“I don’t know.” He sounded reluctant to consider it.
She fixed her eyes on the sleeping boy. “I know that you have always loved Lisana. I know that I have sometimes been only—”
Her words were interrupted by an odd noise. Something heavy fell onto the roof. Soldier’s Boy looked up as something scrabbled wildly against the leather tent’s side, clambering awkwardly back up it until it achieved a perch at the top. A moment later, I heard the croaker bird give three satisfied caws. The god of balances and of death sat on the peak of our tent.
“Likari—does he sleep still?” Soldier’s Boy demanded anxiously.
Olikea heard the anxiety in his voice. She leaned down close to the boy’s face. “He does. He breathes.”
Abruptly the door of the tent was flipped open and two servers entered carrying a laden table. There was a single large bowl on it, the size of a punch bowl, holding a chowderlike substance. The aroma that rose from it was both delicious and repellent, as if someone had prepared a succulent dish and then attempted to conceal a strong medicine in it. The two men carrying it positioned the table carefully on the uneven floor and left. Soldier’s Boy breathed a sigh of relief as the tent door fell into place, but an instant later, it was lifted again, and more feeders entered. One carried a large ewer of water and a cup. Others brought various food dishes—breads, new greens, fish, and fowl—that they set down near the vat of chowder.
This parade of food was followed by the feeder whom Kinrove had put in charge of us. She was a buxom, comely young woman, with long gleaming black hair and her face patterned with tiny specks like a scattering of fine seed. Her name was Wurta, and as she introduced herself she seemed very pleased to have been given such an important task. She almost ignored Soldier’s Boy, speaking directly to Olikea, feeder to feeder.
“I have been given instructions that I must pass on to you,” she announced. At her words, Olikea rose, reluctantly leaving Likari, and came to stand beside my chair. The seed-speckled feeder spoke briskly, almost officiously, as she stepped up to the table and stirred the vat of creamy-brown chowder, releasing clouds of steam trapped beneath its thick surface. “This, all of this, he must eat. We have done our best to give it a pleasant flavor, but the roots that feed this magic have their own strong taste. It may be hard for him to stomach. Kinrove has had us flavor his water to give him some respite from it. These other foods are for you to feed him sparingly. Do not let him fill his belly with them; most of what he eats must be this soup, and Kinrove judges that he must eat it all.”
Wurta was interrupted by a loud snuffing noise. Likari, eyes still closed, had lifted his head from the bedding and was sniffing after the steam rising from the chowder pot. His face had a blank, infantile look, or perhaps more like that of a still-blind puppy mindlessly seeking the scent of food. Olikea looked at him with a gaze full of horror.
“Oh, no, he must have none of this,” Wurta said quickly as her eyes followed the direction of his snuffling. “I will have something else brought for him right away. And some washwater? Yes.”
She hastened away to fulfill those errands while Soldier’s Boy leaned forward and hesitantly lifted the ladle from the pot. He touched it to his lips, and then took a mouthful. It did not taste awful. He swallowed it and waited, anticipating a bitter aftertaste. Nothing. No, there was something, a perfumy tang. Not unpleasant, but not something I would ever associate with food. It rather reminded me of the food served to us at the Academy. There was a lot of it, but none of it tasted so delicious as to make one long for more.
Likari stopped his sniffing and suddenly sagged back onto the bed. If the sound of his muffled snores were an indication, he had fallen into a new depth of sleep. Olikea looked relieved. She turned her attention back to Soldier’s Boy. “Perhaps you should begin eating while it is still warm and fresh,” she suggested. So saying, she came and ladled up a bowlful of the stuff and set it before him.
Soldier’s Boy ate it. He ate the next three bowls of it as well. It was warm and not unpleasant, though the perfume began to be annoying. Olikea, watchful as ever, offered him a bit of the fish and some bread. It cleared his palate of the soup, and when he was finished she served him up another bowlful of the stuff and he attacked it manfully.
About a third of the way through the cauldron Wurta shepherded in a team of feeders with a large pot of aromatic salve, food for Likari, and a washtub and several pots of warmed water. She smoothly suggested that Olikea wake her son, wash him, and then feed him. While she was doing that, Wurta proposed that Soldier’s Boy would accompany them to where he could be treated with the salve that Kinrove had had them prepare. Olikea looked doubtful at this, but Soldier’s Boy put her mind at ease. “I am well able to speak for myself in how I am cared for. But I do not wish to entrust Likari to anyone else but you. Take care of him. I am sure I will be back soon.”