“Not only him,” snarled Bear. “Altamont can see it as well.” He stretched himself like a huge cat and turned to watch the men on the bridge as he moved through one of the exercises he and Xulai often had done together. This one was called the Dance of the Herons, one of Xulai’s favorites, and she longed to get down from the wagon and move with him to work the kinks out. Doing so would attract attention, however. Not a good idea.
She reminded herself to be as childish and unexceptionable as possible, turning to stare back the way they had come. From the bridge, the high tower at Woldsgard was invisible, the mountain peak behind it scarcely less so. Then, as the sun fell, they saw a star blooming on the mountaintop.
“There,” said Bear softly. “A signal for the duke.”
“But none on the other mountains,” said Xulai, who had been looking for one.
“Too much glitter from the sunset to see,” said Bear. “It’ll be dark soon! Will we still go a way east before stopping?”
Bartelmy replied in a voice full of annoyance. “When I went over the trip with His Grace, the duke, we planned to go several miles that way, yes, not wanting to stop on Altamont ground, but with this delay, it’ll soon be dark, and the beasts are already tired. Last time I was by here there was a clearing with a brook about a half mile farther on. It’s still a good distance from the Old Dark House . . .”
Ahead of them the men on the bridge cried out and slapped one another on their backs. Waving to Bartelmy and Bear, they went slowly down the arc of the bridge and turned into the eastward road, slowly, very slowly.
Bartelmy cast a look first at the creeping ox-drawn wagon, then at the darkening sky and said, “If you’ve no objection, Bear, we’ll pick the nearer campground.”
Bear examined the sky for himself, shook his head, murmured an assent. Bartelmy clucked to the horses. They crossed the river, went past the crossroad and not far beyond, around a short curve. There, to the right, through a lane of large trees, they found a small, grassy clearing. Along its far side, a cheerful streamlet rushed north toward the Wells. Willum and Clive came into the clearing, parking the wagon and the dray, one at each end of the hop-skip to form a U shape. Pecky Peavine drove the large ’trot across the open end of this arrangement, leapt down from the seat, and gathered rocks to make a cook-fire place near the stream before fetching a net to the stream itself. Black Mike found a place to dig a privy trench, put a folding lady-seat over one end of it, set a canvas sidewall around it, and went to gather firewood. Meantime, the other men removed the harnesses and hobbled the animals before turning them loose to graze.
Xulai—thankful to be off the hard carriage seat—walked out to the road and the few hundred paces back to the curve. The traveler’s wagon was a little way down the road to the east, facing the way they would go tomorrow. Abasio stood beside it. When she approached he put his hand on her shoulder. “I think I’d best not be seen in your company along here. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He patted her shoulder and cheek, got onto the wagon, and clucked to Blue, who took them a distance down the road before commenting, “Has you confused, does she?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Abasio replied, fully aware of what Blue meant. He was not the kind of man who would find a child . . . attractive in that way, yet every time he saw her, his mouth dried and he shivered with a need to . . . to do something about her. He could not, would not, allow himself to define the something.
“Ah,” grunted Blue. “Well, when you figure it out . . .”
Behind them, Xulai swallowed deeply. She had rather hoped he would stay with them tonight. Though the glen was pleasant and the little brook was cheery, it felt false, like a picture. As though it had been arranged. She returned to the campsite to rummage for the large sack of horse biscuits she had asked Cook to help her bake before they left. Emptying some of them into a smaller bag, she went from horse to horse, offering a biscuit to each, breaking some into pieces so they would smell, taste, and relish what they were eating. Distribution ended with Flaxen. Xulai leaned against his side fondling his soft ears while he whickered at her, giving him a second biscuit to make up for the long day’s travel with no petting.
Precious Wind and Nettie Lean were setting their pans on the folding grill over the fire Black Mike had made. Pecky Peavine brought in five large fish and a number of small ones. By this time Bear had made a nest of blankets laid over the thick grass between the two large wagons.
“Is that for me?” asked Xulai when she returned from the horses.
“Of course not,” said Bear. “It’s for Precious Wind, but she’ll no doubt let you other females share it.”
“Why in among the wagons that way?”
“With the men sleeping under the carriages at each end and the wagons at either side, there’s protection for you by us armed creatures if needed . . .”
“Armed?” asked Xulai. “I didn’t realize . . .”
“Pistols, swords, bows, and crossbows, Xulai. Writ of the king allows us pistols when traveling where wolves may be found.”
“And of course you have your knives,” she murmured.
“The long and short of it is—we do.” He grinned, patting the various places where both the long and short blades lived. “Should it rain, you can shelter beneath the wagons or in the ’trot. If it doesn’t rain, you’ll have the nest, the sweet night air, and, just to be safe, someone on watch.”
“Do you always do that when you travel?”
“We do, Xulai, when we travel. Whenever we think other people are around and we don’t know who.”
“Or when there’s an unusually long delay at a bridge,” she murmured. “Or a dust cloud that came from the west and then suddenly turned around and went back, made by someone unidentified.”
He stared at her, scratching his ear and narrowing his eyes. “Exactly. Aren’t you going to let those poor cats out? I can hear them crying from here.”
