"I still think this is a terrible idea, Galen."
Zana pressed her feet against the footboard and stiffened as another wave of pain tore through her belly. "And it's really not necessary. I feel much better." She hoped Galen wouldn't hear the strain in her voice.
"The only terrible idea was to travel again so soon, in your condition," Galen muttered, not looking at her. They had finally reached the mountains, and the road was narrow and broke off into a steep incline at their left. Galen's hands were gripping the reins as if he could prevent the wagon from sliding off the path by sheer force. "It's just that Nelva didn't leave us a choice."
The mere mention of Urko's second-in-command, left behind to hunt for them while the general had returned to the City to prepare some unknown, but certainly sinister mission, made Zana's fur bristle. Nelva might not be as fanatical as his superior, but he was tenacious. She wasn't sure if the concept of territories meant anything to him. Even though Cesarea's influence officially ended at the foot of the Iron Mountains, there wasn't exactly a mountain police force patrolling the informal border.
Reaching the mountains meant reaching safety - that had been the promise that had kept them going until now.
But she didn't feel safe.
"He could still be after us," she argued. "And if we stay here for weeks, he'll catch up with us, and-"
"Zana." Galen's voice allowed no argument. "I'm not going to lose you, too."
She had almost died during her surgery, and with the town doctor's old fashioned anaesthesia, which had been nothing like the deep sleep Kira was granting her patients, that sensation of finally letting go, of sinking into a cold, numb darkness, had been nothing but a sweet release. Zana found herself reliving that experience more and more often, an idle fantasy that was oddly fascinating, perhaps because it contrasted so much with the hot pain raking through her gut day and night.
Galen was worried that the surgery wound had become inflamed. He didn't say much, but his tense features made Zana sick with fear. Maybe her belly was already festering inside, and would pour forth a river of pus once opened. She did have discharge that looked and smelled... not right, but she hadn't told anyone. She didn't want to think about it.
If only the pain would abate! She had gotten good at schooling her face, breathing through the pain instead of tensing up and alerting the others, but this morning, she had been taken by surprise.
They had set up camp at the edge of a tiny village, and the first visitors had clustered at the edge of the trees before the sun was up. Galen was posing as Faro now, not selling Melvin's delicacies anymore (for lack of recipes as well as ingredients), but leather wares that Alan was sewing, and offering Peet's services of sharpening people's knives, scissors, and other blades.
"Never thought I'd end up as a gypsy," Peet had muttered, but hadn't explained the word. Alan had just snorted, and had asked him to sharpen his leather needle again.
To Zana's surprise, the apes didn't have any objections to a human handling their blades, and while they were waiting for Peet to freshen up their metalware, the farmers and woodcutters often wandered over to where 'Faro' had laid out his display of knife sheaths, tool belts, saddlebags, and other assorted leather items. Alan was a meticulous worker - and Zana had expected nothing less from him -, but the human also revealed a remarkable sense of aesthetics, and had begun to decorate his creations, which apparently made all the difference for their customers. With each stop, they drew more people, and their reputation seemed to precede them now, judging by the number of people at that early hour.
Too bad that her pain was worst in the morning.
Usually, Zana rose last, pretending to sleep in, when in truth she was just waiting for the pain to become bearable; and usually, the men just let her be, out of guilt or protectiveness. But today, Galen had stuck his head into the wagon and had asked her to come out and serve tea to the waiting apes, so that they wouldn't get impatient, and start crowding them. "You know," he had murmured, careful not to let his words escape the interior of the wagon, "Peet is holding up well, all things considered, but he's currently sharpening their scythe blades, and a, a nervous Peet and sharp blades is a combination I'd rather not try out."
So Zana had crawled out of the wagon, and had made tea, and poured tea, and had tried to smile all the way through her ordeal; and she had almost finished her round, and would've been able to hunker down for the preparation of the second pot of tea in a moment...
