The Bonemender's Choice Part 13

"Wait! I call them off."

Dominic stared, his brain not quite believing his ears.

"You speak Krylaise?"

The man gave a tiny careful nod around the sword. "I stop them."

Easing back just slightly on the pressure, Dominic said, "Do it."

A BRIGHT BLAZING sun popped over the eastern tree line and washed the world in lavish pink as Dominic hoisted Matthieu onto Gabrielle's horse and settled him in front of his aunt. There were enough horses that the boy could have ridden alone, but the swollen livid lump on his thigh argued against it. Dominic wanted badly to have Matthieu on his own horse, but Derkh had pointed out that would leave only one trained fighter unenc.u.mbered. Madeleine rode with Feolan though Gabrielle was loath to give her up. The girl was not much smaller than her aunt, too heavy for Gabrielle to support securely at a gallop.

Dominic sent the Tarzines down the road on foot, their wounded man slung over the mule.

The only debate was about what to do with the extra horse. Dom was not anxious to bring it along-a tether would be nothing but a hindrance in case of attack-nor did he want to provide the Tarzines with swift transportation back to Turga. It would certainly overtake them if he set it free.

In the end, they waited until the Tarzines were well away, hobbled the horse and left it to make its slow way home.

PUSHING THE HORSES, but not exhausting them, they were able to make the journey from Rath Turga to Niz Hana in one long hard day. It was not fast enough for Gabrielle's liking; she could feel Madeleine weakening with each slow mile and fretted against the lazy dogleg road that looped inland before angling back to the coast. Once, at a nameless crossroads settlement, Dominic called a halt to buy bread and ale at the tiny market. Gabrielle spent every minute of their brief stop sitting with Madeleine, struggling to check the advances the disease had made through the morning. Feolan's efforts to lend Madeleine strength were helping, but they were no subst.i.tute for Gabrielle's powers.

She had no appet.i.te for the rough round of bread Feolan pressed on her, but she chewed it dutifully as they traveled. "Stoke your fire," she remembered her father urging. "No heat without fuel."

They all quickened with hope as their road branched left, back toward the coast. Surely if they had not been overtaken by now, they would reach Niz Hana safely. The road sloped downhill, gradually taking them out of the dry uplands and into the green low pocket of lusher country that surrounded the harbor town.

Matthieu whooped in triumph as they pa.s.sed through the town gates, the sound so infectious that everyone but Derkh had to laugh. Derkh was somber, his dark brows creased. Gabrielle caught a trace, like a scent carried on the wind, of the stew of feelings behind his frown: fear, loss, anger, determination. Love. He was deeply, irrevocably in love with Yolenka, she realized, and she felt her own gust of anger against the Tarzine woman. What was she playing at? If she wanted to stay in her own homeland there was no blame to it, but to disappear without a word of explanation...

They were at the harbor now, and there was the ship at the end of the pier, waiting as promised. Had anything ever looked so lovely as that ship? She would settle Madeleine into the captain's room and get to work undisturbed and heal her niece, and the ship would carry them home.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

THE CAPTAIN PLANTED HIMSELF in front of them, barring the way, and folded his arms across his chest. "I will not have the Veil on my ship."

Feolan tried to gather his thoughts and words. He was tired from the long ride, distracted by Gabrielle's worry. He would normally enjoy the challenge of a new language, but not when lives hung on his eloquence. Not with this dull fog in his head.

"Dominic, would you take Madeleine?" He pa.s.sed the sick girl carefully to her father. It put him at another disadvantage with the captain, trying to argue with his arms full.

Dominic and Gabrielle stood behind him, alarmed and frustrated. Not Derkh. Derkh had left them shipside. "You're safe now," he had said. "I'm staying. Yolenka might make it here after all. If need be, I'll go back for her." Feolan didn't know how Derkh would fare, returning to Turga's stronghold with hardly a word of Tarzine-or how Yolenka would respond if he arrived there. But he missed Derkh's steady quiet presence.

Feolan turned back to the captain. "You agreed to sail us," he insisted. "We paid. You know we came for the children."

"I didn't agree to carry the d.a.m.n plague!" The man's eyebrows drew down in a glowering line. "I won't put my men at risk."

"Feolan." It was Gabrielle. "Tell him I will stay with Madeleine in the cabin and not come out. We will stay away from his men."

Feolan stumbled through the proposal. The captain seemed, for a moment, to soften. Then the eyebrows jutted down again, and he widened his stance.

"What about Turga? Did you kill the pirate?"

"No." Feolan didn't hide his surprise. "That was not our...not why we came here."

"Bleeding eyes of mighty Milor." The captain hawked onto his own deck in disgust. "What you bring me here is trouble. Disease on my ship. Turga alive and on your tail. When I return here, what do you think will be waiting for me? He won't rest until he puts me out of business or under the waves!"

