I dreaded almost everything, so it was simply one more task I had to face. I sighed, sighted down my line of stakes, and moved on to dig the next posthole.
I was digging when Ebrooks and Kesey arrived. They had walked out from town, and I did not hear them coming until they were right behind me. They both seemed subdued until Kesey blurted out, “Where were you yesterday, Nevare? Some lieutenant from supply came out here looking for you and was really upset when he couldn’t find you. We didn’t know what to tell him. At first we said you’d only been gone a little while, but he kept asking so many questions that finally we had to tell him that we hadn’t seen you all day, but that we thought you’d only been gone a short time because you didn’t often leave for very long. He went into your shack.”
“I know. He left me a note.”
“You in much trouble?” Ebrooks asked worriedly.
“Some, probably. But I’ll tell him the truth. I went into the woods and I got turned around and it took me all day to find my way home.”
A silence greeted my words. I’d expected them to accept my excuse. Instead, they exchanged glances. Ebrooks shook his head slightly and then, seeing me scowl, gestured toward the graves and said gruffly, “Kesey and me, we better get to cutting grass.”
But Kesey stood his ground. Slowly he moved his shoulders back and his chin came up. His dark eyes had always looked mournful to me, and dispirited. But today he folded his arms on his chest and bored into me with his gaze. “Nevare, I got something to say. Lots of people in the regiment don’t like you, but me, I think you’re a decent fellow, just really fat, and that shouldn’t count against you no more than me being bald or Gimper having only two toes left. It’s just how you are. Now we got an inspection coming up, and if every man don’t look good, it’s going to come down hard on all of us. Maybe you think we aren’t much of a regiment, and maybe we haven’t been since you joined us, but once we were plenty proud and a damn crack outfit. Things aren’t the best for you, I know, what with the rumors about you and that fancy woman making a big squawk that you said something dirty to her. You might think going native is a way out. You wouldn’t be the first to just walk off into those woods and never come back again. But don’t you do it, Nevare. You take some pride in what you are and who you are and you tough it out like a true-born soldier son. Nobody says it much anymore around here, but I’ll tell you this. You owe it to this regiment to be the best soldier you can be. Not just when we’re stepping smart and pretty, and we’ve got our banners flying and good days rolling along. Not just when there’s gunpowder and smoke and blood. But during times like this, when no one thinks much of us, not even ourselves, and we know we’re going to get our comeuppance from that inspection team. Even in times like this, we got to do what we can, and be soldiers like our fathers was before us. You hear me?”
He took a deep breath after he’d spoken his piece. It was the longest speech and the most sense I’d heard out of the man since I’d met him. There he stood in a wrinkled uniform jacket with one button dangling from a thread and the knees of his trousers gone shiny with wear. His hat was dusty and rain had speckled the dust. What hair he had stood out in tufts above his ears. But he stood as straight as a ramrod, and his words sank into me like rain falling on parched soil. They moved me as I hadn’t been moved in a long time. They restored my true self just as absolutely as the forest food had satiated my Speck self. Nothing could have stirred the dormant duty in my soul as plainly as the heartfelt call to arms of that wizened old soldier.
I lifted my eyes to meet his. “You’re right, Kesey. You’re right.”
That was all I said to him, but he beamed as if I’d just given him a commendation. He marched off to follow Ebrooks and as they went, I heard him say, “I told you he was a right fellow, Ebrooks, now didn’t I? Just needed a bit of reminding, that was all.”
I did not hear Ebrooks’s muttered response. I applied myself to my task with fresh energy. By early afternoon I’d used up all of Kilikurra’s poles. They looked pathetic: a widely spaced fence of shovel handles sticking up out of the earth. But when I stood at one end of the row and sighted down them, they lined up perfectly. I took pleasure in what I’d accomplished with only crude tools.
I carried my shovel and pick back to my tool shed, returned to my cabin for water, and was just thinking of going to look for my clothing when I heard the snort of a horse outside my open door. I rose from my chair, but before I even reached my door, Spink rushed through it. He stopped short when he saw me and exclaimed fervently, “Oh, thank the good god that you have returned! Nevare, I feared I would never see you again.”
“I was lost in the forest overnight, sir, but as you can see, I’ve returned safely and taken up my duties again.”
Spink whirled as neatly as a cat and slammed my door behind him. Then he turned back to me and I saw that the relief on his face had been replaced with something akin to anger. “We’re talking plainly today, Nevare. No hedging. Where were you yesterday? And I warn you, I want the whole story.”
