by Kyra Halland
But this wasn’t the time or place to start that discussion again. “Don’t forget the forty gildings I got for my stingergrass,” she said. She still couldn’t believe those Granadaian folks would pay that much for common grass, even if it was good for seasoning food and clearing stuffed noses.
“That’s yours,” Silas said. He winked at her. “Pin money.”
Lainie laughed. Forty pennies was pin money; forty gildings was two or three months’ wages for most folk. The smell of beef roasting in the firepits near the market grounds wafted over, brown and spicy and appetizing. “We’re going to the dance tonight, right?” she asked.
“Do you want to?”
“I sure do. I’m not much of a dancer and I haven’t got anything special to wear, but it’ll still be fun.”
“Wouldn’t miss it, then,” Silas said. “And you always look fine to me.”
Finally they got to the front of the line. Mr. Landstrom, red-faced and sweating in the sun, counted out one hundred and twenty-five gildings for Silas, five months’ pay, and then one hundred and forty for Lainie.
“That’s only four months’ pay,” Lainie said.
“Mrs. Bington tells me you haven’t been doing your job this last month.”
“But –” The unfairness of that left Lainie fumbling for words. “But she wouldn’t let me work at the grub wagon! I tried, but she didn’t want me around. And anyhow, I’ve still been helping with the herd.”
“Seems to me you owe my wife another thirty-five gildings,” Silas said.
“She hasn’t been doing the job I hired her to do. Now move along, there’s still a lot of people waiting behind you.”
“I worked hard!” Lainie protested. “And we saved the herd!”
“Go on,” someone behind them said. “Just be glad of what you got. We’re tired of waiting!” Others grumbled as well, and an unpleasant feeling crept up Lainie’s back. This could turn ugly; she suddenly understood why guns weren’t allowed in the pay lines.
Silas didn’t budge. “We’ve got bonuses coming, too.”
“You lied to me when I hired you,” Landstrom said.
“Lied?” At the steely tone in Silas’s voice, the grumbling behind them died away.
“You told me you weren’t a wizard.”
“As I recall it, Landstrom, you said you’d heard a rumor that Miss Lainie had run off with a wizard, then you decided on your own, based on my appearance, that it wasn’t true.”
“And then you said it wasn’t true.”
“No, I said, ‘You know how it is with rumors.’ Meaning that sometimes they aren’t true and sometimes they are.”
From somewhere behind them came a snort of laughter; it sounded to Lainie like Paslund. Landstrom’s face went even redder. “I don’t pay bonuses to lying sheep-knocking bastard hells-damned wizards. Mr. Brin Coltor’s man isn’t here for you to hide behind now; you’re lucky I paid you one copper bit. I should have let the boys hang you when we found out what you were. Now take what I gave you and get out of my sight.”
Lainie drew breath to tell Landstrom exactly what she thought of lying, cheating co-op managers, and Silas clenched his fists and went very still. Though Lainie had her mage senses tucked safely away, she felt a tingle of magic in her nerves. In the bright sunlight, she could see a faint blue glow around Silas’s left hand, and the ground trembled slightly beneath her.
“Come on, Landstrom,” Paslund said. “You know what they did for the herd.”
“Yeah, better not piss him off any more,” someone else behind them added nervously.
Lainie held her breath. Surely Silas wouldn’t attack Landstrom. Not with all those lawmen around, and the Mage Council enforcers as well.
Whether because of the enforcers or just because he didn’t want to cause any trouble, Silas slowly uncurled his fists, and the magical tension faded away. “Come on, darlin’,” he said. “It isn’t worth trying to argue with someone like him.” He put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her with him as he stalked away from the table.
Lainie’s anger and humiliation boiled inside her. Maybe she was a fool for thinking it would ever be possible for mages to be treated like regular folks in the Wildings. Maybe there was no point in even trying. She and Silas could die helping the Plains, and they wouldn’t care. She hated to admit it, but it wasn’t so hard after all to see why Silas was tempted to turn his back on protecting them and take her away somewhere safe. And damned if she wouldn’t be tempted to let him, if the Wildings wasn’t her home and she wasn’t determined not to let them run her out.
