Dagger's Point (Shadow series) (10 page)

“There you are.” A tall, stout woman dressed in riding clothes, apparently Merchant Karina herself, came to greet them. “Thought you’d fallen in love with Westenvale and decided to forego traveling with me and my cheeses. Tie your horses at the back and ride with me if you like. I’ve cut a wheel of my best, and I’ll gladly make you sick of it while I pry out everything you can tell me about every cheese seller who works the market in Allan-mere.”

Jael glanced at Tanis, and to her delight this time he nodded. The two quickly tied their horses behind the wagon.

“Everd says you’re the ones gave warning about the bandits on the road from Allanmere,” Karina continued, walking along the other wagons and nodding to the drivers. “That warning gave me time to hire a few more guards. Hopefully we’ll make Gerriden with our goods and hides intact. Sparing your bottoms from the saddle’s the least I can do. I’ve hired a fair cook, too, so we won’t starve. Guess you can tell from looking that I’m one to expect a goodly meal. Well, the others look to be ready if you are, Durgan,” Karina added to a tall, dark-skinned young guard standing beside the horses hitched to the lead wagon.

“Almost ready, Mistress Karina,” Durgan said, smiling and half-bowing. He raised his eyebrows as he saw Jael and Tanis. “Cesanne is checking the horses for the last time. Is this lovely young lady and her friend to be a part of our company?”

“This is Caden, a merchant’s son, making his way west from Allanmere,” Karina said, “and Acorn, one of Allanmere’s forest elves. Caden, Acorn, this is Durgan, my guard captain and wagonmaster.”

“I am delighted to meet you,” Durgan said, taking Jael’s hand and bowing over it.

Jael almost snatched her hand away as she felt a familiar tingle at his touch. Gods, he was wearing some kind of magic— maybe something as simple as a trap-spell on his purse or a water-repellant spell on his clothing—and the gods grant she hadn’t just ruined it!

Durgan released Jael’s hand and turned toward the horses. “Cesanne, come and meet our new friends. Caden, Acorn, I present my sister Cesanne.”

An extraordinarily beautiful woman, as dark of skin as Durgan but her hair golden as the sun, stepped out from behind the horses. She was as slender as Durgan, but not as tall, and her radiant green eyes slanted exotically like his dark brown ones.

Like Durgan, she was dressed in butter-supple riding leathers, a sword at her hip and a bow at her back.

“My lady.” Before Jael could say a word, Tanis had stepped forward and bowed over Cesanne’s hand. When he straightened, Cesanne smiled slowly, and her fingers lingered on his for just a moment longer than necessary. Jael sighed to herself.

“Well, then, let’s be gone,” Karina said with just a hint of impatience. “Gerriden’s not getting any closer while we stand.”

Jael quickly found that traveling by wagon also had its disadvantages. The trade road was in poor condition after winter and the recent rains, and the wagon jolted as the horses did not. Merchant Karina was cheerful and hospitable, but her incessant conversation proved as annoying as the constant bouncing of the wagon seat. Jael munched on the proffered cheese—it
was
really excellent cheese—and let Tanis and Karina talk about the market as much as they liked while she watched the countryside roll slowly by like the Brightwater River on a lazy afternoon.

This was how Aunt Shadow saw the world, sitting on a jolting wagon seat while some merchant lord droned on unendingly about how his last shipment of goods had gotten damaged on its way to market and how the price of hiring additional guards to dissuade highwaymen had driven up prices. Somehow Jael had never thought about that; she’d pictured Shadow lying on soft cushions in some handsome lord’s arms at night, sipping expensive wines and nibbling sweets from the farthest cities, not sweating in the noon sun on a hard wagon seat while she bounced up and down. But then Jael had never thought much about highwaymen and cold, rainy nights, either.

Occasionally Durgan or Cesanne would drop back and ride beside Karina’s wagon. Cesanne often smiled at Tanis, a slow, sweet smile, and then Tanis’s conversation with Karina would falter and die. Jael chuckled to herself.

Near sunset Durgan brought his horse up beside their wagon, and Cesanne followed.

“Some of us will scout the road ahead and do a bit of hunting for our supper before the wagons frighten away the game,” Durgan said. “Would you wish to join us?”

“Acorn doesn’t hunt,” Tanis said before Jael could answer. “But I’d be glad to join you.”

