Vault Of Heaven 01 - The Unremembered (66 page)

Farther on, at a fork in the road, Jastail called them to a stop, surveying each direction. Finally, he led them fifty strides from the intersection and asked Penit to build a fire. The boy eagerly took to the task.

“Not concerned about your fellow tradesmen pursuing us anymore?” Wendra asked as Jastail took a seat on a flat rock.

The highwayman smiled. “They’ll wait their chance upon me. For now, they will return to their trading.” He carved a slice of cheese. “When we meet again, they’ll remember what their efforts earned them, and I will be wealthy enough to have them whipped for harboring ill thoughts of me.”

Wendra looked for Penit, who bent gathering sticks near a copse of alder a stone’s throw away. “There’s no mystery in you,” Wendra said, seething. “I have saved your life more than once and for it I must watch the boy learn to trust a salter’s hand. You don’t live to build wealth; the shine of a copper has long since lost its luster for you.”

“Ah, but remember that each time you helped me you also helped yourself.” Jastail took another slice of cheese and looked away with a studious gaze. “The irony is striking, don’t you think, that by helping me you preserve your life, which also helps me? It is true charity, thank you.”

Wendra clenched her teeth and a flush of heat raced through her body. “Keep your thanks to yourself. Do you think I will not find a way to escape—”

“And shatter poor Penit’s illusions,” Jastail interrupted, a wry look upon his face.

“You are a fool to be so confident.”

Still smiling, he said glibly, “And you are a lovely woman far from home whose views of the world and its people are not useful beyond the limits of the most rural town. And maybe not even there.” Jastail scrubbed at his beard and motioned toward the trees and sky. “A different season turns now, and the covenants of the early fathers no longer apply to us, if they ever did. Dear lady, you may be right about my waning desire for coin, and any man is grateful to the hand of his rescuer, but it ends there.” His tone became serious. “A day ago you asked about the book I read. Well, let me tell you, line and verse it opens a spyglass to the farthest reaches of what man is. And where the lens blurs on too distant an object … there, there is where I long to be. To know what I am capable of…”

Jastail looked into the distance, recalling the words from the poem.

The bird that uses wings only to gather insects,

No matter how finely plumed,

Is a meaningless creature.

The horse that uses hardy legs

To but pull a plow through the soil,

Is a meal waiting to be prepared.

What then of man, so noble in reason, fine in particulars, crafty with wit,

Who rests his body and rises again at dawn to weed a furrow,

Draw a mug, or argue over the shifting of a line upon a map?

How lesser is he, to have been endowed with such capability

And yet negotiate each breath to the breeding of yet another man,

Who will but eat and drink and argue until his own rest is come.

Jastail’s smile returned. “So now you have it … the all of me.”

“Bitter words for a poet.”

“The truth always sounds bitter to an unfamiliar ear.” Jastail put his cheese away and pointed at Penit. “It is forgivable in the boy, but you’d do better to understand the poem.”

Wendra regarded Penit for a long moment. “I understand it well enough,” she asserted, still watching Penit. “They are a coward’s words, written with his own grave at the back of his mind. Some men come to nothing because they aspire to nothing.”

“And this is how you value an author?” Jastail said, interest arching his brows.

“No,” she said sharply. “It is pity for one who thinks so little of his own contribution that he must do as the starling and soil his home for those that come after him.” She directed a searching look at Jastail. “Is this really all of you? Are you like the maker of your poem? Perhaps that is why you drag the boy and me toward some hidden destination. You are the starling soiling the nest by killing or corrupting a woman and child.”

Jastail did not reply, but stared at Wendra. She returned his gaze with equal measures of hate and empathy. She did not know if she believed what she had said, but it eased her mind and satisfied her sense of justice to insult him using something he cared about, as Jastail had done to her in using Penit as leverage.

“No words from the apprentice wordsmith,” Wendra finally said. “Your wisest choice in a week’s time.”

Jastail stood and positioned himself between Wendra and Penit, who was now coming back with an armload of dry firewood. “You have a sharp tongue and clever mind, but on the highroads away from the walls of your cozy home, there is an immutable truth. Everything may be bought and sold, and what is not can be taken if you are willing to risk.” The corners of his mouth dropped to the utter look of apathy she hated so much. “For all your clever words, you will do what I say because the risk for you”—he nodded subtly back toward Penit—“is too great. And when our verse is written, dear Anais, you will be a notation writ in small script, and that will be a good deal more than the grave marker will say.”

Wendra opened her mouth to respond, but just then Penit returned. She closed her mouth with a sour smile to cover the comment she’d intended to make. Jastail grinned a mouthful of smiling teeth, and took some of the load from Penit’s arms.

Staggered clouds floated high in an otherwise clear sky turned russet with dusk. Wendra saw to her horse, taking her music box from her satchel and gripping it tightly. She would not play it, for fear Jastail would have something to say about it, but holding it was enough. She heard the tune in her mind and watched the fire-colored sky give way to violet hues as Penit helped Jastail feed the fire. Soon, the crackle of burning wood echoing behind them accompanied their voices like ghosts in the dark beyond the horses.

She wondered if the others would find her, or she them. And if so, would it be in time to escape what Jastail had planned for her and Penit? He used people the way his poets used their words, each stroke carefully placed, each word just the right choice to carry off the intended meaning. Her head ached with the constant effort of sorting things out, tracing her steps since the High Plains and wondering how she came here.

