“Don’t call it ‘witch’s fever.’ Witches don’t make fevers or sicken cows or kill crops or any of that.”
“I didn’t say they did. But witch’s—I mean, the sickness. Everyone calls it that.”
“I know.” Drina’s voice was softer now. They had reached the river at the inner side of a broad curve where a slope of clay and pebbles eased into the water. Drina walked on the margin, placing her feet delicately as a heron and watching her prints fill with water. “But it’s—with theskara rok, people look for someone to blame. Ugly people. Outsiders. Witch-whites. Roamers.”
Carvers, thought Kate. She thought she knew more about being hunted and blamed than Drina did, but she did not say so.
The winding river Narwe was turning again; there was a huge stone a pace or two into the channel, and jammed against it a wall of tangled trunks and limbs, remnants of some old flood, cut across their way. Drina blew through her lips in frustration.“Nothing here!”
“What are you looking for?”
“Sand. Clean sand, to scour the pots.”
The anger that Drina had shown a moment ago had slid from her completely and easily, like water off of oiled wood. That sort of generosity was a new thing to Plain Kate; she didn’t know how to take it. But she said, “There’s sand just alee of this fall.” She pointed past the snarl of bleached wood. “That’s what I use.”
“I guess even a town girl has to scrub pots,” said Drina, swinging up over the timbers, staining her legs with moss.
Plain Kate climbed carefully up behind her.“I’ve only got one pot. I use the sand to smooth wood. For carving. That’s who I am, a carver.”
The drizzle had broken into patches as they walked. As Drina scooped up the pale sand, Kate found herself standing in the smudge of shadow cast by the deadfall. She had never before noticed the way shadows gave things weight, made them look heavy and real and connected to the ground. Without hers…
She edged into the light.
Her shadow looked strange and thinned. It seemed not cast against the ground, but floating above it, like a fog. What Linay had said was true: No one would notice this, at first. It was just an uneasy little change, like the half-felt movement of a boat that slowly induces a great sickness.
“Got it!” Drina’s voice came from her elbow, suddenly. She scrambled up the bank toward the field, and Kate followed. At the meadow wall, Drina stopped. “If we go back now, we’ll have to pluck chickens.” She snuck Kate a sly, friendly look. “Let’s go see if Behjet needs help.”
“I asked him already,” said Plain Kate, then regretted it as Drina’s face fell.
Drina rubbed a bare foot against the other leg, smearing mud.“Well. Let’s go see the horses, anyway. Just for a moment.” She swung up onto the wall and walked along the loose, wobbly stones, easy and graceful. “Come on!” Plain Kate walked beside her, though Drina’s feet were level with Kate’s shoulders. Even if she could have walked the wall—and it looked like an acrobat’s trick—Kate would not have dared. It could attract attention.
The horses were picketed on the far side of the camp. There were about two dozen drays: big, powerful animals, the engines of farms and towns. Scattered among them were a handful of draft ponies, and some of the smaller, faster, feistier horses meant for riding.
Drina flipped off the wall, heels over head, landed neat-footed, and ran over to them. Kate came cautiously with her. Drina was stroking a cart horse’s pink, freckled nose. The horse was nearly white, but dappled with dun patches, like butter floating in buttermilk. “This is Cream,” said Drina. She stooped and pulled a handful of grass and held it out. The horse wrapped her tongue around Drina’s hand. “She’s mine.” Drina glanced sideways at Plain Kate, then twitched a smile and amended: “I mean, she’s my favorite. I helped her be born.” Cream worked her jaw and whickered. Drina leaned her cheek into the hollow between Cream’s huge collarbones. Her face looked like stained walnut against the horse’s coat of pale newpine.
Drina looked at Plain Kate, eyes shining.“Do you want to ride her?”
Plain Kate looked up at the horse: way up.“I don’t know how.”
“I’ll teach you. It’s not hard, you just have to hold on.”
“I… Shouldn’t we get back?”
“We should.” Drina wrapped her arms up toward Cream’s shoulders and kissed her chin. The horse whuffled and lipped Drina’s hair. “But I’ll teach you to ride soon. You can’t go the Roamer way without riding.”
There were a hundred things to tend to, a thousand things to do, in the breaking of a camp, and Plain Kate didn’t know how to do any of them.
She didn’t know how to unhook a cooking tripod and bind the three legs together into a single iron staff, or where to tuck the tripod under the cart. She didn’t know how to fold a wet rug so that it wouldn’t mold. She didn’t know how to oil horse tack or fix a harness.
There were eggs to gather and chickens to catch and stuff into wicker baskets, which were in turn piled into a rough iron cage.“A bear cage,” said Drina, her arms full of squawking feathers. “We had a dancing bear for the markets. She died.” Plain Kate didn’t know how to catch chickens.
“I’ll show you,” offered Taggle, who was still drowsing on her coat.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered, and hoped she could keep him quiet that long.
The Roamers hoisted the iron cage onto the top of one of the wagons with a block and tackle. Kate didn’t know how to use a block and tackle. She didn’t know why the one wagon was like a little house on wheels, built of solid wood, while the others were like tents. She couldn’t even keep the three women straight: one was Daj’s daughter, and the other two some sort of complicated cousins. Shewasn’t sure where the men were or whether she was allowed to talk to them, since the other women did not.
But she did know how to scrub a pot. It was not too different from smoothing a finished carving, and was done with a folded square of leather, dipped wet into sand. Plain Kate scoured pots until they gleamed black as the night reflected in the river, and by the time that was done, the Roamers were ready to go.
And when they went, Plain Kate went with them.
FIVE
THE ROAD AND THE RAIN
Despite what Drina had said, it turned out you could go the Roamer way without riding. Mostly, you walked.
The caravan bunched and inched down the road. People on foot went first, where the road was merely sticky and rutted with water. Then came the loose horses, with the horsemen among them. And finally, churning up the mud and the new horse dung, came the wagons. And last of all came Plain Kate.
Walking at the back was Daj’s idea, to keep Plain Kate out of sight until they were far from town. “Harder for some fool to turn you loose, then,” she’d said. Plain Kate had been taken aback; she’d thought her place among the Roamers was Daj’s to give. But, no, explained Drina. Big decisions like that were a matter for the men. “Never fear, kit,” said Daj. “Trust Mother Daj. I know how to lead from the last wagon.”
So Kate walked in the back. It was hard going. She’d lived her life on cobbles, and the mud of the road was new to her. It clutched at her heels like a dying thing. Her boots grew dark with water. Her tall socks got wet and her feet squelched and soon blistered. But she said nothing, and kept walking.
Her little town sank behind her. Samilae. She had never left it before, and had never had to think of its name. Her father when he was alive had been only Father. Dead he was Piotr Carver, and she had to say his name sometimes. And now her home was Samilae. She looked back and saw it become a huddle of roofs, with the tall spire of the weizi above them—her father’s handiwork, casting its finger of shadow after her. She did not cry, and kept walking.