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She worked on her Parl by asking Jessup about the woods, ostensibly with an eye toward the hunting prospects of the Thickets, as that part of the thanedom was known.
Jessup was working the roadside near the river, sinking a well. He’d laid out a few stones in what Rainfall’s study-books called a rectangle on a flat, firm piece of land. Every now and then he would fell a few trees and place them on the rocks so they could dry without touching the ground, whistling more loudly through his teeth as the pile of lumber grew.
He quit working as she nosed around, and took off his ear-flapped cap to scratch his head. “Hunting? Some pheasant, a gobbler or two. No wild boar or deer left—the thane has hunted them all.”
“I’d like to avoid notice.”
“Then keep to the thorn hollows. Not a problem for you. Your skin should keep them out.” He looked doubtful, then took a step closer. “May I touch?”
Wistala raised her head and turned sideways. “The ones on my back are the thickest.”
He ran his hand over her scales. “Like . . . like cast iron, only rougher.”
Wistala used a saa to scritch at the back of her shoulder, where a few of her hatchling scales still clung. One dropped off, and she flipped it to him with her nose. “One of your own.”
“I may keep this?”
“You may.”
He bowed in gratitude.
“Could I ask a favor of you?” Wistala asked.
“I’ve more wealth than my father saw in his lifetime, thanks to you. I’d do my best.”
“I’d like to start bringing home game to Mossbell. Rainfall has been feeding me for so long, I’d like to do the same for him.”
“The master gives too much. He’s . . . he’s noble that way. Go on.”
“I need a sort of harness that will allow me to carry a few birds or a quartered deer. Can you manage it?”
“I’ll see the hidesman and blacksmith a-morrow.” He scratched his close-cropped head again, circling her and cocking his head this way and that in thought.
Wistala bowed. “Thank you. Anything I can do to help—”
“Stand still.”
He took a ball of string from his pocket and measured her, along the back, around her neck, across her shoulders, making little marks on the string with a bit of charcoal. “I expect I’ll have it done by blueberry day.”
“Which is?” The profusion of hominid holidays were all jumbled in Wistala’s head; they celebrated everything from turns of the stars and moon to hop-picking to the ripening of the first plum.
“Eight days.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m the one obliged, Wisssakle.”
“Wistala.”
Jessup did better on the second try. When Wistala nuzzled him and gave a bit of a prrum to congratulate him, his face broke into a grin. “Me conversing with a dragon in its own tongue. Like something out of a bedtime story.”
With the air warm and spring in full bloom, Stog came outdoors. His hooves had been turned flaky and white by Rainfall’s applications, but strong and healthy hoof lived beneath, revealed as the diseased parts fell away.
Wistala took Stog to see Avalanche’s grave, as a final proof of Rainfall’s goodness and the turn of his fortune marked by the mule’s arrival at Mossbell.
Stog snorted. According to the mule, horses got all the glory, and mules did all the work. “We can go twice as far, carrying twice the load, on half the feed as a horse. Up hills they’d break a leg on and down valleys that would mean their necks, too. But where’s the poetry, the statuary?”
“Just wait. I’ll give you a chance to show a pack of horses a trick or two.”
