Karavans

by Jennifer Roberson

  It brought pain, that question. “My family has always lived in Sancorra province. I can conceive of no place I would rather be … except now. After all that has happened.” He gestured futilely; she understood completely. Hecari. War. “But my wife’s grandmother came from Atalanda province. My wife has blood-kin there, if distant. We would do best to go where we have blood than where we have none.”

  Ilona tried once more. “Wait here, then. Until next season. You would have your choice of karavans next year.” She gestured expansively. “There is pasturage, game, water … you could do worse.”

  He was a man of simple dignity and immense pride. But defeat—by the enemy, by refusals of the karavan-masters—had worn away his substance. He was not yet desperate, but self-control was fraying. “I haven’t the means to wait a year. And the diviners have said the child should be born in Atalanda, if it is to be worthy of the gods’ protection. The journey will take time. We must go soon.”

  She asked it because she had to. “Why did you come to me?”

  He spread his palm and looked into it. “I wondered—I wondered if it was me. If something in me …” His voice trailed off as he lifted his head to look at her again, hand falling slack at his side. “I don’t know. I saw you, sweeping. Your motions …” He shrugged. “Your coloring is darker than hers, but, well, in motion, you reminded me of my wife.”

  Ilona felt the coil of regret tightening in her belly. How she hated this! “I’m sorry. If Jorda has said there is no room, then there is no room.”

  The man nodded. “I know.” He managed a faint, fleeting smile that left nothing of itself in his eyes. “I know.”

  She watched him turn and walk away. A tall, wide, sturdy man. A man of substance, and certain to be judged worthy when it came his time to cross the river, for all he had no wealth. And like so many others in Sancorra province, he had lost everything to the Hecari.

  Ilona shut her eyes. She could not change fates. She could only read them.

  AUDRUN WENT IN search of and found her children inexplicably huddled behind a brown-dyed tent in the midst of the settlement. They gazed at her with identical wide blue eyes. It never failed to strike her how similar they were, despite dissimilarities in height and gender. Davyn was bearded now, and weathered, but she saw him again in the faces of his children. She wondered idly if the new baby would share Davyn’s coloring and thus that of its siblings, or, at long last, her own dark gold hair and brown eyes.

  Smiling, she said, “Come back to the wagon.”

  Kneeling by the tent, they were stiff as wooden dolls with jointed limbs. Megritte, eyes stretched wide, whispered loudly, “We saw a demon!”

  “He killed that man,” Torvic added, fascination overriding his younger sister’s tone.

  Audrun frowned and looked to her eldest for explanation. “What man?”

  Ellica and Gillan were not prone to childish excesses like Torvic and Megritte, but they too looked stricken. “The man who came to the wagon,” Gillan explained faintly.

  It stunned her. The man had not left her wagon all that long ago. “He’s dead?”

  Torvic, clutching tent ropes knotted to thick wooden ground pegs, thrust out a pointing arm. “He went in there. He went in there with the demon.”

  Skepticism made it difficult to maintain an even tone. “The demon went into the tent with another demon?” Audrun glanced briefly across the footpath, then before her children could answer she made up her mind to contain the tale before it grew lengthier and even less believable. “Never mind. We are going.” She caught her youngest daughter’s hand in one of hers and clasped the other over Torvic’s skull, swiveling it to aim him. “Move. Now.”

  They knew that tone. They moved.

  Megritte, seeming pleased to surrender her demon-watching responsibilities, asked, “Did Da find us a karavan?”

  “I don’t know. Torvic, stop twisting! But if we don’t get back to the wagon someone may well steal it—Megritte, stand up on both feet; you’re too big for me to carry!—and then we’ll have no need to join a karavan at all.”

  Her children continued to ask questions all the way back to the wagon, and Audrun continued to insist there were other far more interesting things to discuss in the world though she was not at that moment, in view of a dead man, murdered or no, certain she knew of any.

  And then the wagon was there before them, and so was Davyn.

  “Bless the Mother of Moons,” Audrun sighed, releasing her two youngest to run to their father. “And bless those who have more patience than I—and more children!—for they are truly the worthiest among us.”

