'Not as a kinless orphan, Aunt. He's done nothing wrong.'
'His family is dead, and he survived. That is enough wrong for one person. We should never have taken him in. A demon's child can have a handsome face as easily as an ugly one.' Her eyes were stones, the line of her mouth a closed tent. 'Take some milk to your mother.'
Her mother was awake, but only semiconscious, too weak to sit up but able to swallow milk spooned into her mouth. Her eyes were the same intense blue as Kirya's, and with these she gazed at her daughter, her only way of communicating since she could not speak. Such torment. Such trouble.
Kirya said, 'It seems we'll be moving on, Mother. Don't worry, I'll be with you always.'
Gently, she turned her to the other side, arranged the pillows around her, took away the pad of soft grass that caught her urine
and loose feces and replaced it with another. The smell wasn't too bad; she was used to it. Maybe if her mother could talk, she would ask to be left behind on the grass, to die in the proper manner, but the illness had taken her voice as suddenly as her ability to walk, and in the eyes of the gods to abandon her without her consent was no different from murder.
Anyway, Kirya did not want to lose her. 'Kontas,' she said, calling to her brother. 'Pack our things, and sit by mother. Sing to her, will you? She likes your voice. Mine is such a croak!' She made frog sounds, and that got him to smile a little, but his serious face troubled her as she went out to help Uncle Olig with his gear.
'What did we do wrong, Uncle?' she asked in a low voice as she bound a dozen green staves and placed the bundle in the wagon. 'It doesn't seem right that Orphan is punished for it.'
'His eyes are demon eyes,' said uncle, but no force animated the words. Like all of them, he was too sick at heart to fight Aunt's proclamation. They could not confront the Singer. They had no choice but to leave.
As twilight settled over the grass, Kirya slipped away to a tangle of late-season wildflowers that the sheep hadn't trampled. She plucked a handful of pinks and whites, humble flowers, nothing special, just like her.
Sometimes your position is so bad that the worst thing you thought you could do no longer seems bad at all. Clutching the flowers, she went in search of Orphan. He'd had his talk with Aunt and been given his sad bundle and banished from camp, but he hadn't gone far. He'd hunkered down within sight of their tents.
He saw her coming but did not move or speak. She sank down on her haunches beside him, slung her quiver off to one side, and offered him the flowers.
Ei!
He swayed back, visibly startled. He did not open his clenched hands.
'It's rude not to take them,' she said, not sure whether to grin or to slap him.
He stared at the flowers. 'You don't want me,' he said in his hoarse voice.
'Aunt forbade me, not in so many words, but you know how she is. But I've changed my mind about obeying her. It's my Flower Night. The gods say I can choose who I want. Now are you going to take them?'
As though they were precious, he took them from her. He brought them to his face, inhaled their scent. Then grinned, twisting a finger into the tangle and pulling out a green stalk with triple-pointed leaves. 'These sour-root leaves are edible. Did you know that? Orphan's food.' He sank back onto the ground, one leg crossed before him and the other with knee up so he could prop an elbow on it. He plucked the leaves, chewed several, and touched the rest to her lips. 'I've been teaching the children to recognize which plants they can eat.'
The idea of Kontas eating ground-digger's food made her flush with shame. 'Like we're no better than-?'
'They're sweet.'
His hands were warm, and his smile warmer. She parted her lips and licked at the leaves. The leaves had a snap, but a sweet aftertaste that lingered in her mouth. He chuckled. She leaned toward him, brushed his cheek with her own. She blew softly at his ear, and he cupped her neck in his hand and pulled her closer.
'I'm only an orphan.' With her head turned, and his lips pressed close to her ear, she could not see his expression. 'I'm not worthy of your Flower Night.'
The twilight darkened, brushed by rose like fire along the western horizon. To the east, fires burned where the encampment sprawled, a place they were no longer welcome. Exiles all. Yet maybe none of that mattered. They had good green staves for new bows that could be traded; twin female lambs as well as not one lamb lost to wolves or mouth fever; Feder's precious kur, on which he could sing for favor from the gods.
'Who is worthy?' she said to the heavens. 'We'll follow the gar-deer. We'll ride to new pastures, somewhere they don't know the Singer who cursed us. You'll follow, and in a month or two Aunt will relent and let you back. Things will get better.'
She lay down in the grass and he lay beside her, and as she caressed him and he caressed her, the drumming of her heart quickened and the blood thrummed in her ears like galloping hooves. She
unfastened the loops on his tunic and slid her hands beneath, tracing his muscled chest and smooth back. The small noises he made as she stroked him made her crazy; she could could not hear or see anything, nothing but the presence of him pressed close against her and the warmth that spread through her body. She fumbled with the loops on her own tunic.
His hands gripped hers, crushing her fingers. She grunted with pain. He bent close.
'Listen.'
That drumming was not her heart.
'It's a raid,' he added. 'Stay down.'
'How can you-' She struggled, trying to sit up.
He rolled on top of her to pin her, with the tall grass still concealing them in a conspiracy with the falling of night. His whisper was harsh in her ear.
'How do you think my kin died? I was out looking for a lost lamb. I hid, but I heard it all.'
'Oh, gods,' she whispered.
Hooves drummed on the earth, felt through the soil. Orphan stayed on top of her, nothing of love or lust in his position, only desperation. He had heard what she must hear now.
The shing of steel drawn, shouts and screams, the hiss of flame, the wailing of children, the bleating of panicked sheep. The sounds shuddered the air until she could bear it no longer. She shoved him so hard he toppled sideways, and she sprang up to see a tent spurting flames as riders raced away into the night laughing and howling. Stars blazed above, fire below. She ran. Orphan overtook her and tackled her.
She screamed at him, 'My mother's in the tent!'
Swearing, he leaped up and ran with her.
It was too late.
In the ruins of the camp, Uncle Olig and Feder the Cripple lay dead, cut down despite being too old and too infirm to fight. Cowards! The tent burned, and Aunt had burned hands as they dragged her back from the flaming canvas while Mari sobbed.
'Where are the children?' Edina ran in circles, keening and shouting by turns. The tents were alight, burning crisply. 'Where are the children?'
They shouted and they called, and Kirya whistled — wheet wheet whoo — over and over again. All night Kirya and Orphan and Edina searched in the grass while Mari held on to her mother to stop her from throwing herself into the burning tent where her beloved sister lay.
The Tomanyi cousins and their daughters, as well as Estifio and Yara and their baby son, had fled or been taken.
The children — Kontas, Danya, Stanyo, and Asya — were gone.
Stolen.
23
At dawn, they knew what was left: the gelding and the piebald mare, who had trotted back into camp late in the night followed by two skittish goats and a dozen confused ewes; the chest Edina had salvaged with cloth, utensils, and Aunt's weaving kit; the churn, ladle, and whip; Feder's overturned cart with his saber hidden under one of the wheels; some scattered bundles and gear not taken out of the wagon, which Kirya had helped load the afternoon before, the remains of Uncle Olig's workshop. Nimwit and None-Skull had refused to budge during the
