They did not see the ambush but passed through the hills to the south of it, and Raeflin nodded at the dim shapes of the blue-black hills and said “They’re waiting for each other on the road.” Her words were muffled by the muslin-swathed head of her costume, and swallowed up by the violent expectancy of the night. She had retrieved her horse from Macbrau’s compound, retrieved her costume from the hidden room in the fallen tree trunk, and had forced Manrie to ride behind her and hold onto her waist as the horse jolted into its gallop. Away from the road, the riding was rough and unpleasant, the horse’s stride uneven and juddering. Manrie’s spine felt like it was coming undone, and she imagined her vertebrae scattering the ground like breadcrumbs and giving away their trail.
But after a few more miles Raeflin turned the horse north and they cantered out of the foothills and back onto the road. Moonlight stretched along it and brought every rock, every small and straggling tree into sharp relief. “You’ll be able to recognize the place?” Raeflin asked again, her voice barely audible over the thudding of hooves on hard packed ground.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Look for the ghosts.”
She could feel Raeflin stiffen, then relax. It gave Manrie a grim sense of defiance. She liked that Raeflin might be frightened of the ghosts.
But when they came through a grove of mimosa trees and saw shimmering figures in the road before them, the bounty hunter didn’t hesitate. The trees were sleeping, their leaflets closed up, and the ghosts turned their faces towards the horse with a stillness and quiet that seemed to want to dampen all sound. But Raeflin spurred the horse towards them, and started to laugh as she did so. There was Aizdha, standing over the place where Manrie’s pack was buried. She looked right into his eyes, and he smiled and stepped aside, just as he had when training her, in order to give her a more generous view of some monster or species of plant that he had been examining. The gesture was so specific, so personal, that Manrie began to cry.
The horse shied away at the last moment and veered to the left, tilting as it ran along an escarpment. Manrie forgot everything for a moment as she clung to Raeflin, who was cursing. The false head and shoulders tipped and then fell from the old woman’s body and went skittering down into the road. A long, dangerous moment as the bounty hunter fought for control, and then the horse was brought back to the road and pulled to a stop. It stood shivering and squealing, and Raeflin bent over its neck, whispering at it, trying to calm it.
Manrie slid off its back and landed on the hard pack of the road. She turned and walked deliberately back towards Aizdha, who had shifted his position and was watching her from the midst of the dead villagers. There was Amurka, named now and no longer simply Praeda’s mother. She gazed at Manrie with the tragic, beseeching look of the recently dead. The spirits of the villagers stepped aside for Manrie and she passed between them. Their presence made her feel as if she was asleep. Not in the natural sleep of dreams and a stilled body, but as if she were a limb that had gone numb, and that was just beginning to tingle painfully back to life. She came up to Aizdha, and he stared at her and beyond her at the same time, as if she were the ghost, and he was viewing some other, more real world through her shimmering form. She looked down at the ground so that she didn’t have to look at him.
“Is it there?” Raeflin asked from outside the circle of spirits.
“How should I know? It’s buried.”
“Well, dig for it.”
“With my hands?”
A sound, and she glanced up to see Raeflin stalking back towards the horse, which she had tethered to a lonely tree. In a moment she was walking back, and Manrie squinted through the darkness to make out the pick axe and shovel that she was carrying in either hand. She seemed reluctant to breach the sphere of dead bystanders, and dropped the tools onto the ground with a loud clang. Manrie glanced at Aizdha, in the old way in which they would share a look to comment on some incident, but she could see no knowledge of their former closeness in his eyes. He was distracted, as he would get when studying some important task. At those moments she would become nothing but a slave to him, of no more significance than his stylus and his jar of ink.
She retrieved the tools and set to digging. The sound of the spade in the hard earth reverberated over the hills, as if it wanted to offend the stillness that the spirits imposed. It didn’t take her long to unearth the strap of the saddle bag, and she got down on her hands and knees and dug around it, scraping the earth from its sides with her fingers, and wishing that the bounty hunter had handed over her gloves.
Raeflin was impatient. “Well?” she called.
