Deepwoods (Book 1) (11 page)

“A rival third party that knew about the trade agreement and
wanted to destroy the possibility before it was formed?” Hammon suggested in an
objective tone of voice.

She paused, her mouth half-open, as the words struck her.
“Now why didn’t I think of that?”

“It’s just a possibility.” Hammon splayed his palms up in a
shrug. “I don’t know of anyone that would go to those lengths to stop a trade
agreement, either. I mean, if it’s ever found out who it was that attacked
them, then I don’t imagine Darrens would let it rest until he wipes the guild
out completely.”

True, that.

“But they could very well get away with it if they hire a
mercenary or assassin guild to do their dirty work for them,” Wolf pointed out.
“It’s nigh impossible to track those requests back to their source without a
lot of persuasion of a physical nature, if you catch my meaning.”

And he would know. Siobhan blew out a breath. “In that case,
if we show up looking for Lirah, wouldn’t we become a target too? No one would
want us to find out the truth, after all.”

Both men gave her unhappy nods.

“Well, isn’t that a chipper thought?” Siobhan rubbed at her
forehead, feeling a headache brewing. “As soon as we’ve let for Sateren, we’re
sleeping in shifts.”

“Probably for the best,” Wolf agreed.

Not at all happy with her dark thoughts, she bent back to
the stones and sifted through the ones on the ground with her gloved hands. She
had no desire to keep going toward Sateren, not after this conversation, but
she’d taken on the job, so they had no choice but to see it through. She might
as well get this over with sooner rather than later.

Grae finished the path by noon the next day, so they loaded
everything back up in the cart and went to the newly placed stepping stones.
Grae activated the path and took them through without mishap, and they arrived
within sight of Sateren’s walls.

Like most of the major cities of the world, Sateren looked
like a veritable fortress from the outside. No one really worried about
invasion from an army or the like, as it would take a united front from several
major guilds to even pull an army together, but the walls
did
protect
from other dangers. If nothing else, it served as a way to regulate the traffic
coming and going through the gates and let the major guild in charge of security
have a better handle on their visitors. Siobhan took a long second to really
look at the place.

The walls stood three stories tall—a bit of overkill,
there—made of dark grey stone that looked cold even from here. The gate in
front of her stood wide open, the door made of thick wood that could be used
for a ship’s mast, it was so dense. What she could see inside of the city
didn’t look that different from any other major city she’d visited. Oh, the
roofs had more of a slope at the edges, and the buildings tended to use shingles
instead of thatch, but the people bustled about on business like in any other
part of the world.

“What now?” Hammon asked her.

“Now we split up and ask questions,” Siobhan answered
promptly. She’d been thinking about this all last night and this morning,
coming up with a plan. “I don’t believe that our people ever made it to the
city, but in case I’m wrong, I want two people to go to the gates and see if
anyone there spotted them. The guards will have a record of a group that large.
The rest of us are going to split up and backtrack a little.” She indicated the
docks not a stone’s throw away, and then to the highway that led off in a
south-westerly direction. “Odds are if they didn’t make it to the city, then
they retreated one of these directions. If they didn’t, that means we’ve gone
too far north, and we’ll have to travel back southward on horses and look as we
go.”

Hammon pointed toward the western highway. “Why go there?”

It was Wolf that explained. “Wynngaard is not like most
countries. The cities, sure, they act like any other guild-run city you might
come across. But the people that live in the villages and towns, they’re a
separate matter altogether. They don’t take kindly to guilds, they’re not known
for coming to the city unless it’s a dire matter, and they tend to keep to
themselves.”

“It would make for a perfect hiding place,” Siobhan added as
she jumped lithely off the cart. The ground made a squishing noise under her
boots, and she realized with a grimace she had just landed in mud.

“These lowland villages trade more with the cities than us
mountain people do,” the way Wolf said this suggested he didn’t think much of
that custom, “so odds are good that someone either coming to or from the city
would find a troubled group and be more likely to help. If they did, they could
hide easily and lick their wounds with no one the wiser. Thing is, they
wouldn’t be able to contact anyone outside the village either.”

