Storm of Locusts

Chapter 8

We don’t speak on the drive home. Ben curls up in the passenger’s seat of the jeep, a small ball of grief. I keep my eyes on the road, try to avoid the worst of the potholes and keep the jostling to a minimum. We get back to my trailer with the setting sun, the vehicle rattling over the cattle grate. The noise wakes Ben from her stupor. She looks around, confused.

“We’re at your place?” she asks, as I guide the vehicle up the sloping hill to my house. The lights are on above the porch, and in the front window, a warm glow that tells me Tah is in there making an early dinner or afternoon tea. At the thought, my muscles slide loose and some of the horror of the afternoon fades. I decide right then and there to clear the air with Tah and fix the rift I’ve let fester. If that means talking about Kai, so be it. It’s time I made things right between us.

But that vow holds only until Tah opens the door, a cup of broth in his hands. He doesn’t say anything, just takes one look at Ben, wrung-out and blood-spattered, and hustles her into the house. I can hear him fussing, probably getting her out of those bloody clothes and making her wash up before he puts her to bed.

I collapse on the couch, mindful of my own bloody face and clothes, but too tired to do much about it. Dealing with a shell-shocked teenager seems to have compounded my fatigue.

Confident Tah’s got Ben in hand, I close my eyes. Just a moment of rest before I figure out what comes next.

I wake up to Tah standing over me, holding out a cup of broth. I take it, grateful and silent, and we sit together, stealing a moment of peace. He waits until I’ve finished my broth to ask what happened.

“Hastiin’s dead.” I don’t equivocate. “Arrow through the throat. The brain. She saw it all.”

Tah sighs, long and heavy. “He was a good man.”

“No, he was a complete ass,” I say, tired, “but he was my friend in the end. And I don’t have many of those.”

Tah nods. “And who is the girl?”

“His niece. A tracker with clan powers.”

Tah’s eyes are tired. “So she’s a bit like you, then, Maggie.”

“I hope not.” He looks surprised at my vehemence. “I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through, Tah. It would be better to be dead. I mean it.”

“But she’s already come into her clan powers. So she’s already suffered. And her clans aren’t . . . She’s not . . .”

He’s trying to say she’s not K’aahanáanii, so she won’t suffer the same blood lust as me. She won’t become a killer.

“She’s Foot Path, born for Deer People, or something like that,” I acknowledge. “But she did try to kill that woman today, up on the ridge. The one who killed Hastiin.” And she said some awful things about me, but I don’t tell Tah that.

“Ah . . . ,” Tah says, sounding disappointed. Weary. “Ah.”

“There’s something else. Before Hastiin died, he asked me to watch after her.”

Tah fiddles with a silver ring, a habit Kai had too. It makes me smile. And then it makes me unconscionably sad.

“And what did you say, Maggie?”

“To Hastiin? Nothing. He died before I could answer him.”

“What will you do?”

I rub a hand across my face, belatedly realize that I’m raining flakes of dried blood onto my shirt. “Honestly, Tah? I haven’t got a clue.”

He pats my knee. He takes the empty cup from my hand and stands. “Tomorrow, then,” he says.

I nod, close my eyes, and fall asleep sitting up on the couch.