“It’s here.”
“My needle is still there?”
Manrie hefted the bag out of the hole and onto the road and undid the ties on its flap. “It’s here. And the bestiary. And the discs.”
“Discs?”
“I took them from the Man on the Mountain.” Manrie stood and slung the saddle bag over her shoulder. Clumps of earth avalanched down from it, smearing her robes. But by the time she got to the edge of the circle of ghosts, her clothing was white again, and shone sharply in the darkness.
Raeflin was watching her with narrowed eyes. She held out a hand. “My needle.”
Manrie gave it to her. As her fingers closed around it, the bounty hunter relaxed. The crow’s feet around her eyes puckered upwards, and for a moment she was just an old woman, pleased by the reception of some present. Then her eyes narrowed. She rubbed a gloved finger along the needle, then sniffed at the fingertip. “It’s greasy.”
“I was using it as a spit. I cooked rabbits on it.”
A fleeting mood of danger, and then Raeflin smiled. “A unique use for it. They were quite dead before you stabbed them through with it?”
“Yes.” Did she imagine that Manrie had delighted in torturing dinner?
The old woman looked up at her, a long, considering gaze that had a strange tinge of threat. Then she sighed. “You are an interesting young woman.” There was a hint of resentment in her voice, as if, by being interesting, Manrie had denied her something. “Well,” Raeflin said, “I could leave you here, but I made a promise. Shall we go and rescue your friends?”
“Yes,” Manrie repeated.
They did not leave the road, but cantered along it in the sharp moonlight, Manrie riding pinion behind the bounty hunter, the saddle bag slapping at her back. After half a mile Manrie glanced back. “The ghosts are following us.”
She felt Raeflin stiffen. The bounty hunter had put her false head and shoulders back on, and her voice was muffled. “Not because of the needle.”
“No. Because of the bestiary, I think.”
“Why would they care about that?”
“Well, Aizdha cares about it.”
“And Aizdha is their leader? Why would the rest of them care about Aizdha?”
“There has to be some reason.”
Raeflin was quiet, deep in thought. They came around a bend in the road and saw a haze of dust rising into the plane of moonlight that slid over the Sand Hills. “We’ll ride through them,” Raeflin said. “Drop the saddle bag when we’re in their midst.”
“Why?”
“Do what you’re told.”
The bounty hunter kicked the horse into a gallop and Manrie saw a handful of men in the road ahead. Some of them were standing with their hands on their knees, as if trying to catch their breaths. She saw a flash of white hair, and Laenrid’s triumphant face turning towards the sound of the horse. He let out a cry, but the horse charged past him. Manrie threw the saddle bag at his feet.
As soon as they were beyond the ambush, the bounty hunter reined the horse in and turned it in the road. Laenrid was facing them, glaring. He was hefting a spear. There were bodies scattered on the road around him and a few surviving men, who were following his lead and brandishing their weapons. “It seems that you were successful,” Raeflin called to Laenrid.
“It seems I have more people to kill tonight,” he called back.
“Look behind you.”
He seemed reluctant to glance back. But then he seemed to sense the onrush of ghosts, and turned just as Amurka led the spirits of the villagers onto the bloodied ground. She seemed elongated as she rushed forward, her mouth stretched, her eyes oddly solidified by intensity. Laenrid screamed. The men around him began to scream. Manrie slid down from the horse but then merely stood in the middle of the road as the animal shied and squealed beside her and Raeflin strove to calm it. The ghosts of Hareramanda seemed to rush into Laenrid, as if his whole body had suddenly become a door that they were passing through. He stood, rigid, convulsing, his back arched, his limbs thrashing out. He screamed and screamed. And then he fell onto the road. Manrie took a step forward, and the horse stepped with her, cautiously, carefully, snorting its distress. She glanced up at Raeflin, but the muslin-shrouded head was facing down the road and she had no sense of the bounty hunter’s reaction.
