Plain Kate

FIFTEEN THE ABANDONED COUNTRY

Stumbling down the road to Lov, Plain Kate dripped and shivered. Taggle was slumped in her arms like a little child, sleeping. He had slept through her huddled wait in the boat, slept through her wade to the shore, slept through the slap and sting of alder branches as she fought her way up the bank. She tried not to be terrified for him.He’ll live, Linay had said, and that made it true.

The night was white-blind with fog, and Kate staggered over every stone and stumbled in every puddle, but she pushed on as fast as she could.

Apart from the sleeping cat, she was almost empty-handed. The carving of Lenore banged at her hip. Her haversack held only stolen socks, a few apples, and a barley loaf. It was not much, not enough to live long. But in the abandoned country, it should be easy to find what she needed.

Except her shadow.

In Lov I’ll set your shadow loose, Linay had promised her.

Set it loose, she should have asked, to do what? She could still see the swallow, limp as a glove, falling into clots of dust and feathers, broken as last year’s leaves. The whole city.

And she had made it possible. Her blood. Her shadow.

The moon came out, a broken thing tangled in the birch branches. The road to Lov appeared before Kate, stretching into the distance. She walked along it until she found her eyes closing and her arm, where she held Taggle, growing stiff and numb. At last she found herself walking off the road. She eased the cat off her shoulder, muttering,“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Why? What for?” said Taggle. “Did I miss something? Was there food?”

And she dropped him in her joy.

For three days and two nights, Kate and Taggle walked the road to Lov. They hurried when they could, and dozed when they had to, hiding in tangles of bloodtwig and heartsease at the edge of the road. When Kate couldn’t sleep, she hunched up, shivering as if fevered, and freed Lenore’s face from the burl wood. The twisting lines of the grain flowed across the carving’s features like tongues of fire. She was rushing down the road to beat Linay to Lov, but she had no idea how to stop him.

Kate carried Taggle the first day, and the second, while waves of shivering broke over him, subsided, and broke. On the third day he walked. They went as fast as they could, and following them came a line of fog and rain, solid as a wall, slow as an army.

The sleeping death had not come yet, but the flight before it had created its own devastation: The road was rutted and littered with broken wheels, abandoned boxes, the bodies of horses driven too hard whose eyes buzzed with flies. The wheat fields were trampled with the remains of hasty camps. Yet they met no one. The farmsteads they passed were empty and sometimes burned. Outside one farmstead three women dangled dead from the branch that overhung the road, signs against witchcraft slashed into their hands. Kate closed her eyes and ducked under their black feet and hurried on.

On the evening of the fourth day, the road swung away from the river and they found themselves walking in a tunnel of willows. And through them, across the river, Kate glimpsed something white. Big. Moving. It was just a glimpse but Plain Kate stopped short, squinting. On her shoulder, Taggle stirred awake. Kate put a hand up to touch him and edged forward. Her throat was tight, as if it had seen and recognized something her eyes had not.

The river bent, the tunnel ended, and Kate looked back along the bank.

On the other side of the river, something looked back at her. Just a horse, a big white cart horse. It was picketed outside a single Roamervardo, red.“It’s Cream,” said Kate.

“Cream?” Taggle sprang down. “Cream?” He tangled himself with her feet, purring. “Cream, yes, please, how kind, what a thoughtful human…”

“No, the horse. It’s Drina’s horse, it’s Cream.”

“Oh.” Taggle sniffed and flicked his ears. “I knew that.”

Kate kept walking with Taggle beside her prancing grandly in his embarrassment. The horse Cream whinnied to them from her circle of mud, but no one stirred from thevardo and Kate didn’t stop. The sun came down under the clouds and red light ran over the river like fire. Kate glanced back again, watching as thevardo got smaller. Her hands were clenched. Her pulse beat at the underside of her scars.

Onevardo, one horse. A horse left at picket so long she’d eaten the grass down to dirt. Cream stomped and screamed to them again.

Kate stopped, turned around.“Something’s wrong.”

