Dark Heart Part 8

You would hardly know there was anything wrong, reading the faces of these women. For a while Lenares worried that she might have forgotten how to interpret the numbers correctly, but she reminded herself that people were likely to be different in different places. Friendly, not quarrelsome like the cosmographers were. They did not sulk over petty things. They got on and did what needed to be done.

The women welcomed her as part of their group. They shrugged their shoulders when she indicated she couldn't talk, and laughed and joked with each other, even though they must have been worried about what had happened to them. Not all of them were like this, though. A few women sat listlessly on the ground, or moved purposelessly from group to group. Perhaps these were the ones who had lost family members. The friendly women took special care over these ones.

Within a single hour Lenares found herself able to understand much of what the women said. She was delighted. It seemed her numbers had more uses than even she had suspected. She a.s.sociated the sound of the words the women spoke with particular facial mannerisms, body language and a dozen other clues. I am reading them, Lenares realised. I am hearing their language through my numbers.

The women were talking about the loss of their city, of course they were. Their husbands and sons were indeed scouting the city, seeing what could be done to take it back. This hill they had camped on was called Shambles Hill, and the small wooden buildings packed about its base were known as the Shambles. It was a poor place, and people who couldn't afford to live in Raceme proper lived there. These huts were where the women begged most of their food. Some of the women were embarra.s.sed by this: they had thought themselves too good to seek charity from the poor, but in most cases it had been offered freely.

Lenares found her numbers could not help her talk to them-though she felt confident even that would come in time-but she enjoyed listening. Had such a disaster happened in Talamaq, people would have bickered and fought in their haste to blame each other. This was a much nicer place than Great Golden Talamaq. People in Talamaq did not smile at her like these women did.

'I wonder where this girl is from,' one of the laughing woman said. 'She's a hard worker.'

'I thought she might have been a-' Lenares didn't understand the word, but she thought it meant someone not right in the head. 'She's not, though. She understands what we're saying.'

'She looks like an Ikhnal-some of them have skin that light. Definitely someone from the Fisher Coast.'

'She's with the three men who appeared in the city just after the storm,' said another woman. 'They're definitely not from this part of Bhrudwo. Did you see how dark their skin was?'

'I didn't like the look of them. One of them had shifty eyes. Do you suppose the girl's their--' and she used another word Lenares could not interpret.

'The younger man is nice.' Lenares supposed the woman was talking about Captain Duon. 'He has such a friendly face. And did you see the shape of his shoulders? He could--' another series of words she didn't understand, accompanied by gestures, 'with me any time he wanted.' The women laughed together and Lenares laughed with them.

And so the talk went. Lenares loved it all. To be included was such a wonderful feeling. She felt now as she had felt the day she appeared at the Emperor's court.

So this is happiness.

'Lenares?'

She turned to see who had placed his hand on her shoulder. 'Don't touch-oh, Torve. Does Dryman want something? Have you collected enough food?'

Torve looked embarra.s.sed, as though caught doing something he shouldn't. 'Dryman is elsewhere, and I have as much food as we can carry. I came to see you, to talk to you. I thought you might want to talk about what happened to us in Nomansland.'

'I am enjoying myself here,' she said, more strongly than she intended to. Her happiness had made her forget her previous concern about the hole in the world, she realised; and, because she was honest, she acknowledged to herself she did not want anything to interfere with that happiness. 'These people do not care whether I have a gift or not. None of them call me a halfwit.'

'Nor do I,' Torve said gently.

'But you don't think I am human.'

'I think you're my Lenares,' Torve answered. 'It's the others who think neither of us are human. You know this.'

'Can we talk here?' said Lenares, reluctant to leave her new friends, but finding Torve's gentle speech stirring her, as it always did. My Lenares, he said.

'Wouldn't you rather talk where we can't be overheard?'

She thought about it and found that yes, she would very much like to talk with Torve where no one else could hear them. The warm pink feeling moved from her chest as she thought about it, down it went, until she could feel it...well, in the strangest place. Why there?

'Where do you want us to go?' she asked, her voice somewhat hoa.r.s.e.

