The diligence was a long boxy vehicle creaking along on three pairs of oversize wheels that cast up broad sheets of brown water. Oiled silk curtains were drawn tight against the rain but there was some sort of lamp burning inside, probably more than one, because she saw the shadows of the passengers moving across the silk. Six high narrow windows filled with profiles and the rounds of swaying heads. She watched them and wondered what was so important it took those people out into weather like this. The last window slid past, then she saw the piles of luggage strapped behind. And felt again that helplessness that had engulfed her as she walked into the Inn, an ignorance of life down here so complete that moving into it was like stepping off Tincreal onto a low-hanging cloud.
Four Temuengs rode guard far enough behind the diligence to escape the mud and gravel the broad iron-tired wheels kicked up. They rode swathed in heavy cloaks, lances couched, bows covered, but she had little doubt they’d be a nasty surprise to anyone thinking of attacking the diligence. The leader turned his head and stared at her as he rode past. She saw a flash of gilt, of paler silver. An empush, commanding four.
Then he was past. Then they were all past. She let out a breath. Her middle hurt as if she’d been stooping and straightening for hours. She wiped at her face, kneed Coier into a walk, guiding him back onto the road, the two hounds pacing silently one on each side of her.
A few breaths later she heard the sound of a horse coming rapidly up behind her, then the Temueng empush rode around her, turning his mount to block the road. She pulled up, a flutter in her stomach, a knot of fear and rage closing her throat. She couldn’t speak, sat staring at him grimly, silently. Her eyes blurred and after a moment she knew she was crying; she didn’t try to hide her tears, only hoped the rain beating on her face would camouflage them.
“Who are you?” he shouted at her, his voice harsh, impatient. “What are you doing on this road? Where are you going?”
She stared at him, managed, “A traveler, headed for the nearest port so I can get out of this soggy backwater.” She was surprised by the crisp bite of the words, no sign of what she was feeling in them, as if someone else were speaking for her. Her fear and anger lessened, the tears stopped, she sat silent waiting for his response.
“Your credeen.” He rode closer, held out his hand. “What?”
“Your permit to travel, athin.” The honorific was an insult. He drew his sword, holding it lightly in his right hand. “The sigiled tag.”
– “Ah.” She thought furiously. Seemed the Temuengs were trying to control travel and tighten their grip on Croaldhu; nothing of this had been in place three years ago at the last Fair; the Kumaliyn didn’t bother with such nonsense. She dredged up the worst words she could think of, cursing the Temueng’s officiousness, the need to poke his nose in other people’s business. All he had to do was ride on and let her be. But he was waiting for some sort of answer and from the look of him, wasn’t inclined to accept excuses or pleas of ignorance. She glanced quickly at Jaril and Yaril. The werehounds had moved quietly out from her until almost obliterated by the rain. She risked a look over her shoulder; the other soldiers and the diligence were out of sight and hearing. Lifting a hand slowly so he could see it was empty, she moved it in a broad arc from Yaril to Jaril. “They are all the permits I need, Temueng.”
And Yaril was a fireball rushing at his head, and Jaril was fire about his sword. With a scream of pain, he dropped the blade. Hastily Brann said, “Just chase this one off, I’ve had enough lives.”
The fires seemed to shrug, then nipped and sizzled about the flanks of the already nervous horse, driving it into a frantic, bucking run after the diligence, the shaken empush struggling to keep from being thrown into the mud. One of the fires flowed into a large hawk and came flying back. It swooped to the sword’s hilt, caught it up and vanished into the rain with it. A second later it was back, settling to the ground beside Coier, Yaril again as soon as the talons touched mud. Brann lifted her Onto the saddle in front of her. “I gave that fool his sword,” Yaril said. “Better if he doesn’t have to explain how he lost it.” She leaned back against Brann, smiled as the other fire returned and was a hound again standing beside the horse. “We got trouble enough once he connects up with those enforcers.”
Brann nudged Coier into an easy canter. “I’m still glad he’s alive. We got trouble anyway, what’s one more stinking Temueng?” She stroked Yaril’s moonpale hair. “Another hour,…” She sighed. “Stinking rain. Wasn’t for that, one of you could fly watch. I don’t know what to do… I don’t know…”
BRANN RODE ON into the rain, that dreary steady downpour that falls straight from clouds to earth and stays and stays until you forget what the sun feels like. Jaril laughed at the idea that anything so simple and natural as rain could keep him from flying and was following about an hour’s ride behind, a dark gray mistcrane dipping in and out of clouds. Yaril was a hound again, running easily beside the horse. Rested and well-fed, Coier had to be held to a steady lope; he wanted to run and Brann shared the urge, but she didn’t dare let him loose.
An hour passed, then another. The children could communicate over any distance bounded by the horizon, why this limitation they either couldn’t or wouldn’t explain, and Jaril would give them an hour’s warning of pursuit, a chance to discover a hide that would fool the followers.
Another hour. Brann rode on between half-seen hedgerows beaten into a semblance of neatness by the downpour, washed to a dark shiny green that glowed through the grays of rain and mud.
Some fifteen minutes into the fourth hour the hound was suddenly Yaril trotting by her knee, screaming up at her over the hiss and splat of the rain, “Riders coming up. Fast. Temuengs. Three from the diligence, one of the enforcers. Half dozen besides. New faces. Most likely occupation troops.” She dashed ahead of the horse, was a hawk running, then powering into the rain, gone to look for a break in the hedges.
Brann was frantic. Ten men, men warned about her. Half a score of men who could stand at a distance putting arrows in her, pincushion Brann, not something pleasant to contemplate. Adept as her body was at healing itself, she had a strong suspicion there had to be a limit-at which point she would be very dead. The hedges on both sides of the road were high, wild and flourishing, taller than she was atop Coier and likely as thick as they were tall. Even if she could somehow push through, those murderous hounds on her trail would spot the signs she’d have to leave and be through after her and she’d have gained nothing, would have lost if some of them had been living long enough hereabouts to know something of the land. Even a year’s patrolling would have taught them how they could drive her into a corner.