Nondula (The Waifs of Duldred Book 2) Read online

  16 The Bom

  The bear was very near to death. Oy saw Ede’s warning on the packet of herbs. Of course she wasn’t to know that he was treating a bear; he was sorry to have caused her worry. He asked Burf for some lively water, something clean and fast running. While the keeper was gone, Oy spoke to the bear. ‘I’m going to give you a high dose to start. They’ll see it works and they won’t kill me so quick. Then I’ll give you a lower one so’s you get better gradual-like then they won’t kill you so quick. It will give us both some time. Time for what I don’t know, but it’s all I can think to do.’

  Burf came back and Oy swirled the powders into the water.

  He touched his wet fingers to the bear’s lips. ‘Want some? You ain’t alive enough to decide are you? But I got a feeling you want to live.’ The black lips twitched. He parted them to show fearsome interlocking teeth. He scooped some liquid into the well of its gums. The bear made no sign so he kept on pouring. He didn’t know where it was going. He half expected it to come out of the bear’s nose or ears. At last the bear swallowed and belched. ‘That’s enough for now. Let it work in you and I’ll come back later.’ The bear opened one eye.

  That evening the bear drank by itself. In the morning it ate and drank. By the second evening it was standing waiting for its meal.

  Burf fetched Oy from his pit. ‘It seems you are what you say. Better get washed. Capun Rigaw wants you.’

  The keeper put a sack over his head and someone led him away. Oy traced his path by smell as far as the salt caverns. After that he only knew that there were slopes and stairs and windings. A voice, he thought it was Rigaw, told him to give his best or die. A door opened and closed. He felt a lighter touch on his arm.

  A Chee woman lifted the sack. She wore a red apron and her cheekbones were painted red. ‘I’m Meccanee,’ she said, ‘Bominata’s maid. Want to tell me what she wants with you?’

  ‘It’s confidential ma’am, else I would.’

  ‘You might as well. I’ll find out anyway.’

  ‘I’d like to tell you, ma’am but I can’t. No offence.’

  ‘None taken. Like I said, I’ll find out. Ever seen her?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘I’d best prepare you.’ She lifted Oy so that he could see through the service window.

  The room was red: red marble, red drapes, red fur, red furniture. Bominata was wide and squat and dressed in red. Piggy feet stuck out from her heavy frock. Her head was like cannon shot. The hair started way back: thin hair, curled to make the most of it. Paint and jewels surrounded one tiny eye. Was there an eye in the centre? He thought there was. The other eye was patched. The blue feather patch was the only unred thing in the room and the only lovely thing about her. She lounged, her arm along the back of the seat, her chin running into her chest. There was a bowl of small bird’s eggs beside her. She scooped up a handful and crunched on them, shells and all. She belched, licked her lips and rang a handbell.

  ‘She’s ready for you now. Let’s rouge you up.’ She smeared red paste on his cheeks. ‘I’ll put the sack back on. She likes to surprise people with her beauty.’

  Meccanee led Oy into the room and removed the sack.

  Oy felt as though he had been swallowed by a giant beast and he stood in the cavern of its red guts. Bominata’s face was alarmingly close to his. That was because she could hardly see and also because there wasn’t much for her to look at.

  ‘It’s a wishty-washty thing,’ she said. ‘Where’s the Nondul hair? There’s not enough to fix on. Put more signs on it.’

  Meccanee fetched the dye pot and smeared Oy’s forehead. She put dabs of red on the front of his smock. ‘Is it enough, Fellona? Can you fill its face in? Its body starts here.’

  Bominata nodded. ‘Make it sit then you can go.’ She leaned towards Oy, her eye directed at his forehead. ‘Have you ever seen anything like me?’

  ‘No’m.’

  ‘You healed the bear I’m told.’

  ‘It’s on the mend, ma’am.’

  ‘What? Turn it up.’

  ‘Yes’m,’ said Oy, louder.

  ‘Bear doctor’s no good for me.’

  ‘I think I can help you, ma’am.’

  ‘Really. Why do you say that? I look well don’t I?’

  Oy crossed and uncrossed his ankles where they dangled from the high seat.

  ‘T’ain’t about looks, ma’am. Permission to talk straight.’

  Bominata inclined her head but her eye was forbidding.

