I looked at her and said, rather stupidly, “Lloi?”
She smiled her gap-toothed grin. “Bookmaster.” Then she looked down at Braylar, and her smile disappeared.
I set the crossbow down, and tried to explain, “We were worried, well, at least I was, that a ripper had… that you weren’t coming back. What happened to you? Where have you been?”
She hunkered down next to Braylar and slapped his cheek, not altogether gently. His head shifted position, but otherwise he didn’t move or respond. She asked, “How many?”
I looked at her, wondering if I were still asleep.
“Killed. With that flail of his? How many?”
“Two,” I replied, and then for reasons unknown, repeated it, “two.”
“About four days back? Five?”
“Yes, five days. Well, one didn’t die right away. At least, Braylar-that is, Captain Killcoin-he said he didn’t. That he knew he hadn’t. He thought he died a day or two after the attack.”
She grunted and then lifted his tunic up, looking at his belly and chest. “How long has Captain Noose been laid low?”
“He fell yesterday. Driving the wagon.” I moved closer and looked over her shoulder. “What’s… what’s wrong with him, Lloi?”
She responded not with an answer but with another question, after looking at the two-headed flail and then back to me. “You try to take it?”
I felt like a child caught stealing, though I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong.
“I was going to try to make him more comfortable, so he could rest. But…”
“But he didn’t like that none, did he? Tried it, too, first time he went down like this. Actually got it off his belt, and he started screaming like I was murdering him with something hot and sharp. And he’s not like to give it up more if he’s awake neither.”
I glanced at Bloodsounder and then back to her. As was usually the case, I felt like there was more to what she was saying than what she was saying. “The weapon warns him sometimes. Of violence. That much I get. But the cost seems high. The nausea, the wounds that aren’t his, now this. Why wouldn’t he just be rid of it, Lloi?”
She arched her bushy eyebrows. “Thinking you would’ve puzzled that clear by now. More a matter of can’t than won’t.”
“Can’t?”
“On balance, you’re on the mark-that wicked thing on his belt done more harm than good. He had any choice, he’d be rid of it already, I’m thinking.”
“But he… can’t be rid of it?”
“Thinking we established that, bookmaster.”
I sighed. “So we did. What I mean is, why? Why can’t he be rid of it?”
“Wasn’t with him, but heard tell he tried burying it once, figuring that was where it come from. Back to the ground, like a body you don’t want nobody else to find. Him and some Nooses with him. Dropped the last dirt on top, probably without a whole lot of eulogizing, and then rode off. Didn’t get real far, though.”
She stopped. I waited. When she didn’t continue, I started to open my mouth and she said, “Guessing you’ll want to know what happened after that, too, so I’ll just tell you. Crippling pain brought him down. They thought he was dying. Like to have, until they knocked their heads together long enough to figure out what to do. Rushed back, got those shovels dirty again, and brought that vicious thing back out of the earth. Seemed it didn’t much like being buried like that. Captain stopped screaming when it was back in his hands.”
I was about to ask something else, but she held up her nubs. “Right now, the whyfores of getting rid of it got nothing to do with us. I just got to get him through this spell.”
We both looked at Braylar for a long moment and then I asked, “So you’ll be able to help him, then?”
“Won’t be any kind of easy. I been here right after… But two killed, and five days? Done that many, but never that long. Memoridon could manage. Least, that’s what’s said. But none of their kind wandering out this way. So I’ll do what I can do.” She laid her palm on Braylar’s forehead. Quietly, and directed to the prone man on the floor, she said, “I would’ve been here sooner if I was able. Fact was, I was trying to lead danger the opposite way, keep you out of another scrape. But you wouldn’t have it. Ordered me away. I told you you ought not to, but…” She sighed. “Now you might not never wake to hear how right I was.”
I understood little and less. “I have no idea what’s happening here, Lloi.”
“You ever seen a man bit by a snake? Got the poison coursing through him? Now, maybe it’s a pit snake, just hurts the man bad, or maybe it’s a brass viper, kills him dead. Either way, you catch it early, open the wound, draw it out, that man might get better. Might not. But wait too long? Real sick or real dead. This is that, only the flail the thing done the biting, and those dead memories are the poison. Can’t say how bad Captain Noose is like to get-this is the worst I seen him. But I got to get that poison out, and I got to do it now, so you step on back and let me get to draining.”
I stood up. “What can I do to help?”
“Make sure I drink plenty,” she said. “Water, fine, wine, better. Do that, and keep your lips locked, that’ll be the rightest kind of help you can give.”
I found a flask and watched as Lloi knelt next to him, her good hand on his belly, and the nubby stump on his forehead. She lowered her head until it touched his sternum, then slowly raised it, rolling and turning it side to side slightly as she began to chant something I assumed was in her native tongue, until she tilted her head back as far as it would go, chin pointing at the canvas. She did this over and over, the only small changes coming in her humming or chanting.
I sat and watched, feeling equally mystified and obtrusive, as if I were witnessing some deviant act or sacred rite meant to be private. And yet what else was I supposed to do, go outside and sit in the dark?
And so I waited and held my tongue. After a time, my eyes began closing, but Lloi’s chanting, while lilting, wasn’t rhythmic or repetitive enough to allow me to fall asleep. Every time I was close, the pitch or delivery changed, or a new kind of alien syllable was introduced, and my eyes opened again.
I looked over after one such occurrence, and she paused her chanting, although the strange bobbing continued, and she looked over at me and opened her mouth. I remembered her request, and started to hand her the flask, but she shook her head. She paused mid-rise long enough for me to put the flask to her lips and tip it up. She took several swallows before pulling her lips away as wine dribbled down her chin and fell on Braylar’s chest.
And then she continued her ritual, with a smear of wine on her forehead after she touched down again, and I immediately thought of the large blood stain I’d hidden in the rear of the wagon.
This went on the remainder of the night, with Lloi pausing briefly on occasion to take some wine, and the chanting undergoing subtle changes, and little other variation as the hours crept by. As dawn came on, I put out the lantern and chewed some goat that was especially stringy. I offered some to Lloi, but she only looked at the flask, which I gave her. By now, we’d worked out the transfer of liquid so nothing was spilled, but Lloi’s hair was sticky and matted in front from our previous slips. I patted at her with a damp cloth as best I could and settled back against the side of the wagon.
I was nodding off again when Lloi finally stopped chanting. I looked at her as she fell back against a barrel, eyes shut, face pale. She pointed her toes away from her and then rolled her sandaled feet in circles, to either work out stiff muscles or keep them from seizing up.
I asked if she wanted food or drink but she declined both. I looked at Braylar, but besides the splotches of wine on his skin, he seemed unchanged. I whispered, “What happens next?”
She pulled her legs up to her chest and laid her head on her knees. She sounded absolutely exhausted and hoarse when she finally replied, “Can’t say.” Then she forced herself up, legs wobbly, holding the barrel for support. “Need some rest now. He wakes, you wake me. Otherwise, you leave me be.”
She disappeared through the front flap and the wagon rocked as she jumped off. A few moments later, I heard her vomiting. Even after I was sure she’d emptied her stomach, she continued to make awful clenching, heaving, sputtering noises.
I wasn’t sure which was the greater oddity-a Syldoon whose Deserter-inspired weapon allegedly stole memories from the dead, or a disfigured Grass Dog who presumably drew those memories out of him like poison. Or an archivist who believed either one.
