“Are we going there?” demanded Jinian. “Where it is going? North?”
“Peter and I,” began Silkhands wearily.
“All of us,” said Jinian. “I won’t be left out, Silkhands. I won’t.”
“King Kelver…”
“Devils take King Kelver. I’ll spend my whole life weaving an alliance for King Kelver, warming his bed, bearing his children, but not until I’ve done something for myself. I won’t be left behind.”
She brushed aside Silkhands’ expostulations as though they had been cobweb concerns of no matter. I stifled laughter to see her, so sturdy and independent, so determined not to be left out. Oh, I understood well enough that feeling of being shut up in others’ lives. “Let be, Silkhands,” I said. “King Kelver will no doubt wait.”
“He is to meet us in Reavebridge,” Silkhands retorted, obviously annoyed. “He will not be pleased. Nor will your brother be pleased, Jinian. I have heard of the black rages of Armiger Mendost.”
“Leave Mendost to me,” Jinian said. “He knows how far he may push me and how far he may not. He has no other sisters, but I have other brothers who are fond of me and not overfond of Mendost. They know his black rages, too, and have reason to undo him if he proves unreasonable.”
I thought, Aha, she is not so manipulable as I had assumed. And this led me to other thoughts and wonders about Jinian so that for a moment I forgot the giant, forgot the mysteries of our journey, only remembering it all when we had dressed ourselves and gathered at our fire. Then it was only to search the starry sky and wonder whether the misty form still walked north beneath its cover or whether it had come to rest in some far, high place — and in what form. Across the fire, Jinian sat crosslegged with the little book tipped to catch the light of the flames. She was so deep in it that I had to speak to her twice before she heard me.
“What are you finding there, student? You look like a newly named Thaumaturge, trying to figure your life pattern from perusing the Index.”
She thought seriously upon this before answering me. “It is not unlike that, Peter. I am taking what you have told me, and what is in this book, and what I have seen and heard, and making an imagining from them.”
“A hypothesis,” I said. “That is what Windlow called it. A hypothesis; an imagining which might be true.”
“Yes.” She chuckled, a little bubble of amusement. “Though I had thought of it rather more like a stew. A bit of this and a bit of that, all simmering away in my head, boiling gently so that first one thing comes to the top then another, with the steam roiling and drifting and the smells catching at my nose.” She wrinkled that nose at me, making me think of a pet bunwit. “A tasty stew, Peter. Oh, I am eager to go north and see what is there!”
“The song spoke of danger, Jinian. You have been at risk of life once on my account already.”
“Well, but it was exciting in a sort of nasty way,” she said. “And very surprising. I think I’m more ready for it now, knowing that wonderful things are toward. And, if danger comes, well, it is no little danger to bear children, either. And no one much concerns themselves about that.”
Silkhands had retreated into an aggrieved silence which I did not interrupt. When we had lain down to sleep, I did ask, “Will those of Vorbold’s House hold you accountable that Jinian chooses to make King Kelver wait upon her pleasure?”
She sighed, turned, and I saw the firelight gleaming in her wide eyes. “Not they, no, Peter. King Kelver himself may spend annoyance on me, but who am I to tell Jinian she must do this or that. The negotiations were complete; she agreed; now she says yes-but-wait-a-while. Who knows who will hold any of us accountable. Do not let it worry you.” And she closed her eyes.
When we dropped off to sleep, we were three blanket bundles around the fire. When I woke in the morning, I sat there stupidly, unable to count fewer than four, startled into full wakefulness by a harsh cry from the riverside. There were two monstrous birds drinking from the ripples, spraddle-legged, long necks dipping. Birds. Yes. Two man heights tall from their horny huge feet to the towering topknot of plumes which crowned them, screaming greeting to the morning like some grotesque barnyard fowl, and the fourth blanket bundle across the fire had to be whoever — or whatever — brought them. I began a surreptitious untangling of arms and legs only to be greeted by a cheerful, “Ah, awake are you?” and a small round man tumbled out of the fourth roll of blankets to stand above me, yawning and stretching, as though he had been my dearest friend for years. I saw Jinian’s eyes snap open to complete awareness, though Silkhands made only a drowsy umming sound and slept on.
He was good humored, that one, bearded a little, almost bald, dressed in a bizarre combination of clothing which led me in one moment to believe he had been valet to an Armiger, or that he was a merchant, or perhaps a madman escaped from keepers and let loose upon the countryside. His boots were one purple, one blue, his cloak striped red and yellow (part of an Afrit’s dress) and he wore a complicated hat with a fantastic horn coming out the top, all in black and rust, Armiger colors. Aside from these anomalous accoutrements, he wore a bright green shirt and a pair of soft zellerskin trousers, an aberrant combination, but perhaps not insane.
“Allow me to make myself known to you,” he said, stooping over me where I lay in the tangle, taking my hand in his to pump it energetically. “Vitior Queynt. Vitior Vulpas Queynt. I came upon the fading gleam of your fire late in the night and thought to myself, Aha, I thought, Queynt, but here is company for tomorrow’s road and the day after that, perhaps. Besides, who can deny that journeys move with a speed which is directly proportional to the number traveling? Hmmm? Four move at least one third faster than three, isn’t that so? And a hundred would move like the wind? Ah, hmmm. Ha-ha. Or so it seems, for with every additional traveler is more to distract one from the tedium of jog, jog, jogging along. Isn’t that so? Ah, to be alone upon the road is a sadsome, lonesome thing, is it not? Well, I’ll get breakfast started.”
Still talking about something else, he turned away to pick up a pot and take it to the river for water, to return, to build up the fire and put the pot to boil, never stopping in all that time his talk to himself or the birds or the river running. I struggled out of my blankets at last and set myself to rights, deciding I did not need to shave myself after a quick stroke at my jaw. I joined our odd visitor at the fire.
“Those … birds?” I asked. “Are they … I mean, what kind are they?”
“Ah, the krylobos? Surely, surely, great incredible creatures, aren’t they? One would not think they could be broken to harness, and, indeed, they have their tricks and ways about them, pretending they have broken a leg, or a wing — not that they use their wings for much save fruit picking and weaving nests — and lying there thrashing about or limping as though about to die, and then comes the predator with his hungry eyes full of dinner, and then old krylobos pops upright with plumes flying and swack, swack, two kicks and a dead pombi or whatever. I’ve seen them do gnarlibars that way, be the beast not too mature or fearsome bulky. Ah, well, the one on the left is Yittleby and the one on the right is Yattleby. I’ll introduce you later so they know they cannot pull any tricks on any friend of old Queynt’s. How do you like your egg?”
He had an egg, only one, between his square little hands, but that egg looked enough to feed us four and several fustigars beside.
“They — they laid that?” I asked, awed.
“Oh, not they, young sir, no indeed, not they. Why, Yattleby would be ashamed at the allegation, for he is a great lord of his roost and his nest and would not bear for an instant such an imputation. No, it is Yittleby who lays the eggs, and Queynt who eats them, from time to time, except when Yittleby goes all broodish and demands time to hatch a family, which is every other year or so and during that time old Queynt must simply do without his wagon, hmmm? Nothing else for it but do without. How do you like your egg?”