Page 21 of Into the West

Just look at us. It’s easy to dwell on danger and homesickness, but just look at us! Each of us strong, competent, and ready for whatever lies ahead. She wondered if anyone but her took a minute to simply take in how they looked. She, for one, felt reassured by it in ways she couldn’t put words to.

Delia found her spirits rising—despite the fact that the distance between her and Kordas increased with every passing moment—and couldn’t help but take in deep breaths of the crisp, clean air, slightly bitter with the scents of leaves dying. She hadn’t quite realized how much smell there was around the lake, what with cooking and sweating animals, sweating people, and the very occasional whiff of a latrine trench the mages hadn’t gotten to yet. The sun shone over the trees to the east, thanks to her warm clothing she wasn’t in the least cold, and if only the rest of their trip could be like this—

Well, it won’t be, she thought, resigned. So I had better enjoy the good part.

“Delia!” called Hakkon. “How much can you pick up with that Gift of yours?”

She hadn’t been spending the last several moons practicing for nothing. “As much as I can lift myself,” she said, a little proudly. “About fifty pounds.”

“Can you skip back to the fourth barge, look for deadfall at the edge of the trees, and drop it onto the deck and the roof? That’ll save us a lot of time we won’t have to spend looking for firewood when we camp.”

“Oh! What a good idea!” It pleased her on several levels. She was going to be obviously useful from the start. She’d be able to save camping time, and Hakkon thought enough of her ability to just ask her to do something to begin with, rather than ignoring her as a supposed burden or a card to be played.

“And if you see ducks or geese or pheasants, bring them down. Three please,” said Sai. “That will give each of us a quarter bird for supper, and the bones and extra quarter can go in the pease-porridge to cook overnight for breakfast in the morning.”

Pleased enough to feel a little giddy, she began looking for deadfall, not just in the grass at the feet of the trees, but for dead branches still in the trees that she could snap off. It was just about as tiring as it would have been to go to where the branch was, pick it up, and carry it herself to the boat, but she was prepared for that. When she began to feel winded, she stopped Fetching wood and began breaking it up with a hand axe and arranging it in neat stacks on the deck between the railing around the edge of the barge and the oblong bulk of the upper half.

It was very nearly noon by the sun when Bay suddenly alerted, stopped, and looked back at his master. Ivar stood up in his stirrups, shaded his eyes with his hand, and peered ahead. “Flush!” he ordered the dog, who bounded ahead, barking. A moment later there was an explosion of geese from the water upstream.

Most of them flew in their opposite direction, but a smaller part of the flock came toward them.

Delia “grabbed” one out of the air; it appeared at her feet, dazed and disoriented. And before she could feel guilty about what she was about to do, she took a full swing at its head with the back of her little hand axe.

To her relief—relief that almost brought tears to her eyes—she killed it instantly. She looked back at the geese in the air rapidly moving away from them, honking as they flew, and made a second grab for one. It was a strain, but it appeared at her feet and she killed it the same way she’d killed the first one. Delia didn’t like to think of herself as a killer. She didn’t like killing. But all those heroes in stories had to eat something, and in matters of survival, the mathematics of it made sense—meat comes from somewhere, and everything alive more often than not consumed something else alive. She was as thoughtful about it as one could be—quick deaths and usage of everything taken from the target’s life and body. She knew she’d better get used to this. One day she’d pass her thousandth kill without even knowing it, and every time, she would give the game a pause of respect before dressing it out. It was that it was an involuntary sacrifice to her needs that made her squeamish, she decided. That made her feel dirty, that she’d ended a life so abruptly and now their story was done, by her hands. She could only sigh about it and carry on.

“Pluck and clean them now or later?” she called to Ivar, who was in charge of their group—at least unless or until they encountered an armed threat, in which case Briada was in command.

“Now,” he said. He didn’t have to tell her to save everything. That was a given. She exerted herself and Fetched an empty sack from the storage barge under her, a ceramic pot with a lid from the barge where she was sleeping, and finally a cooking pot from where Sai had stored the cooking things. Of all things tedious, plucking a goose had to be the worst, but by the time Ivar signaled the Fairweathers to halt for lunch, the birds were bald, beheaded and gutted and in the big pot, the liver, gizzard, and heart in there under them, the heads, feet, guts, and lungs in the ceramic pot with the lid on, and the feathers in the sack. All but the wing feathers; those were saved out separately.

