Battle Magic

8

THE ROAD SOUTH, DOHAN TO KUSHI

So relieved was Rosethorn to be out in the countryside, able to leave the caravan now and then to investigate a new plant, that two days of travel and three inspections by imperial soldiers passed before she realized that her two youngsters were behaving oddly. She also had to wait and stay with the caravan to be sure that her instincts were correct. Most of the time Evvy and Briar behaved as they always did when traveling. They rambled up and down the caravan, making friends with Traders and merchants alike. They helped with the horses, the meals, and cleanup. Briar spent idle moments in the back of the wagon putting together seed bombs. These were mixes of lethally long-spined thorny plants that he and Rosethorn had created to grow very fast when the cloth that held them struck the ground. Evvy had her own magical weapons to work on and she did so, knapping sharp edges onto disks of flint. All of that was perfectly normal.

In the second search by imperial soldiers who looked for Parahan, Rosethorn thought both of her youngsters looked uncommonly pale. As the soldiers questioned other travelers, Briar put his arm around Evvy, when neither she nor he encouraged gestures of affection before strangers. They were cheerful enough when they answered the soldiers’ questions, but something was odd. Then Rosethorn spotted a Yanjingyi variant of an herb she used to cleanse wounds and she left the road to get some. By the time she returned, the soldiers were waiting only to question her.

No, she would say, far more politely than she would have done had she been in a friendly country. I have seen no escaped slaves or captives. I have all I can manage keeping up with those two children there. She would point out Evvy and Briar, who watched from their seat on the wagon. Usually the big cat Monster watched, too, blinking sleepily in the sun. No, I have received no messages from anyone who wanted me to hide them on my wagon, Rosethorn would answer. I know better than to break the law in a foreign country. Besides, the Traders discourage it. Are we finished? I need to get these plants in damp wrappings before they wither.

It wasn’t true — her magic would preserve the plants as long as she wanted to — but the questions tired her.

The soldiers would let her go.

On the third night, after two more such searches, Rosethorn made arrangements for them to take supper at their own fire in the shelter of their wagon. Briar and Evvy collected their servings of the evening meal while she tied their horses in a picket line near their wagon. If anyone thought they could snoop on the trio’s conversation, the horses would give warning.

Once the meal and cleanup were done and they had settled by the fire with a bit of work before bedtime, Rosethorn took a sip of her tea and said in Chammuri, “Do you know what I miss?”

Briar looked up from his night’s collection of seed bombs, mildly puzzled. Evvy, who was rubbing Mystery’s ears, shook her head.

Rosethorn went on. “The entire time we were in the palace, I don’t think I went half a day without ‘Parahan said this’ or ‘Parahan told me that.’” Evvy’s head jerked up. Rosethorn said, as if she hadn’t noticed, “I heard this mostly from Evvy, but you had some interesting talks with him, too, Briar.”

“We miss him, that’s all,” Briar said, but his eyes were too steady as he looked at her. She was very familiar with that gaze. He was waiting to see how much she knew. It could be a matter of stolen grapes or a missing prince; but her boy was in it up to his elbows.

“When we left Gyongxe, you both talked about Dokyi and the God-King until I thought you wanted me to adopt them. Now we’ve been away from the palace four days. Your good friend — our good friend — actually managed to escape. It’s clear he hasn’t been found. Yet you two haven’t uttered a word. Aren’t you worried? Aren’t you wondering how he managed to slip his chains and his cage?” Evvy glanced at Briar, who remained absolutely still. With increasing wrath, because suddenly a few things made very good sense, Rosethorn whispered, “That is the wonderful thing, isn’t it? You would think that only magic would help him to escape, but if that were the case, the soldiers wouldn’t be looking for him still. The mages would have found him. So it wasn’t magic that helped him to slip his shackles.”

“Please don’t be angry,” Evvy blurted. “I stole the picks, and I took them to Parahan, and I moved the blocks so he could get out. And I opened the locks.”

Rosethorn looked at Evvy. “You, Evumeimei Dingzai, stole Briar’s lock picks and unlocked Parahan’s shackles and cage.”