It was not a tale I could imagine telling to Spink or anyone else. Not just yet. So I replied stiffly, “I told you. I went into the forest. It got dark faster than I thought it would, and I got turned around. Even when daylight came, I couldn’t get my bearings. It took me a long time to find my way back home. I returned late last night.”
“Why did you go into the forest in the evening, Nevare?”
I hesitated too long, trying to find a good answer for that. When I opened my mouth, Spink waved his hand at me. “No. Don’t lie to me. If you aren’t going to tell me, then just don’t tell me, but please, Nevare, don’t lie to me. You’ve changed enough as it is. When you start deliberately lying to me, then I’ll know there’s nothing left of our friendship to salvage.”
His eyes bored into mine so honestly, and the hurt in them was so plain, that I was shamed dumb by it. I looked away from him. After a moment he said, “Well, let me tell you what has been transpiring in my home, and perhaps you can give me some answers to what you know of that.”
“In your home?” I asked, startled.
He took a seat at my table as if he expected to be there for a time. I slowly sat down across from him. He nodded at me sternly, affirming that I should take this conversation seriously. He cleared his throat. “Yesterday morning, a woman came to my door. She told me that she had been told that my lady wife could use a servant, and that she was willing to do anything our household required in exchange for shelter and whatever food we could spare them.”
“Amzil,” I said reflexively. I had completely forgotten that I had sent her to Spink’s door.
“Yes. Amzil. The Dead Town whore.”
A small silence followed his words. I felt both angry that he called her such a name and abashed that I had thoughtlessly sent a woman who merited such a name to his door. The awkwardness built between us as I tried desperately to think of something that would take us back to a place where we were friends who could talk to each other.
Spink cleared his throat and then added accusingly, “Amzil AND her three children. Of course, Epiny was immediately entranced with all of them. Have you any idea what a junior lieutenant’s pay is, Nevare? And how much noise three children make in a very small house? And how much they eat, especially that little boy? It fascinates Epiny. She just kept putting food in front of him, waiting for him to stop. But he didn’t, not until he suddenly put his head down on the table and fell asleep.”
A leaf turns in the wind, and you suddenly have a different perception of what color it is. It stung that Spink could call Amzil a whore, but he had no way of knowing that she was someone I cared about. I wondered when she had become “someone I cared about” rather than just Amzil the whore. That realization was as jolting to me as the sudden knowledge that I was the one throwing up barriers between Spink and me. “I didn’t stop to think about that,” I admitted. “Amzil came out here, wanting to live with me. She thought that was her only option, other than raising her kids in a brothel.”
“And you turned her away?” Spink sounded surprised.
I shifted in my chair and then said grudgingly, “It was right after that incident in town. I didn’t think they would be safe here. And she wasn’t offering me—I know they call her a whore, Spink, but I don’t think that’s fair to her. She’s done that occasionally, out of necessity, to feed her children. And I suspect that sometimes she wasn’t given the option of saying no, that men went out there, used her, and left money or whatever so they didn’t have to think of themselves as rapists. Well. I don’t know. But yes, I sent her to you. Without thinking of what a financial burden they might be. Did you let them stay?”
“Epiny answered the door.” It was the only reply I needed. He went on, “She’s a strong woman, my Epiny. Not in the flesh; I’ll admit that her health has suffered since we came here, and that like the rest of us, she is prey to the darkness of spirit that flows out of the forest. But she fights it. She has made the women of Gettys her special project. Having a woman come to the door and say that she’d rather scrub floors for us than be a whore was a validation of all that Epiny has been trying to accomplish with her whistles and meetings and night classes for women.”
“Classes? Classes in what?”
Spink rolled his eyes. “In whatever they want to learn, I expect. By the good god, Nevare, you don’t think I’ve attended, do you? I’m sure you recall how adamantly Epiny endorsed my mother’s idea that women must be able to manage their own households in the event that one is widowed or abandoned by her husband. Epiny teaches them the basics of arithmetic, and gives them an understanding of banking and, well, I don’t know. Whatever it is that she thinks women need to know when there are no men about.”
I gave an involuntary snort of laughter. “Amzil might be a better teacher than a student in such a class.”
“I suspect she might. She probably will be, if Epiny has her way. Despite their differences, Epiny is quite glad to have another woman around the house, because of her condition. She loves the children already. She has very much missed her younger sister, you know.”
