“No.”
She opened her mouth, closed it again. Reiter had sent soldiers to kill and he’d sent them to die and he knew how to draw a line in the sand. When Cobb turned her attention back to her meal, so did he.
“Head for the cleft…” Gryham put a hand on her shoulder and turned her slightly to the left. “…and that’ll take you to the Tardford Bridge.”
“Karis is this way.” Mirian turned herself back, squinting into the morning sun.
“And if you go that way, you’ll have to cross at the Vone at Chamon. Small town, everyone knows everyone, and they’re all suspicious as shit of strangers. No, you want to cross at Tardford. Second largest city in the old empire, shitload of people, and it’s easier to hide in a crowd. Lots of people wander into big cities looking for work. No one goes to a small town unless they got friends or relatives there. You go to Tardford, you avoid the kind what think a uniform or a piece of paper gives them power they’ve no right to…”
“Bureaucrats, soldiers, priests,” Jake put in from Gryham’s other side.
“…and you’ll be fine. You move your ass,” Gryham continued, wrapping an arm around Jake’s shoulder and pulling him in close, “you get to Tardford tomorrow. You take Old Capital Street right through town, then strike off straight for Karis. The road follows the river, but you don’t have to. It’ll take a day off your run.”
“We could get a ride.”
“Could you?” Gryham snickered. “You’re going to put a wolf in a wagon behind a horse?”
“We went from Abyek to the border in a wagon.”
“Flat on your back and sweating out drugs. You get into a wagon now and you better be sure you stay downwind of anything pulling it.”
“I could…” Mirian began, chin up, glaring at Gryham, but Jake cut her off.
“Ignore him. He’s missing the point. Horses are fine if you’re carrying shit or if you need to cover a short distance fast. You…” He nodded at Tomas. “…can run for longer than any horse. Not as fast, but longer. Can probably run longer than Master Musclebound here…ow! You…” He turned his slightly manic grin on Mirian. “…are rebuilding yourself to keep up to him. Why the fuck would you slow yourselves down by bouncing along behind a horse?”
Tomas stared out toward the cleft—although Mirian couldn’t see anything cleftlike, it was possible he could—and kicked at a clump of dead grass. “Tardford, Chamon; why don’t we just avoid people entirely?”
“And walk across the Vone?” Jake snorted. “They put towns where bridges are.”
“Mirian could part it.”
“You sure?”
“No,” Mirian answered before Tomas could. “I’m all about bridges!”
“You need to be around people or you’ll be screwed in Karis,” Gryham told them. Mirian didn’t appreciate the whole you’re idiots subtext, but he wasn’t wrong. “You’ve gone wild last few days. Can’t say I blame you, but the capital’s not going to empty out when you walk in, is it? You need to practice being civilized.”
Tomas kicked at another clump of grass, looked down at his foot, then up at Gryham in triumph. “We need shoes to go into a town.”
“Well, you’ll never fucking fit in his,” Jake pointed out, smacking Gryham on the chest, “but I might be able to help.”
Mirian leaned around Gryham. “You said that…Saw that yesterday.”
“Did I? Well, now we know what I meant. Fucking yay. Stay here. Gryham…”
Gryham rolled his eyes, but allowed the smaller man to pull him back to the cottage. As they disappeared inside, Mirian untied the bedroll and pulled out the telescope. Aim for the cleft was all very well, but she couldn’t even see the cleft. She pointed herself at Karis, then moved as much as she thought Gryham had moved her, shut one eye, and held the telescope up to the other. The brass eye-piece warmed quickly.
“It’s right there.” Tomas moved in and shifted the telescope a little farther. “Can’t you see it?”
Without the telescope, the triangular cut in the distant hills blended into the landscape. With the telescope, she could just make it out, although the edges were fuzzy. “You’ve got good eyes.”
“It’s right there!”
“I can see it now.” More or less. “It’s hazy by the river.”
“No, it isn’t. Mirian…”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Because if they talked about it, she’d have to acknowledge what was happening. That wasn’t sensible, but she didn’t care. Mirian lowered the telescope as Gryham and Jake returned, and slid it away as Jake dumped the carpetbag he carried out onto the ground. “Why do you have so many pairs of old shoes?”
“I live in the middle of nowhere. I don’t get rid of shit.” He tossed a pair of work boots, tied by their laces, at Tomas who ducked. “Try these. They’re big on me and you lot have small feet for your size. I think it’s a paw thing.”
Mirian had never noticed Tomas’ feet.
“Now these…” Jack handed Mirian a pair of leather house shoes. “…are soft enough the laces might pull them tight enough to fit you. You’re not what I’d call delicate.”
“Thank you.”
He grinned. “Any time.”
The shoes fit well enough, as much too big on her as the boots were too small on Tomas. They wouldn’t be comfortable, but if they had to rejoin civilization, they needed shoes.
“I never thought I’d say this,” Tomas murmured as Mirian packed them into the bedroll, “but I miss those wooden clogs.”
“Definitely easier to get out of,” Mirian agreed. “And not…”
“Just keep to the right, you’ll be…Your right, you idiot, not their right! Good night!”
They turned to see Jake staring toward the east, one hand holding a slipper, Gryham a step away.
“And now,” Gryham grinned. “…you know what to do tomorrow.” He reached for Jake’s free hand, but Jake snatched it away and stiffened.
“Hurry!”
Mirian felt as though someone had just stroked a cold finger down the center of her back. “Gryham. He Saw that yesterday, too.”
“About keeping to the right?”
“No. He said, ‘Hurry.’”
“Did he?” Graham wrapped his arms around the smaller man and pulled him close. “Then you’d better be getting a move on.”
Reiter stared at the jacket Linnit had laid out on his bed, at the gold braid on the epaulets, the double strands of gold cord hanging down under his left arm, and the gold frogging across the front and around the cuffs. “Tell me this is a joke.”
“It’s court dress, sir.”
He knew it was court dress. He saw officers in court dress every day. But, like many things, it looked a lot worse when it was applied to him personally. The only thing that made it even remotely acceptable was that the gold was a color only and at that he’d be paying for the color out of his next half dozen pay packets—real gold would take the rest of his flaming life.
Linnit approached, fabric draped over his hands. “The sash has to go on before the jacket.”
The sash had fringe. Reiter felt like an idiot. He took what comfort he could in the plainness of the black trousers and that his dress boots had been deemed suitable. Wearing this mockery of a military uniform, he’d be less noticeable within the court but unable to hide should he want to step to the side.
One of the officers whistled as he entered the guards’ mess. He hadn’t made any friends, he wasn’t around enough for that, but they’d ignored him the way they’d have ignored any new man posted to the unit. That easy neutrality was gone. He wasn’t just another military man doing a job; court dress in that room was about equal to bragging that he’d been mentioned by the Soothsayers and he had the emperor’s ear.