“Even if it is Cream, it might not be Drina,” said Taggle. Kate tried to remember when the cat had become the voice of caution and reason. “It could be anyone.”

“Stivo,” she murmured.

“He said Stivo was dead.”

And Kate remembered that it was Behjet—soft-voiced, softhearted Behjet—who, wearing Stivo’s face, had set her on fire.

“I might also point out,” said Taggle, “that these are the people who tried to kill us. And also that we already have a daunting quest.”

“But it’s not the Roamer way,” said Kate, “to go alone.”

And she bundled up Taggle and waded into the river.

The horsewas Cream, with her familiar constellation of dun patches, and thevardo was the little red one in which Plain Kate had slept for months. In the twilight she could see the carving of the horses braided into ropes, the place on the edge of the top step where the paint had worn away. Kate’s heart lurched, and she wasn’t sure if it was recognition, loss, or fear. Hungry and desperate at the center of her muddy picket circle, the horse squealed and jerked her head sideways against her bridle rope. Kate edged around her, hoping for silence. The horse bellowed. But no one came out of thevardo. Kate crept up the steps and lifted the door flap.

A girl in a dark turban was kneeling in front of the back bunk, on which was a tumbled hump of blankets. Kate let the flap drop. It rustled. The girl turned. It was Drina. Kate had known it would be.

Drina looked at Kate with large black eyes, blank as a frightened rabbit.

Kate lifted her hand and touched the slick, bubbled scar on her own face. She said nothing.

“Oh,” said Drina. She took a step forward. And then Kate could see that the heap of blankets wasn’t a heap of blankets, but a man lying asleep. Drina took another step and Kate saw it was Behjet.

“Oh, it’s these two,” said Taggle. “I hope they have sausages.”

But Kate stepped back so fast she felt her heels wobble on the edge of the step—she spun and leapt. She stood there, knee-deep in the grass, silent. Cream came over, jerking her head against the picket rope. She heard the step creak behind her.

Kate took a step forward—away from Drina—and stroked Cream’s freckled nose. “You just left her tied up here?” The horse whuffled and started sniffing her hand for food. “She’s been here too long. She’s trapped. She, she—” Her breath snagged, surprising her, and as clearly as if she were there, she smelled the rankness of the bear cage, the smoldering straw.

Drina lowered herself slowly down to stand with her—side by side but not touching, not looking.

“I—” said Drina, and stopped. Kate edged away so that Drina could undo Cream’s lead. The horse tossed her mane and shouldered Drina aside on her way to fresh grass. “I’m sorry,” Drina whispered, and patted Cream’s neck. Cream stamped but didn’t pause from her browsing.

“Mira—” Drina’s voice broke as Kate’s had.

“Is he dead?” she asked without turning. “Is Behjet dead?”

Drina shook her head.“Are you really a witch, Plain Kate? Can you save him?”

“Why would I?” snapped Kate.

They both stood a while, watching the horse and listening to the night rising: bullfrogs, crickets, the birds of evening. Finally Kate turned. She saw that Drina looked thinner and smaller, and that her mouth closed crookedly, like a mis-made box.“I’m just a carver,” she said. “But you have power. I saw it.”

Drina swallowed as if trying to get down a stone.“I don’t know how to use it.”

Plain Kate remembered the spell braided into her hair, the nick of the knife on her ear. The shadow on the wall of the bender tent. That shadow had been the rusalka. It might have killed them. Kate remembered the rush of steam into her face as she doused the fire, Drina’s walnut face gray as if flashed to ashes. Drina had tried to help her, had used all she knew—which wasn’t enough—and when she’d tried to find out more, the crowd had attacked her. It wasn’t Drina who had set her on fire.

She remembered sleeping in thevardo, with Taggle in her arms and Drina’s back warm against her back.

Kate was silent a moment, and then she said,“I don’t know what to do. And I can’t stay here. I have to get to Lov. But—I will try.”

They went back into thevardo, where they found Behjet lying as if dead, and Taggle balanced on his chest, trying to pull sausages down from a hook on the wall.

