L ate the next day, a league vessel made its appearance. It slid silently atop the water, cutting the current with its sleek lines, effortless. Unnatural. Potemp had warning enough to move the antok well back into the woods, out of hearing and sight and smell. Tunnel and the others watched the ship from the woods behind the burned-out shell of the demolished structure. The ruins still smoked, hot with glowing coals.
Ishtat soldiers came ashore, too many for them to confront. Staying hidden, Tunnel watched them kick through the ashes. Later, a leagueman-cone headed, robed, and unarmed-came across on a skiff and inspected the site. It was not the same one who had ordered Skylene shot. If it had been, nothing would have stopped Tunnel from rushing him, mallets swinging until he bashed the man to pulp. He almost did so anyway, but Skylene had not sent him out to die.
He’s a lucky one today, that one, Tunnel thought.
“We were just in time,” the messenger whispered. “Just in time.”
They stayed in hiding throughout the day, watching. By the time the last skiff had returned to the anchored vessel, it was clear the leagueman had gained nothing. After sunset, Tunnel and the others came down into the ruins carrying armfuls of branches. They collected driftwood from the shore. Using a coal from the ruins they got a new fire going on the beach. They fed it until it blazed and then proceeded to dance around it. They shouted out toward the vessel, seeing its deck brimming with onlookers. They yelled taunts across the water at them, declaring that this ruin was the work of the Free People of Ushen Brae, saying that this was their land and would be forever more. The league would gain no footing here. The People would not allow it.
And then, with a flash of inspiration, Tunnel turned around, shoved his thumbs inside the waist of his trousers and pulled them to his knees. He waggled his bare bottom in the torchlight, shouting over his shoulder instructions for what the leagueman could do with his ass. The others did the same, all of them offering their buttocks with rebellious glee.
“Leagueman,” Tunnel yelled, “here’s my ass! Here’s Tunnel’s ass. I pinch it for you.” So saying, he did so.
The others added their own takes on the theme. They all howled with laughter, so caught up in the moment that they retreated from the shore grudgingly and only after the rain of Ishtat arrows shot from the boat became too heavy to chance further.
T unnel arrived back at the Free People’s compound in the middle of the night. Without pausing to rest or even to wash the grime of his work and travel from his face, he went to Skylene. Her caretakers greeted him grimly at the door, then stepped aside to let him visit her in solitude.
She lay as he had left her, propped up on pillows, with a blanket pulled up to her shoulders. Lowering himself softly to the edge of the bed, he could smell the sickness on her. It was there in the tang of her sweat, in the spoiled scent of her sheets, and in the fetid stench of the festering wound in her chest. The crossbow bolt that Sire Lethel had so casually set in motion had punched right through her left breast, ripping apart tissue, fracturing a rib, and leaving a dirty, oil-smeared puncture wound that quickly turned bad. He had looked upon it before he left; he did not want to do so again.
Skylene opened her eyes. She smiled at him, warmly enough that Tunnel wondered if she was getting better. But when her lips released the curve, her face looked even more drawn, lined, and thin than before. She asked, “Did you destroy it?”
Her voice sounded dry. Tunnel poured from a pitcher of mint water on the bedside table. He moved the glass toward her, saying, “Nah, nah,” when she tried to take hold of it. Big armed and shouldered as he was, with large-knuckled hands that made the glass seem a child’s toy, he touched the rim to her lips with delicacy. He did not answer her question until after she had taken a few sips.
“We did. Smashed it up good. Built a fire. It was a fine show.” He detailed what they thought the relic was and told of their encounter with the league ship. By the end he was on his feet, his bottom pointed toward her as he repeated the taunts he had shouted over his shoulder.
It hurt Skylene to laugh, but she did so anyway.
“Are you getting better?” Tunnel asked, sitting beside her again.
Skylene set a hand on top of his. Her touch was hot, dry. She meant it to be comforting, but it felt wrong. He felt the fever burning in her. He almost pulled his hand away. “The others are looking after me. They brought a healer from the Kern clan. She was very kind, but her poultice had fennel seeds in them. You know I can’t stand the smell of it. I wore it for a day, but then…” She lifted her hand and gestured, a vague motion that erased the very thing she was describing.
“We should send a messenger to the elders,” he said. “To Mor. She would want…”
“To rush here to my side.” Skylene shook her head. “No, Tunnel, send no message. None of them can help me either way. Why add to their distress? Mor left me-and you-to hold the city until she returned…”
“With the Rhuin Fa,” Tunnel said, nodding in acknowledgment of the fact that he had finished her sentence, just as she had finished his a moment earlier.
“But we have not done that here, have we?”
“Not our fault.”
“I know, but-”
“Dukish, he is just a fool! Going to mess with everything that could be so simple and good. How we going to know that before he show us it? Stupid man. Should have squashed him the first time.”
Skylene did not dispute it. “If you get another chance, do squash him. Do it for me. But otherwise… stay alive for Dariel. Be here when he arrives. That should be within a fortnight.”
“What? You know this?”
Nodding, Skylene said, “The vessel messenger who took you to the relic, he came here with a message for me, a message from Yoen.”
“You didn’t tell Tunnel,” Tunnel said, managing to convey a depth of hurt in the short sentence.
“No.” Skylene smiled. “If I had, you might not have taken those mallets to the relic. You might not have shown the good sire your backside. I needed you to act without distraction, without waiting for your Rhuin Fa. I was right, wasn’t I? Even a day’s delay would have-”
“What’s the message, then?”
“Mor and the others are returning via the Sheeven Lek. Dariel is with them.”
Tunnel smiled. “This is news.”
“There’s more. The journey has been a success in many ways. They all still live, for one. For another, they visited the Sky Watcher. Na Gamen blessed them all, especially Dariel.”
“That’s right.”
“Yoen said to expect Dariel to look different. He wears a sign on his forehead, a spirit mark that combines his name with Na Gamen’s.”
“He is the Rhuin Fa.” Tunnel leaned in close and whispered, with passion, “He is. I always told it, didn’t I?”
Skylene started to laugh, but it pained her. She choked it down. “Of course you did, Tunnel. You are the smartest of all of us, the truest.”
“Should we tell everyone?”
“No, not yet.” Skylene closed her eyes a moment, her breathing shallow. “Not yet. He is not the Rhuin Fa until the People name him so. We have all to do it, understand? Not just Na Gamen, the elders. Not just you and me. Everyone must do it. And none who don’t want to believe him are going to want to change, not without seeing him for themselves. We need to hold this news as long as we can, until they are nearly here, understand? We use it to call a gathering, but only at the last moment. We don’t want Dukish or any of the others to have time to work against him. All right?”
“Yeah, that’s all right.”
“Tunnel”-she softened her voice, rounded it and weighted it with import-“I’ve told no body else about this. If I…”
“That won’t happen.”
“But if it does, you…”
Shaking his head, Tunnel stood up. “Nah, won’t happen. You love Mor too much to die. You’ll still be lying here, waiting for a kiss, when she comes. Tunnel knows.” He glanced around. “You hungry?”