Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2) (25 page)

At dusk, he brought her all the way up Salver Street and
along the climbing footpath to the Brauman Lightpost Overlook, a memorial to
the Vantanible ancestry set in concrete and stone, giving visitors stunning
views of the city and the desert beyond. Reylenn was a slight woman, tinier
still from her injuries than her nineteen years might suggest, but Toler was
sweaty and breathless by the time they arrived.

“What do you think it all means?” Reylenn asked, taking him
by the wrist and pulling him close. “Our lives. The world out there. The
light-star, and what it’s done to us. Do you think it’s all going to end?”

“I think a lot of people wish they knew the answer to that,”
Toler said, wiping his brow.

“I’d settle for knowing why those savages attacked me. I
could understand them going after my father. But me? What have I ever done to
them?”

Reylenn had spoken of these things often since Toler’s
return. The attempt on her life had given her a new, more critical perspective.
Telling her his brother had ordered the hit would be as ruinous for Toler as
telling Vantanible about the route map. No matter how it pained him to see her
struggling with these unanswered questions, Toler could never divulge what he
knew.

“They must’ve been planning to kill your father after they
were done with you, only they didn’t make it that far,” Toler said. “Thank
Infernal they didn’t.”

“I don’t thank Infernal for anything. Sometimes I think I
would rather have died than become such a burden on you two.”

When Toler knelt beside her, Reylenn’s tears were shimmering
in the half-light. He put a finger to her chin and turned her face toward his.
In her eyes he saw the pain of self-pity, the tug of war between love and
misery. “Don’t you ever think that. You’re no burden on me or your father. I’d
still love you if those Infernal-forsaken savages had taken your legs
altogether. And hey—they didn’t. You’re going to walk again. How many more
weeks did the doctor say until you can get your casts off?”

“Three on the left one, four on the right,” she sniffed.

“See? There you go. I’m going to hold onto you, every single
step until you’re moving around on your own again. It won’t be long now. You’ll
be good as new by the end of the short year. Then we’ll go riding again. How
about that?” Toler smiled, wiping away her tears with his thumbs.

“The doctor said it could be another two years before I can
walk again. He said I’ll probably have to use a cane, or… or a walker, for the
rest of my life.”

Toler shook his head. “He’s covering his ass. Nichel
Vantanible’s doctors don’t ever make predictions they can’t keep. That’s a
worst-case scenario. I’m telling you.”

She seemed to brighten at that. “And you’ll be here? You’ll
stay with me? Even if it takes that long?”

“Even if it takes that long. I promise, baby girl.” Toler bit
his lip. That was Daxin’s pet name for Savannah.
I’ll miss you too much,
baby girl
, Daxin used to tell her every time he left. Knowing his brother
was still out there somewhere made Toler afraid for Reylenn’s safety. Daxin
knew she was still alive. Would he abandon his grudge and leave her alone?
When
I kill him, he will
.

Toler brought Reylenn home, where they ate dinner and talked
all evening until Reylenn began to complain of the pain in her legs. He gave
her a small cup of the liquid painkiller prescribed by her doctor, then helped
her into bed and kissed her goodnight as she began to doze from its effects.
Then he made his nightly rounds, inspecting every door and window to ensure it
was closed and locked. Nichel still hadn’t arrived by the time Toler came
outside, so he made sure Vantanible’s night watchmen had no plans to vacate the
premises before the master of the house returned.

As Toler crossed the street toward home, two things struck
him with a sudden disquiet. The first was that he had never left Reylenn home
alone at night before; he had always made sure at least one person was inside
the flat with her. This was usually the housekeeper, Ms. Daubert, who was away
tonight visiting family in Elcombe.

The second thing Toler noticed was how queasy he felt. It
wasn’t the food; he knew the meat and vegetables they’d eaten for dinner were
fresh. It was the feeling he always got just before the starwinds came.

He gazed up to study the night sky. Unless his eyes were
deceiving him, he thought he could see faint slivers of green and purple beyond
the veil of black. Sometimes the starwinds came suddenly; at others their
coming was gradual. The more gradual manifestations were not only the
longest-lasting, but the most severe.

Toler’s stomach was churning by the time he came to the side
street beneath his apartment. If he didn’t make it inside soon, he was going to
lose his dinner in the alley. He still had to enter the building through a
broken window, ascend seven flights of stairs, and walk the long hallway to his
apartment door. As it turned out, he didn’t make it nearly that far.

