By the time he finished, so had the leech. It fell off my body and splooshed into the river, presumably returning to the dead tree. I had a small wound on my stomach, trickling blood, but it wasn’t as big as I expected. I exhaled unsteadily.
Another King Solomon story. I was too tired to protest that it was a common saying. After everything that had happened, I had no energy to spare wondering about my bloodlines or my destiny; no matter what else, I liked the cleverness of the fable. A happy man, reading such, remembered that pleasure was fleeting; a sorrowful man recalled that no pain lasted forever. I needed that reminder.
Since I was wet from head to toe, walking would be a misery henceforth, because the humid air wouldn’t allow me to dry out. I had to smell disgusting. But he wasn’t done with me. He stripped off his shirt, dipped the clean end in the river, and used it to wash my face. Beneath his care, I felt vulnerable.
Wordlessly, I braided my hair into a single plait. He froze then. For the first time, his expression told me clearly what he felt. Fear. Likely I didn’t want to know what could scare him.
I asked anyway. “What?”
In answer he indicated my throat; my palm rose to investigate. No pendant. No protection. The next time Montoya’s sorcerer sought, he’d find me. Wonderful, so it really would be like The Amazing Race. But we were far enough out here that his men would have a hell of a time catching up. Sendings and summonings were different, and I didn’t have a Tri-P—one of Shannon’s portable protection packs—on me, but even if I’d had the foresight to make one in the village, the river dunking would’ve rendered it ineffectual. I was so screwed.
“That just raised the stakes,” Kel said.
No longer could we consider this a challenge without outside antagonists.
“We’ll just have to push harder.” Which meant running through our dwindling supplies faster. “You know how to survive in hostile conditions, right?”
His expression said I probably should’ve asked him that before I chose him for this job. As if I’d had an opportunity. “Try not to worry. Just keep moving.”
Apart from that one ocelot, the wildlife mostly left us alone, as if Kel emitted a low-grade signal that warned them away. Partway, rain blasted through the leaves like a watery blanket. It was a sudden, fierce shower that left us drenched but did nothing to cool the air. We walked until fire ate the sky. At that point, the river bent right, which I thought was east, but I wasn’t sure anymore.
“I think this is where you head up.”
He nodded. “Watch the packs.”
It wasn’t until he started climbing that I got nervous. As long as I’d been moving and not thinking—and frankly, I was almost too tired to do more than put one foot in front of the other—I could quiet my mind. Now that it was just the jungle sounds and me, fear strolled in, hand in hand with visceral exhaustion. I slumped against the tree trunk while keeping an eye out for reptiles and unfriendly amphibians. I retained the good sense not to call out, though it was tough.
An eternity later, he dropped from the lowest branches. “We need to cut west, away from the river. A tall pile of stones marks the way.”
“One that looks like a lady?”
He nodded. “Undoubtedly. Just beyond there, the jungle thins. I think there’s a valley, just as you predicted.”
“How far? Should we risk it tonight?” The light was fading fast.
“I don’t think it’s more than an hour or two. Stay close.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. In the dark, the jungle was a hundred times as frightening. Each noise seemed magnified. Each time a branch rustled or the leaves stirred, my muscles clenched, bracing for an attack. Kel used the machete more in that last hour than he had all the days prior. There was no path; we might have been the first people to walk this way in hundreds of years.
I was stumbling, borderline falling on my face, when the trees gave way to rolling hillside. For the first time in days, I saw the sky and it was magnificent. Out here, no city lights dimmed the display, and the stars shimmered like heavenly crystal on dark silk. I had never in my life seen anything so lovely or so welcome.
“We’ll camp at the lady tonight,” Kel said. “She’s just over this rise.”
I didn’t argue with him, though I was none too sure my legs would hold me. In the past days, I had gone well beyond my imagined limits and I was still going. He led the way, and I trudged on, weakness quivering in my muscles.
When we crested the hill, I saw her, and she was aweinspiring in the moonlight, a work of art to make one wonder at the ingenuity of indigenous people. Four enormous stones had been stacked and shaped—how, I could only guess—but this was, unquestionably, the lady’s hollow. They had given her a feminine silhouette and a swollen belly, but she lacked a head. Maybe she’d had one in days past and it had yielded to the elements.
My pace increased until I was leading the way. The ground was relatively level near the monument, so I sat down. My skin bore countless insect bites; I was sore, chafed, and so grateful to be still I couldn’t articulate it. A burn in my shoulders punished me for carrying a backpack for days at a time when I was used to sitting at a counter, but at least out of the jungle, we might pass a dry night.
“So you think we need to dig?” I asked.
Unearth her bones, the translation said. I hoped to all gods and goddesses we were not actually being asked to rob a grave. I didn’t think I could do it, not even to save my own skin. With Montoya’s assassins, I could tell myself they were paid to kill me and feel better about their lost lives. I could even rationalize the alliance with Escobar for the sake of my own survival, even though accepting his patronage would taint me in ways I might not discover right away.
But to desecrate a grave to pass Escobar’s test? The coffin contained a peaceful soul who never did me any harm. I knew how I’d feel if someone dug up my mother’s remains to steal from her body. I couldn’t do that to an innocent, grieving family, even to save my own life—and surely Kel wouldn’t want me to. Yeah, I’d done some bad things along this road, but corpse defilers were universally loathed.
“Hard to say. We’ll find out in the morning.”
With some effort, I put the macabre possibility from my mind. While I was at my physical limit, I had a little brain juice left. “You need sleep. I’ll take first watch.”
To my surprise, he unrolled his ultralight sleeping bag and lay down without argument. Which meant he had to be dead on his feet. I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. It was too warm a night to need a fire, even if I’d wanted to go wandering in the dark to find wood. I didn’t.
After a while, the faint breeze cut through my damp clothes. I shivered and wrapped my own bag around my shoulders, but I couldn’t close my eyes. With my back against the comforting stone of the lady, I felt reasonably sure I could get through the night—or at least a few hours. Thoughts of Chance filled my mind, unsurprisingly. I could go months pretending I didn’t miss him, but in the darkness and the silence, I remembered how it felt to touch him, how he smelled, and the way his hair felt slipping through my fingers. Seeing him in the dream world brought it all back. Go away, I told the dream Chance. You made it clear where we stood when you didn’t call or write.
Time passed slowly, and I struggled to stay awake. With no watch and my cell phone off, I had no way of knowing how long I had let Kel sleep. He roused with a jerk, somersaulting to his feet and reaching for a weapon that wasn’t strapped to his back. His muscles tensed and twitched; in those moments, I had no doubt he didn’t know where—or possibly when—he was. I didn’t dare move.