"He will rest." The voice was commanding as a clarion. "He will rest until the end of days."

Feolan turned to see Yolenka, her gauzy costume sweat-stained and dusty, hair a windblown fury, stalk past him and stop just short of the captain's face. She jabbed a finger into his chest, and he took an alarmed half-step backward before catching himself. Feolan found himself feeling a little sorry for the man.

"Turga is dead." Yolenka bowed and swept her hands open in an ironic exaggerated gesture of bounty. "A gift for you." She straightened and her voice grew hard. "We have paid you gold to grow fat on and swept the seas clean of your worst predator. Now it is for you to hold up your end and carry these children home."

She swept her eyes over him with frank scorn. "I did not think to see such cowardice in a Tarzine captain."

All eyes, crew and pa.s.senger, were on the captain. He bl.u.s.tered and bridled, stung by the insult, groping after a reply that would salvage his pride and his men's respect.

Yolenka let him stew in his own anger. Then her features softened, became almost pleading, and she touched his arm hesitantly.

"Your pardon," she said. "I spoke wrongly. There is no cowardice in protecting your crew."

The captain, on the verge of smacking her arm away, stopped in confusion. The poor lout, thought Feolan. She's playing him like a bag of renenas. Yolenka continued, all humble supplication.

"They are children. They have suffered great evil, and it is due to them that Turga is killed. Now their fate rests in your hands. Will you not save them?"

Agonizing moments ticked by. The captain shifted his weight, scratched at the stubble under his chin. Met Yolenka's liquid golden gaze. Straightened briskly.

"I'll clean out my things," he announced. "But..." He pointed a finger and swept it stiffly across the little group. "You lot will eat and sleep on deck. And any one of you has the least complaint, even a b.l.o.o.d.y hangnail, you're confined to the cabin."

YOLENKA PERCHED ON a coil of rope, her ruined finery tucked around her legs, and systematically worked a comb through her tangles. Derkh sat beside her, feeling the movement of the ship underneath him-a familiar motion this time, cheering even. The seas were calm as sunset approached, the breeze billowing the sails playfully. They had just lost sight of land. Derkh watched Yolenka's fingers move briskly through the strands of hair, let his eyes travel over her golden features. What if she had not returned? He still felt weak from the fear of it, and from the relief that had washed through him when he first caught sight of her galloping breakneck down the narrow street on a lathered horse, people scattering in her wake. His lips curled into a private grin at the memory.

"What? You are smiling because dinner arrives, I hope." Yolenka scowled. "Will this captain never feed us? I am near to falling down starved."

"When did you eat last?" Derkh was hungry too-their quick midday meal had been a small c.h.i.n.k in a yawning gap.

"Not anytime this day."

"Yolenka..." Where to start? Maybe not the beginning-he wasn't sure he was ready for the story of Turga's death. "How did you get out of there?"

Yolenka glinted up at him. "There is guard I know. I make a deal."

Eternal night. Did she have to joke about it like that? Heat rose in his face, and Derkh was glad for the sunburn that hid his angry flush. I'm too jealous, he thought bleakly. I will never survive her.

"Never mind, I don't want to-"

She laid a hand on his arm. "Stop now. Is no need for making that red face more red. I win much gold from him in renenas. I offer it back to him if he let me out harbor gate."

"The harbor gate?" Derkh hadn't noticed another gate.

"Yes, is gate at harbor side. Not for travelers. For ship's cargo. Is always locked except for loading times." Her look was stern now. "I have much trouble to return here. I circle around far from stronghold to escape searchers. Very rough country in darkness. I think, I never reach Niz Hana in time, you leave without me. Then when I find road again, what do I see?"

Derkh made a sudden guess, darted a look and saw in her brilliant smile that he was right.

"A broken cart, some dead men. Not you dead, is good sign. And then not much farther, I find horse, all ready for a rider."

They sat in silence for a bit, close now to the heart of what had happened between them.

"There is something else I find." Yolenka spoke so softly, her face veiled by a down-sweep of hair, that Derkh could barely make out the words. "You are not on the ship." Her voice was wondering.

He shook his head. "No," he said, "I wasn't." He waited while she hooked the sheet of hair behind her ear and raised her head to meet his eyes.

"I was ready to go back and find you," he said. "I love you. Wherever you are, that's where I want to be. I want to be your man." And then, because it was Yolenka and because of what he had endured in the past week, he thought he had better be perfectly clear. "Your only man."

"You are my only man," she said, and for once there was no hint of teasing in her tone, but a low fierce pa.s.sion. And she twined her arms around his neck, and right there on the busy deck he kissed her, and he didn't let her loose until the whistle finally called them to eat.

