Frenemies

 

Monday, April 20, 2708

(Why do I bother even making soup for him?  He won't eat it.  Well, he might.  I think this time he might.  He'd do better with something solid for his stomach to gnaw beside itself, but no use telling him that--he never listens.

The fragrance of herbs and marrow waft up through the morning mists in this, the blue hour.  We've passed the crest--only a little farther to go, now.  The fire pops and crackles in its friendly, gossipy way; I don't think I could ever get used to the silence of kitchen stoves after all these years out in the world.  The morning begins to twitter and rustle around me, stirring with the light; I couldn't feel more at peace.

Except... why do I bother?  Why do I care about him so?  There he tosses in uneasy sleep, so greenish pale, so feverish with advanced anemia.  Yesterday he couldn't put two sentences together in any kind of sense, yet that didn't stop him from muttering on.  Deirdre's name kept coming up.  I think he has forgotten all else by now, except that name.  He must love her so terribly, terribly much.

So what’s that to me?  Once the plan made sense.  You can't easily overpower an agent of the Tilián, everybody knows that, but you can sometimes squeeze ransom out of them.  But I could walk over there right now, step on his throat, and his troubles would end.  I wouldn't even have to do that much.  I could rob him right here and now as he lies there unable to stop me, take everything, never mind what he'd spare to buy his "daughter" back.

Then I look over at that grizzled, care-lined face, and I think, Holy Mother, if I don't get some iron and some vitamins into him soon, he'll die before he ever lays eyes on her face again. 

I look away and I think, "This man broke another man's back!  This man sold out his people's high ideals for the fickle company of tyrants." 

Then I look back at him, sleeping, sick and helpless, and I think, "This man held a Mountainfolk child's hand when she was just a little girl, this man told her stories of adventure, this man carried her piggy-back when her feet grew tired, and she not even the same race as him."

He stirs.  I watch him crawl over to a bush to attend his most basic needs, then crawl back and collapse once more onto his sleeping-bag.  Hammocks are out of the question these days; he can't climb into them.  Today he won't be able to walk without help.  These last few miles have taken days to cross--and us so close, so close!

I bring over the soup.  He smiles at the scent of it, surprised and delighted.  He gives me the grin that people reserve for friends—gaunt, unshaven, but warm.  I push a saddlebag behind him to prop him up a bit, and then I spoon broth into him, not trusting his shaking hands to hold the bowl.  He has grace enough left to thank me.

They expect me to have all the answers.  They expect me to declare what is black, what is white.  Hell, I wasn't Alysha's present age when the first orphans landed on my doorstep--and I still had the mantle of my last allegiance hanging on a peg inside the door!  There I stood, fourteen years old and just beginning to realize that I'd never shave, never father children, that those occasional cramps and bloody fluxes didn't come from dysentery, but neither would I ever give birth, ever nurse, nothing to console me, nothing of either world, nothing.  And here in the midst of my confusion this babbling priest had to name me father and mother to all of these messed-up kids!

And, in all the years since, I have learned only one thing for certain: nothing is ever simple.)

I wake to a light, rhythmical sound, barely remembering bits of some sad dream about soup, when I open my eyes to Alysha standing grimly by my hammock, tapping a book and asking, "Just exactly what did you mean by this?"

"By what?" I ask blearily.

"Teaching Lufti to read on this propaganda."  I focus my eyes on the title: Animal Farm, by George Orwell.

"Oh, that.  Well, after all he's been through, the usual children's books hardly seem appropriate.  I wanted something simple to read yet complex in..."

"You call this appropriate?  A revolution that ends in a tyranny as bad as before?"

I sit up in the swaying hammock and stare at her coldly.  "Why does that bother you?  Afraid it might happen here?"

Flustered, she says, "Not at all!  I was just afraid that he might think..."

"Precisely.  You don't want your partisans to think."

"That's not what I meant!  You didn't let me finish..."

"Which is what you want me to do--not finish my thought with Lufti."  That draws her up short.  "Don't you see?” I press.  “He has to know that this could happen in order to prevent it."

"When we win."

"If you win."  An agent of the Tilián has to plan for all contingencies, after all.

