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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 unh
appy 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 o
ne 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.