'Down beyond those trees,' Torve indicated. 'We will not be overheard there.'

'Wait for me there. I think I need to...you know, go.'

'We don't have long. Dryman will be back soon.'

Lenares watched him walk away and saw the beauty, the n.o.bility, in his numbers. Honesty, integrity, pa.s.sion. And a deep sadness, so tightly held it was difficult for her to read. She could pry, but Torve would not like that. And everything about him was held in thrall by something else. Something to do with Dryman and his obedience to the Emperor. Something, she was beginning to realise, she would have to save him from.

Torve couldn't name the emotion that had driven him to take Lenares aside. He had no experience that could give the feeling a name, no friend or parent to tell him what he felt was desire. His master had said little of these things, for who would talk of love-of making love-to an animal?

If he had known what motivated him, he would have resisted it with everything he had. He could not, they could not, never, not that, not while his master still lived. Could not. So, because they could not, he did not consider that they might.

'Lenares?'

'Yes?'

She sat down beside him on a gra.s.sy slope overlooking the sea. The late morning was warm and the air moist; unusual for his desert senses, made stranger still by the absence of the clinging Talamaq dust. The gra.s.s fairly wriggled with life, and his ears were entertained by birds chirruping to each other in trees off to their right. The sounds of the others had been left well behind.

'Am I such a disappointment to you?'

'Yes,' she said; and the way in which she stated the truth without adornment took his breath away. 'I wish you could tell me everything, all the truth. You confuse me and hurt me. But you make me feel good too. I want to talk with you all the time.'

'Just talk?'

Torve's heart leapt in his chest at his daring words. Talking as the young men and women did behind the curtains at summer feasts in the Talamaq Palace. Where was this taking them? He remembered the House of the G.o.ds and how they had kissed, how they had wandered from room to room holding hands, and in his heart named them the best days of his life.

'No,' Lenares said shyly, and bit her lip. 'I also like...this.' She reached out a hand and took his.

It was just a touch. She had held his hand before; it was nothing compared to what those he'd spied upon at the Emperor's command had got up to. Nothing at all. But he found his whole body inflamed by the feel of her skin on his. Her touch signalled her complete openness, her surrender. An image crossed his mind, and he began to realise the peril they were in. Ask her a question, he thought. Get her talking; much safer than what might otherwise happen.

He cleared his throat. 'Are there two Houses of the G.o.ds or just one?' he asked her. Inane, he knew, but the best he could come up with. He did not let go of her hand.

'One,' she answered dreamily, her fingers interlacing his. 'But it can appear in many places. I think there are sacred places in each of the three continents, places where the G.o.ds once met, and they took their House with them to each meeting.'

'Once met?'

'Once, but no more. The Father was driven out by the others many years ago, and now the Son and the Daughter quarrel. There are no more meetings.'

'Quarrels are such terrible things,' Torve said. 'People driven apart often because of the most trivial disagreements.'

'Why should people fight? Why don't they just tell the truth to each other?'

Torve knew Lenares did not intend to wound, but her words hurt nonetheless. 'I tell as much of the truth as I can,' he said.

'I know,' she replied.

'Your numbers don't tell you everything,' said Torve, moving as close as he was able to the secret she seemed unable to penetrate. He willed her to see.

'I know,' she said again. 'In Talamaq I lived such a small life, spending every day with the same people, that my numbers served to describe everything. I thought I knew all there is to know. But out here there is too much, far too much to understand.'

'And you have no centre.'

'I don't need one,' she said.

His heart fell. 'What do you need?'

She must have known what he wanted her to say. Their hands were clasped tightly, they had edged close to each other so their legs touched. She looked into his eyes and said what only Lenares would say in a situation like this.

'Nothing. I have finally realised I need nothing.'

Torve sighed. He knew they were fortunate, that her habit of telling the truth protected them from disaster. Yet he wished she had been willing to play the game of words, to go just a little further along the road to destruction, so that he could cry 'Stop!' So that he could be the strong one.

'Kiss me,' she said.

