Of course it had been a woman all along — she’d only thought it was a man! The black rag that held in the thick hair did not go across her forehead, but across her eyes. In it were two eyeholes, though Pryn could not have been more surprised if there’d been three, or five, or seven!
She walked toward Pryn. Her breasts were not large, but they were definitely a woman’s, not just muscular pectorals, for all Pryn tried to read them as such.
She strode into the undergrowth, pushing back leaves. As she passed, she looked at Pryn with only mild surprise.
It was the first anyone had looked directly at her since she’d moved off with the slaves.
Between frayed slits, the eyes were intensely blue.
Pryn thought for an awkward moment: Her hair’s blue, too! But it was only sun-dappling slipping across the blue beads she wore chained in her hair. Sun flaked over terra-cotta shoulders. And she was off among trees; was only a shadow; was a sound in leaves; was — like Bruka — gone.
Pryn stood, astounded.
Beyond the leaves, Vatry lingered in the wagon door, still in her bells and scarfs. Slowly, she stepped back inside.
Pryn swallowed. Then, sack bouncing, she pushed from the undergrowth, crossed the clearing, was up the wagon’s single step, and through the colorful hanging. ‘Vatry…!’
Inside the wagon was a smell of incense and old varnish. Paintings of castles, of waves, of forests, of houses, of mountains leaned against the walls. Ornate armor hung from the ceiling. A trap in the roof let in sunlight. Sitting on a shelf-bed against the back, Vatry pushed away a hanging blanket and peered through dusty sun. ‘Yes? What do you — ?’
‘Vatry, who was…’ Pryn lost her question to the strangeness of the wonder-cramped wagon.
Vatry frowned. Her eyes were winged with paint. ‘What do you…? You? Oh, that girl…from the city!’ She stood up, pushing the blanket further back on the rope over which it was strung. ‘It’s Pryn…?’
Excited, Pryn nodded. She’d really thought Vatry might not remember her at all.
‘What are you doing here at this…?’ Suddenly the freckled hand went back against Vatry’s breast. ‘But you’ve been captured!’ she cried in her odd accent. ‘Oh, you’ve been taken! That’s awful! Is there anything anyone can do?’ She leaned forward in complete sincerity.
Which bewildered Pryn — till she remembered the collar. ‘Oh, this…? No, it’s just a…it’s not real. I mean, it’s broken!’ She dropped her sack to the floor, raised her chin, slipped a finger into each side of the iron band, and tugged — of course this would be the moment when the broken lock held…
But the hinge gave.
Pryn took the iron from her neck. ‘I was only pretending — using it, as a disguise.’ Then she said: ‘It’s for you!’
Vatry frowned. ‘What?’
‘I mean for the skits. You do skits with slaves in them. I thought they might use it…for the show.’
Suspicion found its way into Vatry’s voice. ‘Oh…’
‘Vatry, I have to get away from here! I want to get back to Kolhari!’
‘Don’t we all!’
‘When you pull out this evening, could I ride along — ?’
‘This evening? Oh, no!’ Vatry shook her head. ‘We don’t hang around these places till evening! These local shindigs get a little rough by sundown. Everyone’s gambled away all their money, or gotten too drunk to follow a skit anyway. Every local hooligan thinks the holiday isn’t complete unless he’s stolen something or other from our props as a souvenir. And any little tramp diddled behind the rocks, who decides she doesn’t like it, always finds it easier to blame it on one of our boys instead of the leering local lout who actually got to her. It makes less trouble for them later. Well, I did it myself once — but I’ve been paid back many times over! No, we don’t hang around these kinds of places. We should be packed up and rolling inside an hour.’
‘That’s even better!’ Pryn said. ‘Oh, please, can’t I come? You see, there’re some people looking for me — at any rate, they may be looking for me. I did something that they won’t like. Of course, I don’t know if they realize it was me, yet — ’
‘What did you do? Steal some old geezer’s hard-won hoard?’ Vatry pointed toward Pryn’s sack.
‘Oh, that’s just food I got for the trip.’ Pryn took a breath. ‘What I did was free one of the old geezer’s slaves!’
‘That was noble,’ Vatry said, ‘I suppose — if foolhardy!’
The sack the masked woman had brought lay on rumpled cloth at the foot of Vatry’s bed. ‘What’s in that?’
‘What’s in what?’ Vatry said.
‘That bag the woman gave you?’
Vatry pulled in her small shoulders. Her forehead wrinkled. ‘What woman?’
‘Well, she looked like a man, but I’m sure — I know it was a woman. In that sack there.’
Vatry considered a moment. ‘There wasn’t any woman here — or man.’
‘Of course there was. With a black rag mask.’ Pryn was trying to remember the tale-teller’s tale. Blue Heron…? But that had been her name. ‘She passed right by me when — ’
Vatry leaned over, reached into the sack, and pulled out something small and black. ‘What’s this?’ She held out her hand.
Pryn looked. ‘I don’t…know.’
Vatry closed her fingers, turned her hand over, threw the black pellet down on the wagon floor — thack! It bounced back into her hand. She turned her palm up to show Pryn.
‘It’s a ball…?’
‘Yes. A child’s playing ball, that you see the children tossing about on the streets all through Kolhari. It’s nothing special — absolutely not worth a mention.’ Her odd accent gave her a measured tone. ‘It’s not worth any kind of mention at all, is it, now?’
‘Oh, no.’ Pryn shook her head. ‘Of course it’s not!’
Vatry rolled the ball between thumb and forefinger. ‘These come from further south of here. I’ll bring this bag of them with me up to Kolhari. I’ll sell them for a few iron coins to some vendor in the market, who’ll sell them to the passing children for their end-of-summer games. It may keep me from having to break my back carrying sacks of onions for noisy barbarians in the eating halls for a day or two, when the troupe here lets me go. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’
Pryn shook her head again. ‘Of course not.’
‘Certainly it’s not worth any sort of a mention — to anyone. Do you understand?’
Pryn remembered the smugglers she’d come south with, and their cartload of contraband, against which this minuscule enterprise seemed laughable. ‘Vatry, there may be other people after me too. What ancient custom I violated or bit of intrigue I might have tripped over, I don’t begin to understand and don’t want to. But they tried to poison me last night! At least I think they did. They may try again — and maybe they won’t. But they’re bad people. They order slaves to be whipped for nothing. And I don’t want to stay to find out why — and no, I saw no woman here. Did she give you a sack? I certainly didn’t see it! What was in it? I wouldn’t have a clue!’
Vatry looked serious. She pulled the sack into her lap, put the ball back in it, then pushed it behind some bedding at the bed’s other end. ‘You say they tried to poison you because you freed one of their slaves…?’
It seemed hopelessly complicated to explain right then that it was the other way around. Pryn nodded.