"What for?"
The man shrugged again. "Don' know."
"Baskets," came a voice from farther down the column. A young woman peered back at them, the wind making her long red hair dance. "They're looking for baskets, just like all the Fal'Borna."
Suddenly, Stam found it hard to draw breath. "Why?" he asked, barely making himself heard.
The woman frowned. "Haven't you heard about the plague?"
He felt light-headed. "What does the plague have to do with baskets?"
She waved her hand, seeming to dismiss the question. "Probably nothing at all. But you know the Fal'Borna: They're always looking for some new reason to hate the Eandi."
"They claim it's a Mettai curse," said the merchant in line ahead of the woman. "They think that the Mettai and some merchants have conspired together to destroy them." He laughed. "As if the Mettai would trust us."
The woman said something in return. Stam didn't hear what it was. His mind was racing. Baskets? A plague? A Mettai curse? What had he done? What had HedFarren done to him? Had it been his baskets that sickened the people in those two settlements? He didn't understand how it could be possible, but then again, the blood magic of the Mettai had always been a mystery to him.
He shouldn't have left the way he did. He would have been better off waiting there on line for a while longer before pretending to grow impatient. Then he might have been able to steer his cart away from the city without drawing attention to himself, without giving anyone reason to think that he'd had anything to do with the baskets. He might even have learned more about this curse the others were talking about.
But in that moment, all he could think was that he had to get away from the Fal'Borna as quickly as possible. He knew just how brutal the Qirsi of the plain could be with their enemies.
And he was their enemy now. He hadn't intended it; he hadn't known what he was doing. But they wouldn't believe that, nor would they care even if they did believe it. He was a dead man.
He turned his cart around and started back the way he had come.
"Hey, where are you going?" asked the man who had been in front of him in line.
Stam didn't look back. "I have to go."
"It doesn't affect us, you know," the man called to him. "This pestilence. It won't make you sick. You have nothing to worry about."
Stain nodded, but he said nothing and he didn't look back. It was all he could do to keep from using his whip to make Wislo, his cart horse, go faster. "What an idiot," he heard the man say to the others.
About the only thing Stam did right that day was turn north rather than immediately striking out eastward, toward the Silverwater Wash and the safety of Eandi land. As a lone rider heading away from the city to the east, he would have been noticed instantly by the guards at the gate. By steering Wislo to the north for a league or so, he was able to use the column of waiting peddlers' carts to conceal himself from the Fal'Borna.
Not that any of this occurred to him at the time. Instead, his mind was consumed with questions. Had Young Red known when he sold those baskets what they would do to the white-hairs? He had been awfully eager to be rid of them. At the time Stam believed that the young merchant didn't know the value of his wares, though looking back now he realized how foolish he'd been to think so. Brint HedFarren, despite his age, was already one of the most successful merchants in the Southlands, a rival for old Torgan Plye himself. Of course he would have recognized the quality of those baskets. He sold them for a bargain price because he wanted to be rid of them. It was the only explanation that made any sense.
Was HedFarren in league with the Mettai? It seemed a ridiculous question, or rather it would have only a short time before. Now, though…
He followed the river north from H'Nivar for several hours before realizing that he was making a mistake. He needed to get out of Fal'Borna land, and instead he was driving his cart into the heart of it. He considered his options for a moment or two, but quickly recognized that he had none. To the north lay the septs of the rilda hunters; to the south he'd find only the Ofirean and the great Fal'Borna cities along its shores. The J'Balanar held the lands west of the plain, and though the Fal'Borna and J'Balanar had fought battles in the past, both clans were Qirsi. If the Fal'Borna declared Stam their enemy, he'd be no safer among the J'Balanar than he was here.
He had to turn east and hope that he could cross the Silverwater into Stelpana before the Fal'Borna found him. As soon as he formed this thought, however, he felt his entire body sag. He'd never make it. He was at least thirty leagues from the wash, and with the moons on the wane he'd have little choice but to cross the plain by day and rest at night.
Still, Stam turned his cart, determined to reach the wash or die in the attempt. Once more, he had to resist the urge to drive Wislo too hard. It wouldn't do to kill the beast before they crossed into Eandi land, and he couldn't afford to appear to be in too much of a hurry.
He kept an eye out for Fal'Borna riders, septs, and villages. He forced himself to stop periodically so that Wislo could rest and graze and drink from the rills flowing among the grasses. And when he stopped for the night, he made do without a fire, despite the cold. Since he hadn't reached the H'Nivar marketplace, he was still short on food. But he could do nothing about that now. He would get by on a few bites of dried meat and hard cheese in the mornings and evenings. He had an ample gut; he wouldn't starve. And with the cold rains that had fallen over the past turn, he'd find plenty of water.
He continued this way for two days, and by grace of the gods, or by dint of skills he hadn't known he possessed, or thanks simply to sheer dumb luck, he encountered no Fal'Borna. At one point on the second day, he thought he spotted a sept to the north, but he turned slightly southward and drove on, glancing back over his shoulder repeatedly, expecting at any moment to see riders bearing down on him.
By the fourth day, Stam had started to convince himself that he would be all right, that the Fal'Borna weren't even looking for him. Early on he had imagined the other merchants mentioning him to the city guards at H'Nivar, describing his odd behavior and noting that he fled immediately upon hearing of the plague and the baskets. But Eandi merchants had no reason to help white-hairs at the expense of one of their own, no matter how strange they might have thought him. He might still give himself away through some chance encounter with the Qirsi, but he didn't think he had anything to fear from the merchants.
He had been at a loss as to what to do about his three remaining baskets. Just as he didn't build a fire for fear of drawing the notice of the Qirsi, he didn't dare burn the baskets out here on the open plain. Nor could he risk just leaving them in the grass. What if some innocent Fal'Borna came across them and didn't know the risk? What if it was a child? He didn't particularly like the Qirsi, but neither did he wish them harm. And he refused to be the cause of any more suffering like that he'd seen in the two septs in which he'd sold Young Red's baskets.
So he carried them with him, and deep down inside his heart he was glad. They were the only weapons he had that might give him some advantage over the Fal'Borna. He didn't want to use them this way, but if the Qirsi gave him no choice, he would. At least, that's what he told himself.
On the sixth morning after he fled the gates of H'Nivar, Stam woke later than usual, his heart pounding in his chest like a war hammer, his stomach tight and sour, his breath coming in great gasps. He'd slept poorly all night and had finally been driven from his slumber by a dream of Qirsi horsemen who pursued him across the plain, laughing harshly at his vain attempts to outrun them with his plow horse. It had been raining lightly when he went to bed, so he had slept in the cart. Now, though, the sun was shining and it was uncomfortably warm beneath the cloth covering that protected his goods from the elements. He tried to sit up, but his heart still labored and the queasy feeling in his gut seemed to be worsening by the moment.