Needle Rain (18 page)

“Where to now?” Bull asked.

Milly?

Almost before Heloise finished the thought, Milly piped up,
There!
And her presence flowed outward, reclaiming control of fingers, toes, muscles...and space inside Heloise’s head. Her hand pointed a few degrees to the right.

He guided the horse slowly between the mounds of overgrown plots and the gravestones – some tumbled or leaning dirtward, some upright and draped with garlands or posies of flowers. A few were mere boards of timber with burnt-on writing. At last they came to an unmarked grave. Heloise/Milly slid from the horse, stumbling then crawling the last few feet to the grave.

A jingle and thud behind her, told Heloise that Bull had dismounted. She couldn’t turn to look, or open her mouth to speak, Milly had utter control. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Mother, father? I’m sorry.” Milly choked on the tears. “I’m so sorry I ran! I wish I had-of stayed and helped you. I could’ve... I could’ve...”

A voice seeped in like winter rain, pattering, chilling, flowing where it wished. It washed away Heloise’s sense of her own self.
Milly, Milly, don’t chide yourself. Shush. Oh, child, shush...come to me. We’ve been waiting for you so long. It weren’t your fault. The plague took us, it weren’t your doing. Don’t fear. Come to us.

The flow of entity as Milly left tugged Heloise along with it, she couldn’t free herself, didn’t want to, and for an instant there was the promise of a never-ending void. It beckoned and tantalized, as startling as a splash of color on a blank canvas.

No! No, lady!
Milly had turned and was pushing her back.
Stay there! You cannot come too!

A veil fell upon the world, wrapping Heloise up, keeping her safe. Holding her. Rocking her.

“Heloise! Heloise?”

She opened her eyes and found her head cushioned in someone’s arms. A few obstinate stars sprinkled across the sky. A wash of orange tinted the horizon. The sun. She breathed in deep. Nothing special in the air, just a hint of cut-grass, a few dollops of new-turned earth, a veritable cacophony of late blossoming passacandra, scorched timber, oiled metal, leather, blood, spit, snot, vomit, urine...

She sat up, bolt upright. “Oh, my gods!”

Bull had ducked his head back to avoid a collision. They were his arms. The old drunk’s coat lay crumpled next to her.

“Girl.” He shook his head. “Don’t ever do that again. You were not breathing. I almost had to give you the kiss of life!”

Despite the morning shadows, Heloise was sure he was blushing. She rested her head against his chest. “She’s gone...to her parents. Oh, Bull. It was so sad, and yet, it was right. You know? What she wanted.”

“I know,” he growled. “Don’t ever do that again.” He smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead. “I couldn’t stand losing you.”

Oh, dear. Despite everything, all the muddle of life around her, she realized that soon she would have to tell Bull she didn’t feel that way about him. Though she wished she could. Right now...right now, she was way too tired. She closed her eyes, and fell into sleep.

Herbologist
– a magience practitioner who studies herbs

and masters their use in magience.

*****

Samos sighed. He hadn’t meant what he’d said about scaring the rats. They were in the next room and unlikely to care anyway. It had been a long umpteen minutes of silence and an even longer endless age of hearing
thunk, thunk, thunk
as Joss played try-not-to-stab-your-fingers or mumbely-peg with his pocket knife. So far he’d missed.

“Stop!” He snatched away the knife. “Right, boy, if you know so much, tell me what that bat trinketton up on the main mast is for. Any ideas?”

“I did ask,” Joss said slowly. “Cork said it was for finding ships that you couldn’t see. But...if you can’t see them, they’re not there. Are they?”

Samos shifted his back along the slats of timber, searching for a comfortable spot without a nail head sticking out.

“Hmm. Ships you can’t see?” That would be handy in battle. Or for following those who didn’t want to be followed. But surely it wouldn’t help Tatiana find the Sungese ship since that was days ahead of them.

“Time to see if we’ve caught any rats.”

At the back of the hold, they found the plate of food. Much of the it had been scattered across the floor, though it was difficult to judge whether any had been eaten.

“You go down the outside,” he said, directing Joss to the gap between the hull and the cargo. Meanwhile, he searched every other nook and cranny, lifting up the heavier crates, listening for odd noises. They found only two rats. One of them stiff and dead; the other flopped in Samos’s hands. Not taking tails into account, both were almost as long as his forearm.

“Wow,” said Joss. “I’ve seen dogs smaller than this.”

“Hmm. It proves the cook did poison my food.” He laid the sleeping rodent back on the floor and poked the carcass of the dead one. “This one bothers me more.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s dead! I was supposed to eat that stuff.”

“Yes, but...” Joss clammed his mouth shut. Looking as if he had something to say but was unsure of its reception.