One of the men with Laenrid took a step forward, as if intending to go to his side, but the body suddenly began to convulse again, and the spirits stepped out from it, one by one, as if they had finished some orderly and necessary task. As they left, Laenrid began weeping. It was an astringent, wet sound, a pathetic, unbelieving howl. Laenrid’s companion took a further step towards him and Laenrid squirmed up onto his knees and faced the man. “Your knife,” he said, and then he screamed it. “Your knife!”
The man was shaking. He fumbled his knife and dropped it in the road. Laenrid scrambled forward for it, his white hair strangely sinuous against the dark road. As if he had become a mist, a vapor. Manrie watched as he seized the knife, brought its point to his neck, and fell forward onto it. His body quivered and went still. His companion screamed. The ghosts didn’t even bother to look. They had returned to the dropped saddle bag, where they stood in a circle around it, as if in expectation.
Raeflin kicked the horse and it moved forward reluctantly. The remainder of Laenrid’s men were running away, scrambling up the uncertain earth of the escarpments on either side of the road. After a few steps the horse stopped and wouldn’t go any further. The muslin clad head turned to stare back at Manrie. “Get the saddlebag.”
“What happened to him?” Manrie asked.
The shoulders couldn’t shrug, but there was the sound of a shrug in Raeflin’s voice. “They rode him.”
“Rode him?”
“What would you call it? I imagine they showed him their pain. The pain that he caused. I hope they left it with him.”
“Look,” Manrie said. There was a new ghost, at the very edge of the crowd of spirits. Laenrid himself, staring down at the saddle bag with the same posture of patient waiting that the rest of them held. “They’ll just accept him?” Manrie asked.
There was something pensive in Raeflin’s tone as she replied. “It is the one great hope. That we may be forgiven, when we’re dead.” Then the bounty hunter shook herself. “I would not want to be him,” she said.
The sun was rising as they returned to Tzurfaera. The ghosts disappeared from the road behind them. “Will they appear in the town tonight?” Manrie asked.
Raeflin seemed impatient with her questions. “Why would I know that? Only there don’t seem to be ghosts in Tzurfaera, although many have died here. Now be silent. I need to confer with Macbrau.”
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She turned the horse to the left as they came onto the street of the little town. The fibers of her muslin mask were picked out by the dawn. Riding behind her, Manrie wanted to pluck it from her shoulders and fling it down into the dirt and expose the bounty hunter’s true identity. In her tiredness and confusion it all seemed like a stupid sham, meant to protect no one. And when they came up to the gate of Macbrau’s compound, and Raeflin called out in the harsh, low-pitched voice of the bounty hunter, Manrie had to stifle a hysterical laugh.
Uku had not returned to his post. There was no guard at all on the gate, and Raeflin’s call didn’t cause any immediate stir within the shacks that lined the base of the cliff. Manrie slid down from the horse and walked forward. She pushed the gate open and went through it. She was too frightened and exhausted to go carefully. The first shack she came to was empty, and so was the next. She glanced back. Raeflin hadn’t moved from the street in front of the gate.
“Praeda!” Manrie called, and her voice echoed off the cliff side. She could feel her heart pounding as she ran to the path that led up the cliffside. She dropped the saddle bag beside the angled hitching post and sprinted forward, coming to the door in front of the first lace hole and pounding on it. She almost collapsed with relief when she heard Liezhae’s voice on the other side.
“Who is it?” Liezhae called, and the baby started to cry.
“Manrie. Is Praeda all right? Let me in.”
A pause. “I’m not supposed to open the door.”
“Is Praeda all right?”
“I’m here,” Praeda called.
“Praeda, are you well?”
“I was sleeping.”
“Liezhae, why can’t you open the door. Where are the men?”
“They’ve gone to attack the Enrieghos. Macbrau led them along the top of the cliff.”
“And he left no guard?”
“What is there to guard?”
“You.”
A pause, as if Liezhae was considering her plight. “The door is strong,” she said.
“You won’t let me in?”
“No one can come in until he comes back.”
“And what if he doesn’t come back?”
A wry laugh. “Macbrau always comes back.”