“Oh,” she cried as she ran to the carriage. “I was . . . thinking about something else.”
Bothercat decided the pile of dirt that came out of the privy hole was the right place to dig another. Vexcat agreed. That business disposed of, both began a game of creeping and pouncing on each other or on Xulai. When the meal was ready, Xulai moved herself and the cats into the nest, where they could share her fish and she could finish off with apples, cheese, and a slice of bread from home, both bread and cheese shared with her pocket creature.
Later, when Precious Wind covered them with a light blanket, three creatures were asleep in a heap, and the fourth was hidden in a pocket. Precious Wind went looking for Bear. She found him kneeling beside the road, his hand hovering over the wheel tracks.
“Did you eat? You’ve been somewhere else for a time.”
“I ate while walking. Out on the Wellsport road, I saw tracks of several horses, ridden hard, that came to the crossroad from the west. They slowed, then walked east along Riversmeet and on to the top of a little hill where one can see a good distance farther. Then, turn about, same horses walking to the crossroad, then ridden hard back the way they came.”
“As though to see if we had passed?”
“Which we would have done save for that desecrated ox wagon. Those weren’t the only tracks. Earlier than that, one horseman came north from Altamont, rode on north, past the bridge, on to the top of the first hill, where he could see a good way toward the town of Hives, then returned in a hurry. Then, on top of those hoofprints, I found the tracks of those oxen coming south from Altamont. They stopped here. The oxen had time to browse off the roadside foliage; it’s bitten fresh. They waited here until the single horseman returned to say we were coming, then went across the bridge, turned around, and came back this way with no motive other than to remove a wheel, block the bridge, and prevent us from going on. I feel nothing in the tracks, but then, even though many Tingawans have that talent, I have only a little of it.”
“Well, I have a small talent in that direction,” said Precio
us Wind, standing tall and staring back through the trees at the quiet glow of the fire, burning itself out among its stones. “And what I have of it makes me edgy.”
He said calmly, “Well yes, but any unexpected change makes us feel that way, doesn’t it? At least two groups of people expected us to turn onto the Royal Road and go some way east; one set was disconcerted that we didn’t, the other prevented our doing so. Perhaps we should have gone on. Still, we’d have had to make camp in the dark. Besides, Bartelmy knows the animals better than any of us, and no doubt he was right about their being tired.”
“We set a watch?”
“As prudence undoubtedly dictates, yes. I’ll take first. Tell the others I’ll be waking one of them.”
She returned to the clearing, glancing over her shoulder at the stooped form behind her. Bear was still studying the road. He was apprehensive, or at least as much so as Bear ever allowed himself to be.
Nettie, Oldwife, and Precious Wind joined Xulai in the nest, where Precious Wind told them what Bear had found. Willum and Clive put their blanket rolls under the wagon; Pecky and Black Mike unrolled theirs under the dray. Bear ambled around the camp while Bartelmy lay down under the carriage he had driven. The fire died down. Bear covered the coals to keep them for morning and prevent the fire spreading if a wind came up. When the place was silent except for rhythmic snores from under the wagons and an occasional whicker of a horse moving about among the trees, Bear took his seat in the carriage and set himself to wait.
The rose moon floated up gradually over the eastern trees, casting its pale light into the clearing, only a few days past full. In the western sky, a toenail of ivory moon dropped toward the last glow of sunset. The rose and green moons were said to be artificial. Constructions made by mankind in the Before Time. Bear did not know whether he believed that or not. Occasionally a night bird called. Insects in the trees made a rhythmic stridulation, gradually falling silent as the moon sank beyond the mountains. The birds quieted. The horses stopped talking to one another. Bear sat up straight, shaking drowsiness away. Night moved toward its center: no owl, no bat, no sleepy bird meant it was unusually, unseemly quiet.
All of which changed in an instant. Something howled in the woods. A horse screamed, then another and another. More howls, more screams, noises of breaking branches, then a flash of lightning! A thunder of hooves, all the horses, all the mules, gone, away, faster than one might imagine! Precious Wind was standing beside the carriage, her firm hand on his knee.
“We thought there’d be something, and that was it,” she murmured in a cool tone of very slight annoyance. “It wasn’t wolves.”
“No,” he mused. “Wolves don’t break hobbles, and neither do lightning bolts.”
“What now?” she asked.
“Wait until light,” he said between clenched teeth. “Horsemaster has his horses trained like homing pigeons! They’ll be all the way back at Woldsgard castle by morning!”
“Never mind,” said a small voice.
He looked down to see Xulai standing just behind Precious Wind, her eyes glued half-shut with sleep.
“Just go to sleep, Bear,” she said. “You, too, Precious Wind. Likely the witch has done all she’s going to do. By morning, the animals should all be back, right here.” She yawned and turned back the way she had come. Giving Bear an incredulous look, Precious Wind went after her.
“So you’re not worried about the horses?” Precious Wind asked.
Xulai spoke as though from a dream. “I’d be more worried about the thing she sent to chase the horses, but I think something—maybe a chipmunk or something—killed it.” She trudged to the edge of her nest, falling drowsily into it beside the sleeping cats.
