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  “And the better part of my job doesn’t begin until tomorrow.”

  The hand came up again. “The better part of your life may never begin at all!”

  The guide, Audrun saw, was not in the least cowed by the noise. “What about the Sisters?” he asked. “You took them on, after swearing you never would.”

  Audrun seized on that. “Sisters?”

  Jorda was staring at his guide as if he had lost his mind. “I can’t do that!”

  “Why not? She says they are desperate—” The guide glanced at Audrun. “Are you desperate?” He nodded as she nodded; they were. “Desperate,” he repeated, as if that settled it.

  “My husband has offered to work as well as pay,” she told the master firmly. “We are neither destitute nor helpless; and I have a son as well, old enough and big enough to do his share. My daughter and I can take on mending and cooking, and the younger ones—” Audrun broke off, aware the big man was staring at her in alarm. “What is it?”

  “How many of you are there?”

  “Six,” she answered. “My husband, four children, and me.” Then she amended. “Seven, actually. But the littlest one has conveyance already.”

  The karavan-master blinked at her in bafflement.

  It was the guide who understood. “She’s in whelp.” He was grinning. “Jorda, you can’t tell a pregnant woman she isn’t welcome.”

  Jorda scowled. Audrun had the impression he wished to say he very well could tell her she wasn’t welcome, but for some reason he didn’t. “These Sisters,” she began. “Perhaps we could help them? If they are women without men of their own, my husband could aid them, even my oldest son.”

  The guide was laughing again, teeth showing. Jorda appeared to be on the verge of choking. “I can’t do this,” he muttered. “Rhuan, even you would not have me do this!”

  “What is it?” Audrun repeated.

  The guide, for a change, offered no comment. He merely assumed an expression of supreme innocence that Audrun, thanks to having children, recognized as entirely feigned. Cider-colored eyes glinted.

  Jorda rumbled another growl, then turned to her stiffly. “They are indeed women without men of their own,” he said, with precise enunciation, “because they have everyone else’s men. They’re Sisters.” He said it more plainly still as she gazed at him blankly. “Sisters of the Road.”

  It meant nothing to Audrun. The guide said helpfully,

  “He means they are whores.”

  Audrun’s mind went blank. She felt the emptying of sense, of comprehension. She wondered vaguely if she were supposed to be angry, to feel insulted; and if she felt neither, was she then abnormal?

  She heard the big man move, a slight shifting of the massive body. She became aware that his eyes were genuinely sorry, but also wholly relieved. Apparently this was a better excuse than oxen being too slow.

  “This is acceptable,” she heard herself say.

  Jorda’s mouth parted the thick beard. “What?”

  “They are acceptable. Your terms. We will go behind the Sisters.” She kept her tone very even. “Of the Road.”

  He blinked at her, brow furrowing. The karavan-master, she realized, did not believe her.

  “The war,” Audrun said, summoning dignity, “has changed everything. One makes shift where one must. Where we lived, it was very bad. My husband—” She paused a moment, to recover her composure. “My husband lost every member of his kinfolk. Father. Mother. Three brothers. Two sisters. Their children. There is no one now of his blood. Only my kin survive, and they are overmountain.” Briefly her hand cupped the slight curve of her belly beneath voluminous skirts and long, unbelted tunic. “We sought the advice of fourteen different diviners. All of them said the same. This child must be born in Atalanda, if it is to survive at all.” She raised her chin, the better to meet the suddenly sharp green eyes. “Sancorra is defeated. We can do nothing here. But we can do everything there.”

  BRODHI HEARD THEM even before he entered the couriers’ common tent. Timmon, Bethid, and Alorn. Laughing, as usual, telling impossible tales of impossible adventures and equally impossible sexual encounters, insulting one another with impunity, insulting those who would never hear the comments to know they were the butt of jokes. Nowhere were couriers different. He didn’t know if they were hired for it, or gained the vulgar camaraderie upon the road.