Wearily, Manrie turned and looked across the valley. She thought she could see people moving along the ridge, although her eyes were red with sleeplessness and her vision swam before her. She and Praeda had been on that ridge only the evening before, and her exhausted mind indulged a brief moment of hallucination, and she felt afraid, imagining that they were still on it, sitting in the grasses, gathering their strength after their flight up the cliffside.
She glanced down. Raeflin was still sitting on the horse in front of the gate. The muslin-clad head was tilted to look at her. Manrie lifted an arm and pointed across the valley. The bounty hunter turned the horse, and it stamped and snorted, its haunches quivering in the morning sunlight. The poor horse must be at the end of its energy, as well.
The figures on the ridge had come to the ladder and started down it. Manrie sat down on the dusty path and watched them moving stealthily down the cliff path. She counted the lace holes. They came to the first one, directly opposite her, and the two guards she had encountered the night before were taken by surprise. She saw them fall, pushed off the trail to tumble down onto the roof of the Enriegho compound, where they lay still. For some reason, she began to cry.
“Manrie, are you still there?” Praeda called through the door.
“I’m here, Praeda.”
“Are you afraid?”
“I’m tired. And hungry.”
“I have porridge, but Liezhae won’t let me open the door.”
“Never mind. I can eat later.”
Macbrau himself was towards the back of his men. His long, weirdly articulated body made him seem insect-like as he moved among them. They had come to the gate and were passing silently through it. The two wagons of Cloedeya’s caravan were to their right, and for a tense moment Manrie feared that they would turn to them, and murder her friends. But they turned to the left, towards the Enriegho’s main house.
A sound from below, and Manrie glanced down to see the horse trotting away, up the long street. She expected the bounty hunter to go to the Enriegho’s gate, but instead Raeflin turned the horse to the right, and rode away, leaving the town. Manrie felt as if she had been dealt a blow. The old woman had broken her promise. But perhaps Macbrau would murder Ahlo Enriegho and release the caravan. Maybe there was no more promise left to keep.
A cry from the Enriegho’s house sounded across the valley, and then a crashing sound, calls, a deep pounding as if someone were hammering the walls. The little town seemed to curl into itself, like a frightened child pretending to be asleep. The two gate guards left their posts and ran for the house. A side panel on one of the caravan wagons flew open, and Melsa emerged, a tiny form in the distance, her distress obvious in the pitch of her shoulders. Manrie’s other friends piled out of the wagons, and Manrie frowned when she saw that Tafaemi and her son were among them. Another exhausted hallucination assailed her. Taeyaho spending the night in Tafaemi’s arms, suckling at her motherly tits. Manrie’s whole body flushed, and she shook her head quickly, trying to clear the vision.
Someone screamed in the house, and then all went silent. The caravaners were still, like frightened animals sensing danger. “The gate is unguarded,” Manrie murmured. “Escape. Come on, Cloedeya. Escape.”
The door of the house flew open, and Ahlo Enriegho stepped into the morning light. He was made tiny by distance, and yet she could sense his triumph, even from her high perch. Uku emerged behind him, and he was holding Macbrau by the scruff of his neck. More men came out into the courtyard. They were dragging bodies behind them. No prisoners, except for the old miner.
Ahlo led his people to the gate and threw it open. Manrie scrambled to her feet. “Praeda,” she called through the door, “I’m going down into the town. Just for a little while. Don’t be afraid.”
“What was that noise?”
“Something is happening, but you’re safe. Don’t be afraid.”
“Manrie, don’t leave me!”
“I’ll be back. I promise.”
She ran down the path and dodged between the shacks. Ahlo was leading his procession to the tea house, and people were coming out onto the porches of the other building or leaning out of the windows. Manrie came to a stop a few paces from the crowd. Her friends were opposite her, unguarded, having followed the Enrieghos out of their gate. Cloedeya’s face wore an expression of horrified curiosity, and Big Praeda was hiding behind him. Tafaemi was clutching at Taeyaho’s arm, a gesture of weak dependency that screamed her uselessness to the world. Her son had stepped forward, to stand beside Ahlo Enriegho.