“She knows I did it, Evvy,” Briar said. “Even if you stole my picks, those were fancy locks. You’re not ready for them yet.”

“I really did move the stones,” Evvy muttered. “We put them back. None of our magic is there anymore, so they won’t know we used it.”

Rosethorn drew her legs up and rested her face on her knees. Finally she looked at her companions. “Go to bed,” she ordered them. “No, wait. Did he tell you his plans?”

They shook their heads.

“Excellent. Go to bed, both of you.”

She wished they had gone to their bedrolls under the wagon in utter fear of her wrath. Instead, as she was putting out the fire, she heard Evvy murmur to Briar, “That went better than I thought.”

Rosethorn held her hands palm up and looked at the sky. Gracious Mila, help me explain how close they came to the most horrible kind of death, she begged her goddess. Give them knowledge of the world before the world kills them. Give me patience, before I buy two barrels and ship them home that way. I beg you, my goddess, guide me before I do something dreadful and box their ears.

Rosethorn knew very well that these weren’t the reasons she hadn’t given them a long list of punishments and a royal scold. She had shown mercy because in two days she would have to tell them that she was sending them on to Hanjian without her.

With dawn came the promise of rain. While Evvy fetched tea and steamed dumplings, Briar and Rosethorn set the ribs on the wagon and rolled the heavy cover over them to protect the most delicate of their belongings. They had scarcely gone two miles down the road when the skies delivered on their promise. The cats, who liked to go for a run first thing after breakfast, returned yowling in complaint and took up positions under the cover. Soon after Evvy had made certain all of them were accounted for, the traffic on the road south came to a halt. There were soldiers ahead, searching and questioning the travelers. Briar tied his riding horse’s reins to the wagon and climbed up on the seat with Rosethorn. Gently he took the team’s reins from her hands.

Rosethorn decided that now was as good a time as any. She half turned so that both of her companions could see her face under her wide-brimmed straw hat. “Tomorrow we’ll be reaching a big market town called Kushi. You might remember it from the map I showed you. We’re going to have a small change in our plans after that. The caravan turns southeast from there, going on to Hanjian. You two will take our things and stay with the caravan, understand me? Briar, you’re to get Evvy, the cats, your shakkans —”

“No.” Briar held the reins tightly, so much so that his knuckles had gone white, but he wasn’t pulling too hard on the horses’ mouths. She made sure of that.

“Don’t argue with me, boy,” she warned.

“No,” Evvy said. She knuckled an eye before a tear could escape. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t leave him in the cage. Please don’t send me away.” She crawled to the back with the cats. “I won’t leave, you can’t make me.”

Rosethorn turned to Briar. “You have to take her back to Emelan,” she said, trying to hold his eyes with her own. He would not look at her, keeping his gaze on the team that pulled the wagon. “Briar, you heard what they said, Weishu has kept the religious people in the local temples prisoner. Unless there was a miracle of some kind, no one has been able to smuggle word to Gyongxe. I don’t know if I’ll beat the imperial army there, but I have to try.”

“It’s a horrible long way,” Evvy argued. “It’ll be dangerous, with bandits and rock slides and border guards. You’ll need us.”

“Be sensible,” Briar said. “Even with people being locked up and all, you’re going the long way around. They probably will know by then. What will you do, turn and walk back out?”

Rosethorn stared at the horse’s ears. “I have to help. You won’t understand. If the First Circle Temple falls … It’s sacred to everyone of the Living Circle. This is my faith, and my devotion. My vows.”

“Now we come to it,” Briar said bleakly.

Rosethorn glared at him. “My vows. But I won’t risk your lives because I swore to defend my faith and those who take shelter in it. Neither of you is a believer. I am not dragging either of you into a war, and that is my last word on the subject!”

Rosethorn looked around the inside of the gilav’s wagon with admiration. The home of the head of the caravan and his family was ornate and as organized as the caravan itself. Each inch of space was put to use, with no clutter allowed on any surface. Rosethorn always took away ideas for her small workshop at home.

