“You shouldn’t—” Drina swallowed, her jaw clicking. “We don’t say the names of the dead.” Then stiffly she whispered, “How—”
And Kate, knowing it would break her friend’s heart held out the burl wood carving. Drina’s hands shook as she took it. She held it by the wings and looked into the wooden eyes. “This is her. You really are a witch. This is her.”
“I’m not,” said Kate. “But I’ve seen her. I’ve seen your mother.”
Drina’s head snapped up. “She’s alive?”
“No.” Kate was sorry she’d started the way she had. She shifted tracks. “She had a brother. The one who went mad. Linay.”
Drina shivered.“How do you know his name?”
“When I—He—After—” Kate stopped and poked at the fire. “After the Roamers burned me, Linay saved me. He pulled me out of the river. He’s the one, Drina. He’s the witch who stole my shadow.”
Plain Kate drew herself up and started from the beginning, from the day a witch-white stranger had asked her to fashion a fiddle bow. She told her own story as if it were about someone else, and was amazed at how rich and strange it sounded, like an old tale. She told Drina about learning the rusalka’s name, about trading blood for answers, about the swallow that had crumbled to ash. About what Linay planned for Lov.
“And then I saw you,” she finished. “I recognized Cream—and she’d been tied up so long… I thought I should come… I was afraid, because you burned me. But it’s not the Roamer way, to go alone.”
Drina didn’t answer at once. The two girls sat listening to Cream cropping grass, her tail swishing.
“They were twins,” said Drina at last. “My mother and my uncle. Lenore and Linay. He was my favorite, my other father. He taught me little magics, and how to turn handsprings. He was different, after she died. After that spell, with his shadow—after he summoned her. The clan spoke death to him. He went alone. I remember watching him walk down the road.”
It was full dark now. The trees were stirring and rustling. Nearby a nightjar churred, an eerie whirr that seemed to come from everywhere. Drina traced the lines of the carving’s wooden face. “Plain Kate, you didn’t know her, you don’t understand. She would never have done this.” She was crying. “What you’re saying—the rusalka—it can’t be true.”
“We have ample evidence,” said Taggle. “Scars and stuff, even.”
“But my father,” said Drina desperately. “He was different before she died. She loved him. How can it be that she killed him? Her own husband? And, and—Ciri!” The name burst from her. “Stivo, Wen, and Ciri! Kate, she would never have hurt Ciri. She would have died first.”
“She did,” said Taggle.
“Hush, Taggle.” Kate patted at Drina’s bunched shoulders, awkward as if patting a horse. “Drina. She doesn’t have a choice. Linay, he said it was a terrible fate. That’s why he’s doing all this. He wants to save her.”
Drina sniffed hard and swallowed.“Save her?”
“A rusalka’s fate…” Kate tried to remember the exact words. “He said a rusalka’s fate could be undone by avenging her death. That’s what he wants to do. That’s why he wants to kill all the people in Lov.”
“Undone…” Drina’s eyes were huge. “What does that mean? Would it…bring her back?”
Kate felt as if Drina had kicked her in the belly. Would Drina be on Linay’s side? Lenore had been her mother. Kate had lost her father. What would she do to save him? To stop Linay, would she have to fight Drina?
But Drina fought herself. She grabbed Kate’s hand and squeezed so hard that Kate’s fingers ached. “We can’t let him do this, Plain Kate. My mother wouldn’t want—we have to stop him.”
Kate laced her fingers through Drina’s. She could barely see them in the dark: walnut brown and new pine pale, like a pattern of inlay. “Yes,” she said. “You can come with me.”
¶
So Plain Kate and Drina went together down the road to Lov. Whatever had been between them—the lopsided friendship of Drina’s merriness and Kate’s cautious silences—was gone now, hacked off, burned away. But something new had grown in its place, a bond as strong as a scar. They did not speak of it, and they made the best time they could.
Riding in thevardo was easier than walking, though not much faster: The wall of fog trailed them, relentless. Still, Kate recovered some strength, nodding and dozing on Drina’s shoulder as they sat together on the driver’s seat, high above Cream’s back. Neither girl was willing to ride alone beside Behjet’s helpless body.
The broad road, which Kate had walked for three days, was on the other bank of the river.
On this side of the river, the way was hardly more than a track, winding through birch groves and boggy patches of basket rush and purple aster—a strangely peaceful place.
“We wanted to take the small road,” Drina explained. “The great road was jammed—the whole country, and the people are angry. They…” She paused, looking as if she might be sick.
“I saw.” Kate thought of the hanged women, their black feet brushing her shoulders as she ducked away.
“They’re going to Lov,” said Drina. “Thegadje farmers in this country always hide themselves in the stone city when there’s trouble. Since the time of the dragon boats, Daj says. They will all go to Lov.”
And they’ll die, thought Kate.Unless we can stop Linay.
But talk as they would, they had no idea of how to stop him. Finally on the third day, in the last of the light, the little track broke free of a wall of birch and joined a larger road that bridged the river. Snakes of fog eddied on top of the water, and the overcast had half swallowed the rising moon. Across the river, Lov squatted, cold as a toad.
¶
They could not go the last mile—it was nearly full dark—so they turned Cream around and nosed thevardo back into the shelter of the trees. Branches scraped the canvas sides. They found a little rise by the river and took shelter in a grove of young birch. Drina tended to Behjet. They built a little fire.
Across the river, the city muttered to itself in the damp darkness.“It’s big,” said Drina. “I forgot how big it was.”
Kate worked on her carving, smoothing life into wood with a leather pad wetted and dipped into sand. It was nearly finished, and she knew, she knew it was good, it was true, it was important. But whatever it was saying to her, she couldn’t hear.
Cream was shouldering her way into the grove, tangling her mane in the low branches. Drina got up and set her free, then got out the softest brush and started to curry the horse’s neck. Taggle climbed into Kate’s lap. “You could do that for me, you know.” So Kate put down her sanding pad and the speechless, useless carving and scratched her fingernails through his dense ruff.
Beside Kate the firelight crinkled on the water. It was going right through her.“My shadow,” she said. “He can’t make the monster without my shadow. We have to get it back.”
“You tried that,” the cat pointed out. “I had to act heroically in order to save you.” He sat up, even though she was still petting him. “Develop a better plan.”
Kate did her best to obey. The river murmured at her elbow, and the fog on it carried bursts of other voices, high laughter and thick shouts, and for a moment a snatch of eerie fiddle music.“He’s here,” said Kate. Drina came to sit beside her. They listened but the music didn’t come again.
“I don’t know how to stop him,” said Kate. “I never have.”
The words hung there a moment. Then Taggle said,“Why do we have to stop him?”
Drina began:“Because my mother—”
“Bah. She’s dead. Her wishes are of no importance.”
“Taggle.” Kate put a silencing hand between his ears—and found little ridges of muscle, alert, tense.
“Give me another reason,” Taggle said, flicking his ears. “Give me acat’s reason. Keep in mind that we do not,” he harrumphed, “run into burning buildings going ‘bark, bark.’ ”