And she had put back the pot full of geese in the pantry in Sai’s boat, the wing feathers with the archery repair gear, and only the pot full of entrails was still in her hands. Which fact she proudly announced as her barge got moored up to the bank and she hopped off.

“Well, that’s quite a budget of work for one morning,” Sai said, pleased.

“I thought Bay should have the guts,” she said to Ivar, who grinned at her.

“So he should. We can give him the heads and feet for his supper,” Ivar agreed. “Of course, if he catches himself a rabbit, we can just save them for his breakfast. Oh! That reminds me. If you spot a rabbit, or he does, and you can drop it at his feet, he’s trained to do a quick, clean kill, then bring it to me.”

Another relief. It was hard enough killing those poor geese and ducks, and they didn’t have big, soft eyes, adorable twitchy ears, and a plush coat. She could eat cooked rabbit without a qualm, and had on innumerable occasions, but nothing could make her kill one. At least not right now. Maybe if I am starving.

Venidel made a fire. Sai brewed everyone tea, and passed around small loaves of bread stuffed with sausages. “Enjoy these while you can,” he said. “Once these are gone there won’t be any proper bread. Grain doesn’t spoil like flour does, so I won’t even be making flatbread unless we have time enough for me to grind some up in my hand mill, or we find a village with a mill and we can somehow trade for some.”

Delia sighed, but didn’t complain. It was unlikely that anyone else in the entire convoy was going to be making bread either; all they had were hand mills, and the barge kitchens were not set up to do anything but make stews and porridges.

They slipped the bits on all the horses—Jonaton “shortened their tethers,” as he put it, altering the charm on them so they would not wander more than thirty arm-lengths from the barges, not even if they were startled. That allowed the horses to happily tear up huge mouthfuls of the grass they had been eyeing all morning.

Amethyst simply stood quietly to one side of the fire, and Delia admired the beautiful needlework on her face, the careful way in which what were usually mitten-like hands had been sculpted with separate, and apparently working, fingers, and the clothing she had been dressed in. She was clearly still wearing what she had fled the Imperial Palace wearing: soft, sueded deerskin tunic, boots, and trews that had been embroidered with black and gold thread in an abstract pattern. In addition, she had been wigged with what looked like horsehair, braided into thousands of tiny braids, each one ending in an amethyst bead. Amethyst seemed to sense her regard, and turned to face her.

“May this one serve you in any way, Lady Delia?” she said in a soft, breathy voice much like Rose’s.

Delia flushed with embarrassment. “It’s just Delia, Amethyst, and no, I was just admiring your face, your hair, and your clothing.”

“This one was a rare gift to Lady Meriposa from the Emperor,” said the Doll. “She found it amusing to dress this one as she had her childhood toys. It is fortunate that on the day the Capital fell, this one was garbed in one of the more practical outfits. Trains six feet long and sleeves that swept the floor would not have fared well during the escape, or later.”

“Was she—kind?” Delia asked. Somehow, the answer seemed important. Maybe because she didn’t want to think that someone who could create something of beauty was in her heart cold and cruel.

“Very. She knew that the Emperor had his eye on her and intended to add her to his kept women as soon as he had rid himself of some of the older ones. In fact, her parents had sent her to Court as a hostage with that intent. She was very brave about it, and confided much to this one.” Amethyst raised her head ever so slightly, as if with pride and defiance. “So when the Dolls were included in Baron Kordas’s plan of escape, this one obtained a Gate pass to the Temple of Diony the Tale-Weaver, and set aside a casket of the Lady’s most valuable jewelry where this one could snatch it up quickly. When the alarm was sounded, the Lady froze. That enabled this one to seize the casket and the Lady, press the pass into her hand until she grasped it, run to the nearest Gate, and thrust both her and the casket through it. Then this one followed the rest of the Dolls to Crescent Lake.”

By this point everyone around the fire was staring at the Doll with mouths agape. Amethyst had not said five words in total since she had been assigned to them—and now this extraordinary story!