“Epiny’s condition?” I feared the worst. It was well known that plague survivors often had impaired health and sometimes died young. “Is she ill?”
“Quite the contrary,” Spink assured me. His cheeks had gone pink, but he was grinning. “Nevare.” His voice suddenly deepened with emotion. “I’m going to be a father.”
I leaned back in my chair, astonished. “You’ve got my cousin with child?”
His cheeks went redder. “Well, your cousin is also my wife. Had you forgotten that?”
I hadn’t, but I’d never dwelt on exactly what that meant. I was suddenly jolted to my core. They would be a family. They were a family. It was silly that such a concept could shock me, but I hadn’t really seen Spink and Epiny as a couple, let alone as the seed of a family. And now it was there. It was shameful, but I suddenly pitied myself, losing both of them to each other. I felt even more alone. I was glad for them, but my gladness was edged with envy. I kept that out of my voice as I offered him congratulations.
“With that the situation, you can see why Epiny feels that the good god himself sent Amzil to our door. She’s had three children herself, and has assisted at other births, she told us. And she’s a hard worker. She’s already proven that. Epiny has tried to be a good housekeeper for us, but it is work she was never taught, and there are no decent servants to be hired in Gettys. So in some ways, it has been a relief for Amzil to come in and give the floor a proper scrubbing and put the kitchen to rights.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Then it may work out well for all of you.”
He gave me a flat look. “It may work out in ways you hadn’t planned on, Nevare. Your Amzil did find a way to get your message to me, not that she needed to convince me to take her in. She already had Epiny’s goodwill on her side. But it’s only a matter of time before she notices that Epiny’s whistle matches the one in her ‘password’ and then what will she make of it?”
I considered it for a moment. “I don’t know.”
“Nor do I. But I already suspect Amzil is not one to let a mystery rest in peace. How long before she asks Epiny what it means?”
“I specifically told her not to say anything about it to Epiny, only you.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “Oh, well, that’s such a relief. Nevare, don’t you see that such a command would only add oil to the fire?”
He was right. I’d told Amzil that the otter whistle had saved a life, and when she saw Epiny’s whistle shaped like an otter, she’d know it was the one I meant. Spink was right; Amzil couldn’t leave such a mystery alone. I sighed. “Well, if she talks to Epiny, then she does, and I’ll deal with it then.”
“That’s not good enough, Nevare!” He slapped the table at me and leaned forward earnestly. “I’ve kept your secret for you far longer than I should. When Epiny finds out, she will be murderous toward me. Since she became pregnant, she’s been more emotional than usual. Learning that I’ve deceived her for months could destroy us. I came out her to ask you—no, I came out here to tell you that I’m going to tell her the truth. So you’d best be prepared for her.”
“Spink, you can’t! You mustn’t! You know what my reputation has become in Gettys. You can’t allow her to link her name to mine. It will ruin both of you. Which officers’ wives will keep their friendships with her after they discover that her cousin is suspected of rape, murder, and propositioning virtuous women on the streets? She won’t have a female friend left in Gettys. Think what that ostracism would do to her. Think what it could do to your child’s future!”
He looked down at his feet and then up at me. “I have thought about it, Nevare. I’m not a saintly man, but I have my honor. I would lose more of it by denying you than claiming you, especially at this time of need in your life. Don’t look at me like that! I can see what’s happening to you.” He stood up abruptly and paced around the room, halting by my window. He stared out of it as he spoke. “You grow fatter daily. I don’t say that to rebuke you, but to tell you I notice. And I do believe it has some magical force behind it, for I don’t see any of our other enlisted men growing as you do, and some of them spend far more time swilling beer and eating than you ever have. But it isn’t just that. You go into the forest, Nevare, and you stay there, far beyond the amount of time than any of the rest of us could tolerate without going mad. You’re drifting away from us. I can feel it when I talk to you. You remind me of that scout, Hitch. He gets that same look in his eyes sometimes.”
He glanced back over his shoulder at me suddenly as he said this, almost as if he expected to catch something in my expression. But I controlled my face well. All the while I was weighing in my mind just how much of my experience I could share with Spink. I would be ashamed to tell how I had indulged myself with Olikea, or to admit how much contact I’d had with the Specks. He was uncomfortably close to the truth; I had thought of staying in the forest with them. I probably would have if I had not lost to Jodoli’s challenge. I wondered again what had happened, then reined my mind violently back to the present as Spink suddenly slapped his forehead.