  Oy took a breath. ‘Ma’am, you want watering.’

  Bominata grabbed her bell and slammed it on the table like a plunger.

  The maid ran in. Bominata’s face had filled with blood. Her chins and neck were swollen. ‘He says I want watering,’ she screeched.

  ‘May Gravid stop your ears, Fellona,’ said the woman. Her eyes widened, a signal to Oy to take care. ‘It will be because he’s young and don’t know how to speak to queens. His elders must be blamed.’

  ‘Perhaps. Leave us then.’ Meccanee left. Bominata squinted at Oy. ‘I am perfect,’ she said, ‘but for one small thing. Can you tell me what it is?’

  ‘I’m sure it will be near impossible to find, ma’am, being such a tiny thing, but leave to try?’

  Bominata assented.

  ‘Can I see your gums?’

  Her mouth had edges rather than lips. She folded them back. The gums were bulging and purple.

  ‘And can I listen to your heart?’

  Bominata put her hand on the bell. Then she changed her mind. ‘Your manners are appalling. Be quick, I don’t like to be touched.’

  Oy slid down and stood in front of her. ‘Sorry, ma’am, like your servant says, I ain’t never been told how to speak to the likes of you.’

  ‘Here, do it.’ She tapped her chest.

  She smelled overcooked – that was the only word Oy could put to it. He lay his shoulder and ear against her. There wasn’t any give in her, not at all like dear Molly. ‘Ma’am, you’re holding your breath.’ The hard chest sank. ‘That’s better.’ Oy stood back. ‘It’s all slow and sludgy ma’am. You’re very likely to get a build up. Your tubing’s like a sewer.’ Oy closed his eyes and cursed his foolish tongue.

  Bominata slapped his face. Her hand was hard and heavy. Oy cried out.

  ‘Shocking,’ she said. She rang her bell furiously. Meccanee ran in. ‘Take him away. He says I’m like a sewer.’

  ‘Not you ma’am. Sewers is what I know, and the gurgling, it just reminded me – I didn’t mean…’

  ‘Take him.’

  Meccanee dragged him from the room. Outside she was gentler.

  ‘You insulted her blood. That’s the worst thing you can say to a Fellun. All you healers should know that. They got blood you can stand a spoon in. You can’t kill ’em, less you get down through skin this thick,’ she held her fingers several oggits apart, ‘like four layers of pig hide, then the black blood comes out of ’em like tar, sets straight off in a clot like a cowpat with wire through it. Magnets stick to her. The Nonduls should’ve told you all this.’

  ‘They didn’t know I was coming.’

  ‘Why’d you come then? Tell you what, I’ll help you out; you’re only a kid. These are the rules: never insult her blood and don’t touch her except by invite. You must call her Fellona or Most Dense.’

  ‘Ain’t she like to kill me if I call her dense?’

  ‘It’s praise to them. It means hard and heavy. They’re hard to shift or kill, and they got no feelings. That’s why they rule the rest of us. They got hearts like lead and hides like armour. They’ve got one soft spot, here, in the throat.’ The bell rang. ‘What now?’ Oy was wanted again.

  Bominata did not want to speak to him, she only wanted to slap him. As before he cried out.

  ‘That hurts you?’

  Oy held his face. It was striped with weals and finger marks. ‘Yes’m, Your Density.’

  ‘Nonduls never cry out,’ said Bominata. ‘So what ar
e you?’

  Oy couldn’t tell her because he didn’t know.

  Next day the keeper tested Oy further. He prodded him with sharp things and pressed hot metal against him. Oy jumped and yelped obligingly. Burf carried on, just to be sure. ‘You earned yourself an upgrade,’ he said. ‘You get your own chair and table – and Mr Krute for company. See how you like it. My guess is you’ll soon be begging to come back to old Burf, smell or no smell.’

  Burf led Oy to the tower. ‘This here’s the Terror Gate,’ he said cheerfully, pointing at the arch. The stone faces above them were contorted with fear and pain. Oy dropped his eyes. They climbed a spiral stair. Burf’s shoulders brushed the walls. He huffed and puffed and complained and stopped frequently to catch his breath. Oy waited. He had no wish to reach the place where he was going. They stopped at a door banded with iron.

  ‘This is it,’ said Burf. ‘I’ll be happy to have you back when they’re done, so long as they don’t mangle your hands.’ He left bolting the door behind him.