A figure emerged from the shadows. Gunmetal gleamed in the
starlight as the figure came forward, the barrel of a silvered chrome revolver
held steady in its grip. “Stay where you are, Shep.”

Another one of these coffing zoom freaks, thinking he’ll
get an easy score out of me
, Toler predicted. But this was no drug addict.
Next Toler knew, a second figure came from behind to grab him by the wrists. He
struggled free and whirled to see a slender black-haired woman, her dark eyes
shining.

“We don’t want to hurt you,” said the woman, her accent thick
with northern twang.

“Then leave me alone.”

“‘Fraid we can’t do that,” said the man, pressing his
revolver barrel into the small of Toler’s back.

There was nowhere to run. The narrow alley was crushed
between two tall buildings, and the man behind him looked like he knew how to
use that revolver.

“You’re Toler, ain’t you?” asked the woman.

A shiver ran through him. “Who are you, the shit patrol?”

“My name’s Jallika Weaver. This here’s Willis Lokes.”

“How do you know my name, and what do you want with me?”

“We was sent here to… retrieve you,” said Lokes. “Gentleman
wants to see you in Belmond.”

“I’m not going to Belmond.”

“I got a dozen rounds of three fifty-seven says you are.”

“Tell me who sent you and how much he’s paying. I’m sure we
can work out a deal.”

“Unfortunately for you, the gentleman didn’t give us a name,”
said Lokes.

“Was it Calistari? Fat dway, fancy clothes? No? How about
Mandrake? Brown hair, red beard… beady eyes?”

“You hard of hearing, Shep? Fella didn’t give us a name.
Sounds like you got plenty of enemies, so I don’t see as it makes much matter.
In another life I might’ve taken you up on that offer. But this one here, she
don’t take kindly to double-dealin’. Says we ought to keep to our word, and all
that hogwash.”

Weaver gave Lokes a sour grin. “What my associate here is
trying to tell you is that we won’t be bought. You can work out whatever deal
you like with the man after we give you to him.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t leave. If I leave Unterberg
without telling Mr. Vantanible, he’ll brand me a traitor, or a spy, and have me
hunted down and killed.”

“Don’t sound like the kind of dway you ought to be kickin’
around with anyhow,” said Lokes. “I figure we’re doing you a favor. Now, if
you’d be so kind as to turn toward me and put your hands behind your back, this
nice young lady here’ll get you all squared away. I know you’re thinkin’ ‘bout
trying to skedaddle on me. Don’t do it, Shep. I’ll put one through the back of
your knee, sure as a dimple on a butt cheek. You don’t want us hauling you
through the sand on a bad leg. We’ll do it if we got to.”

Toler set his jaw as he turned to face the man and crossed
his wrists behind his back. He felt the cut of thin plastic as the woman zipped
his bonds tight.

Lokes moved into the light, his wide-brimmed hat cleaving a
thin, ruddy face in a diagonal slash of shadow. “There now. That’s a good Shep.
Wasn’t so bad, was it? Where you stable your horse at?”

“My horse?”

“You got one, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“Well, we got a long road ahead of us, and too little time to
get on down it. Since you decided to keep both your knees, better you ride than
walk.”

Toler bent over and vomited on Lokes’s boots.

“What the shit, you little—”

“Sorry. Sorry,” Toler croaked, spitting. “I get starwind
sickness.”

Lokes stepped back to wipe his boots on a black plastic
garbage bag. “You do that again, you gonna find one of these cowhides tickling
your tonsils, boy.”

Toler heard Weaver chuckle behind him.

Lokes looked past Toler to glower at her. “You think that’s
funny, do you? I told you we should’ve knocked him out cold.”

“He gonna ride with you, then?” Weaver asked. “‘Cause I’d
rather we find out where he keeps his horse.”

Toler was ready for bed, not for a days-long ride through the
desert. “You can’t take me. I’m sick. I’ll hold you up.”

Lokes’s eyes met Toler’s. “I’ll be honest. I don’t want to
share a saddle with you, Shep. I don’t want to hit you over the head, neither.
But I’ll do what I gotta do. So let’s not make us a big ordeal outta this, huh?
You fixin’ to tell me where your horse is, or would you rather us buy that
half-blind swayback with the bad hip we saw for sale a few blocks down?”

