Plain Kate

“Also, I can bring in very large rabbits,” said Taggle. “Possibly a small deer.”

“That will help,” said Kate, and bundled him close, her eyes smarting with what she told herself was the smoke.

¶

Plain Kate had meant to go to the clan the next day, but as it happened she could not. Her monthly woman’s blood had come, for the first time. Face burning, she went to Daj to find out what to do.

“Oh ho!” Daj crowed like a rooster, when she understood what had happened. “We Roamers have fattened you up!”

Plain Kate had only ever heard of pigs being fattened up, for slaughter. Some of her confusion must have shown, because Daj added, “Well, you had been hungry, mira, when you came to us. Any fool could see it. Hunger brings the blood late. It’s hard to come into your power when you’re hungry. If you’d had a mother you would know that. And if you were mine, what a cake I’d make you. With berries and honey, and I might, anyway.”

Kate’s blush was turning from shame to pleasure, but Daj wasn’t done talking. “You cannot tell the men, of course. And you must sit apart.”

Daj did make the cake. But Kate was frustrated. She could not go to Rye Baro to show her objarka. She could not go to the men’s fire at all, or stir the food, or fetch the water. Every time she tried to do something useful she stumbled over some new rule, and she spent long days sitting on a trestle bench, with her carving in her lap. The rose hedge dripped on her. Cream tried to eat her hair.

It was strange not to be walking, and not to be working. Plain Kate felt sullen and stupid—but the horror raised by the thing they had summoned was fading in her.

Drina brightened day by day, and was soon sitting by Plain Kate, making little bundles of feather and twig and blossom, hiding them in the folds of her skirt whenever anyone glanced their way.

“Charms,” said Kate. They made her uneasy. Linay had called them foolish, and she had a feeling he might know. And she thought they could draw the wrong kind of eyes. But she did not know how to tell any of that to Drina. She settled for: “What if your father sees?”

“Faw,” sniffed Drina, sounding like Taggle when he got a paw wet. “He’s with the Oksar men, getting drunk and talking about the rain as if it were the end of the world. There’s a sleeping sickness or something. They’re all fluttered up like chickens under a hawk.”

Drina plucked a red thread free from the fraying poppies embroidered on her skirt. She bit through it, then tied the bundle off with a jerk. “We need these. They will help me find the right person—someone who knows how to call a shadow. We cannot just go into the market asking. These bundles will show my gift, to those who know how to look.

“Besides,” she said, “they’ll add to your silver.”

¶

They stayed three more days with Pan Oksar, and then they struck the tents, harnessed the horses, knocked the mud from their wheels, and went off down the road to Toila. The first night on the road, Plain Kate went with Daj to the men’s fire, to present her objarka.

Plain Kate curtsied and knelt, and offered the objarka to Rye Baro with both hands.

He took it with both hands. He raised it up.

Plain Kate had brought only one objarka to show: her best. It was an owl-eyed human face with antlers and a seducer’s smile. She stayed kneeling and watched Rye Baro meet the thing’s eyes. She could hear her father’s voice: The magic of carving is to tell people the truth. What was that lush wooden mouth saying?

It was Linay’s mouth, she realized abruptly. That was why it frightened her.

Rye Baro’s face was impassive. No one else spoke. The inspection stretched and stretched. Daj shifted behind Kate, creaking from knee to knee. “By the Black Lady, Rye,” she said. “Don’t tease the child!”

Rye Baro laughed. “Well, does she not know she is good? Good!” He handed the carving to Daj. “You’ve a gift, Kate Carver. Your hands know things.”

Daj looked at the carving. “Aye, good does not begin it. It’s beautiful, mira. In its own horrid way, of course. There’s craft in those hands.”

“Too much craft,” said Stivo, taking the carving. “The gadje don’t know craft. They won’t pay for it. It is good, though”—and here he smiled at her, both scorn and peace offering—“little girl.”

“Soon we will see what the gadje have a mind to pay for,” Rye Baro rumbled. “We will press for Toila tomorrow. And there’s that riding colt that you broke without craft, Stivo. Xeri, the one who eats. See if you can sell him before we’re stuck with the feeding of him for the winter.”

“Ah,” said Behjet, coming to his brother Stivo’s rescue. “Xeri’s a good beast at heart. We’ll wash him in the river and comb him till he shines. All of Toila will cover their eyes against his brightness.”

They fell into talking about the horses, and Plain Kate got up quietly and went back to the red vardo, where Taggle was keeping her bedding warm.

And the next day they went to Toila.

seven

toila