Ahlo was looking down at his cupped hands. He didn’t raise his voice when he started to speak, but he was loud, his words reverberating off of the cliff sides. “This old man came to kill me. After having killed my brother.”
Macbrau tried to shake loose of Uku’s grip, but failed. “I didn’t kill your brother.”
“Brother, brethren, kin,” the giant muttered.
“I didn’t kill him,” Macbrau insisted. “He came to me. Three days ago. He said that he had looked across the valley from your highest lace hole. He had looked directly into the lace hole opposite, and he had seen the ocean.”
Rue blinked. His shoulders heaved, as if in a sob. But his voice was very calm. “That is a lie.”
“He saw it, Ahlo. He saw your home. The land he was searching for. He asked me to let him climb my path. He asked me to let him go home. Without you.”
“A lie.”
“Without you, Ahlo. He didn’t even think of you.”
“A lie,” Ahlo repeated, in a dead tone.
Macbrau’s head swung about wildly, the burn scar on his forehead like a search light. He was looking for some friend, some ally. He was met by blank or frightened stares. “Son,” he said, settling his gaze on Malekeisae, “you were there. Speak the truth. You were there when I led Rue up the path.”
The boy smirked. “You’ve ignored me ever since that baby was born. He’s your son. I’m not.”
The burn scar sought and found the boy’s mother. “Tafaemi, my love. You know I only sent you down the road to trick Ahlo. To make it seem like Rue had gone running after you.”
“And why would you do that?” Ahlo asked with a kind of deadened curiosity. He found something to scratch at on one of his palms.
“I thought I could use it. The fact that Rue was gone. I thought I could finally have my valley back.”
Ahlo looked up suddenly, and there was an expression of raw rage on his foxy face. “Your valley? For ten years, you made Rue and I slave for you, delving about in the darkness, sleeping in a shack, the cold wind coming through the walls. You called us your sons but you treated us like slaves. You and Liezhae. And if we hadn’t found Old Riman, we’d still be there, wouldn’t we? Sent to delve deep in the lace holes.”
Macbrau blinked, and Manrie was surprised that the burn scar didn’t blink along with his eyes. “You’ve done some delving yourself,” the old man said, as if amazed by Ahlo’s resentment.
“And you continued to benefit. We brought the caravans here, and you lured them to your side. We found gold in the fifth hole, and you knew to mine for it in its opposite. Everything you have, old man, was stolen from me and my brother. And now you’ve stolen Rue.”
“I didn’t. He left you, boy!” It was a harsh, disciplining shout, and Ahlo responded by stepping forward and punching him in the gut. He curved forward, and Uku lifted him and shook him like a rag doll.
“Hang him up,” Ahlo said.
Manrie glanced to the west, in the direction that Raeflin had ridden. She half expected the bounty hunter to come charging back into the town. But sunlight slanted caustically along the road, carving out the ruts and potholes with acid.
Uku had let Macbrau go. There was an expression of disgust on his large face. “I won’t kill. Slay. Dispatch.”
Ahlo snorted his disgust. “You came to my house to kill. To lay in wait for that Laenrid.”
“Him, yes. It’s justice. Magisterial. Righteous. Fair.”
“He’s already dead,” Manrie said, and all eyes turned to her. She stepped forward. “On the road. He died in your ambush.”
Ahlo grimaced. “And my other men?”
“A few of them were there.”
“And you? Why were you there?”
She shrugged. “I was with the bounty hunter.”
A stillness descended over the little town. “It’s true,” one of the Enriegho gate guards said. “I saw them this morning.”
“And where is the bounty hunter now?” Ahlo asked in a quiet, reflective voice that seemed to hide a well of deep violence.
“She rode off,” Manrie said, and then froze, realizing her mistake.
“She?” Manrie said nothing. Ahlo was staring at her from beneath lowered brows. Then he smiled. “The old woman? She’s the bounty hunter? The great terror of the Sand Hills?” When Manrie still didn’t answer he lifted both of his cupped hands and suddenly broke them apart, as if dispelling a nightmare or flinging away a burden. He turned to the gate guard who had spoken. “String him up,” he said again.