But the pain sliced through her guts so fiercely that the pot dropped from her hand and she almost broke down. Strong arms caught her at the last moment, and then Galen was there and took her from the stunned farmer's hands and carried her back into the wagon without a word. He laid her down onto her bedroll and vanished.
Voices sounded outside, Galen's, and several she didn't know - the farmers.
Then Galen came back. "There is a town in the next valley," he said. His voice was deceptively calm, but Zana knew him too well by now. "It's about a day's worth of travel. We're breaking camp now, so that we'll reach it before sunset. They have a very good doctor there. We'll stay there until you've completely recovered this time, Nelva be damned."
She hadn't been able to say anything then, too busy with breathing through the pain. But now, feeling well enough to sit beside Galen on the passenger's seat, she couldn't stop fretting. "You're exaggerating this, Galen, this... this episode earlier was an exception. I don't usually have those cramps."
"Fine," Galen said, still staring ahead. "Then the doctor will just examine you, and if he agrees with your diagnosis, we'll be on our way. Nothing to worry about, if you're right."
Zana threw a hasty glance over her shoulder, into the wagon. Alan was sitting all the way back, as always; he was sewing yet another piece of leather together, head bowed over his work in deep concentration. Zana suspected he sought to put as much distance between her and him as possible, although he claimed that he needed the light that fell through the back opening of the wagon's cover. Peet had crawled back under his blankets and was fast asleep.
"We're just so recognizable with Alan's color, and his limp," she whispered when she turned back to Galen. "You know I'll never send him away, but we should stay away from towns, just like we've been doing all this time."
"And you know I'll never put a human's wellbeing above yours," Galen said, and now his voice had taken on a steely undertone that told Zana she had lost the argument. Ever since they had been attacked in the human city, Galen reacted with stony implacability to everything remotely to do with humans. It had been a mistake to bring their humans into the argument, Zana realized. If Galen had been determined to take her to a doctor before, nothing short of the end of the world would keep him from doing so now.
She just hoped that this time, it wouldn't be an ape's stubbornness that resulted in a catastrophe.
The town was lovely, Zana had to admit to herself as she stepped out of the doctor's office. It was exactly the kind of town she had been dreaming of while they had been crawling through the vast marches of the Southern plain - the kind of town where they would settle down and start a new life. Just like in most villages, apes had adopted the human style of architecture, instead of the arboreal construction that purists like Urko insisted on-
Mothers, would she ever be able to enjoy a day in her life again without thinking about Urko?
Zana took a deep breath and forced herself to focus on the cool air, spiced by the scent of wood fires, on the milky yellow of the evening sky, as the setting sun backlighted the clouds that were crowding the horizon, and the feeling of gravel under the soles of her shoes, as she cautiously made her way across the street and towards the inn where they were currently lodging. It belonged to an elderly widow who usually hired out rooms for the woodworkers during the summer, and who had been delighted to have a source of income during fall.
Galen had to pay her up front, and had promptly sent out Alan to buy another batch of hides from the tanner. Currently, he was looking for a way to turn Peet's skills into money, too.
At any other time, Galen's unabashed use of the humans as working animals would have made her uncomfortable, despite admitting to its necessity. But ever since that day in the ruins, Zana felt strangely indifferent towards them, although she enjoyed grooming Peet. She found the repetitive movements soothing, the feeling of his sleek hair gliding through her fingers, and of equally smooth skin, warmed from the afternoon sun. Peet wasn't enjoying those sessions, but Zana felt unable to care.
As if thinking about the humans had conjured him, Alan was suddenly standing in her way, the tang of tanning baths clinging to his clothes. He stopped cold when he saw her, apparently unsure of how to react.
"Have you been at the tanners'?" Zana asked politely. She didn't have the energy for Galen's quiet, sustained fury.
