“I might also point out,” said Taggle, “that these are the people who tried to kill us. And also that we already have a daunting quest.”
“But it’s not the Roamer way,” said Kate, “to go alone.”
And she bundled up Taggle and waded into the river.
¶
The horsewas Cream, with her familiar constellation of dun patches, and thevardo was the little red one in which Plain Kate had slept for months. In the twilight she could see the carving of the horses braided into ropes, the place on the edge of the top step where the paint had worn away. Kate’s heart lurched, and she wasn’t sure if it was recognition, loss, or fear. Hungry and desperate at the center of her muddy picket circle, the horse squealed and jerked her head sideways against her bridle rope. Kate edged around her, hoping for silence. The horse bellowed. But no one came out of thevardo. Kate crept up the steps and lifted the door flap.
A girl in a dark turban was kneeling in front of the back bunk, on which was a tumbled hump of blankets. Kate let the flap drop. It rustled. The girl turned. It was Drina. Kate had known it would be.
Drina looked at Kate with large black eyes, blank as a frightened rabbit.
Kate lifted her hand and touched the slick, bubbled scar on her own face. She said nothing.
“Oh,” said Drina. She took a step forward. And then Kate could see that the heap of blankets wasn’t a heap of blankets, but a man lying asleep. Drina took another step and Kate saw it was Behjet.
“Oh, it’s these two,” said Taggle. “I hope they have sausages.”
But Kate stepped back so fast she felt her heels wobble on the edge of the step—she spun and leapt. She stood there, knee-deep in the grass, silent. Cream came over, jerking her head against the picket rope. She heard the step creak behind her.
Kate took a step forward—away from Drina—and stroked Cream’s freckled nose. “You just left her tied up here?” The horse whuffled and started sniffing her hand for food. “She’s been here too long. She’s trapped. She, she—” Her breath snagged, surprising her, and as clearly as if she were there, she smelled the rankness of the bear cage, the smoldering straw.
Drina lowered herself slowly down to stand with her—side by side but not touching, not looking.
“I—” said Drina, and stopped. Kate edged away so that Drina could undo Cream’s lead. The horse tossed her mane and shouldered Drina aside on her way to fresh grass. “I’m sorry,” Drina whispered, and patted Cream’s neck. Cream stamped but didn’t pause from her browsing.
“Mira—” Drina’s voice broke as Kate’s had.
“Is he dead?” she asked without turning. “Is Behjet dead?”
Drina shook her head.“Are you really a witch, Plain Kate? Can you save him?”
“Why would I?” snapped Kate.
They both stood a while, watching the horse and listening to the night rising: bullfrogs, crickets, the birds of evening. Finally Kate turned. She saw that Drina looked thinner and smaller, and that her mouth closed crookedly, like a mis-made box.“I’m just a carver,” she said. “But you have power. I saw it.”
Drina swallowed as if trying to get down a stone.“I don’t know how to use it.”
Plain Kate remembered the spell braided into her hair, the nick of the knife on her ear. The shadow on the wall of the bender tent. That shadow had been the rusalka. It might have killed them. Kate remembered the rush of steam into her face as she doused the fire, Drina’s walnut face gray as if flashed to ashes. Drina had tried to help her, had used all she knew—which wasn’t enough—and when she’d tried to find out more, the crowd had attacked her. It wasn’t Drina who had set her on fire.
She remembered sleeping in thevardo, with Taggle in her arms and Drina’s back warm against her back.
Kate was silent a moment, and then she said,“I don’t know what to do. And I can’t stay here. I have to get to Lov. But—I will try.”
They went back into thevardo, where they found Behjet lying as if dead, and Taggle balanced on his chest, trying to pull sausages down from a hook on the wall.
¶
Behjet looked as if he were only sleeping. Kate both did and did not want him to wake up, both did and did not want him to die. She crouched and picked up his hand. It was heavy and cold and a bit stiff, like a raw fish. A pulse lubbed sluggishly in the hollow of the wrist. There was a healed burn across the back of his hand, where the lamp oil had splashed when he’d tried to kill her.
Kate braced herself and shook him by the shoulder.“Behjet? Behjet, it’s Plain Kate.” She shook him harder. His head lolled to one side as if he’d turned to look at her. She leapt back. But the face was slack. Kate turned toward Drina.
“It’s been four days,” said Drina. “Daj says the body can’t live if the soul gets lost. I’ve been trying. I’ve been feeding him and…cleaning him. I even tried to travel downriver, out of the fog. They say the sleep is in the fog. But nothing works. I cannot wake him.”
“Let me try,” said Taggle. He curled his whiskers toward her, smugly. “Waking is not so hard, really, if you know how.”
The cat solemnly placed a paw on Behjet’s elbow and another on his stomach. Kate and Drina edged together and watched. Taggle went high stepping, delicately, to perch on the man’s breastbone. He lengthened his neck and touched his nose to Behjet’s. He sniffed. He mewed. Then he opened his mouth and shouted, “Wake up!”
The girls jumped.
“Wake up,” yowled Taggle. “Get up and feed me! Get up and scratch me! Get up and see me! Wake up!”
It was earsplitting, rattling thevardo. But Behjet didn’t move.
Taggle lifted his nose and quirked an ear at them.“It may be hopeless,” he intoned. “WAKE UP!” he wauled. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”
Drina was crying and giggling at once. Kate stepped forward and scooped the cat up.“That’s enough, Taggle.”
“He’ll die,” gasped Drina, wrapping her arms around her ribs. “That’s how it is. The others died. My father died. And Daj’s husband.” Kate could hear her avoiding the names: the names of the dead. “And after you left, Magda’s son—the one who grabbed Taggle, that time…”
Ciri. The toddling prince of the Roamer children, who’d exclaimed over the talking cat. Ciri.
Plain Kate led Drina outside and sat her on thevardo steps. She stacked tinder and built a fire. She fetched a pan, cut an onion free from its braid, and lifted a pair of sausages from their hook on the wall above Behjet’s head. She looked down at his face.
“Good,” purred Taggle when she came out with the pan and sausages. “Food, yes. I’m sure that will wake him. Food.”
Kate knocked the edge of the fire down into coals and put the pan on it.“Have you eaten?” she asked Drina. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”
Drina was huddled up on the steps. She shrugged.“Since…”
Kate tossed the sausages onto the smoking pan and started cutting the onion. The heating cast iron smelled of Roamer cooking, smelled of being loved, of being safe, home.“I can’t stay here,” Kate said. “I have to go to Lov.”
Drina wrapped her arms around her knees. The night was coming up fast.“I was going to go to my mother’s clan. My father is dead. I have no blood tie to his clan. Daj said I could go if I wanted and Behjet was taking me. And then—” She stopped, swallowed. “Plain Kate,” she said. “Can I come with you?”
Kate didn’t know how to answer.You can’t. I want you to. I’m still afraid of you. You shouldn’t, because I’m going to try to stop Linay and he’ll probably kill me.“Well,” she said aloud. “Eat.” She stabbed the sausage up on a knife and handed it to Drina.
Drina ate it without attention, and put it down half finished. Taggle helped himself and no one stopped him. Drina sat still with the firelight playing over the dark grain of her face.
“You look like your mother,” said Kate abruptly. “You look like Lenore.”