Kiravi's Travelogue Ch. 08

When she spoke again, it wasn't to me, but to Serina. "You seem the nurturing sort, young maiden." Serina blushed at the accurate compliment, "For a fortnight at least, our dear Kiravi will likely suffer from the blood fever. Ensure he sips on both of these every day, and make sure the supply lasts for those two weeks," Serina nodded. "One is to keep his strength up and seal his wounds. The other will fight the fever." She turned back to me. "And this is for you, Kiravi, and the most valuable thing that I can give you now. I hope the gods will think it a worthy enough payment for the service you have done for me." She pressed the bag into my hands.

I opened it with my scratched and beaten hands, undoing the sinew thong cinching it shut, and reaching inside. It was a loosely bound bundle of dried hide sheets just like my own spellbook, but far thicker and better made. The carefully scribed symbols were absolutely crammed together on the front and back of each page, separated into spells and instructions for brewing elixirs I'd never even heard of. In my hands, dear readers, I held something more valuable than all of my father's lands and taxes combined.

"This is...I wouldn't even know where to begin," I mumbled, flipping through the pages slowly.

"You laid low four of my bitterest rivals in a single night and gave me warning by reporting Sata's treachery. Believe me, Kiravi, it is an appropriate payment." A scribe appeared nearby, insistently gesturing for Quisrlay's attention, and she reluctantly nodded at him. "I must return to these matters of state, Kiravi, and you must leave as well. Tonight, I will pray to the Kwarzi for your safe passage and to the Pashudia and Hashkeha for your fortunes."

Still almost completely lost for words, I managed to mumble back to her, "As I will pray to the Ettuku to restore structure and order to Tebis and keep its ruler safe."

She smiled once more, her features regaining their youth for a brief instant before she hurried off to her waiting staff. We were hustled out of the palace by nervous and exhausted guards and escorted to the downriver docks. The city was still trying to rouse itself from the blood-soaked nightmare of the day before by the time, for the second time in two days, we found ourselves floating downriver. Not, however, before Leotie had plundered an armful and a half of discarded weapons from the palace grounds and various gutters.

The water sloshed against the well-made -- though not as well made as Kapak's -- canoe and Tebis began to shrink away behind us. We were wedged in close together, Niknik and the three of us, amongst pots and jars and stacks of provisions, and the vessel rode dangerously low in the choppy water. So much had changed in just the single turning of the sun since we'd landed upstream.

Leotie laid out the best of the various flint and obsidian knives she'd collected, shoving those cracked or poorly made aside. She'd found two atlatls and a handful of darts in the palace as well and looked them over with a keen eye. All the while, whenever Serina wasn't watching, she gave me one intimate glance after another, each one more tender than the last. A warm feeling flooded through me, but one tempered with apprehension at having to find a way to speak about this to Serina. And, I told myself, there was no guarantee that Leotie's words, about the three of us being together and said in the heat of passion, still rang true.

Serina, so happy when we'd reunited, kept staring out towards the horizon in between bouts of wincing pain and rubbing at her temples. She assured me it was nothing, just the smoke, and a poor night's sleep. She set up the same simple shade for us as the days before and made sure I sipped on the elixirs from the palace. She fussed over me, fiddling with my bandages, before working under one of my arms to contour her slight body against mine.

Niknik took over the canoe's center, endlessly grooming himself to get the last remnants of the night's carnage out of his coat. Leotie smiled and scratched his head before crawling towards Serina and me carefully to avoid unbalancing the craft. For the first time, with all of us awake, she climbed under my other arm, resting her weary body against my other side. Nervous, I glanced down at both of them; an inscrutable look passed back and forth as they glanced at each other across my scarred chest, but nothing more.

My mind wandered to a land of fantastic possibilities, of two feminine bodies writhing and cooing beneath me, but the fatigue and pain and fresh doses of bitter magical tonics lured me away. Away, and down into a deep sleep born of true exhaustion. If I dreamt of them, I do not know, for the moment my eyes closed and my head fell back upon the gunwale, darkness swirled around me.

***

I needn't have worried about easing my worries about my relationship with my lovers or the possibly volatile reaction from either or both of them. When I awoke, it was still morning, or so I thought, and only one warm and soft body was mashed against mine. Instead of the warmth of the sun, I was shivering through limb-wracking chills.

