Suth’s cloak needed watering before its owner could answer questions.
It was an inconvenient discovery. Ysabet had arranged her worries in what seemed a sensible order: whether Pip was becoming Azhrak, whether Edris could find them, and whether the road ahead would kill them before either matter was settled. The cloak promoted itself above all three by shedding a small rain of brown leaves into Suth’s lap.
“It’s thirsty,” she said.
“There isn’t a stream,” Chaska said.
“No. I was hoping to get farther before I stopped.”
Ysabet counted their water skins with her eyes. Suth noticed.
“Don’t give it your drinking water. There’s a seep under those reeds.”
The reeds occupied an apparently dry crack in the slope. Chaska went to look and returned with mud on both knees and an expression of professional affront.
“There is water,” she said. “The trouble is that it’s underground.”
“Most water has been underground at one point. You’ll catch up with it.”
The seep filled a shallow hollow too slowly for a skin. They made a gutter from bark and set a cooking cup beneath it. While it filled, Ysabet helped Suth remove the cloak. The cloth underneath smelled of clean damp earth. Fine white threads traveled through its weave, gathering at a dark knot near the collar.
Pip nosed toward the knot. Suth put one finger on the ground between them. It paused.
“Not for eating.”
It clicked softly, pushed its nose against the finger, and went around it toward a fallen flower.
“That you may have.”
The flower was inspected, rejected, and carefully placed in Ysabet’s boot.
She left it there. She had more urgent uncertainties than the social purpose of flowers.
“Are the roots in you?” she asked.
“Some of the work is.” Suth lifted the collar to show a pale branching scar behind her neck. “An old arrangement. It has lasted longer than most of my friendships, though I recommend neither as a measure of health.”
“Can it be removed?”
“Yes.”
Suth’s plainness stopped the next question. Ysabet had the impression of a door closed without force.
They watered the cloak a cup at a time. Its leaves recovered in patches, first the rounded ones near the hem, then a fringe of moss. Lilt crawled closer to smell it. Chaska touched two fingers to the sandray’s head and pointed back toward the shelf. Lilt went, slowly enough to preserve her opinion of the instruction.
“Is that consumption?” Ysabet asked, watching the roots.
“Why?”
“Because it takes something from your body.”
“So does a hungry child. So does a flea. The thing taken isn’t the whole question.” Suth folded the damp cloak over her knees. “How did the taking begin? What happens if I stop? What can change because we are together?”
Ashaun watched from beside the track. She had chosen a place with a view downhill.
“Those sound like questions asked after the spear has gone in.”
“Frequently. People are very busy before.”
Ysabet shifted the mouse’s box farther into shade. During the meal it had come out of Pip’s pouch to drink and had shown no inclination to return. Its injured leg trailed crookedly as it worked through the clean grass. Pip leaned toward every rustle, then looked away with exaggerated indifference.
Suth watched this exchange for some time.
“The pouch,” she said. “Did you ask for it?”
“No. The mouse came in at night. Pip was warm, but the lining wasn’t there until morning.”
“Did you reward it?”
“I fed it.”
“That isn’t necessarily a reward. Bodies need material.”
“I praised it.”
“After the mouse?”
“Yes.”
“And the first change happened before?”
“Yes.”
Suth rubbed a moss strand between finger and thumb. “Reciprocity, then, as nearly as we can tell from one event. A creature brought a need it didn’t invent. Your little traveler changed, and the mouse’s presence changed what the traveler could do.”
Pip had found a loose pebble. It rolled the stone under its front foot until the smooth face lay upward.
“It doesn’t make either of them good,” Suth added. “I have seen wonderfully cooperative parasites.”
Chaska laughed. Ashaun did not.
“And consumption?” Ysabet asked.
“A god eats another living pattern and keeps something of its work. Or takes what a body would not freely give. The old records muddle the distinction. Some writers called every supper a sacrament, which made their natural histories rather hungry reading.”
“The third?”
“Devotion. Enough people expect a thing, often enough, and a seed may begin to make that expectation flesh.”
Ysabet looked at Pip. It was trying to roll the pebble into the mouse box. The box entrance was too small. Rather than turn the pebble, it had begun pushing the entire box.
She steadied it with her left hand.
“What happens if people are wrong?”
“They can still be persuasive.”
The cup overflowed beneath the bark gutter. Chaska hurried to rescue it. Water ran across the dust toward Pip, which abandoned its construction and lifted all six feet in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid getting wet.
Suth watched it settle awkwardly onto its belly.
“We’ll need more than an afternoon,” she said.