The Desert Spear (47 page)

'I wish it could give some to me,' Rojer said. 'Sometimes I think in my case the opposite is true.'

'Nonsense,' Jona said. 'Strength of spirit is not some finite thing, where one man must lose for another to gain. The Creator grants strength and weakness to us all. What has you feeling weak, child''

'Child'' Rojer laughed. 'I'm not part of your audience, Tender. I have my fiddle,' he held up the instrument, 'and you have yours.' He pointed with his bow at the heavy leather-bound Canon that Jona held in his hands.

Rojer knew his words hurt the Tender, and that the man deserved better, but his mood was black and Jona had picked the wrong time to condescend. He waited for the Holy Man to shout at him, ready and willing to shout right back.

But Jona never grew vexed. He slipped the book into a satchel he wore for just that purpose, and spread his hands to show they were empty. 'As your friend, then. And someone who understands your pain.'

'How could
you
possibly understand my pain'' Rojer snapped.

Jona smiled. 'I love her, too, Rojer. I don't think I've ever met a man who didn't. She used to come almost every day to read at the Holy House, and we would talk for hours. I've seen her shine on men who didn't deserve her, never even noticing that I was a man as well.'

Rojer tried to keep his Jongleur's mask in place, but there was an honesty in Jona's tone that cut through his defenses. 'How did you deal with it' How do you stop loving someone''

'The Creator didn't make love conditional,' Jona said. 'Love is what makes us human. What separates us from the corelings. There is value in it, even when it is not requited.'

'You love her still'' Rojer asked.

Jona nodded. 'But I love my Vika and our children even more. Love is as infinite as spirit.' He put his hand on Rojer's shoulder. 'Do not waste years lamenting what you do not have with her. Instead, cherish what you do. And if ever you need to speak with someone who understands your trial, come to me. I promise to leave the Canon in its satchel.'

He slapped Rojer on the shoulder and walked off, leaving Rojer feeling as if a weight had been lifted from him.

The lamps were lit in Leesha's cottage when Rojer arrived, and the front door was open. Neglecting his warded cloak, Rojer had held the corelings off with his fiddle, which meant Leesha had heard him coming long before he arrived.

It was a ritual they shared. Leesha was always awake and working, but she would leave the door open when she heard his fiddle in the distance. Rojer would find her with her nose in a book or embroidering, grinding herbs or tending her gardens.

Rojer stopped playing when he reached Leesha's warded path, and the cold night grew quiet save for the distant shrieks of demons. But in the silence between the sounds of corelings, Rojer heard weeping.

He found Leesha curled in an ancient rocking chair, wrapped in a tattered old shawl. They had belonged to her teacher, Bruna, and Leesha always went to them when she had doubt.

Her eyes were red and puffy, the crumpled kerchief in her hand soaked through. He looked at her and understood what Jona meant about cherishing what they had. Even when she was at her lowest, she left her door open for him. Could the other men in her life say the same'

'You're not still mad at me'' Leesha asked.

'Course not,' Rojer said. 'We both did a little spitting, is all.'

Leesha gave a strained smile. 'I'm glad.'

'Your kerchief is soaked,' Rojer said. He flicked his wrist, pulling out one of the many colored kerchiefs in his sleeve. He held it out to her, but when she reached for it, he tossed it into the air, quickly adding several more as if from empty air. Rojer began to juggle them, creating a circle of colored cloth floating in the air. Leesha laughed and clapped.

Arrick, Rojer's master, could have juggled anything in the room, but with Rojer's crippled hand, kerchiefs were the only thing he could keep going indefinitely. 'Pick a color.'

'Green,' Leesha said, and faster than her eye could see his hand snatched that cloth and tossed it her way, making it seem to have leapt from the circle of its own accord. Rojer caught the rest and tucked them back away as Leesha dried her face.

'What is it'' he asked.

'Bad enough that demons hunt us at night,' Leesha said, 'but now men are killing one another in the daylight. Arlen wants us to make war with both, but how can I support that''

'I don't know that you have much choice,' Rojer said. 'If he's right, the Daylight War will find us whether we support it or not.'

