Lukassa looked offended at first, but Nyateneri’s laughter swept everything before it until we were all three rocking and yapping like the fox, who bounced between us, nipping painfully at chins and noses. I slapped him off the bed, and he promptly sprang to the table and stood there listening to the pigeons overhead, plainly counting them with his pricked ears. Why did Karsh keep those birds, I still wonder, and to whom in this world would Karsh send messages? I certainly never found out.
The laughter dissolved the clawing ball of fury that had been turning in my stomach all that day—longer, perhaps. Lukassa in particular clung to her mirth like a child to the last moments of a holiday; as well she might, who hadn’t laughed twice since her return to this life. Nyateneri kept asking her about that, still chuckling but without mockery: “What was it like to be a squash, a head of cabbage? What did it feel like?” Lukassa finally answered her, speaking in a voice that I would give more than I can tell you to forget.
“I was never that,” she said, quite gently. “A vegetable has no notion of what is happening to it, but I always knew. When I was in the river, I was Lukassa dying, and when I was dead I was still Lukassa, still, still.” And so she had been, for no reason I understand yet: crying her death with such hunger, such outrage, that it changed my road, and next my journey, and at last my life. She continued, “And when I rose to moonlight through the water and stood before Lal, I was Lukassa there, too, only”—the voice faltered then—“only not so much. Different. Some Lukassa was left among the stones of the river, and I cannot go back to find her. And if I could, she would not come to me, because she has no name now, so no one can call her.” She stopped then, and not even the fox could meet her eyes.
When I felt the tears begin, I did not know what they were. It had been that long since the last time I wept. I thought first that I was sick from the wine, and then that I might be having a taking, a fit, for the muscles of my face and throat and stomach took themselves away from me, though I fought them so hard that I could not breathe. My own body, turned treacherous as Bismaya, effortlessly cruel as men. I heard a strange, light voice, a child’s voice, saying something very far away, and then the tears came in full and I gave in, gave in, I who never gave in, not to any of them, not in my heart, never, and they all knew it, every one, always. Until that moment, no one living had seen me cry, except for my friend, if he indeed lived.
I have cried since, but only once, and that time for joy, and it has no place in this tale.
How they gaped at me, Nyateneri and Lukassa as well. I was doubled over, almost retching with sorrow—and, yes, some of that was undoubtedly the wine, but there was more. You see, absolutely all that I have of my beginnings is my name, Lalkhamsin-khamsolal, and to have lost that, to have your soul not answer to its name—oh, do you see, I could just imagine that, but for me even the imagining was beyond dealing with, beyond fighting or enduring or turning into a story. And there she was, that village goose, staring down at me in vague wonder while I wept and wept for her loss and her courage, and for myself, for my friend, for Khaidun where I was born. It had been that long.
Nyateneri finally put her arms around me, which quieted me immediately. She was stiff at it; and, in honesty, I am not easy being held, not by most people. I moved a little from her, wiping my face and eyes. Nyateneri turned away then, and busied herself refilling my winemug. She sipped, gasped, shivered slightly, and said, “I think we are going to need some more of this appalling swill.”
“No more left,” I snuffled. “Karsh said.” I cried a little more at the thought.
“Karsh misunderstood,” Nyateneri said. She swung herself off the bed and was gone in what seemed the same movement, already calling for the innkeeper as she clattered down the stair. Lukassa and I sat silent, shyer than strangers, while I cleaned myself up as well as I might. When I could speak again, I said finally, “Lukassa, there is only one person who can call back Lukassa, the one there in the river, under the stones. That person is Tikat.”
Lukassa shuddered. I could feel it where we sat, as though the earth had shuddered beneath both of us. She would not look at me. I said, “There is no other. If you want her back, that part of yourself, you must go to him.”
“I will not. I will not.” I could barely hear her, so low she spoke. She clenched her hands on the bedframe, looking down at her knees pressed tightly together. “Let me alone. I will not.”
“He loves you,” I said. “Little as I know of love, I know that much past doubting.” But she shook her head so that I heard the very gristle of her neck crack, crying to me, “Lal, no, let be, I cannot bear this.” She called me by my name rarely, and Nyateneri not at all. I touched her to comfort her—as clumsily as Nyateneri had me—but she pushed my hand away and sat still until we heard booted feet on the stair again. Then she turned to face me, paler than ever, but seeing me out of dry, steady eyes.
“I do not know if I want her back,” she said. “That Lukassa.” Then Nyateneri had pushed the door open with her foot and was inside with her arms full of bottles of Dragon’s Daughter. She was smiling savagely—I half-expected to see bits of Karsh’s habitual dirty smock stuck between her teeth. She said, “A simple misunderstanding. I knew it would turn out so, once I explained the situation.”
Perhaps it was the effects of exhaustion, reaction to her fight for life, or perhaps I am simply as vain as I’ve always suspected, but Nyateneri had a weaker head than I that night. No more wincing, no grimaces: she drank straight from the bottle like any common soldier, and it took distinctly less than one bottle before she began to tell us about the convent she had fled. I was right about that, after all, if about precious little else.
“It’s deep in the west country,” she said. “No, you don’t know it, Lal, it’s not anywhere near any place you could know, as much journeying as you’ve done. The closest town is Sumildene, and it’s not close at all, and no one goes there who doesn’t have to.” Which is true enough, as I know, having been once to Sumildene, but there was no reason to go into that. Nyateneri said, “West and south of Sumildene, the land turns boggy, no good for anything but tilgit farmers, and not many of those.” She grinned at our stares. “Tilgit? It’s a kind of marsh weed: you dry it out and pound it forever and it makes a perfectly disgusting porridge that seems to keep people alive until they’d rather die than eat any more of the stuff. Oh, we did look forward to fast-days at the convent. I’d have run away for that reason alone.”
“What is it called,” I asked, “that place?” Nyateneri spread her hands and smiled apologetically. I asked then, “How long did you live there?”
“Twenty-one years,” Nyateneri said quietly. “From the time I was nine years old.” She answered my next question before I voiced it. “Eleven years. I have been fleeing them for eleven years.”
Lukassa sipped her wine, wrinkling her nose and mouth into a dainty sneeze. She said, “I don’t understand. What kind of a convent could that be?”
Nyateneri did not answer. I said, “A convent that forbids its sisters ever to break their vows. There are such.” The fox had come down from the table and curled in a corner, bright eyes glittering under drowsy lids. I continued: “But I have never heard of a convent that would pursue a recusant for eleven years, let alone set assassins after her.” When Nyateneri opened a second bottle without looking at me, a mischief took me to add, “I must say, I don’t think much of trackers who take that long a time to run down their quarry. I’d have found you in two years, at most, and I know those who would have done it within one.”