She shrugged again, and Niki sighed.“But it’s wise, little one. Wise. There’s talk.”
She stood, still looking at the objarka. Niki faltered and looked at it too.“It’s very fine, you know, very fine work. You have a way with a knife, that’s sure, a blessed blade. This will be lucky for me, sure. But I’ll miss you.” As if the admission embarrassed him, he started to bustle. “I can give you bread. Two-day-old millet, only a little stale. And I think”—he was rummaging—“there’s some hurry bread, you know, for traveling. I—” He stopped as a thought took him. “You should go with the Roamers.”
Unexpected hope rocked her. Going with other people—even a foreign and despised people—would give her a real chance to survive. “The Roamers?” she echoed.
“Yes, that’s it, Roamers,” said Niki.
They both looked at each other, not sure of how one went about being taken in by outcasts.“I’ve dealings with them, you know, over the horse,” said Niki at last. “So they’ll talk to me, I suppose. They’re down by the sheep meadows.”
He stopped, seeing her face.“No fear,” he said, patting her hand. “Roamers are right enough.”
But he had mistaken her: She was afraid not that the Roamers would take her in, but that they would turn her away.
So, at dawn in misty rain, Plain Kate found herself with Niki the Baker at the edge of the sheep meadows, just outside Samilae’s lower gate. The Roamers were just stirring: an old man uncovering a banked fire, two young women chatting and gathering eggs from sleepy chickens. Their bright-painted wagons floated in the morning dew-fog. On the far side of the camp, two dozen horses wove like shadows in the mist, and a young man in blue moved among them.
“Wait a moment,” murmured Niki, and left her standing by the low wall of stones and raspberry brambles that marked the edge of the meadow. She watched Niki go toward the horses and stood waiting. After a moment she shrugged off her basket. The lid lifted and Taggle poured himself over the side.
“Are we finished fleeing?” the cat asked, the last word swallowed by a huge yawn. He stretched forward, lengthening his back and spreading his toes, then sprang onto the wall beside her. His nose worked. “Horses,” he said. “Dogs. Hrrmmmmm. Humans. Chickens. And—ah, another cat! I must go and establish my dominance.” He leapt off the wall.
Plain Kate lunged after him.“Taggle! Wait!” She snatched him out of the air by the scruff of his neck.
“Yerrrrowww!” he shouted, hanging from her hand. “The insult! The indignity!”
Kate fell to her knees and bundled the spitting cat against her chest.“Taggle!” she hissed. “Stop!”
“I shall claw you in a moment, no matter how much I like you. Let mego!” He writhed against her chest.
“Tag, you can’t talk.”
“Ican talk,” came the muffled, outraged voice. “I can also claw and bite and scra—”
“No,” she interrupted. “Youcan’t, you mustn’t talk. Listen to me. They’ll kill you if they hear you talk.”
The cat stopped twisting.“Who would? Who would dare?”
“The other people. Please, Taggle. They’ll think it’s magic. They’ll kill us both.”
“Itis magic,” he said, reproachful. “And it wasyour wish.”
“I know—I’m sorry. But please.”
“Well. I am not afraid. But to protect you, Katerina, I will be discreet.” Plain Kate considered a cat’s idea of discretion, and was frightened. But it was the best she could do.
“Now, let me go,” said Taggle. “I have business to conduct in the language of fur and claw.”
“Good luck,” she said, and wished hard.
Plain Kate was still sitting with her back to the wall when Niki reappeared with the young man who’d been tending the horses. “Up, up,” the baker fussed. Kate stood and kept herself from backing into the wall. “Meet someone. Meet Behjet, who sold me my horse. Best horseman among the Roamers, it’s said.”
The flattery made it obvious that Niki wanted something. Plain Kate wanted to wince, but the man just said,“And who have we here, Nikolai?” He was soft-voiced, slender, wearing a blue shirt with a green kerchief knotted round his neck: kingfisher colors.
“She is, this is,” Niki sputtered, “Plain Kate. Orphan girl, orphan to Piotr Carver.” He drew Plain Kate forward into the crook of his arm. “Behjet, she needs a place.”
“Among the Roamers, you mean?” The man, Behjet, wiped his palms on his groom’s apron. “That’s no small thing to ask. Where is she going?”
Plain Kate pulled away from the soft, doughy warmth of Niki and answered for herself.“Away.”
“Hmmm,” said Behjet. “And why’s that?”
From far off, Plain Kate heard Taggle’s yowl of victory. The cat was establishing his dominance. Finding his place. “Because.” Kate swallowed. “Because they’ll kill me if I stay here. They think I’m a witch.”
“Which she’s none of,” Niki added.
“Ah,” said the young man softly. Like all the Roamers, he had dark skin and wide, uptilted dark eyes. They were horse deep and horse soft; they made him look kindly. But still he didn’t move.
Niki fluttered his hands.“And you were saying you were in need of a carpenter, that you had to fix your wagons in every other town and wished for a carpenter among you. Plain Kate is a woodworker.”
“A good one,” added Kate. Her voice came out level. She was proud of that.
Behjet blew through his lips, whuffling like one of his horses.“Taking in agadje—it’s not for me to decide. But let me take you to meet my mother.” He started off across the close-cropped, drizzle-gray grass.
Plain Kate pulled on her pack-basket and hurried after him, with Niki trailing.“What does ‘gage-eh’ mean?”
“Gadje-eh,” Behjet corrected, pulling herg towardz.“It means ‘not one of the Roamers.’ It’s not the kindest word, and I’m sorry for it. But you must not think that because we have no walls, we have no ways. We are not wild men, for all that we are not welcome most places. Now then.” They had come to the wagons. They were small, with high wheels, their beds wooden and heavily carved, bright with paint. Their decks were covered by canvas pulled across bows of wood. On the back steps of a red-painted wagon, an apple-faced old woman was plucking a rooster. She was bundled in green and yellow skirts and many scarves. Gray hair frizzed from under her turban and dripped into her dark face.
Niki did not bow, but he twisted his hands in front of him as if he thought maybe he should.“Mother Daj,” he said.
“Daj,” said Behjet, who did bow a little, and then added something in another language. It seemed to Plain Kate like a long speech, and she was frustrated. If her fate was being decided, she wanted to understand.
Behjet fell silent. Plain Kate found the woman looking at her, her eyes small and bright as a hawk’s among her wrinkles. Copying Behjet, she bowed, but said nothing.
“A carver, eh?” the woman drawled. She used the rooster’s beak to point at Kate’s objarka. “Just fancy work?”
Plain Kate planted her feet as if about to fight.“Plain and fancy. Boxwork, wheelwork, turned wood. But mostly carving.” She took off the objarka, which her father had called a masterpiece, and passed it to the woman.
She turned the dark wooden cat round and round in her dark hands, put its little nose to her big one.“She’s a good blade, Mother,” said Niki. But the old woman ignored the baker, intent on Kate’s objarka and some internal question. At last she said, “Well, we could use a carver, and that’s sure, child.” Her head was still down, as if she were speaking to the carved cat. Then she looked up, her face soft with wrinkles. “And though you keep it from your face, I think you could use us. You have your own gear? Your own tools?”