There was no use resisting them. Willis Lokes had a look in
his eyes that told Toler he meant what he said. And the woman… this Jallika
Weaver… there was something different about her. Something Toler couldn’t
place, but which he disliked all the same. He gave a long sigh, not sure what
he was in for, but certain he wasn’t going to like it. “Follow me.”

CHAPTER 20

Stirrings in Molehind

Far from home was the last place Lizneth had ever
expected to be right now. It was the last place she wanted to be, with or
without her aging parents and the dozen-and-a-half siblings stumbling and
bumbling through the tunnels, clangorous as a kitchener’s wagon. Between all
the shoving and squabbling and an apparent dearth of experience walking in a
straight line, they might as well have been a traveling circus for all the ruckus
they made. If a cotterphage ever came within shouting distance, it was going to
make a tasty morsel out of someone. Probably someone small.

Lizneth didn’t like thinking about that, so she turned her
mind to other things. Like how tired she was of shushing her brothers and
sisters every other minute. Her legs were sore, her arms ached from stints
carrying the little ones, and the comfort of the darkness ahead made it hard to
keep her eyes open. The thing that alarmed her most, however, was that the
longer they walked, the more her stomach began to ache.

They had stopped only once so far, crowding into a niche
beside the road to nap for a few hours. Tanley was far behind them now,
Molehind only a short distance ahead if they were going the right way. Lizneth
and Papa thought they were close, judging by the
haick
; Mama, whose nose
was not what it used to be, had her doubts.

“I remember Molehind well, and that isn’t it,” Mama insisted.

“It
is
, Kyriah,” Papa told her. “I’ve been there more
recently than you have, and I know it.”

Mama cocked her head and gave Papa a disbelieving look. “If
you say so, Halak.”

Papa fumed, but said nothing. Those two had been as bad as
the nestlings since they left home. Lizneth didn’t know how they managed
sometimes. Mama had borne her last litter a year ago, but Lizneth reckoned she
and Papa should’ve stopped long before that. Breeding to fill Sniverlik’s ranks
did little good if the Marauders couldn’t even protect Tanley from a bunch of
blundering hu-mans.

Molehind was lofted high within a forest of thick mineral
pillars, the sort created by the slow drip of sediment over thousands of years.
Circular platforms girdled huts and dwellings carved into the pillars
themselves, while bridges and walkways spanned the gaps between. There was a
magical quality to that quiet sanctum high in the darkness. The tunnels leading
here ran close to the surface, so its residents were forever wary of the
predators who often wandered down from the blind-world with empty bellies.

Lizneth and her family were no predators, so the
ikzhehn
of Molehind extended a narrow ramp and let them climb to the heights. She
noticed at once the brindled fur patterns of many of Molehind’s inhabitants.
Most were generations removed from the burrow-kin, though they shared traces of
that bloodline.

Papa’s brood-brother Enzak lived in a stucco hut attached to
the side of a broad pillar near the village center. The way the hardened mud
stucco swirled across the hut’s surface in striated patterns reminded Lizneth
of a hornet’s nest. She was pleasantly surprised to find that her Uncle Enzak
was a
scearib
like her, though he made no mention of it when he greeted
them.

He took Lizneth and her family inside, where he introduced
them to his mate Pomka and their two broods. The hut was cramped already, and
with the addition of Lizneth’s family they were practically crawling on top of
each other. Before long they spilled out onto the causeway, where the two
brood-brothers wandered off to discuss recent events, leaving Lizneth, her
mother, and Pomka to watch the nestlings.

Lizneth was feeling even worse now, so she sat by the wayside
as the children scampered and played across the platforms. Mama noticed her
with a hand to her belly and came to check on her.

“Don’t you feel well?”

“No.”

“What’s the matter,
cuzhe
?”

“I’m not well in my
djigdeh
.”

Mama’s look of concern only lasted a moment before two
misbehaving nestlings stole her attention. “Malak, what did I tell you? Do not
hang your sister over the railing. Malak. Malak.” Mama wandered away to chase
him down.

Lizneth stood and went to Pomka, who had a new-birth on each
hip but was less preoccupied than Mama at the moment. “Who is the
chabad
in this village?”

