"Well, you're not too far from where you're going." Eric's pack held a map that Jay had painstakingly sketched on a piece of worn leather so Heart and Eric could find the Unifier base after they'd finished in First City. The Skyman had not volunteered the information; Eric had demanded it.
"Promise me you'll sleep with one eye open while you're with him," Eric whispered.
Aria smiled only for a split second. "You feel it too, do you? I had hoped it was just me." Eric shook his head and she sighed. "If my Lord Teacher knows any options…" She paused just long enough to see that he wasn't going to say anything. "Neither do I." She stroked the ox's side and turned to face him. "You be careful as well, Eric."
Suddenly, she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close in a deep kiss. Startled by her intensity, it took him a moment to respond.
When she finally released him, he wished fiercely that there was something he could say. He wanted to give her some promise or meaningful speech that would give her courage and hope. Nothing came to him. He pulled away from her slowly, silently. She didn't press him. She just let him go.
Not quite soon enough, though. Eyes Above, leaning on Storm Water's arm, pushed through the bamboo. Eric felt his face redden and his hands go cold at the same time. The old woman's eyesight was bad, but it wasn't that bad and she was, according to Aria, a strict interpreter of the Words. The boy had seen them, too. Eric could tell by the dubious frown on his face. His mother could get much the same look when she wasn't sure about what was going on.
"Do not go too far in your task, Daughter," Eyes Above admonished Aria, more softly than Eric had expected.
"I'll try not to, Mother," said Aria, but the look on her face told Eric she was thinking, too late for that.
Aria leaned over and took her son's square-jawed face in both hands. "I expect you to take good care and plenty of it, Storm Water dena Sharp Eyes in the Light," she said. "I expect to hear you acted as a grown man in all things, or I shall have your father wrap you in diapers and spank you until you wail."
Eric looked away, suddenly discomforted. As he did, he saw that Heart already stood in place in the sledge. He tapped his stick impatiently against the rail.
"Storm Water says it shall be so," Aria's son said. There was a lot of his father's steadiness in his voice.
"Obey the Servant," said Eyes Above, and Eric wondered why. "Find your sister, and find that she is still my daughter."
"Stone in the Wall says it shall be so." Aria climbed into her sledge too fast for Eric to see the look on her face. He strongly suspected that she did it on purpose. Jay dropped his bundle into the box and then sat carefully on the lid.
The thought of the Skyman with a backside full of splinters gave Eric a moment's sour amusement.
"Yah!" Aria cracked the driving stick against the sledge's rickety rails. "Get a move on! Get up there!"
The oxen snorted and ambled forward. The sledge jostled and jolted across the muddy ground. Aria and Jay would take the path at the base of the Lif wall, straight across the marshes until they hit the Narroways road. Eric and Heart would head in roughly the same direction for a while, except they would climb up the wall onto the heights in order to pick a route toward First City.
The bamboo leaves crackled as Aria's team forced its way through. The greenery swallowed them up. The sound of skids and harness and hooves lasted a little while longer, but eventually the marshes swallowed that too.
Feeling strangely bereft, Eric faced Eyes Above and Storm Water. A second passed before he realized something was wrong. They had remained standing in front of him.
Aria's family indeed. The thought gave him a smile. He raised both his hands. "The Nameless speak of your deeds. They cannot be denied."
Eyes Above inclined her head with a dignity that belonged to a King, not a Notouch. The gesture increased Eric's discomfort as much as it touched his heart. Now he knew where Aria got it from.
"Hand on the Seablade!" called Heart. "Will we go before night hits?"
I preferred the U-Kenai too, Aria. Eric trudged to join his brother-in-law. Even Adu knew when not to interrupt.
The soldiers' sledge did have a rain cover, but since it had been built to carry supplies, not passengers, its boxes had no padding on their lids. Eric stowed his pack and sat down at least as gingerly as Jay had.
Heart gave him a wry glance that Eric did not bother to return. Heart touched up the team and they lurched forward.
Eric leaned back against the support pole, fixed his gaze on the countryside that jiggled and skidded behind the sledge, and got ready to be bored. The noise and jostle of the sledge didn't make for a conversational atmosphere, especially with Heart struggling to keep them on dry ground. Supposedly, an ox had a nose for deep water and wouldn't stray off the dry paths, but Eric had more than once ministered to those who put too much faith in that theory, and so, he suspected, had Heart. It was much better to be silent and let his brother-in-law concentrate on keeping them out of the bogs.
It wasn't as if he needed any news of the House. He wasn't going to be staying in First City any longer than he needed to. He and Heart would deliver their information and then he'd be on his way to meet up with Aria. The politics of the house could go drown themselves.
I wish I'd had a chance to tell Aria the best part of It. He rubbed his palms thoughtfully together. With Jay here, we don't have to stay in the Realm. Neither of us.
Jay would most certainly be calling the Unifiers as soon as he got back to his dome. When the Vitae had been dealt with, a Unifier ship could take Eric and Aria back to May 16. From there they could go anywhere in the Quarter Galaxy. She could bring her children if she wanted to. They'd thrive over the World's Wall and they'd have what she really wished for. They would not be Notouch. The Little Eye and the younger boys wouldn't ever even be marked.
He probably wouldn't even have to see Lady Fire if he finished his end of this business quickly enough. Heart could stay behind to deal with the House and the Nobles.
Eric rested his elbows on this thighs. It'll be a few days of hard looks and long silences, at the worst. He dropped his gaze to the two lines of pulverized reeds stretch out behind the sledge. At the very worst.
He let his internal reassurances occupy him as the sledge rocked and rattled along. Outside, the ground dried out and the flat expanse of reeds and bamboo was replaced by tufts of grass sprouting between piles of boulders and thick puddles of moss. The Walls closed in overhead.
Balancing himself carefully and hanging on to the canvas's support poles, Eric sidestepped to the rear of the sledge and leaned out. Despite his claim that he had lost all his geography, he retained enough to see that they were almost to Midway Breach, a ragged escarpment between the Broken Canyon and the Dead Sea Canyon. He squinted up at the line of the Walls. The Pinnacle was an arrow-shaped protrusion listing toward the Dead Sea. They'd have to follow it all the way down the canyon and skirt the salt flats before they came to the main road to First City.
The sledge ran over a larger than average bump. The shock sat Eric down hard on the nearest box, jarring his backbone.
"Sorry," Heart called back.
Eric shifted his buttocks and started to say it was all right.
Heart cut him off. "We've been waiting for you to come back, you know."
Eric raised his head slowly. Heart had a quarter profile turned toward him so he could see Eric with one eye and the oxen with the other. His elbows pumped and strained in response to the team tugging at the harness.