“Yes, do come and hunt with us,” Cesanne said, speaking for the first time. Her voice was low and silken, like honey. “There are wild deer with long horns that run these plains, fleet as the wind. It’s been said that if you find such a deer with a perfect white coat and kill it, and if you eat its heart, then under the moon you can take its form and run like the wind over the tops of the grass.” She reached out and took Durgan’s hand, sliding her fingers caressingly over his own.

“Now, that’s a horrible tale,” Karina said, scowling. “Sounds like the curse of the shifters to me. Ride along, then, young Caden, if that’s your wish, but don’t be eating the hearts of any white deer, thank you very kindly, and changing into any uncanny thing while you ride with me!”

She stopped the wagon, and Tanis quickly ran around to the back. When he reappeared on his horse, Jael saw that he had removed the saddlebags, and she wondered whether he had loaded them on one of the other horses or thrown them in the back of Karina’s wagon. Tanis had unpacked his bow also, and Jael wondered amusedly whether he would try to use it, likely to his humiliation.

Tanis gave Jael a rather abashed look, but rode off after Cesanne and Durgan. Jael sipped from her waterskin and picked up another piece of cheese from the basket Karina had laid at their feet, munching thoughtfully.

“Have you known Durgan and Cesanne long?” Jael asked at last.

Karina shook her head.

“No. They’ve come recently from the far west, or so Durgan says. But they were well recommended by Lord Tedrin, who brought a load of spices from Gerriden. They got his caravan through safe even though a couple of guards deserted in mid-journey, just disappeared in the night. Not a pinch of his shipment lost, and some of those spices were worth Suns for a featherweight.”

“Do you think—” Jael stared after the riders. “Durgan and Cesanne, do you think they’re a couple?”

“They’re brother and sister, or so Durgan says, but that sort of thing isn’t uncommon in the wild country.” Karina shrugged. “I’d say yes but for the come-to-the-bushes-m’lad looks she’s been giving Caden.” Karina glanced sideways at Jael. “Is she grazing in someone else’s pasture?”

Jael shook her head.

“Caden and I are good friends. That’s all. If he wants to tumble every female between here and the edge of the world, I wish him a strong back. But Durgan moves like he knows how to use that sword. I wouldn’t want any trouble.”

Karina had no reply to that, and to Jael’s delight, they rode in silence until they sighted the camp ahead. A fire was already burning, and there were not one, but two spiral-horned plains deer roasting on spits. Apparently Tanis had managed to shoot one of them, for he strode around the fire to meet them as proudly as if he had slain a dragon.

“Good hunting,” Jael greeted him, sliding down from the wagon seat. “Which one’s yours?”

“That one.” Tanis indicated the closer of the two deer, then grinned sheepishly. “Cesanne drove it practically into my bow. If I’d missed at that range, I don’t think I could have held my head up under the shame.”

Jael was glad to see that Tanis was neither too proud of his kill nor too smitten with Cesanne to help her set up their camp. They did not camp under a wagon; after what had happened with the last caravan, Jael thought it prudent to set their tent a bit apart. Karina refused to have her cheese unloaded to clear space to sleep in any of the wagons, but she used a cunning arrangement whereby the waxed cloth of her tent fastened to the wagon top and formed a lean-to against the side of the wagon, comfortably large enough for her to lay within it the straw and feather mattresses she had brought with her.

By the time the camp was finished, the roasting deer were seared to juicy perfection. Durgan sent out the guards in short shifts so each of them had time to eat their fill of the hot, strong-flavored meat, roasted tubers brought from Westenvale with Karina’s cheese melted over them, and a pot of early spring greens the cook had managed to gather while the others had set up the camp. There was wine, too, but Jael had no desire to ruin a good meal with the sick belly wine always gave her, so she filled a pot with water and brewed some of the black tea she’d brought with her.

The rich, aromatic flavor of the tea, although it had come from Calidwyn, not Allanmere, reminded Jael of home. Mother, Father, and the twins would be at supper now, too, possibly wondering how Jael was faring.

Tanis was almost embarrassingly attentive to Cesanne over supper, jumping up to cut her a slab of meat or fill her cup of wine as soon as it was empty. Cesanne rewarded him with the sort of smile Jael had seen Aunt Shadow use to devastating effect on a few occasions. Jael sighed to herself, but said nothing. Once Jael’s eyes met Durgan’s over the fire. Durgan glanced at Tanis and Cesanne, then back at Jael, the corners of his lips turning up slightly and his eyes twinkling as if he and Jael shared a private joke. Jael was vastly relieved; at least he wasn’t roaring with anger and drawing his sword. But when supper was finished, Durgan stood and took Cesanne’s hand, leading her toward

their tent, which they had pitched at the far end of the camp.