  Oy looked around his cell. It was not a nice room but it didn’t smell. There was a lamp on the wall, and a table with various holes in it. Also there were two chairs. Oy sat down. The chair felt bad; he stood up again. He sat cross-legged in a corner and closed his eyes. He thought about Nondula. He thought about his friends. He thought about sourjacks and cloud cakes till his breathing slowed. When he opened his eyes the calm stayed with him. He watched an old cobweb wafting in the air grate. Very soon it began to glow. The glow spread through his head; his body ceased to weigh on him. Sounds wrote themselves like patterns in the glow. The shape of the sounds was this: hecarnt heerme. Something hard and heavy swung against his leg. He dropped back into his body.

  ‘There was no need for that,’ said a voice that Oy knew and loved. The tall man blocked the wide one from kicking Oy again.

  ‘Emberd!’ said Oy in delight.

  ‘Scriberd,’ the Berd corrected. ‘And that,’ said Scriberd pointing to the Fellun, ‘is Krute.’

  Krute took no notice of Oy. He arranged some tools on the table while whistling in a hissing, tuneless way.

  Scriberd set the other side of the table with paper and quills. Several times he looked from Oy to the table and back again. When they were ready he asked Oy to come forward. ‘I will ask the questions and write the answers. Krute is the terrorgater.’

  ‘I’ll help you get your answers out,’ said Krute.

  Oy tried not to look at Krute but his eyes kept drifting over the gouges, clamps, forceps, blades, and pliers in his belt, the whip draped over one shoulder and the teeth and nails hanging round his neck.

  ‘Don’t worry about him.’ Scriberd used the Nondulan dialect.

  ‘In the common, if you please,’ said Krute.

  ‘I wish to put him at ease. He is only a child.’ Scriberd looked into Oy’s frightened eyes. ‘It’s all for show,’ he said.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Krute. ‘There’s not much call for my services now – that’s because it’s harder to shut the Chee up than to make ’em talk, but I’m pleased to use them if I have to.’ He fingered his gruesome necklace.

  ‘It’s just an heirloom,’ said Scriberd.

  Krute lifted his hand in protest. ‘Not all of it. I’m taking the credit for that nail and three of the teeth.’

  ‘Hush and stand back. The child can barely speak as it is. I don’t expect we shall need you at all. Oy, answer simply and honestly and we’ll be done quickly.’ He dipped his pen. ‘Tell me about your family to begin with.’

  ‘I ain’t got one of those,’ Oy said quietly.

  ‘They are dead?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. I never did have no family.’

  ‘You were orphaned early I expect. Who brought you up?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Who looked after you, raised you? Who did you live with?’

  ‘I lived alone till I got… I lived alone.’

  ‘Oy, if you have family left in Nondula and if they are healers, I need to know. As you are so young the Fellona might trade you for one of them.’ Scriberd rolled the tip of his quill between his fingers and waited. Krute began to doze. An hour later and Scriberd had less than a page of notes.

  Krute woke up. His leather jerkin creaked and his gouges knocked. ‘You’re getting nowhere. It’s my turn now.’

  Oy slid down in his chair.

  ‘But I have only just done with the warm up,’ said Scriberd. He took a fresh sheet of paper and began to write fancily across the top: Questions pertaining to the issues adumbrated by her Fellona Bominata Bung.

  ‘That’s beautiful writing,’ said Oy.

  ‘Thank you. I was picked out for my serifs and curlicues.’

  Krute’s slab-like hand came down on the page. ‘Quit it with the sherrifs and cuckoos – just write.’

  ‘Now it’s smudged,’ said Scriberd. ‘Perhaps you’d prefer to do the writing.’

  Krute closed the quill in his fist. ‘Well I will then. What’s this next question?’ He brought the page close to his best eye. ‘Have the Nonduls ever put poison in the Felluns’ tonics?’

  ‘They wouldn’t,’ said Oy.

  Krute repeated the words as he wrote. ‘How do you spell unt?’ Three large uneven words covered the page: THEY WUD UNT. Krute looked at it with pride. ‘Now we shall get on faster.’

  ‘Hand that to Bominata and she’ll have you skewered,’ said Scriberd.

