During the night they listen to Cleric and his incoherent declarations. And it seems they grasp a logic that binds disjointed absurdities into profound wholes. They revel in a clarity indistinguishable from confusion, an enlightenment devoid of claim or truth or hope…
And the plains pass like a dream.
'The Qirri…' she finally manages to blurt. 'It's beginning to frighten me.'
The Wizard's silence has the character of a breach. She senses his alarm, the effort of will it takes for him to stifle his rebuke. She knows the words warring for control of his voice because they are the same words that continue to nag and accuse the corners of her thought. Fool. Why throw stones at wolves? Everything is as it must be. Everything will turn out fine…
'How so?' he says coldly.
'In the brothel…' she hears herself reply and is amazed because she is usually so loathe to speak of the place. 'Some of the girls, the ones who broke, mostly… They would feed them opium-force them. Within weeks they would… would…'
'Do whatever they needed to get more,' the Wizard says dully.
Trudging silence. Coughing from somewhere ahead of them.
'Could that be what the Nonman is doing to us?'
Speaking this question is like rolling a great stone from her chest. How could it be so difficult to stand square in the light of what was happening?
'Why?' the Wizard asks. 'Has he been making… making demands?'
'No,' she answers. Not yet.
He ponders the ground, his stride, and the resulting exhalations of dust.
'We have nothing to fear, Mimara,' he finally says, but there is something false in his manner, as if he were a frightened boy borrowing the assured tone and posture of a priest. 'We're not the same as the others. We understand the dangers.'
She does not know how to reply, so she simply continues pacing the Wizard in silent turmoil. Yes! something cries within her. Yes! We know the danger. We can take precautions, refuse the Qirri anytime we wish! Anytime!
Just not now.
'Besides…' he eventually continues, 'we need it.'
She has anticipated this objection. 'But we've travelled so far so fast already!'
Why so harsh? a voice-her voice-chides her. Let the man speak at the very least.
'Look at the Stone Hags,' he replies. 'Men bred for the slog, eaten up in the matter of weeks. How well do you think an old man and a woman would fare?'
'Let the others go ahead then. Or even better, we could steal away in the heart of night!'
Or best of all, it occurs to her, just take the Nonman's pouch… Yes! Steal it! This makes so much sparkling sense to her that she almost laughs out loud-even as a more sober part of her realizes that one does not take anything from a Quya Mage-ever. As quick as her smile leaps to her lips, her eyes tear in frustration.
'No,' the old Wizard is saying. 'There's no breaking the covenant we've struck with these men. They would hunt us down, and well they should, given what they've sacrificed.'
He is warming to the ingenuity of his rationalizations-as is she.
'Maybe we should confront Cleric,' she offers. 'Drag the issue before the whole company.' Even as she utters this, she can feel her resolution leach away. See? Why bother?
You never had the heart for this…
Achamian shakes his head as if at a truth so old and fat it cannot but be weary. 'I don't trust Galian. I fear the Qirri is the only thing keeping him here…'
'Let him leave then.' Her shrug is directed more at her words than at the man, it seems.
'If Galian leaves,' Achamian replies, his self-assurance relentless now, 'he will take Pokwas and Xonghis with him. We need Xonghis. To eat as much to find our way.'
Though they smile at each other, their gazes are too slicked with apprehension to truly lock. And so it ends, a conversation that began so real it sent burning coals skidding through her gut, become a pantomime, a shadow-play of numbing words and self-serving reasons.
As she had hoped all along.
They walk, the nine, their backs bent to an exhaustion only the remaining Stone Hag can feel. Mimara actually cries, softly, so that the others cannot hear above the wind batting their ears. She sobs, once, twice, so profound is her relief. Her thighs blush and her mouth waters at the thought of the coming darkness…
And of the soot smudged across the tip of Cleric's white finger.
There is a vastness to the wind on the nocturnal plain, a sense of heaven-spanning enormities, one drawn roughly across the other. All things are seized. All things are lifted and bent. And when the gusts are violent enough, all things kneel-or are broken.
She has crept from the others into the night. Gusts scour the ground, galloping like the outriders of an infinite horde. She turns her face away from the prick of flying sand, gazes without surprise at herself wearing the tattered rags that had once belonged to Soma.
It seems she had known she would find it here waiting-the Consult skin-spy. The company had continued marching past dusk, stopping only when they found the protection of a meagre depression. She set out the way she always set out, instinctively choosing the line of sight and wind most favourable to a stalking predator…
And found one.
'How?' she hisses. There is something frantic within her, something that would fly into pieces were it not for her skin. 'How is the Nonman killing us?'
The thing mimics her crouching posture. It seems at once harmless, nothing more than an image without depth, a mere reflection, and as deadly as a bolt cocked in a ballistae. Fear tickles her, but she feels it with a stranger's skin.
'Tell me!'
It smiles with the same condescension she has felt across her face innumerable times. One both beautiful and infuriating.
'Your Chorae,' it says with her voice. 'Give it to me and I can save you.'
What? She clasps the pouch where it hangs between her breasts.
'No! No more games! Tell me how!'
Her vehemence surprises both of them. She watches her eyes click to the darkness of the camp behind her, her face imperceptibly bent to the needs of a sharper ear.
Then she hears it herself. The mutter of sorcery, effortlessly stepping around the buffeting wind, climbing up out of the substance of dust and earth.
'The Qirri…' the other her says. The other spy. 'Ask him what it is!'
Then the thing is gone, leaping high and deep into the darkness and running like no human can run. Yanking her head about, Mimara sees the old Wizard scaling the gusting heights, his eyes and mouth alight with brilliant meaning. His voice echoes deep across the angles and surfaces of a different plane. Lines of blinding light needle the dark, carving trails of white across plain. She glimpses fire and exploding earth, swathes of ground clawed into black by the shadow of grasses.
She glimpses herself running with gazelle beauty, leaping with serpentine grace. Then the spewing dust sweeps up to obscure him and so secure his escape.
Koll. The last of the Stone Hags.
She stares at him while the Wizard rails at her.
'What? What were you doing so far away?'
The man sits hunched, the only one not watching her and her father. He was a large man, a powerful man, when they had rescued the surviving Stone Hags in the Mop. Now he is scarce more than a knob-jointed rack. He has long ceased caring about his war-knot, so his hair falls in mats about his face and shoulders. Whatever armour he possessed, he has lost to the trail-and were it not for the Captain, he would have cast away his broadsword as
