A Gathering Of Stones

7

Karoumang took the Miyachungay cautiously up the river, moored her between the bulwarks and sent Prifuan and four more ashore to work the gates. The girls from the village saw this and crept from the trees; they were bloody, bruised, dressed in clothing salvaged from the dead and deep in shock. Women among the deck passengers took charge of them, got them cleaned up, fed, wrapped them in blankets; they petted the story out of the girls, gasped and sympathized in the proper places, got the names of kin in the next Lock village and carried the information to Karoumang.

Korimenei slept through all this. She slept through the stir at the next lock as the girls went ashore and Karoumang consulted with the village elders. She was deep, deep asleep as Prifuan and his four arrived; they’d been left behind to open the gates once the Miyachungay was far enough upriver. She slept for three more days, woke to find the Miyachungay past the locks and moving through a dun and dreary landscape.

When she stepped onto the deck, wind beat at her, the dust it carried scoured every inch of bare flesh. She went back and dug out the despised veil, belted the hanging panels so they wouldn’t flap about too badly and tried the deck again. She picked her way through shrouded bales and climbed to Karoumang’s favorite perch. He was there now, wearing a Temueng headcloth, the ends wrapped about his face, leaving only his eyes free.

“Well,” he said. “You found a use for it after all.” He rubbed his thumb over the veil where it snugged against her cheek. “How you doing otherwise?”

“Well enough. One of these days I might even be hungry again.” She stood at the rail and looked around. “This is lovely stuff, Karon. Hunh. Where are we?”

“Ambijan. Nine days to Kapi Yuntipek.” He turned his back to the wind, pulled her closer, sheltering her with his body.

“All of them like this?” She leaned against him, smiling under her veil, drowsy and comfortable.

“Long as we’re in Ambijan. Five days, six if there’s more cargo than I expect at Limni Sacca’l.”

“I’m surprised you get anything. Who’d live here?”

“Ambijaks. They’re all a little crazy.”

She slapped at her breasts, raising a dust cloud of her own. “I believe it. Mind my asking, what DO you get here?”

“Canvas. Jaxin do some of the tightest weaving you can find anywhere. Need to, I suppose. Keep the dust out. I use it whenever I need new sails. Jaks make colorfast dyes, there’s always a good market for those, especially new colors. Drugs. Opals. There are mines in the back country somewhere. I don’t ask.” She felt rather than heard his soft laugh. “Ambijaks spend words like blood. Their own blood, not yours, they’re generous with yours. Crazy. But they know me so they keep it down some.”

“Mmm.” Despite the veil her eyes were watering and the skin of her face was starting to burn. She looked past his head, tried to see the sun. All she saw was a dull tan sky. “What time is it?”

“Coming on third watch. Want lunch?”

“Getting that way. I think I’ll go back down, this wind is peeling the skin off me flake by flake. Any chance of a bath?’

“If you’ll work for it.”

“Scrub your back, huh?”

“You got it.”

She rubbed her shoulder against him. “Anything, Captain Sad, I’ll do anything to get clean.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. We might even manage some hot water.”

“Ah, bliss to be alive and in your presence.” She giggled, eased out of the circle of his arm and bent into the wind as she started down.

The Miyachungay traveled upstream day on dreary day. The Wansheeri was sluggish here, winding around broad bends and serried oxbows. It carried a load of silt and occasional animal carcasses, but few snags; in Ambijan trees were an exotic species, any floaters that got so far from the mountains were seized by the Jaks and hauled ashore as soon as they were spotted. The wind blew steadily out of the east, cold dry wind, engendering melancholy and distraction. The sound of it never stopped, it muted everything, reduced the comfortable small noises of the boat to whimpers; words were unintelligible a few paces away from the speaker; crew and passengers alike communicated with grunts or single shouted words, no more. The pressure of it never stopped; it drove west, west, west without letup. When the river turned east, they fought to shove the boat forward against the wind; when it turned west, if they lost their concentration a single moment and let the wind take her, it could jam her into the bank before they had a chance to recover; getting her around some of those bends took sweat and prayer and curses in nearly equal amounts. It was almost worse when she pointed straight north; then the wind threatened to blow her sideways. Karoumang got little sleep, a few hours of sweaty nightmare filled with snatches of horror. He was wild and rough when he took Korimenei those nights, using her to ease his wind-frayed nerves, the grinding tension built up during the day. He didn’t care who she was, only that she was there. She should have resented that; other times, other circumstances she would have been furious, she would have given him a scar or three to remember her by, but she wasn’t thinking these days, the wind was getting at her too; she was rough and wild as he was, she used him for needs that would have terrified and shamed her a month or two ago, and slept like she was slugged when it was over.

When they slid through a tattered ghostring into the lee of Kapi Yuntipek, even the Miyachungay seemed to sigh with relief.