Qusirlay had, of course, dear readers, been right; I had the blood fever.

My lovers had wrapped me in blankets, and I realized that the only warmth I felt came from Niknik's compact body, curled against me under the wool. He felt me shift, shivering violently, and rubbed his big head against my chest. A low purr thrummed in his throat, vibrating through my body and seeming to cancel out the worst of my feverish convulsions. His big golden eyes looked up at me, pupils dilated widely.

"You're not exactly who I expected to see," I croaked, just the act of speaking taking monumental effort. Niknik blinked slowly at me in response.

"He's awake!" Leotie said, her voice cutting through both the river fog and the fever in my mind. "Get the potions."

The canoe rocked slightly as Serina crawled over with the precious jugs in her arms. "You've slept an entire day," she whispered to me, "mumbling and shaking all day and night. Here," she tipped first one elixir and then the other into my mouth. Both were glutinous and foul, but I could feel their magic curling around my conduit, combining with and strengthening it.

"I wish those Old Nobles had just killed me and been done with it," I groaned, the agony lessening somewhat as the elixirs did their job.

Serina made a horrified face, but it was Leotie that looked over her shoulder at me and barked, "Akagi take your eyes, you whiny little man." Despite the harsh words and sneer, there was still the hint of a smile in her eyes. "If we didn't have you, who would catch every sword and spear and spell instead of us?" She smirked, and, with a supreme effort, I arched a suspicious eyebrow. "Right, Serina?" She asked with playful badinage.

What the hell had been happening between the two of them while I'd been shivering to death?

Serina smiled weakly, embarrassed, "That's...one of his talents. An important talent."

I coughed pathetically, "It's so nice to be appreciated."

"Let's leave him alone," Serina relented first, unsurprisingly. "Here, Kiravi," she pressed herself closer to me and handed me a beerskin. It was warm but thick and robust, and it helped the potions dull the ache in my body. She draped a cool rag of worn cotton on my forehead, the only part of me that wasn't wracked with horrific chills.

Most of that second day, I faded in and out of wakefulness, my lucid periods marked by sips of elixir and mouthfuls of tepid beer. Niknik didn't leave me except to messily eat some small fish Leotie hooked out of the river, and every time he wriggled his way back to me. He never seemed to stop purring, and it lulled me into a somewhat restful oblivion.

The next day, I woke around dawn to some faint and incoherent mumblings. My lovers, each unaware of the entire scope of my relationship with the other, faced each other in the canoe's center. Hands clasped, they chanted like they had before we'd arrived in Tebis. The blue magic swirled faintly around them, and the air rippled as it had before. Sha naqba imuru, sha naqba imuru, those same strange words, again and again. For just a moment, I saw the ethereal silhouettes of the Kwarzi, and the spell peaked. My conduit twisted in response, and they noticed my pained groan. They subjected me to another few mouthfuls of foul medicine with apologetic smiles.

Serina tried -- she tried, dear readers, until tears streamed down her face -- to focus the same viridian magic from the Ketza to heal me. The energy spluttered faintly around her hands, and her eyes flickered only briefly from red-orange to misty green. I tried to smile at her, patting her soft thigh to comfort her.

By the fifth day, I'd managed to crawl around the canoe a bit, holding onto the scruff of Niknik's neck for balance, "Where are we?" I muttered after swallowing my daily dose of foulness.

"How in the Chaos Wastes should we know?" Leotie said without malice but with plenty of sass. "Wherever it is, it's a bit lower and a bit greener. Just a bit."

The banks that slid by on either side of the long river were partially masked by swaying stands of reeds. Juniper trees clustered close to the water, and the imposing ridges of the Ketza north of Tebis had fallen away. The riverfront was still crowded with jagged rocks, but the land felt much more open than before. I couldn't help but be reminded of my home around Anghu.

She took my calloused and scarred hands in hers, pressing a small wooden rod into them, "Fish with me? The Kwarzi say the trout are plentiful today."

"I've never fished a day in my life," I croaked, and she rolled her eyes but smiled, "Comes from being a pampered, useless noble, I suppose."