She exchanged her greetings with Rajoni and her mother, Nisha — the gilav himself took over as ride leader while Nisha and his daughter had their midday with Rosethorn and talked business. The women invited Rosethorn to take a seat on a foldout bench as she surveyed the food set on the table between the three of them.

Since this clan of Traders had its roots in the Realms of the Sun, Rosethorn was braced for the spicy vegetable stew with fish and green chilies and the pickles flavored with mustard seeds. Silently she thanked Mila of the Grain for the rice that took some of the bite off the chilies and mustard. She even managed believable thanks to her hosts for the excellence of the meal.

She always thought of Lark when she ate food like this. Lark could eat spicy food by the bucket, the hotter the better. She’d acquired a taste for it as a traveling player on the roads between the Pebbled Sea and the Storm Dragons Ocean. It was thanks to Lark that Rosethorn had at least a little preparation for some of the deadlier dishes of the southern and eastern countries.

Once they had cleaned their hands, Rajoni was pouring a final cup of tea when Nisha asked, “You said you have business with us?”

Rosethorn picked up the small cloth bundle she had put beside her when she took her seat. Carefully she set it before them, centering it with her hands. She knew that she had the two Traders’ absolute attention. Negotiating business with Traders was a ceremony, one that Rosethorn, Briar, and Evvy appreciated. It involved gifts, which showed respect, and money, which showed thanks for the extra time and trouble those who conducted the caravan would be put to.

“To our sorrow, we have realized we must change our plans,” Rosethorn told the other women. “For reasons we may not discuss, we must leave the caravan at Kushi, but our goods, including Briar’s miniature trees, must be conveyed to Hanjian, and placed aboard the next Trader ship for Summersea in Emelan, on the Pebbled Sea. We will need to purchase our pack animals and riding horses from you as well.” She didn’t mention that she would be selling or trading their horses for others in Kushi. The less that was known of their plans, even by tight-mouthed Traders, the better.

“What of the cats?” Nisha asked with a frown. “It seems to me that your Evvy exercises a control over the cats that will not be possible for strangers. It would be difficult to convey them. Not impossible, given proper consideration, of course.”

“Of course,” Rosethorn said. She sighed. “No, the cats will be coming with us.” In fact, the battle over the cats had been almost as bad as the battle for Briar and Evvy to stay with Rosethorn. It was Evvy’s threat not to travel with them, but to follow them, with the cats, that had forced Rosethorn to agree.

“These are all very difficult and unusual requirements to fulfill,” Nisha said. She folded her hands on the table. It was time for the real bargaining to start.

Rosethorn opened the topmost folds of cloth on her bundle to reveal two rubies the size of pigeon’s eggs. Evvy could call forth the magic that was part of any stone, which meant that others would pay highly for what she had handled. She accepted precious stones in trade, which had come in handy on their way east. Hidden deep among the girl’s things was a store of gems that the three of them had accumulated against emergencies during their travels in exchange for magical work.

Rajoni and Nisha were interested in the rubies. Their faces were expressionless, but Rosethorn could read the signs in the twitch of Rajoni’s shoulder and the hitch in Nisha’s breath. Now Rosethorn opened another fold in her package to reveal a vial and a small cloth bundle.

“A drop of this” — Rosethorn touched a finger to the vial — “on the lips of one you believe to be lying to you will result in truthful speech. A pinch of this” — she touched the bundle of herbs — “in a cup of tea for a laboring mother will ease her birth completely. They are our gifts, a thank-you in advance for the trouble we will cause.”

“We will need a list of your requirements,” Nisha said. “Written instructions for the transport of your goods to Hanjian, and another for the ship that will take them to your home.”

Rosethorn reached into a pocket in her habit and brought out folded papers. There had been plenty of time that morning, while waiting for the imperials to search for Parahan, to write everything out. “I will have the instructions for the ship’s captain later this afternoon,” she said, handing the papers over.

Rajoni looked her over. “You will need magic on your face,” she said frankly. “Briar and Evvy are fine for this country, but you stand out.”

“I could go veiled,” Rosethorn suggested.

“Our mimander can place a spell that is hard for other mages to detect,” Nisha replied. “We’ve had to use it before. It will last a week, and those who look on you will believe you come from their country.”

