" 'A dart in my eye,' " he mused.
They had gone over the ghost's words again and again. It was the only phrase Shai had heard before the corpse and the wagon had been hauled off by Captain Waras's men; naturally, they had been given no chance to examine either.
"How did we miss the killing? Who wanted him dead?"
Anji had no answer.
32
Keshad sat on a mat under a Ladytree. Off in the distance he heard the river's lazy voice, and the haunting call of a dusk wren. Yesterday morning he and Zubaidit had walked free, out of Olossi. They had walked relentlessly, neither of them flagging. In two full days, they had trudged more than twenty mey on West Track. It would take a caravan three or four days to cover as much ground.
He stared at the string of coin draped over his palm. "How could you have had that many debts racked up in town? How often were you allowed to leave the temple? How could any slave spend that much money?"
Bai was sprawled in grass just beyond the farthest reach of the canopy, eyes closed and a smile on her face as a fat golden rumble bug looped lazy circles around her head. For reasons beyond his comprehension, two ginny lizards had accompanied her when she had left the temple. Big enough to be intimidating, they were, fortunately, small enough to be carried. Both had spiky frills along their backs; both, he'd discovered, shifted in color depending on their mood and other less obvious changes. They had disconcertingly alert gazes. At the moment, they basked beside Bai, watching the rumble bug with what appeared to be friendly interest. Neither the ginnies or Bai responded to his voice.
"Bai! We only have eighty-four leya left. Oh. And twenty vey. But we can buy a day's ration of rice with twenty vey. To be split between us!"
She sighed contentedly, without opening her eyes. "I can earn coin, or a night's lodging. Don't worry, Kesh. You worry too much."
"I'm not worrying! I'm being realistic! How are we going to establish ourselves in a new town with so little seed money? We can't afford to pay a leya here and another there for lodging and food as we travel. We can't afford a ride in a wagon. We'll have to walk the entire way. Not at the prices these villages charge. That man at Crow's Gate wanted two leya for us to ride in the back of his cart, only as far as Hayi Fork. That's robbery! And in that village we just passed through, they wanted a half leya apiece just to stay the night in their empty council house! Because their own Ladytree was so ill-cared-for that it had blown down in last year's storms. That's why we have to sleep out here under a wild-lands Ladytree like the paupers we're going to become."
She rolled up to sit. "I heard most of this same speech last night, didn't I? Anyway, I like 'out here.' "
She scritched Mischief under her chin and rubbed Magic on one puffy jowl, then rose lithely to her feet. She moved differently; the change was impossible to ignore. His strongest memories of her naturally involved the years they had been little children together, when she had followed him everywhere, cried when she skinned her knee, or asked him for help at any and every least obstacle, whether a barking dog or a splinter in her finger or a shadow that had to be circumnavigated. Now she strolled to the traveler's hearth with a feral glide and poked in the ashy remains with a stout walking stick she had cut for herself yesterday. It looked like she was stabbing a man to make sure he was dead. The ginnies ambled after.
The light deepened, made hazy by the heat. The wayside was quiet. They were the only travelers to stop here beside the road. Every one else was likely relaxing in a tub of hot water at an inn. Certainly they had seen no traffic in the hour since they had left the last village behind.
"Doesn't it seem strange to you?" he said, watching her prowl in ever-greater circles around the hearth, pacing out the roughly oval clearing as she searched for certain plants the ginnies liked to eat. Magic had paused, scanning the tree line as if for trouble. Kesh swatted away a swarm of gnats. A pair of dark shapes glided out of the trees and swooped over him, through the heart of the swarm. He threw himself flat, and Bai, turning, laughed.
"Just senny lizards," she said. "And a good thing. Sennies will keep the bugs off us tonight. What seems strange to me?"
"How little traffic is on the road."
She shrugged, then walked over to stand beside Magic, looking in the same direction as the ginny. "Everyone says the roads are no longer safe. That no one dares walk into the north, past Horn and the Aua Gap. Maybe we shouldn't have taken West Track at all. Maybe we should have walked into the northwest along the Rice Walk."
"We already talked this over. There aren't any real towns to the northwest where newcomers can set up in business. You know how villagers are. Close-minded, close-fisted, and they smell, too."
She looked at him. "I thought from the way you were talking that you'd been up West Track recently."
"No. Better profits to be made trading south into the empire."
She grunted. "Those empire men-drovers, mostly, and mercenaries guarding the caravans-they would come sometimes to the temple. It isn't the law of the Merciless One to turn any devoured man or woman away, but I tell you, those empire men were dogs. It was just a dirty hump to them, nothing sacred. They would say all kinds of prayers afterward, like they were ashamed of what they'd done! Anyway, they didn't smell good. I don't know how you could stand trading with them."
"My last drover was a good man. He kept silence for the whole trip, and he saved my life by sticking by me when he could have run."
"Maybe." With a shrug, she dismissed him.
"Why don't you believe me? Without Tebedir, you wouldn't be free!"
"Never mind. It doesn't matter, Kesh. What matters is that you're finally free, and I'm with you. For a few days at least."
"A few days? I don't have any intention of indenturing us out, not when we're free of debt."
"That's not what I meant." She paused to look down at the male ginny. Magic gave a slight head-shake, then bobbed his head, as if he were actually communicating with her. She walked back to the cold hearth and set the walking stick on the ground. Both ginnies followed her. The sun had set below the trees, and the entire clearing had turned soft and handsome, like an eager lover glimpsed in shadow. "Help me walk the boundaries. I want to pray."
"I won't."
"I can't do it alone!"
"How can you worship her? After what she did to you?"
"What she did to me? The Devourer has kept faith with me. It was that old bitch who runs the temple who cheated me and abused me!" She crossed her forearms out in front of her chest in the warding sign. "That's what you don't understand, Kesh. They'll try anything to get me back. We're not free of them."
He patted their packs. "We have our accounts bundles. It's legal. There's nothing they can do."
"Don't believe it!"
"Why do they want you back? You're a good-looking girl, Bai, I'm sure, but there were plenty of sexier women there."
"Like Walla?" she said with an annoying laugh. "I saw you sizing her up. She's a real devourer, though. You have to be careful of them, they like to chew men up."
"Why would they want you back, if you're not a 'real devourer' like Walla?"
"Because I'm the best."
"Been sucking up too much sap lately?"
"Don't give me that look. I'm not some vain hierodule who serves the goddess for a year in order to have men drunk on wine and fumes worship her as if she was the Merciless One herself. My redemption price would have been much higher-"