  Then she saw Davyn’s eyes, even as he smiled and pulled his two little ones up into his arms, and Audrun realized a new home overmountain lay farther away than ever.

  BRODHI, FREE ONCE more of meddlesome human children, continued his journey along one of the maze-like pathways among the tents, and sensed the presence, as always, before he saw its progenitor. He stopped. He summoned patience. He did not turn. “Yes, Darmuth?”

  Laughter, if soft. Then the other slipped around from behind, sliding into his path. Neatly blocking him.

  A short, compact, smooth-skinned man of indeterminate age was Darmuth, with feathery pale brows and eyelashes, and a head shaved all over except for one coarse silver—haired plait low on the back of his skull. It was clubbed on his neck, wrapped with a length of red-dyed leather thong. His eyes were light gray, very like winter water. He wore a simple black leather tunic with the sleeves chopped short to expose muscled tattooed arms, shell-weighted leggings, and a vulgar purple silk sash doubled around his waist. The hilt of his knife, jutting from the tooled sheath tucked into the sash, was black-and-white striated horn, the pommel intricately carved.

  “I’ve lost him, Brodhi.”

  Irritably Brodhi countered, “You never lose him. You can’t. You’ve just let him wander off.”

  The man grinned. “You refer to him as if he’s a pet.”

  “Not my pet.” Brodhi resettled the bright blue courier’s mantle hanging off his left shoulder, feeling the tug of the wrought-silver badge pinning it to his long-sleeved leather tunic. He hid impatience; Darmuth would keep him here, if he saw it. “Perhaps a leash might serve.”

  The man cocked his head. “Have you seen him?”

  “Not lately.” Brodhi shrugged idly. “He’s here somewhere. Or so I’ve heard.”

  “Rhuan’s always somewhere,” Darmuth noted. “Too many ‘somewheres.’ I do lose track.”

  Brodhi wasn’t amused. “You do no such thing.”

  “All right.” Darmuth’s vulpine grin flashed; his canines were slightly pointed, and he had invested in a brilliant green gemstone that was drilled and set into the left one. “I actually wanted to visit with you. It was an excuse.”

  Though surrounded by tents, Brodhi was aware that, as usual, the footpath he inhabited had emptied of people. They found other ways to go where they wished to go rather than share a path with him if they could avoid it.

  Or—he brightened a moment—perhaps it was Darmuth the humans avoided. In his way, Darmuth was more exotic and unique—and threatening—than a Shoia.

  “It was no excuse.” Brodhi folded his arms, mantle rippling. “What is it?”

  “Ferize,” Darmuth answered. “How is she?”

  Brodhi suppressed all emotion. He held his face expressionless. “Ferize is—Ferize.”

  “When did you see her last?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  One of the feathery brows rose. Darmuth could mimic Brodhi’s arrogance, even to capturing the intonations of his voice, which annoyed Brodhi no end. “Surely you do.”

  “A month ago. Two months, as the humans reckon time.”

  Brodhi shrugged again, putting more indolence into the motion. “Possibly three.”

  Darmuth shook his head in mock admonition. “A man should be more attentive to his wife.”

  “I am as attentive as I need to be, for such as Fer
ize.”

  Brodhi smiled easily, flicking supple fingers in a human gesture to suggest departure. “Go away, Darmuth. I don’t like you.”

  The tattooed man laughed. “You don’t like anyone, Brodhi. Not even your wife. Not even your own—” He paused. “What do the humans call them? Cousins?”

  Dryly Brodhi said, “Rhuan makes it supremely difficult for me to like him, Darmuth. You know that.”

  “Well, he is difficult,” the other conceded. “But he isn’t my cousin. Nor my kin. Nor even my kind. Therefore you should tolerate him better, being blood-bound.”

  “That I tolerate him at all is a miracle unto itself,” Brodhi pointed out, “and if we were not blood-bound—or kin at all, for that matter—I wouldn’t tolerate him in the least.”

