Plain Kate

Daj shook her head.“Among the Roamers blood is powerful,” she said. “A woman’s blood specially. Some women can work great magics while in their blood—scares the menfolk down to their socks, knowing that. When we get our monthly blood, they make us sit where they can keep an eye on us.”

“I’m not, though,” said Kate. “I can’t do magic. I’m not a witch.”

“And I’m not a muskrat,” said Daj. “But neither one of us will walk about bleeding. I’ll explain our ways, town child, when I think of it, but whether you understand them or not, you must respect.”

“I—” Plain Kate began, but Daj silenced her with a finger on her cheek. Kate found herself fixed on the texture of Daj’s hands: so calloused and worn with work that they were glossy-smooth, like the inside of an ox yoke or the edge of an oarlock. Smooth as dry dust. Her father’s hands hadbeen a little like that. Such hands had not touched her in a long time. Daj tucked Kate’s frizzing hair behind her ears. “Come with me now,mira. I’d say be brave, but that I can see you are.”

***

Daj led the way from one fire to another, and Kate followed her, feeling the soaked, loamy earth give like soft bread beneath her feet, feeling the bandage on her heel grow loose with wet. She was trying to take in the labyrinth of rules Daj was telling her: Don’t pass between a man and a fire. Don’t walk between two men who are facing each other. Ask permission to speak. If you walk near a man, gather up your skirt so that it does not brush him.

“I don’t have a skirt,” said Kate. She was wearing, as always, the striped smock that had been her father’s. It skimmed her knees, but it was no dress. Among the bright layered scarves of the Roamers, the russet and indigo stripes seemed drab.

“Ah, so you don’t,” said Daj. “Well, don’t mind it, child. For here we are.” And Kate followed Mother Daj into the circle of firelight as silently and solemnly as if into a church.

There were only a few men about; Plain Kate could hear them farther off, moving among the horses. But to her surprise, Behjet was sitting on a stone near the fire, whittling. He looked up at her, cold and blank, as if he didn’t know her at all. Could this be courtesy? It was like a door slammed in the face.

Daj led her to where an old man sat on a carved and painted bench. His face was grooved like a winter road. A cane rested at each knee; his feet were almost in the fire. Daj curtsied to him, not elaborately, but the way a sandpiper might dip its beak, natural and fast, without reverence.“If a woman might pass among you and speak,” said Daj. And then, without waiting for an answer, she said: “Rye Baro. I have brought a guest. This is Plain Kate Carver, of Samilae. She would go the Roamer way.”

Rye Baro had eyebrows like caterpillars before a long winter. He raised one.“With thesevardo?”

“Aye,” said Daj. “She’s orphan, I’m told, and has nowhere else.”

Behind them, someone said,“Are we a pack of dogs, then, taking in strays?” Plain Kate turned. The man had Behjet’s face, but the whole way he held himself was different. He sat hunched up like a drawn bow.

“Are we dogs, then, talking piss at the fire?” Daj clouted the man on the head affectionately. “Show manners, Stivo.”

The man—Stivo—shrugged. Twins, Plain Kate realized. Behjet and Stivo were the twins she had seen selling horses in the Samilae market, a few weeks before.

“Well, it wouldn’t be manners to set her loose in wild country, would it?” said Rye Baro. He had a voice like a fine rasp: rough but polishing. “Makes a man wonder how she got into wild country with the Roamers in the first place.”

“Hmmm,” said Daj with a wink in her voice. “That is a puzzle.”

No one seemed puzzled or much surprised.“Behjet says her people want to burn her for a witch,” said Stivo.

“Aye,” said Daj. “He said that to me too.”

The whole circle turned to Stivo, and waited. He poked at the fire, sending sparks spiraling up into the rainy darkness. The fire hissed. Stivo said nothing. A log snapped and crackled. And still Stivo said nothing.

At last Daj spoke again.“Plain Kate is a carver,” she said. “We need one of those.”

“We get by well enough, seems to me,” Rye Baro mused.

“If the yellowvardo goes another week before the tongue snaps, it will be by the Black Lady’s mercy,” said Daj. “But I was thinking: She can make real coins to clink together.”

“Do they carve those now?” Firelight played across Rye Baro’s face. “I hadn’t heard.”

“She makes objarka.” Daj wrapped an arm around Plain Kate like a wing around a chick. “Best I’ve seen. They’ll sell, and for silver too, not copper.”

“In the market of Toila?” said Rye Baro.

Daj nodded.“That was my mind.”