Plain Kate

“And then I saw you,” she finished. “I recognized Cream—and she’d been tied up so long… I thought I should come… I was afraid, because you burned me. But it’s not the Roamer way, to go alone.”

Drina didn’t answer at once. The two girls sat listening to Cream cropping grass, her tail swishing.

“They were twins,” said Drina at last. “My mother and my uncle. Lenore and Linay. He was my favorite, my other father. He taught me little magics, and how to turn handsprings. He was different, after she died. After that spell, with his shadow—after he summoned her. The clan spoke death to him. He went alone. I remember watching him walk down the road.”

It was full dark now. The trees were stirring and rustling. Nearby a nightjar churred, an eerie whirr that seemed to come from everywhere. Drina traced the lines of the carving’s wooden face. “Plain Kate, you didn’t know her, you don’t understand. She would never have done this.” She was crying. “What you’re saying—the rusalka—it can’t be true.”

“We have ample evidence,” said Taggle. “Scars and stuff, even.”

“But my father,” said Drina desperately. “He was different before she died. She loved him. How can it be that she killed him? Her own husband? And, and—Ciri!” The name burst from her. “Stivo, Wen, and Ciri! Kate, she would never have hurt Ciri. She would have died first.”

“She did,” said Taggle.

“Hush, Taggle.” Kate patted at Drina’s bunched shoulders, awkward as if patting a horse. “Drina. She doesn’t have a choice. Linay, he said it was a terrible fate. That’s why he’s doing all this. He wants to save her.”

Drina sniffed hard and swallowed.“Save her?”

“A rusalka’s fate…” Kate tried to remember the exact words. “He said a rusalka’s fate could be undone by avenging her death. That’s what he wants to do. That’s why he wants to kill all the people in Lov.”

“Undone…” Drina’s eyes were huge. “What does that mean? Would it…bring her back?”

Kate felt as if Drina had kicked her in the belly. Would Drina be on Linay’s side? Lenore had been her mother. Kate had lost her father. What would she do to save him? To stop Linay, would she have to fight Drina?

But Drina fought herself. She grabbed Kate’s hand and squeezed so hard that Kate’s fingers ached. “We can’t let him do this, Plain Kate. My mother wouldn’t want—we have to stop him.”

Kate laced her fingers through Drina’s. She could barely see them in the dark: walnut brown and new pine pale, like a pattern of inlay. “Yes,” she said. “You can come with me.”

***

So Plain Kate and Drina went together down the road to Lov. Whatever had been between them—the lopsided friendship of Drina’s merriness and Kate’s cautious silences—was gone now, hacked off, burned away. But something new had grown in its place, a bond as strong as a scar. They did not speak of it, and they made the best time they could.

Riding in thevardo was easier than walking, though not much faster: The wall of fog trailed them, relentless. Still, Kate recovered some strength, nodding and dozing on Drina’s shoulder as they sat together on the driver’s seat, high above Cream’s back. Neither girl was willing to ride alone beside Behjet’s helpless body.

The broad road, which Kate had walked for three days, was on the other bank of the river.

On this side of the river, the way was hardly more than a track, winding through birch groves and boggy patches of basket rush and purple aster—a strangely peaceful place.

“We wanted to take the small road,” Drina explained. “The great road was jammed—the whole country, and the people are angry. They…” She paused, looking as if she might be sick.

“I saw.” Kate thought of the hanged women, their black feet brushing her shoulders as she ducked away.

“They’re going to Lov,” said Drina. “Thegadje farmers in this country always hide themselves in the stone city when there’s trouble. Since the time of the dragon boats, Daj says. They will all go to Lov.”

And they’ll die, thought Kate.Unless we can stop Linay.

But talk as they would, they had no idea of how to stop him. Finally on the third day, in the last of the light, the little track broke free of a wall of birch and joined a larger road that bridged the river. Snakes of fog eddied on top of the water, and the overcast had half swallowed the rising moon. Across the river, Lov squatted, cold as a toad.

***

They could not go the last mile—it was nearly full dark—so they turned Cream around and nosed thevardo back into the shelter of the trees. Branches scraped the canvas sides. They found a little rise by the river and took shelter in a grove of young birch. Drina tended to Behjet. They built a little fire.

Across the river, the city muttered to itself in the damp darkness.“It’s big,” said Drina. “I forgot how big it was.”

Kate worked on her carving, smoothing life into wood with a leather pad wetted and dipped into sand. It was nearly finished, and she knew, she knew it was good, it was true, it was important. But whatever it was saying to her, she couldn’t hear.