“What an imbecile I am! Here we’ve been talking away, and I almost forgot the most important reason for my visit, the one that makes it absolutely necessary for Epiny to know that you are here. Look at this, Nevare, and tell me that it changes everything for you.”
From inside the breast of his jacket he drew out a simple white envelope and set it on the table before me. My heart turned over in my chest. At one time, the sight of that handwriting had meant so much to me. The pen strokes in Carsina’s hand spelled out my sister’s name and my home address. I glanced at Spink, then opened the unsealed envelope and drew out two sheets of paper.
My dear Yaril,
I regret that I could not find time to visit or write to you before my departure to the east. The oppertunity arose and my beloved parents judged it best that I act upon the invitation swiftly. I am staying with my cousin and his wife, Clara Gorling, so that I may have the time to become better acquainted with her cousin, Captain Thayer, my fiancé. Gettys is a rather wild place, it’s true, but I think I will find true happyness here with such an ambitious young officer. He is the most dashing fellow you could imagine, with dark curly hair and the widest shoulders I’ve ever seen! Oh, I do wish you could meet him! He is far handsomer than Remwar ever was! I feel so silly when I think that I was jealous of your flirtation with him. What children we both were!
Please write to me at your earliest convenience to say that you have missed me as much as I have missed you and that we can renew the friendship that sustained us through so many happy years.
With affection,
Carsina Grenalter, the future wife of Captain Thayer
“What is this?” I demanded of Spink, though my mind was already putting the puzzle together.
“I went to Carsina. It was difficult for me to get in to see her, for it seemed a score of women had closed in to stand guard over her and commiserate with her on her terrifying experience. It was harder still to find a way to speak privately with her. I pretended I was there to get a detailed statement of exactly what you had said to her and how you had insulted her. She’s a fine little actress, Nevare. She stuttered and wept and fanned herself until I sent her maid out of the room to fetch a glass of water for her. Then I told her, bluntly, that I knew who she was and who you were and that I’d even seen some of the letters that she had written to you while you were in the academy. I told her that you had saved them, and that if it came to a court-martial over your behavior, you could produce them to prove that your prior acquaintanceship gave you every right to speak to her on the street. I think she came close to really swooning then.”
Spink was grinning as he spoke, and I found a rare smile stretching my face as well.
“I told her that if she wanted the whole matter quieted down, she could simply accede to your request and give me an envelope addressed to your sister in her hand. I assured her that was all you wanted and that you had no interest in her beyond that.
“By then her maid returned with her water. Carsina sent her immediately for paper and pen, and this was in my hands before I left the room. I suggested to her in the maid’s hearing that it was all a mistake, that I had talked with you and you had said that you had only asked her name, for she resembled someone you had once known. She very faintly agreed with me. I am sure I left her with a dilemma, for she had been denouncing you so rabidly that it will be difficult for her to retract what she has said. But her fear of her own letters may keep her from taking her wicked lie any further than it has gone. I can’t tell you that your good name has been restored, but I don’t think Carsina will dare to blacken it further.”
I looked up from the letter in my hands. While he had been speaking, I’d read it through again. I was sure that her references to her future husband were put in to needle me. I was surprised by how little it bothered me. “Truth to tell, I do have her old letters. They’re shut in my soldier son journal, with all the rest of my papers.” I heaved a huge sigh of relief. “Spink, I don’t know how to thank you. You’ve boxed her in quite neatly. If I presented those letters, I’m sure it would be the end of her engagement to Captain Thayer. I doubt that she’ll do or say anything that would damage her own reputation in such a way.”
He glanced away. “I felt rather a bully at first, to tell you the truth. But once I had threatened her with exposure, I could not believe how her sweet little mouth stopped trembling; I swear she longed to spit at me. I know you once loved the girl, Nevare, but I think she did you a favor when she ended your engagement. I cannot imagine you harnessed to such a woman for the rest of your life.”
“Nor I,” I muttered. The last remnants of my old fondness for Carsina were long gone. I wondered if she had ever been the sweet and simple girl I had imagined her to be. Was it possible that both Yaril and I had been so mistaken about someone? Or had the harshness of fate changed all of us?
“Well, we have what we needed. You must write to Yaril at once, and I’ll put it in the military post for you. Tell her that she is more than welcome to come and stay with Epiny and me; Epiny would be delighted.”