  Darmuth grinned. The green gem sparked. “So difficult to believe you are related, you and Rhuan. One can hardly credit that your father and his father, born themselves of the same parents, could sire such decidedly different sons upon—”

  “Never mind,” Brodhi interrupted sharply, who didn’t like to discuss such things with anyone, let alone with Darmuth. Perhaps especially with Darmuth, who knew more about Brodhi and Rhuan than anyone in the world.

  Except possibly for Ferize. Who was, after all, Darmuth’s kin-in-kind.

  “But I should like to contemplate this,” Darmuth said brightly, gemstone glinting. “We know what will become of you both if you don’t succeed in your tasks. One would think you’d be in accordance, as you desire the same things—”

  Brodhi cut him off with a sharp, silencing gesture. “But we don’t. We want entirely different things, Rhuan and I.” With sustained effort he regained his fraying composure. “It is a mark of how deeply different we are, Darmuth. In tastes and temperaments.”

  “Perhaps.” Darmuth tilted his head slightly. “Perhaps not.”

  This time the gesture of dismissal was not a human one. “Go away, Darmuth. You and I are not blood-bound, nor kin-in-kind.”

  The shorter man inclined first his head, then folded his body upon itself in a parody of abject submission. “Spare me, I beg you. Be not unkind to your inferior.”

  The word Brodhi spoke was not even remotely polite.

  Darmuth, laughing, unfolded his powerful body and took himself away.

  ILONA KNEW THE stride even before she saw his face. She heard the muted rattle of fringe bearing beads, rings, and shells swinging from the outer seams of his amber-hued leggings and tunic. She glanced up from the low table set just outside the rear steps of her wagon. “You’re late. Quite late. Extremely late.”

  Rhuan slowed, then stopped altogether. He came over to where she sat upon her cushions laid out on her rugs, surrounded by glowing pierced-tin lanterns hanging from wrought iron crooks driven into the ground, the low laquered table modestly hiding her knees. “I know.” He quirked an eyebrow, marking her preparations and professional posture. “Business poor tonight?”

  “Not after Jorda speaks his piece to the people of his karavan. Then they’ll all come. I am simply preparing.”

  He winced. “Am I that late?”

  She nodded. “He’s threatened to slit your throat already. Darmuth suggested he not, as you are occasionally useful. He was looking for you earlier, too.”

  “I was talking to the Watch.”

  Ilona smiled archly. “Drunk again?”

  “I’m never drunk,” he retorted. “No. About a dead man.” She tended her table, straightening rich silks and embroidered velvets, placing charms, carved stones, and blessing-sticks in precise arrangements. “Did you kill him?”

  He was as aggrieved as she had ever seen him. “Why does everyone think I killed him? I don’t kill every individual who crosses my path!”

  “Only most of them.” She was comfortable bantering with him. He made it easy. “Rhuan—Jorda truly is unhappy. We’re to leave at first light.”

  “That late,” he muttered. “I thought we had two more days.” He shook his head; the gold and silver rings threaded loosely through multiple braids clattered faintly against his beadwork. “All right. I’m going.”

  “Who died?” Ilona called after him.

  He turned back, hesitating. “Some poor man who stumbled into Alisanos, then found his way back out again.”

  She chilled. Stilled. “Was he—?”

  “—human?” Rhuan’s expression was grim. “Not anymore.”

  Ilona felt her belly clench up into a hard knot as Rhuan left. She murmured a prayer to Sibetha, the god of hand-readers, then expanded it to any god who might be moved to take pity on a human who went into the deepwood. Most never returned. Those who did, died.

  Rhuan hadn’t killed him. He hadn’t needed to.

  No wonder he looked so grim.

  By habit, Ilona spread her left hand. But she read nothing in it. No hand-reader could divine future or fate from his or her own flesh.

  She gathered up the blessing-sticks and, closing her eyes, began in a quiet murmur to tell over their representations, invoking goodwill and good fortune. The man’s death was a very bad omen for the night before departure. She would have to consult Jorda’s other diviners to see if the potential events set into motion by this one involved the welfare of the karavan. Jorda would have to be told as well. He might wish to put off departure for a day or two so she, Melior, and Branca could test the auguries, which would disturb him; he could not afford to wait much longer. It was late in the season already. Once the rains began, the roads would be nearly impassable.