  It was dusk, and the interior of the tent was accordingly dim. Brodhi slid silently into the tent before they realized he was there. Bethid lay sprawled on her narrow pallet, one leather-gaitered leg cocked up as she grinned up at the glyph-carved ridgepole overhead. Her short-cropped fair hair was mussed into upstanding tufts and spikes, her duncolored woven tunic stained. She had tossed her blue courier’s mantle across the foot of her pallet, though Timmon and Alorn had resorted to crude iron hooks depending from the ridgepole. Timmon and Alorn themselves sat upon a spread blanket in the center of the tent, throwing bone dice.

  The two young men were intent upon their gambling. It was Bethid who saw him first. “Brodhi!” She sat upright. “We weren’t expecting you back so soon.”

  He availed himself of the nearest empty hook and hung up his mantle after shaking it out briefly and making certain the heavy silver badge stayed pinned. The jesting had died. So too had the insults.

  Timmon and Alorn exchanged glances. The dice were scooped up and tucked away into a hidden pocket. As one the male couriers rose and went to the entry flap. Timmon stepped through, murmuring something Brodhi didn’t catch; Alorn hesitated and briefly turned back. “Bethid? Want to come? We’ll go down to Mikal’s.”

  “In a moment.” She jerked her head to suggest he go on, then tugged at a loose gaitered boot, tightening leather straps. “You could try, Brodhi. Learn the dice games. Play a few throws. Let them think you’re human.”

  He sat down upon the nearest open pallet and began to undo knots in the leather thongs cross-gartered over his own gaiters. “Why should I pretend to be something I am not?”

  Bethid waved a dismissive hand. “You know what I mean. Let them think you don’t hold them in contempt.”

  Brodhi glanced at her in mild irony. “But I do.”

  “So much contempt,” she amended, scowling at him. “Is it so difficult to accept everyone for what they are? To let them maybe like you?”

  “Difficult? No.” Gaiters undone, unwrapped, he set them neatly beside the pallet on the earth floor. “Infinitely impossible.”

  Bethid emitted a rising growl of frustration as he tugged off his boots and put them beside the gaiters. “You are infinitely impossible!”

  Suppressing a faint smile, Brodhi watched in silence as she rose swiftly, stamping her right foot more deeply into the loose boot. She shot him a sharp, annoyed glance, which he turned away with the implacability that warded him against too much human intimacy.

  Yet of all the couriers Brodhi served with, Bethid was the one he was willing to tolerate. Occasionally.

  “I’m going for ale,” she said. “This is your last opportunity. Will you join us?”

  He shook his head.

  Bethid shook hers and departed.

  When she was gone, clattering the charms and blessing-sticks suspended at the door flap, Brodhi stretched out his lean length upon his pallet. He folded his hands across his abdomen and closed his eyes. “Ferize?”

  It took but a moment for her to answer. “Yes?”

  Startled pleasure kindled that she was so close after days of absence. “The primaries are done with you?”

  “Until next time.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Nearly there. Do you wish me to hasten?”

  “No.”

  She was silent a moment, tasting him. “What is it, Brodhi?”

  He smiled openly. Bethid would have been shocked.

  “What it always is.”

  “Humans are not that bad, Brodhi.” Ferize’s tone had a bite to it. “Weak, yes. Flawed, yes. Exasperating? Always. But t
olerable.” She paused. “If one is himself tolerant.”

  He grinned, baring teeth. “My breeding suggests that is not my temperament.”

  “Your temperament,” she replied, “is gods-awful. But it is a reflection of your sire’s, so I suppose you come by it honestly.” And then she laughed the warm, ringing, joyous laugh that heated all his flesh, even when he was most displeased with her.

  “Ferize?”

  Absence was her reply.

  A wave of loneliness engulfed him, startling in its magnitude.

  Perhaps he should have told her to hasten after all.

  ILONA ACCEPTED PAYMENT from her latest client with thanks and a brief blessing. Payment was not required—she and the other two karavan diviners were in Jorda’s employ—but few clients were comfortable walking away without giving her something for her time. She had learned to accept anything: a coin, a charm, a length of cloth, even a chicken. Some gifts she kept, others she passed along to someone in greater need.

