“We must leave this here,” the woman said, pausing at the root ball of a fallen tree. Manrie and Praeda watched as she grasped the smooth crookedness of a tangled root and pulled open a hidden door, revealing a large opening in the hollow trunk. She placed the muslin head and the wide, stuffed shoulders inside it and closed it softly. The soft leather gloves that she wore weren’t part of her costume, apparently, as she left them on and even pulled them tighter with a small fastidious gesture. Then she turned and winked at them, the moonlight bringing the crow’s feet beside her eyes into stark relief.
“What is it made of?” Manrie asked curiously.
“What is what made of?”
“Your head.” The woman had carried it easily on their trek through the woods, going around the edge of the ravine and coming down the opposite slope. She had strode along with the head under one arm, the shoulders under the other, allowing Manrie and Praeda to ride the horse, and Manrie had looked down at her spiky silver hair with dull, dreamlike amazement.
“I constructed it from the bark of the drifting trees that you sometimes find in the forests by the sea. It’s very light, and it keeps me out of the weather. Like wearing a roof on your head.”
“But why do you wear it?”
She winked again. “I believe you found it intimidating. In general, bounty hunters like their prey to be a little bit intimidated.”
Manrie frowned at the word ‘prey.’ But she said nothing. The woman picked up the horse’s reins and began leading them again, down the final slope before they reached the road. “You are, of course, required to be silent about who I really am. You may call me Raeflin. Never mention the bounty hunter, please. This will not work, if I am exposed.”
“What’s your plan?” Manrie asked her.
“Oh, to stir things up. Fortunately, I’ve been here before. I know the Enrieghos, and I know Macbrau even better, unfortunately. But they’ve never seen me as I really am. They’ve only spoken to me when I’ve been wearing the head.”
They reached the road, and the horse jostled Praeda against Manrie as it stepped onto the beaten dirt. They were where they had been a few hours before, looking into the narrow valley between the cliffs and the dispiriting, shadowy buildings of the town that eked out its existence between the two opposing camps. The woman, Raeflin, led the horse forward. The clip clop of its hooves echoed dully against the cliff sides.
They came up beside the shambling tea house and paused. To their left, a glow of light rose behind the walls of the Enriegho compound and the sound of raucous voices poured over them. Manrie listened carefully, but the sounds were happy, slightly drunken, somewhat delirious. She thought she could make out Tafaemi’s screech of delight, and the high, sweet tones of Taeyaho singing. The two guards were still standing beside the gate. They peered down the wide street at Manrie and Praeda atop the horse, and Manrie realized that Raeflin was deliberately presenting them to the guards, making sure they were seen before she turned the horse to the left, towards Macbrau’s compound. As they went by the tavern, a woman whose robes were hanging off of her shoulders came out and leaned drunkenly against a post to watch them go by.
There was a single guard at the rather spindly gate of Macbrau’s compound. The walls were made of wattled sticks, and seemed like an afterthought. The guard seemed distracted by something. He was quite huge, with a large belly that peeped through the opening in his robes and caught the moonlight on greasy, slightly mangy skin. Manrie could see that he was wearing worn trousers beneath his robes, and that they had holes at the knees. He looked up at her and Praeda and addressed them, instead of Raeflin.
“Who are you?”
Raeflin spoke for them. “We’ve come to speak with Macbrau,” she said in a light, wavering voice. It was so different from the gruff tones she’d used as the bounty hunter that Manrie looked at her sharply, wondering if she had become a different person.
“Speak with. Expatiate. Vocalize. Natter,” the guard said.
“Yes, all of those.”
The guard moved his jaw back and forth in a chewing motion. “Who are you?”
“Just someone with something to say.”
“Eminence. Personage. Big shot.”
“You have a big vocabulary.”
The guard shrugged. “Gives me something to do. To render, or decode, or decipher.”
“Well, may we enter? Or should I say ingress or pass into?”
“Or infiltrate. Or insinuate.”
“I thought that it was sad, how we lose words,” Manrie murmured into the back of Praeda’s head.
Praeda said, “I’m hungry.”