“The
chabad
here is one they call Kolki. Is everything
alright?”

“Yes. Where can I find her?”

“She is two platforms above us, along that pillar, there.”

“Thank you,” Lizneth said. “Tell Mama I’ll be back in a short
while. If she asks, please don’t tell her where I’ve gone.”

Pomka nodded and gave her a soft smile, but Lizneth was not
sure there was much in it to rely upon. On her way up the ramps, her thoughts
turned to Raial and Thrin. She wondered how they were getting along in
Sniverlik’s stronghold without Mama and Papa. They were young, even for
conscripts. Her heart ached to think of adventurous little Raial, with his
fearless spirit and his nose for curiosity, broken and scared and alone. Or
Thrin—sweet, innocent Thrin—who probably knew nothing about what was happening
or why she’d been taken.

The entrance to Kolki’s hut was veiled in hanging strands of
glazed clay beads. Lizneth knocked on the wattle beside the opening, but her
rapping yielded only dull, soundless thuds. She called inside and waited a few
seconds, then gave her surroundings a glance and entered. A sweet smoky fragrance
assailed her within, so strong she went cross-eyed and light-headed for a
moment. She scanned the hut’s dim interior for signs of life, hoping she wasn’t
intruding.

“Hello? Is anyone here? I’m looking for Kolki.”

“A deepling comes to consult me about the harvest,” said a
thin, ragged voice.

Lizneth noticed her then, an old dam seated behind a wicker
screen, visible only by silhouette in the flickering candlelight. She took
another step into the hut and said, “With respect… it’s not the harvest I’m
here about.”

“When a
parikua
comes to see a
chabad
, it is
for one of two reasons: she wants the crops to grow, or the river to flow.”

“For me, it’s different,” Lizneth said. “I’m sick.”

“Sick? Is that the name by which it goes?” Kolki chuckled,
then grunted as she pushed herself up with her tail. When she rounded the
screen, Lizneth found herself looking at a stout little agouti with flashes of
fawn and white running through her fur. Kolki’s head and shoulders were hooded
in a thin crimson scarf, beneath which Lizneth saw bones knotted in the fur
between her ears. She had a slender snout and long pinback whiskers that
glimmered with a healthy sheen when she twitched them.

“I feel unwell in my belly,” Lizneth explained.

Kolki chuckled again. “Come with me, deepling.” She gathered
up a canteen, a small shoulder bag, a walking stick, and a pair of eyeshades,
which she donned before gesturing for Lizneth to follow.

They ascended to the next-highest platform by a wooden
staircase whose steps jutted from the pillar like spokes on a wheel. This,
Lizneth discovered, was the highest platform beneath the cave ceiling. Ahead
lay a natural channel through the rock, which the people of Molehind had
connected to a long wooden ramp for easier access. Lizneth could feel the blind-world’s
heat as soon as her feet left the wood and touched rock. “Where are we going?”
she asked.

Kolki lifted her eyeshades. “On a walk.”

Lizneth didn’t want to walk. She’d been walking for days.
What she wanted to do was sit and rest and drink a tonic for the pains in her
belly. Every step made her stomach quake, and she had begun to feel as if it
might come loose. But she kept silent for the time being and followed Kolki up
the path’s gentle slope.

They emerged into mountainous dusk, a high cliff shrouded in
dry brambles. To their right, the light-star was setting beyond the vale, its
last rays disappearing behind the peaks of the distant Brinescales. Above them,
the darkening sky swirled with curtains of shimmering color. Kolki continued up
the rocky slope, picking her way through patches of scree and stones fallen
from the cliffside above.

At the top of the climb, they could see the northern lands
spread out before them, a sight Lizneth had never thought could be so different
from the desert scrubland of the vale. Still a wasteland, to be sure, but one
where the tracts of growth were not so sparse or brown. There was life blooming
in the valleys below, and with it came the scent of newness. She could even see
the color green against the dusk—real green, though maybe not as vibrant as the
leaves of her mulligraws—green enough to speak against the blind-world’s
wilting heat.

“The short year is upon us, deepling,” said Kolki, inhaling
deeply to catch her breath. “The days grow shorter, and growing things that have
waited patiently will sprout anew. By the end of the winter season, the
calaihn
will have taken their harvest from the lands which sustain it, only to wait out
the long year’s oppression once again. As the light-star turns across the sky,
so do our lives turn across the years.”