Leesha sighed, hugging the shawl tightly even though the heat wards around her yard kept things comfortably warm. 'Do you remember the night in the cave''

Rojer nodded. It had been the previous summer, a few days after the Painted Man had rescued them on the road. The three of them had taken shelter from the rain, and while there, Leesha had learned that Rojer and the Painted Man had killed the bandits who had robbed them and ravished Leesha. She had been furious with them, and called them murderers.

'Do you know why I was so angry with you and Arlen'' Leesha asked. Rojer shook his head. 'Because I could have killed those men if I'd wanted.' She reached into her dress pocket, producing a slim needle coated in some greenish mixture.

'I carry these needles for putting down mad animals,' Leesha said. 'I keep them in my dress pocket because they are too dangerous to leave lying in the herb cloth, or even my apron, which I take off sometimes. No man would long survive a puncture from one of these, and even a scratch might kill him in time.'

'I'll ware my tongue around you in the future,' Rojer said, but Leesha didn't laugh.

'I had one in my free hand when I threw the blinding powder at the bandit leader,' Leesha said. 'If I had struck the mute with it when he grabbed me, he would have been dead before the leader recovered, and I could have struck him, too.'

'And I could have handled the third,' Rojer said. He lifted an empty hand, and suddenly a knife appeared in it. He thrust quick and twisted the knife in the air. 'So why didn't you''

'Because it's one thing to kill a coreling,' Leesha said, 'and another to kill a person. Even a bad person. I wanted to. Sometimes I even look back and wish I had. But when the time to do it came, I couldn't.'

Rojer looked at the knife in his hand a moment, then sighed and slipped it back into the special harness on his forearm, rebuttoning his cuff.

'Don't think I could, either,' he admitted sadly. 'I started learning knife tricks when I was five, but it's all mummery. I've never so much as cut someone.'

'Once I knew I couldn't do it, I just stopped fighting when they pushed me down,' Leesha said. 'Night, I even spit on my hand to wet myself when the first one fumbled with his breeches. But even when they left me sobbing in the dirt, I didn't wish I'd killed them.'

'You wished they'd killed you, instead,' Rojer said.

Leesha nodded.

'I felt the same way, after Master Jaycob was killed,' Rojer said. 'I didn't want revenge, I just wanted the pain to end.'

'I remember,' Leesha said. 'You begged me to let you die.'

Rojer nodded. 'That's why I went with the Painted Man to the bandit camp.'

'For me'' Leesha asked.

Rojer shook his head. 'Those men needed to be put down like any mad horse, Leesha. We weren't the first folk they robbed, and we wouldn't have been the last, especially once they had my portable circle. But we didn't kill them. The Painted Man walked in and stole your horse, I grabbed the circle, and we ran. They were all breathing and relatively unbroken when we left.'

'Food for the demons,' Leesha said.

Rojer shrugged. 'The Painted Man had killed most of the demons in the area. We didn't see a one when we walked to their camp, and dawn was only a few hours away. It was a better chance than they gave us by far.'

Leesha sighed, but she said nothing. He looked at her. 'Why do folk call an Herb Gatherer to put down an animal' Any axe or mallet will do the job.'

Leesha shrugged. 'Can't bring themselves to kill a loyal animal, or they hold out hope I can heal it. But sometimes I can't and the animal is suffering. The needles are quick and kind.'

'Maybe the Painted Man is, too,' Rojer said.

'Are you saying you think we should fight the Krasians'' Leesha asked.

Rojer shrugged. 'I don't know. But I think we need to keep a needle in our hand, even if we don't use it.'

ONE CUP AND ONE PLATE

333 AR SPRING

LEESHA WATCHED AS WONDA and Gared faced off in the Corelings' Graveyard, circling slowly. Wonda was taller than any other woman in the Hollow, including the refugees, but giant Gared dwarfed her regardless. She was fifteen, and Gared near to thirty. Still, Gared wore a look of intense concentration, while Wonda's face was calm.