Then she gives me that wonderful, radiant smile of hers and says, "I'm sorry, Deirdre, I underestimated you."  She unlocks my evening chain and hooks me up to my leash-chain.  Then she hands the thing to me and says, "Here, take yourself to breakfast; I've got things to do, and Kiril’s on kitchen-duty."  As she leaves I stare at the leash in my own hand, strangely uncomfortable with my freedom.

* * *

Rain patters on the roof and windows as I push Cantimar's black hair from her forehead.  I feel her brow: cool and dry.  She has weathered her fever.  She smiles up at me sleepily. 

"Rest while you can," I tell her.  "Tomorrow we've got work for you to do."

"Good," she says, as she snuggles back into her pillow and falls asleep again.  In the distance, thunder rumbles tenderly.

God knows I wish I didn't have to send her back so soon, but she'll have to learn to make the best of her periods of relative health.  I pick up laundry here and there--the infirmary generates more than anybody.

I pause by the door, staring on past my chain on its hook, out into the rain, taking in a deep breath of that wet jungle perfume, and sighing it out again.  I'm no doctor, but I know enough to recognize goat fever when I see it.  The worst kind in the general category that they call “draggin’ fevers” around here.  Nearly unpredictable in its cycles.  Incurable by any means within our reach, though I know of a medicine of expensive compounds that some may buy, which clears it up in a week. 

Suffering is bad enough.  Incurable suffering hurts still worse.  But nothing hurts so searingly as those ills for which the privileged few enjoy a remedy denied you.  That's when the hate runs through you like a toxin in the blood.

I return to Cantimar.  She groans as she turns over.  Her joints still ache; they might never stop.  A sudden rainstorm makes it worse, of course, with the drop in air pressure and all.

I shudder to think of all the times in childhood that I drank milk straight from the bucket despite the scolding of my elders--you catch this ill from tainted milk, while milder forms come from bad water.  But Cantimar's parents never told her that, because they didn't know, themselves.  A little education might have prevented her suffering; it would've cost hardly anything at all.

At first I think it thunder when something smashes outside.  "Marduk!  Don't!  Please!"

"If you keep pushing me, Alysha, I won't be responsible for my actions!"  More things shatter, kicked to pieces in the hissing rain, thrown into walls.  But I don't think he's touched her yet.  "You may be boss out on the battlefield, but in our own quarters I'm the boss--you got that?  You got that?"

"Marduk, let go of me!  You're hurting me!"

"Oh, I'm hurting you, am I?  Well how about that?  And that!"  I don’t want to look.  I don’t.

"Please!  I'm sorry!  I'm sorry!"

"You wanna play General in the bedroom, Alysha?  You wanna bring the battlefield into the bedroom?"

"No!  Please!  I'm sorry!  I was wrong, I'm sorry!  Sorry!" 

For the longest time I hear her sobbing, then I hear his own deeper sobs undercut her own.

"Marduk..."

"I don't know what got into me.  I'm bad news, Alysha--you should leave me, you should run right out the gates and leave..."

"Stop it!  I won't abandon you.  I promised I would never, ever abandon you."

"I'm sick, 'Lysha.  I can't help myself."

"Yes you can.  Someday we'll be able to put all this war stuff behind us, and..."

"I can't!"

"Ow!  Please!"

"I can't!  I am war!  I am, I, I don't know what I am.  Alysha, you just make me so mad sometimes that I can't control myself, but I, I, I..."

"It's all right, lover.  I'll do better.  You'll see.  You've got all these bruises in your soul, but sometimes I forget, I push against them, it's me, really.  I'll be more thoughtful in the future.  We'll nurse you back to health, darling.  We can do it."

"Oh, Alysha, I love you so much.  You make me so mad sometimes, but I will never, ever stop loving you."

I finally do look back out the door again.  There they stand, together, her cuddling into him and his arms around her, as though he could shelter her from the rain that drags down and darkens her hair.  The bruises have not had time to develop, of course.  They could almost look romantic—if you could ignore all the mud in Alysha’s clothes and hair and skin, where he apparently dragged her outdoors.

I turn and stare into Rashid's face, as bloodless as my own.  Does he also feel his stomach churn?