For the rest of the day and all of the next, my gorgeous and wild lover patiently shared her mastery of the river. She'd kept a handful of thin sinew lines and carved bone hooks in her pack and easily dangled bait in the silty river. One middling-size trout after another flopped into the canoe, plucked easily by my huntress. I clumsily hung my line beside hers, shivering still despite the heat, and in two days, all I managed to snag was a sluggish-looking pulangi fish. As thanks for all of his help so far, I fed it to the patiently drooling and waiting Niknik.

Another day dawned, and Serina and Leotie steered us towards a rare, gravelly beach to cook the catch of the last day. They splashed out into the shallows, dragging the heavy canoe and my near-inert bulk ashore. I felt -- and was -- all but useless, their small hands grabbing my sweating but shivering arms and helping me ashore. They transferred the shades and awnings to an already pleasantly shaded clearing amongst the juniper trees. They splashed back and forth, pulling our packs and some provisions to the shade before heaving the canoe all the way onto the sandy bank.

"Why are we stopping?" I croaked, pulling my blankets closer around me. I should've known by then that it was a futile gesture, but it was comforting.

"There's a good amount of pemmican and other traveling food on that canoe, and it'll last a good while no matter if we go through it right away or sit on it," Leotie explained, sweat sheened on her face and muscles bulging. "I can cook the fish and snare something, make the stores we already have last even longer. This is rich-looking country; I'm bound to get something."

I grunted assent, not that my opinion mattered, but I scowled beneath the bundled blankets. This was her world, her expertise, and I felt useless and out of place. Painstakingly, I dragged a handful of dried juniper branches into a pile in front of the awning and pushed a spark of magic into it. The drought-dried wood caught fire, and sharp-smelling smoke curled upwards. "What do you want Serina and I to do?" I wasn't used to not making the decisions for our little band, and my feverish mind chafed at it.

"Oh no," Leotie shared a look with me that Serina couldn't see, but I was too addled to understand it. "Serina's coming with me. She needs to start learning how to do something more than cast terrifying, uncontrolled magic," she nudged the younger woman playfully.

"Hey," Serina scowled adorably back at the older woman, "I know how to do plenty of things. I bound all of his wounds, didn't I?"

"So you're just going to leave a blood-sick man alone in the wilderness?" I was feverish and swimming in pain that shot through my joints and curdled in my guts, but I was still unnecessarily petulant, dear readers.

"Quit being such a baby," Leotie barked back. "Niknik will stay with you."

"I don't know; maybe I should stay with him," Serina said quietly, clearly nervous about tramping into the woods with the experienced huntress.

"He'll be fine, and you'll be fine," Leotie snapped while rummaging through her pack for the atlatls and good knives, "I'm not going to be the only one who knows how to feed the lot of us."

So, off they went into the depths of the juniper thicket, and I was alone with the faintly rushing water and Niknik's quiet breath. Refusing to just linger like some elder dying of a bloody cough, I puttered around the camp and gathered more wood for the small fire. When the pain grew to be too much, I collapsed next to my pack with cold sweat pouring down my face.

I considered muttering a short prayer to the Pashudia or Hashkeha, but I didn't know if I would ask for a swift death or a miraculous recovery from that damnable fever. So I did neither and fished around for my new spell book and my poorly made older one. Blinking against the pain and swimming fever, I focused my attention on the complicated symbols of Qusirlay's alchemical spells. There was so much there, a vast array spanning from the potions I'd been force-fed for a week to volatile concentrations of magic and mundane components capable of blasting entire buildings into dust. I wanted desperately to begin experimenting, but my weakened body couldn't handle the strain.

They shook me awake as the sun was slipping into darkness in the west and fed me more of the foul tinctures. Both were streaked with dust, twigs, and juniper needles tangled in their hair. Serina looked exhausted but excited, but Leotie was in a rotten mood. They'd only trapped a hare and a ground squirrel between them, and that seemed like a good haul to me, but Leotie complained about the unfamiliar atlatl and poorly made darts. She still felt the sting of losing her bow, I could tell, and had a fierce pride in her skill that was wounded by the day's failure to catch any larger game.

Still, the trout roasted into delicious perfection, and Serina stewed the small game in a leather pot hung close over the fire. The hot, fatty meal stuck to my ribs and seemed to fill my shaking limbs with a bit of strength. I went to sleep with Serina wrapped in my arms and Leotie's toned body wrapped around my back. No one spoke a word about it. Perhaps it was just to save heat in the bitter desert night. Maybe it was something else.

