“Is she getting sick too?” Cithrin asked. The very idea made her want to weep.
“She may, but she hasn’t yet,” Opal said. “Probably just jealous that the old boy here’s getting all the attention.”
“Should we go, then? I mean, is it safe to get back to the ’van?”
“This afternoon, maybe,” Opal said. “Better that he have his strength back. Start him with a half day’s work.”
“But—”
“We’ve been this way before. We’ll catch them up before they go over the pass. They’ll stop at Bellin, send up scouts.”
Cithrin knew the name, but she couldn’t place it. Opal glanced over at her.
“Bellin,” Opal said. “Trading town just before the pass. You really don’t know much about hauling in a caravan, do you?”
“No,” Cithrin said, both sullen and embarrassed at being sullen.
“Bellin’s not much, but they’re friendly to travelers. Master Kit took us there for a month once. New people coming through the road every few days, no one staying long. It was like being a traveling company without the traveling.”
A breath of cold wind stirred the straw. In the brazier, the coals brightened and the thin flame danced. Cithrin’s mind felt slow and sodden with fatigue. What would a guard company do with a month of passing traders and merchants and missionaries? Protect them inside the town walls where they needed it the least?
“I should go,” Cithrin said. “Check the… check the cart.”
“Make sure it hasn’t gone anywhere,” Opal said, as if she was agreeing.
In practice, being only with Opal was better than being with the full ’van. With just one person to keep track of, Cithrin could find moments to let her guard down, be herself instead of Tag. When the time came and they harnessed the mules, it wasn’t all that different from being alone. Opal did most of the talking, and that was for the most part about how to manage the team. Cithrin knew that Tag should have been bored by the lectures, but she drank them in. In the first half day, she learned a hundred things she’d been doing wrong. When they bedded down that night in a wide meadow beside the road, she was a better carter than she’d been in all the long weeks since Vanai.
She wanted to thank the guard for all she’d done, but she was afraid that if she started she might not stop. Gratitude would become friendship, and friendship confession, and then her secrets would be spilled. So instead she made sure that Opal got the best food and the softer place to sleep.
In the darkness, the two of them lay on the soft wool. The moon and stars were gone, wrapped in clouds, and the darkness was absolute. Cithrin’s mind skittered and shifted, thin with exhaustion. And still, sleep was slow to come. In the middle of the night, she felt Opal’s body pressing next to her own and woke up in a panic, afraid that the guard was attacking her or seducing her or both, but she was only cold and half asleep. She spent the rest of the night drawn by the warmth of Opal’s body and trying to hold herself apart for fear of compromising her disguise.
In the dark, the weeks between her and Carse seemed eternal. She imagined that she could feel the casks and boxes hidden just beneath her. The books and ledgers, silk and tobacco leaf and spice. Gems and jewelry. The weight of responsibility and fear was like someone pressing on her chest. When, just before dawn, she finally slept deeply enough to dream, she found herself at the edge of a cliff, trying to keep a hundred stumbling babies from pitching into the abyss.
She woke with a cry, and she woke to snow.
Wide, fat flakes dropped from the sky, grey against the white of clouds. The trees caught it, the bark seeming to turn black by contrast. The dragon’s jade of the road was gone, their path marked only by a clear space between the trunks. The horizon had been erased. Opal was already fixing the mules in their harness.
“Can we really go in this?” Cithrin asked, forgetting to deepen her voice.
“Better had. Unless you’d prefer to settle here.”
“It’s safe, though?”
“Safer than the option,” Opal said. “Help me with this buckle. My hand’s half frozen.”
Cithrin clambered down from the cart and did as she was told. Before long, they were forging ahead. The wide iron cartwheels became caked with wet snow and the mules began to steam. Without discussion, Opal had taken the reins and the whip. Cithrin huddled beside her, miserable. Opal squinted into the weather and shook her head.
“The good news is there won’t be bandits.”
“Really? And what’s the bad?” Cithrin said bitterly.
Opal looked over at her, eyes wide with surprise and delight. Cithrin realized it was the closest thing to a joke she’d made since the caravan left Vanai. She blushed, and the guard beside her laughed.
