Sandry smiled at her. “You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten something,” she said practically. “And I didn’t make your boots. They’ll be scraping mud off them for a week.” She offered Tris her hand.
Tris took it, and fought her body—it had been in one position for much too long—to get to her feet. The mud seemed far deeper than it had been when she sat down. As she struggled and lurched, worried that she would pull Sandry into the clayey soup, she looked at herself. From her waist down she was coated in mud.
Maghen saw Tris’s self-inspection. “You sank,” she explained. “The ground went soft and you sank, and you didn’t even move. Oooh,” she whispered as Sandry and Tris brushed at Tris’s skirts. The mud slid off as if the cloth were made of glass.
Tris grinned at Maghen. “When Sandry makes a dress for a rainy day, she makes sure no one will have to wash it twelve times to get it clean,” she told the child. “Really, she’s very useful to have around, even if she is a clehame.”
Sandry elbowed Tris in the ribs. “Shake that mud off your stockings, too, while you’re at it,” she ordered.
Tris obeyed.
“Come see,” begged Maghen. “Look what happened.” She towed Tris closer to the river’s edge. On both sides, a hundred yards upstream of the bridge and roughly the same length downstream, the riverbanks were secured by solid stone walls. Closer examination showed them to be made of thousands of pieces of rock, large and small, fitted tightly together into barriers a foot thick. Tris bent down to look under the bridge. The walls continued under it, supporting and filling in the spaces around the piers. The riverbanks would stay put for a few decades, at least.
“Not bad for a day’s work,” she told Maghen, and trudged back to Sandry and Ambros. The man had procured sausage rolls, which he offered to her. Tris took two—she was ravenous—and ate quickly and neatly as the guards mustered the nerve to bring forward their horses. When she was done, she shook hands solemnly with Maghen and waited for Sandry to mount up.
“I’ll make sure the villagers thank you before we return to the capital,” Ambros murmured to Tris. “They’re just ... unsettled. The ground quivered and growled for hours.”
“I didn’t mean to unsettle anybody,” Tris grumbled as she swung herself into the saddle. “I just didn’t want you to have to pay to repair the riverbanks along with everything else.” She smiled crookedly. “Sandry might actually have to sell rubies, or something.”
As Ambros mounted his horse, Sandry looked back at Tris. “Donkey dung,” she said. “I was so hoping to sell the rubies Papa bought Mama. I prefer garnets, you know. They have a much more pleasing color.”
Chime glided over to them from wherever she had been as they set their horses forward, waving good-bye to the villagers. Ambros shook his head and continued to shake it. “I’ve never known anyone like either of you,” he said, befuddled. “Not a noblewoman who didn’t prize expensive stones, nor a young woman who could stir up the earth like a stewpot and say, ‘Oh, by the way, I’ve just saved you a hundred gold argibs in riverbank shoring.’ Not to mention the lives of the few who always manage to fall into the river and die during the work.”
“Then you’ve led a sheltered life,” Tris informed him.
Sandry patted Ambros on the arm. “We lived in a very rowdy household,” she added sympathetically. “You should be glad we didn’t live here, with all the mistakes we made.”
“But you ...,” Ambros said, looking at Tris.
Tris slapped her mount’s withers lightly with the reins, sending the horse into a trot ahead of the group. I hate it when they go on and on about the things I can do, she thought irritably. Why can’t Ambros just let it drop?
It’ll be different when I get an academic mage’s license at Lightsbridge, she told herself. Then I can just do all the work mages are expected to do: charms and spells and potions and things. The trouble with the Winding Circle medallion is that when I show it I have to explain about weather magic—a Lightsbridge license won’t require that. People won’t fuss at me for being odd. I can live a normal life.
As she crested the ridge, the wind brought an unexpected metallic tang to Tris’s nose. When she straightened to get a better whiff of it, the scent was gone. She drew her mare up and raised a hand to signal the others to slow down.
“What’s wrong?” demanded Ambros.
The wind shifted. Tris no longer smelled whatever it was. Slowly she lowered her hand.
“Maybe nothing,” Sandry replied to her cousin. “Maybe trouble coming.”
“Maybe one of those villagers slipped off to warn someone we’d be coming this way—bandits or the like,” one of their guards suggested. When Ambros frowned at him, the man shrugged. “Sorry, my lord, but we couldn’t watch everyone. There’s no word the Pofkim folk have any dealings with outlaws, but you never know.”
On they went, the guards with hands on their weapons, riding around Sandry and Ambros in a loose circle. Tris refused to retreat into their ranks. After seeing her work with the riverbanks, none of the guards insisted that she move inside their protection.
They had gone two miles when a spurt of wind showed Tris metal plates sewn to leather and shoved the tang of sweat, oil, and iron into her sensitive nose. She sneezed and reined up. Twenty men trotted out from behind a stone outcrop at the bend of the road and rode wide to encircle them. Some guards tracked them with their bows, sighting on first one, then another rider. Ambros and the remaining guards drew their swords.
Three of the newcomers halted directly in front of their party. One of them was an older man, gray with age and red-nosed from too much drinking, though his seat in the saddle was assured and his gaze clear. Another was a redheaded man in his thirties who wore a gaudy blue tunic over his armor. He grinned at them, but there was nothing friendly about the double-headed ax in one of his hands. The third man was barely older than Sandry and Tris themselves. He wore a metal cuirass and held a bared sword in his trembling grip.
“Good day to you, Saghad fer Landreg,” the redheaded man said casually.
Ambros looked as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “Bidis fer Holm. Saghad fer Haugh.” He directed the glare that went with the Saghad title at the oldest newcomer. For the youngest of them, Ambros spared only a sniff of disdain. He spoke to Sandry, though his eyes never left the men in front of them. “Behold the least savory of the so-called nobles who haunt your borders in search of easy pickings. Saghad Yeskoy fer Haugh is uncle to Bidis Dymytur fer Holm and father to that young sprig of a rotten family tree.”
“Ah, but Dymytur is your eternal slave, fair Clehame,” the redheaded man said, bowing mockingly in the saddle. “Now, which of you wenches would that be? Please tell me it’s not the fat one, Ambros. Fat redheads always spell trouble in our family—look at my mother. I suppose I could cut this one back on her feed, get her a little less padded.”
Tris sighed and leaned on her saddlehorn. “I wouldn’t touch you to kick you,” she told him rudely, her brain working rapidly. Ambros must think I’m worn out from the river, she thought. Oh, dear. I suppose a little surprise won’t hurt him. He really ought to know that Sandry isn’t a helpless maiden. Now seems as good a time as any for him to learn.
“You’re going to try that thing, aren’t you?” demanded Sandry, her eyes blazing. “You’re going to try and kidnap me and force me to sign a marriage contract so you’ll get my wealth and lands.”
“Oh, not try, dearest, wealthy Clehame,” Dymytur assured Sandry. “We’re going to do it. Your party has eight swords, and we have twenty.”