Behjet looked as if he were only sleeping. Kate both did and did not want him to wake up, both did and did not want him to die. She crouched and picked up his hand. It was heavy and cold and a bit stiff, like a raw fish. A pulse lubbed sluggishly in the hollow of the wrist. There was a healed burn across the back of his hand, where the lamp oil had splashed when he’d tried to kill her.

Kate braced herself and shook him by the shoulder.“Behjet? Behjet, it’s Plain Kate.” She shook him harder. His head lolled to one side as if he’d turned to look at her. She leapt back. But the face was slack. Kate turned toward Drina.

“It’s been four days,” said Drina. “Daj says the body can’t live if the soul gets lost. I’ve been trying. I’ve been feeding him and…cleaning him. I even tried to travel downriver, out of the fog. They say the sleep is in the fog. But nothing works. I cannot wake him.”

“Let me try,” said Taggle. He curled his whiskers toward her, smugly. “Waking is not so hard, really, if you know how.”

The cat solemnly placed a paw on Behjet’s elbow and another on his stomach. Kate and Drina edged together and watched. Taggle went high stepping, delicately, to perch on the man’s breastbone. He lengthened his neck and touched his nose to Behjet’s. He sniffed. He mewed. Then he opened his mouth and shouted, “Wake up!”

The girls jumped.

“Wake up,” yowled Taggle. “Get up and feed me! Get up and scratch me! Get up and see me! Wake up!”

It was earsplitting, rattling thevardo. But Behjet didn’t move.

Taggle lifted his nose and quirked an ear at them.“It may be hopeless,” he intoned. “WAKE UP!” he wauled. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

Drina was crying and giggling at once. Kate stepped forward and scooped the cat up.“That’s enough, Taggle.”

“He’ll die,” gasped Drina, wrapping her arms around her ribs. “That’s how it is. The others died. My father died. And Daj’s husband.” Kate could hear her avoiding the names: the names of the dead. “And after you left, Magda’s son—the one who grabbed Taggle, that time…”

Ciri. The toddling prince of the Roamer children, who’d exclaimed over the talking cat. Ciri.

Plain Kate led Drina outside and sat her on thevardo steps. She stacked tinder and built a fire. She fetched a pan, cut an onion free from its braid, and lifted a pair of sausages from their hook on the wall above Behjet’s head. She looked down at his face.

“Good,” purred Taggle when she came out with the pan and sausages. “Food, yes. I’m sure that will wake him. Food.”

Kate knocked the edge of the fire down into coals and put the pan on it.“Have you eaten?” she asked Drina. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

Drina was huddled up on the steps. She shrugged.“Since…”

Kate tossed the sausages onto the smoking pan and started cutting the onion. The heating cast iron smelled of Roamer cooking, smelled of being loved, of being safe, home.“I can’t stay here,” Kate said. “I have to go to Lov.”

Drina wrapped her arms around her knees. The night was coming up fast.“I was going to go to my mother’s clan. My father is dead. I have no blood tie to his clan. Daj said I could go if I wanted and Behjet was taking me. And then—” She stopped, swallowed. “Plain Kate,” she said. “Can I come with you?”

Kate didn’t know how to answer.You can’t. I want you to. I’m still afraid of you. You shouldn’t, because I’m going to try to stop Linay and he’ll probably kill me.“Well,” she said aloud. “Eat.” She stabbed the sausage up on a knife and handed it to Drina.

Drina ate it without attention, and put it down half finished. Taggle helped himself and no one stopped him. Drina sat still with the firelight playing over the dark grain of her face.

“You look like your mother,” said Kate abruptly. “You look like Lenore.”

“You shouldn’t—” Drina swallowed, her jaw clicking. “We don’t say the names of the dead.” Then stiffly she whispered, “How—”

And Kate, knowing it would break her friend’s heart held out the burl wood carving. Drina’s hands shook as she took it. She held it by the wings and looked into the wooden eyes. “This is her. You really are a witch. This is her.”

