"I love you," said Hyacinth, because in its own way it was true. Yevgeni made a strangled noise in his throat and no other response, only stood there, holding on. One of his hands clenched and relaxed. The rain ceased, finally. A wind came up.
"Oh, gods," said Yevgeni at last in a muffled voice, talking into the collar of Hyacinth's tunic, "I want to go there so badly, to this place where you come from, this Erthe, where there's no shame for a man to tell another man that he loves him."
"Of course there's no shame! Why should there be?" Hyacinth stroked Yevgeni's hair.
The sound of a horse crashing through brush stirred them. Yevgeni spun away and drew his saber. But it was only Valye, returning empty-handed from her hunt. She swung down and kissed her brother on the cheek and nodded to Hyacinth. Yevgeni went back to the fire, to try to spark it to life, but it smoldered and refused to give either flame or heat. Valye unsaddled her horse and rubbed it down and hobbled it with the others, under the shelter of a grove of scrub trees that ringed a little pond. Birds skittered across the water on the far side. Birds. But perhaps Valye wasn't a good enough shot to kill birds for dinner.
Valye cast a practiced eye up at the lowering sky. Darkness swept down on them. "I think it's going to rain again tonight," she said to her brother. "I'd better set up my tent."
Again. She kept setting up her tent, and Yevgeni always had to sleep there. Yevgeni didn't want to offend her sensibilities, even though she knew damn well what he had been banished for. "It's stupid," said Hyacinth suddenly, surprising even himself, "for you to set up your tent. Mine is warmer."
Valye flushed and drew up her chin. "It isn't proper."
"Hyacinth," said Yevgeni softly, "she's right, of course."
Of course he did anything his sister said. They went to bed that night on empty stomachs. Valye had first watch.
Hyacinth crawled alone into his own tent and set the perimeter alert. He took off his clothes and slid them into the drying pouch slung at the base of the tent. Then he dozed, until Valye woke him for his half of the watch.
At dawn, while the others still slept, Hyacinth walked down to the water. In the quiet, he watched birds swarming over the pond and along the shore. Such abundance, and he was so hungry. Yevgeni and Valye weren't around to see. He circled around to the far side of the pond, staying out at a safe distance, and then aimed his knife and fired.
It was like fishing for trout in a barrel-that was an old phrase his great-grandmother Nguyen always used. Within moments two dozen birds lay dead or stunned, some on the ground, some along the shore in and out of the reeds, most floating in the lake. He left the ones in the water and, with a great sense of pride and a fair measure of squeamishness, hoisted the others by their feet and carried them back to camp.
At camp, Valye and Yevgeni had woken up. Valye tended to the fire while Yevgeni tied Valye's rolled-up tent onto a packhorse. Yevgeni flung up his head and saw Hyacinth. A look of such overwhelming relief passed over his features that Hyacinth was embarrassed.
"Look what I got!" he said instead, displaying the half-dozen birds he had salvaged from the massacre. "Now we can eat for the next day or two."
Valye flung herself down on the damp ground and began to wail. Yevgeni simply stared. He looked as if he were in shock. He looked horrified.
Hyacinth actually turned around to see if some loathsome monster followed in his wake, but there was nothing there. A flight of birds erupted from the pond, driving up into the cloud-laden sky. A single hawk circled above, and abruptly, it folded its wings and dropped like a stone toward the ground.
"Build the fire," said Yevgeni suddenly in a hoarse voice. "Valye, build the fire, quickly. We'll give them back to her and beg her forgiveness. We'll release them into her hands."
"What about him?" Valye wailed. "Who will kill him?"
What, in the Lady's Name, were they talking about?
"No one, damn it!" snapped Yevgeni. "It's obvious he doesn't know. Go on."
"But she'll demand retribution!" Valye cried.
"Just do as I say!"
"What's going on?" demanded Hyacinth.
Yevgeni took in a deep breath, as if by main force of will he controlled himself, and strode over to Hyacinth. "Birds are sacred to us. Perhaps they aren't to you khaja." He put out his hand. "Give them to me."
Relieved to be free of the limp birds, Hyacinth handed them over. Only to watch in shock as Yevgeni carried them across to the fire and, once its flames had gathered force and heat, simply laid them over the pit.
"Aren't you supposed to pull the feathers off first, and maybe get rid of the heads and the feet?" Hyacinth asked, utterly confused.
"Take down your tent unless you want us to leave it here," said Yevgeni in a voice so cold that Hyacinth abruptly knew that if he didn't obey, he would be left behind as well. He obeyed. As he worked, Yevgeni and Valye stoked the fire, feeding it, nursing it, encouraging it to consume the birds. They chanted in singsong voices, sometimes together, sometimes separately, sometimes overlapping.
"Grandmother Night, forgive us for drawing ourselves to your attention. We beg your pardon. We draw back. It was a child's error, that your messengers, your holy ones, were taken from life this day. Even you yourself did not blame your children when, all ignorant, they transgressed your laws. Spare us from your just retribution. Allow us to beg for your mercy. Look not upon us with your dreadful sight. We are not strong enough to endure the terrible glance of your eye. We send these messengers back to you, in the old way, to grace your lands once more. Grant us mercy for our transgression."
They were praying. They were just going to burn the birds and leave them.
"How can you waste them like that?" demanded Hyacinth, stopping in the middle of his task and staring. "I'm hungry!"
"Valye." Yevgeni dropped out of the singsong chant and motioned with a turn of his head toward the horses. "Saddle and pack up. Go. Quickly." She glanced toward Hyacinth, but she obeyed her brother. Yevgeni looked back over his shoulder at Hyacinth and then away. Hyacinth felt that he himself had somehow taken on the aspect of a loathsome monster, but he didn't understand what had happened. Drawing a knife, Yevgeni opened his palm out flat over the fire and before Hyacinth realized what he meant to do, he cut his own skin. Blood welled up. Yevgeni turned over his hand and let the blood drip into the fire.
"Take this offering, Grandmother Night, whose name is terrible to hear, whose glance is terrible to suffer, and grant us mercy, grant us forgiveness, for the death of these, your holy messengers."
Blood scattered into the fire. Singed feathers poured an acrid odor into the air. Yevgeni rocked back on his heels and stood, clenching his hand tight to stop the bleeding.
"Get your tent down," Yevgeni said to Hyacinth, so harshly that Hyacinth felt his courage and his heart melt within him. But he obeyed.
They packed up and rode on. The clouds scudded away. It did not rain. A low range of mountains loomed before them, the next obstacle.
Valye would not talk to him. Yevgeni answered his comments, his questions, in curt monosyllables, and finally Hyacinth gave up talking. He had never felt more alone in his life.
They climbed by winding paths up into the hills. A packhorse went lame around midday, picking up a stone in its hoof. They halted in the lee of a copse of trees that straggled along the steep slope that bounded the north wall of the valley up which they rode. Hills loomed around them. The sun burned bright overhead. Here between the rocks, it grew warm. It was a gloomy countryside. A few green shoots sprouted up, encouraged by die recent rains, but otherwise the land lay rocky and barren. Their trail wound up into the heights, and Yevgeni seemed sure that it would lead them over the hills and into Farisa country, past which lay the plains and freedom.