Alan nodded, and fell into step with her. "The hides will be delivered tomorrow morning. But we still have some left, from Gal... Faro's last purchase, so I don't have to interrupt-"
"You don't have to work from the moment you wake up until you go to sleep," Zana murmured. She didn't find it difficult to adjust her speed to the human's limp; Alan had been training his leg under Peet's supervision since they had left Silam, and no longer needed a crutch, while the pain in her belly had been slowing her down in equal measure to his progress. They met somewhere in the middle; maybe it was Alan who was slowing down for her sake, and not the other way around. When they were back at the inn, she would lie down for a bit, maybe ask Alan to make her some tea...
"Now this is a sight you don't see very often here! Figures that we need strangers to show us what simian decency looks like!"
Zana turned around with an uncertain smile. "Excuse me?" The words hadn't been unfriendly, but the tone had carried a challenge... against whom, she wasn't sure yet.
A woman in a checkered skirt and cape had stepped out of the store behind them, and was now staring at Alan with a mixture of glee and outrage. Zana would've called her plump, but the force of the woman's excitement made her appear more imposing than clumsy. She reminded Zana of Lora somewhat - the same coiled-up energy, but without the young woman's naivete. The eyes of this Chimp were shrewd; they took in every detail of Alan's appearance, as if she was memorizing them for a police sketch.
The woman gestured at him. "An ape keeping a crippled human? You don't see that around here! A bullet to the head, that's what the poor beasts can expect when they tear a ligament. These monkeys don't even consider the possibility of using a human for work other than running around like a scared chicken!" She propped her hands on her hips and studied Alan, who had schooled his face into an expressionless mask, his gaze fixed on some invisible point behind her shoulder. "What are you using him for?"
"Leatherwork," Zana said, feeling as if a cart had just run her over. The woman's energy was vibrating around her like a thundercloud, ready to erupt at the slightest provocation. "He sews saddlebags, and purses... he decorates them, too. He creates beautiful things," she added, feeling the sudden urge to let the human know that she respected his work.
The woman nodded emphatically. "That is an excellent idea. I'm going to steal that for our charity. - I'm Felga." She bowed abruptly, as if introducing herself was a pesky formality that only took up precious time better spent with vigorous debate. "I'm the head of the local chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Humans, founded by the esteemed Zorya in Chubla - that's North of these mountains, in case you were wondering. Definitely will suggest introducing leatherwork for our humans in our next meeting."
She circled Alan, but thankfully didn't touch him. "My, but what a handsome boy. How long do you have him?"
"A few years," Zana lied, watching Alan's face that was still perfectly calm, but slightly flushed with embarrassment now.
"Did you purchase him like that, or did it happen when you already had him?" Felga wanted to know. Judging by her expression, she was about to either offer Alan a treat, or pat him like a horse, and Zana couldn't decide which would be worse.
"No, it was a hunting accident," she used their usual story.
Felga turned abruptly to her, and Zana saw the tension leave Alan's shoulders. "A hunting accident? Did you use him as a beater?"
Her face was open and her voice friendly, but something in her eyes put Zana on alert. There was a right and a wrong way to answer this question.
She decided for the truth. "No, we didn't use him for hunting. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Felga grimaced, and Zana cautiously released her breath. She had just passed the test. "Hunters," Felga said contemptuously. "If they'd at least shoot each other, instead of innocent animals! Poor thing! And so noble of you to keep him despite his impairment."
"That reminds me, he can't stand for such a long time, with his bad leg," Zana said, relieved to have found an excuse to at least give one of them a chance to escape. "Nait, why don't you go ahead to the inn and wait for me there? I'll catch up with you shortly." They were using fake names again; this time, the humans had insisted on choosing their own names.
Alan, remembering to play his part in public, ducked his head with a murmured "yes'm" and limped off, maybe a little faster than usual. You owe me, Alan, Zana thought wryly.
But he already knew that, and the impossibility of ever paying back his debt was what made him mute and clumsy around her. Zana closed her eyes for a moment, feeling tired and worn out. She wanted nothing more than to lay down and have a cup of tea.
"Oh, you're staying for longer?" Felga beamed. "That's excellent! My mother had mentioned that she had found guests for the fall, but I hadn't had an opportunity to check the register yet."