“I’m not,” said Kate. “But I’ve seen her. I’ve seen your mother.”

Drina’s head snapped up. “She’s alive?”

“No.” Kate was sorry she’d started the way she had. She shifted tracks. “She had a brother. The one who went mad. Linay.”

Drina shivered.“How do you know his name?”

“When I—He—After—” Kate stopped and poked at the fire. “After the Roamers burned me, Linay saved me. He pulled me out of the river. He’s the one, Drina. He’s the witch who stole my shadow.”

Plain Kate drew herself up and started from the beginning, from the day a witch-white stranger had asked her to fashion a fiddle bow. She told her own story as if it were about someone else, and was amazed at how rich and strange it sounded, like an old tale. She told Drina about learning the rusalka’s name, about trading blood for answers, about the swallow that had crumbled to ash. About what Linay planned for Lov.

“And then I saw you,” she finished. “I recognized Cream—and she’d been tied up so long… I thought I should come… I was afraid, because you burned me. But it’s not the Roamer way, to go alone.”

Drina didn’t answer at once. The two girls sat listening to Cream cropping grass, her tail swishing.

“They were twins,” said Drina at last. “My mother and my uncle. Lenore and Linay. He was my favorite, my other father. He taught me little magics, and how to turn handsprings. He was different, after she died. After that spell, with his shadow—after he summoned her. The clan spoke death to him. He went alone. I remember watching him walk down the road.”

It was full dark now. The trees were stirring and rustling. Nearby a nightjar churred, an eerie whirr that seemed to come from everywhere. Drina traced the lines of the carving’s wooden face. “Plain Kate, you didn’t know her, you don’t understand. She would never have done this.” She was crying. “What you’re saying—the rusalka—it can’t be true.”

“We have ample evidence,” said Taggle. “Scars and stuff, even.”

“But my father,” said Drina desperately. “He was different before she died. She loved him. How can it be that she killed him? Her own husband? And, and—Ciri!” The name burst from her. “Stivo, Wen, and Ciri! Kate, she would never have hurt Ciri. She would have died first.”

“She did,” said Taggle.

“Hush, Taggle.” Kate patted at Drina’s bunched shoulders, awkward as if patting a horse. “Drina. She doesn’t have a choice. Linay, he said it was a terrible fate. That’s why he’s doing all this. He wants to save her.”

Drina sniffed hard and swallowed.“Save her?”

“A rusalka’s fate…” Kate tried to remember the exact words. “He said a rusalka’s fate could be undone by avenging her death. That’s what he wants to do. That’s why he wants to kill all the people in Lov.”

“Undone…” Drina’s eyes were huge. “What does that mean? Would it…bring her back?”

Kate felt as if Drina had kicked her in the belly. Would Drina be on Linay’s side? Lenore had been her mother. Kate had lost her father. What would she do to save him? To stop Linay, would she have to fight Drina?

But Drina fought herself. She grabbed Kate’s hand and squeezed so hard that Kate’s fingers ached. “We can’t let him do this, Plain Kate. My mother wouldn’t want—we have to stop him.”

Kate laced her fingers through Drina’s. She could barely see them in the dark: walnut brown and new pine pale, like a pattern of inlay. “Yes,” she said. “You can come with me.”

So Plain Kate and Drina went together down the road to Lov. Whatever had been between them—the lopsided friendship of Drina’s merriness and Kate’s cautious silences—was gone now, hacked off, burned away. But something new had grown in its place, a bond as strong as a scar. They did not speak of it, and they made the best time they could.

Riding in thevardo was easier than walking, though not much faster: The wall of fog trailed them, relentless. Still, Kate recovered some strength, nodding and dozing on Drina’s shoulder as they sat together on the driver’s seat, high above Cream’s back. Neither girl was willing to ride alone beside Behjet’s helpless body.

The broad road, which Kate had walked for three days, was on the other bank of the river.

On this side of the river, the way was hardly more than a track, winding through birch groves and boggy patches of basket rush and purple aster—a strangely peaceful place.

