Blackdog (75 page)

“You'll be staying here,” she said flatly.

“No.”

“The Blackdog doesn't leave Attalissa.”

“I'm not the Blackdog. I'm…I don't know who, anymore. And she can stand on her own. I'm free of Lissavakail. Do you still want me?”

“Don't ask stupid questions,” she muttered at her feet. “Bikkim's staying. He says he has no right to go to Serakallash; he wasn't there when they needed him, he belongs with Pakdhala, whatever she calls herself, and the Battu'um can choose other chiefs. He says.”

“They burying Immerose and Asmin?”

“Trying to find a cart. There's a lot of dead. Some valley up to the east, that's where they take them.”

“We should go with them.”

“We will. ‘Dhala—Attalissa—is going too. Though not with us. What happened to your Northron friends?”

“They left.”

“Good. I've got merchants to get to Marakand, if they didn't get themselves killed in whatever Jerusha brewed up in Serakallash. I'm shorthanded, but not so desperate I'll hire devils out of old tales.” Shorthanded worse than she knew, Holla realized, as his thoughts ran on Serakallash. Now
he
knew. Tusa was dead, entombed in sand. She had walked into storm seeking an end of pain. Poor Zavel.

He kissed Gaguush, cautiously, and she didn't flinch away.

“You're mine now?” she asked.

“As long as you want me.”

“All my life.”

All her life.

T
here were no single graves. The Valley of the Dead was a meadow, bright with mountain poppies, blue and purple and white. Mounds of stone dotted the slopes, cairns marking more recent deaths. The stony soil did not permit deep digging, but cairns were shifted, stone reused, as bodies, souls long gone, went back to the earth. Old bone, mostly fragments, worked its way to the surface again, feeding the meadow grasses.

The high-wheeled yak-carts came and left their burdens, returning to Lissavakail for more, an unending procession of them. The gravediggers, who seemed at times to be everyone in the valley, scraped shallow pits. Tamghati were heaved in anyhow, stripped of anything of value. Attalissa's folk were laid with more care, shoulder to shoulder in death, as they had stood. Kinsfolk or the priestesses took their weapons and armour. Rocks were shifted from other cairns or hauled down the mountainsides to cover the mud-scars and protect the shallow graves from scavengers. Flowers fell beneath the trampling.

“They don't belong here,” said Gaguush. “They should go to the desert.”

No one contradicted her; they could not carry bodies to the desert. Instead they had brought Immerose and Asmin-Luya partway up a hillside and laid them amid waving grass and scattered stones, debating, lost, foreigners here. Priestesses ignored them, too busy with their own fallen. Everyone was. Gaguush couldn't blame them, but…but she did. The Lissavakailis had died for their goddess, as was right and their duty. Asmin and Immerose had died for their friend, for a cuckoo-child. Wasn't that a greater sacrifice? And where was Attalissa?

The lake-goddess, followed always by a swarm of blue-clad women, moved among the mass graves, blessing, praying, taking farewell of those who had died for her. Even Bikkim had left her. He sat by Asmin-Luya's hacked and half-dismembered, sacking-shrouded corpse, an arm over Zavel's shoulders. Holla-Sayan had told the boy his mother was dead too, down in Serakallash. Gaguush would have waited, waited till they learned the truth by natural means, but maybe she'd have been wrong to do so. What use was false hope?

“Everyone's digging wherever suits them, boss,” said Varro. “We've as much right as the rest of them. Can we build a pyre? There's juniper down along the road.”

“No,” said Gaguush. “Barbarian.”

“You burn me, when my time comes. I want the fire, not the mound.”

“I'll leave you for the jackals, is what I'll do. Go find us something to dig with.”

Holla-Sayan rose to his feet and walked off. He moved like a ghost, a wind, drifting, stalking…she couldn't put a finger on it, but he trailed menace, a lion skirting a herd it did not, for that moment, intend to hunt. Something had changed within him. He was free of service to the goddess, he claimed, but he was still whatever the Blackdog had been, if not something else. Gaguush would not let even her mind shape the thought,
something worse.
But they all felt it. He jerked his chin in a summons and Varro scrambled to catch up.

They were back with spades and two pickaxes before long. The Blackdog could requisition what he would among these people. But he offered her his hand to heave herself wearily up, and he was only Holla-Sayan, tired and battered, leaning his forehead on her shoulder a moment, holding her close. She imagined monsters, that was all.

They dug the grave deep, deeper than the shallow pits down in the valley, taking it in shifts, levering out the stones. The bones of Asmin-Luya and Immerose would never rise to scatter through the grass. Tihmrose wept, silent tears streaking a filthy face. She turned her back, arms clenched tight across her ribs.

Gaguush felt the sudden rising tension in the air, as if a storm rolled down off the mountains, and looked around. Attalissa climbed the hillside to them, alone, the blue-clad guards left behind.

And Holla-Sayan moved away so that the grave was between him and the lake-goddess. That was…different. The pickaxe in his hand looked like a weapon, till he seemed to see it and softly laid it at his feet. That was the storm-weight that had rolled over them.

Attalissa stopped. They all stopped.

Bashra save them, this was Pakdhala, this was Holla's daughter,
her
daughter, as much as she would ever have one, the child he had barely let out of his sight in all too many years. Gaguush made an angry noise, not even a growl, and started forward.

“Brat,” she began. “You took your time—”

“I belong to all of them, as well as to you,” Attalissa said—and it was Attalissa who spoke.

But Bikkim said simply, “You're here now. We knew you would be.”

