Plain Kate

Given his head, the horse half reared, and jolted forward. Kate grabbed at his mane until the coarse hair cut into her fingers. The horse pounded under her. The road blurred. Her basket—with Taggle in it—banged at her knee. Behind her she could feel Behjet breathing hard. His arms struck her ears and the reins whipped her hair. Still, she risked leaning out and looking backward.

“No one’s following—” she shouted, her voice ripped away by the speed.

“Not yet,” said Behjet. “If they get to talking—if they remember she’s a Roamer girl—well. Everyone will know she didn’t come to Toila alone.

The Roamers were already striking camp when they arrived. Behjet reined in Xeri, who stamped. One of Daj’s daughters came fluttering up to them. “They’re here. Daj is with her, in the red vardo. Stivo too.”

“Is Drina much hurt?” Behjet asked. Kate leaned down to hear over the horse’s panting.

“Her ear, and a tooth or two—but nay. Stivo’s in a weeping rage.”

Behjet nodded. His arms around Kate were roped with tight muscles, spattered with mud. “We’ll go ahead. We must find someplace at least a little off the road.” He nudged Xeri with his heels, and the horse snatched backward at Kate, snapping. “Tell Daj I’ll lay a blaze.”

The Roamer woman nodded. “Do you think—are they coming? Those that hurt her? Or the watch?”

But Behjet kicked the horse and they took to the road without answering.

¶

Behjet got the ill-trained horse under control and they rode on more slowly. Every few hundred yards Behjet would pick a birch and slash a quick mark into the white bark: the blaze he promised. To stay close to the trees, they went splashing through the drainage trench at the edge of the road. They didn’t speak; Kate tried to gather her breath and think.

In Samilae it had been her the witch-hunters wanted. It is your trouble and you must not bring it upon us, Rye Baro had said. And Stivo: Do not bring it on my Drina. But she had. In letting Drina try to help her, she had made her friend a target of the mob. Behjet didn’t know enough to blame her, but Drina did—and Stivo would, even without knowing that he should. She should say something to Behjet, but it was hard to know what.

Taggle had worked his head out of Kate’s pack-basket, just in time to get a face full of water as Xeri hit a deep spot in the ditch.

Taggle ducked down with a yowl, and Behjet chuckled. “You’d swear he could talk. That sounded like a curse. Sorry, cat.” Deeper water raised another splash, soaking Kate’s leggings and raising a muffled ruckus in her basket. Behjet twitched the reins and the horse’s shoulders bunched and surged under her. They clambered out of the ditch and onto the road. “Bit damp, that,” said Behjet. “This rain is endless.”

“They…” Kate gathered her breath, “They won’t really come after us? They weren’t searching, in the town.”

“Most likely not. But people get odd ideas in the twilight. Sometimes dark stories take their hearts. And that town’s in trouble.” Behjet guided Xeri closer to the edge of the road. An egret exploded from the ditch, and the horse reared and wheeled. He turned three tight circles before Behjet could calm him. The man leaned far forward to stroke the horse’s ear and murmured. Kate could smell his sweat and feel his heat pressing into her. It was strange, being that close to another person.

Behjet eased the horse forward again. “They’re talking at Pan Oksar’s farm—but it’s worse in that market. The harvest is failing. There will be no crop at all if this rain doesn’t stop—not even hay.”

The rain. The rain she’d been so grateful for, the rain that concealed the warping of her shadow. It was going to kill people.

“But,” said Behjet, and let the thought hang. Plain Kate could feel the tension in his body at her back. Xeri’s hooves squelched and splatted in the mud.

“But there’s more than that. They say there’s something coming. Something coming down the river, down from Samilae and the high country: a kind of death. The traders are all talking about it. A fog that takes your soul. They say there’s a woman in it, and music. Roamer music. They say men fall asleep and do not wake. They say boats go and do not come back. It will be the skara rok again. Worse. They will come after the Roamers, as they did then.”

Kate was thinking hard. In Samilae, Boyar the fisher had fallen into a sleep from which he could not be awakened. And, escaping down the road from the town, she’d stumbled into a fog. And she’d heard… “Music,” she whispered.

“Aye. A fiddle.”

Linay had played a fiddle. Plain Kate’s chest felt tight, a pulling ache like an old wound. Fear. Guilt. The weight of her secret. “A fiddle,” she said.

“A Roamer fiddle, so they say.” Behjet reined the horse into an amble. “You’re squawking words back to me like a raven, Plain Kate. Did they shake you out of your wits, in that alley? Or do you know something?”

Not trusting herself to speak, Kate shook her head.