Suddenly he lunged, grabbing for her, but Wonda caught his wrist in one hand and pivoted, pressing his elbow hard with her other hand as she sidestepped and used the force of his own attack to throw him onto his back on the cobbles.

'Corespawn it!' Gared roared.

'Well done,' the Painted Man congratulated Wonda as she gave Gared a hand to help him up. Since he had begun giving
sharusahk
lessons to the Hollowers, she had shown herself to be his best student by far.

'
Sharusahk
teaches diverting force,' the Painted Man reminded Gared. 'You can't keep using the wild swings you would against a coreling.'

'Or a tree,' Wonda added, bringing titters from many of the female students. The Cutters glared. More than a few of them had found themselves defeated by female students, something no man was used to.

'Try again,' the Painted Man said. 'Keep your limbs in close and your balance centered. Don't give her an opening.

'And you,' he added, turning to Wonda, 'don't grow overconfident. The weakest
dal'Sharum
still has a lifetime of training against your few months. They'll be your true test.' Wonda nodded, her smile disappearing, and she and Gared bowed and began to circle again.

'They're learning quickly,' Leesha said as the Painted Man came to join her and Rojer. She never trained with the other Hollowers, but she watched carefully each day as they practiced the
sharukin,
her quick mind cataloguing every move.

Again, Wonda threw Gared onto his back. Leesha shook her head wistfully. 'It really is a beautiful art. It's a shame its only purpose is to maim and kill.'

'The people that invented it are no different,' the Painted Man said. 'Brilliant, beautiful, and deadly beyond reckoning.'

'And you're sure they're coming'' Leesha asked.

'There isn't a doubt in my mind,' the Painted Man said, 'much as I wish otherwise.'

'What do you think Duke Rhinebeck will do'' she asked.

The Painted Man shrugged. 'I met him a handful of times in my Messenger days, but I know little of his heart.'

'There's not much to know,' Rojer said. 'Rhinebeck spends his hours doing three things: counting money, drinking wine, and bedding younger and younger brides, hoping one of them will bear him an heir.'

'He's seedless'' Leesha asked in surprise.

'I wouldn't call him that anyplace where it might be overheard,' Rojer warned. 'He's hung Herb Gatherers for less insult. He blames his wives.'

'They always do,' Leesha said. 'As if being seedless somehow makes them less a man.'

'Doesn't it'' Rojer asked.

'Don't be absurd,' Leesha said, but even the Painted Man looked at her doubtfully.

'Regardless,' Leesha said, 'fertility was one of Bruna's specialties, and she taught me well. Perhaps I can win favor by curing him.'

'Favor'' Rojer asked. 'He 'd make you his duchess for it, and get the child on you.'

'It doesn't matter,' the Painted Man said. 'Even if your herbs can awaken his seed, it could be months before there was any proof of it. We 'll need more leverage than that.'

'More leverage than an army of desert warriors on his doorstep'' Rojer asked.

'Rhinebeck will need to mobilize well before it comes to that, if he's to have any hope of stopping Jardir,' the Painted Man said, 'and dukes are not men apt to take such risks without great convincing.'

'You'll have Rhinebeck's brothers to contend with, as well,' Rojer said. 'Prince Mickael will take the throne if Rhinebeck dies without an heir, and Prince Pether is Shepherd of the Tenders of the Creator. Thamos, the youngest, leads Rhinebeck's guards, the Wooden Soldiers.'

'Are any of them likely to see reason'' Leesha asked.

'Not likely,' Rojer said. 'The one to convince is Lord Janson, the first minister. None of the princes could find their boots without Janson. Not a thing goes on in Angiers that Janson doesn't track in his neat ledgers, and the royal family delegates almost everything to him.'

'So if Janson doesn't support us, it's unlikely the duke will, either,' the Painted Man said.

Rojer nodded. 'Janson is a coward,' he warned. 'Getting him to agree to war'' He shrugged. 'It won't be easy. You may have to resort to other methods.' The Painted Man and Leesha looked at him curiously.