Lawrence Watt-Evans - In the Empire of Shadow

How could he go to sleep?

“How do we get back?” he repeated, a bit more quietly.

“I don’t know, Mr. Brown,” Susan said. “I don’t know, and no one here knows. You’re tired, we’re all tired, we’re distraught-get some sleep. It’ll help.”

“But what…”

“Maybe Taillefer will be braver by daylight; had you thought of that? People are like that sometimes- everybody is, whether they admit it or not. It’s easier to take risks by daylight. Go to sleep, Mr. Brown.”

Pel hesitated, then rolled over, and tried to sleep.

It was easier than he had expected.

Amy sat up, stretched, then immediately leaned over and threw up-or tried to; her stomach held nothing she could bring up.

Susan awoke at the sound; Amy saw the attorney’s eyes, closed a moment before, open and watching her. Pel, on Susan’s other side, stirred.

Taillefer, already up and about, turned and looked at her with interest.

“What ails you, woman?” he asked.

“I dunno,” Amy muttered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Have you a fever, then?”

Amy shrugged; Susan, who had felt Amy’s wrist and forehead the night before, answered, “No fever I could find.”

“Is’t bad food, perchance? What had you to eat, of late?”

“Garbage,” Amy muttered.

“The same as the rest of us,” Susan replied.

Taillefer considered that. “Well, betimes a poison may strike one and pass another by, yet…how long has this troubled you?”

“A few days,” Amy said, wiping her hand on a clump of grass.

“Has it…your pardon for my coarseness; has it troubled your bowels?”

Amy shook her head. “Not really. Not yet, anyway.”

“Feel you weak and weary, perchance? An so, did that come ere the vomiting?”

“I’ve felt rotten for weeks,” Amy agreed. “But it’s just this place-I need to go home!”

Taillefer shook his head. “I think that’s not the cause, mistress.”

Amy glared up at him. “Oh? Is this something people get here? You recognize it?”

Taillefer smiled crookedly. “An I read the signs aright, mistress,” he said, “’tis something that women must surely ‘get’ in every land, be it here in the True World, or in the Galactic Empire, or on your Earth. Are you wed?”

For a moment, Amy didn’t understand what Taillefer meant; the sudden question seemed to come from nowhere, to be completely irrelevant.

Then she saw the connection. The anger drained from her stare, to be replaced with shock.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

* * * *

Pel returned from the bushes still blinking sleepily as he buttoned his pants; he wished the Galactic Empire had developed the zippered fly, but they apparently hadn’t. He looked up to see that Amy was crying, and Susan was comforting her-again.

Pel frowned slightly. Whatever was bothering Amy, she didn’t seem to be taking it well. It didn’t seem to be getting much worse-or any better.

He had heard her asking Susan whether she thought it could be the same thing that killed Grummetty and Alella, that her system was somehow incompatible with this entire universe; he didn’t see how that could be it, since no one else was affected, and he certainly hoped it wasn’t that.

Well, whatever it was, there wasn’t anything he could do about it except help her get back to Earth. The sooner the whole group sat down together and figured out how to do that, the better.

Amy and Susan were sitting against the east wall of the great hall, in the shade; Ted was still asleep nearby. Taillefer and Valadrakul were talking quietly over toward the northeast corner. Raven and Singer and Prossie were doing something together in the sunlit center of the hall, shadows stretching far out to the west-Pel hoped they were getting breakfast. Wilkins and Marks and Sawyer were moving about over at the south end, where thorn bushes had grown up through the broken floor.

Stoddard was nowhere in sight; Pel guessed he was out gathering firewood. The morning air was chilly and damp, fragrant with mosses and weeds, and he still had no shirt; a fire would be welcome.

But there was no need to wait for that; if everyone but Ted was awake, it was time to start discussion.

“So what are we doing?” Pel demanded loudly, of no one in particular.

“Getting breakfast, I hope,” Wilkins replied. “We’ve been trying to catch something here-might be a woodchuck, if you have those here.”

The two wizards looked up from their colloquy. “Perchance I might lend a hand,” Valadrakul said.

* * * *

The animal was a badger, not a woodchuck, and managed to claw Singer’s arm before being clubbed into unconsciousness by the butts of four blasters and a chunk of wood; it was finished off by Wilkins, who cut its throat with his pocket knife.

Pel watched the operation with morbid interest, but did not help beyond lending moral support; he was not yet accustomed to killing his own food. It seemed like a very messy business-not that he saw much of an alternative here.

He did help build the fire, though.

The meat was edible, at least some of it-Raven cut out the portions he said were fit to eat, and left the rest. Even when properly cooked, however, it wasn’t very pleasant eating, and the relatively good parts did not go very far when divided a dozen ways. The smells of blood and dew-wet badger fur lingered, which didn’t help Pel’s appetite any.

For the rest of the meal Taillefer had a pouch of hard biscuits he shared out, while Sawyer and Marks brought water from a nearby spring.

As they ate, Pel kept looking for Stoddard’s return, but there was no sign of the man; when he suggested that a share be set aside for him, Raven simply shook his head.

Amy ate her share quietly, without complaint, and kept it down-she seemed more interested in the biscuits than the meat, however.

The entire party was gathered around the cooking fire in a circle, more or less; the three women were seated together on one side, between Ted Deranian and Albert Singer, while the other men were arranged in no particular order. Pel found himself between Sawyer and Valadrakul; Raven was seated on Sawyer’s other side, Taillefer just beyond Valadrakul.

When everyone had eaten, and had brushed crumbs from their hands and clothes, and Valadrakul had collected the offal and gnawed bones in a heap on the dead animal’s hide for later burial in sacrifice to the Goddess the Faerie folk worshipped, Pel asked loudly, “Should we get down to business now, or should we wait for Stoddard?”

Raven glared silently at him; Valadrakul looked up from the badger skin to say quietly, “Messire Brown, speak you no more of Raven’s man. Stoddard left in the night, whither we know not, without leave nor notice. We can but assume that he has left Raven’s service, as did so many others, and that we’ll not see him more.”

Startled, Pel turned to Raven for confirmation; the nobleman nodded, once.

It had never occurred to Pel, despite Stoddard’s complaints, that Stoddard would really desert.

“Oh,” he said. Then he recovered himself. “Well, then, let’s get on with it!”

“On with what?” Wilkins demanded.

“On with deciding what to do next, of course,” Pel said. “Taillefer says he won’t open the space-warp for us, and we don’t seem to be able to force him-so how do we get home?”

“Maybe we don’t,” Wilkins growled.

“And you’ll all be made welcome by those of us who yet resist Shadow’s foul dominion,” Raven said. “Live you among us, and join our fight!”

“I say we go back to the ship,” Marks said. “Maybe they’ve sent a rescue party. Or maybe the lieutenant’s got some plans of his own.”