This caught the guard’s attention. He squinted up at her. “Poor little thing,” he said. Then he gave a small huff and stepped aside so that they could go past him.
The Macbrau’s compound occupied a semi-circle in front of the cliff face and was littered with leaning structures, the ground strewn with discarded rope and chain. As Raeflin led the horse through the clutter, people emerged into the doorways of the shacks looked out at them. There was no central house, like in the Enriegho’s compound, and the pathway up the cliff wasn’t guarded by any gate. There was only a hitching post, sunk into the ground at a drunken angle. It was as if Macbrau was afraid of making anything plumb.
Raeflin tied the horse to the post and glanced back at Manrie. “We walk from here,” she said.
“Won’t they wonder how you know the way?”
The old woman shrugged. “People always assume that the whole world understands their living arrangements. Especially people like Macbrau.”
For the second time that evening, Manrie led Praeda up a narrow, steep path, with the cliff on one side and a precarious drop below. When they were high enough to see past the compound’s wall, she glanced across at the rival camp and the lit up cliff behind it. She hadn’t realized that the Enrieghos were neat and well organized. She wouldn’t have realized it, without the comparison to Macbrau and his people.
They came to the first lace hole, and Manrie was surprised to see that there was a door across the opening. Raeflin gave it two sharp knocks, and there was the sound of stirring within. The door opened a crack and a woman’s face peered out at them. A rather beautiful face, raw boned and weathered, with a high forehead and onyx hair. She was holding a baby.
“He’s sleeping,” she said, without asking who they were.
“I wonder what it would take to wake him,” Raeflin said brightly.
“A good reason, I suppose. Are you a good reason?”
“An excellent reason.”
The woman looked at her, then at Manrie and Praeda. “I’ll wake him,” she said, and closed the door.
“Was that Leezie?” Manrie asked. “The one Tafaemi hates?”
“Liezhae,” Raeflin corrected her.
The door opened again, the woman looked out at them, then gestured them inside. It was just like the lace holes on the other side of the valley, large and round, as if a hefty pole had been driven through the rock. Only it had a platform built along its bottom, making a flat floor that was reached by a flight of short steps. There was a fire burning in a brazier, the smoke venting somewhere in the ceiling of the cave, and four poster beds built around it. A man was sitting with his legs dangling off of the side of a mattress. The most striking thing about him was the burn scar on his bald forehead. It created a wide circle above his bushy eyebrows, and it drew the eye, so that it was hard to stay focused on his face. His shoulders were bulbous, his elbows bulging, but his arms were skinny, as if he were a doll made of string, his joints articulated with knots. He had enormous hands, which were resting on his blanket-covered knees. Praeda was scared of him, and hid her face in the skirts of manrie’s robe.
“What is this, then?” he asked in a strangely high voice. It sounded like the chirping of a canary, just before it asphyxiated in the depths of a mine.
“In a few minutes,” Raeflin said, “the Enrieghos will arrive at your gates.”
The man stared at her. The puckered skin of his burn scar seemed to contract slightly in the wavering firelight. “Will they, then? And why would they do that?”
“They want these two girls.”
“Ah.”
“They are part of Cloedeya’s caravan, and they ran away.”
“Why did they need to run away?”
“Ahlo has captured the caravan.”
“Tsk tsk,” the man said. “And he wants a complete set, does he?”
“Complete set?”
“Of cooks. Of caravan people. No tasty morsels for old Macbrau.”
“He wants to know what happened to his brother.”
One of the huge hands lifted and the man scratched his face with a cracked yellow fingernail. “That I know. He’s been bothering me about it all day. But I’m not his brother’s keeper. Not for a long time, now. Not since they broke my heart, those two boys.”
“Tafaemi is there, too. And your son.”
This sparked the first sign of worry in the old man. He glanced at his wife, who was sitting on her own bed, looking down at the sleeping baby in her lap. The curtains of the four poster were half-closed, and her face was in shadow. “Had to send those two away,” he said glumly.
“Could be you thought of making a little trap for Rue. That’s what Ahlo is starting to think.”
The puckered skin of the burn mark swung back towards Raeflin. “You seem to know a lot.”
