Plain Kate

“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 theskara 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.

“If you do, you must tell me.” With sudden decisiveness, he stopped the horse. She couldn’t see his face, just his long fingers tight on the reins, the little knife in one hand. “Now you’re trembling. What happened, Plain Kate? What happened to you and Drina in that market?”

Plain Kate tried to compose an answer, but found tears stinging to the surface of her eyes. She shook her head harder. Xeri stamped and struggled forward, thrashing his head. Behjet gave him rein and he took up an easy ramble. And still Kate could only shake her head.

Behjet lifted his hand—knife and all—and let it rest over hers. “It’s all right, then,mira,” he said, and she could hear his mother Daj in his voice. His kindness broke her, and she told him. A flood of details came spilling out of her like fish from a net, last caught first: The basket woman who had saved them, the arc of the silver coins over the spitting crowd, the blood on the cleaver, the rearing horse, the booted watchman, the angry tinker—

“A tinker?” Behjet interrupted, sounding urgent. “Selling charms? What did he look like?”

Plain Kate sketched for him the bald man with the catfish whiskers, selling the cheap tin objarka off his own jangling coat.

“Ah.” Behjet relaxed. “I thought perhaps—well. Look here.” He turned the horse almost right around, and took them up a little track that ran slantwise to the road. It curved and wound into the birch wood. Branches brushed their knees on either side and clattered on her basket. Taggle popped his head out again, and this time got a face full of pine needle. He swore in cat.

Behjet chuckled.“Sorry, Taggle.”

They rode on. The track opened and spilled into a streambed of rushes and willow saplings.“It doesn’t go anywhere,” said Kate. “It’s just a deer track.”

“Ah, but that’s the point. Here thevardo may leave the road without leaving too broad a trace. And yet, it’s not a path the town folk will follow, if they come looking.” He swung down, then lifted her from Xeri’s back. She wobbled at the suddenly steady ground, and was hardly standing before Taggle sprang into her arms. She tumbled backward into a clump of marsh marigold. Behjet smirked—but kindly. She had never before known someone who could smirk kindly. He climbed back up on the horse.

“Stay here a moment,” he said, and rode off. Kate watched him go with a shaking heart, Taggle with a disgusted sniff.

“That,” proclaimed the cat, squirming down into her lap, “was awful. The jouncing. The rearing! The mud. I have decided that we will not travel again by horse.” When she didn’t answer, he poked her with his damp nose, and rubbed her thumb with the corner of his mouth. “Look, I’m stilldamp. Fuss over me.”

So she hugged the cat to her chest.“My hero,” she said. “My soft damp little warrior. What are we going to do?”

***

Behjet was gone for a long time. The woods they had disturbed into silence filled again with birdsong and glimpsed movement, rabbits and deer. Gradually it occurred to Plain Kate that the Roamers could abandon her here, dump her off like a sack of kittens.

But finally Behjet did come back. Together they walked Xeri deeper into the woods, to where the stream widened into a clearing by the river. Behjet fished, and Kate tried to do the chores that she and Drina did together. It took longer, and was harder, drearier work alone. She was still piling firewood when the firstvardo came nosing through the willow saplings, the horse straining to pull it through the mud.

The clearing was a miserable camp: more bog than meadow. Every step pressed tea-colored water from the grass. The wheels of thevardo sank halfway to the hubs. Flies swarmed and bit. The horses twitched and pulled at the sour-smelling grass. The people swatted and grumbled.

Daj and Drina did not come out of the redvardo. Stivo sat on its steps and sharpened his axe.