The Unfinished Song: Taboo (14 page)

Footsteps shuffled in the pine needles on her left, behind a shield of bushes and a large rotted tree stump.

Lady Mercy
. The Deathsworn had come back.

The cold felt less fierce, however, and she no longer felt that strange sense of paralysis. She jumped to her feet to face her adversary.

“I know you saw me,” she said in a low voice.

A handsome man, bare-chested above his legwals, stepped out from behind the bush. It was Zumo, Kavio’s cousin. She recognized him from the banquet. His pale bone-gray eyes unnerved her. He had a most intense stare.
The young man could have been Kavio’s brother, of the same height, girth, muscle and rugged beauty, save for some indefinable lack. His features were like a rough draft of Kavio’s, coarser, cruder,
crueler
.

At the moment he looked both hostile and puzzled. “Who are you? Why are you out here alone?”

She wondered if she should lie. Had he seen her following the Tavaedies or not?

“Ah, yes, I
know.
”
Zumo’s
examination grew insulting.
“You’re the pretty little serving girl Kavio took back to his hut for the night.”

“I didn’t spend the night.” She crossed her arms.

He stepped closer to her. She tried to step back, but he gripped her arm.

“You saw something that night, didn’t you? A secret about me.”

“Let me go.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

“Please.” She tried to pull away, but he would not release her.

“It’s only fair that you tell me, since it’s
my
Vision you stole.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can prove it.” He held her firmly with one hand, and raised his other hand above her face. She feared he might hit her and squirmed to pull away, but his fingers traced her cheek in a caress.

The otherlight of a Vision shimmered all around her.

In the morning, Vessia expected that Vio would send her back to the cage with the other prisoners. Instead, he
ordered a morning meal of savory rabbit, herb-roasted vegetables and corn mash, which he shared with her. The sweet onion bulbs tasted delicious, and she shamelessly ate every one. Vio ate without speaking. He focused on consuming his food with the precision and intensity normally required for knapping flint or aiming a bow and arrow. Only after he cleared his bowl, carefully licking the last bit of sauce so that not a drop would be wasted, did he wipe his mouth, relax slightly and smile at her.

“I have a deal to offer you,” he said.

She waited.

“If you can acquire a certain object for me, I will set you free instead of delivering you to the Bone Whistler.”

“What about Danumoro?”

“I need him.”

“I’m not interested in your deal.”

He waved a hand. “If he cooperates with me, I will set him free as well.”

“I doubt he will cooperate with you. He hates you.”

“I’m sure he does. But I have a bargain to offer him as well, and I think he might take it. Shouldn’t it be his choice?”

A hole in the tent allowed smoke from the hearth to escape, and also allowed rays of morning sunshine to streak inside. Vessia studied the fall of light on the leather surface of the tent, which rippled in the wind, moving the light like water. She was sure that if Danumoro were here, he would know whether it was good or bad to take Vio’s bargain, but she did not. Her curiosity overcame her reluctance to help Vio the Skull Stomper.

“What is the object you want me to acquire, and how do you suppose I could acquire anything?” she asked. “I’m not very good at convincing people to give me things.”

Vio smiled in triumph. He picked up the looking bowl he had shown her last night.

“You won’t have to convince anyone of anything. Just take this bowl with you, hidden under your clothes. I will send you to Nangi’s tent. She will be dancing today, and need a handmaiden. You will help her brush her hair and dress. When she is not looking, you will switch this looking bowl for the one she has in her tent. Then you will be returned to me. It should be simple.”

“It should be simple,” she agreed. “Much more simple than all that hiding and sneaking. Why don’t you just ask her to trade bowls?”

“Because I don’t want her to know they have been switched. My bowl is a fake; hers is real. I need the real one, and I need her not to know it is missing.”

“A bowl is a bowl. How can you have a fake bowl?”

Vio blew a raspberry. “Vessia, I have told you what you need to do. Don’t ask questions. Just do it. Or not. But if you refuse, Danumoro will be killed.”

She stiffened and glared at him. “I do not care for your threats.”

“I didn’t say it would be by me.” He handed her the bowl. “Tell me you will do it.”

Perhaps Danumoro would still tell her not to help Vio, no matter what the consequence, but she could not let her friend be killed. Her choice was not as hard to
make
as she had feared, so why did her stomach roil and why did she want to take the bowl and smash it over Vio’s head? Then he grinned at her, like a shamefaced boy, as if he knew quite well what she wanted to do, and part of him did not blame her; and her stomach turned again, but this time because of a different feeling than fear or anger, something she could not identify or understand.

She nodded. Vio helped her tie the bowl under her wrap, at her hip, so it looked like the folds of her blanket shawl were bunched up, bulky, but not out of place.

Warriors escorted her to another tent in the compound. The leather of this tent was painted in elaborate orange patterns, and the poles upholding it were surmounted with numerous human skulls. Inside, it did not look much different from Vio’s. Furs and cushions were arranged around a low burning hearth fire.

The very ugly woman that Vessia had seen briefly when she entered the camp sat on a cushion with her back to the door, gazing into something that Vessia immediately recognized as the “real” looking bowl. It rested on a stone that served as a table. The ugly woman turned only to scowl at the newcomer.

