"You might be right," she admitted. "If so, it may be the first time he's been able to figure out when he's treading on dangerous emotional ground! But _"
"It c-can wait unt-til tomorrow," Kestrel said firmly, and took her mug away from her. He put it down beside his own, and then took her in his arms. "I m-may be t-tired, b-but I h-have other p-plans."
And he proceeded to show her what those plans were.
Afterwards, they were so exhausted that not even the pounding rain, the thunder, or the brilliant lightning could keep them awake.
Jonny woke first, as usual; he poked his nose out from under the blankets and took an experimental sniff of the chill air.
Clear, clean air, but one without a lot of moisture in it. Maybe the rain had cleared off?
He opened up one eye, and pulled back the curtain over the door by the bed. Sunlight poured through the crack, and as he freed his head from the bedclothes, he heard a bird singing madly. Probably a foolish jay, with no notion that it should have gone south by now. He smiled, let the curtain fall, and closed his eyes again.
In a few more minutes, Robin stirred, right on schedule. She cracked her eye open, muttered something unintelligible about the birds, and slowly, painfully, opened her eyes completely. Jonny grinned and stretched. Another day had begun.
He crawled past Robin, who muttered and curled up in the blankets. She was never able to wake up properly, so he was the one who made breakfast; he got the stove going and made sausage, tea, and batter-cakes, while she slowly unwound from the blankets. He ate first, then cleaned himself and the tiny kitchen up while she ate. And about the time her breakfast was finished, Robin was capable of speaking coherently. About the time she finished her second mug of tea, the cartwright arrived.
Kestrel left her to clean herself up, and joined the cartwright in the clear and rain-washed morning.
There was no sign of life in Harperus' wagon, but it was entirely possible that the Deliambren and his guest were up and about long ago; there was enough room in there for six or eight people to set up full-time housekeeping. Certainly it was possible for Harperus to be doing anything up to and including carpentry in that behemoth without any trace of activity to an outside watcher.
The cartwright was a taciturn individual, although not sullen; he seemed simply to be unwilling to part with too many words. Clearly another Gypsy by his dark hair and olive skin, his scarlet shirt and leather breeches, he nodded a friendly greeting as Jonny waved to him. "Free Bard Kestrel?" he asked, then crawled under the wagon without anything more than waiting for Kestrel's affirmative reply. He had brought a number of small tools with him; he took off the protective enclosure on the offending axle while Kestrel watched with interest. He studied the situation, with no comment or expression on his dark face, then replaced the cover and crawled back out.
"Right," he said then. "Cracked axle. Not bad. Start now, done by nightfall. Fifty silver; good axle is thirty, ten each for me and Crackle."
Robin poked her head out of the wagon as he finished, and Kestrel blanched at the price of the repair. They had it; had it, and a nice nest-egg to spare, but all the years of abject poverty made Kestrel extremely reluctant to part with any money, much less this much. He looked to Robin for advice. Was this fair, or was the man gouging them?
Robin shrugged. "It's a fair price," she said. "An axle has to be made of lathe-turned, kiln-dried oronwood, and the nearest oronwood stand that I know of is on the other side of Kingsford."
The cartwright (whose name Kestrel still did not know) nodded, respect in his eyes, presumably that Robin was so well-informed. Kestrel sighed, but only to himself. There would be no bargaining here.
"G-go ahead," he said, trying not to let the words choke him.
The cartwright nodded and strode briskly off down the lane towards the cluster of buildings at the front of the Waymeet, presumably to get his partner, tools, and the new axle.
"D-do we s-stay here?" he asked Robin. "Are w-we s-supposed to help?"
"Not at that price," she replied, jumping down out of the wagon. "I heard him out here, so I locked everything up, figuring if he could start immediately, we could go wander around the Waymeet for a while, and see if there's anyone I know here. We can't do anything in the wagon while he has it up on blocks, changing out the axle."
She reached up and locked the back door, then slipped the key in her pocket. The bird in the tree above them, who had been silent while the cartwright was prodding the wagon, burst into song, and she looked up and smiled at it.
That smile lit up his heart and brought a smile to his lips. He reached for her hand, and she slipped it into his. "Th-there's lots of n-news t-to tell, and m-more t-to hear. L-let's at least g-go tell Gypsies and F-Free B-Bards ab-bout Wren and L-L-Lark. And th-the w-welcome to Free B-Bards in B-Birnam. Th-that's g-good news."
"Surely," she agreed. "And we'll see if there's anything of interest to us in what the other folk here have to tell us in the way of news."
To Robin's delight, the first people they encountered, cooking up a breakfast of sausage around their fire, were people she knew very well. It was a trio of Free Bards: Linnet, Gannet, and Blackbird. Blackbird jumped up, nearly stepping into the fire, when he spotted Robin, and rushed to hug her.
Linnet was a tiny thing, with long, coppery-brown hair that reached almost to her ankles when she let it down. Gannet's hair was as red as flame, his milky face speckled with freckles; Blackbird's red-gold hair was lighter and wavy rather than curly, like Gannet's. All three had sparkling green eyes, and slight builds. They made a striking group, whether they were dressed for the road or in their performance costumes.
She made the introductions hastily; none of the trio had ever seen Jonny or even heard of him, so far as she knew.
"Linnet is flute, Gannet is drum, and Blackbird is a mandolin player," she told him, concluding the introduction. "Kestrel is a harpist, and he's learning lute _"
"Well, if Master Wren declared he's one of us, that's good enough for me," Blackbird declared. "No other qualifications needed. Now, we heard there was some kind of to-do over in Birnam_but how did you end up mixed in it, and how did you end up wedded?"
She glanced over at Kestrel, who shrugged, and settled down on one of the logs arranged as seats around the open fire. "Finish your meal and we'll see if we can't get it all sorted out for you," she said, following his example. "We've already eaten, so go right ahead."
Jonny didn't say a great deal, but he did interject a word or phrase now and again; enough that it didn't look as if she was doing all the talking. Linnet and her two partners kept mostly quiet, although by their eyes, they were intensely excited by the whole story. They passed sausages and bread to each other, and filled tea-mugs, without their gazes ever leaving the faces of the two tale-tellers.
"_ and then, well, it was just a matter of getting wedded," Robin concluded.