So their host was Felga's mother. It figured - in such a small town, everyone was related to everyone else, or at least knew everyone for so long that it didn't make a difference anymore. Zana smiled despite her weariness. "She's a lovely woman. I feel right at home there."
"She's a warrior," Felga said, stiffening with pride. "Don't let her sweet smile fool you. Some people here thought they could pull one over her. They all learned their lesson."
"I... have no intention to defraud your mother," Zana said, unsure if Felga had just been boasting, or meant it as a warning.
"Oh no, sweetie, I wasn't talking about you." Felga linked arms with her and began to wander down the street, and Zana, too startled to protest, went along. "Mom was full of praise for her guests, especially 'that lovely lady' - and if my mother calls someone a lady, they can't be too bad. - Look, this is what I wanted to show you!"
They had stopped in front of a narrow building with a small crown glass window. "Our tea parlour," Felga said with obvious satisfaction. "It was our first project, and it's our biggest success. Come on in, I'm inviting you!" She pushed open the door, and Zana had no choice but to follow her inside.
Felga led her to a cozy alcove near the only window, more for the light than the view - the glass was thick and opaque, tinting the table with an olive hue. Felga lit the candle that sat on the table, and waved for the waiter. It was a human, Zana noticed.
Felga smiled, and ordered tea and cinnamon rolls for both of them. "I noticed your look," she said, when the waiter had vanished. "I bet you didn't think a human could manage that task."
"Oh, I have no doubts that humans can serve as waiters," Zana said, craning her neck to survey the other tables. The rest of the clientele seemed to consist solely of teenagers. "I was just amazed that apes would accept them at all."
"It was a fight," Felga admitted. "We had to buy the building because nobody wanted to rent us a room, and as you can see, our guests are schoolchildren, but it's a start. And they are our future - if they accept human waiters today, they'll accept human concierges tomorrow. Or human artisans. And what's more important, they'll raise their children to do the same. Whoever wants to shape the future, has to win over the youth."
"If their parents are so against the very idea," Zana mused, then stopped when the human set a cup before her and poured her tea. "If they are so hostile towards your project," she continued when he had gone again, "how come they allow their sons and daughters to come here?"
"Oh, they don't," Felga said dryly and took a sip of her tea. Zana followed her example. The tea had a lovely citrus aroma, with a strong balsamic note underneath. It was a perfect blend, and she decided to ask Felga if one could buy tea leaves for preparation at home... or on the road. But she suddenly felt completely disinclined to leave this town any time soon.
"There's hardly a day when I'm not stopped by some enraged parent in the street, and shouted at," Felga continued, and laughed. "I don't mind - it keeps this project in people's minds. It's good advertisement. And teenagers love to rebel, so these little tantrums always win us new customers."
"They also win you a lot of hostility," Zana remarked.
Felga smirked, and shrugged. "They do, but if I'd give in, I'd have to close this establishment, and close our manufactory, too. How would I feed and clothe our humans then? And pay back the loan for the shelter? What's more important, how am I to educate people if I cater to their old prejudices? Everything new is painful at first. We've had at least three or four attempts to burn this house down, in the middle of town, can you imagine that?" She shook her head.
Zana took another sip from her tea. A fire could spread to other houses in mere moments. Whoever had tried their hand at arson had either been oblivious or indifferent to the danger of burning down half of the town. "That sounds worse than just anger."
Felga scoffed. "I'm not surprised, though. The biggest thing around here are the races, and the stable owners are a bunch of murderous bastards, and I'm being polite here."
Zana believed that in a heartbeat. She had the feeling that Felga could easily outdo Peet in a cussing contest. Still, the woman fascinated her. It was rare to find apes that cared enough about the plight of humans to speak up against it, let alone do anything about it, in the City. To find a fellow activist here, in the middle of nowhere, had been totally unexpected.
"You mentioned a manufactory," she said, and emptied her cup. "What's that all about?"