Raeflin shrugged. “I was traveling with the caravan, too. But I got detained in Hiraherra. Manrie here has told me everything that I need to know.”
Manrie winced at the sound of her name. She had forgotten to tell the bounty hunter that she was called Kumynoe now. She glanced down at Praeda and saw the girl looking up at her, an alarmed expression on her little round face.
Macbrau’s attention shifted to the two girls. “Am I supposed to protect them, then? Not give them back to Ahlo?”
“I’ve already killed two of his men,” Raeflin said.
Macbrau tensed. “Then I should give him you, too.”
“You won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is your chance. Rue is gone, and you know that Ahlo cannot lead in his place. Ahlo likes caves and delving deep, just like you taught him. He isn’t one for haggling with merchant caravans, or commanding men.”
“Friends with Ahlo, are you?”
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
“I was a friend of Old Riman.”
At that name, Liezhae gave a little hiss, and Macbrau gazed across the fire at her with narrowed eyes. “Caravan guard, are you?”
“Until I met Cloedeya.”
“Now you’re a cook?”
Raeflin shrugged. “I hunt. I gather.”
“And you guard. Failed in your duties, somewhat, it seems. But I’ve never met you before, and I’ve seen all the caravans that go through here.”
“I’ve noticed you with Rue and Ahlo, on your trips to Hiraherra,” Raeflin said sarcastically.
The old man stared at her. “You would have, when they were boys. Before they betrayed me.”
“How many years has it been, since they last let you into their company?”
One of the enormous hands reached up to rub the burn mark. As if Macbrau were scratching an old wound. “My chance, eh? Hit ‘em while they’re weak.”
“You won’t have a better one.”
“No? You think Rue will come back?”
“Unless you’ve done something to him.”
Macbrau considered. He glanced again at his wife. “Liezhae,” he said, “go and open up the door. Let’s see if there’s a commotion at the gate.”
She left the baby lying in the blankets, and plodded indifferently across the platform to the stairs leading down to the cave floor. Manrie was looking past the circle of firelight and into the darkness beyond. “You don’t worry about things coming out of the cave?” she asked.
“Built a wall there,” Macbrau said indifferently. “Nice wall, with a good solid door. If something knocks, I might open it.”
“The Enrieghos found a skull, in a hidden cave.”
The burn scar turned slowly towards her. “How do you know that?”
“Everyone knows that,” Raeflin said quickly. “It’s known throughout the Sand Hills.”
The old man scratched his cheek with a split fingernail. “Well, we didn’t find one. Seems the mirror’s a little cracked.”
A gust of air came in when Liezhae opened the door. They could see across the valley from where they were sitting. There was a procession of torches approaching the gates of the compound. Macbrau sighed and stood, the blanket falling from his legs and revealing his nakedness below his grimy shirt. He leered at Manrie, who ignored the burn mark and stared into his eyes.
“Seems I better go meet them,” he said.
“Like that?” Raeflin asked, her voice sounding sweet, curious, inflected with the titter of a shocked old woman.
He pretended to notice his nakedness and gave a little bow, so that his member jiggled. “My apologies to the fine young ladies.”
Robed, and carrying a worn and notched pickaxe, the old man led them down the trail to the gate of the compound. Manrie was surprised that Liezhae and the baby came with them, but understood when she saw Tafaemi among the crowd of Enrieghos. Macbrau’s people had fallen lazily in behind him, picking up cudgels and spears from where they lay discarded on the ground. The scent of alcohol mingled with the reek of their unwashed bodies, and the few children among them seemed just as drunk as the rest. The gate was standing wide open, and the large guard who loved words was standing in the gap, facing the Enrieghos with lowered shoulders.
Ahlo Enriegho stood in the center of his people, his hands cupped in front of him, his face made more triangular by the sharp moonlight. Laenrid was to the left of him, a wad of bandages tied to his wounded shoulder. His white hair seemed to grab the moonlight and settle it against his scalp. He saw Manrie and stared at her with burning eyes.
“Macbrau,” Ahlo said, “I see that you’ve decided to return my guests, at least.”
