Page 5 of Into the West

“Well, the local farmers like us well enough,” she pointed out. And it was true. Several farmers would arrive with wagons every day to collect all the excrement of humans and their animals that would otherwise soon have overwhelmed the area.

“Well, as one of them told me, ‘No farmer has ever complained of having too much manure,’ though I suspect they would if Kordas had made the decision to stay.” The Mender shrugged. “Once we’re out of here, the land will rest over the winter, and everything will be fine again.”

“Do you ever—” She hesitated, but the Mender seemed a kind young man, and maybe he wouldn’t mind letting her talk about things. “Do you ever wish we could go back to the way it was?”

He sat back on his heels, and rolled up the leather case that held his instruments. “For myself? No. There was always the chance I’d be snatched up by the Emperor’s people if anyone had ever found out about all the mages that the D—I mean, Baron, was harboring. And—” His eyes lit up. “I had no idea that the Dolls were something that was even possible! I love being able to help them. They let me study them as much as I want. And I am going to miss them dreadfully when we finally figure out how to release them.”

“We will miss you too, Mender,” said the Doll they had been helping. They both turned to look at the Doll with a little surprise, since most of the Dolls were not much given to spontaneous expressions of any sort. “You are a considerate and skilled man. We appreciate you.”

“Well . . . thank you.” The Mender blinked rapidly, as if he was trying not to cry. “I’m exceedingly touched . . .”

“Have you a need for an assistant such as this one?” the Doll continued, hesitantly. “This one would enjoy serving you.”

“Uh—you mean that’s possible?” the Mender replied, clearly taken aback.

“This one is a bit handicapped,” the Doll pointed out, raising their mitten-like hands. “Fine manual dexterity is, alas, out of the question. But this one can fetch and carry, hold things, pass you instruments, and keep track of your supplies and belongings. If nothing else, this one is a pincushion.”

“No, I meant, is it possible that I’d be allowed to have your services?” the Mender corrected. “I was under the impression that you Dolls were a sort of common labor pool, and no single person could—uh—require your help.”

“The Baron has told us repeatedly that we may do as we please,” the Doll said. “And this one would be pleased to serve you.”

“Well, I guess it’s settled, then.” The Mender licked his lips and thought for a moment. “Do you have a name?”

“This one has not chosen a name. Would you like this one to do so?” the Doll tipped their head to the side.

“Yes. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to make you look more—unique.” He now looked at Delia. “I’m kind of . . . helpless with hair . . .”

“We’ve got wool without any sand in it,” she pointed out. “That will do for hair.”

It took quite a bit of time, which Delia was actually happy about, since it meant no one was looking for her to do some other unskilled chore to release someone who actually had skills for other work.

But no one sent for her (and all Isla had to do was ask the nearest Doll to tell her to come back) and no one brought in another broken Doll to be worked on, so she and the Mender and the Doll had a rather relaxed, interesting time together. The Doll settled on a name—Dern—and a look—androgynous—and they went to work. When they were done, Dern had a wig of sorts, sewn into the canvas “scalp,” of short brown curls from a brown-fleeced sheep. Dern also had a face delineated with that dense Imperial ink and a feather. The Mender had a rather delicate touch for that.

“Your face looks better than the painted ones I’ve seen, Dern,” Delia observed, as the Mender corked his bottle tightly and gave Dern the feather, which Dern promptly stuck in their brown curls like an ornament.

“Technically the faces are painted on cloth attached to the Doll—barely anything but the most pigmented ink sticks to them. I always think that the people who had faces painted on their Dolls were going a bit too far,” the Mender replied. “It’s too close to real, yet not real enough. It makes me all uneasy when I look at them. This is better.”

“Is it? That’s good,” Dern replied. “This one does not wish to be the cause of distress.”

Delia sat back on her heels to study the effect of their work. “It is good,” she agreed. “Attractive. And now that you’ve been decorated, I think we need one more thing that will identify you as having allied yourself with the Mender. Can you think of anything?”

Silence from both of the others, while she thought about it herself. What would work for that sort of thing? Kordas’s Dolls all had the tabard with the Valdemar “V” and horse head on them. All of the Dolls who had assigned themselves to the Healers wore a green leaf painted on their tunics or shirts.

“Well, I suppose I am a sort of Healer,” the Mender said finally. He took back the feather from Dern and inked a brown-colored leaf with oak-gall ink on the front of Dern’s shirt, then handed the feather back. “Even if people don’t know what that means, they’ll think twice about trying to command your services.”

“Which are to be used for what, right now?” Dern asked, tilting their head to the side in mimicry, Delia supposed, of the same gesture humans made.

“Organizing and packing up my tools and things, then stowing them in my barge. We’ll start with things I’m not likely to need before we set out, and end with the things I’ll need in an emergency.” The Mender shrugged at Delia. “Sorry, I think I won’t need you now, Delia. But thanks.”

“That’s all right,” she replied, although all right was not exactly what she felt. “I’ll see if the other mages need help.”

She quickly came to discover that the answer was “no,” since each of the mages seemed to have their own Dolls, or at least, there were teams of Dolls helping them, as they, too, got ready for the migration. “I can’t think of anyone that needs help except those two apprentices that are on latrine-trench duty,” Sai told her, as he supervised the Dolls packing up the bricks that made his bread oven preparatory to stowing them as ballast. She sighed with regret at that. She was going to miss Sai’s bread. “They don’t have Dolls and they’re probably sick of the work by now.”

The two apprentices had been taught a spell that pulled all the water out of what it was cast on, and their job was a full-time walk of the latrine trenches, desiccating everything that was in there. Servants that were used to dealing with manure, like stablehands and gardeners, went out with the herds, collecting everything the animals dropped and bringing it to the trenches as well. From there the local farmers collected the now-dry and easier-to-handle fossilized feces and carted them away to be added to their compost piles. She’d thought this was ridiculous, and that the servants’ time could be utilized much better elsewhere, until she got a look at just how much waste fifteen thousand people and exponentially more animals could produce in a day. Without things like the compost heaps and cesspits they had back home to handle it all, well, it wouldn’t be pretty, and people would be getting sick faster than the Healers could help them. The farmers, meanwhile, were stockpiling what was as good as gold to them, and they were making compost piles out of it that would keep their fields well-manured for the next several years at the least. And those that didn’t actually have many animals themselves were positively giddy at this unexpected bonanza.

She was pretty sure they’d have been less enthusiastic if it had been in its native state. But they probably would have taken it anyway.

She wanted to dawdle, but there was always the chance that someone would see her making her slowest possible pace back to the family boats, and people being people, someone would take great glee in telling Isla about it. Isla wouldn’t say anything, but she’d give Delia that look that said I am disappointed in you, and that was worse than being scolded.