Precious Wind’s usually expressionless face bore a look of astonishment. “So a chipmunk or something killed it?”
“So she said,” said Oldwife Gancer from among the blankets.
“What was it, and what might that something have been?”
Oldwife shook her head slowly, brow furrowed. “Someone sent something to prevent our leaving here. Someone else sent something to do away with it. You know, Xulai is, ah . . . distant kin to Xu-i-lok. And she was a granddaughter of someone very famous in their country.”
“I know. But she’s never before—”
“I’m just saying maybe she’s got some family talents, is all. If people’d let her be, they’d prob’lya known that by now.”
Precious Wind returned to the nest, Bear to his carriage seat. Though he wakened several times during the night thinking he heard horses on the road they had crossed, all was peaceful. In the morning all the mules and horses were back, trailing the ends of their severed hobbles and showing embarrassment in equine fashion, studiously chomping with their noses near the ground, tending to graze near Xulai while avoiding the eyes of those who harnessed them.
Precious Wind took Xulai to a private place among the trees and asked her to explain.
She flushed uncomfortably. “I’m not really sure. Remember I asked you if you thought I was carrying Xu-i-lok’s soul yet?”
Precious Wind said, “Yes. So?”
“You said I likely was. I asked because—I’ve been having these strange thoughts and ideas that seemed to come from . . . from someone else.” She fell silent, fumbling with the buttons of her coat. She was not going to say a chipmunk was talking to her. She had firmly decided that was one thing she was not going to share.
Precious Wind patted her shoulder. “Just tell me, Xulai. No matter what it is, you have nothing to be embarrassed about.” At this comforting, too-consoling voice, Xulai felt the strange feeling again. As though she wanted to snarl or shout, though she had never in her short life snarled or shouted. “I’m not embarrassed!” she said, in a voice a trifle more loud than her usual one. “That is, I don’t think so. It’s just, things jump out at me when I least expect it . . .”
“Things?”
“Fumitos. Velipe vun vuxa duxa vevo duxa. My cousin the duke said we would pass near Altamont. That’s a little thing. He said the duchess might be curious about anyone who was associated with Princess Xu-i-lok. That’s a little thing. Another little thing I know is that the duchess has had a spy in Castle Woldsgard—”
“How do you know that?” asked Precious Wind, trying to keep her voice very level and calm.
Xulai took a moment to decide among unrelated truths and came up with a plausible selection. “The duchess travels along the road. I’ve seen her, even though she hasn’t seen me. I overheard her telling someone.”
“You told the duke?”
“He already knew. The spy knows about you and Bear being at Wold, too. And she knows about me, of course. But that’s all she knows. Still, these little things assembled in my head and a picture came to me. No. It was more a likelihood than a picture, a probability of the duchess getting very close to us. Not merely close, but close while we were upset or uncomfortable. You know . . .”
“While we were at a disadvantage,” Precious Wind offered.
Yes, that was it! “Exactly. Well, if we were to be put at a disadvantage, something would have to happen to us while we were traveling . . .”
“Something?” Precious wind cocked her head.
“Something going wrong. So I asked Wainwright and Horsemaster what kinds of things go wrong when people travel. Horsemaster said aside from people behaving like jackasses, it’s usually a matter of horses running away; Wainwright said it was usually axles and wheels. So I suggested that the duke just knew he’d look at the wheels and axles very carefully right before we left. It seemed . . . appropriate.”
“Appropriate,” said Precious Wind, her eyebrows rising slowly into her hair. “And?”
Xulai murmured, “Wainwright found two wheels that had been trifled with, not very expertly, he said, but enough to cause us trouble. The spy is only a kitchen maid, and she probably didn’t have the tools to do much damage, and he had time to fix the wheels and to put spare parts for each in the
dray.”
“And the horses?” Precious Wind demanded.
“People say Horsemaster has all his stock enchanted. He doesn’t really. He’s just trained all his stock to come to him because he regularly feeds them biscuits which they like very, very much. They are fed only at Woldsgard, or by him personally, so anywhere else they happen to be is non-biscuit country, and if they are away, they hurry home to biscuit country as soon as they can. So, Cook and I baked a great many Horsemaster biscuits for them. I’ve been feeding them some along the way whenever we stop. That made whatever place I am biscuit country. We must continue doing it, of course. They have to understand that biscuit country travels with us, and only us.”
“You have more of the biscuits?”
“Enough for a few days, and enough ingredients to make more. I know how to make them, even over a campfire. We should see that they get biscuits from us, no one else. All the horses and mules ate them last night, and once they calmed down when the thing quit chasing them, they came back to us.”
“What thing was that?” asked Precious Wind.
Xulai staggered slightly, as though she had encountered something unpleasant. “I don’t know. I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t see it!” She shivered. “Maybe something happened to it? Maybe it ran into a . . . protection, or something.”
Precious Wind put her hand on Xulai’s shoulder, squeezed it gently, and swallowed, trying to moisten her very dry mouth. “It bothers you that you couldn’t see it?”
“I should have been able to see it, don’t you think? I saw most of the rest of it!”