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 the vardo, 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 the vardo. 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 the vardo 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?”