through the larger fields, mud and water splattering until they and the beasts were coated. A pair of young women stood on the raised earth that separated the fields, holding trays with drink and food for the working men; they were chatting and laughing as though they'd no idea what had happened to Candra Crossing not three days' walk away. Seeing the refugees, the young women splashed away into the cover of trees.
Two young men hurried over along the raised berms and confronted the travelers with spears and sour faces. The way they looked Avisha up and down made her shiver, for it wasn't a nice look at all but an ugly one. 'You're not allowed to stop here.'
Nallo placed herself between the armed men and the children. 'We can offer what news we have, of Candra Crossing, in exchange for a meal of rice.'
'We already know about Candra Crossing. You're not the first travelers to come through. So you just move on.'
'The gods will curse you!' Nallo spat on the dirt.
The brawnier of the young men pushed the haft of his spear right up against Nallo's chest. 'Don't threaten us. Take your ugly face and your pretty sister and your little brats and get moving before we make you wish you'd never walked this way. We'll protect ourselves.'
Nallo grabbed Zianna and swung her up onto her hip. 'The gods will judge the worth of your hospitality. Come, children. No need to linger here. It's a gods-cursed place, as they'll soon discover.'
Her stare sent the men back a few steps, and Nallo walked past, not looking to see if Avisha and Jerad were following. Those hostile stares scared Avisha, but she could only walk so fast and keep the washtub balanced on her head, and anyway Jerad was lagging. But he stuck it out, and Nallo — who wasn't as oblivious as she sometimes seemed — called a halt as soon as they discovered a Ladytree on the far side of the village, just off the road. Under its spreading branches they found shelter from the drizzle. In a recently used fire pit, Nallo got sticks smoldering and cooked up two handfuls of rice, not enough to fill their stomachs but enough to cut the ache of hunger.
'I wonder what happened to Keshad and his sister,' Avisha said when the little ones were asleep, wrapped up in the blanket, and she and Nallo lay on the ground sharing the cloak against the damp night air. 'They should have been ahead of us on the road.'
'They've gone off the road. There could be a dozen trails, a hundred, leading through the fields and woods. We should take to the fields, too. If an army marches, it'll be on this road.'
'You said we'd be safer going this way than east on West Track and walking into Sohayil by the Passage.'
'Safer. Not safe. I'll decide in the morning.'
In the morning, Nallo identified a trail that ran more or less parallel to the main path, seen as a berm beyond fields and coppices. Walking on this trail, they spotted clusters of buildings that marked hamlets or villages, but they kept their distance.
That night, they camped under a scrawny Ladytree growing at the edge of a meadow. Its canopy was dying. Bugs ate at them all night, a cloud of annoyance. A nightjar clicked, so that she'd start dropping off to sleep and then startle awake. Late in the night it rained again, dripping through the branches.
By morning, Zianna was sniffling. They slogged through intermittent rains all day, drying out when the sun shone.
By the next morning, Zianna had started to cough. Although Nallo explained that they had not yet begun to climb into the Soha Hills, this was rugged country, sparsely inhabited, and rough walking on a path that sometimes was smooth and easy and sometimes little more than a gouge barely wide enough for one foot. Several times Nallo stopped and, pointing aloft, marked the passage of an eagle high overhead.
After some days they reached the outlying hills and began climbing. As they toiled up the first slope, slick from the rains, Avisha slipped. She lost her hold on the washtub, and it slid downslope and spilled its contents every which way on the wet hillside among trees and scrub.
She scrambled down through thornbush and prickleberry to retrieve their belongings and the precious bag of rice while the others huddled under such cover as the woodland gave them. Her father's cordmaking stand — the one special thing of his she had salvaged from the ruins of the house — had broken in half. The fire had weakened it, and the fall snapped it. Just like her life. She sobbed, holding the pieces. Papa had handled this so gently, and now it was gone. It couldn't be fixed. None of it could be fixed.
'Vish! What are you doing down there?'
Of course Nallo had no idea how sharp her voice sounded.
'Almost got everything,' she called back.
A length of bright orange cloth, not theirs, had gotten stuck among prickleberry. She pushed over to it, careful of thorns. The cloth was stained, wet, torn. Below, tumbled into the bush, lay the corpse of a young woman, freshly killed: blood stained her thighs and belly. She'd been raped and had her abdomen cut open in a jagged line.
'Vish?' Nallo's voice drifted down to her, but she might have been a hundred mey away for all it mattered.
Flies crawled in and out of the gaping mouth. Her fingers had been eaten away, and her eyes were gone, two empty pits. Abruptly, her belly stirred, the skin rippling. A bloody face popped out of the cut. Black eyes stared at Avisha. She shrieked. A small animal darted away into the brush.
'Vish!'
Her throat burned. Her eyes stung. She backed up, tripped, fell rump-first into a tangle of bushes. Her hands brushed a trailing branch of prickleberry, and blood bubbled up on her palm. Scrambling back, she found the washtub. But as she climbed the slope, dragging the washtub behind her, she kept losing her footing and slipping backward. The ghost of that dead woman was trying to drag her into the shadows. Claws bound her ankle, tugging at her. She whimpered, but it was only a vine caught around
her foot. She wrenched the vine loose, and climbed. After an eternity she reached the road. She was scratched, soaked, caked in dirt. Blood dripped from her palm. She wiped her hair out of her eyes.
Nallo wasn't even looking at her. She was staring up at the sky, mouth open, rain washing her face.
A huge eagle swooped low over them. Avisha ducked. Jerad wailed. Zianna hid her face in her hands, sobbing. The creature banked around and, flaring its wings, struggled to a landing in an open space above them, beside the path. It stared at them with eyes as big as plates and a beak large enough to rip open a poor girl's belly so every manner of vermin could crawl in.
'Is that blood on its feathers?' said Nallo. 'Look how it's holding its wing. It's injured.'
'Look at that beak!' sobbed Avisha. 'Those talons! We can't walk past it.'
'Have you ever heard of a reeve's eagle killing a human being?' Nallo picked up Zianna and began walking up the path.
'Nallo! I'm afraid!'
Jerad burst into tears. 'Won't go. It's so big!'
'Stop it, Vish! Look how you've got him blubbing! That bird isn't going to hurt us.'
That bird was staring at them, deciding which was plumpest. 'How can you know?'
'Stop shrieking! Look how it gets your brother and sister scared.'
'C–Can't we just wait until it leaves?'
'No! No! No! No! No!' sobbed Zi.
Nallo set the little girl down roughly. 'We'll stand here in the rain until the cursed bird flies off and we'll all be dead by then anyway.' Abruptly, horrifyingly, Nallo, too, began to cry.
The rain pattered over them as they wept. Avisha's clothes were wet, her feet were cold, and her face was muddy, smeared with dirt. Her hand hurt, and that girl down there was dead and mutilated and abandoned, just like she was going to be. Everything was the worst it could be. She wished Papa was alive because he could have fixed it all but he was dead. Why did Papa have to die? Why did everything go so bad? Why couldn't they just all be at home in their good little house all dry, sitting on
the porch like they always did when the first rains came and watching the wet over the other houses and over the fields and woodland and sipping on the last of the year's rice wine that Papa always held over for the first day of the rains and the promise of a new year? Now there would be a new year without Papa in it, nothing good at all, everything torn and broken and bloody and hopeless.
She kept gulping, trying to stop crying, but the sobs kept bursting out, shaking her whole body. It wasn't fair.