Nothing would do for Spink but that I undertook that task immediately. He stood over me as I took my pen and ink from my soldier son journal. “You’ve filled pages and pages of that!” he exclaimed when he saw it. “I’ve scarcely touched mine. I’ve been waiting for something significant to occur in my career.”
“My father taught me that I should write at least a few lines every night, for insight comes from detail, and often a man can look back and see that a problem or a solution had its roots in earlier actions.” I glanced at the dwindling supply of blank paper. “I suppose that soon I shall have to stop keeping it. It wasn’t really intended for an ordinary soldier anyway, and if my father ever read all that I’ve put into it, I think he would be horrified. But I suppose I shall keep it until I run out of paper.”
“You won’t send it home to him when it’s finished, so he can replace it with a fresh one?”
I looked at Spink to see if he was making a bad joke. He was sincere.
“No, Spink,” I said quietly. “I am dead to that man. He disowned me. He wouldn’t want to see it.”
“Then entrust it to me, when you are finished, for I am sure you have written many valuable pages. I’ll take care of it. Or give it to Yaril, to pass on to her own soldier son.”
“Perhaps. If she has one. Now I need to think before I write.”
Silence reigned for a time. I’d dipped my pen, but that ink had dried before I thought of what to say and how to phrase it. I did not write a long letter; too fat an envelope might invite my father’s scrutiny. I told Yaril only the bare facts, that I was alive and at Gettys, enlisted as a common trooper, but that Spink and Epiny were living in a situation better befitting Yaril’s station and had offered to make her welcome. With every word I penned, I was painfully aware that my father might read my words and judge me on them. I hesitated long over mentioning Spink’s invitation, for fear it would prompt my father to some radical maneuver to keep Yaril at home. At last I decided that I’d have to chance it. The sooner that Yaril knew she had a bolt-hole, the more opportunities she could find to use it.
“How can she reply to this? She may need money to make the journey, or she may need to let us know when she might arrive.”
Spink grinned. “I’ve already arranged it. Tell her to write back to Carsina, but to enclose a second, sealed envelope addressed to me. That should work. Be sure to let her know that Epiny is most eager for her to join us.”
I added the requested instructions. As I sanded and then sealed the letter, I asked him, “Just how large a household are you planning to support on a junior lieutenant’s pay?”
His smile faded slightly as he took the envelope from my hand. “Well, I’m sure it will all work out some way,” he replied. And then, more sternly he added, “And I don’t expect to shoulder it alone, Nevare. You realize that once Yaril writes back to us, you will have to talk with Epiny. This deception you practice will end. You will have to step up to your responsibilities. Yaril will be coming here. You know that. Her only other recourse would be to stay under your father’s roof and marry Caulder Stiet, and I can’t imagine a woman of even rudimentary intelligence taking that path. Your sister will be here. Both she and Epiny will expect to see you living and working as a proper soldier son, even if you are not an officer. So I suggest you begin now.
“You need a proper uniform, and you need to maintain yourself as befits a soldier. That means shaving and keeping your hair cut and asking the colonel to position you in the regiment in the regular chain of command instead of reporting directly to him. Devote yourself to your duties, and you can earn some rank. The dice rolled against you and you aren’t starting your career as a lieutenant, but that doesn’t mean you have to surrender your ambitions. Many a man with less intelligence and fewer connections, I might add, has managed to work his way up through the ranks. For everyone’s sake, you had best start conducting yourself as a soldier son. You’re a part of this regiment, and it can only be as good as the worst soldier in it.”
His voice had grown sterner and more officious as he spoke. I raised an eyebrow, and he flicked a sideways glance toward the window. I instantly divined that either Ebrooks or Kesey was within listening distance. I came to my feet as quietly as I could and quietly acceded, “Yes, sir. I’ll do better, sir.”
“Yes. You will. Because this is the last warning you’ll be receiving from anyone. Whenever I choose to drop by here, I expect to find you at your duties, soldier, and looking like a proper trooper. Good day.”
“Yes, sir.”
Spink left immediately afterward. Outside, a light summer rain had begun to fall. I knew that Spink had admonished me for show, but as he rode off, I took his words to heart. I’d been teetering on the brink, but now I’d stepped back to safety in my life as a soldier son. I would do more than simply drudge along. I thought of Gord and how natty he had kept his academy uniform despite his girth. I could do that. It would take effort, but a soldier’s lot was effort. And there was no real reason that I could not set my sights on making rank. I’d begun well with my cemetery duties. Colonel Haren had said so. I could earn my stripes and perhaps more.
