Battle Magic (18 page)

“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.

T
HE GORGE OF THE
S
NOW
S
ERPENT
R
IVER

Company continued to thin as people scattered to other roads. The land now was steep and hilly, with terrace farms on the slopes. Beyond them were mountains. By the map, Briar saw they were in a kind of funnel that would take them into the Snow Serpent Pass. Evvy would have no cause to complain after that. They would be traveling down a gorge through the Drimbakang Lho, the highest mountains in the world.

Briar kept a keen eye on the people around them, knowing that Evvy was too busy looking at the stones beside the road. The others were commoners by and large: an occasional priest on donkey-back, merchants on mules or horses followed by servants, peddlers, farmers, and the occasional beggar. Two days after they had crossed the bridge, Briar saw the man he had come to think of as
their
beggar again. They overtook him around mid-morning, when a large wedding party left the road to cross the river. The beggar was seated by the road, digging a stone out of the wrappings on his feet. Successful, he rose and hobbled off, leaning on his tall staff.

“He moves fast for someone with a bad back,” Rosethorn murmured.

“Maybe he’s used to it,” Briar suggested.

Suddenly she stiffened. “Look at his neck.”

The rags the beggar wore for scarves had come undone. The morning’s stiff breeze blew them onto the hillside. He was struggling to climb after them when Evvy galloped uphill to grab the flyaway rags. She had learned some riding tricks in their two years of travel, and she loved to show off.

Like Rosethorn, Briar was staring. The beggar’s neck was as dirty as the rest of him. What his dirt could not cover was the shackle gall around his throat, the kind of scar that would come from years of wearing a metal collar.

As Evvy rode over to the beggar with his neck scarves, Rosethorn murmured, “Without the pack he carries …”

Briar replied, “Could the long hair be a wig? It’s a good one.”

“The rags on his feet and hands could be as much to cover scars from his chains as to keep him warm,” Rosethorn added. “But the blind eye?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Briar told her. “This beggar we knew, back when I was with the Thief Lord, he would take the white lining of eggshells. He’d cut pieces of it to the right size, then punch a hole in them with a pin to see out of. It made me go all over goose bumps to watch him put them in his eyes, but he made money. It’s the beggars that have something wrong with them that get the coin.”

“Let’s invite this one to supper,” Rosethorn suggested.

“Let’s. I’d like to know what he’s doing out here.”

Briar kept an eye on the beggar all that day as they progressed along the road. There were no inspections. It seemed that those who were hunting for the emperor’s missing captive did not think he would be heading west.