Bellin had only half a dozen buildings. The rest of the town crouched inside a wide cliff, doorways and windows carved into the grey stone thousands of years before by inhuman hands. Soot stained the wall where chimneys slanted out into the world. Snow clung to huge runes carved into the mountainside, a script Cithrin had never seen before. The peaks themselves were invisible apart from a sense of looming darkness within the storm. The familiar carts of the ’van were black dots against the white, horses and carters already sheltered within the rock. She helped Opal set their cart in place, unhitch the mules, and guide them safely into the stable where the ’van’s other animals were already tucked away.
The guards were there, sitting around a banked smith’s furnace, Mikel and Hornet, Master Kit and Smit. Sandr grinned at them both as they came in, and the Tralgu second in command lifted a wide hand without turning from his conversation with the long-haired woman, Cary. Opal’s pleasure at seeing them almost made Cithrin happy too.
“There must be something,” Cary said, and Cithrin could tell it wasn’t the first time she’d said it.
“There’s not,” Yardem rumbled. “Women are smaller and weaker. There’s no weapon that can make that an advantage.”
“What are we talking about?” Opal asked, sitting by the open furnace. Cithrin sat on the bench at her side, only realizing afterward that it was the same position they’d held on the cart. Master Kit chuckled and shook his head.
“I think Cary would prefer to train with weapons that better exploit her natural abilities,” Master Kit said.
“Like being small and weak,” Sandr said. Without looking over, Cary flicked a clod of earth at his head.
“Short bow,” Cary said.
“Takes power to pull back a bow,” Yardem said. He seemed on the edge of apology. “With a sling and stone, it matters less, but it still matters. A spear has better reach, but takes more muscle. A blade needs less strength, but calls for more reach. A strong, big woman’s better than a small, weak man, but there’s no such thing as a woman’s natural weapon.” The Tralgu shrugged expansively.
“There has to be something,” Cary said.
“There doesn’t,” Yardem said.
“Sex,” Sandr suggested with a grin. Cary threw another clod at his head.
“How are your mules, Tag?” Master Kit asked.
“Better,” Cithrin said. “Much better. Thanks to Opal.”
“It was nothing,” Opal said.
“I’m pleased it worked out,” Master Kit said. “I was beginning to worry that we’d leave you behind.”
“Wouldn’t have happened,” a voice said from behind them.
Cithrin twisted in her seat, and her chest went tight with anxiety. Captain Wester stalked into the room. Snow caked his wide leather cloak and matted his hair. His face was so bright, it looked like the cold had slapped him. He walked to the heat, scowling.
“Welcome back, sir,” the Tralgu said. The captain didn’t so much as nod.
“I take it the scouting went poorly, then,” Master Kit said.
“No worse than expected,” Marcus Wester said. “The ’van master’s breaking it to the others right now. There’s no getting through that pass. Not now, not for months.”
; “What?” Cithrin said, her voice sharp and unexpected. She tried to swallow the word as soon as she’d said it, but the captain took no particular notice of her.
“Snow came early, we took too long, and we didn’t get lucky,” he said. “We’ll get some warehouse space for the goods and bunks for the rest of us. Not much room, so it’ll be close quarters. We’ll make for Carse in the spring.”
Spring. The word hit Cithrin in the gut. She looked at the flames dancing in the furnace, felt a trickle of snowmelt tracing its way down her spine. Despairing laughter bubbled at the back of her throat. If she let it out, it would turn to tears, and it wouldn’t stop. A season spent in disguise. Moving everything in her cart to a warehouse and back without being discovered. Months to Carse instead of weeks.
I can’t do this, she thought.
Marcus
Nightfall came early. Only half of the carts had been emptied, and the caravan master was all but chewing his own wrists over it. Marcus didn’t think it would be a problem. The storm had come from the west, and the mountains would squeeze the worst of the snow out. They might be tunneling up from the roofs in Birancour, but Bellin was in the rain shadow. They’d be fine. At least when it came to snow.