Rosethorn frowned. “I thought mimanders could only deal in one kind of magic.”

Rajoni shrugged. “You are able to work a spell from another mage if it is complete and needs but a word from you, yes? It is the same here.”

Rosethorn grimaced. “I understand. There is another thing.”

The women raised their brows in the same expression. Up until that moment Rosethorn would have said Rajoni resembled her father, the gilav. She did her best not to smile, because now it was clear the daughter was her mother’s child as well. Rosethorn took a sip of tea and opened another fold of her bundle. There lay some of the emperor’s farewell gift, ten pieces of gold, each the length and width of Rosethorn’s hand and twice the thickness of her cup.

“I need a map of the country between Kushi and the end of the Snow Serpent Pass in Gyongxe,” she said quietly. “And I need a map of Gyongxe. I will copy yours or Briar will, but we need them.”

Nisha looked at Rosethorn, then at Rajoni. Trader maps were sacred documents, kept secret among Traders. Rosethorn saw refusal in the women’s eyes.

She opened the last fold. The mage back in Laenpa had traded Evvy three Kombanpur diamonds for a handful of stones that Evvy had prepared for magical use. In turn, Evvy had spent one month of her spare time that winter doing nothing else but thinking about those stones when she was not carrying them in her pockets, bathing with them, and even sleeping with them. The next month she had turned one of the diamonds into ten shards, which one of the local stone merchants happily traded for two small diamonds. The month after that, with further thought, she had tried to shape a large diamond again, carefully running her power down chosen fissures in the gem. The result lay on the cloth before them: a clean, many-surfaced stone like a jewel-cut ruby, sapphire, or emerald, with a brilliant white fire. The cuts and stone were uneven, but Rosethorn could tell that made no difference whatever to the other women. She reached for it, saying, “I do understand the maps are —”

Nisha beat her to the diamond. “We will copy the maps. You will have them by the time we stop for the night. Be assured, they will be correct in all the ways you will require.”

Rajoni reached for a small basket nearby and placed the gifts in that. “It is true, then? The emperor means to wage war on Gyongxe?”

Rosethorn said nothing.

Nisha was turning the diamond over in her palm. She looked up when Rosethorn did not reply. Seeing that Rosethorn hesitated, she pointed to the unlit lamp that hung over the table. “What is said under the lamp is repeated only to those who are trusted,” she assured Rosethorn.

Rosethorn nodded. “He is going to invade through Inxia.”

The Traders exchanged looks. “We were supposed to cross roads with Third Caravan Gerzi fifty miles north of Dohan,” Rajoni said, her voice just above a whisper. “But only two of their people came by stealth to warn us. Imperial troops took the caravan. They now hold everyone but the two who escaped. Very slowly our people are leaving Yanjing. Our imperial treaty states clearly that we are permitted to trade without harm. Either this emperor thinks we do not know our own treaties, or he believes we fear him too much to punish him by refusing to trade.”

Rosethorn felt a chill run down her spine. “I pray you will escape Yanjing before he sees that is what you are doing,” she replied. “It will go badly with your people if he realizes you are fleeing altogether.”

Rajoni made a V of two fingers and stabbed them at the floor. That was the way Traders signaled spitting when they were unwilling to soil their carpets.

“Even though you are not one of ours, your prayers are welcome,” Nisha said. “Now, let us begin to make your arrangements. And do not worry that the other travelers will tell any imperial soldiers about those who left us unexpectedly in Kushi. We will make sure that they understand it is against their best interest to speak of it.”

Rosethorn thanked them for the meal, and for the excellent bout of trading. Tying her wide straw hat to her head, she walked back to her wagon and her two unruly students. There was much to be done yet, even if the Traders had taken on the burden of copying the maps. Briar and Evvy had better have gotten their packing under way while she was gone, Rosethorn thought. She was still unhappy that they had been so impossible about continuing on to Emelan. She knew what Moonstream and her fellow dedicates back home would say when they learned she had dragged a child Evvy’s age into a war.