The sound of metal clanking drew her from the dark thoughts. To the east, toward the road, she could see two lanterns swaying with the gentle motion of a large wagon. By turns, the lanterns struck the sides of the cart, causing a dull, tinny
whop
in the night. The slow clopping of hooves came next, and then the sound of song, evenly measured and hummed low in the chest of a large man.

Before she could think, Jastail was beside her. “On the highroads it is unwritten grace to share a man’s fire and offer him a cup of tea. He’ll have seen our fire, and he’s made no secret of his presence on the road. When he comes, remember all that I have said. He may be yet a rougher man than I, and you may be glad of my company. Or he may be more your suit.” Jastail sniffed. “But even if I am taken down, you may be sure I won’t go down alone. And you know where my first strike will go.”

Wendra marveled still at the indifferent timbre in Jastail’s voice. “Would you sooner we die than let us go free?”

“I would sooner you keep your manner as cordial as when we first met in the shadow of the north face,” Jastail said. She could not see his eyes, but he had already affected the charm that had first allayed her fears of him. He wore a different face as easily as a player wore a mask.

The wagon creaked to a stop at the crossroads. “Hail there,” a voice called.

“And you, traveler,” Jastail said in a raised voice. “Come off the road and share our fire.”

Penit left the fire and jumped through the high brush toward the wagon as it turned from the well-worn ruts. As the stranger came, Wendra regarded Jastail’s handsome profile silhouetted against the firelight behind him. She thought how strange—and deviously useful—a face he had, to show apathy in one moment and to be striking in its strength and affected good-nature the next.

The horses’ muzzles emerged from the darkness into the dim glow of the flame, their backs already striped by the glare of the wagon lanterns. Their tack and harnesses jangled and yawed until the driver pulled them to a stop and tied the reins down to the hitch. A tall man with a deep chest hopped spryly to the ground. His buckle gleamed in the flicker of the firelight, but his face remained obscured until he came close. Nearer, Wendra realized the man was Tilatian—one of the dark-skinned peoples out of the east. Some of Ogea’s stories hinted that the Tilatians were Inveterae, once confined to the Bourne; though Ogea thought that particular bit of wisdom to be nothing more than a myth.

And though Wendra had never seen a Tilatian, the real shock came when she realized the man had shaved every last bit of hair from his head and face and wore no tunic; he was not simply Tilatian, and not a man at all, but Ta’Opin—a race within a race, as Ogea would have said. If Tilatians were uncommon, the Ta’Opin were rare, perhaps mythical. The Ta’Opin were rumored to live six generations, and to end their days with a strange madness, such that most took their own lives before the dementia beset them.

The shock of seeing one of the Ta’Opin made Wendra forget Jastail, who strode confidently past her and put out his hand.

“Off of the road when greater light has failed, share our tea.” Jastail said it with a strange rhythm. It carried the sound of a routine greeting.

“And a tale when our tobaccom is lit,” the other replied as if by rote.

They clasped hands, and Wendra wondered if she could communicate her predicament to the man without alerting Jastail. As the two approached the fire, Penit flitting about their legs like a light-fly, Wendra put her box away and joined them.

Jastail produced two tin cups and poured steaming tea into each. He handed one to the traveler. “What name do you carry across the highroads?” Jastail said, settling himself again on his rock.

“Seanbea,” he answered, and sipped his tea. “Thank you for the tidings. Not every fire near the road is the welcome it used to be.”

“Truer words were never spoken,” Jastail said, nodding. He pointed his cup of tea at Penit. “This is Penit, a fine young man I’m escorting to Recityv to run in the Lesher Roon.” He raised his other hand with his open palm up. “I am Jastail. And this is Lani,” he said as Wendra came into the circle near the fire.

The Ta’Opin stood and bowed slightly at the waist. The deferential gesture took Wendra by surprise. It struck her as strange but pleasing to see a wagoneer so far from the trappings of society perform such a simple but genuine acknowledgment. Perhaps he would be just the one to help her and Penit get free of Jastail. She nodded in return and sat on a fallen log next to the boy. She nudged him subtly with her elbow.

“I meant to tell you,” Penit whispered. “Jastail told me about it today. The Lesher Roon is a race with a great prize. And we need to go to Recityv anyway, right?”

Had the boy become so completely blind to the highwayman’s manipulation?

Jastail cleared his throat with the obvious intention of ending their exchange. “Have a seat,” he invited the Ta’Opin. Seanbea sat directly on the ground close to the fire and drank his tea. “You drive your horses late,” Jastail said over his own cup.

“And would have gone on another hour or two if you’d not welcomed me to warm my hands,” Seanbea replied.

“What makes a man brave the roads at night, and without protection?” Jastail said, refreshing his own cup of tea.

“I go myself to Recityv. And my haul is awaited.” Seanbea put his cup out to be refilled, and spoke as Jastail filled it to the brim. “But it is hardly a bounty for the highwayman: music instruments and census records, collected for Descant Cathedral.”

Descant!
Wendra remembered the name from her fevers. She looked away at the wagon; its load had been tied down with thick cords. What accompanying instruments might he be freighting?

The Ta’Opin went on. “The instruments are old, serviceable maybe, but only to the hand that remembers how to play them. Your man around town wouldn’t have any idea how to go about it with any of these. As for the rest, moldy parchments and rotted books, little to interest a thief.”

“Still, to ride alone is risky,” Jastail commented as he settled himself comfortably with his mug.

“Right you are,” the wagoneer agreed. “But an escort would draw attention to my parcels, and really, it isn’t the kind of haul that needs extra riders. Besides, the legends of my people make average men wary, and dull men faint of heart.” He snickered. “And it is my good luck that a smart man rarely takes to the road to earn his fortune.”