Meek

Laranya's breath caught at the sight of Eli falling from the tower, but her only response was to move faster. Away from the fire. What she'd learned was, there were problems you couldn't solve, there were hurts you couldn't ease. You needed to focus on what you could do.

She caught a glimpse of a young man racing along the streets. A runner, one of the marquis's runners, rushing to the Keep to raise the alarm. To summon backup.

Which worried Lara, but she stayed focused and a handful of minutes later she returned to the manor with the donkey cart and one of the kids she'd hired.

A few people were standing on the streets, peering at the tower, more in idle interest than alarm. The fire didn't feel like a threat, burning at the top of one of highest chimneys in the city, and the roofs were still damp from a rainstorm.

A larger crowd had gathered inside the manor gate. Soldiers--the ones who'd accompanied the marquis--were shouting inside the tower, so loudly that their voices carried to the yard. A few of them were blocking the doors. One shoved a man trying to get to his home, but Lara didn't see what happened next because she led the donkey around the tower, to side that faced away from the door.

The side where she'd seen Eli fall.

She found him a minute later, after swerving the cart around a handful of old-timers muttering at the charred wreckage and a middle-aged woman stomping on a chunk of burning cloth.

His body was burned almost beyond recognition. A bone jutted from one arm and his neck was bent at a terrible angle. Lara swallowed the bitter taste in her mouth and knelt beside him. He'd survived so much. Surely he could survive this, too.

Except he hadn't. No breath. No pulse.

She touched his ruined flesh. She wanted to cry. She wanted to--

"Oi, miss," the street kid murmured her. "There's another one over there, if you're looking to, um, collect, um ..."

A wave of hope rose in her chest. She didn't even respond to the fact that the kid apparently thought she was a corpse snatcher. She just hurried toward the blackened hump he'd indicated. And yes, that was Eli. Burned like ... like meat dropped into a bonfire, but definitely Eli.

Not breathing, not that she could hear with her ear pressed against his charred lips. But still bleeding. Blood welled from the slashes and punctures covering his back, his blistered and mangled skin visible where his clothes had burned away.

Blood meant life, so she wailed, "It's him, it's him, my husband, oh Dreamers!"

She carried on, moaning and sobbing as the kid helped her load the body onto the cart. She cried, too, which came pretty easily considering the state of Eli. His blistered, melted face, his abused body. Sniffling, she led the donkey around the corner, where she took a breath and pressed too many coins in the kid's hand. When she reminded him that corpse-snatching was a hanging offense, he fled so fast that he left a half-full tankard of ale on the cart.

She climbed into the cart and sat on the trunk, which she'd strapped into place as a seat. With a flick of the reins, the donkey's hooves clomped through the evening streets. She turned another corner, so she wasn't in sight of the manor, then headed along half-dozen streets that were perfectly safe in the daytime, and imperfectly safe at night.

"Can you hear me?" she whispered, in case a spark was hovering. "Are you alive?"

She glanced at him, jostling bonelessly every time the cart's clattering wheels struck an uneven patch--which was constantly. She quickly turned away. He looked worse than dead. He looked like a corpse that had been dragged off a pyre.

She didn't want to linger, but she couldn't let anyone see her dragging that across the city. So a few minutes later, she reined in and crawled beside Eli. He didn't look any better. He wasn't healing, at least not as fast as earlier. Maybe he was breathing stronger, but other than that he seemed the same.

"Stop messing around," she told him. "You're no good to me dead."

She draped her cloak over him but he still looked horrible. A bell tolled somewhere, and she checked the street for trouble. Two couples stepped from a doorway nearby, and headed the other direction. A man slouched past, picking his teeth with a fingernail.

Okay. She needed to put more distance between herself and the manor, she needed that urgently. If the marquis was dead, they'd lash out. And if he wasn't dead, they'd still lash out.

Still, carting a charred corpse around would attract attention. So instead of leaving, she pulled a blanket from the trunk. Between that and the cloak, he looked ... passable. She reached for the reins again, then thought of something. She poured the dregs of the street kid's ale over Eli's head and jammed the tankard by his side. It would have to do.

A woman shouted nearby, and glass shattered. Time to leave.

When Lara flicked the reins, the donkey whuffled and started away. She kept her blowgun near to hand but nobody bothered her--at least not until she reached the outskirts of the city. There were no gates to speak of, but Rockbridge maintained a few rarely-used checkpoints along the major roads. And she couldn't travel off-road, not with the cart, which she needed to transport Eli's insensate body.

The 'rarely-used' checkpoint was being used now. Which meant that news of the assassination--or the assassination attempt--had spread. Still, the militia members at the roadblock didn't look all that alert. She guessed that they knew something had happened, but not exactly what.

"Hey, there, lass," one of them said, as she rolled to a stop. "What're you doing out, this time of night?"

"That no good man of mine," she grumbled. "Drunk again."