“Lainie! There you are!”
The familiar voice jolted Lainie out of her seething thoughts. Melna Bordine, the blonde woman from the marketplace, ran up to her and grabbed her arm. “Come back for her later,” she said to Silas. “Us ladies are getting ready for the dance!”
Before either Lainie or Silas could say anything, Melna dragged Lainie away and led her to a large tent near the southern herd camps. The tent was filled with women chatting excitedly as they changed into their dance finery and fixed their hair. Flania Gralen was there, as were Nan and Tarla. A woman with wet hair and a towel draped around her underclothes emerged from a curtained-off corner.
“I haven’t got anything to change into,” Lainie said to Melna, “but I would surely like a bath.”
“Go on.” Melna pushed her into the concealed corner, which held a metal tub, a chair with more towels piled on it, and a small stove where a kettle of water was keeping hot. Lainie scooped a little hot water into the bath to freshen it, stripped down, and climbed in. As she basked in the lovely warmth of the bath, her anger at Landstrom melted away. Tomorrow it might matter that people hated her and Silas and that they hadn’t been paid all the money they were owed, but tonight she would have fun.
She scrubbed down and washed her hair, then got out and dried off with one of the towels. As she reached for her clothes, wishing she had some clean things to put on, Melna stepped around the curtain and pushed a bundle of white cotton trimmed with lace into her arms. “You’re about Mrs. Gralen’s size. She said you can wear these.”
“But –”
“Go on!” Flania called out from beyond the curtain. “You can bring them back tomorrow.”
Lainie inspected the pile of fabric, and found lace-trimmed drawers and chemise, along with white stockings crocheted from fine thread, with ribbon garters to hold them up. The stockings were more suited for wearing with a dress, but it would be nice to have clean underclothes, at least. Lainie put on the drawers and chemise and stepped out of the bathing corner, carrying her clothes with her, so that the next woman waiting could have her turn for a bath.
Before she could start dressing, Melna handed her a long petticoat with a boned lace-up bodice. “Here, you can wear this too.”
“But I don’t have a dress,” Lainie said.
“I’ve got one for you,” Flania said from the other side of the tent, where Nan was doing up her hair in fancy braids.
At the prospect of having something nice to wear, Lainie felt a new spark of excitement for the dance. Eagerly, she pulled on the stockings and then the petticoat. “I’ve never bothered with stays,” she said as she fumbled with the lacing on the bodice. “I haven’t got enough of a figure to make it worth the trouble.”
“You got plenty, you just need to arrange it right,” Melna said. “We’ll just push everything in and up – like so – and lace you up good and tight –” She tugged the laces so hard Lainie gasped “– and there you go.”
Lainie looked down at herself. Her breasts swelled up above the petticoat bodice and lace-trimmed chemise, looking three times bigger than they were. Or maybe they really were that big and her usual camisoles and men’s shirts just didn’t make the most of them.
“Here.” Flania, her hair finished, came over to Lainie with her arms full of fabric. She held up the dress, a pale, creamy yellow printed all over with a delicate pattern of blue flowers. The scooped necklin
e and elbow-length sleeves were trimmed with white lace. Lainie caught her breath at how pretty it was.
“This should fit,” Flania said. “I wore it before I took pregnant with my little boy, so it’s a little small for me now. I brought it to trade or sell or in case someone needed a dress this size, and it’s a good thing I did. We might just need to take the hem up a bit.”
Flania eased the dress over Lainie’s head and helped her work her arms into the sleeves, then did the buttons up the back of the bodice. Lainie looked down again. The dress fit like a dream, the gathered skirt falling full and graceful over her hips from the close-fitting bodice. The very top of her new cleavage peeked out above the lace at the neckline. The dress was a little long; Tarla hitched up her skirts, knelt on the ground, and got busy pinning up the hem to the right length. While Tarla took up the hem with quick, neat stitches, Nan brushed out Lainie’s hair and arranged it a few different ways before settling on a single high braid wound into a crown at the top of her head.
