Scarlet and the White Wolf [01] - Scarlet and the White Wolf (20 page)

Scarlet, you ninny, what are you thinking?

His mouth twitched into a little smile. It was Linhona's voice in his head, not his own, and he was oddly comforted by it. He knew they would always be with him.

"Feeling better?"

He did not, really. Liall had risen and was scrounging in Peysho's supplies. There was no sign of Peysho or Kio.

"Yes, thank you," he replied automatically.

Liall stopped his rummaging long enough to throw him a curious glance. "Are you always so polite?"

He thought for a moment. "No."

Liall resumed his search. "Good. We stand on short ceremony here and we like to be quick about things. Manners take the long way around everything."

"That explains why Kasiri don't have any." He could have bit his tongue, but the look Liall gave him was one of amusement.

"Now
that
is the red-coat I know. Ah, here we go. Che."

Liall held up a small linen bag and pulled its drawstrings open, then stuck his nose inside and sniffed. "Real southern blend, too. Peysho always has the best." He began to sprinkle some of the curled green leaves into the kettle.

"Won't he mind if—"

"Who, Peysho? Anything I have is his, and anything he has is mine, save for Kio."

"Is that the Kasiri creed?"

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Liall gave a huff of laughter. "No, but it is the creed between comrades, and we are that."

Something else Liall said nagged him. "You said Kio ...

does he own Kio?" He was apprehensive, remembering the boys in the slave market.

"Not at all, though there is a proprietary line there that only a very unwise man would cross." Liall poured the che and handed him a delicate enameled cup that had a chasing of green leaves around its white rim.

He sipped experimentally, and the taste of the che drove all further questions from his mind. It was green che, the same kind in Scaja's house, yet this had a subtle flavor and a mellowness he had never tasted before, without any of the bitterness that Byzantur che usually carried. There was also a hint of scent about it, like a delicate dusting of roses.

Liall took in Scarlet's widened eyes and startled expression. He smiled. "Good?"

"It's the best I've ever had," Scarlet said honestly, the incredible scent and fragile flavor lingering on his tongue and in his nose. "I didn't even know they could make something so wonderful." Then he felt awful. How could he be enjoying che when Scaja and Linhona were dead?

Liall sipped his che noisily, as Scarlet had seen other Kasiri do. "The world is bigger than any man can know in a dozen lifetimes, red-coat, and you have seen only a small part of it, no more than a thimble of sand on a broad beach."

The yurt flap opened and Peysho stood looking in. He nodded at Liall deferentially and then fixed his fearsome gaze 176

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on Scarlet. His gravelly voice was gentle. "Yer sister wants ye, lad. Better come."

* * * *

To avoid going through the center of the camp and endure again the curious stares of the Kasiri, Scarlet took the longer route that skirted the outside of the wagons. The wagons were nearest the edges of the promontory where the land fell away steeply on all sides into the mountain. In his haste, Scarlet nearly tripped on a jutting rock and Liall caught him and steadied him on his feet.

"Byzan fool!" Liall's hands gripped his arms tightly, and Scarlet got the distinct impression the atya wanted to shake him for his carelessness. "Be more careful!"

"Annaya—"

"Is safe. Peysho would have said so if she were not. We have plenty of time. Slow down and keep your wits about you. There are cliffs all around here."

"I've been walking for a goodly time now," he retorted.

Still, he slowed down.

They came to the yurt and Scarlet found he was strangely frozen, unable to mount the steps to go inside. Liall pushed on Scarlet's shoulder to urge him, and Scarlet went forward in a rush, only to freeze again when he pulled the flap open.

Annaya was huddled into a young man's arms, sobbing loudly. It took Scarlet a few moments to recognize him.

"Shansi?" he breathed. His feet carried him into the smoky interior, where he sank to his knees. "Oh, Deva, we thought you were done for."

