The mule’s labored breath and the murmur of the morning breeze through the boughs roughened the silence. Cithrin felt the knot in her belly tightening into something like nausea.
“One fewer guard won’t make any damn difference,” Opal said. “I’ll stay with Tag, and when the old boy’s well enough, we’ll catch you up. Won’t be more than a day or two, and one cart with a good team moves faster than a full ’van.”
The cunning man crossed his arms, considering. Cithrin felt a rush of hope.
“Can you do that?” Master Kit asked her. His eyes were gentle, his voice as soft as old flannel.
“I can, sir,” Cithrin said, keeping her voice low and masculine. The cunning man nodded.
“I don’t suppose there’s any harm in suggesting it,” he said. “But perhaps you would allow me to approach them, Tag?”
She nodded, and the old man smiled. He turned and walked back toward the quarters, leaving Cithrin, Opal, and the animals to themselves.
The relief took the edge off her fear. And perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing, in its way. With Opal dressing in her leathers and Cithrin disguised as a man, they weren’t likely to arouse suspicion. It would be a few days away from the greater company, so she would only have to avoid discovery by Opal. And their supposedly different sexes would give a plausible excuse for privacy.
And yet the fear didn’t entirely fade. It came, she told herself, from knowing more than the people around her. She could almost hear Magister Imaniel now, sitting at the evening meal with Cam and Besel, dissecting exactly how a merchant or prelate had behaved differently than expected, and what it implied that they had. Cithrin knew that Tag the Carter carried enough wealth to buy a small army, but no one else did. The risk of lagging behind the body of the ’van was no more than she would have faced if she’d truly carried a load of undyed wool. Her chances only seemed worse because she knew the stakes of the bet were high. She was undiscovered. No one was searching for her or what she carried, the mule would be made well, and she wouldn’t face a journey to Carse by herself. Everything would be fine.
“First time out?” Opal said.
Cithrin glanced at her and nodded.
“Well, don’t let it worry you, dear,” the guard said. “We take care of our own.”
It didn’t occur to Cithrin for hours to wonder exactly why a mercenary guard would include a semi-competent carter in our own, and by then the plan was set and the caravan with Captain Wester and Master Kit was gone down the road to the mountains and to Carse.
They passed the day in caring for the sick beast: warming the stable, rubbing down the mule, forcing an odd concoction that smelled of tar and licorice into its mouth. By nightfall, the mule held its head higher and its cough seemed less violent. That night, Cithrin and Opal slept in the stables, wrapped in thin blankets. An ancient iron brazier between them threw off enough heat to keep the room from freezing, but only just. In the darkness outside, something shrieked once and then not again. Cithrin closed her eyes, resting her head on one arm, and willed herself to sleep. She envied Opal’s slow, even breath. Her own body tensed and shivered, her mind jumped from one fear to another, conjuring a hundred possible disasters. The bandits who had attacked the ’van before might arrive in the night, rape and murder them both, and make off with the bank’s money. Opal might discover her secret and, mad with avarice, slit her throat. The mule might relapse and leave her stranded in the autumn cold.
When a low, grey dawn finally came, Cithrin hadn’t slept. Her head ached, and her back felt as if someone had beaten her with a hammer. Opal, humming to herself, rebuilt the fire, boiled a pan of water with a sprinkling of leaves in it, and checked on their patient. When Cithrin joined her, the mule felt cooler to the touch, his eyes looked brighter, his head stood at its more usual angle. In the next stall, the other mule cleared her throat and grumbled.
“Is she getting sick too?” Cithrin asked. The very idea made her want to weep.
“She may, but she hasn’t yet,” Opal said. “Probably just jealous that the old boy here’s getting all the attention.”
“Should we go, then? I mean, is it safe to get back to the ’van?”
“This afternoon, maybe,” Opal said. “Better that he have his strength back. Start him with a half day’s work.”
“But—”
“We’ve been this way before. We’ll catch them up before they go over the pass. They’ll stop at Bellin, send up scouts.”
Cithrin knew the name, but she couldn’t place it. Opal glanced over at her.
“Bellin,” Opal said. “Trading town just before the pass. You really don’t know much about hauling in a caravan, do you?”
“No,” Cithrin said, both sullen and embarrassed at being sullen.
“Bellin’s not much, but they’re friendly to travelers. Master Kit took us there for a month once. New people coming through the road every few days, no one staying long. It was like being a traveling company without the traveling.”
A breath of cold wind stirred the straw. In the brazier, the coals brightened and the thin flame danced. Cithrin’s mind felt slow and sodden with fatigue. What would a guard company do with a month of passing traders and merchants and missionaries? Protect them inside the town walls where they needed it the least?
“I should go,” Cithrin said. “Check the… check the cart.”
“Make sure it hasn’t gone anywhere,” Opal said, as if she was agreeing.
In practice, being only with Opal was better than being with the full ’van. With just one person to keep track of, Cithrin could find moments to let her guard down, be herself instead of Tag. When the time came and they harnessed the mules, it wasn’t all that different from being alone. Opal did most of the talking, and that was for the most part about how to manage the team. Cithrin knew that Tag should have been bored by the lectures, but she drank them in. In the first half day, she learned a hundred things she’d been doing wrong. When they bedded down that night in a wide meadow beside the road, she was a better carter than she’d been in all the long weeks since Vanai.
She wanted to thank the guard for all she’d done, but she was afraid that if she started she might not stop. Gratitude would become friendship, and friendship confession, and then her secrets would be spilled. So instead she made sure that Opal got the best food and the softer place to sleep.
In the darkness, the two of them lay on the soft wool. The moon and stars were gone, wrapped in clouds, and the darkness was absolute. Cithrin’s mind skittered and shifted, thin with exhaustion. And still, sleep was slow to come. In the middle of the night, she felt Opal’s body pressing next to her own and woke up in a panic, afraid that the guard was attacking her or seducing her or both, but she was only cold and half asleep. She spent the rest of the night drawn by the warmth of Opal’s body and trying to hold herself apart for fear of compromising her disguise.
In the dark, the weeks between her and Carse seemed eternal. She imagined that she could feel the casks and boxes hidden just beneath her. The books and ledgers, silk and tobacco leaf and spice. Gems and jewelry. The weight of responsibility and fear was like someone pressing on her chest. When, just before dawn, she finally slept deeply enough to dream, she found herself at the edge of a cliff, trying to keep a hundred stumbling babies from pitching into the abyss.
She woke with a cry, and she woke to snow.
Wide, fat flakes dropped from the sky, grey against the white of clouds. The trees caught it, the bark seeming to turn black by contrast. The dragon’s jade of the road was gone, their path marked only by a clear space between the trunks. The horizon had been erased. Opal was already fixing the mules in their harness.
“Can we really go in this?” Cithrin asked, forgetting to deepen her voice.
“Better had. Unless you’d prefer to settle here.”