“I…” Attalissa looked around at them, a long look shared with Holla-Sayan, shook her head, and went to Tihmrose. The storm-weight lifted, or was pushed away, but Holla still kept withdrawn, arms folded, standing back from them all.

The rest all found things to do, pointless tidying of the grave, dusting hands, anything to turn aside and leave Tihmrose some privacy. Gaguush stalked around to Holla-Sayan.

“What?” she demanded in his ear. “You should be the first one shouting that none of this is her fault.”

“But it is. Her choices, long ago…Part of me doesn't like Attalissa very much.” He said the last lightly, jestingly, but she wasn't imagining that hot green-gold flare in his eyes. “It's all right. Holla's—I've—won the argument.”

“What argument?”

He grinned, said nothing, but took her hand.

Attalissa went next to Zavel, and embraced him, kissed his cheek, whispering. He ducked his head, blinking, then clutched her, shaking with a child's sobs. Gaguush looked away again. Tihmrose was gathering poppies, making a garland for her sister. Some hint of weary peace eased her face.

The goddess went around them all: Varro, Thekla, Kapuzeh, Django, Judeh. Private words, private thanks, private leave-takings. Went to all but Bikkim, who returned to smoothing the bottom of the grave, covering it with sweet grass. Apart from them already; his own choice, at least. But maybe they'd all chosen what had got them here, even Holla. Maybe she'd ask him, someday, when she felt very brave and had had a cup too many of unwatered wine.

Attalissa came to Gaguush and Holla-Sayan last.

“Look after my father,” was what she murmured to Gaguush. “You have no idea how alone he is, right now.”

“You think he'll let me?”

“I think you'd better make him let you. Gaguush…” Attalissa stood back, holding her by the elbows, looking her in the eyes. “Gaguush, I've never known a mother. You know that. My mothers were always sent away once the avatar was weaned.”

“Don't get all sentimental now.”

“If not now, when? Let me say it. You were never a mother to me. You were the big sister and the aunt I always needed.” It was Pakdhala's grin of mischief, directed at Gaguush and Holla both. “So there.” A sudden hug, a kiss, another whisper. “Look after him. Make sure he looks after you.”

“Not much left to say, is there?” Holla asked, when Attalissa let Gaguush go once more.

“No.”

“So.” He shrugged. Held out his arms. “’Dhala—”

She flung herself into them, clung to him as Zavel had clung to her, a child seeking comfort, one last time. He kissed the top of her head. Neither spoke, and after a moment he turned her loose and went without a glance back at her to help Judeh and the Stone Desert brothers lay first Asmin-Luya, then Immerose, into the grave they would share.

The goddess dropped the first handfuls of earth, the earth to free the lingering souls. “Be safe on the long road,” she said. And she waited as the grave was filled, and helped the gang to pile the stones into a cairn over it, gaining torn nails and barked knuckles with the rest of them. Pakdhala's hands, Gaguush thought. Attalissa had created this body from nothing, but it had Pakdhala's hands, callused by years handling cord and canvas, by bow and sabre and rein.

A last solemn look around at them all. “Thank you,” the goddess said, and she bowed to them.

Attalissa walked away.

Bikkim went with her.

Gaguush took a deep breath. “Right, then. Let's go find someplace to sleep a while, because you're all staggering-stupid on your feet. And we'll be back here tonight with food and wine and fire, Varro, as big a blaze as you damn well please. And we will drink to Immerose, and Asmin-Luya, and Tusa too. And sing old Doha's songs, and remember all our lost ones. Even Bikkim, who's going to marry and settle down, it looks like, and our girl Pakdhala, because she's not coming back, no more than the rest of them.”

She shepherded them ahead of her, her weary and her wounded, down towards the valley road. Holla-Sayan walked at her side. And it felt…odd, felt as though he were some new-met stranger with all the potential of that first gaze sizzling between them, that his eyes shifted to watch her, that whatever secrets lay behind those hazel depths were all…kept from her, for now, yes, but kept
for
no one else. That eye and thought did not slide away, even unconsciously, to seek Pakdhala.

T
he mountains hulked around them, and the lowering sun was cool. Mists trailed down the valleys, tracing watercourses. Storm nosed over thin grass he did not need to eat, picking out the juiciest blades.

“Leave it for the yaks,” Mikki advised, but the bone-horse took no notice. He sniffed at the skewered fish roasting over the fire. “Supper, wolf.”

“In a moment.”

“In a moment we'll have fish-scented charcoal and all our valiant efforts in the river will be wasted.” When Moth made no move to come to the fire, Mikki took the green willow sticks with the fish threaded on them down himself, carefully, with his teeth and hasty mutterings. “Hot!”

No sympathy. He padded over to watch her. She had thrown the runes once already, after they reclaimed their gear from Sister Orillias, who regretted deeply that they hadn't come to relieve her of Mistress Gaguush's camels into the bargain. This second casting, so far as Mikki could tell, was frustrated bargaining with fate on Moth's part.
Send some other sign…
Not good. Wood didn't last long in the damp summers of Baisirbska. There wouldn't be much to go home to, at this rate. He rested his head on her shoulder, watched as she drew out and set down the carved wooden slips, three rows of three.

Need. Devil. Journey.

Sun. Sword. Journey.

Devil. Water. Speech.

To Mikki, the runes meant little beyond their names and a way of spelling out inscriptions on things, but these did not look like the road back to Baisirbska.

“East?” he guessed. “Marakand?”

“Marakand.”

“Gaguush's gang will be heading to Marakand.”

“Holla-Sayan is nothing to do with us. Let him be a cameleer, for as long as he can pretend he's still human.” She tossed the slips back into their pouch. “Supper, you said?”