“That looks perfect,” Melna said as Nan pulled out a few wavy tendrils of hair to fall around Lainie’s face and neck. “You say your man’s never seen you in a gown and stays before?”
“Never,” Lainie said.
“Well, he’s in for a treat,” Flania said. “Don’t you think so, ladies?”
“He surely is!” Melna said, and Tarla and Nan agreed as well.
When Tarla was finished with the hem, Flania offered Lainie a pair of low-heeled blue calfskin shoes. A brief thundershower had blown up while Lainie was getting dressed, so she would probably have to replace the shoes with her boots so they wouldn’t get muddy. But, for the moment, they completed her outfit perfectly. Lainie collected her discarded clothes, to take them back to her and Silas’s tent, then she, Flania, and Melna went outside to find their husbands.
Silas and a number of other men were waiting near the tent, passing around a bottle. If the other men knew they were sharing drink with a rumored wizard, they didn’t seem to care. On second thought, Lainie decided they were already too drunk to care or even notice. Silas had washed and put on clean clothes, and had even shaved, something that only happened once a nineday, if that often.
He was in mid-pull from the bottle when he caught sight of her. He froze, then lowered the bottle and handed it off without looking to see who he was giving it to or if they took it.
Lainie brushed her hands over her skirt, suddenly feeling shy and embarrassed, like a little girl caught playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes. “One of the girls had an extra dress she let me borrow. You like it?”
His eyes dropped to her neckline and stayed there, and her cheeks grew warm. He tried to say something, but it came out as kind of a croak. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Yeah. I like it. You look pretty. I mean, you always look pretty, darlin’, but you look… real pretty.”
“You think so?”
He tore his stare away from her cleavage. With an elegant gesture that could only have come from the highest mage society in Granadaia, he took her hand in his and kissed it. “You are the loveliest sight ever to have graced these eyes, my lady.”
Her face burned hotter. She looked down, feeling silly and out of place, dressing up in fancy clothes and being spoken to in such fancy words. “Don’t make fun.”
He pulled her into a hard embrace. “I’m not making fun. Oh, gods, Lainie, you’re so beautiful.”
Relief that he wasn’t laughing at her and delight at his words left her so completely flustered that she didn’t know what to say. “And you look handsome,” she finally managed.
He grinned. “As compared to how I usually look?”
“No, I mean, you always – you know what I mean.”
He laughed and kissed her, then offered his arm to her like a gentleman offering his arm to a lady. “Shall we?”
She took his arm and smiled up at him. “Yes.”
Chapter 13
AFTER DROPPING OFF Lainie’s work clothes at the tent, Lainie and Silas headed for the part of the market grounds where the dance would be held, well away from the noise and mess of the cattle stockades. The rain had left the evening pleasantly cool, but the ground had already started to dry, and Lainie happily decided that she could wear the blue shoes without ruining them, after all.
All the co-op grub wagons were set up in a circle at the center of the celebration area and open for serving. There was more food than Lainie could have imagined – great pans of spiced roasted beef, grilled beefsteaks and fish fresh from the Gap River, stews, beans, biscuits, breads, fresh and cooked greens, cakes, and fruit pies. Several saloon keepers from the towns near the Gap had set up booths and were selling drinks. To Lainie’s delight, a few of them even had casks of sweet lemonade, a rare treat back home in Bitterbush Springs.