“So you are the latest prize,” snarled Nangi. “You don’t look so special to me. What is wrong with men? They have no discernment; they just want to taste new flesh. Very well, help me with my hair.”

She held out a comb.

Vessia stood behind her and plied the comb through her hair. As she brushed, she peeked at the bowl on the stone table.

Nangi snickered. “You won’t be able to see the reflection, girl. This is no ordinary looking bowl.”

Nangi was wrong. Vessia could see the reflection clearly, but it made no sense. For in the reflection, Nangi was beautiful. Beautiful was too weak a word; from what Vessia had learned of humans and their judgments, Nangi was exquisite.

Vessia did not comment on the paradox, but she wondered about it as she brushed Nangi’s hair, helped her with her make-up and costume and endured Nangi’s acerbic commands. Now she understood why Vio wanted this particular bowl. It possessed some magic…but did it create illusions or unveil them? Did the bowl show Nangi as she truly was or only as she wished to be?

The light shattered. Dindi blinked groggily to see Zumo punching and pinching the air as if to pluck the Vision out of the sky.

“Bring it back!” he shouted. “I need to see more!”

She ran. Without looking back, she ran and ran until she was back at the river, back with Jensi.

Today, the maidens sang work songs as they sifted grain. Each maiden held a large, flat basket and tossed the grain in the air over and over. The song was jolly and naughty, about a maiden who borrowed a spear from a warrior to skin a rabbit. There were all sorts of sly innuendos, many of which Dindi didn’t quite understand, but made her blush anyway.

“So I’ve arranged for you to meet with him,” said Jensi, as soon as she saw Dindi, as if they had been in the middle of a conversation. “It’s best if you bring him a gift.
Nothing too obvious.
You don’t want to seem desperate.”

Dindi’s policy was to smile and nod at most of what Jensi said, whether the topic was clear or not, but this sounded alarming.

“Wha…? Gift? For who?”

Jensi rolled her eyes. “Dindi!
Who
else would I be talking about?”

Dindi’s heart hammered. Kavio’s face popped into her mind, but that was ridiculous. So
who
could
Jensi be talking about? Zumo? Surely Jensi didn’t know about the meeting in the woods?

The man in black—the Deathsworn?

“Yodigo, of course!” exclaimed Jensi.
She whapped Dindi on the arm with her threshing basket.
“Gramma Sullana thinks Full Basket clan might agree to a match between you two, if he fancies you. So? Now is the time to put your net in the water if you want to catch him by the time we return home! Fa, let’s decide what you’ll bring him when you meet. A jug shaped like a trout, maybe, or a fur ribbon…. It shouldn’t be obvious that’s it’s a gift, you see, and you won’t tell him you’re giving it to him. But it will be a token that you can leave behind by ‘mistake’ that will remind him of you…”

As Jensi babbled on, Dindi brooded over her encounters in the woods. If the Deathsworn knew of her transgression, their punishment would be awful beyond her imagination. She could imagine what would happen if Zumo denounced her all too well, however. She remembered how the war prisoners had been tormented during the feast, and shuddered.

Yet evening fell, and no one raised a clamor, so she had to assume Zumo had not figured out why she was in the woods. Besides, his reaction to her had been peculiar. It was as if he had been too obsessed protecting his own secrets to worry about hers. And what had he meant that she had “stolen” his Vision?

Did the corncob doll belong to Zumo? Surely that was impossible?

Dindi knew that she should take the hint and cease her stalking of the Tavaedies, cease dancing altogether. She also knew she wouldn’t.

As he often did in whatever quiet moments he could find at the trail’s end of the day, in the privacy of his well-appointed room, Kavio took out his thinking stones. He wasn’t using them to make a decision this time. Instead, he marked them with ochre paint and moved them around the floor, like septs of toy warriors.

This group of stones represented the warriors of Yellow Bear.
That group, the Blue Waters warriors.
Blue waters clans who lived close to the border with Yellow Bear had fled their
clanholds
,
expecting a
raid of retaliation
. He moved stones. Nargano had invited a peace party to come to Blue Waters tribehold. Another set of stones warbled across the floor.
Two piles, set aside for now but still there in the periphery of his vision, stood for the
Morvae
and
Imorvae
of the Rainbow Labyrinth.

He painted several loose stones with both the maze glyph and the sun-and-ladder; these were the Rainbow Labyrinth-born warriors and Initiates here in Yellow Bear. Hertio
still
refused to let Kavio teach the
Rainbow Labyrinth kinborn to fight with the rest of the Yellow Bear warriors—a group of stones held back from the rest.

He tossed them across the
floor,
let them land scattershot in all the other piles, knocking some over. Then he picked them out again and drew them into a tight arrow formation, wedged between the Yellow Bear and Blue Waters rocks.

There were a few rocks that defied an easy fit.
The Gremo rock.
The Rthan rock.
Kavio had traded back the other Blue Waters prisoners as part of the peace offer to Nargano, though not after asking them a few questions. They hadn’t answered the questions he’d asked, but they
had
answered the questions he’d wanted answered.
About kin and memory, about grievance and debt.