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"So did I," Shansi croaked, looking up at Scarlet from the dark tangle of Annaya's hair. His voice was coarse as winter winds, aged as an old man's, and his torn clothes were filthy with mud and ash. "I was down in Jerivet's new cellar near the village gate, fixing his side door against robbers ... you remember how he was feared of robbers, Scarlet? I never heard the Aralyrin come riding in, and only when they came for the stores did I spy 'em. I realized what was happening, because they could have never gotten by old Jerivet without him raising the alarm. I tried to get past them, wanting to get to my uncle, but one of the bastards hit me with his club."

Scarlet saw the wide gash on Shansi's forehead, healed a day or so, and his gut twisted in sympathy. Poor Jerivet, and poor Shansi, too: alone, underground, cornered.

"I don't remember much after that. Just darkness and the smell of smoke," Shansi said. His voice faltered but he forged ahead, and Scarlet realized that the words had been trapped inside Shansi since Lysia burned, and now they must come out, the poison must be drained. He settled back to listen, every bit as shaken as Shansi.

"The bastard must have rattled my brain for me, for when I woke up I didn't know where I was or what had happened.

The cellar was empty. After they thought they killed me, they took everything and fired the building above me. The roof collapsed and that must have saved my life. It was pure luck I'd pulled away some of the side door built into the hill to repair it the day before, else I'd have had no air and be dead, too, like my uncle is."

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"I'm sorry," Scarlet told him. He swallowed hard. Shansi had come to Lysia to become a blacksmith and instead had seen a massacre. At least he still had his parents, safely tucked away in Nantua. "We lost both Scaja and Linhona."

Shansi gave him a look of deep sympathy. "So Annaya has said. I'm so sorry. They would have been my family, too."

He took a deep breath, willing back tears. He had cried enough. "How did you get out?" He settled down closer to Annaya to hear the rest of Shansi's story, his heart thumping rapidly. Shansi's face had brought everything back to him: his first sight of the village, the smoke and ash rising from the pyre of bodies, his home, and somewhere underneath, Scaja and Linhona...

Scarlet shook his head to banish the images, trying to focus on Shansi's voice.

"I dug my way out," Shansi said, his hands combing through Annaya's hair. She had quieted and was holding on to him like he was a treasure returned to her, which Scarlet supposed he was. The smith's fingers were black with soot and earth and there were patches of raw flesh showing through.

Shansi saw the direction of his gaze. "Some of the timbers were still smoldering," he explained. "I lost a few fingernails, but I knew if I didn't get out right then, that cellar was going to be my tomb. The first place I looked was the smithy, but there was nowt left but ashes and bricks, so I went by your dad's place on Wainwright's Lane." He paused for a moment.

"Ah, Scarlet..."

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"I'm glad Deva saved you," Scarlet said bravely. "Annaya, at least, has someone returned to her."

"Deva saved all three of us, it seems."

"That wasn't Deva," Annaya said, stirring. She wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands. "That was Liall, the Wolf."

Shansi blinked. "But ... you mean he was telling the truth?

I thought it was some bandit's boast, saying he had rescued you."

"That much is true," Annaya interjected when Scarlet would have spoken. She gave her brother an unblinking stare.

"He did save me, him and the Morturii with the red eye."

"Peysho," he informed her. "And Kio and a few more, from what I hear."

"Scarlet, we're in their debt now," Annaya said, amazing him. Just yesterday, he had doubted her will to survive, yet now her strength had returned along with her sense of Hilurin honor. Her voice shook and she needed a bath and a long sleep, but she was again in command of herself.

"I know that," Scarlet said reluctantly. He owed Liall a life twice over, but he no longer had any way to pay him, now that he had Annaya to take care of. "But how can we—"

"We honor our debts," Annaya went on. She turned and hugged Shansi fiercely, unaware of how he winced in pain and his shredded hands fluttered on her shoulders. "Oh Deva, to think I almost ... but no, you're both alive, and we won't talk about that now. As long as there's life, there's hope."

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Scarlet was highly unsettled. "I'll pay our debts, Annaya, even if he is a Kasiri," he promised. "If Scaja and Linhona were here, they'd be grateful even to a demon for saving us."