"Is he now?"

"See for yourself," she said, and shot a scornful look toward Eli's covered, ale-damp form.

The man snorted. "And where's home?"

"White's Mill," she said, naming a nearby village.

"You just come to the city to fetch your man home?"

"Of course not," she said, scornfully. "You take me for a fool? We were in the city. I'm dragging his boney arse home before he falls afoul of any other temptations."

"Wave her through," an older man said.

"Go on then," the first man told Lara.

She clicked to the donkey, who flicked her ears and pulled the cart forward. Lara had just cleared the roadblock when hoofbeats sounded behind her. A good horse, approaching fast. A quick glance showed her the rider was a woman in a messenger tabard, with colors that meant she'd come from the Keep.

"Lock it down!" the rider called.

"Lock what down, now?" the older man said.

"Everything. Nobody leaves Rockbridge. Not a single dreamin' flea, starting immediately."

"Whoa. What climbed into the marquis's wig?"

"It's not him," the rider said. "Lady Pym's in charge now. Someone attacked her father and she will raze the valley to find him."

On the other side of the roadblock, Lara gave the reins the slightest flick. Keeping her head low, encouraging the donkey to maintain a steady pace. No reason to look at her. She was already past the barricade, she was nobody important, just a woman with a drunk husband who--

"Hey!" the first man called. "Lass. Lass!"

She couldn't run, so she looked over her shoulder. "Me?"

"Bide a moment," he said.

She pulled on the reins and the donkey stopped.

The man stepped closer, his hand on the hilt of his sword. Then he considered her for what felt like a long time.

"If I had a little thing like you waiting at home," he finally said. "You wouldn't see me going off drinking."

"Words are easy," she told him, putting saucy affront into her voice, "but where were you before I got hitched?"

He grinned and smacked the side of the cart. "Angel keep you."

"And you," she told him, and rolled away.

A young woman driving a donkey cart along the rural roads in the early evening wouldn't raise too many eyebrows. But at night? People might talk.

So Lara decided to get off the road before night fell proper. She headed toward White's Mill for ten minutes, just in case, then veered onto another road. She didn't know the area surrounding Rockbridge as well as a native, but Chivat Lo had made her memorize the basic geography and common landmarks and roads and she--

Well, she knew exactly where she was going.

She wouldn't get there tonight, though.

So she climbed down from her seat before too long and wiggled her fingers between the the donkey's chest band and her warm, damp fur. She liked the donkey, so placid and useful and self-assured. She murmured to her as she picked a path behind a rise that would keep the cart out of sight of the road.

She tied the old girl's lead to a bush and unhitched her. Plenty of shrubs to eat, but no water. She'd be okay until tomorrow. Well, she'd probably be okay for a five-day. Donkeys could last without water for quite some--

Laranya shook herself. She was avoiding dealing with Eli, afraid of what she'd see when she peeled the blanket off him.

For good reason.

It was ugly.

He wasn't healing right. His skin was still blackened and charred and ... hm. Actually, the slashes and punctures were half-healed. His left hand, which had been mostly bone, only had a deep, puckered groove running across the flesh of his palm. His broken ankles and shattered leg-bones--apparently he'd landed feet-first--looked ... less horrible.

But the burns had barely faded. Were trolls susceptible to fire? She'd never heard that. Still, that's what it looked like to her. She didn't know how to help him, though, so she just ... well, she took a breath, then starting picking the embedded debris out of him.

Splinters the size of her pinky.

Shards of stone.

Broken crockery.

At first, she couldn't dislodge a jagged chunk of wood in his stomach. When she pulled finally got purchase with her fingernails, she pulled out a length of shattered walking stick that must've impaled half his torso.

Then she took a few moments to not faint.

She worked in the dim moonlight after the sun set, using her fingers instead of her eyes. By the time she found everything--or everything she could find--his ankles looked okay again and she was beyond exhausted. If she moved him, she'd never get him back onto the cart, so she left him there, wrapped in blankets.

She crawled beneath the cart, between the wheels, braced for nightmarish images of ruined flesh--and fell asleep immediately.

Lara woke at dawn, blinking up at the bottom of the cart. The air smelled fresh and clean and new, not like city air. The scent made her hungry. She stretched beneath her blanket, feeling a sleepy sense of satisfaction--then she remembered.

She scrambled out and checked Eli.

He looked better. Well, no, he looked worse. He was absolutely covered with oozing scabs and ropy scars. Which at least took care of her hunger. But his heart was thumping loud and regular, and his legs were intact and his fingers regrown, and his breathing sounded good. His face was still ... she didn't want to think about that. But other than being cocooned in shiny burn-scarred flesh, he definitely looked stronger.

He just needed a little more time, that was all. And they both needed a little more distance from Rockbridge.

"And what you need," she told the donkey, as she harnessed her. "Is a name."

