Bound For Home

  — Taylor —

  They kicked him out for brooding too hard, but they didn't phrase it like that to his face. Alice shoved his guitar into his hands and told him to go play in the second passenger car because "our visitors are bored". The gurantor wasn't scheduled to stop for two more hours, so he swung himself through the open door and onto the roof, then leaped to the other car. From there, he could look into the third car, an open wagon carrying appalons and luggage. It was a full train today, moving at a slower pace. The appalons looked happy enough. Magnificent Ben was holding trunks with the mount next door.

  Nexus cars had stirrups spaced along their roofs to act as footholds so disciples could sling stones while the train was moving. He braced his feet and stood for a while, watching Morufu's Teeth go by. Wedges of sandstone thrust up at a sixty-degree angle toward the desert, their sides sculpted into smooth curves along the differences between layers of sediment. They reminded Taylor of shark teeth, rows of giant triangular forms pointing at the desert as if travelers were being swallowed and wouldn't be allowed out again.

  Milo had joined him. "Wanna throw some rocks?" He peeked into a box that should have contained ten-kilo stones. "Box is full." Taylor was tempted, but maybe Alice was right. Music put him in a better mood, and he hadn't played at all lately.

  In a single motion, he swung down to the side of the second car, opened the door, and let himself in. All the former slaves, Jaida and her household, and a selection of Calique hunters gawked at him with startled eyes. Taylor stepped aside to let Milo swing in and close the door behind him. It was a good entrance.

  The hunters welcomed him boisterously while the recently emancipated fell silent. Taylor went around clasping arms and patting backs for a minute while Milo scanned the car for threats. Iraj was there, sitting across from one of the weavers, and insisted Taylor take the seat next to him. "This is the good friend I told you about, Pasha Phillip. Don't mind his dour face. He's a happy lad at heart!"

  Taylor gave the woman and her party a Nexus greeting while he scanned their faces. A couple of days of food and rest had put some life into them, but not enough. They were still thin and pale. Knowing his face would show pity, he tried to think about how much better their prospects were compared to what they had left behind. If they read anything from his expression, it should be hope.

  "Pleased to meet you," said Iraj's companion. "I'm Alamina."

  "Alamina wove our war banner."

  "Then I'm grateful to you. Nothing could be a more fitting symbol for our cause. A shame we have to burn it at the end." Taylor unpacked his instrument and started tuning.

  "It's nothing. I can make another if I have a loom. Maybe … something nicer."

  "That would make Iraj very happy. You should have heard him, going on about you. 'Hands like these should never suffer bondage!'"

  "I never said that," grumped the Maul of Pashtuk. "He's the one with the pretty words. I said something like it, once or twice."

  Every day, Taylor signed where Iraj couldn't see. Alamina smiled so mirthfully her face looked pained, like she was out of practice. Taylor launched into a series of mostly happy songs. Emil and Leah sat on the floor and crowded close to watch him play, as children often did. The Calique sang along with some of the tunes. He put away his guitar just as their enthusiasm began to wane. That was the difference between playing for someone and playing at them.

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  The rescued weavers seemed tired out by the excitement and gathered together at one end of the car, packed close to keep each other upright, and dozed in the warm afternoon sun. Taylor felt something while watching them, but he wasn't sure what to call it. Their futures were unwritten, but they had choices now. Each of them had a chance at a better life. Not all of them would find happiness, but some of them would.

  None of Taylor's recent victories had made him happy. In just a few weeks, he drove invaders from his new home, destroyed the source of Enclave's power, and convinced Kashmar to give up on the South. Hyskos was a work in progress, but soon it would be ripe for restructuring. He did those things because they were necessary, but none of it pleased him.

  Calique wouldn't have invasions hanging over them every ten or twenty years. Tenobre would have more and better disciples. Even those thoughts didn't satisfy him. He was changing the world to fit his imagined future, but it was too early to start writing his history. Three hundred years down the line, new practitioners might view Phillip the Younger like he viewed Saint Bahram. He decided to leave Kashmar's government intact despite its excesses. He decided to reform Hyskos. Those could still turn out to be fatefully bad choices.

  His results couldn't be properly judged until long after this life ended, when Tenobre faced the peak of this sun cycle and survived … or didn't. If he was going to judge himself on that scale, he had to balance the lives he'd helped with all those he'd taken, directly and indirectly. Nexus was rushing healers into the field now, but defrocking all of Enclave's healers would still cost innocent lives. Taylor didn't have the information he needed to perform such a calculus.

  What made him happy was seeing people better off today than yesterday. Calique hunters were going home. Former slaves looked ahead with cautious hope. The broken and infirm could move again. Hungry people could eat. That was the Work he set out to do, and it was possible now that Enclave was out of the way. The irony was, he'd have to do most of it through his subordinates. He would have less time for fieldwork than anyone, at least until he could shove the Hierarch's responsibilities onto someone else.

  In the shuffling of seats, Taylor found himself across from Jaida and Vivian, each with a sleepy toddler in her lap. Did Jaida know she was sitting next to a royal spy? He wanted to ask but put the matter aside. Ultimately, she was Anisca's problem.

  Taylor was shocked to realize he wasn't furious with Vivian. It wasn't long ago that she and the Queen's Ladies poisoned him to death in a carriage. But Taylor learned that Queen Diana had argued with her husband king to spare him. She failed, but only because Joaquim was a feckless, ungrateful, greedy fool. His Majesty gave the order, and Diana had to obey. The consequences of not obeying were too high to pay for one life.

  Taylor did something similar in Zorda's case. Leaving him alive would have doomed the Calique defense. Killing him wasn't right, but he'd done it anyway because it was less wrong than the alternative. Also like Diana, he gave the job to subordinates to carry out. It wasn't to keep his hands clean — Hypha was just a better shot.

  There was little point to holding a grudge against Lavradio's Dowager Queen. Her King Joaquim was dead now. The proximate cause was a dark monster that ate his arm off, but the actual cause was his stupidity. In the end, he got a well-deserved death, and Lavradio got the successor it needed.

  "I have a message for your mistress," he said, surprising himself. "Your true mistress. Tell her …" He wasn't ready to say the word forgive, and neither could he forget. He could even say it was an important lesson about heads of state and how they pursued their interests. "Tell her I understand, now. One day, I hope we can narrow the distance between us."

  "She will be most pleased to hear it, Your Holiness."

  Milo sensed he was ready to leave and opened the door of the swiftly moving car. Taylor grasped the handhold above the door and swung himself out and up to the roof in one smooth motion. Milo followed him in a dashing exit, and they leaped to the forward car together.

  For a long time, he just stood on the roof, feet in the sling stirrups, and felt the wind pass over him. The desert sights were a balm for Taylor's over-burdened mind. Its severe simplicity calmed him. He could see far from his elevated perch, and he knew almost every plant and insect in the land. The heat coming up from the ground told him what the sun had been like that day. He could taste moisture in the air, blown down from the Central Mountains range, which was new. Winter would bring occasional rains that rushed the wadis with momentary floods, filled the water table, and gave them cold nights. It would be a new desert, one he hadn't seen before. He could experience his new home in a new season, and he was looking forward to it.

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  Heretic. The infamous poisoning occurred in .