Cattlehounds ran around the dining area, happily gobbling up tasty treats dropped on the ground or thrown to them by the celebrating hands. A group of trail bosses went from wagon to wagon, sampling food at each one and making notes on papers nailed to writing boards. The prizes awarded tonight would give the winning cooks bragging rights for the coming winter and let them command higher wages on next year’s drive. Lainie and Silas ate their fill at every wagon but the Bingtons’. All of it was delicious, except for the food from the Forn’s Crossing wagon, but the Forn’s Crossing cook had tapped a keg of beer and was giving drinks away for free, so his wagon was one of the most popular. From what Lainie could tell, Nan and Tarla and the Bentwood Gulch cook were in tight competition for the grand prize, but Silas told her that if she had still been working at the Windy Valley wagon, she would have been the sure winner.
The sun set over the hills to the west, coloring the snow-covered peaks of the Spine rose and peach and purple. As the stars appeared in the sky, bonfires were lit around the large open area that was reserved for the dancing, and a band of musicians with pipes, fiddles, guitar, and hand drums took their places and started playing. Lainie had never thought she was a very good dancer, but Silas more than made up for her lack of skill. He led and guided her as they stepped and spun and swayed to the music, and she had never felt so graceful and light on her feet. There were set dances and circle dances and couples’ dances, two-steps and three-steps, and they danced in the light of the bonfires until they were giddy and dizzy and their feet cried out for a rest.
Laughing and breathless, holding on to each other, they stumbled away from the dance circle back to the grub wagons. Silas bought a bottle from one of the saloon keepers’ booths. He took a long drink, said, “Ah,” then held the bottle out to Lainie. “Want some?”
She didn’t much care for alcohol, but she was thirsty, and maybe this time she would like it. “I guess.” She took a drink; it burned going down, and she doubled over, laughing through her gasps for air. Laughing as well, Silas held her up though he was no more steady than she was. When she caught her breath and straightened up, he bent his head down to hers and kissed her, a long, messy, whiskey-tasting kiss.
“I’d rather have lemonade,” she said when he finally let her come up for air.
“Than kiss me?”
“No, silly, than whiskey.”
“Well, then, darlin’, that’s all right.”
He bought her another cup of lemonade, and they got another slice of peach pie from the Bentwood Gulch wagon. They found a secluded bench where they could sit down and rest their feet, and took turns feeding the pie to each other while Silas worked on his bottle.
Beyond the grub wagons, opposite the dance circle, stood a row of brightly painted wagons which had been driven in by the house ladies from the nearby towns. Some of the ladies were out at the party, others were entertaining customers inside the wagons. Several drive hands stood outside, drinking and joking as they waited their turns.
Not far from the birdy wagons, a dozen or more lanterns on poles illuminated several tables where card games were in progress. One table in particular caught Lainie’s eye. Silas had once told her she could
sniff out a high-stakes card game from two leagues away; this game was a lot closer than two leagues, and judging by the players, including Mr. Landstrom, Mr. Nikalsdon, and several other co-op managers and ranch foremen, and the presence of a professional dealer, it was the highest-stakes game going that night. “Let’s go look,” she said, tugging at Silas’s sleeve and pointing at the game.
He took another pull from his bottle. “Anything you want, darlin’.”
They approached the table, hanging back behind the house ladies and other onlookers so Lainie could watch unobserved. Landstrom was chewing on an enormous unlit cigar and piling up money. Lainie watched the play go around the table a few times; the Windy Valley manager was playing very high stakes indeed.
“Reckon that’s our money he’s playing with?” she said in a low voice to Silas.
“I’d lay money on it,” he answered, then chortled at his own joke.
Lainie made sure he saw her roll her eyes at him, though by the looks of it he was too bricked by now to care. “He won’t be for long,” she said.
When the game ended, before the cards could be dealt again, she eased her way through the crowd around the table. Silas followed close behind her. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said, giving the men at the table her best, brightest smile. “Got room for another player?”
The men looked at her, then over her shoulder at Silas. Landstrom scowled. “Vendine.”
Silas drank from his bottle again. “Not me,” he said. “Her. I’m not allowed to play for money.”
“I don’t play cards with cheating wizards,” Landstrom said.
Whispers of “Wizards!” and “Suppose it’s true?” flew around the table, but the looks cast Lainie’s way were as much curious as hostile.