Those two impossible young people would never hear that she was secretly glad they were coming with her. The only thing that had frightened her more than taking them into a land soon to be invaded was the thought of letting them travel back to Emelan without her. She trusted the Traders: The ties that bound Briar, his foster-sisters, their teachers, and the Traders were many and strong, too many and too strong to be erased by outsiders’ money and magic. But they were not Rosethorn, and they were not aware of the special kinds of peril that followed those who wielded ambient magic.

It was almost dawn when the three of them finally gave up on sleeping and finished their last preparations. Briar and Rosethorn had spent time before bed working with their traveling clothes. Sandry had made them from an unusual cloth, both the wool that most people wore and linen spun together with the wool. It was the linen that had mattered on delicate occasions, when Rosethorn or Briar could call on it to look more elderly, worn, and hard-used than it was. Their neat, clean traveling tunics and breeches turned into the weary clothes that poor farmers wore for days on end as they went about long hours of work. The braided trim came off, to be packed away. The wooden buttons lost their polish and developed cracks and splinters. Briar planned to send Evvy to buy straw sandals for them while he and Rosethorn swapped their horses for others more suited to poor farmers.

Using Evvy’s light stones they dressed, then quickly readied the horses and the cats. Two years’ of experience at having to leave some places quickly had made them good at being quiet.

They were drinking tea made over some of Evvy’s hot stones when Rosethorn raised the cat issue again. “Evvy, they’ll know to look for the cats. Can’t you —”

Evvy stared at her. “Then I’ll follow on my own. You don’t know. All those years in Prince’s Heights in Chammur — my cats were all I had. You never spent all your days with strangers looking to wallop you just for living. They were my blanket when I didn’t have anything else. When I had to eat rat, they shared with me. I am not dumping them with strangers in a foreign place.”

Two of the hot stones cracked and went to pieces.

“Sorry.” Evvy walked away from them, over to the wagon.

“We’ll grow plants from the carry-baskets,” Briar told Rosethorn soothingly. “If anyone asks, we’ll say we bought the plants at the market and we’re going to try them in the garden. No one will notice there’s cats inside.”

Steps — quiet ones — made them turn. Rajoni approached, carrying the smallest of lamps. She also had an old Trader woman with her. When they reached Briar and Rosethorn, Rajoni said, “When Grandmother learned what was going on — she had to log in your payment, understand — she told us we were fools.”

“My children sell a charm to disguise the woman and never think of seven cats,” the old woman remarked, and shook her head. “The soldiers capture you because of cats, then see charm to disguise woman and punish Traders. No.”

“She came to offer her help,” Rajoni explained when she realized Rosethorn thought the old woman was going to create problems.

“For a price,” Briar said quietly.

Both women raised their eyebrows as if to say, What else? Money was the main thing that kept Traders free and alive in the hostile lands where they made their living.

“Isn’t it the mimander who handles all spells, even purchased ones?” Rosethorn asked. He had come the night before and set the disguise spell before she went to bed. It had changed the look and feel of her from top to toe, everything about her but the way she spoke.

“The mimander still snores in his bed,” the grandmother replied crisply. “And we have no charms to sell that will disguise baskets of cats as crates of gabbling chickens. This is work that must be done over the baskets and over the cats.”

“But you can do it,” Evvy said. Her hands were bunched into fists. “Even their sounds?”

The old woman looked at her. “What do you offer, girl who changed the nature of diamonds?”

“But I didn’t,” Evvy said. “I just broke them in the way they want to be broken. What people call flaws in stones, those are really just opportunities, you know.”

“Diamond opportunities are beyond other lugshai,” the old woman said, using the word for non-Trader craftsmen.

Evvy grinned. “I have a few opportunities, then.” She went to the pack with her mage kit and dug in it. She soon returned with a piece of cloth. When she opened it, she revealed four long pieces of diamond that sparked in the light from Rajoni’s lamp. “These are diamond splinters. Your lugshai, or whoever you get, must fix these really well to a metal grip, then use them as a chisel on one of the flaws in a diamond. Diamond will cut diamond. It will cut the surface, too, so they have to grip the stone tight in some kind of vise, and it will break diamond, so they can’t hit too hard, understand? Have we a bargain?”