“I see that you have the Butcher of Hareramanda with you,” Raeflin called. She was standing just behind Macbrau, and Ahlo turned his sharp eyes on her, so he didn’t see the gate guard stiffen. But Manrie, who was standing near to him, heard the man murmur, “butcher, despoiler, destroyer.”
“And who are you?” Ahlo asked respectfully.
“A witness.”
The big guard turned his head and looked at her.
“You weren’t there,” Laenrid spat.
“Not to the act. To the aftermath.”
“Laenrid has told me a strange story,” Ahlo said, ignoring her. “He says that he met the Bounty Hunter at the top of our cliff. He says that he threw a hatchet right into the Bounty Hunter’s head, and it didn’t kill him.”
“I saw that, too,” Manrie said. “After Laenrid tried to kill Little Praeda here. She is the daughter of Amurka, whose husband he murdered.”
“Not her husband,” Laenrid spat. “She was never false to me in that way.”
Ahlo held up a hand. “I ask that you return the two girls to the caravan, that’s all. They won’t come to any harm.”
Macbrau scratched at his cheek. “I will,” he said. The valley went silent. The moonlight seemed to flatten all the faces. “If,” he continued, “you will return to me everything you’ve stolen.”
Ahlo sighed. “What have we stolen?”
“Half my valley. All of the iron and gold and gems that you have extracted from my lace holes. My woman Tafaemi. My son. Yourselves.”
“We were never your slaves.”
“You were my children,” Macbrau spat. “We took you in, when you came wandering, shoeless, out of the lace holes. I taught you how to delve, boy. All your knowledge belongs to me.”
Ahlo looked down into his cupped hands. “And you have taken my brother.”
The old miner grunted a laugh. “Maybe. It is what you keep saying.”
“We will allow no more caravans to turn towards your gate, until Rue is returned to us.”
“Allow?”
Ahlo sighed. “We have more men, Macbrau. Better men.”
“You have butchers and thieves. Your brother had all the brains. And Old Riman is dead. You have nothing.”
There was a long pause. Manrie was aware that the big gate guard was breathing heavily, as if he were drowning. At last Ahlo looked up from his hands. “We shall see,” he said, and turned to lead his people back through the little town.
Macbrau watched them go for a moment, then turned to the big guard. “Bar the gates, Lummox.” He turned to the men who had gathered behind him. “We need twenty of you. Volunteers. Quickly!”
His people seemed eager to fight. Manrie paid little attention to them. She remained fixated on the guard, who closed the gate and lifted a huge bar across it and then stood facing it, as if he could see through the boards to the Enrieghos compound. Macbrau and his people were moving off, receiving orders and running to their tasks. Praeda had buried her face in Manrie’s skirts.
“Is it true?” the huge gate guard asked. “Was that the Butcher?”
Raeflin answered him, stepping to Manrie’s side. “His hair is white because of the spirits that came out of Hareramanda Barrow.”
“Barrow,” the guard said. “Crypt, sepulcher, tomb, grave.” His gaze drifted downwards, to Manrie and Praeda’s white robes.
“It was as terrible as everyone says,” Raeflin told him. “When I rode through, the bodies were still lying in the streets and beside the river. But the spirits were gone.”
“Where did they go?”
No one answered him. But Praeda lifted her face from Manrie’s skirts. “Manrie,” she whispered, “why aren’t there any ghosts here?”
Manrie looked down at her. She glanced at Raeflin, who was inspecting her curiously, her crow’s feet puckered, as if she were amused. “Come, Manrie,” she said. “Bring the little girl. She should sleep.”
But she didn’t lead them back to Macbrau and Liezhae’s cave. Instead she lead them past it, and past the next lace hole, only stopping on a wide ledge in front of the third.
“We’re going to sleep here?” Manrie asked.
“Not sleep. Watch. Although you should sit, and make a pillow of your lap for the little girl.”
“Watch what?”
