“Bramble’s smart,” Stone said, handing Moon a fresh rock. “Just because she’s never had to use her brains for manipulating Hians doesn’t mean she can’t do it.”
“Manipulating,” Moon said, thinking about it. Vendoin, the Hian leader who had been plotting this apparently since she had first left Hia Iserae for the Kish-Jandera city of Kedmar to work with Callumkal, was a master manipulator. As Kalam had said, she had known him and his father for turns, since Kalam was a child. But they were Janderan and Bramble was a Raksura. More importantly, she was an Arbora. “Vendoin never did think any of us were that smart, did she.”
“No. She thought we were smart animals, not smart people.” Stone stood to survey Moon’s handiwork. He indicated the drawing with one toe. “What’s that?”
“That” was meant to be a fan-folded sail on a wind-ship’s central mast, except it looked nothing like the image in Moon’s head and he had no idea how to make it any better. He said, “Guess.”
Stone sighed, like Moon was the one being a problem. “Ready?”
Moon pushed to his feet and shouldered the pack. They were going south on the random word of a sleepy bladder-boat groundling, and their own theory that the Hians had switched flying boats to keep a Kish horticultural from tracking them. It was a risk, and they were gambling for the lives of their friends.
Stone walked to where the statue’s head started to curve down, shifted, and leapt into the air. Just before Moon followed, he caught a hint of Fell stench in the wind, a reminder that they weren’t the only ones searching for the Hians.
CHAPTER FOUR
As they waited, stuck in their cage, Bramble considered Delin’s hint that she should pretend to be weak, and decided to give the Hians some proof of it. She would stop eating.
Merit wasn’t keen on it when she informed him of this decision, but mentors always thought they knew everything, particularly mentors who were younger than you. He said, “And if you just die, what then?”
“I won’t do it right away, that would be stupid.” Someone might connect it with Delin’s visit and suspect a trick. “I’ll eat less, gradually, each time they feed us. I don’t know if they’ll notice, but if I need to pretend to be sick later, it’ll add—” She waved a hand. “Verisimilitude.”
Merit sighed. He sat back against the mossy wall of their prison, small and tired. He had been trying to augur but had admitted that either the Fell poison was still interfering with his sight or the situation was so confused right now there was nothing to see. The scale pattern was fading from their skin, but slowly, and they still couldn’t shift. “Maybe I should do it instead.”
“They aren’t going to let you near them,” Bramble explained, almost patiently. “Vendoin saw too much of what you can do.”
“She saw you, too.” Merit sounded sulky, more like a fledgling warrior than an adult mentor. Bramble decided to save pointing that out for the moment when they needed a violent argument to clear the air.
“Vendoin saw me making sure everyone ate, and had clean bedding,” she explained. “She saw me putting up the tent. She saw me with you and Delin figuring out the way into the city, but she didn’t see how much I helped. That was bad, I shouldn’t have done that, but we didn’t know what she was then. At least she didn’t see it from close up. She thinks I’m a—” She lowered her voice, because the Raksuran language had no real word for this, and she didn’t know if Altanic did either. She said in Kedaic, “—servant.”
Merit frowned. “What is that?”
“Someone who does things for someone else, like wash their clothes and bring the food—”
“Everybody does those things.”
Bramble tried to explain. “For yourself, not for other people.”
“Of course you do it for other people.” Merit was clearly exasperated. “If you’re doing it for yourself you might as well do it for everybody nearby who needs it at the time.”
“Royal Aeriat don’t do it.”
Now Merit was scandalized. “If we let the queens and the consorts do things like that, everyone would laugh at us! Even lazy warriors wouldn’t let that happen. What kind of shit court would let—”
“Merit, shut up and let me talk,” Bramble growled. “It’s a thing for groundlings, that’s why we don’t have a word for it.” You could serve someone in Raksuran, like you might serve tea or food, but it didn’t mean the same thing in Kedaic. It was like the way the Raksuran word “lazy” didn’t have a case for Arbora, only warriors. “It’s what Vendoin thinks I am. Magrim and Esankel thought so too, but they asked me about it, and I tried to explain how the court doesn’t work like a Jandera settlement. They understood, but I doubt they ever explained it to Vendoin.”
Merit shook his head, still confused. “But the warriors were helping you. I wasn’t, very much, because I was busy.”
“Vendoin didn’t see much of that. And she’s . . .” Bramble didn’t know quite how to explain it. “She’s not a very agile thinker. Not like us and Delin, the way we talk about things and change our minds. Once she gets an idea, she doesn’t change her mind about it.” Bramble thought it was a sad way to be. If you weren’t entertaining a dozen different possibilities and probabilities at once, what was there to think about?
“I can see that.” Merit let out his breath and leaned his head back against the wall. “So how does this help us?”
“Some groundlings look down on the ones who are servants, and think they do all the work because they’re inferior. Hians do, Esankel told me that.” Bramble grinned, baring her teeth. “It means Vendoin thinks I’m weak, and not smart.”
Merit was still frowning. “I’m not sure you’re right about this. I understand that you think you can trick her, but . . . Even if we get out of this cage, and let Delin and Callumkal out of their cages, wherever they are, we can’t fly, Bramble. We could steal some of those flying packs, but the Hians would just chase us, or shoot us with the fire weapons. We can’t go fast enough to get away from them, like Aeriat could. We’re stuck on this boat.”
Bramble slumped back. That was the flaw in her plan. Merit continued, “Though if we did try to get away, the Hians would have to stop while they were catching us. That would give the others more time to find us.”
Without discussing it, they had both decided to pretend the others had survived and were hunting for them. Mostly because the alternative was unthinkable.
Merit added, regretfully, “It’s not like we can kill all the Hians.”
Bramble blinked, struck by the perfect simplicity of the idea. It was an idea still, not a plan. It wouldn’t be a plan until she could figure out some things, and make contact with Delin again. And most importantly, trick the Hians into letting her out. She said softly, “It’s not like they have poison on board.”
Merit turned to stare at her, and hissed in speculation.
The letting out part came sooner than Bramble expected, but it wasn’t any trick of hers and Merit’s that did it.
Bramble knew it was evening, could feel the sun sinking into the horizon somewhere outside the confines of the flying boat, when several Hians came to the edge of the opening and said that Vendoin wanted to speak to her. There was a great deal of reassurance that she wouldn’t be hurt, and Bramble pretended, hopefully convincingly, that she needed it. She protested the fact that Merit wasn’t allowed to come with her, but the Hians said it must be only her.
Merit squeezed her wrist as the Hians opened the grill and Bramble leaned against him reassuringly. She knew he didn’t want to be left alone. It’ll be all right, she thought. I promise.