The black water closed over her head and poured cold and oily into her mouth. It cut off all air, all light, and pushed her deep below the surface. She sank into utter blackness, drowned. At the bottom, Luc waited for her, his white throat gaping and closing in the current like gills.

With a harsh rasp Madeleine sucked at the air, pulling it through the painful swollen flap of her throat and sobbing it out again. She was weeping, and the more she gasped and cried the more her throat clenched shut. It was her dream all over again, only without any water.

"Maddy, easy now."

Aunt Gabrielle. Madeleine felt the woman's arms about her, felt her warm calm presence enter her.

"I can't breathe!" She heaved, heard the breath rattle grudgingly into her lungs. "I can't-"

"Nice and slow, love. Try like this." Gabrielle adjusted Madeleine's position, tipped her head back just a little in the crook of her arm. Something seemed to relax in her throat. "Little soft breaths."

She needed more than little breaths, needed great rushes of air to chase away the dream, but Gabrielle breathed with her and as she grew calmer the air flowed back. Panic softened to confused sorrow.

"I'm dying," she murmured. "Like Luc. His throat opened up, and he died. Because of me. My throat is closed up, and I'll die too. Like Luc..."

"No, Madeleine." Gabrielle's voice was firm, like her mother's almost. "You are not going to die. We are going to keep your throat open, and you will live."

Madeleine didn't know if that was true. She knew she had never been so sick, that "sore throat" didn't remotely capture what was wrong with her. She thought if she drifted back to the dark, not-quite-sleep that filled her mind with bizarre dreams and bright wheeling colors, she might not awaken. She tried to hang onto her aunt's voice, but she was so tired. And her throat-she could not endure the sensation, not just the pain but the horror of it, her own tender tissue become monstrous.

Gabrielle's voice faded away, but Madeleine felt the warm bright light flooding into her and knew her aunt was with her. Here was a better place to go than the dark dreams of her illness. She hung on until she felt cradled in Gabrielle's warm presence, and then she gave herself up to sleep.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

YOLENKA TAPPED ON THE CABIN door and pushed it open.

"Gabrielle?"

It was dark in the little room, just one wall lamp casting a small pool of light. Yolenka could make out Gabrielle's form sitting close by the girl's bed. She was hunched over her patient, head drooping.

Fallen asleep, thought Yolenka. Like Feolan. Not used to staying up all night.

She laid down her tray and lit another lamp. Then she crossed the floor and laid a hand on Gabrielle's shoulder, shook it gently.

"Gabrielle, wake up! I bring dinner."

She felt the other woman start under her hand. Gabrielle straightened. She looked bleary.

"Sorry to wake you. Feolan asked me to make sure you ate." Yolenka smiled. "Is good. Captain get fresh stores at Niz Hana market."

"Well..." Gabrielle seemed reluctant, her gaze turning back to Madeleine. "Yes, I guess I had better, at that. Thanks."

She ate, as they all had, with the steady indiscriminate efficiency of the very hungry. Neither of them spoke while Gabrielle loaded in the first restorative mouthfuls.

"Where's Feolan?" Gabrielle asked.

"He say he is very tired and is going early to his bed," answered Yolenka.

Gabrielle's spoon paused on its way to her mouth and her brows creased, but she said nothing. Yolenka shrugged. "We will all join him soon. My bones are wanting death." She guessed from Gabrielle's startled glance that the expression hadn't translated very well into Krylaise. My bones long for the grave, meaning heavy with the need to rest. Oh well.

"How is the girl?" she asked gently. Death was, perhaps, not the best word to use in a casual expression right now.

Gabrielle shook her head. "She lost a lot of ground during that ride. The membrane on her throat is really big now. It's making it hard for her to breathe."

Yolenka nodded. "Yes, I have seen that," she said softly.

"I was thinking..." Gabrielle's features were wide awake now, her green eyes dark and intent in the lamplight. "That membrane-it could suffocate her, couldn't it?"

Yolenka gave a reluctant nod. "It happens sometimes."

"Do your healers ever remove it? If it impedes the patient's breathing, I mean? Could I not peel it away like a scab?"

Yolenka was shaking her head so hard her hair swung across her face.

"No! No, you must not!" Every child knew this. "You cannot pull aside the Veil. Beyond the Veil lies Death."

Gabrielle stared at her. "But why? What happens? Is it because of the bleeding?"

Yolenka tried to think. It was folk knowledge in her country, not something she had ever seen done. What had her mother told her? "There is bleeding, yes, but that is not the problem. Whenever it has been tried, the patient dies soon after," she said. "They say the Veil is angry and sends an evil spell on the patient, but that is just..."

Gabrielle didn't know the Tarzine word Yolenka resorted to, but she thought the phrase "country nonsense" might be close.

"But the danger is real," Yolenka insisted. "The patient loses his muscles, he shakes, his heart stops. He dies."