When they were through, Hannah’s face wrinkled into a grimace she feared she might wear for the rest of her life. ‘How long will it smell like this?’ Even Branag’s wolfhound had moved to the other side of the room, his nose buried beneath two enormous paws.
‘Not long,’ Hoyt assured her, ‘eight or nine days at the most.’
She laughed and slugged him hard in the shoulder. ‘Well, I won’t need to worry about them finding me in that closet. They’ll get within two or three steps of the door and decide something hideous must have died in there.’
Periodically, Hoyt and Churn ventured out separately to check on the disposition of the Southport citizens. Branag had told them several young men had been accused and hanged for the soldier’s murder and Hoyt had to fight the urge to summarily strangle every occupation soldier who happened by. Neither he nor Churn had ever had an innocent bystander punished for their efforts before, and he didn’t like it.
‘We will make them pay for this,’ he promised under his breath. Hannah detected a different side of the otherwise cheerful young man, a sinister side normally veiled from view by his carefree demeanour. She made note of it, and vowed to be out of the Pragan healer’s reach if he got angry again.
During the next couple of days Hannah marvelled at how Hoyt could change his appearance without apparently trying. A sunken chest, a dropped shoulder, or a protruding stomach: Hannah was startled at the difference such simple changes made. He would leave the store a different person altogether.
When Hoyt returned, he and Branag would speak in hushed tones while signing for Churn. She was sure they were planning something, some retaliation for the innocent lives lost; she was almost glad the trio was keeping her out of the discussion. But as much as Hannah worried their plans might bring her into harm’s way, she did not want to flee and turn herself over to the Malakasians. The only occupation soldiers she had met had been determined to gang-rape her; the Malakasians she was now experiencing – albeit second-hand – were responsible for murdering innocent civilians and trashing Branag’s store at regular intervals for no reason.
Though she tried not to eavesdrop, she could not control herself and strained to make out anything that might give her more information on her whereabouts, on Eldarn, and especially on how she might find Steven and get home.
One morning, Hoyt dared a limp, a dangerous endeavour, he explained, because limps had to be consistent. ‘I’ll never get away with the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t kind of limp popular on stage. All of those actors are trying to appear as if they have a limp. That’s their mistake. People with a limp are always trying to look as if they don’t have a limp. That’s my secret.’
‘I’m sorry, Hoyt, but that doesn’t sound like much of a strategy to me.’ Hannah was dubious. ‘You’re going out as a man with no limp pretending to be someone with a limp who doesn’t want people to know he has a limp?’
‘Churn!’ the young man bellowed excitedly, ‘we have a virtuoso among us.’ He grinned. ‘That’s exactly it. Well, that and rhythm.’
‘Rhythm?’
‘Yes. I have to ensure I have the rhythm down. People can live with almost anything if it eventually has a predictability… I mean look at Eldarn. No one really gets riled up about revolution until Malagon starts ordering his emissaries to play too rough and people start dying. Predictability breeds a sense of consistency and security. As long as my limp has a steady rhythm, a steady beat, let’s say drag-toe-step-drag-toe-step-drag-toe-step, I’ll look like I have been struggling with it for fifty Twinmoons.’
‘Amazing,’ Hannah said, surprised herself at how impressed she was with the young man’s resourcefulness, ‘but why not just change your hair or wear a hat – or maybe grow a beard?’
‘Amateurs.’ Hoyt draped an irregularly shaped length of tanned cowhide over one shoulder, tousled his hair until it fell in ragged unkempt strands across his face and shuffled awkwardly out front, the rhythm of his limp perfected already.
When Hoyt returned that evening, he came back in a rush. His hands were dirty, stained almost black by what appeared to be a mixture of soot and blood. He was breathing heavily and sweating, and his face was covered with a thin coating of dark grey dust.
‘We need to be ready to move into the back,’ he said, signing simultaneously to Churn, ‘there may be searches again tonight.’
Churn was sitting against one of Branag’s trestles while Hannah rested against the far wall. Two tall candles illuminated the room. She fought the desire to ask Hoyt what had happened, deciding he would tell her if it were something she needed to know. She was quietly impressed that even in the wake of whatever blow he had struck for the Pragan Resistance, Hoyt’s adopted limp was still there, drag-toe-step-drag-toe-step. She watched him move towards his bedroll in the back corner and wondered if the sinister side of the healer, the invisible spirit that haunted Hoyt from time to time, had been permitted to emerge and stretch its gossamer legs that evening.
Branag Otharo was a different matter. From what Hannah had gathered during his periodic visits to the storage room, he was an honest businessman who hated the Malakasian occupation force and their leader, someone called Malagon, a prince of some sort. His long days at the shop were fuelled by venison stew, fresh bread and cold beer at the corner tavern, which led her to believe he was not married, or attached, or whatever they called it here in Eldarn. Flanked constantly by the dog Hannah never heard him refer to as anything but ‘dog’, Branag didn’t appear to have any other companions besides the customers who stopped by periodically, and the itinerant rebels hiding in his back room.
He was a powerful man, with a barrel chest and thick forearms, dressed in a long-sleeved cotton tunic tucked into wool breeches with high boots, regardless of the heat. But what made the greatest impression on Hannah was Branag’s kindness. Despite his size, he appeared to be a gentle soul; he didn’t strike her as the kind of person who would hold anyone, even an occupation force, in such contempt. Like Hoyt though, there was something beneath the surface of the artisan’s jovial demeanour, something unspoken that was motivating him. Hannah could not bring herself to ask what Branag’s grim secret was.
One evening, after a particularly difficult stint in the foul-smelling secret chamber, Branag made a special trip to the tavern to find Hannah some tecan. He brought back a flagon-full, and bottles of beer for Hoyt and Churn.
As she sipped it gratefully, he asked if she had any children.
‘No,’ Hannah replied, ‘at least not yet.’ The question was unexpected; no one had shown much interest in her background so far. She tried to read him, but his face was impassive, not brooding or sullen, but rather devoid of any emotion at all. ‘I do hope to have children one day… perhaps even one day soon,’ she added optimistically.
‘I see,’ he said as he poured her another cup, then he patted the big dog affectionately behind his ears and wished them all good night. Turning to leave, he paused momentarily in the short hallway separating the storage area from the shop’s main showroom. Backlit by a rank of thick candles casting a hazy yellow glow across the burnished saddles and leather goods, he whispered, ‘I believe children are as close as we are allowed to come to feeling as though we have, for just a moment, been singled out by the gods. It is their way of touching us, even briefly, as we make our way to the Northern Forest.’
Hannah could not see his face, but the emotion in his voice answered all her questions. They were gone, and of course he would fight. She felt her chest tighten; she hoped she could reply before he heard her choke back a sympathetic sob. She didn’t feel she had earned the right to cry for the older man.