The old woman grinned at her. “You’ll see.” She sat down on the broken ground and crossed her legs. “This will do. Macbrau has no doubt sent men further up, to keep watch from the highest cave. But we can see enough from here. There, do you see his men slipping out through the secret gate beside the cliff wall? They’re going to make their way down the road and prevent the Enrieghos from creating a blockade. I imagine they’ll make a blockade of their own. And look at the top of the cliff over there,” she said, gesturing with a gloved hand towards the Enriegho side of the valley. “There go Ahlo’s men, creeping up the ladder. They’ll come down from the woods, and no doubt meet Macbrau’s people on the road. But that’s not the real action.”
“What’s the real action?”
“Can you make out the gate below? It is unbarred.”
Manrie squinted. The base of the cliff was a haze of torch smoke. Manrie was surprised that it didn’t set fire to the alcoholic vapors in the air. The gate seemed to be partway open. “Someone is letting the Enrieghos in.”
“No,” Raeflin said. “Someone has gone out.” She jerked her chin up, at the shanty town in the center of the valley. A hulking figure was moving stealthily from shadow to shadow. “Uku.”
“What is Uku?”
“Not what. Who. Our friend the gate guard.”
“You know him?”
The withered lips twitched into something close to a smirk. “I’ve been hunting him. Not much, and not often. But there has been a bounty on him for several moons. He fled Libreigia before you did.”
“What?”
Raeflin glanced at her. “You never met him? Well, I suppose that his days as a slave in the archives were long over by the time you came to Libreigia. He was once one of the boys who sit on the benches in the atriums, and are sent to fetch books and scrolls. And he might have had a happy life working in the towers, if he hadn’t grown so big. But he frightened the scholars, and they sold him to work in the tanneries. Terrible work. Many die from infections, and the stench is awful. I’m not surprised that he ran away.”
“But…but why is he sneaking towards the Enrieghos?”
Raeflin grimaced. “He did what all slaves do, when they manage to escape. He tried to go home, as I discovered when I went to Hareramanda. After you escaped me at Haerahiz’s house in the mountains, I had to guess which direction you would go in. I thought you would go south, to try to fool me, since you had been heading north before you stole the needle. I wanted my needle back, of course. I rode into Hareramanda hoping that the First Families would have some news of you, and found the butchery. But I also found a few survivors. They told me that Uku had been there. They also told me that poor Amurka and her child had survived. And both had gone north. But they had never seen or met you.
“I turned north, and after three nights of hard riding, I saw the ghosts. I recognized some of them, as I’ve passed through Hareramanda many times in my travels. And I surmised that they were following Amurka. But then I found her dead in that meadow. I also found a greasy cloth, woven in a checkered pattern, that I once bought in Ibimendi, and had wrapped my cheese in for many years. And I knew that the little girl must be with you.”
As Raeflin talked, Manrie hugged Praeda closer, until the dozing little girl mumbled a protest. “But you won’t take me back?”
“To Libreigia? No. Slavery is disgusting.” The old woman sighed. Her sharp gaze was still concentrated on the valley below. “It is the saddest thing that has happened, since we came through the Door at Hasra. Slavery was outlawed in the Previous World. It should only be allowed in the most extreme circumstances and even then its use is…a tragedy.” A shadow crossed her face. But then here eyes brightened. “Look. Uku has almost reached the Enriegho’s compound. It seems he can be very sneaky, if he wants to.” She stood up and dusted herself off. “It’s time for me to go.”
“Go? Go where?”
Raeflin gave her a sharp, slightly mocking glance. “Why, to get my needle. You say it’s with the caravan.”
“Yes,” Manrie lied.
“Where will I find it?”
“In the pantry wagon. Will you…will you bring the others back with you? Cloedeya and Melsa and Big Praeda and Taeyaho?”
Raeflin looked away from her. “After I have my needle.”
“Promise.”
The old woman sighed. “Do you think I’d let Ahlo keep them?”
