Whandall was learning how to survive in the streets of Serpent's Walk. In the "benighted sections" he had enemies but also friends and guides. He was actually getting good at it. In the Lordshills were dangers he didn't understand. No, he didn't really want to go back; not now. Not until he understood better what he might do there.
He had no place in Lordshills. Or in Lord's Town nearby, where kinless and Lordkin lived together and hung clothes out to dry. But he might learn, in time. The kinless in the pony cart had spoken of moving his relatives to Lord's Town. And there were gardeners, and Lordsmen living inside the walls of Lordshills, They had to come from somewhere. He had to learn those things. Hut where? doing to Lordshills without knowing more could he dangerous.
There was his promise to Shanda. But he'd told her it might take time.
He tried avoiding the teller. It made life less interesting, and Tras sought him out anyway. Whandall began to wonder: what would the teller do to persuade him?
Whandall hadn't looked at the clothes Shanda had given him in a third of a year. When he saw their condition, he put a kilt and shirt on under his Serpent's Walk gear and took them to show the teller.
They were torn. They stank. "It's all like this," he told Tras.
"Dry rot. And how did they get ripped?"
"Bull Fizzles caught me. And afterward I couldn't hang them up to dry without somebody gathering them."
Tras offered to get him some soap.
Whandall explained that soap was unheard-of treasure. His family would gather it from him, if he could get it that far. Unless...
Tras grumbled at the price, but he paid.
Whandall went home by hidden ways, concealing a whole bag of soap. Guile and a brisk breeze hid him through Dirty Bird to Serpent's Walk, and from there a cake of soap bought him an escort back to the Placehold.
He could think of only one way to hide so much soap. He started giving it away.
His mother praised him extravagantly. Brothers took a few cakes to give to their women. He spoke to Wess, a girl two years older than Whandall, the daughter of his aunt's new lover. For the luck that was in his words or because she liked him or for the soap she knew he had, she lay with him and took his virginity.
Now Placehold reeked of soap, and Whandall could safely use the rest. He cleaned the clothes Shanda had given him. Pants and two shirts had rotted too badly; they came apart. He found he could still assemble a full outfit.
He went back to Wess and begged her to sew up the rips. They didn't have to hold long, or to stand up to more than a second glance. When Wess agreed, he gave her another cake of soap.
It would not do to trade with a Lordkin, man or woman. But a gift would persuade Wess not to forget her promise or keep it badly. He could see himself in the Lordshills, trying to get into pants that had been sewn shut at the cuffs!
His clothes must have been good enough, because the guards paid no attention to him at all. This time he knew the way to Samorty's house.
Dinner in Serana's kitchen was as good as he remembered. There was always more than enough food in a Lord's house. Whandall thought that must be the best thing about living here. You could never be hungry.
Shanda had new clothes for him.
"When did you get these?" Whandall asked.
"Just after the carnival," she said. "When you didn't come back, I thought about giving them to the gardeners, but you said it might be a long time."
Whandall was impressed: not that she had saved them for him, though that was nice, but that she could keep things a long time. No one gathered from her room. He'd seen clothes hung to dry, unguarded.
The Lords had gone to someone else's house, so there was nothing to do. Whandall slept in the empty room next to Shanda's.
In the morning they went over the wall with a lunch Serana had packed. Whandall inspected Shanda in her leathers before he let her go further. He was no less careful with his own.
The hills near the Lords' wall were ablaze with flowers. It was glorious, but Whandall had never seen the chaparral like this. All the patterns and paths he remembered were gone.
The chaparral seemed well behaved this near the Lords' wall. Whandall tried to urge caution, but Shanda was entranced by the beauty. The farther they went, the more vicious it all became. Yet the hills still flared in every conceivable color! Every bouquet of swords had a great scarlet flower at the tip. Touch-me displayed tiny white berries and pale green flowers with red streaks. Hemp plants grew taller than Whandall. They looked inviting, but Whandall wouldn't touch them.
"I've never seen the woods like this," he confessed. "Don't pick anything, okay? Please?"
There were few paths, and animals had made those. At least Shanda seemed to be taking the plants seriously. The whips and morningstars were visibly dangerous, and she'd seen what touch-me did to her stepmother. \ le watched her weave her way through a patch of creepy-julia, very cautious, very graceful, very pretty among the black-edged lavender flowers. But she kept stopping to look.
He wove a path through touch-me and bouquets of swords to an apple tree. She followed carefully in his footsteps. They ate a dozen tiny apples and, in a field of high yellow grass, threw the cores at each other.
It was well past noon and they were ravenous again before they reached the redwoods. They were a thousand paces outside Lord's Town.
These trees seemed different. They were not taller or larger, but none of
them had ever been cut. Perhaps the Lords protected their view of the for-
est from the woodsmen. >
At Shanda's urging he kepi moving until the city couldn't be seen at all. All was shadows and wilderness and the huge and ancient pillars.
"This won't hurl you," he said. "Watch your feel!" He walked a crooked path to a twisted trunk that was half bark, half glossy red wood.
"Freaky."
"Yeah. Firewand. This's all right too." A pine tree loomed huge next to children, but tiny beneath the redwoods. Whandall plucked a pine cone and gave it to her. "You can eat parts of this." And he showed her.
Pelzed had been impressed with his knowledge of the forest. Would Shanda's father?
Serana's packed lunch was clearly superior, but Shanda picked another pine cone to keep.
They were late starting home. Whandall didn't worry at first. He only gradually saw that as shadows grew long, the world lost detail. The sun was still up there somewhere, but not for them. You couldn't quite tell where anything was: paths, morningstars, touch-me, a sudden drop.
He found them a patch of clear ground while he still could.
There was a bit of lunch left over. No water. The leathers had been too hot during the day, but they were glad of them now. He and Shanda still had to curl up together for warmth.
He felt stirrings, remembering the clumsy coupling with Wess. Wess was older. He'd thought she would know more than he did. He might have been her first-she wouldn't say-and he still didn't really know how.
The plants were very close-the thought of getting touch-me between his legs made him shudder-and Shanda wasn't at all interested. Instead they lay looking at stars. A meteor flashed overhead.
"Lord Qirinty keeps hoping one of those will fall where he can find it," Shanda said. "But they never do."
Deep into the black night, when he felt her uncoiling from him, he made her piss right next to him where he knew it was safe. He held his own water until the first moments of daylight.
They could take off the masks when they got closer to the wall, but it wasn't safe to remove the leathers.
When they came in over the wall, Miss Bertrana was waiting by the rope. She took Shanda's hand. Whandall tried to run away, but two gardeners grabbed him. They didn't hurt him, but he couldn't get away. They followed Miss Bertrana and Shanda into the house.