At the first words, Ki had frozen. As the head continued to speak, she had scrambled to her feet and begun to back out of the fire’s circle of light.
‘What can you do, Ki? Abandon me, your wagon and team, and flee into the woods? It wouldn’t free you of those who gave you the responsibility for my journey. It certainly wouldn’t do me any good. Although I retain some small powers in this diminished state, I would be vastly more comfortable with my own body beneath me, and my own hands at the ends of my arms. the body and hands, I might add, that you have so carelessly lost.’
Ki remained on the edge of the firelight. Every hair on her body was acrawl with dread. Yet she knew that face and voice if only she could place them. And she had to bow to the logic of his words, even in the weird circumstances in which he uttered them. Perhaps especially in those circumstances. She stared at him, unable to flee and unwilling to return.
‘Oh, come,’ he resumed condescendingly. ‘At least have some manners! I would greatly appreciate a sip of your tea. My bodily wants in this state are few, but the mouth does become dry. Surely you won’t let me, uh, sit here alone all evening.’
Ki straightened her shoulders and advanced with a bravado she did not feel. She picked up her mug. With hands that trembled only slightly, she held its rim to the head’s lips. He sipped. Ki set down her mug, and retreated to the other side of the fire.
‘That’s better,’ the head sighed. A little of the greyness seemed to leave his face. ‘But perhaps I am forgetting my manners as well. I am Dresh, lately a power of Dyal, soon to be, I hope, a power of Bitters. If, that is, you can live up to the terms of our bargain. You’ve made a fine mess of it so far. You realize that, don’t you?’
‘I realize that I was given a cargo I would not have chosen to carry, had I known its true nature!’ Ki snapped. She drowned her fear in anger. ‘And I remember your face now. You were the drunken tinker that stirred up the tavern at Dyal with your wild political cant about the Windsingers. You urged the farmers and weavers to rebel openly, to burn their crops and wool in the field before they paid tribute to the Windsingers. And when the brawl started, you left me to pay the damage!’
As Ki spoke to him, Dresh let his face slide into the tinker’s drunken scowl. His eyelids drooped, his cheeks sagged, he let his mouth dangle open. Then with a wink he straightened his features to handsomeness and grinned at her. Had the atmosphere been different, and the head atop a body, Ki might have warmed to that grin. But now it only fueled her anger.
‘Someone wants you, Dresh. Someone wants you badly enough to pay gold for wind spells. Such magic is not cheap. Whoever wants you has the wealth to buy his desires. And if he wants you all that badly, I do not think he will take kindly to my interference. You hired me as a teamster, not as a bodyguard.’
‘…to do all within my power to see that my freight reaches its destination safely.” And signed, not just with your name, but also with your status as a freeborn, and the attestation that your loyalty is only to yourself. That bit of braggadocio has bound you to me even more tightly than I could have engineered. And,’ a lifted eyebrow stemmed Ki’s outburst, ‘you may wish to consider this. You fear you have earned the enmity of certain wealthy and perhaps powerful persons who wish to do me harm. You have. The Windsingers. Themselves. Abandoning me here will not lessen their dislike of you. As you well know, they have never been overly fond of Romni. They will see your conveying of me from Dyal to here as an act of defiance, of open rebellion. So you may as well plot further with me as to how to restore myself. At least then you will be under my not inconsiderable protection.’
Ki sat glaring with narrow cat eyes, weighing the options he hadn’t mentioned. She could just load his head back into her wagon and haul it to Bitters. But that might mean facing whatever allies this Dresh might have waiting for him. She could seek out the Windsingers herself, and turn the head over to them, with humble apologies. If they would believe her. If they bothered to wait to hear out her story. If she found them before they found her. And, the biggest if, if she had not already given her word to paper that she would deliver this ‘freight’ safely. Gods, what a fix! He had her, thrice bound to him, by name, birth, and loyalty. And the Windsingers against them. Ki was in a game where the opening stakes were already too high for her purse. Dresh was the only way out.
She gave a curt nod to the head that was regarding her with a smug smile, as if he could follow the trail of her thoughts. Ki took a sip of her tea. ‘So. If I am to assist you in this madness, I think I must know what is going on. Let us have the whys of it.’
‘The whys?’
‘Why are you in pieces? I dare not ask how. Why make this journey? Why pay me a premium price to haul dirt and stones? Why did you incite that riot in the tavern? Why didn’t they get your head when they got the rest of you? Why do they want you at all?’
‘Such a busy little mind to hide inside a Romni teamster’s head! Will you not just trust me, and do as you are told? Believe me when I tell you that knowledge without understanding can cause fear that is completely disproportionate to the realities involved. As a teamster, you must know that the blinkered team may go more steadily than…’
‘I am not a horse,’ Ki warned him.
‘No. I did not mean to imply that you were one. Only that the less you knew, the safer you might feel. If…’
‘You’re asking me to drive a strange trail by night, Dresh, and I…’
‘Ah, the quaint wordings of the Romni born. Almost like a subdialect of Common. You are stubborn, and I have no time for it. Know then, and wish you did not. It will take me less time to tell it than to talk you out of it. There is this. For some time, I have been a bother to the Windsingers. For one thing, I know too much about them, I know enough that I fear them in quite a different way from the way ordinary fools fear them. To say more would be to get into personal areas. That must content you. As to why I divided myself, let us say that I knew that the Windsingers had finally decided to free me from my mortal shell, to turn my soul adrift in the universe. The idea did not please me. The runings I had made about Dyal had grown old and were loosening. Too often had they been renewed. I need a new home, guarded by fresh runes. A suitable configuration occurred in Bitters. But there was the journey to Bitters to consider. To leave in my natural form would be useless. They would have had me before I was a step outside the gates. To leave in a disguise would make the game a little more interesting for them, but not for me. I am a wizard, Ki. That shape I project into the strata of power is distinctive. They know that shape as well as you know the scar down Vandien’s face.’
Dresh paused, smiling, to let Ki feel that little dart. ‘There are ways, but not many, to alter that configuration. I did not choose to invite a lesser spirit to join mine in my body. I did not choose to…well, let us not go into what else I did not choose. What I chose was to divide my body. Thus my shape on the power strata was also divided and would appear in new forms. For a while, it confused them. For a while, but not for as long as I had hoped.’ The head paused and sighed. Dresh licked his lips, stared at the fire thoughtfully.
Ki echoed his sigh. Without being asked, she circled the fire, poured more hot tea into her mug, and offered it to his lips. He drank sparingly, then watched her as she drank.
‘The boxes of earth were to throw them off. As was the use of the black house where you signed the contract. You carried too much freight for it to be the body of Dresh. But that, too, did not deceive them for long. As for why they did not get all of me…’ The fine white teeth nibbled thoughtfully at the full lower lip. ‘I think we may call it luck. They did not know how many pieces I was in. The creature they sent was of the basest level of intelligence, twice as primitive as a Romni teamster, even. It was probably told to fetch back the boxes that were enamelled. A necessary part of this magic, you will guess. My head box, within your wagon, escaped its attention. Luckily for us, they will not instantly know it is missing. Unlike some fools, they have too much respect for my boxes to try to pry one open with a knife. They will know the catch is in the jewels. Enough stones