With that enigmatic statement, she turned and began to jog down the trail. Manrie watched her. She felt a tremor pass through her body, and Praeda shifted uneasily in her lap. She flexed her hands. She couldn’t stay here, merely watching, as all of the action happened below. And what would Raeflin do, when she discovered that Manrie had lied? Turn her over to Ahlo? Stand by while Laenrid killed Praeda? There was something about the old woman that she didn’t like. She was like a scholar, pretending to know things that couldn’t possibly be known, lecturing ceaselessly because she liked the sound of her own voice. Scholars had a way of standing to one side when bad things happened, blinking studiously and making notes so that future generations might know of rapes and murders. No, Manrie would not stay on the cliff, as she’d been told to. She was not a scholar, and she was not a mother, and she was not a slave.
She stood, heaving Praeda in her arms and nestling the little girl’s head against her shoulder. Then she went quickly down the path, to knock on Liezhae’s door. When the older woman opened it, Manrie said, “Praeda needs to sleep here. It’s too cold on the cliffside and too dangerous in the shacks below.”
Liezhae wasn’t holding her son, and she seemed oddly shaped without him, as if she were missing a limb. She was old, and she must have looked like this for many years, incomplete and only partially present in the world. She held out her arms for Praeda and Manrie gratefully transferred the child’s weight to her. “And you?” Liezhae asked.
“I can sleep anywhere,” Manrie said blithely, and didn’t wait to see Liezhae’s reaction. She turned and rushed down the trail and through the compound and out of the half-open gate.
The buildings in the ramshackle village were silent, as if the people were asleep. But Manrie had the feeling of being watched as she dodged from shadow to shadow. She knew there were observers high on the cliffs on both sides of the valley, and realized that they would see her regardless of her stealth, their eyes drawn to the sheen of her white robes. So she left the shadows and ran, down the wide street to the gates of the Enriegho Compound.
They were closed, and she looked wildly along the wall, trying to see some other means of entrance. But just as she was about to turn and run along it, the gate opened and Raeflin looked out at her. For a moment the woman’s face was naked, free of dissembling. In that moment Manrie saw a flash of something immeasurably old, and tired, and despairing. But then her expression snapped shut, and the mask of the brisk, competent bounty hunter reasserted herself. She looked at Manrie with an expression of extreme disapproval.
“You lied, and you have abandoned the child.”
“What’s…what’s happening. Where is Uku?”
Raeflin stepped forward, pushing Manrie back into the street. Manrie caught a glimpse of one of the guards, lying in a heap inside the gate. Raeflin saw her looking, and grimaced. “Unfortunate,” she said. She stepped forward again, maneuvering Manrie away from the wall. Then she turned and briskly pulled the gate shut behind her. “Come,” she said, and seized Manrie’s arm to pull her back up the street.
But not back to Macbrau’s compound. They came to the dissolute looking tea house and Raeflin turned Manrie and pushed her up onto the porch, following close behind her. “Sit,” she said, gesturing to a worn chair beside a worn table. She glanced at the darkened doorway that led into the interior and said “tea!” in commanding voice. Someone stirred within.
Raeflin sat down firmly on a chair and then leaned it back, so that the top of her head rested against the wall. She gave Manrie a sidelong glance. “Where is my needle?” she demanded.
“Are the others…are they all right?”
“Yes, of course they are. I asked blue lips, the one who likes to change her name, where your pack was, and she said you buried it.” The gloved hands moved in a short, impatient gesture, stilling Manrie’s reaction. “Not her fault. I woke her, and she wasn’t thinking. She didn’t betray you. But where did you bury it?”
“You said you would free them.”
“I will. Once I have my needle.”
“Why should I believe you?”
Raeflin squinted at her, the wrinkles beside her eyes tightening. “Take stock. You now have hostages in both camps. The caravan with the Enrieghos, the little girl with Macbrau. You’re the only free one left. But what can you do? Are you a fighter, Manrie of Libreigia? Are you a great strategist? Do you know how to manipulate this situation to your advantage? What do you know of Rue and Ahlo? What do you know of Macbrau? I’m your only advantage, and I’m not doing anything until I have my needle.”
“Why is it so important?”
“Never you mind.”
At that moment a girl shambled out with a tea pot and chipped cups on a small tray. Raeflin waited impatiently as she poured the tea, then said, sharply, “leave.” The girl left.
The old woman leaned forward. “Trust is the only coin you have,” she hissed. “You should use it.”