The Forlorn(78)

Usually they'd ridden into the dusk. It was more pleasant to travel then. But this evening they had stopped early, before sundown. Keilin had used the nearby water cave and the relative abundance of thorny scrub for the camels as an excuse. Actually they were near a spot called Broken-Chimney Rock. He was wrapped in memories, and they were within a mile of the place where he had burned Marou. He wanted to go and pay his respects in private. Also he was mighty sick of that camel. He was already thinking about how to part with it.

He retired from the fire early, took his bedroll and moved well back into the shadows.

* * *

He was so damn transparent in some ways. He'd said more since they'd come into the desert than he normally did in a month. Mostly talking about the plants and animals he knew and had hunted, or about geology. Geology! And even Cap had acknowledged he knew what he was talking about. There'd been a sort of joy about him. Shael didn't even think he'd realized he was talking mostly to her. Even his destruction of the pursuit had not seemed to shatter his mood.

But since they'd come to the ruin of that shop he'd gone quiet, shifted into the reticence which was his norm, when he wasn't being a teenager showing off to the girls. Funny. She'd almost forgotten his performances back when he'd met her. The realization that he had been trying to impress her as a member of the opposite sex, back then, struck her abruptly. She'd been pretty dense, hadn't she? All she needed to have done at that stage was pretend to be awed, to have had him eating out of her hand. Still . . . how was Cay to have known he was a lot more impressive when he wasn't trying to show off his tricks? A sharp insight pecked at her quick mind: Did the same apply to her? No. Couldn't be.

She watched him like a hawk that evening, refusing even to let the fact that he and Beywulf had tried to feed her overgrown lizard distract her. When he made his excuses for going to bed, she followed within a minute, ignoring Bey's comment, and Leyla's searching look.

When he left the camp she was just behind him.

* * *

He'd been distracted when he left camp. But not that distracted. She made more noise than the Tinarana Brass Band, for heaven's sake.

"Go back, Princess."

She stepped out from behind the rock where she'd been ineffectually skulking. "Cay. . . . I'm not sure of the way back. Can't I . . . come with you? Are you leaving us?"

"I made my promise, Princess. I'll see you to your father, if I can. I won't run off before that," he said dismissively.

"We could still just go on alone . . ." she said softly.

He shook his head. "I'm ashamed of you, Princess. They'd all die out here, without me to find them water. Now, I'll take you back to where you can see the fire."

She twined her fingers in his. "Can't I just come with you? You . . . seemed to be climbing into yourself for the last couple of hours. What's wrong?"

He sighed. "I'm just going to pay my respects. I'm going back to the place where I burned the body of the man who was like a father to me. My first real friend. He made me what I am."

He stood silent for a while, seemingly unaware that he still held her hand. "Back in Port T. people put flowers on the graves. Ol' Marou wouldn't want flowers. I'm taking him a piece of goanna and a bottle of beer. To remember."

She said nothing, just squeezed his hand. "Come," he said roughly. "Come and see the last resting place of the lord of the desert."

In the stark moonlight he led her up between the shadowed buttes and then into a narrow ravine, dark and cruel-edged in the sharp moonlight, and then out onto the naked sheetrock at the top. In the moonlight the tangled weave of sharp-edged valleys lay like some gargantuan mauled tapestry below them. "In the early morning, after a storm, you can see both the mountains and the sea from up here. The old man loved it," said Keilin, as Shael tried to catch her breath. He walked forward to a few charred remains of the cedar logs. He stood for a moment, with only the sound of her panting stirring the still, cold air. Then he set down the piece of goanna, and poured the beer onto the bare stones.

"Cheers, Marou, you ol' bastard."

After a long silence he turned to Shael. "He lived out here for seventy years at least. He couldn't read or write. He never had a bath in his life. Every year or so he'd go across the mountains, drink himself blind, stink out the whorehouse . . . and leave before morning. He could kill you in thirty ways . . . he could slip up to you without you even knowing he was there. He could keep alive on country so bare an ant would starve. He taught me nearly everything I know. He showed me things no king ever saw. He was rich. Richer than any other man I ever saw. Yet all he had was a knife, a spear and a few old bits and pieces. God, I miss him. I miss him."