The camp stirred. Duon raised his head, woken from a short nap. From what he could tell, it was early afternoon. Dryman had returned from one of his unexplained wanderings; the man now slept beside him. Seems like the first time I've ever seen him sleep.

The men of Raceme had woken him. They filed back into camp, returning from their latest foray into Raceme with their heads down, clear disappointment on their features. There was no need to listen to their reports. It was clear that the invaders had consolidated their hold on the town.

'Sentries up on every part of the wall,' the men said, shaking their heads. 'Guards on the gates; archers stationed on the Cavalier, above Suggate and the Water Gate, and all along the groyne of the harbour. No way in.'

'There must be a way in,' the women said. 'The Neherians found a way, after all.'

'Yes,' said the men, 'but see how they were equipped, and look what it cost them. Even then they would have failed but for the storm. We have neither their equipment nor their numbers, unless you expect the women and children to march unarmed against them. And the weather is clear.'

'Is there not one among you brave enough to try to win back our homes?' asked the women.

This angered the men. 'You saw our bravery. We risked their arrows and their swords to spy out the city. But it is not our city any more.'

'Then where are we to go? How can we leave our sons and daughters behind, unburied, unmourned?' The women began to cry bitter tears.

The burly red-haired man stood before them. 'This is what we do,' he said. 'We go north. We leave Raceme to the rats for just a little while. Let them get fat and complacent. We regroup, find some willing friends, and then we return to drive the rats out. What better burial gift could you offer your dead than that?'

The men muttered at this, but the women saw the sense of the red-haired man's words. 'We go north,' they said. 'For a little while.'

Captain Duon settled back on his haunches. The sun had begun to descend, and still Dryman slept on. Why should Duon wake the man? He knew the mercenary would want to be informed, but it was his own fault he slept, since he had been up most of the previous night prowling about.

All around, the survivors of Raceme broke camp with a minimum of fuss, despite the demands of crying children and a number of injured men and women. Duon tried to estimate how many people were on the hill: five thousand at least, maybe more. The red-haired man was right. There was nothing even this number could do against a well-prepared enemy, especially without the element of surprise. Perhaps if another storm was to come...but Duon knew little about the weather in these parts; and hadn't the cosmographer said the storm had been unnatural? Unnatural enough, at least, to disgorge them into the city at the moment it had been destroyed.

They could stay here on this hill no longer anyway, as he doubted there was much, if any, food left in the Shambles. And the longer they remained, the greater the chance their conquerors would send out a sortie against them. Someone, somewhere, would surely offer them shelter.

Finally Duon could wait no more. People were leaving the hill in groups, all moving north. Oh, how he wished he could leave the hateful soldier sleeping there, to wake alone on an empty hillside-or better, to be captured by the Neherians. He wished he were the sort of man who could take his sword and cut open the mercenary's throat. But he'd seen the threat in the other man's eyes, and knew that if the attempt failed he'd never outrun the man's vengeance.

'Dryman,' he said, shaking him by the shoulder. 'Time to wake.'

The mercenary moved from deep sleep to fully awake in a split second.

'Where is everyone going?' he asked, a scowl on his face. 'Why have you waited so long to wake me?'

'I've been busy preparing, as you instructed. You said nothing about being woken.'

The man was on his feet and at Duon's throat in an instant. 'Don't shave the ends with me,' he snarled, his hand under the captain's chin. 'You have neither the wit nor the strength to deal with me, boy.'

The man's voice thundered like a storm, and a dreadful weight settled on the captain's shoulders. Duon thought about nodding, but noticed the gleam of a knife in the soldier's hand and thought better of it.

Dryman took silence as acquiescence. 'Where are the Omeran and the halfwit?'

Duon spread his hands. 'I thought you sent them on some task.'

'They were tasked to prepare for our departure. They should be here. He had better not be...no, he wouldn't. Couldn't.' The man shook his head, but his eyes narrowed. 'Go and find them, Duon.'

Again Dryman treated Duon as his servant. The mercenary could do it because there was something about him that must be obeyed. I am a captain, the leader of the Emperor's great expedition. Who is this soldier?

