Gull chuckled, caught her by the waist, hoisted her onto the wagon seat. Inside, the cook crooned, "Ha, there's the little darling! Come here and nap with Felda, sweetie." All dirty feet and knees, Greensleeves tumbled into the back to curl like a dog.
Gull limped around the wagons, checking one last time. As he passed the women's wagon, a blob of spittle landed before him. The leather-clad bodyguard perched on the box. His ear had scabbed, but swollen twice its size. He sneered, "You won't live the night, shit shoveler."
Grinning, Gull put a hand to his head. "What's that? I can't hear you. There's something wrong with my ear."
Veins bulged in the bodyguard's neck. Two wagons down, the crinkled bodyguard silently guffawed.
Gull finished inspecting, then called to the clerk on Towser's wagon. "Ready to roll."
The clerk spoke into the wagon, then nodded. "Move out."
To the click of brakes and slap of reins and cluck of drivers, the wagon train uncoiled and wheeled down the trail picked out by the sheepskinned man the cook called Slow Boy. Creak, rattle, clunk, into the depths of the Whispering Woods.
Gull wondered how far the woods extended, where they ended, what came next. Then he hollered at Knothead to take the proper side of a rock, the stupid mangy lop-eared peabrained son of a blind piebald pig.
Anyone not driving was free to walk. The bard always did, toting her lyre and whistling birdcalls. The dancing girls hopped from one wagon to another, into Towser's when summoned.
Yet Gull was surprised when a white-clad dancing girl caught the edge of the chuck wagon seat. "Give me a hand!"
Gently, Gull hauled her aboard, then returned to his driving. In this stretch, he could easily scrape a tree and break a wheel. Yet he risked a glance. Penetrating the makeup, he guessed she was only slightly older than Greensleeves, still a girl. She rode in silence a way, then offered, "That was clever how you snipped Kern's ear."
Gull chuckled at the memory. "Oh, that was nothing. I flick flies off my mule's ear without a twitch. He was testing my mettle. Now we know where we stand."
"Well, ignore his threats. He only beats people who give in. He made our last freighter's life hell."
So that's why the man hid among the horses, Gull thought, and died by a fireball.
Gull clucked to urge his teams around a stand of birch. "Do you speak from personal experience?"
"Aye," she said frankly. "I slept with him once, but he hit me. So no more."
Ah, thought Gull, she was grateful he'd bashed Kem. "What did Towser say about that?"
"What? The hitting?"
"No, the sleeping."
"Oh. We're allowed to pleasure the men as long as they pay for it. We're in Towser's employ, after all."
"And what do you do for Towser?" Just making conversation, Gull didn't expect a reply.
Yet she smiled and answered. "Not as much as you'd think. He frets about his health and stars too much to enjoy a romp."
"Eh? His health and stars?"
"Aye." She stretched like a cat, yawning. "He has the notion-you won't tell him I said so?"
"What?" Gull looked sidelong. The girl's hair was dark, cut short at the sides to kiss her cheeks, with the rest braided down her back, twined with white ribbons. All her clothes were white with yellow and blue piping: sheer blouse, vest brocaded in flowers, pantaloons, slippers bound with more ribbons. He returned to studying his mules. "No. You can trust me."
"Hmmm…" she demurred, then plunged in. "Towser has the notion that working magic drains his 'vital juices.' He's always carping about 'balancing the salts' and 'maintaining electricity,' whatever that means. That's why he has a nurse in attendance, Haley, the eunuch. Sloppy green potions six times a day, poured in one end or squirted up the other. Ridiculous. And he worries about the influence of the stars, so he fetches along that witch, Kakulina, his personal astrologer. All she does is draw star charts and mumble absurdities. I should have her job. She doesn't have to humor someone who talks constantly of his bowels and his birthstone."
Amused by his boss's queer notions, Gull smirked. "You could have asked to be muleskinner."
"I should have. I couldn't be cook, that's for sure. I never learned how."
"Can't cook?" Gull gurgled. "Every child in my village learns that!"
The girl extended a slippered foot over the seat, let it bob with the sway of the wagon. Sunlight dappled her powdered face, making her look artificial and unhealthy. "When I was a child, my parents sold me to a bawdy house. Eleven mouths were too many to feed. And I was too pretty to keep. I learned how to set a table, serve tea and ale, mull wine, dance and sing, to duck a hurled bottle, to recognize disease, to hide my money so the other girls wouldn't steal it, to beg a man not to slash me. Later, when I was old enough, I learned how to arouse a man, how to fulfill his fantasies-"
"You don't need to tell me the rest."
The girl stared straight ahead. "Anyway, they never taught me how to cook."
"Doesn't sound like a jolly life."
She shrugged thin shoulders. "It's not the worst job in the world. I don't have to gut fish, or plow, or lean over tanning vats, or muck out hogs. I don't have to please six or seven men a night, only one, and Towser doesn't require much. And I've been saving my money. Someday I'll have a business of my own."
"Oh?" Gull was amused and bemused. In some ways, this woman reminded him of poor Cowslip, practical and level-headed. Yet dainty and aloof, she was unlike any woman he'd ever met. "What kind of business?"
"A shop for gentlemen and ladies. A milliner's. I'll sell only the finest hats and gloves. In some big city."
The driver nodded. "People will always need clothes, so you won't starve. It's good to see ambition. All I ever learned is how to cut wood and shape timber. And whack mules in the head. That would have been enough, too, but my luck ran out three days ago."
"Don't dwell on it, then. Be glad for the home you had. Some of us were denied even that."
They rode in silence a while, then Gull asked, "How did you come to work here?"
"Towser bought my contract a year ago. He was very queer about it, too."
"How queer?" This woman was one surprise after another.
The dancing girl frowned in recollection. "He had all us girls paraded into the main hall, then he had each don this silver medallion he took from a box. We took it in turns and never did learn why. Then he bargained for me, and my mistress let me go."
Gull could make no sense of that, just shrugged. "How are you called?"
"Lily. Towser has me dress in white. The other girls are Rose, who's sweet but dense; Orchid, who thinks she's a queen; Peachblossom, friendly enough; Jonquil, fit to butcher hogs; and Bluebonnet, such a bitch she could birth puppies."
"Thanks for the warning," Gull drawled.
Yet he brooded. The dancing girls were named after flowers, as had often been the women in his village. None of them would have been named Lily, a delicate flower grown fussily in gardens. A cowslip was a hardy wildflower that flourished in manure piles.
Then thoughts of home and all he'd lost crowded his mind, let him say no more.
In the midafternoon, the scout waved the train to halt. From a low rise ahead, he mimed Gull should walk. Curious, the woodcutter handed the reins to Lily and limped up there.
The crinkled bronzed man was taking his turn. He draped a crossbow across a knotty arm and pointed to the ground. "What d'ya make?"
Careful not to step on the evidence, Gull dropped to one knee and examined the trail. Groundwater trapped by a ledge made the earth muddy. Twin wheel tracks scarred the loam. Deep dimples were space a foot apart.
"Rivet heads on an iron rim," said Gull. "Not like our wheels. They're smooth. Someone's ahead of us. Maybe… four wagons?" He fingered the edge of the tracks. Sharp-cut but dry, they crumbled at his touch. "Two days ahead, I'd guess."