  The sun had set following Jorda’s karavan-wide meeting to explain to everyone how the morning departure would be undertaken. He also warned them of the possibility of encountering Hecari on the roads, parties of them demanding a “road tax.” As Ilona expected, many of the people immediately afterward sought the words of the karavan diviners, hoping to learn if the departure was auspicious, and she had been quite busy. Now she was alone, freed from questions and outthrust hands; she began to pack up her clothes and cushions, to blow out the hanging lanterns. But Rhuan arrived in the middle of it, and so she stopped.

  Candlelight and sunset glinted off his beadwork and ornamentation. For a moment Ilona was swept back to the night she had first met Rhuan in Mikal’s tent three years before, when she had been mourning Tansit, one of Jorda’s guides. Then she had wanted to give the Shoia neither time nor attention; but he had died not long after, only to awaken with her kneeling beside him in one of the dark footpaths where he had been murdered, thinking to guide his spirit across the river once she read his cooling hand to know his people’s ritual. It had been more than startling to witness his revival, until he explained how it was Shoia could survive six deaths. She had witnessed one, but Rhuan never told her how many others he had experienced. That, she had learned, was a Shoia’s self-defense.

  When Rhuan paused and told her where he was going, and why, casually explaining his errand was duty-related, she scoffed. “I can’t believe Jorda agreed to that.”

  “He did.”

  But Ilona knew that expression, even if gilded by the ruddy purple hues of sundown. There was more to the story. With Rhuan, there always was. “What did you do?” She blew out the candle in a hanging lantern, stirring the pierced tin into motion. “This time?”

  His tone was matter of fact. “Helped someone who needed it.”

  Her laugh was a breathy blurt of skepticism. “To ride with the Sisters?”

  “Not with them, precisely,” he hedged. “Behind them.”

  “Eating dust.”

  “That was the choice. The woman made it. I merely … assisted Jorda with his decision.”

  Now Ilona laughed outright. “Oh yes, I’m well aware of how it is you assist Jorda with difficult decisions!” But the amusement died out, replaced by memory. “I may have done a reading for her husband.” She described the tall, blond farmer.

  Rhuan shrugged, stirring the bead-weighted fringe on the sleeves of his tunic. “I saw no one but the woman.”

  Ilona reflected Rhuan likely wouldn’t see anyone but the woman even with the man present as well. “He came to me earlier, the husband. He blamed himself, fearing it was something in him that brought them bad fortune.” She smiled faintly, recalling the farmer’s diffidence commingled with conviction. “He is stronger than he believes. He’s only forgotten because of the war.”

  Rhuan grinned. “I think she’s stronger than he is. You should have heard how she told off Jorda.”

  Ilona grinned. “Jorda is very soft when it comes to women.”

  The coppery brows arched up. “Soft, is he? With women?” He paused. “With you?”

  She ignored the provocation. Rhuan knew Jorda did not sleep with his hired diviners. Melior and Branca were male, which would not appeal to Jorda, but the master had also never approached her. “Is that why you have taken her part? Because she told off Jorda?” Trust the Shoia to be intrigued by such a display, especially by a woman.

  “I haven’t taken anyone’s part,” Rhuan declared. “They just didn’t want to be trapped here, is all.”

  With everyone else, he was very good at misdirection. Ilona, however, read him better than anyone save perhaps Brodhi, who was blood-kin, and Darmuth, who was friend and partner. “Many families have been trapped here,”

  Ilona remarked dryly. “That never earned your help before.”

  He shrugged, donning his implacable face; Rhuan was one of the more voluble men she knew, but he could become as sullen as a pen-soured horse when he decided to.

  Ilona sighed. “One of these days a husband is going to kill you.” She paused. “Again. And perhaps enough times, if he knows you are Shoia, to make certain you stay dead.”

  Rhuan grinned, flashing white teeth and dimples. Implacability was banished: he had found a defense. “It isn’t the woman this time. Truly. Besides the husband, she has four children and another on the way.”

  Ilona had forgotten that. “I agree that isn’t your usual preference, but …” She took the blown-out lantern from its iron hook. “Why else?”

  Rhuan’s eyes slid aside. One shoulder was lifted in a casual warning sign she knew all too well.

  And chose to ignore. “Rhuan. There are no secrets between us.”