“I’ve seen the blind-world before,” Lizneth complained. “I’ve
seen
calaihn
, too. I don’t understand what this has to do with helping
me feel better.”

“Oh, my little
lecuzhe
. You are not sick.”

“Yes I am,” Lizneth insisted. “I am. I don’t feel well at
all.”

“Things do not always happen for the reasons we assume. Why,
take our visitor here, for example…” Kolki extended an arm toward the northern
valley, unfurling her fingers like the spines along a glowfish’s back.

There was someone down there. A hu-man. He was on foot,
traveling south, roughly in their direction. It looked as though he aimed to
take the low mountain pass rather than climb the ridge from which they
overlooked him. Dark shapes swarmed around him, four-legged things with slender
bodies and sharp, narrow heads. They circled him like predators after a wounded
animal, but it seemed there was no hostility between the hu-man and these
creatures. Lizneth could hear the things making noises, yips and whines and
snarls. The hu-man bent over and touched one of them. The thing shot away from
the group at a gallop and disappeared from view behind a cluster of stones.

“Who’s that?” Lizneth asked.

“A harbinger,” said Kolki.

“How do you know that?”

“I am the
chabad
,” Kolki said, “and you are not. I
know because I know.”

Mama thinks
my
manners are bad
, Lizneth
thought. “Why did you bring me up here if you aren’t going to answer any of my
questions?”

“You are rude, for a deepling,” Kolki observed.

Lizneth was startled. “I was just thinking the same thing.
Only, about you. Did you… know what I was thinking?”

“A guest should be more considerate. I take my walks each
evening before nightfall, regardless of whether a deepling wanders into my home
with questions whose answers are staring her right in the face or not.”

“Sorry to have bothered you. You could’ve just told me to
come back later.”

“Had you come later, I would have told you to come back
tomorrow.”

Lizneth gave a loud sigh. “The answers are staring me in the
face, are they? All I can see is the world getting dark.”

Kolki laughed to herself. “Yes. As it has been, for some
time.”

“And the
calai
down in that valley is a harbinger?”

“That is no
calai
, deepling. In taking on the
appearance of one, the visitor has shown us his true intent.”

“I’m guessing if I asked you what his intent was, you’d give
me some vague, cryptic answer,” Lizneth said, frustrated.

“You are pregnant.”

Lizneth began to speak, but the words caught in her throat.
“Huh?” was all she could manage.

“I am unable to offer you a more direct answer than that.”

“What do you mean I’m pregnant? Me? That’s impossible.”

Kolki gave her a skeptical look. “Is it?”

“Well… I guess not. No.”

“And if it is not
im
possible, then you have spoken
falsely. Yes?”

Lizneth hesitated. “Yes. But I thought—”

“You thought you were sick. I know. You are not sick.”

“How can you tell? You haven’t even examined me.”

“Do you want to know how many young
ledozhehn
have
come to me with these same concerns? I hope you don’t, because the number is
too many, and I have lost count.”

Lizneth found herself shaking her head in disbelief. “No. I
can’t be pregnant. I can’t.”

“As we have concluded already… you can be, and you are.”

“But this will ruin everything. We’ve lost our fields, and
our home, and Mama and Papa are too old for planting and harvesting anyway. The
Marauders took my brood-siblings, and the nestlings are too young still. Maybe
in a season or two, but not yet. And if I can’t, then… oh, what have I done?”
Tired and desperate, Lizneth broke into tears. She hated Artolo the Nuck for
what he’d done to her; for what he had made her feel like doing with him. He
had been kind to her. He had made her trust him. For that, she hated herself
more than him. Hated herself for letting him, for giving into it—even though
she’d wanted to. Had she wanted to?

It would’ve been easier to blame it all on Artolo, but that
wouldn’t have been the whole truth. And to learn later that he was Morish’s
son… What would become of her new-births, if this condition of his was passed
down to them? She remembered Morish’s sickly
haick
, and Artolo’s words
came back to her.
It’s a flesh-borne disease
, he had said.
You just…
decay. Over time, the muscles and the skin lose their strength. Like putting
meat in a stew; it gets soft and tender and falls apart
…