My brief glimmer of hope that I might be climbing out of this damned sickly fugue was dashed when I started awake before dawn and vomited the rich meal into the dust.

After pouring water and potions down my throat at dawn and ensuring the fire was well-stoked, the women disappeared into the woods again. A confused, frustrated, powerless tempest of emotion churned in my head while my hands trembled. So much needed to be done, discussed, explored, but I was nothing more than a feverish slab of meat.

Where would we go next? Where was it safe? Who could possibly have better answers for Serina? When and how could I tell Serina that I loved Leotie? How could we manage all of our feelings for one another? How did they even feel about each other? And, most important and most worrying: what in the Akagi's hells was I doing? Why hadn't I just gone home, draped in honor and wealth? What the fuck was I doing?

Niknik tensed beside me, and my head snapped up and out of its doubting spiral. A figure stood at the edge of our little clearing, atlatl half-raised while he stared at me. At least another dozen of them were nearly hidden amongst the junipers. All were Bhakhuri, equally male and female, dressed in well-made hide wraps or breeches, with bandeaus for the females. They seemed to have been following the river bank headed upstream and missed where Leotie and Serina were further inland.

"Hush, friend," I ruffled Niknik's pinned ears, but he continued to bristle.

I slowly lifted my hand in an attempted greeting, my mind too feverish to panic. The Headman's stance softened, atlatl lowering further. My skill with the Bhakhuri dialect of the east was limited, though bolstered by a few lessons with Leotie in the Ketza. Who knew if these hunters even spoke that dialect? I tried a simple greeting anyway.

He cocked his head slightly and moved forward a half-step. His skin and hair were similar to Shindra's, dusky flesh and features with pale, silvery hair pulled into a long braid. He was well-muscled despite his parentage rather than because of it, but only about Leotie's height.

He said something back that sounded, very vaguely, with my limited knowledge, like, "Who are you?"

I'd already reached the limit of my Bhakhuri, and the only thing keeping me from slipping into another bout of feverish unconsciousness seemed to be the surge of fear that was finally souring its way into my gut. So, with nothing better coming to mind, I pointed to the east, "Anghu. Anghu."

He took another step, the atlatl all but limp at his side by then, "You...travel?" He said in extremely broken Anghoreti.

I nodded as vigorously as I could. "Yes. Travel."

If I'd been more coherent, I would've still been on edge, worried that this wandering band would ransack the camp and canoe and murder me for my absent lovers to find. As it was, the fever chose that moment to reduce me to a shivering mess once more. My ability to worry about anything else but that shrank away.

The lead hunter seemed wary, "Why...sick?" He asked, his tone inflected as he searched for the right words. I opened the blankets slightly by way of response, showing him the dusty bandages crisscrossing my body. He nodded slightly in understanding.

My mother's old lesson flickered through my mind: the road is hard for all, so offer what you can when you can. I gestured painfully at the dusty and needle-strewn ground around the fire. "Sit...sit."

He hesitated again before a wry smile crossed his face. Slowly and carefully, eyes scanning the stand of trees, he crossed the open space and crouched by the fire across from me. Hospitality honors the gods and raises us above the animals, or so my mother had always said. So, with shaking hands, I offered him my beerskin. Niknik bristled, his hackles and short tail puffed out, but my hand resting on his head kept him just calm enough.

Once the Headman had taken a long draught and nodded at me, he waved the others forward and out of the mottled shadows. They rested their packs beside ours, crouching in the dust and stretching out tired limbs. Ten or so dogs I hadn't noticed before trotted after them and between their legs, tails pointed and ears erect, studying Niknik and me warily. One of them stared at me more intently than the others, amber eyes never leaving mine, and it seemed more coyote than dog.

The other Bhakhuri all nodded at me in thanks, chattering in their tongue with each other and their animals. Some gathered more firewood; others scooped water from the river. Niknik remained tense, muscles bunched under his coat, but his fur slowly returned to its sleek, soft state.

By the time I heard Serina and Leotie shriek in fear and anger from the juniper thicket, I'd relaxed to the point that I was trying to tell terrible jokes with the Bhakhuri Headman.