  That brought his head around, braid rings, clasps, and beads rattling against his shoulders. She was privy to his most intense stare, which nearly stopped the breath in her chest. And his skin had darkened. Once again she was forcibly reminded how it was so many people feared him, despite his protests that he was not in the least dangerous.

  “Leave it,” he said, in tones so cold her bones were chilled.

  Ilona had heard it before. But never had it been directed at her.

  And then he appeared to realize how he sounded and the effect it had on a woman who was his friend, who had known what he was before so many others. The intensity in eyes and skin altered, softening. “Forgive me, ‘Lona.”

  Yet there was no explanation, merely a departure. Ilona watched Jorda’s guide walk away into the darkness, contemplating the myriad facets of a man beset by many, and sharp with all of them.

  Sharper than she expected.

  Chapter 7

  BETHID’S FELLOW COURIERS had managed to claim the table they most valued, very close to the plank bar behind which Mikal ruled. They saw her slip through the door flap and waved her over; already the dice game had recommenced, poured out across the knife-scarred surface of the table. She caught Mikal’s eye, nodded, and found an untenanted stool to make her own. She dragged it to the table and sat down.

  Timmon was blue-eyed and tall, with lank, light brown hair, a long jaw, and bony shoulders threatening the seams of his tunic. Doe-eyed Alorn, shorter and thicker, boasted a vibrant crop of rich brown curls that matched his eyes. Both had dented tankards next to their elbows.

  As Bethid sat down, Timmon shook his head. “I don’t know why you bother, Beth.”

  She thanked Mikal as he set a foaming tankard on the table in front of her. Bethid raised it in a two-handed grasp and drank off a goodly amount of ale before answering.

  “Bother what?”

  Alorn gathered up the dice and rattled them in his hand. “He’s a cold bastard, Beth. Always has been. He’ll never change. Don’t waste your time on him.”

  “Oh. Brodhi.” She wiped foam from her upper lip. “He’s not as bad as all that.”

  As one, Alorn and Timmon said, “Yes, he is.”

  Bethid sighed. “All right, so he is.”

  “So why bother?” Timmon
asked. “Leave him to his own company.”

  Alorn said dryly, “Such as it is.”

  Bethid contemplated her tankard, tracing a line of dripping foam down the cool pewter. “I guess it’s because when I joined the guild, there were those who disdained me.” She raised her eyes to look at each of them. “I wasn’t welcomed, you know, when I first arrived at the Guildhall in Cardatha. I was a woman. Until I was accepted, there were no women couriers.”

  Alorn was surprised. “Truly?”

  “Truly,” Bethid said, remembering how young the two were. “All men, until me. The Guildmasters refused me out of hand. They wouldn’t even admit me to the trials.”

  Timmon frowned. “Then how did you get admitted?”

  Bethid’s smile was ironic. “A senior courier may appeal the denial. The appeal doesn’t overturn the decision of the Guildmasters, but it does mean the applicant must be allowed to take part in the trials.” She shrugged. “He simply said my gender would make no difference to the horses I’d ride, to the oath I’d sworn, or to the news and messages I would carry—”

  “It doesn’t!” Timmon declared. “Why would anyone believe it would?”

  Bethid continued her interrupted sentence. “—and he was the first of all the couriers to buy me a drink when I passed each and every trial.” She lifted her tankard, drank, then set it down once more. “I wouldn’t be sitting here with you had it not been for Brodhi.”

  DAVYN DID NOT at first believe Audrun when she said there was room for them in Jorda’s karavan. Oh, it was not that he thought she lied; Audrun never did. It was not that it stung his pride that she had apparently accomplished what he could not; Audrun often did.

  But when she explained that they would be required to remain at the back of the karavan, behind the wagon of women euphemistically called Sisters of the Road, Davyn knew at once what kind of women she meant. That astonished him into disbelief.

  “Mother of Moons,” he muttered now. Replete after the evening meal, Davyn sat on a folded blanket with his spine against a wagon wheel, enjoying his post-dinner pipe. Not only did decent women decline to mix with such as the Sisters, but his eldest son was, after all, of an age to be intrigued by them. He wondered if Audrun had considered that, or if such thoughts were in a man’s mind more often than a woman’s, even if she be a mother.