Other Lives(15)

No matter. There was the lonely business of salt now. The rain spells were but a memory, bitter as the sap of the aloe.

She worked for three hours. By then it was getting very hot, and Leocadia retreated towards the crumbling stone temple where she had left the mule, safely under the shade of its tall roof.

The temple was pretty, but not very practical. Dragging stones across the playa seemed stupid to her.

Leocadia’s own home was made of salt, white bricks neatly piled on top of each other.

Leocadia sat on the back of a stone lion that guarded the temple’s steps, and ate her lunch, humming a tune to herself. Across the desert a solitary figure, waving with the heat, was heading her way. Leocadia ignored it. It was a trick of the light.

The figure kept moving, growing bigger. Leocadia took a better look. Someone was riding across the salt flat.

“What kind of idiot,” she muttered.

It was a man, all in white, on a horse, with a llama behind. He waved from afar. Leocadia jumped down from the lion, and was clutching her knife when he reined his horse.

“I’m heading for Caravaike,” he said, in a thick accent she could not place. His brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He had narrow eyes, a slight stubble, and a brilliant smile.

“That’s that way,” she said turning her head slightly in the direction of the town. “But you’re still far.”

“How far?”

“Two days’ ride.”

He dismounted and thrust a piece of paper in her direction. “Can you point out my location?”

Leocadia only clutched her knife tighter and took a step back.

“I’m sorry,” he said shaking his head and extending his hand instead of the map. “What am I thinking? I’m Abelardo.”

Leocadia frowned. “You’re near Comba.”

“Comba?” He untied a little brown bag around his neck and took out a black case, tapping his finger against it. Then he glanced up, in the direction of the shadscale and black sage. “Well, that’s not too bad. I was hoping to pass through Comba. Someone said it was around here, but you never know. The map I have is outdated and poorly made, I…”

“Are you some sort of bandit?” she asked.

“No,” he said with a chuckle. “Why do you ask that?”

“Who else’s is going to be crossing the salt plain except a bandit?”

“I’m not a thief. I chase mountains.”

Leocadia scratched her head, itchy from the scarf she was wearing.

“You’re a lunatic,” she said.

“Cartographer,” he said. “In the service of the Empress. I’m updating some maps.”

“Alone?”

“Aha.”

Maybe he was a spy sent by an enemy king and was trying to trick his way into their midst. She had read about such things when she was in the temple; forbidden storybooks which often included a brave young hero saving a young woman from the bandit-king.

Stupid stuff, illustrated with images of lovers holding hands and speaking passionate vows. Such things, just like the rain, had passed her by.

“Do you come from Comba?” he asked.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m heading there. These maps are so old that I might get lost without some guidance.”

“Not my problem.”

“I’ve got money,” he said and showed her a pouch filled with coins.

“Then you shouldn’t flaunt it so stupidly. I could rob you blind and let you rot here,” she said.

“I hope you don’t.”

She shook her head hard and put away the knife.

He tried to talk to her while they rode across the smooth salt plain, noisily telling her answers she did not ask.

She asked him to part ways at the outskirts of the town, and he waved goodbye to her with a wide smile on his face. Leocadia tried not to look at him, fearing someone inside the salt huts was watching.

She dragged her tools back to her house. Her mother was stirring the goat stew, sweat beading her forehead. She could hear a baby crying nearby. Rosaura must be visiting.

“Hello mother,” she said and kissed her mother on the cheek. “Is Rosaura here?”

“For a short while,” her mother muttered.

Leocadia could already picture Rosaura’s purple eye. Bastian beat her, but their mother had little sympathy for Rosaura’s plight. If Rosaura had been a rain-priestess she might have amassed a nice dowry. The priestess, however, had seen little aptitude in Rosaura and did not care for her. So she married Bastian. Leocadia had done even worse. Their mother’s hopes had been dashed by her useless children.

“I’m going to talk to her,” Leocadia said.

Her mother nodded. Her eyes were fixed on the large pot sitting over the fire.

***

That evening they went to walk through the town square, with its squat trees and its precious beds of flowers. Rosaura did not have a purple eye. He had hit her in the back. The sisters walked together, as cheerfully as they had before Rosaura had married, back when the boys flocked to court her. Now Rosaura had a spouse and Leocadia had lost her gift for casting rain, and her reputation. There were no more admiring boys for them.

Leocadia watched a flock of young priestesses in their white dresses stream across the square and into the temple. There was a pang of longing in her, and of loss. She looked away and found herself face to face with the cartographer.