“We wanted to take the small road,” Drina explained. “The great road was jammed—the whole country, and the people are angry. They…” She paused, looking as if she might be sick.

“I saw.” Kate thought of the hanged women, their black feet brushing her shoulders as she ducked away.

“They’re going to Lov,” said Drina. “Thegadje farmers in this country always hide themselves in the stone city when there’s trouble. Since the time of the dragon boats, Daj says. They will all go to Lov.”

And they’ll die, thought Kate.Unless we can stop Linay.

But talk as they would, they had no idea of how to stop him. Finally on the third day, in the last of the light, the little track broke free of a wall of birch and joined a larger road that bridged the river. Snakes of fog eddied on top of the water, and the overcast had half swallowed the rising moon. Across the river, Lov squatted, cold as a toad.

They could not go the last mile—it was nearly full dark—so they turned Cream around and nosed thevardo back into the shelter of the trees. Branches scraped the canvas sides. They found a little rise by the river and took shelter in a grove of young birch. Drina tended to Behjet. They built a little fire.

Across the river, the city muttered to itself in the damp darkness.“It’s big,” said Drina. “I forgot how big it was.”

Kate worked on her carving, smoothing life into wood with a leather pad wetted and dipped into sand. It was nearly finished, and she knew, she knew it was good, it was true, it was important. But whatever it was saying to her, she couldn’t hear.

Cream was shouldering her way into the grove, tangling her mane in the low branches. Drina got up and set her free, then got out the softest brush and started to curry the horse’s neck. Taggle climbed into Kate’s lap. “You could do that for me, you know.” So Kate put down her sanding pad and the speechless, useless carving and scratched her fingernails through his dense ruff.

Beside Kate the firelight crinkled on the water. It was going right through her.“My shadow,” she said. “He can’t make the monster without my shadow. We have to get it back.”

“You tried that,” the cat pointed out. “I had to act heroically in order to save you.” He sat up, even though she was still petting him. “Develop a better plan.”

Kate did her best to obey. The river murmured at her elbow, and the fog on it carried bursts of other voices, high laughter and thick shouts, and for a moment a snatch of eerie fiddle music.“He’s here,” said Kate. Drina came to sit beside her. They listened but the music didn’t come again.

“I don’t know how to stop him,” said Kate. “I never have.”

The words hung there a moment. Then Taggle said,“Why do we have to stop him?”

Drina began:“Because my mother—”

“Bah. She’s dead. Her wishes are of no importance.”

“Taggle.” Kate put a silencing hand between his ears—and found little ridges of muscle, alert, tense.

“Give me another reason,” Taggle said, flicking his ears. “Give me acat’s reason. Keep in mind that we do not,” he harrumphed, “run into burning buildings going ‘bark, bark.’ ”

“It’s—” Kate struggled to explain. “It’s a city. Thousands and thousands of people.”

“Bah,” said the cat again, but very softly. He was looking at his toes.

“You saved me,” she reminded him. “On the boat. And Linay almost killed you. Did you have a cat’s reason?”

“I’m fond of you.”

“And you’re more than a cat.”

Kate smoothed her thumb along Taggle’s eyebrow whiskers, trying to soothe him, but he lifted a paw and batted her hand away. He stood up. “There is something else we could do.”

Something in his voice, the way his coat rose just slightly over his tight muscles, made Kate’s scars prickle. “Taggle,” she whispered. “What is it?”

“He gave me words, when he took your shadow. If we break the gift, we break the magic. Your shadow would no longer be his to use. The creature he made would come apart.”

“You mean,” said Drina, “you could just stop talking?”

“Oh, no,” said Kate. “No.”

Taggle shook his head, humanwise.“My mind is full of words. Ithink in them. It has changed who I am. That’s the magic, not the talking.”

“Then what—”

Taggle looked up at her, his amber eyes deep as the loneliness Kate had felt before he became her friend.“The traditional thing,” he said slowly, “involves the river and a sack.”