The donkey brayed softly.

"Other than that," Lara told her.

She followed farm roads north and east, stopping to water the donkey and herself--and to drip water between Eli's horrible lips--at a stream. She thought she heard horses galloping in the distance, so she covered Eli with brush. A big mound of leaves and stalks and branches. Probably not the best thing for healing, but if a Rockbridge patrol caught a glimpse of him, they wouldn't believe the 'drunk husband' story.

She heard horses twice more, and once she saw them in the distance. Three riders pounding along a path between fields of barley and a pomegranate orchard. She almost ignored them, but Chivat Lo had told her that you attracted less attention if you acted loudly like whomever you were pretending to be, instead of quietly like yourself. She was pretending to be a farmwife hauling brush so she paused and shaded her eyes to watch the riders, like a normal curious country woman.

She even gave them a half-wave.

Maybe they noticed, maybe they didn't. They kept riding, though.

She ate a lunch of pickled eggs as she headed north, pausing regularly to check that Eli was still breathing inside that brush pile. Well, and inside the ... the seared-flesh sack that covered him like a lumpy, pocked peel around a citrus fruit. At least his chest was still rising and falling, and she felt breath through the slit at his mouth.

As the hours passed, the stands of trees dotting the farmland thickened into lightly wooded pastures. A lumber wagon, pulled by a team of oxen, rumbled along the dirt road. The sun warmed her neck. Flies landed on the donkey, who responded with twitches and snorts, and she used her fly switch for something other than a blowgun.

Then the wind shifted and she smelled forest.

The damp leaf litter, the mossy trunks, the porcupine dens. The gorse birch and red alder and rockrose oak. She almost laughed. She was close now. So close to the forest she'd watched from her window. The one she'd prayed to, twice a day.

"Everthing's going to be okay," she told the donkey.

The donkey twitched an ear.

"Easy for you to say!" A bug bumbled against Lara's cheek. "And I know I shouldn't tempt fate, but once we're in the trees ... we'll be okay."

The donkey didn't even bother twitch her ear again.

"Well, no, we can't stay there forever. There's ... there are things we need to do."

The bug strolled across Lara's face.

"What?" she asked, brushing the bug away. "You think Lady Pym will search the forest? Why? What would she expect to find? No, she'll look to the seats of power. Who else would attack her father?"

The bug tapped her cheek. Three times, in a steady rhythm.

"Blight take you, you stupid--!" She stopped, realizing that it wasn't a bug. "Oh! You're awake!"

One invisible spark tapped her on the left cheek and the other tapped her on the right. Right-left, right-left, right-left--

"Okay, okay!" she laughed.

She turned and rummaged in the brush pile until she uncovered Eli face, and ... he didn't look awake. He looked the same: like a corpse wrapped in burned bacon.

"Uh." She put her ear to his mouth. "Can you talk?"

He didn't say anything. Maaaaybe he breathed harder.

"So you can't move or speak, but you can hear and see with your sparks?"

Left cheek.

"Okay, um, if left is 'yes' and right is 'no,' touch my forehead three times."

Three taps on her forehead.

"Oh! Okay. Um. Good morning. Why aren't you healing faster?"

Sparks touched her left and right cheeks at the same time.

"You don't know," she guessed. "Maybe trolls don't heal from fire so easily."

No.

"Maybe you don't."

Yes.

"Oh. Burl. Um, how can I help? Tell me what you need. Wait, that's more than a yes or no question--"

A spark touched her right cheek: no.

"You don't need anything?"

Yes.

"Are you sure?"

Yes.

"Good. I was afraid you'd want me to ... to peel that outer skin off you, like the valley's grossest plantain. Um, a plantain is a fruit with a thick peel. You don't get them down here, they're long and curved and ... Why am I talking about plaintains?"

Both cheeks, saying that he didn't know.

"Yeah." She took hold of herself as the cart rattled along a gentle curve. "Did you just wake up now?"

A hesitation, then no.

"You've been drifting in and out for a while?"

Yes.

"And you heard me talking to the donkey."

Yes, yes, yes. Yes!

"Oh, you're laughing at me? The guy who looks like yesterday's bonfire is laughing?"

Yes.

She made a face at where she imagined the sparks were floating. She opened her mouth to respond, but then didn't say anything, because the scent of swamp lanterns and seedpods swirled around her again. The scent of the deep woods. Peace touched her heart and she lifted her head to the sky. A hawk circled in the cloudless sky, and she felt her braid dancing with the jostling of the cart.

"Is he dead?" she asked, after a time.

Yes.

"Are you sure?"

Yes.

"Good," she said, and the curve in the road straightened.

The forest stretched in front of her. Wide and green and welcoming, like the Mother's arms. Tears pricked at Lara's eyes and laughter bubbled in her chest again.

"Good," she repeated as the cart moved into the trees. "Because this is just the beginning."