Yes, and for several reasons. If Lirah had done this, she
wouldn’t dare reveal her true identity because if the villagers discovered her
ties with a guild, they’d kick her back out immediately. The distaste for
guilds ran strong in this area of the country. In Lirah’s shoes, Siobhan would
take advantage of any kindness offered to her, lay low until her party was
healed up again, and
then
try to make it back to Sateren. Or even outright
retreat back southward to Quigg.

All of this assumed, of course, that Lirah had even made it
this far north. They could be searching little pockets of villages near the
main road all the way down to Quigg for the next month and might not find her.

And oh ye little gods, she hoped that wasn’t the case!

Praying silently to any god that might be listening, she
divided up her people into groups of three and sent them different directions.
They had orders to reconvene here, at this exact spot, when they had the information
they needed. Or if by some miracle one of her teams found a sign of the missing
party, they were to signal via the horn. Most of the time when traveling, the
guild stayed together, but on rare occasions, she found it necessary to split
them up like this. When she did, she either had a meeting point and a
designated time for people to return or she made sure they each had a horn with
a predetermined signal. In this case, it was one blast for no sighting, two
blasts for solid information, and three blasts for danger. On this flat plain
of grassland, the sound of a horn should carry for spans without trouble.

She, Wolf and Beirly stayed with the cart and consulted a
map on the good chance that they would soon have to search more inland.

Wolf sat next to her on the back of the cart, the map laid
out over their respective laps, and bent over it slightly. “Siobhan, can’t you
find a better map than this?” he complained for what had to be the thousandth
time.

“Wolf, you say that
every time
we go into Wynngaard,”
she retorted in exasperation.

“That’s because you haven’t replaced the map yet!”

“Have you seen a more accurate one?” she challenged, giving
him a stink eye. “Because I certainly haven’t. If you feel like this is a sorry
excuse of a map, make a better one! You can probably do it from memory, you
know this country so well.”

That adequately shut him up. With a grumble and snort, he
pointed at a nearby village. “This is Vakkiod and it’s much closer than the map
indicates. Really, if Lirah Darrens made it within sight of Sateren before
running into trouble, then this is the place I expect to find her in.”

Assuming she and her party weren’t in a shallow grave
somewhere, that was. The thought hung in the air, unspoken between them.
Siobhan cleared her throat to move past that heavy atmosphere. “Fine. Assuming
that they didn’t get this far north? What’s the next best bet?”

“The next village is much farther south, a full day’s travel
from here. The Gainsborough, or the Gain’s Furrow, depending on who you ask.
They’re not far from the highway, so again the odds of them helping out wounded
travelers are fairly good. There’s other possibilities the further south we go,
but…”

She held up a hand to stop him. “Let’s focus on just these
two for now. You said Vakkiod is close. How close?”

“Three hours?” he scratched at his chin as he mulled over
distance. “With the cart, at least.”

“And if I sent Tran ahead?”

“An hour and half, maximum.”

Well, that certainly made it clear to her what she should
do. She often sent Tran ahead in circumstances like this because he was a fast
runner that could go incredible distances. (Not truly unusual for a
Teheranian.) But he sometimes would get bogged down because of the landscape or
city crowds. Apparently, this wouldn’t be the case here or Wolf would think it
would take him longer.

From Sateren’s gate came a short blast from the horn,
followed almost as quickly from the port. She frowned at the reports, but in
truth, it didn’t surprise her that Lirah’s party hadn’t been sighted either
place. Lifting her own horn from her back, she let out a long note, calling
them back to her.

Tran’s group came back first, as they had simply gone to the
gate, and she motioned him closer. “Tran. Wolf thinks it’s a good possibility
for Lirah’s party to be in Vakkiod, which is here.” She pointed it out on the
map, waiting for him to give her a nod before removing her finger. “He
estimates it’ll take you about an hour and a half to get there from here. Will
you go ahead and check?”

“Vahh,” he shrugged in agreement, although a smile lit his
face. Tran loved a good run, and after days and days of either being on a cart
or on a horse, he had to be itching to stretch out some. “Same signals?”

She thought about it. The same signals should work, but… “Do
four blasts if they’re actually there.”

He tapped his heart twice in non-verbal understanding before
turning on his heel and taking off at a fast clip.

Hammon watched him go, the only one that looked concerned,
and asked, “Is it safe for him to go off alone like that?”