  ‘Writing’s for Berds is why.’ Krute threw the pen down. ‘I’m off to the sangarie. I’ll have my turn with him when I come back.’ He creaked away.

  ‘Now we can relax,’ said Scriberd, ‘but we must get on. Sangarie ale is half bear’s blood. It won’t improve his temper.’

  When Krute came back Scriberd had packed his pens and gone. Oy was locked in his cell and Scriberd held the key.

  Scriberd assured Bominata that Oy was telling the truth. If the Nonduls were trying to poison the Felluns, as she suspected, Oy knew nothing about it; and Oy really was the last healer in Nondula. Just the threat of Krute and his instruments had been enough to make Oy talk. If Krute were to use them Oy would very likely be struck dumb. Throat spasms were common in nervous types like Oy.

  Bominata listened. The tiny eye watched him from a rigid face. ‘You have not done well,’ she said. ‘I have one more question for him. If I don’t like his answer, Krute will do his job, spasms or no spasms.’

  Bominata sent for Oy again. He supposed that this was it, the end of his short life. But it seemed that she was giving him another chance. She told the maid to leave and lock the door behind her.

  ‘Look at me again,’ she said. ‘You say my blood is thick. Well that’s the point of blood. Thick blood won’t spurt in battle. It oozes slow and clots quick. You Nonduls are idiots. You all play the same game. You want to thin my blood and make me weak. So tell me something different.’

  ‘The other healers were far better’n me I’m sure ma’am. If they got you well watered I’m sure that would have helped with your belly.’

  Her tiny eye fixed on him. It reminded him of a crab’s eye stalks: tiny, black, functional and without heart.

  ‘My belly. What is wrong with my belly?’

  ‘I think I’m right ma’am, if I can try something. I do need you to lie down. Shall I move that cover to the floor?’

  ‘There had better be a point to this.’ He watched as she got to her knees and rocked and rolled herself onto the floor.

  ‘Hurry up.’

  Oy knelt and tapped her belly in various places. ‘That’s it Your Denseness; you can get up now, and forgive me anything and everything.’

  ‘Well, never ask me to be lower than you again.’ She bumped against him as she struggled to stand. ‘Where are you? Make yourself dense can’t you? Fog’s got more edges than you Nonduls.’

  ‘I’m here, Your Density.’

  ‘Put your shoulder where I can see it.’ Bominata groped for Oy, gripped the top of his head – her hand more than c
overed it – and all but crushed him as she got back onto the chair. ‘What did you find?’

  ‘It’s what I thought, ma’am. That tubing’s bunged as well.’

  ‘How dare you? Meccanee! Mecca, he is mocking our name.’

  Meccanee rushed in and clutched his shoulder roughly. ‘What did you say? Don’t repeat it out loud. In my ear.’ She offered him her ear.

  ‘Said her tubing’s bunged,’ Oy muttered.

  ‘You can’t use the word ‘bung’ like that. It’s her High Density’s glorious family name.’

  ‘I forgot.’

  ‘He forgot, Fellona. He really is the stupidest child I’ve ever come across. Shall I take him now?’

  ‘No, not yet. I haven’t finished.’

  ‘Blocked, use the word blocked if you must,’ Meccanee hissed at Oy as she turned to leave.

  Bominata leaned forward fiercely. ‘I know what you’re trying to do. You want to give me flushers and looseners, no doubt.’

  ‘It might help.’

  ‘Listen to me. You eat a bear’s liver, you don’t want it shooting straight out again. You want it to sit in there,’ she patted her stomach, ‘till you’ve leached its fight and anger. I want no flushing and no loosening. Now, what else can you tell me?’

  ‘Hard to put into words, ma’am. What I’m thinking is rocky and desert.’

  Bominata’s eye strained. Oy thought it bulged minutely towards him. She put both hands over her stomach. ‘Well, there is something in what you say. I am childless and most of my ladies are the same. It can only be that we are being poisoned by you Nonduls. You will give me a medicine to put it right. I must have a child to take my place: my own, not one that’s been thieved by a bird.’

  ‘If only you’d told me straight off, Your Density. You can put it right yourself in no time. If you want a child just eat your greens.’

  Bominata proceeded to slap him into a daze, and herself into a wheezing, high-coloured frenzy. It seemed like she would never stop. Oy tried to speak between slaps.