Duon nodded respectfully to the man, resolving as he strode away to speak to Lenares about him. Perhaps if they put their heads together they could bring the man down somehow.

It is not only a matter of pride, Duon told himself. This man is dangerous, and has his own agenda. Despite his arguments, and no matter what may be done to me or my family, it is my duty to return to Talamaq and humble myself before the Emperor. But I will not humble myself before this man.

Her fingers were cool against his skin, touching him gently, brushing his cheek, running slowly down the line of his jaw. Their touch thickened his throat and set his skin burning. She brought her mouth towards his, her eyes closed, her hair cascading over one cheek. As her lips touched his, she made a small sound in her throat. Little intimacies, each one fanning the flame of his desire.

He closed his mouth over hers, and drew in her breath. Months of travel, weeks of deprivation and days of fear had done nothing to sour it; he had never tasted anything so sweet. She pressed herself against him. He could feel the swell of her and fought to maintain a degree of control.

But what could he do-what could either of them do-against the power they had unleashed? The threat of discovery, of death, was not sufficient to prevent Torve from raising his own hand to her face and touching her skin, her hair, with all the tenderness he possessed. The body has its own language, he acknowledged, closing his eyes to savour every sensation. Listen, Lenares, as I speak to you. As my body loves yours with its own language.

They clung to each other, moving slowly, tentatively, desperately afraid of hurting and being hurt, while taking pleasure where it was offered. After a time he opened his eyes to find hers, less than a hand-span away, focused intently on him. l.u.s.trous, deep, pupils wide open.

'There is more, isn't there,' she said, her breathing fast and shallow against his neck. 'More for us to explore. Do you know what it is? Will you show me?'

His heart rose into his throat.

'Yes,' he said thickly. 'I have witnessed what comes next. I will show you.'

Duon made two careful circuits of Shambles Hill, but saw no sign of the cosmographer or the Omeran. He took the opportunity to talk with a few of the remaining Racemen, but none had seen his companions recently. He did not think to speak with the women, who would have been able to tell him of a man, and a woman with hot eyes, who had left some time ago in obvious pursuit of the oldest magic.

Curse the man!

Duon meant Dryman, not Torve; after all, how could an Omeran be held responsible for what he did? Especially since the Emperor had sent him away north with the expedition, and therefore freed him from the obligation to obey his master?

And why had the Emperor done that? In what way was the Omeran's presence necessary? If there truly were supernatural ent.i.ties involved in their tale-and how could Duon doubt it, given the voices in his head, and the way in which they had been ripped from their own lands-why had they selected the Omeran for survival when thousands of more useful men had been slaughtered?

He had not asked enough questions, it was clear, allowing instead the flow of events to take him. This was not the behaviour of a commander. He would gather together his band-his, not Dryman's-and the questions would be asked, and answered.

Duon crested the brow of a small hill and the ocean came into view. The northern seas were just as he remembered: cool, blue-green and inviting, so unlike the treacherous southern ocean. He imagined himself fleeing, running away from Dryman and the remnants of his expedition, finding an empty beach, building a shack and spending his days fishing. A fantasy, he knew, but one that made far more sense than continuing north. Not, he reminded himself, something a leader could entertain.

His eyes narrowed, and he shaded them against the sun with his hand. Something was moving below him. Somebody struggling-no, fighting. Duon drew his blade.

No, he corrected himself, as the cynical voice in his head began to chuckle. Not fighting.

I have a fever, Lenares told herself. Torve had infected her with something, it seemed; her skin flushed hot under his hands. She didn't care where he put them. No, she did care, she wanted him to put them on her private places. I am sick. My body is no longer under my control. Yet the delicious sensations coursing through her at his touch felt nothing like fever.

The merest touch from another person was normally enough to enrage her. Her body was hers, and people were supposed to stay well away from it. But there were parts of her, secret places, now longing for his touch.

She had never experienced numbers like this before. Skin on skin, love open to love. She felt herself slowly drawing towards an inexplicable, unguessable completion.