InsaneJournal

Chapter Three of 'Fortune Favors the Bold'
Sorry for the long delay; I've had other writing projects occupying my attention.



Chapter Three

Calesto came out of the forest like a trout exploding out of a stream. So Joro had told him often enough; so he ended up believing. He wouldn’t have believed just anyone who made the comparison, but Joro was a friend.

Sometimes.

Calesto turned to make sure his friend was still behind him. Joro, who had a brace of squirrels slung over one shoulder and a pair of pigeons hanging from his belt, waved him on ahead. Calesto nodded and began to run.

He had been able to hear the excitement from Tristone when the wind turned in a certain direction, but he and Joro were in the middle of stalking the squirrels at the time and couldn’t return. Now he was determined to know what had happened in the town in his absence. If important events would only halt until he could get there, he would like them much better.

He rounded the sentry boulder at a lope—taking the time to note briefly and disgustedly that the sentry didn’t stand there anymore—and leaped one of the stubborn clumps of brush that he’d spent the summer hacking at and which always rose again. Now he could hear sounds that definitely weren’t human or horse or chicken. He identified them a moment later as donkeys. And then the side of a gaily-colored wagon came into view, and Calesto stopped, staring.

The Wanderers had come back? But he had been sure, from his reading of the stars, that it would be next year.

So he did not know the stars as well as he thought he did. Or the Wanderers had slipped loose of the nets of the future, as they were fond of doing, and intruded where they should not have.

Cautious now, his head lifted like a deer’s, Calesto edged into the town. It seemed that the Wanderers were encamped on the Festival Ground, the square of grass and small trees usually reserved for dances—and weddings, like the one his Hala was to have with Joro tomorrow. But how would they hold the wedding with wagons in place and donkeys dropping great clumps of dung everywhere? Calesto wondered sometimes if he was the only one who thought of these things.

Of course, many of the people of Tristone lingered around the wagons, watching the Wanderers with greedy eyes. They would be glad just to see strangers. Calesto did not understand the attitude, but he could tolerate it. It was the specific people lingering near the wagons that made him frown.

Hala, her face full of wonder, waited near the wagon in the lead, which was woven of flexible wooden planks and painted half-purple and half-gold. She cradled a cut stone in her hands that flashed purple as the wagon when Calesto glimpsed it. She was speaking, quietly, with a young Wanderer woman who had hair so tangled it resembled a squirrel’s tail.

Calesto clenched his teeth. Hala was supposed to spend the day alone. And since he knew she had troubles, and of what kind they were, why was she here, instead of trying to solve them? Surely she wasn’t looking to the magic-workers for deadly poisons that would kill her unborn child? There was acceptable magic, the magic of stars and sun and wind, and then there was the fascination that the nomads brewed over their fires and in their dances, transfixing as the way of a bird with a snake. Hala should not be looking to that.

She should have come to him. He would have helped her, if only she had made the effort to speak up.

She turned, and caught sight of him. At once she stood straighter, but her shoulders hunched, and her face had no expression. Calesto nodded a little. Perhaps the sight of someone she knew would be concerned in the child’s fate had erased her intentions to seek help of the Wanderers.

The Wanderer woman looked at him with casual lightness, as if she were a bear and he were a squirrel. Then she put an arm around Hala’s shoulders and leaned towards her to murmur something. Hala flushed so brightly it hurt Calesto’s eyes and muttered something in return.

Calesto felt his defenses and his irritation both rise like the quills of a porcupine. Where was Hala’s father? Galdane should be here, both to welcome the Wanderers officially to the village and to defend his daughter. Calesto lamented that the duty should fall on him, when he had never wanted it.

“What is your name?” he asked the woman, who faced him now. His opinion of her age wavered like snowfall in a strong wind. She had an old, seamed face, probably from peering into the ravages of storm and sun, but her eyes laughed like a three-year-old’s. That contrasted strangely with the hand she laid on Hala’s arm, of course. Calesto stood taller. If the stranger sought to play games with him, she would be defeated, but it would be best if he could stop her from playing games altogether. Calesto preferred it when people acted directly and spoke directly and did not dance about.

The Wanderer woman regarded him in silence, then said, “Laiskaiss.” The name whistled and clicked like tossed bones.

Calesto did not try to repeat the name, as he knew he would only embarrass himself. “Do you have the slightest idea why your people have come here, Laiskaiss?” he asked. If she were with Hala, the mayor’s daughter, she must be their leader, or perhaps the daughter or sister of their leader. She would have official sanction. He doubted she would answer the question he had just asked her outright, but he might be able to learn something from her reaction.

Laiskaiss only blinked at him.

*

“I told you,” Zhossith’s voice whispered from her pocket, so soft that Laiskaiss was very nearly certain no one else could hear it. “I told you that they understood power. He thinks you do, as well.”

Laiskaiss relaxed a little. She did not completely understand what the stranger was babbling about, or why he stared at her hand on Hala’s arm as if it were a brand. Hala did not wear the ring that Tristone’s people used to signify marriage, so he could not be her husband. And he was not old enough to be her father, and he did not look enough like her to be her brother. So what was it to him where Hala stood, or whom she took as lover?

But he thought she was someone who understood power, too. Perhaps the leader of the People. Laiskaiss could not gratify the desire he seemed to have to know the leader; if and when Molisstath spoke with him, it would be of her choice.

But she could act as if she understood power. And a few lies were always necessary when dealing with the people of Tristone, as her mother had taught her.

“We have come here to trade,” she said, and let her voice lilt and wander like the tones of a flute, while her eyes got wider and wider. “We have come here to entertain. We have come here because the snows will venture near soon, and we do not have the food to survive it yet. Do you know why your people have settled here, man?”