She smiled before she began to weep again, holding on to her young love.

* * * *

Liall was waiting for him outside the yurt. Scarlet descended the short steps and faced west, filling his lungs with damp, chilly air. An early afternoon storm was gathering to the north, pushing a wave of steel-gray clouds before it.

"You heard?"

"Not everything. I am pleased that your sister again wishes to live."

"More than that," he admitted. "She's reborn."

"It is good, Scarlet."

"I owe that to you," Scarlet said slowly, thinking it over. It was true enough. No matter how much he disliked this bandit, he owed him a great debt.

"I did not save the young man," Liall reminded him. "That was his doing."

"But you saved Annaya, and you saved me from Cadan."

"Only because I was there," Liall disagreed. "I could just as easily have been twenty leagues away."

"But you weren't," Scarlet persisted. "Deva put you there, and so Deva places the debt on me."

Liall tilted his head to look down on Scarlet. His tone turned subtly mocking. "Ah, so it was the will of your gods.

Why thank me at all, then?"

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"Because you had a choice," Scarlet returned plainly. He was unaccountably annoyed with Liall's logic. "You could've turned away, but you chose to help.
You
did. The gods had nothing to do with that part of it."

Liall grunted, eyeing him skeptically. "I do not believe in gods. If they exist at all, they do not answer
my
prayers, so what good are they?" He spat over the edge of the platform.

"I piss on all of them."

This was such blasphemy that Scarlet gaped in shock. "You should not say such things," he whispered, scandalized.

Liall laughed and the skin around his eyes crinkled in merriment. For a moment, Scarlet was angry. Liall put his hand heavily on Scarlet's shoulder.

"Your goddess Deva commands you to remain chaste and to do good in the world, to be charitable to strangers, generous to travelers, kind to children, and respectful of all beasts, yet she fills her world with cutthroats and slavers and rapists and foulness of every sort. She looks on and does nothing while you Hilurin are beset on all sides by animals.

Om-Ret converts more and more followers in Morturii and even Byzantur, and meanwhile you and your kind, faithful worshippers of Deva, are a pitiful minority slowly being swallowed alive by the world." He removed his hand. "No, boy, I fear no god's revenge. I am far more afraid of the cruelty of men."

Liall's words were like whips cutting into his wavering faith.

"Still," he muttered, "I owe you a life debt and I will pay it somehow, on my honor."

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Liall shrugged and looked at the sky, squinting as he assayed the clouds. "Honor does not concern an atya, only sky and wind and keeping his krait fed and an open road in front of them. You have nothing now, either way."

"One does not pay such a debt in coin alone," Scarlet said primly. "There is also service."

"Service?" Liall's pale eyebrows rose and his interest returned. "Do you wish to be my servant? To wait on me like Peysho's women, fetching and carrying my food and laundry.

Is that it?"

"No!" he snapped. Gods, was the man totally ignorant?

"Then you will have to demonstrate this odd notion of service to me. I have no doubt it will be interesting." Liall turned suddenly sober. "But now, I have something to show you. Come with me."

Liall strode off, expecting to be obeyed, and Scarlet had no choice but to follow. They walked quickly through the camp with many eyes on them, but Liall spoke to no one. Scarlet saw that they were headed toward the atya's red platform, and his boots slowed. Liall ascended the short steps and looked back over his shoulder to see Scarlet still on the ground.

"Are you coming?"

Scarlet did not want to follow him inside. Sleeping in Peysho's yurt was one matter, being alone with Liall was quite another. Yet, as he was in the man's debt, he did not wish to offend. Liall looked at him steadily for a long moment, then opened the flap and ducked inside his yurt, leaving him to follow or not as he chose.

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Feeling the eyes of several curious Kasiri on him, Scarlet went haltingly up the stairs and into the yurt. Liall was standing by the small, smoking brazier. A large, hinged box rested on a table beside him, and Liall had his hand on it. The box was painted in many colors and had a crimson vine crowned by a white flower inscribed on the lid, the Byzan symbol of the Flower Prince.