The Unfinished Land

The First City

THE CLOUDS SLIDING along the heights of the pass were so dense they could not tell the difference between night and morning.

Reynard studied this low, coiled deck for a few minutes before rolling out of his covers and standing. He had slept in a quilted round rug from the wagon, stitched with Arabic words, he thought, but comfortable despite the presence of passages likely from the Moors’ sacred and blasphemous book, and now he handed it back to a plump older girl with strong arms and henna-colored hair, one of Yuchil’s assistants or perhaps her daughters, who, it seemed, rarely left the wagon but followed Yuchil’s orders and found whatever was needed inside to supply their needs. She had not appeared before now. Who else was hiding in that wagon?

Widsith had slept in another rug and did not break a deep silence, as if still waking from a fraught dream, contemplating his doom, and that approaching right soon, in his opinion. Reynard, on the other hand, had reacquired, after the plain of jars, a kind of curiosity for what lay beyond the pass. He tried to get answers from Calafi, asking her what, if anything, she had heard from other Travelers—or had sensed on her own. But she only waggled her head, tossed her red frizzled hair, and danced to music he could not hear; and soon he felt a growing apprehension, that he might see all there was to be seen, and understand none of it! For no one, not even Nikolias, seemed inclined to prepare him in any way. Maybe they were simply as ignorant as he was himself. But surely when they had delivered stories before, they had interacted with those of their people assigned to receive them and carry them farther! Maybe they wished for him to innocently view what they themselves were so seldom allowed to see: whatever lay beyond the pass, down the smooth road. They would not even respond to his questions about how often they had been here before.

Bela and Sany and a warrior whose name he did not know talked as they doused the fire. Sany seemed to have Moorish roots. Bela, like many of the Travelers, hailed from the mountain countries in the eastern continent. Reynard stood a few yards away, listening to their mix of Rom and a pidgin of Tinker’s Cant that seemed more eastern than Irish. They paid him no attention. “Papa is putting us all in danger, with the Eater here,” said Bela, who sported only two knives and one short sword. Bela called Valdis a Verdulak.

Sany murmured, under his breath, “An ifrit, a ghroul.”

Yuchil’s strong-armed assistant, whom they called Sophia, shook her head. “She is no danger to us.”

“Why say that?”

“Because she doth serve the paynim,” Sophia said. “She taketh from them, and giveth to them as well. But she dothn’t serve Travelers. We are not of the pact.”

“ ’Tis not always true,” Yuchil said. “I suspect some of our people have here made deals with Calybo, to live long enough to understand the Crafters.”

The assistant did not disagree, but her expression was sour.

Andalo, cleaning and sheathing all his knives and two swords, said, “All is changing. No one is here to take our deliveries! Hel is no longer with us.”

“Hel hath not been with us for most of time,” Yuchil pointed out. “What matter to mortals?”

They saw Reynard’s attention and turned away, walking around the wagon.

“Hath the Eater returned?” Nikolias asked.

“I watch,” Calafi said. “She hath not.”

Nikolias walked off with a shrug to urge the men to finish grooming and feeding the horses. Reynard walked over to where Widsith was shaking off the last of his deep sleep. The Pilgrim did his best to ignore all attentions and company, and did not even look his way.