Yardem had arranged a separate barracks for the so-called guards. Two small rooms with a shared fire grate, but in the town proper, tucked snugly in the living rock. Carved swirls and whorls caught the firelight, and the walls seemed to breathe and dance. Marcus pulled off the soaked leather of his boots and leaned back, groaning. The others were about him, lounging and talking and negotiating for the best sleeping spaces. The ease the actors took in close company wasn’t all that different from real sword-and-bows, and the jokes were better. Even Yardem seemed half relaxed, and that wasn’t a common thing.
Still, Marcus’s work wasn’t done.
“Meeting,” he said. “Our job’s changed now. Best that we talk that through, not find ourselves surprised later.”
The chatter stilled. Master Kit sat beside the fire, his wiry grey hair standing like smoke gone still.
“I don’t see how the ’van can afford this,” the actor said. “Even with small quarters, it’s going to cost having us kept and fed for a full season.”
“Likely they’ll lose money,” Marcus said. “But that’s the caravan master’s problem, not ours. We aren’t here to see a profit turned. Just everyone kept safe. On the road, that means bandits. Holed up for a winter, that means no one gets stir crazy or starts sleeping with someone, makes someone else jealous, or gets in mind to cheat too much at cards.”
Smit, the jack-of-all-roles, pulled a long face. “Are we playing guards or nursemaids?” the man said.
“We’re doing whatever gets the ’van to Carse safe,” Marcus said. “We’ll protect them from ourselves if we have to.”
“Mmm. Good line,” Cary, the thin woman, said. “Protect them from ourselves if we have to.”
Marcus narrowed his eyes, frowning.
“They’re writing a new play,” Master Kit said. “A comic piece about an acting troupe hired to pretend they’re caravan guards.”
Yardem grunted and flicked an ear. Maybe annoyance, maybe amusement. Likely both. Marcus chose to ignore it.
“We’ve got a dozen and a half carters,” Marcus said. “Add the ’van master and his wife. You’ve traveled with these people for weeks. You’ve watched them. You know them. What problems are we going to have?”
“The man hauling the tin ore,” Smit said. “He’s been spoiling for a fight since those raiders. He’s not going to last a season without one unless someone starts sharing his bed or puts him down hard.”
“I’d thought the same,” Marcus said, allowing himself a moment’s pleasure. The actors were much more perceptive than his usual men. Given the circumstances, that would help. “What else?”
“The quarter-Dartinae,” Opal, the older leading woman, said. “He’s been avoiding the ’van master’s sermons almost as much as you have, Captain. A constant diet of scripture isn’t going to sit well with him.”
“The girl in the false whiskers,” Mikel, the thin boy, said. “She’s looking mightily fragile.”
“Oh, yes. Her,” Cary said.
“And God knows what she’s really hauling,” Opal said, her tone all agreement. “Gets jumpy as a cat whenever anyone gets too near her cart. Won’t talk about it either.”
Marcus raised a hand, commanding silence.
“Who?” he said.
“The girl in the false whiskers,” Master Kit said. “The one that calls herself Tag.”
Marcus looked at Yardem. The Tralgu’s expression mirrored his own blank surprise. Marcus lifted an eyebrow. Did you know? Yardem shook his head once, earrings jingling. No.
And God knows what she’s really hauling.
“With me, Yardem,” Marcus said, pulling his boots back on.
“Yes, sir,” the Tralgu rumbled.
The carters and and ’van master were in a separate network of rooms and tunnels. Marcus went through the smoke-hazed halls and common rooms, Yardem looming at his side. The other guards or actors, or whatever they were, trailed along behind like children playing follow-me-follow-you. With every room that Tag wasn’t in, Marcus felt the hair on the back of his neck rising. His mind ran back over everything that had happened on the road, every time he’d spoken to the boy, everything that the ’van master had said about him. There was very little. Almost nothing. Always, the boy had kept himself—and, more the point, his cart—to himself.
The last of the rented rooms looked out over the dark and snow-carpeted hills. Behind him, Marcus heard the high, excited voices of the carters asking what was happening. The chill, wet air smelled as much of rain as snow. Lightning sketched the horizon.
“He’s not here, sir.”
“I see that.”
