She started whistling.
In a couple of days, she might even see Reed and Trail again, and Mother.
What's she going to think of what I've done? I haven't got any idea. And my children? Her breath caught. Except, I've surely been divorced and so they won't be my children and Nail in the Beam won't be…there. She shoved the thought aside. Maybe not. Maybe he'll have held out. Even if he didn't, I know it must make sense. With what I'm doing what kind of wife could I be? She glanced at Eric.
I know my children are my children and they know it, too, and the Teachers' law can go drown itself. She shook her head ruefully. Right back into it, aren't I? Keep on like this and I might as well have never left at all.
Eric tripped, splashed, and swore.
"Use your stick," she prompted. "Swing it in front of you, watch the ground. We may have a long way to go." She looked for the slant of the shadows. There was maybe half the day left. "And we need to do some serious traveling unless you want to spend the night in a tree."
"Aria?"
"Hmm?" She cocked one eye toward him. He had stopped dead. Brown-tipped reeds waved around his knees. A small hillock of muck rose at his feet. Aria looked again. It wasn't muck. It was a shoulder, and a head.
"Nameless Powers preserve…" Aria moved closer. The corpse lay facedown in a pool. It was pale and bloated with water and had been picked at by eels. She swallowed her gorge and laid her hand over her mouth, grateful for once for Lifs ever-present smell. It covered the corpse stench.
It was a woman, she decided. A Bondless tattoo still showed against her greying hands. Eric, showing no signs of nausea, crouched beside the body. Aria was surprised for a moment, then remembered as a Teacher he had surely dealt with his share of unpleasant corpses. He braced himself and levered the body over onto its back. It splashed into the water and Aria got a look at the face. She gasped.
"Do you know her?" asked Eric.
Aria nodded. "She's a Skyman. She's…her name is Cor. She's the one who took me to…who…" She swallowed hard again. "What did the Servant's Eyes see here?" she whispered.
"I don't know." Eric fingered the waterlogged pouch at Cor's waist. He gave an experimental yank. The cord snapped and he stood up. "It happened at least a day ago, whatever it was." He tore the mouth of the pouch open and shook it.
Several coins fell into his palm, along with a translator disk, and a polished piece of pinkish quartz.
Aria's chest tightened like she'd been hit. She snatched the quartz up. It was a long, ragged chip, carved and polished until it looked like a fat lightning bolt the length of her little finger.
"Trail," she croaked.
"What?" Eric asked.
"This is my sister's namestone. My sister, Broken Trail." She stared at the corpse and the horror inside her redoubled. "Eric, what was she doing with my sister's namestone!"
She was shaking. She couldn't help it. The Notouch did not let go of their namestones. Not until they were dead or, at the very least, dying.
Eric laid his hands on on her shoulders. "We won't know until we find your clan, Aria," said Eric. "She can tell us nothing."
"You're right, you're right," Aria pressed her empty palm against her forehead. "Of course you're right." She gripped the stone and pressed her fist against her own pouch, forcing the shaking in her limbs to stop. I've been gone too long. Servant forgive, Powers preserve, I never, ever should have left!
"Aria," said Eric again, "could…could the Notouch have done this?" He turned her so she could look at him without having to see the body.
Aria shook her head. "No. If we'd killed her, the body would have been properly sunken, and no one would have left Trail's namestone with her."
He moved closer to her, and suddenly, she was very aware of his touch. His power-gifted hands, his chest, his arms, his concerned, confused face, all close to her. Too close.
This shouldn't be, this shouldn't be, cried out a part of her. Not with Trail's namestone in her hand and the Lif marshes all around them. They were back. He shouldn't be touching her. She shouldn't be touched. She pulled away and something inside her cried out as she did.
His hands fell to his sides and they stood there, doing nothing but stare at each other for a moment, both knowing too well they were back under the World's Wall.
He picked his stick up again. "Let's get where we're going. I don't think either of us is carrying what we need to sleep in the trees."
Aria took the lead and they kept on going.
Finally, Aria spotted a smooth, stout stick of wood sticking straight up out of the middle of a pond. A scrap of dirty cloth fluttered in the wind.
"Trap marker," she said, pointing it out to Eric. "That's what I've been looking for. All we have to do is wait here. Somebody'll be along to check the catch before dark." She surveyed the sky again. It was still smooth and even. "We might even stay dry until we get under cover, for a wonder."
She swung herself up onto the bent trunk of the Crooker tree and tucked her hands under her poncho, getting ready to wait.
Eric began poking the ground restlessly with his stick. Insects rose in tiny clouds around his knees and ankles. Aria watched, absurdly glad for the distance between them.
The reeds rustled and bent. From between the thickest trees glided a light raft, steered by a boy with a pole. Aria jumped to the ground and raised both hands high in the air.
"Oy-ai! Hello, Little Brother!"
The boy's head jerked up and the pole came all the way out of the water.
"Aunt Stone?" he cried, and she knew the voice.
"Iron Keeper!" She clapped her hands together over her head. "Little Nephew! Come show your aunt your face, boy!"
Iron Keeper poled forward so furiously, he almost upset his raft. He leapt ashore and ran up to her. He pummeled her on the back and shoulders, friendly, greeting blows as she held his face in both hands.
"Garismit's Eyes! You've grown a foot and a half! Tell your aunt, quick, how long has she been gone?"
"My aunt doesn't know?"
"It's been a strange journey, Nephew. You'll hear all about it later. Now, speak up or your aunt will have you across her knee." She let him go and stepped back. "And then you tell me what you're doing fishing all the way out here."
"You…left six months ago, on the Turn Day. The Skymen came. We had to move out. We're staying with the Rising Water…" His gaze drifted across to Eric, who turned his face away. She noticed he was now wearing gloves.
"He's a Skyman, Nephew," Aria told him. "His name is Eric Born. You call him Sar Born. He's helped your aunt and he's here to help more. There's a lot in the wind, Nephew." She smiled. "Including nighttime. What say you, will Aunt Stone be welcomed by her old clan in their new homes?"
"Iron Keeper says it'll be so!" He grinned all over his little boy face. "He'll take you there in a good hurry." He glanced to the water. The raft was four yards away and drifting farther yet in the marsh's unseen current. "As soon as he catches his raft."
The boy scampered off and Aria suppressed a laugh. "This is good. I hadn't thought to find my family for another couple of days, at least."
"Thank you for giving me good welcome among your people," said Eric softly.
"And what else was I to do?" Aria kept her attention on Iron Keeper as he waded hip deep in the pond to retrieve the raft he clean forgot to anchor. He hopped up on its back and poled it toward them.
"I don't know," said Eric before Iron Keeper came back within earshot. "I really don't."