Page 54

“Perhaps, yes, it is for tears.” There’s no exact word for regrettably in Galtish, but that was the sense of it. This karker knew my language and knew it well.

“You don’t seem like a slaver,” I said.

Now Galva said, in Holtish, “Are you going to translate any of this?”

“No time,” I said in Holtish.

She grunted.

I said to Bazl in Galtish, “Do you speak Holtish?”

In Galtish, he replied, “I prefer the language of the collar to that of the leash.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. How can you say things like that, holding a leash yourself?”

“I do not keep slaves, friend.”

“But you make them.”

“I find them. The gleabgh you left those mountains you were promised to chains. I would rather be a farmer, but this land is not for growing, and still a beast must bear a collar.”

I’m telling you the Galtish word he used where a Holter would say moment, only a gleabgh isn’t a moment exactly—it means “little valley.” A gleah is an actual valley, but make the h a bgh and it becomes little, and now an idea rather than a thing. Here, it means the space between heartbeats. There’s a difference between the way a Galt sees the world and a Holter, even if we use their dull fucking language because they made us do.

“The soil in Wostra is black enough,” I told him, speaking of his farming notions.

“As are the hearts of the nobility in Cdarmnyk and Jznk, who still grow rich on others’ work, for all that they say they are Egalitarians, and elect a king or queen. The Folk-Monarch is still one of them. Show me a queen-elect with rough-spun hands or a king-elect with dirt under his fingernails, and who will write me a pardon, and I will go home. We will all go home.”

His voice had risen now, and a dam leaned close and put a bandaged stump near her ear. I supposed she meant to cup her hand as if to ask what was being said, but had forgotten Galva had shaved the hand off her a few hours before. I choked back a laugh, but then Bazl saw what had happened and laughed like a donkey.

Now he held up his hand then moved it slowly down, at which the drummers softened their drumming. And with these soft drums behind him, he translated into Wostran, and, presumably at the part where he talked about going home to a fairly elected Folk-King, every Wostran man and dam howled up a cheer.

“WUUUUU-Ra!”

Fierce enough, these nodders, I thought as my sore arm throbbed with the rhythm of the drums, which had grown loud again.

Galva now asked what was happening, and for the sake of brevity, I told her we had fallen in with Wostran Egalitarians.

“Ah,” she said. “I have heard of these.”

Soon the drumming and singing led to dancing. Galva and I were excused because of the chains on our feet, which would have allowed us little more than a shuffle. Those Galva had injured likewise sat out, as well as those she had killed, which lay covered just outside the firelight’s embrace. But everyone else, save a few musicians, formed a ring around the fire. They circled, first going clockish, then unclockish; now drawing in close, arms up, then back, arms out forward, quivering hands, saying Hey and Wurra when they changed directions. I found myself nodding along, even slapping my uninjured arm’s hand on my knee since clapping was out of the question. We were offered a fair ration of fruits I’d not seen (one like a hairy nut, but milky and sweet around a great tooth-breaking stone), and some I knew (smallish oranges, wild pears). The only thing I refused was a handful of those berries the Spanth and I had maddened ourselves with on the dry riverbed. Our companions were wise enough to eat these in moderation, though to be fair, they weren’t half dead of thirst either.

By the time they were all good and pissed, and sweaty from dancing, a call went up that the foraging party had returned. I made out the dim shapes of camels, one bearing deerish game animals with odd horns (gazelles, I think; I had seen one from Ispanthia in a circus), and the rest laden with brushwood and waterskins.

“Is there a well nearby?” I asked Szymnal, who was sitting near me now.

“Well? Oh yes, for water. Yes. Is well.”

“Why not camp by it?”

“Bad manners to camp by well. Is for, what is word? Is for chair.”

“Chair? There’s some kind of chair there?”

“Chair. Yes. For all use.”

“A big chair that everyone uses?”

“Is for every-all use well. Not only one.”