Siobhan snorted. “I pity the fool that tries to attack Tran.
It would make his day.” She sat back on the wagon a little more, getting
comfortable as she waited for her port people to return. As they had a little
further to go, she expected it to be another half-hour before they could make
it back to the cart.

Once everyone did return, and because they didn’t have
anything better to do, they broke out the cooking gear and made lunch. Some
might have wondered why they didn’t just go into Sateren for lunch—after all,
the city was little more than a stone’s throw away—but she didn’t want to
breach the walls yet. Sending even a few people to the gates and asking after
Lirah’s party was enough to signal that there were people searching. She didn’t
want to alert the possible assailants more than she already had by actually
going into the city.

Besides, out here she had no noise to camouflage Tran’s horn
when he chose to use it. The city’s din would surely cover up the sound if she
went inside.

Hammon broke the companionable silence with a soft clearing
of the throat. “Man Lei, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

Fei looked up from scraping his plate clean. “Go ahead.”

“I’ve noticed you add honorifics to people’s names. What do
they mean? I mean, what do they signify?”

Fei’s brows rose slightly. “There’s quite the list. It would
perhaps be better if I told you the ones you will actually hear me say, as some
of them are so old that no one uses them anymore.”

“That’s fine,” Hammon assured him as he pulled his leather
notebook out of his side pouch. “Are these ones that I will encounter during
trade as well?”

“Some of them, yes.” Fei seemed pleased at the respectful
way Hammon asked and he set his plate aside to focus more fully on the
conversation. “From most formal to least formal, it is in this order: zhi, jia,
gui, ajie, ren, jae, xian.”

“Wait, wait, repeat that please,” Hammon requested as he
scribbled frantically. “Zhi, jai—”

“Jia,” Fei corrected, pronouncing it more carefully. “Gui,
ajie, ren, jae, xian.” He shifted up onto his knees briefly to check Hammon’s
writing, but not finding anything to correct, he gave a brief nod of approval
before relaxing again. “Zhi is something you use when speaking to an older
person of great importance. Someone such as the leader of a town, city, or
guild for instance. Jia is for a person of higher status than you, such as a
master tradesman or an older relative. Gui is for a stranger that has no
special significance. Ajie is for an elder sister or relative.”

Hammon looked up at that. “I’ve heard you call Guildmaster
Maley that.”

“Yes.” Fei softened into a slight smile. “I have been in
this guild for eight years. At first I referred to her as ‘zhi’ but she is now
my sister more than my master.”

Siobhan couldn’t help but lean over and hug him. Fei
chuckled indulgently and patted her on the head. “Yes, ajie, thank you.”

“He’s the sweetest thing,” she told everyone and no one in
particular.

Fei waved her off and went back to the explanation. “Ren is
for a kind elder brother, or an older male friend.”

“You call most of the men in this guild by ‘ren?’” Hammon’s
tone made this a question.

“They are all older than I,” Fei explained patiently. “I am
twenty-six, and one of the youngest in the guild. Only Denney is younger than
I, I believe.”

“Not anymore.” Hammon grinned at him. “I’m twenty-five.”

Fei blinked in surprise. “I had thought you older.”

“Hence why you called me ‘jia?’” Hammon asked, not at all
offended.

“Well, and that, yes.” Fei scratched at his cheek, somewhat
nonplussed. “In truth, I suppose I should be calling you Markl-xian.”

“Xian meaning younger brother, or younger male friend, or
something along those lines?”

“Exactly so,” Fei agreed.

“Then do,” Hammon encouraged him. “I realize I’m here provisionally,
but it might be years before I finish my goals. I can be here a long time, and
because of that, I don’t want to be considered a temporary guest.”

Siobhan felt in that moment as if he were not speaking to
just Fei, but to everyone. They all had adopted the pattern of calling him by
his last name, a formality that no one used with the rest of the guildmembers.
Had she really been treating him as an outsider, in spite of what she
instructed the rest to do? Shaking her head at herself, Siobhan answered in
Fei’s stead. “We’ll do that, Markl.”

He flashed her a sunny smile that stretched from ear to ear.
“Then can I do likewise? I realize it’s rather awkward at this stage to ask
permission.”