“Show me the cats. Then you can tell me if we have a bargain,” the woman told her.

Briar and Rosethorn stayed with Rajoni. “I still don’t understand,” Rosethorn murmured to the other woman. “We were always told about mimanders and their one specialty.”

“But they do not hold all the magic for the clan, any more than one mage holds all the magic for the village,” the ride leader replied. “Some of us have more or fewer talents for different kinds of magic, and some don’t want to limit themselves to one thing all their days. Grandmother discovered she could hide things when there was a killing riot against Traders and she hid her whole family. She was only five. She can un-sour and sour milk, tell if a well has gone bad, cleanse a water source if it is bad. And she can make my mother back down as fast as a monsoon rain, which looks like magic to me. Are your horses ready?”

By the time the cats had come to look and sound like chickens — and their baskets had come to resemble crates — Evvy and Rajoni’s grandmother were on good terms. Evvy was even allowed to kiss the old woman on the cheek before Rajoni took her back to the Trader carts. Then it was time for the three travelers to mount their riding horses, the weariest, scruffiest animals the Traders would allow them to keep, and lead their four packhorses to the market gate.

It was a matter of a bit here and a bit there. When they emerged from the city some time after noon, they had sold the horses they had taken from the caravan at one horse trader, then bought shaggy, sturdy ponies to ride and four bright-eyed, wary mules for pack animals from another. These were farm mules, used to humans and animals alike, which barely blinked at the false chickens they were forced to carry. The ponies, the trader had assured Rosethorn, were bred in the mountains and used to breathing there.

After a trip to the sellers of used clothes, Evvy once again had the bright head cloths she loved. Rosethorn chose the more sober colors of a married woman. Both had put on long skirts made of odds and ends, but their breeches were underneath them, just in case.

Their packs could have been supplies for a farm or the things they needed for a long visit to relatives. As they left the town they presented the picture of a family that knew how to travel. Each carried a cloth sling across the front of their chests. Other travelers used their slings for food, water bottles, cloths for wiping away sweat, or coin purses. Rosethorn and Briar carried round balls of seed made to explode into thorny, strangling vines when they hit a target. Evvy carried her stone alphabet, razor-edged throwing disks, and honey candies. She was always afraid of being hungry.

Once they had passed the guards at the south gate on their way out of Kushi, Briar let Rosethorn and Evvy ride ahead. He purchased steamed plum buns, pressed-rice cakes, and ham at the vendors who kept shop beside the road. It was there that he saw an old beggar or madman hobble through the gate, propped by a long staff. His sack bent him half over. He was utterly filthy, barefooted and bareheaded, missing teeth and blind in one eye. His mingled gray and black locks were lank with greasy dirt. He offered a begging bowl to one of the soldiers on the gate, but the man just pushed it away and ordered the poor creature to move along. The beggar stumbled on and offered his bowl to travelers who were passing him by. Several wrinkled their noses and pretended he wasn’t there. Others walked far around him.

Briar shook his head. People assumed they would always be well fed and well clothed. The beggar lurched toward him, bringing a wave of piss-stink and other smells with him. Briar breathed through his mouth and beckoned so the man could see him with his good eye. The beggar approached on stumbling feet, his staff clicking on the stones of the road. His feet, like his hands, were wrapped in stained and dirty rags.

“Good afternoon to you,” Briar said. “Here you go.” He put a handful of coins in the man’s bowl first, then covered them with one of his many clean handkerchiefs. On top of that he put two of the plum buns and three pressed-rice cakes. The man could chew those even with some of his front teeth missing.

“Thank you, young master,” the beggar said, lisping through the gaps in his teeth. “May Kanzan the Merciful smile on you all your days.”

Briar put his palms together and bowed. “May she smile on us all, friend,” he said politely.

The beggar stopped to tuck his food into various places in his upper garments. The coins vanished into a breeches pocket. Then he limped on, chewing a rice cake.

Briar turned to collect the rest of the food he’d bought for his girls.