They pulled the struggling miner to the tea house’s sign post and heaved him to dangle over the dusty street. Tafaemi turned her head and buried her face in Taeyaho’s shoulder. Malekeisae stared up as his father kicked and struggled, his face full of dreadful interest. Manrie couldn’t watch. She found herself staring into the face of the giant, who was gazing at her with tears in his eyes. He stepped towards her, and she felt the shadow of his protection fall across her. “He’s really dead? The butcher?”
“He was killed by the ghosts of Hareramanda,” she whispered, and saw his eyes widen.
“You saw them? Was my sister among them?”
“I don’t know your sister,” she said gently.
He looked away, at the sunlight clanging off of the rooftops. “She was small. As I am large. Dainty. Delicate. Fine.”
“When did you last see her?”
“When I was a child.”
“Uku, was she a child then as well?”
He lowered his face to her. “You know my name.”
“Yes.”
He took a sudden step forward, and she reared back, afraid. But his two huge arms came around her and he held her gently. “She was a child,” he whispered into her hair. “A lass. A maiden. A damsel.”
“You might not recognize her,” she whispered into his hard and fragrant chest.
“Will I see her?”
“Tonight. Maybe tonight.”
“Because of you?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. And maybe not here. There are no ghosts in Tzurfaera.”
“He is dead,” Ahlo said in a dry, loud voice. Manrie pulled her head away from Uku’s chest and looked at the dangling body. She looked away. Cloedeya was watching her from the crowd, and Big Praeda had taken a step forward, as if to protect her.
“He is dead,” Ahlo repeated. “And I lay claim to his mine and his compound. I lay claim to his people. Do not worry. I will enslave no one. All are free to go. But I ask, first, that you help me search. I must find my brother.”
At the fringe of the crowd, people were turning to face down the road to the west. Ahlo frowned at his loss of their attention, but then turned to look as well. Manrie couldn’t see over the heads of the people. “What is it?” she whispered to Uku.
“A man. On the road. He is injured. Harmed. Wounded.”
Ahlo was stepping forward, his people with him. “Well met, Farahzin.”
A voice answered him. “Ahlo. They’re dead. Macbrau’s people.”
“So is Macbrau. Where is the rest of your party?”
“I’m the only one left. It was the bounty hunter. And the girl. She made the ghosts come.”
Ahlo glanced sharply back, looking for Manrie in the crowd. “Giant, bring her forward.”
“No,” Uku said. “I claim her.”
A small, sharp grin on Ahlo’s foxy face. “You would break her.”
“She’s under my protection. Safeguard. Shelter.”
Ahlo came pacing back to them, and the wounded man followed him through the crowd of his retainers. Manrie studied him from the safety of Uku’s encircling arms. The stubble on his face seemed to want to climb to his eyebrows, and his obsidian hair was very dusty. One of his arms was bandaged all the way to the fingers, and blood was leaking through the cloth in a circle on the back of his left hand.
“Girl,” Ahlo said to her, “is it true?”
“There were ghosts on the road,” she admitted.
“There have been ghosts for months. It’s why the caravans have been less frequent. But did they kill my people?”
“Laenrid killed himself.”
A murmur of disquiet from the crowd. Ahlo stared at her, puzzled. “You have no power over them?”
Manrie felt as if she were balanced on a pinnacle of rock with two deep valleys on either side. She looked across the crowd for Cloedeya, seeking guidance. His mismatched eyes met hers and he gave a little shake of his head. “No,” she said. “I don’t know why they were there.”
“The bounty hunter?”
“Maybe. I don’t know what power she has over them,” Manrie lied.
“We must speak to the bounty hunter,” Ahlo included. “Giant, you will keep this girl here, in Tzurfaera,” He said it with a note of presumed command, but Uku seemed to accept it. Ahlo turned swiftly away. “Now,” he said, “we search Macbrau’s compound. We will find my brother.”