“What? I’ll not bite you, Joss. I’m not that sort.”

“Uh.” He screwed his foot nervously back and forth in a half-circle. “That one, the dead one – it had a bad heart. That’s why it died after it ate the food.”

Samos stared from the rat to Joss and back again. It was very dead. Even a good bio-energeer would have a hard time getting any worthwhile data out of the rat’s body. The thought led to another thought and that led to a startling idea. Lips pressed tight, Samos studied Joss. But a very, very good bio-energeer, and he’d heard of a few through the army’s gossip channels, a very few, could read a dead body, tell you what the corpse had died of, what the person had in their stomach and who knew what else. One in a thousand could do that.

What he needed was some sort of test.

“Hold this for me.” Samos scooped up the sleepy rat and gave it to him. “Now, think hard, can you tell me anything about this one?”

Joss shrugged. “Not really.”

“Sure of that?”

“Um. It’s got gut worms?”

That could be a guess. Most everything had worms at one time or another. Wait, he was using the wrong animal. “What about me. What can you tell me?” He’d been speared once, by an irate drunken soldier who’d thought he was the one doing his girlfriend. He wasn’t doing her, though the man had been close to right. He’d thought about it a lot.

“No. Can’t look inside you. The needles.” Joss pointed. “They make it hard to see.”

“Then, you can see inside?” He ran a hand through his hair and scuffled it round. Last try. “What about Tatiana?”

Silence. The boy half-closed his eyes, looked at the ceiling and revolved his neck as if the thought had unearthed some deep seam.

“Her. The pretty lady? She’s got a heart problem too. Sort of. It was there but it’s gone. What’s there now I can’t see into – like your needles.”

“Uh-huh. That’s it?”

“Mmm, ’cept that her body needs something. I felt that real strong, and if she don’t get it, she’ll die.”

Samos swallowed. Damn. Die?

“Maybe you could ask her what it is? I’d hate it if she died. She’s been nice to me.”

“Yeah. She’s like that, isn’t she?” Asking her was
exactly
what he should do, but how could he? Getting close to her was as healthy as patting a snake. He didn’t need any freaky compulsion to have sex, no matter how pretty she was. And for all his plans to avoid being an Immolator, he’d ended up worse than he’d started with. Years of his life had slipped away by now.

He curled both fists. The jade pendant dug into his palm. If she died, he imagined this ship would turn straight around and head back to port. With his luck, they’d even pin her death on him. He had to find out more, and the only one who held the answers was Tatiana.

Up on deck, Teo was training with a number of the off-duty crew. Though the crew eyed Samos with their dubious hostility, Teo spun to a stop, stood back from his three opponents, and beckoned Samos over. He was bare-chested and clad in only black hose. The gold needle heads on his chest and arms sparked with sunlight. Off to one side, his gray Immolator tunic and bandolier of bronze-handled knives sat in a heap.

“Fight?” Teo growled, raising his eyebrows. Arms hanging loose, he shook out his long fingers, and his blond dreadlocks writhed.

“No thanks,” Samos said languidly and raised the rat he carried in his hands to eye level. “Got things to do.” That really made Teo’s eyebrows pop up. Samos grinned and walked on, knowing they were all staring at his back. It was fully twenty seconds before the slap and boot-thudding-on-timber sounds of sparring returned.

Joss jogged alongside. “Where are we going, Samos?”

“My bunk.” He thought on the location of his bed. Not with the rest of the crew, not in some makeshift jail where they might watch his comings and goings. No, he had a cabin within yards of Tatiana’s. Cautiously, he probed his mind for signs of the compulsion. Nothing. But smell...his nostrils widened. Ah, there was something tantalizing. Like a perfumed scarf trailed across his skin, soft and sweet. He shook himself.

“If you’re plannin’ on keeping the rat, don’t you need a cage, sir?”

He blinked, glanced down at Joss. The stay on the ship was doing him some good. His hair, once a greasy mud-colored mat, though still mud-colored, now shone and shifted in the breeze. “A cage?” He stopped. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Have you got one?”

“No.” He couldn’t recall seeing anything like a cage down in the hold, and although there might be something useful somewhere on this ship, with all its convoluted passageways, the crew wasn’t going to help him. “I’ll think of something.”

The sight of his bunk, with sheets and thin blanket pulled up neat, poured potent lead into his eyelids and limbs. One tiny salt-crusted porthole looked out onto the gangway. He yawned.

“Close the door, Joss. Here, hold the rat.” Still fast asleep, the creature slid limply into Joss’s cradled arms. Its gray pelt was thick and soft, almost inviting pats, its protruding front incisors strong and white. “You ever had a pet, Joss?”