I spotted Ebrooks slinking away behind Clove’s stall. I hailed him as Spink rode off into the sprinkling rain. “Well, that wasn’t quite as bad as I thought it would be,” I told him, trying to sound like a man who had just been soundly rebuked by his superior. “In fact, he said pretty much the same things that Kesey did. Shape up for the good of the regiment and all that.”
“Yah. I heard him. But you know, Nevare, he’s right. Things have been hard for the regiment here, and there’s some of us as would welcome being shipped off somewhere else, disgraced or not. But the rest of us remember the old days, and while we’d like to leave, we’d like to see the road get pushed through first. So that when we walk away, we can say, well, it was hard but we done it.”
I looked at rough, plain-spoken Ebrooks and noted that although his uniform shirt was stained, it was as clean as it would come. He was clean-shaven and his hair was combed. He wasn’t much of a cavalla trooper, but right now he stood in front of a nobly born, academy-trained soldier son and looked far more like a soldier than I did. I felt ashamed of myself and also envious.
“I wish I could have joined this regiment in better times, and know it as you do,” I said humbly.
He gave me a sour grin. “Nevare, in better times, we wouldn’t have had you. That’s harsh, but it’s true. So you come to Gettys and you got a chance to join us. Make it an opportunity. Live up to what we were rather than dragging us down any further. That inspection team won’t arrive for another ten days. Get yourself together. I don’t suppose we’re going to win any citations from them while our primary objective goes undone, but at least we can try to avoid disgrace.”
“You mean the King’s Road? I thought it was up to the prisoners to build it.”
“Well, the shovel-and-pick labor, yes. But our scouts and engineers were supposed to lay it all out for them, and map out the tasks and say what was needed to get it done and how fast it could be done.”
“And didn’t they?”
He gave me a look. “You go walking into that forest like it’s nothing, Nevare. I don’t know how you do it. But for the rest of us…well, whips and threats are all that keep the prisoners working, and even so, the progress is so slow it’s like going backward. Colonel Haren thinks he’s onto something. Rum. And laudanum. I don’t know where he got an idea like that. Get a batch of prisoners drunk or doped up and give them axes—that’s got to be a recipe for trouble.” He gave a lopsided shrug. “But I hear that it’s working. Drunks are too stupid to be afraid of anything. Some of them get gloomy or cranky, but a man with a whip or a gun can persuade you that you’ve got to work no matter how gloomy or cranky you are.
“They’ve started cutting into those monster logs and hauling chunks away. Like ants trying to carry off a loaf of bread crumb by crumb is what one guard told me, but it’s better than no progress. Even liquored up, most prisoners can’t stand to work there more than an hour, and the guards have to be almost as drunk as the workers are. Makes cutting grass here look like a real pleasure.”
Stillness washed through me. The road might go through. And I’d given the colonel the idea of how to do it. Haren seemed a fair man. He might not credit me with the idea, but I suspected I’d have a stripe or even two on my sleeve by the end of summer. Crashing against that idea like two waves meeting was the terrible sick sense that I had betrayed the forest and Tree Woman. I’d given the intruders a way to defeat the magic. They would keep cutting and gouging, an hour at a time, one tree at a time, until they’d cut right through the heart of the forest and the People. I’d betrayed the Specks just as completely as I’d betrayed the Gernians when I’d signaled the Dust Dancers to spread their plague. I felt queasy with what I had done. “You look pale. Are you sick?” Ebrooks asked me.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Well. I got work to do. I’ll see you later.” He walked hastily away. Not much was left of the day, but Ebrooks went back to his work and I went back to mine. Some of my posts were leaning. I tamped them in more heavily. I wished I could just stop thinking and do this simple work in front of me. Why couldn’t my life be simple, like Ebrooks’s? He had duties, he did them, he ate, had a beer, and went to sleep. Why couldn’t I have that life? I knew the answer. Because I didn’t. When I reached the end of my line of posts, I stood for a time looking up at the encroaching forest on the hillside above me. Then I walked up the hill and into it.
