“I’ve already named him,” said Tess coldly. “He’s called—”
But she couldn’t say Dozerius, when it came down to it. She couldn’t say that she’d named her child after the adventure stories Mama had never approved of, that had propelled her into the world to get herself in trouble. She knew what Mama would say and couldn’t bear to hear it, so she sat there, gaping like a fish, trying to come up with a quick substitution.
“Julian,” Tess said at last. “After your grandfather, the count.”
“That old devil?” said Anne-Marie, frowning, but she didn’t suggest another name, so Julian he stayed, officially. The priest came, and the baby’s psalter Saint was determined—St. Polypous, the devious one, apropos for both Dozerius and Count Julian. After that, as if reassured that he had a good advocate for entry into Heaven, little Dozerius began to fade away. His skin grew nearly transparent, his breathing so light and shallow that it could barely be heard, and he died in Tess’s arms upon the morning of the third day.
She couldn’t…remember how she knew. Only that she lay clasping him to her chest, hoping against hope that this had all been a dream and that, in accordance with the logic of dreams, he might melt into her heart.
“You’ve been given a gift, even if you don’t realize it,” said her mother softly, taking the tiny body from her arms. (Where had she come from? How did she know?) “We only had to hide this pregnancy; now we won’t have to hide an embarrassing bastard, too.”
Tess could not reply; she had no muscles left, no will.
“When you’re well enough to travel, we shall return home, and you’ll follow your sister to court. She needs you to keep her to the righteous path, for you know it now. Maybe someday the Saints will hear your prayers, and your penance will be enough.”
No penance could be more terrible than this. Her very heart was dead.
* * *
“I went numb,” she said, raising her head from Big Arnando’s shoulder. “I could see my sorrow in the distance, and I knew that it would kill me, so I didn’t let myself feel. I cut it off—cut everything off—like taking a cleaver and hacking off my own—”
Foot. Like in her dream at the Queen’s summer palace, except in the dream it had been an act of courage, not cowardice.
“You did what you had to do to survive,” said Arnando, pressing his cheek against her forehead. He smelled like the dusty fields. “One thing I’ve learned about grief: it’s like a creditor’s bill. You can put off paying, but it eventually falls due, and exacts usurious interest.”
“Do they send someone to break your fingers?” said Tess, thinking of the Belgiosos.
Arnando laughed softly. “You find a way to break them yourself.” He paused to let her think about what that entailed; she had some idea. “There’s a room in my heart full of unpaid bills,” he said. “We all have one. It’s useful to go in occasionally and open a few.”
Tess pulled away and wiped her eyes. “Then they’re paid? Am I done with Dozerius?” Her voice broke as she said his name, and she knew that she was not.
“That’s a big one, so I doubt it,” said Arnando, his blue eyes mournful. “You might have to pay it in installments, but now you know you can. It won’t kill you. You have the funds, ’Puco.” He paused, embarrassed to have called her Stupid.
“Tess,” said Tess.
“Tess,” he agreed, taking her hand and squeezing it. “You’re stronger than you were when it happened.”
She nodded, inhaling one last sob-breath. They sat in silence a moment, and then she said, “I would like to get to work now.”
“Good,” said Arnando, standing and extending a hand. “There’s always more to do.”
He pulled her to her feet, and they went out together, into the blazing noonday sun.
Arnando, true to his word, never told anyone what had passed between him and ’Puco. In fact, he went back to being her foreman, to Tess’s great relief, and not her particular friend. Having disburdened herself, she wasn’t sure how to talk to him afterward.
Mico joked with her as if nothing had happened, but Felix, at least, felt guilty for sending her to the damaelle against her inclination. He cringed like a kicked dog with big, sad eyes, as close as he could get to apologizing. She didn’t forgive him, quite, but she might have if he could have brought himself to ask.
* * *
Tess was awakened one night by chirping, as if a cricket had crawled down her shirt and started singing. She sat up, half-panicked, swatting her chest, before realizing it was the thnik. Pathka never called her—it was always the other way around—and she hadn’t expected it to sound like a cricket. She clapped a hand over the device to muffle it, grabbed her boots, and sneaked out of the tent without waking Felix, Mico, or Aster.
“Pathka, what’s happened?” she asked when she was far enough from the tents not to be heard. It was well after midnight. Gen set watches along the road, so Tess had run perpendicular, into the wheat. She stopped and wiggled bare feet into boots.
“There’s a windmill downwind from your camp,” said Pathka faintly. “I’ll be there.”
Its triangular sails were outlined against the rising moon, half a mile off by her estimate. “I’m on my way,” cried Tess, hastening her steps. Pathka didn’t answer.
Tess had been watching the windmills on distant hillsides for weeks, fascinated by their majestic slowness. Up close, this one groaned and flapped; some internal trundling mechanism kept up a persistent thump. The door was locked.
Tess scoured the perimeter, and finally looked out at the wheat on the far side of the ridge. A trail of crushed plants was just visible; it ended twenty feet downhill from her. She plunged into the field and found Pathka, collapsed, the bowl-scales clasped to his back.
A glittering among the stalks gave the tableau an aura of enchantment until Tess realized it was the moon reflecting off a puddle of silver blood.
Pathka’s eyes were squeezed shut, and he had three more broken head spines. The blood was coming from a series of punctures in his side, all the same depth, in a tidy curve.
Tess knew only one thing that could make such a wound: Kikiu’s bite enhancer.
Tess fell to her knees and laid a hand on Pathka’s head.
“You came,” said Pathka, his voice faint and gritty like sand underfoot.
“What happened?” said Tess, stroking his drooping spines.
His breathing sounded strangely doubled, a gasp followed by a hiss, and Tess realized with alarm that his lung had been punctured.
“Don’t speak,” she cried. “Tell me after—”
“Might not be an after,” he croaked.
“Did Kikiu do this?” said Tess furiously, uselessly.
“Bit me like an animal.” Pathka paused, panting. “Not like a quigutl at all. That monster—”
Pathka’s voice sputtered and his eye cones rolled. He was out cold.
Tess’s mind raced: he needed care. She’d take him back to the tents, bind his wounds, explain him to Boss Gen somehow. The odds of the road crew accepting Pathka’s presence were dismally small, though, and she couldn’t even vouch for Gen with certainty.
And frankly, she wasn’t sure he’d make it.
Anathuthia could heal him right now, if Tess could get the ritual to work aboveground. She didn’t know if it was possible, only that she had to try.
She gently took the scales from Pathka’s unresisting arms. The wounds in his side still oozed sluggishly. Tess caught the trickle as best she could, shared drops between the bowls, and hoped it was enough.
Hoped she was enough. Pathka had been a more active participant last time.
She squatted in the wheat, elbows on her knees, holding the two bowls like offerings.
Nothing glowed.
Could he be too deeply unconscious to dream? Tess didn’t dare sprinkle the blood around him if it wasn’t glowing.