“She can’t have gone,” Opal said from behind them. “Girl hardly knew how to steer the cart without something in front for the mules to follow.”
“The cart,” Marcus said, walking out into the gloom.
The carts that hadn’t been unloaded were near the low stone warehouses. Half a foot of snow covered them, making them all seem taller than they truly were. Marcus stalked among them. Behind him, someone lit torches, the fires hissing in the still-falling snow. Marcus’s shadow shuddered and danced on the wool cart. The snow on its bench was hardly an inch thick. Marcus hooked a foot on the iron loop beside the wheel and hauled himself up. Once atop it, he pulled back the tarp. Tag lay curled in a ball like a cat. Now that the words had been said, Marcus could see where the whiskers were unevenly placed, the dye in the hair patchy. What had been an underfed, half-dim Firstblood boy resolved into a girl with Cinnae blood.
“Wh-what—” the girl began, and Marcus grabbed her shoulder and pulled her to her feet. Her lips were blue from the cold.
“Yardem?”
“Here, sir,” the Tralgu said from the cart’s side.
“Catch,” Marcus said and shoved her over. The girl yelped as she fell, and then Yardem had her in a headlock. Her cries were wild and Yardem grunted once as a lucky blow struck. Marcus ignored the struggle. The wool was damp and stank of mildew. He lifted up bolt after bolt, letting them drop to the ground. The girl’s cries became sharper, and then quiet. Marcus’s hand found something hard.
“Pass me a torch,” he called.
Instead, Master Kit scrambled up beside him. The old man’s face expression said nothing. In the torchlight, Marcus pulled up the box. Blackwood with an iron fastener and hard leather hinges. Marcus drew his dagger and slashed at the hinges until there was enough play to let him push the blade between lid and box.
“Be careful,” Master Kit said as Marcus bore down on the knife.
“Late for that,” Marcus said, and the lock gave with a snap. The box hung open, limp and broken. Inside, a thousand bits of cut glass glittered and shone. No. Not glass. Gems. Garnets and rubies, emeralds and diamonds and pearls. The box was full to the b
rim with them. Marcus looked down into the hole he had left in the wool and snow. There were more boxes like it. Dozens of them.
He looked at Master Kit. The old man’s eyes were wide with shock.
“All right,” Marcus said shortly, letting the box fall closed. “Come on.”
On the ground, the other guards were clustered around Yardem and the girl. Yardem still held the girl in his wide arms, ready to choke her asleep. Tears were flowing down her cheeks. The set of her jaw was all defiance and grief. Marcus pinched off a bit of the whiskers from her cheek, rubbed them between his fingers, and let them drop to the ground. Beside the Tralgu’s bulk, she seemed barely more than a child. Her eyes met Marcus’s, and he saw the plea there. Something dangerous shifted in his chest. Not rage, not indignation. Not even sorrow. Memory so vibrant and bright it was painful. He told himself to turn away.
“Please,” the girl said.
“Kit,” he said. “Take her inside. Our quarters. She doesn’t talk to anyone, not even the ’van master.”
“As you say, Captain,” Master Kit said. Yardem loosened his grip and stood a half step back. His eyes were locked on the girl, ready to incapacitate her again if she attacked. Master Kit held out a hand to her. “Come along, my dear. You’re among friends.”
The girl hesitated, her gaze jumping from Marcus to Yardem to Master Kit and back again. Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t sob. He’d known another girl once who’d cried the same way. Marcus pushed the thought aside. Master Kit led her away. The others, as if by habit, followed the master actor and left the soldiers to themselves.
“The cart,” Marcus said.
“No one comes near it, sir,” Yardem said.
Marcus squinted up into the falling snow. “How old do you think she is?”
“Part Cinnae. Makes it hard to tell,” Yardem rumbled. “Sixteen summers. Seventeen.”
“That was my thought too.”
“Same age Merian would have been.”
“Near that.”
Marcus turned back toward the cliff. Light glimmered in the stone-carved windows, and the ancient, snow-filled script carved into the cliffside above shone deep grey against the black.
Leviathan Wakes: Book One of The Expanse Page 65