  Meticulous preparations were always required before a karavan departed. Countless rites and rituals conducted by Jorda’s three hired diviners promised protection for his clients. But now even more, and more elaborate, preparations were needed.

  Ilona stroked the satiny finish of the ancient blessing-sticks, feeling the incised, time-faded glyphs. Her lips moved automatically through the chants and prayers.

  Though her voice was little more than a thread of sound, she knew the gods would hear.

  That a human should escape Alisanos was very bad indeed.

  Bad to lose them in the deepwood. Worse to get them back.

  Chapter 6

  AUDRUN WAITED UNTIL the family had eaten, until Davyn agreed to take the children for a walk before bedding down—he had, after all, been absent for most of the day—then wrapped herself in an enveloping shawl and, beneath the risen crescent of Grandmother Moon, marched over to the karavans encamped in the grove of trees at the eastern edge of the tent settlement, not far from where Davyn had halted their wagon. Her husband had told her which masters he had seen and their various explanations for why they would not take them on; the last one, she felt, was an excuse, not an explanation. So she went there.

  It was all confusion at the various encampments. She threaded her way through the sprawling mass of trees, cookfires, livestock, and wagons, and asked so many people to direct her to the karavan-master that Audrun lost count. Probably none of the directions were wrong, but the master was never where he had been by the time she arrived. If she didn’t know better, she’d believe he was avoiding her. But at last she found someone who knew, who pointed at two men nearby and said the taller man was the karavan-master, the other was his senior guide. Audrun thanked the karavaner and marched over. Each step closer fed a growing desperation.

  The karavan-master, she discovered upon arrival, was a remarkably large man with a beard the color of glowing hot coals and wiry russet hair pulled into a single thick braid. In the muted glow of multiple campfires scattered like brilliant flowers, his eyes were clearly green, and as clearly angry. He turned from his guide impatiently as she halted beside him.

  In the face of his annoyance, Audrun found her own, laced with anger. “How dare you?” she demanded. “How dare you turn us down because we have oxen?”

  The guide, a dramatic sort, she noted, in multiple ornamented braids and fringed, amber-hued leather leggings and shirt, seized upon the opening. “You turned them down because t
hey have oxen?” he echoed. “Jorda, how could you? How dare you?”

  The karavan-master, bearlike, swung a huge cupped hand, as if intending to cuff. The guide, laughing, skipped neatly out of the way, bead- and clasp-strung braids flying.

  Audrun knew it was rude to accost the master in front of his own employee, but she hadn’t the time to be polite. “My husband has spoken with every master here. No one will take us on. But they had the courage to say they were full. You made our oxen your pitiful excuse.”

  His voice was very deep. “Oxen are slow.”

  “But steady,” she retorted. “Dependable. More dependable than horses.”

  “And slow,” he repeated.

  She could not help the sharpness in her tone. “What, do you intend to race along the roads? Is there a competition for which karavan arrives first?”

  The anger in Jorda’s eyes died out, but she had very clearly annoyed him. Audrun didn’t care. She had an entire family with which to concern herself: her personal karavan.

  “It is the end of the season,” the master told her coolly. “Pace does matter. Earlier in the year, your oxen would have been welcome. But now …” He shook his head. Silver rings in his ears glinted. “It’s the truth, not an excuse.”

  “We are going overmountain,” she said steadily, undeterred. “To Atalanda. The road leading there breaks off from your route, yes?” So Davyn had told her when she questioned him more closely; she wouldn’t be made a fool of. “We won’t be with you all the way. Only part of the way. And isn’t it true that when a karavan first sets out that it requires days for all the wagons to sort out their places?

  Some horses are faster, some are slower.”

  “Of course,” the guide broke in cheerfully, displaying unexpected dimples, and earned a glare from the master. “I’ve known it to take the better part of a week.”

  “Rhuan,” the big man growled, “you had best go find Darmuth. He’s doing his job.”