“You waste your money on the likes of that,” the cook said. “He’ll just spend those coins on wine.”

Briar shrugged. “If it makes him warm and happy for an hour or two, I’m not the one to judge.” He bowed to the cook and tucked the bundle into the sling over his chest. Excusing himself to those he bumped, he wove through the walkers, wagons, and riders as he searched for Rosethorn and Evvy. He thought he would overtake the beggar in only a few yards, but he was well along before he passed the man. The beggar had managed to hitch a ride on the tail of a farmer’s cart, and was dozing in spite of the faint drizzle.

Briar grinned and passed the cart. Every step he took away from Kushi and their last ties to the caravan and the palace made his heart lighter. The Traders had been decent — they always were — and the people traveling with the caravan were pleasant enough to talk to, but it was hard to keep an eye on Rosethorn and Evvy among so many people. Here, too, it would be difficult, but soldiers would not be palace troops, fearing for their lives when the emperor learned that Parahan had escaped. Soldiers here would be bored and uninterested.

He soon caught up to Rosethorn and Evvy. They ate in the saddle while keeping a sharp eye on the pack animals. None of them had much to say. The cart with the sleeping beggar passed them by, but they passed him before too long. He was afoot again. The cart had turned down a smaller road away from the main one. The beggar, it seemed, wanted to go south, but not the farmer who had given him a ride.

More and more of those on the main road turned off it as the day drew to its close. Still, there were plenty of travelers remaining to enter the caravansary near sunset. Here, Rosethorn’s group was not far from the banks of the Grinding Fist River and the high bridge they would be crossing in the morning. The sound of the river’s thunder as it descended from the Drimbakang Sharlog was intimidating, though Briar would have bitten his own tongue rather than admit it.

Briar and Rosethorn told those few fellow travelers who had taken an interest that they could not afford the prices of a caravansary, and they set their small camp up not far from the gates. Briar wasn’t worried about bandits or wild animals here. Other travelers couldn’t afford the caravansary or chose to save money, so the camp outside the walls was a good-sized one. The guards atop the caravansary walls could see them and come to their rescue if there was trouble.

Rosethorn sent Evvy to a nearby stream to fill their teapot and soup pot. The girl returned to tell Briar, “You know that beggar fellow? He’s soaking his feet in the stream. He stinks. I got the water upstream from him.”

Briar and Rosethorn looked at each other. “You could put him downwind,” Briar suggested.

“Go get him,” she growled. “And keep him away from our chickens.”

“Oh, no, no, young fellow, thank you, no,” the beggar said when Briar made his offer. “I won’t bother anyone here.”

“You won’t bother us. It won’t be easy to see in the dark, and you’re off on your own. We’re making soup.” Briar used the voice he called his “best wheedle.” He could get things out of Rosethorn with that voice. “My mother can do very good things with soup. There will be ham in it.”

The beggar, it seemed, was made of sterner stuff. “I know what I smell like.” His lisping, slightly husky voice was gentle in the growing shadows. “I will be fine. Kanzan shower blessings on you and those kind women you travel with.”

Briar returned to Rosethorn, shaking his head.

The night passed quietly. When they woke, Briar returned to the stream for the morning’s tea water. The beggar was gone. A bowl that looked just like one of their own sat under his tree, freshly cleaned. Briar carried it back with the pot full of water.

“I took him a little soup after you went to bed,” Rosethorn said. “That’s all.”

Guards in imperial colors left the caravansary with the rest of the travelers that morning. Those who had camped outside were already lined up at the bridge, waiting for them to unlock the tall gates. Briar, Rosethorn, and Evvy were near the end of that line with a pushy merchant behind them. They waited as the guards looked through many wagons before they finally unlocked the gates and people began to stream through.

“What were you looking for?” Briar asked one guard as he was about to ride onto the bridge.

“Escaped prisoner,” the man said, and yawned. “As if he’d come this way.”

“Gods pity him when the imperial torturers get him,” the merchant in front of Rosethorn said bitterly.

Everyone murmured agreement. Then they rode onto the bridge, where the thunder of the river below drowned out the sound of their crossing.