Wild Magic

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Desantro was squatting beside the fire, stirring something in the pot; she looked up as Penhari came round the, shack. “You all right?”

“Not happy, but surviving. What are you doing?”

“Making tucker tea. The kind that crawls out the pot if y’ an’t careful. I cut bread and cheese. ‘S over there.” She nodded toward a board laid a short distance off. “You better eat something. Long day ahead of us.”

“Eat.” Penhari shuddered.

Desantro’s face went hard, her eyes glittered. “Diyo. Eat. My mother was raped and murdered before face. I ate. Long as I stayed alive, I knew some day Henriermen would die. You told me I can do what I havta. Well, do ‘t.”

Penhari pulled a hand across her face. “Tsah! I was thinking heroics, Desa. Eating didn’t come to mind. Nayo nay.” She fluttered a hand at Desantro. “Give me time. I’ve spent years being a slug. It slows you down, that kind of thing.”

Desantro’s mouth twitched, her expression softened. “Never met a galloping slug.” She wrapped a scrap of cloth about the pot’s handle, poured some of the turgid brown liquid into a cracked mug. “Here. Drink a this and you be dancing on water.”

Penhari looked into the mug. “Do I kill it first?”

“Nay, jus’ cut it with that bread ‘n cheese. Now do it…” She-stopped talking as a small sailboat nosed round bend, out in the middle of the River, a leadman in the stem taking soundings. “Zaz, turn round, y’ back to the River. And sit.” She flung a cloth over her head and brought the end around her face, then calmly poured herself a cup of the tucker tea and set the pot on the ground beside her.

Penhari swung round and dropped into a squat beside the bread board, her shoulders hunched, her head drawn down. “What’s happening?”

“Barge coming up River. Look over top a those trees, left side, you can see tip a the mainsail. That there going past us, that’s a lead boat. River being low like it is, barge has to stick to the deepest part, they draw lotta water, them. Leadman reads channel.” She laughed suddenly; danger and death seemed to spin her high. Penhari glanced at her, but Desantro’s eyes were lost in the shadow of the cloth, so there was nothing there to read. “Father a my third kid was leadman, we got together at festa. Midsummer. Lakeshore. Anyway, ’tween this ‘n that, ‘I learned more ‘an I want to know ‘bout leadmen.”

Penhari ventured a sip of the tea. It was thick and bitter, but her mouth felt clean once she swallowed it. She reached for a hunk of bread and some cheese and ate quietly, listening to the splashes and creaks from the River behind her. “Desa, there’s one thing I don’t understand, and the longer I know you, the less I understand it. Why didn’t you get out a long time ago? The money can’t have been that important.”

Desantro snorted. “Mal.”

“Verna then, it was. Still. •.”

“Why did you stay?”

Penhari blinked. “Because there was no reason to leave,” she said slowly. “I’d made a comfortable and reasonably bearable life for myself.”

“Same thing. I like plants. ‘M good with them. Full belly and no bothering. Y’ gardener, he double-dance with Salagaum so he leaves me alone. Through m’ first two ldds, I was hot t’ get out, kill me some Hennermen. Find m’ kin, get ’em loose an’ go home. Got the five-tail on m’ back ‘bout every month. After a while, though, I jus’ got tired. That’s all.”

Penhari nodded. “Tired, diyo. I know that feeling.”

“Weerah! Temple barge. Nayo! Don’t turn around. Some mippy type up on deck, sitting with nose in book an’ half a dozen little ’uns waving fans at him. Chooee, they creeping, ‘bout ‘nough wind t’ blow out match. Air gets lighter, poor jeggin sailormans, they’ll be out front rowing and towing.”

Penhari took another sip of the cooling tea, grimaced. Its bitter bite was getting to be too much for her. “What are the colors of the ensign?”

“Huh?”

“There should be a banner of some kind near the front end.”

“Diyo. I see it. Hard to say, it’s all crumpled together. Urn. Some blue an’ some green, there’s another… ah, there ’tis. A dart of red.”

_.”Quiambo, then. Must be Prime Korongo; he spends half the year in Pili, half in Corasso. So Faharmoy said. When he was still talking to me.” After Desantro was pointedly silent for several breaths, Penhari added, “My so-loving son. Thinks he’s a Prophet now, goes about flogging people for their sins. Down in Pili. We’ll have to avoid him.”

“Some family.”

,m_mp.

The barge crept past keeping near the far bank of the long bend where the current had scoured a deeper channel, the sailors and the others on board ignoring the dumpy gray figures by the old landing.