The stranger simply stared at her some more. He was as handsome as Laiskaiss ever found a man, with dark eyes like pools of water hidden under autumn leaves and brown hair gently rippled with bronze. But he was not handsome enough to earn any indulgence from her.

“I want to know the real reason you have come,” he said. And then he turned and attacked Hala, whom he seemed to have sensed was relaxing next to Laiskaiss. “Why are you with them, instead of with your father? He should have been the one to welcome them, not you. You overstep your bounds.”

Hala visibly flinched, bowing her head like a rabbit struggling to fight free of a snare. Laiskaiss decided, quietly, that she did not like this man.

“Her father is old, and gave her leave to come here in his place,” said Laiskaiss. “Strange that you have not gone by his house to know that already. Who are you, to come here and question us?”

The man flung his head back and stared at her. Laiskaiss looked back, wondering what would happen next and conscious of a pleasant humming excitement in her veins. The conflict would not spread far, because the rest of the people of Tristone had welcomed them, and no one had seen anything strange in Hala standing within the circle of her embrace. She had the chance to humiliate someone who believed himself above her. That was always fun.

And then her mother came around the corner of the wagon and destroyed it all.

Molisstath walked heavily, but so carefully that her feet did not raise heavy puffs of sand or echoes when they struck. She came to a halt behind the man, looking at him with her face bare as a river-washed stone. Laiskaiss turned her eyes away, and was grateful that Hala did not seem in the mood to speak.

“My name is Calesto,” the man said. He had not seen her mother, and Laiskaiss was certain he would not understand the danger even if he had. Did the plant growing in the path understand the wagon wheel that suddenly crushed it down? “I have some pretensions to being Hala’s friend and Galdane’s confidant. I could make things unpleasant for you if you wish to stay here.”

“And then, you would find yourself coldly breathed upon,” Molisstath said.

Calesto leaped in the air and whirled around. Laiskaiss hid a smile behind her hand. Now he resembled a rabbit, and she preferred that to his frightening Hala the way he had.

“I do not understand your meaning,” he said. His face was malleable, Laiskaiss saw, anger and frustration already replacing the fear. He looked at Molisstath with insulting quickness, as if he could comprehend all of her in one glance. “Is that a term for Wanderer magic?”

“It is a term for what will happen if you interfere too much with my daughter’s happiness.” Molisstath laid one hand on the thick plait of iron-gray hair that hung past her shoulder. Her face remained blank. Her eyes were watchful, but they always were. Only long experience let Laiskaiss know that her mother was evaluating Calesto on several different levels, seeing how good a fighter he might be, what power of the tongue he could wield, and whether he knew anything of gift-giving. “As winter breathes upon the grass, so will I breathe on you.”

Calesto rolled his eyes and turned back to face Laiskaiss. That was stupid, since Molisstath was still watching him. “You have no right to handle Hala like that,” he said.

“Why not?” Laiskaiss was surprised. Perhaps customs had changed in Tristone. Perhaps couples no longer wore bands to signal their marriage, and so they were married after all. “Hala?” She glanced at the other woman. Hala was playing rabbit again, though, and it was Calesto who answered.

“She is carrying my child.”

Hala’s head snapped up, and she stared at Calesto for long moments. Then she said, “You knew? And you know the difficulties of the situation I lie in, and you did not offer help to me?”

Calesto looked at her with scorn Laiskaiss had seen before, and hated. It was the way a whole Honulith hunter would look at one who had had his hand taken off by a bear. “I wanted you to ask for it.”

Hala shook her head, wordless, but her eyes were angry. And then, for the first time, she took a step back and leaned against Laiskaiss’s shoulder, instead of allowing herself to rest there. Laiskaiss cocked her head, and Zhossith whispered something like wordless encouragement from her pouch.

“You have no right and no claim to me,” Hala said. “I am not married yet. My father has said that I may be with these people.” She did not make it sound quite as if she considered the People the equals of the humans of Tristone, but it was more an effort than Laiskaiss had heard the others make. “And if you knew I carried your child, knew what problems that created for me, and yet did not offer to ease my burden, then I have nothing to say to you.” She turned her back on Calesto.

A small smile rose and worked along the edge of Molisstath’s mouth. Laiskaiss saw no need to be so restrained, and burst out laughing.

Calesto’s eyes had the mad look of a bear harried by wolves now. He did not know precisely what had happened, but he knew he did not like it.

*

Calesto pinched his lips together and stood in silence until the impulse to speak aloud had passed. He had revealed one thing he had not meant to already, that he knew Hala was pregnant and the child she carried his; most people, even he, could have thought it Joro’s. He would not reveal more. He had been too patient, had spent too much time reading the stars, to lose it all now on a simple blurt.

So he took several deep breaths, and whirled away to stride back into Tristone. He would find Galdane and force him to confirm Hala’s story. It was possible she spoke the truth, of course, and her father really had granted her permission to be among the Wanderers. He was an old man with his mind more and more continually locked in thoughts of the past, especially the promise he had made his dead wife, and he did not always think on what he was saying.

But where one young person can speak persuasively to change an old man’s mind, another can speak persuasively to change it back.

He could not allow the star-designs to be ruined. The conception of Hala’s child and its eventual birth were important steps in the control of the future, to ensure that more moral improvements would happen to Tristone than otherwise. Calesto was not stupid enough to think he was a perfectly good person, and neither would his son or daughter be. But he could help teach that child, and that child could teach others, and slowly, they would make the necessary changes. The Wanderers could not be allowed to corrupt his child’s mother even before its birth.

By the time he reached Galdane’s house, Calesto was walking calmly. He put up a fist and knocked hard at the door, since he knew the mayor was often half-dozing at this time of day. Silence pressed in on him, comforting, giving him more time to plan, before Galdane called feebly and invited him inside.