As I entered the young forest, I tried to recall how terrifying and depressing it had been for me the first time I’d walked here. It seemed like a strange dream. I tramped through it, trying to remember where Olikea had fled so I could retrace my path from last night. That seemed like an even stranger dream. Spink and the letter and the lectures from both Ebrooks and Kesey had recalled me to my duty and my life. What had I been thinking, to even consider abandoning Yaril to a forced marriage with Caulder Stiet? How could I have imagined that I could tear off my clothes and run off into the forest to live among the Specks?
Twilight was falling when I found my scattered clothing and boots. I gathered them up and as I did so, I noticed how worn and smelly they were. The cracked leather of my scuffed boots was gray; I could not remember the last time I’d blacked them or even cleaned them. When I held up my trousers, they wrinkled and sagged into a parody of my buttocks and legs. Tomorrow, regardless of consequences, I’d visit town and push hard for a proper uniform from supply, even if I had to simply beg for fabric and then hire Amzil to sew for me. The thought of going to Amzil for help made me recall that she was living at Spink’s home now. Epiny was there, and Spink had said he was going to tell her that I was alive in Gettys. The thought of that filled me with both dread and anticipation. With my dirty clothes draped over one arm and my boots in my free hand, I turned and started back when suddenly a shape separated herself from a tree trunk. Olikea stood before me.
“Now I find you!” she exclaimed accusingly. “Where did you go?”
“Me?” I was affronted. “I woke up in a strange place alone. I don’t even know how I got there or what happened.” I halted my words. I was speaking Speck; I’d made the transition without thought, without effort. Again.
She made a sound between a hiss and spitting. “Jodoli! What did he say?”
“He challenged me to prove that my magic was stronger than his.”
She furrowed her brow at me. “But you are bigger than he is. You hold more magic than he does. You should have won.”
“I may be full of magic. Sometimes I feel that I am. But that does not mean that I know how to use it. Jodoli said as much.”
She puffed out her cheeks at me and made her disparaging sound again. “Then he turned his power on you.”
“His magic made me fall asleep and wake up somewhere else?”
“It could be. Or he made you think you were somewhere else and just awakening, and you wandered off. Or he made it so you could not see us, or I could not see you. I do not know how his magic was done. I only know that he did it. And my sister mocked me, and all the People had to bring tribute to Jodoli and to her today to make up for their doubts.”
I felt a pang of defeat so immense that I could scarcely comprehend it. I’d lost. It was impossible and horribly unfair. I who had undone the power seat of the Plains people, I who had stopped their magic forever so that they could never again menace the People or threaten our lands, had been tricked and defeated by a mage scarcely worthy of the title. He was no Great Man. He barely had the belly of a pregnant girl! And then, as before, my perception shifted, and I was once more Nevare, the soldier son. I looked down at the rumpled and soiled uniform on my arm, at the dirty scuffed boots I still clutched. “I have to go back to my people,” I told her. “I’m sorry I disappointed you. I have to go back. Others are depending on me.”
She smiled at me. “You are right. I am glad that you have come to see it.”
“No,” I told her. She had come closer to me, and I could already sense the warmth and musk that radiated from her body. It was so hard to deny her. “Olikea, I have to go back to my own people. To the Gernians. I have to become a good soldier, I have to make a home for my sister.”
She stood less than a hand’s-breadth from me now, tilting her face to look up into my eyes. “No. You are wrong. You are not to be a soldier, but a Great One. That is how you will serve the magic. And no man should make a home for his sister. Women go out and make their own homes, and it is not with their brothers.”
It was hard to find words when she stood so near. She put her hand on my chest and my heart leapt to meet it. “I have a duty to my people.”
“Yes. You do. And the sooner you fulfil it, the less suffering there will be on both sides. You must use the magic to make the Jhernians go away.” Her lips twisted the name of my folk, and made them foreigners to my ears. “The sooner the war ends, the sooner the suffering will stop for all.”
“War? What war? We are not at war with the Specks.”
“That is the most foolish thing I have ever heard you say. Of course we are at war. They must leave, or we must kill them all. There is no other way. We have tried and tried to make them go away. Soon there will be no choice for us. We will have to kill them all.”
These dark words she breathed against my mouth as she carefully aligned her body to mine and pressed herself against me. “Only you can do it,” she said quietly when she lifted her mouth from mine. “Only you can save all of us from that. That is your duty. You must stay and do it.” She ran her hands down the sides of my belly, caressing it sensuously. The sensations she woke drove all thought and internal division from my mind. She made me hers again, and I fell to her willingly.