“No, sir.”

“Help me look for holes.” If he couldn’t get a cage straight away, he’d try letting it loose.

Where the ceiling met the wall there was a gap and he sent Joss away to find timber and nails, figuring the ship’s carpenter would be more likely to donate such things if Joss asked. By the time Joss returned with a chunk of timber, a hammer and nails, the rat was stirring. It lifted its head, peered about blearily then flopped back down.

“Thanks, Joss.” He eyed the timber. A foot of planed pine, it would do. “Would you like to sleep here?”

Joss shifted from one foot to the other, studied the rat, then looked up again. “Here? You’re planning on letting her loose, aren’t, you?”

“Yep.” Damn, it was a she. He’d not seen that. “The rat won’t do more than nibble a bit, as long as we keep it fed.” He hoped. “Oh, and we might get a few droppings, some smell.” Surely the boy had seen worse at the docks.

“Uh-h. No. I’d rather stay with the men.”

“I’ll sling a hammock for you? You’d be off the floor.” Another set of eyes and ears in the cabin wouldn’t hurt. Might even deter Tatiana.

Joss licked his lips. Screwed his foot around on the floor. “Um. Maybe. I guess. Thank you.”

The nails were long. Samos jingled them in his palm, made a decision. “I’ve been up all night so I’m taking a nap now. I’ll be nailing the door shut.”

Joss opted to go on a search for a spare hammock while he slept. With the nails in the door, the rat tucked underneath the bed, and a saucer of water and a stale stump of bread he’d found placed on the floor, Samos sighed and rolled into bed. Sleep came swiftly.

He woke to the rhythmic creak of the ship’s timbers, the crash of waves, and the sway of the trink light above him. Someone banged on the door. A small warm weight scampered across his stomach and onto the floor.

“Samos?”

Joss was at the door.

He found the hammer and yanked out all nine nails to the squeal of protesting timber. Easy. He’d left an inch of each nail sticking out.

When he opened the door Joss was doing his jig from foot to foot. “Miss Tatiana wants to see you.”

Miss? The title seemed incongruous, like calling a bloodsucking bat, sweetie pie or something. “She does?” He peered along the bare timber walkway between his cabin and the railing. “Where?” Above, the sky glowered, crowded with dark clouds. A distant storm grumbled.

“At the stern.”

This was her ship and he couldn’t avoid her if she wanted to see him. Not forever. But that didn’t mean he had to make it easy.

On the forecastle, just forward of an anchor chain, was a flat area around two gheist multi-guns. Fan-shaped, four barrels apiece, the guns were possibly meant to repel a swarm of boarders, or sweep the ship’s deck clear of combatants in one deadly blast. With no battle imminent the only crewman nearby was occupied with scouring the deck timber with a holystone to keep the timbers healthy and salt-free.

He’d been neglecting his true purpose lately. Samos knelt on a dry patch of deck, bowed his head for a while, composing his mind until the words were clear.

He said them out loud. It seemed to mean more that way. “Pela. Each day, from now on, I’m going to send these words to you. You may not hear them, but somehow I believe that you will feel them. I’ve done a bad thing and I intend to correct that. You are my true love and I can think of no better thing than to strive for the rest of my life to deserve you. I will never forget you, or our child that you carry.”

He stared at the jade pendant tied to the middle of his left palm. No longer merely a piece of jewelry, it had become a potent symbol of their love and in some esoteric way, it helped him to block the waves of lust that rolled out from Tatiana.

Footsteps came, light, precise ones, the tap of those so well-remembered boots.

He turned his head.

Even from six or seven yards away, the arch of her body as she leaned back against the rail, her breasts outlined by cloth, the shift of buttock and thigh as she crossed her ankles – it was enough to make the memories of the day before surge to the surface. Raw, sensual, commanding. He froze. Dragged in a few ragged breaths. A mistake. There was that enticing, come-take-me-to-bed scent again.

“Stay there!” Shakily, he put his hand out – the left one – not that he’d done that deliberately.

A swell of coolness spread from the pendant through hand, wrist, and arm to the rest of him. Thoughts cleared. He could control this. He chuckled and climbed to his feet, felt the bones in his backbone click as he stretched and shifted the bulk of his muscles.

“I have your measure, Tatiana.”

“Do you?” she said, voice smooth as whipped cream. Then the enticing arrangement of her body was spoiled as she whipped out a handkerchief and coughed into her hand. The racking, moist coughs doubled her over for at least a minute.

Samos folded his arms. He was not going to budge. Whatever afflicted her was not his doing. Yet he couldn’t help wondering. What she’d told him so far, didn’t fit together in some way.