Tanis, rather disgruntled, finally followed Jael back to their own tent, but there he sat and brooded rather than curling up comfortably with Jael as he usually did.

“Come on, don’t be foolish,” Jael said at last. “She’s only toying with you, like the noblewomen flirt with the young lords. She doesn’t mean anything by it.”

“Oh, I know that,” Tanis said rather crossly. “Look, I’m not going moon-mad over her. She’d be a grand feast of a tumble, that’s all. I’m not all
that
interested in her. It’s just that—well—”

“Well, what?” Jael prompted, grinning. “You can’t plead a long fast, can you, after your games last night almost made us miss the caravan?”

“Oh, please,” Tanis groaned. “If you hadn’t given me that potion, I think I’d have cut off my own head just to be rid of the ache. Can you just imagine, bouncing around on that wagon seat all morning?”

He chuckled in spite of himself, and Jael joined in.

“Well, there’s plenty more of that potion, so if you want to whore yourself sick every time we reach a town, go ahead,” Jael said, chuckling. “At least that’s safer than a quick night’s tumble in the grass with a woman who can use sword and bow, and whose lover is the guard captain of the caravan.”

“He’s not her lover,” Tanis protested.

“I’ll wager you five Suns they are,” Jael countered. “Want to creep up on their tent and listen?”

“No!” Tanis flushed. “The guards would see us before we got close enough.”

“I don’t have to be very close,” Jael told him. “But it doesn’t matter, really, if you’re ‘not
that
interested,’ does it?”

“I suppose not,” Tanis said, sighing. “Look, just leave it be, will you please?”

“All right,” Jael said, relenting. “Let me look at your arm, and then we’ll go to bed.”

The long slash was still ugly to look at and painful when touched, but Jael pronounced it to be healing cleanly, and Tanis could move his fingers freely, although he admitted that pulling his bow had made the wound ache ferociously. Jael cleaned and dressed the wound and fetched Tanis a cup of wine, and he was quickly asleep. Jael smiled to herself as she curled up against Tanis’s warmth; having such a wound cleaned and probed was enough to take any man’s mind off a woman, no matter how fetchingly her breasts might bounce.

The next two days were much the same. The weather stayed fine, and the caravan made good progress. Gradually the endless rolling plains were broken by lone trees, then stands, then small woods. By the third day they were nearing the edge of a large forest. There were no more farms now, although Karina told Jael that they were no more than another three days’ travel from Gerriden; Gerriden’s farmers had settled farther north and west, where they did not have to clear seedlings and stumps from their land and where the river had deposited rich soil.

On the second day of the trip, Cesanne had made excuses to ride back to Karina’s wagon often—she wanted another taste of that cheese, she needed to tell Karina of deep ruts in the road ahead, and perhaps those clouds meant more rain was on the way. Each time she would linger to chat with them, her remarks increasingly directed at Tanis. When she would ride away, Tanis would stare after her, and Jael would stifle a sigh.

By the third day Tanis frequently abandoned his seat on the wagon and rode with Durgan and (more importantly) Cesanne, although he excused himself from the second day’s hunting trip, stating truthfully that pulling the bow overtaxed his wounded arm. Jael thought to herself that nothing but pure luck had let him make his shot on the first hunt, and Tanis was reluctant to risk ruining the impression he’d made of himself to Cesanne as a great hunter. Still, Tanis did not go out of his way to pursue Cesanne, and Jael was grateful that he showed that much common sense. Soon they’d be in Gerriden, where Tanis could find safer tumbles than with guardswomen with swords and bows and formidable brothers.

By and large, Tanis’s absence left Jael the unhappy audience for Karina’s unending chatter. Jael tried to guide the conversation into channels somewhat more interesting than cheese, and found that Karina was in fact a wealth of stories garnered from trade cities east to west. To Jael’s delight, Karina had heard of the Kresh, though not by that name.

“Ah, the invisible people,” Karina answered Jael’s query, nodding sagely. “I spoke to a man once who’d seen one, a woman filling a waterskin at a stream. He said she looked at him and vanished before his eyes, leaving no tracks behind her except two footprints in the mud of the riverbank where she’d stood.