Plain Kate

EIGHT THE BOG CAMP

Plain Kate found Behjet and Stivo in the market of the animals and stammered out enough of the story to send Stivo running. Kate started to follow him, but Behjet seized her by the shoulder to stop her. His hands trembled a little, but he kept his movement calm as he slid a saddle onto the dray colt. They mounted together, with Behjet behind and Kate squeezed between him and the horse’s pulsing neck. They rode out of Toila easily, so as to draw no eyes. But when they passed the city gates they went at a gallop.

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 redvardo. 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 andonto 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 Behjetcould 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 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.

So Kate, by herself, took the buckets from their pegs on the greenvardo and placed them—one, two, three, four—a few paces apart along the stream. She took the big bucket from the bluevardo and set off toward the river. One of the women, pulling piled chicken baskets out of the bear cage, called after her:“Not alone! It’s not the Roamer way—”

But Stivo interrupted her:“But she’s not Roamer, is she? And she looks after herself well enough.”

So Kate went alone. Full, the big bucket was iron-heavy. She and Drina usually carried it between them, their hands twined side by side on the handle, both of them leaning outward against the weight. Without Drina, Kate staggered. The bucket had to be held out far enough that it didn’t bang into her knee. It made the weight more; it was like carrying her secret. She shook with it.

It was too much. Drina hurt and hating her—her silver gone—her place vanishing—her shadow twisted away. Coming into camp, she caught her foot in a rabbit hole and fell. The water spilled. The bucket tumbled under the feet of the horses; Xeri shied and struck at it, and two of the staves cracked, and when Kate picked it up she was crying.

But worse was coming. It took her all of the evening to water the chickens, fill the kettles, and tend the fires, and through it all no one spoke to her, though there was whispering.

Where the men’s fire should be, the Roamers had put up a big tent, which she had only ever seen bundled and strapped beneath the biggestvardo.“Council tent,” said Behjet, who caught her looking. “This business in Toila was bad, Plain Kate. We must decide what to do.”

What to do with her, he did not say. She knew it, anyway.I knew this, she tried to remind herself. The test. After Toila, they were going to decide.

All the men went inside, and the women spoke only in their own language.Drina, she heard,gadje, Toila, market, knife, blood, witch. Blame.

Kate settled onto the back step of the redvardo and tried to mend the bucket in the fading light. Inside she could hear Daj muttering and puttering, and Stivo—gruff, angry Stivo—singing a lullaby that her own father had once sung to her. She knew the tune, though he sang in the Roamer language:“Cheya, Drina,mira cheya.” Daughter, dearest daughter.

The fire burning inside the council tent cast the men’s shadows on yellow canvas—shadows so crisp and solid they looked like people made of shadow. Smoke billowed, dragonish, from the vent in the roof. In the women’s circle, the cooking fire smoldered and sputtered, smoking in the damp. The woods pressed close and the river muttered.

Plain Kate worked and listened to Stivo sing. Drina’s voice didn’t come. The night closed in.

One of the women came around with a splint and lit the lanterns that hung from the back doors of the fivevardo, which Kate had always thought made the wagons look sweet as fireflies. But tonight—the lantern washed down over her as she struggled with planing a stave for the broken bucket. And after a moment she saw the way the shadow of the step made a fluttering line on the damp grass. Nothing broke that line. Of her own shadow there was no trace.

Kate stopped. Her hands went numb, her stomach seized, her breathing snatched. Gone. It was finally gone. Into the gathering dark, she hissed:“Taggle? Taggle?”

From the shifting dark shapes of the horses a smaller gray shape sauntered. The cat leapt onto the steps beside her. His shadow fell—alone—across the grass. “I found the horse,” he announced. “The one that gave us such a horrible ride. I scratched his ankle.”

“Ah,” she said automatically. She couldn’t even gather the courage to tell him, to speak the horrible thing aloud.My shadow.“Taggle—”

He had heard something, anyway.“Katerina?” He pricked his ears at her. His tail twitched and he sniffed at her, as if looking for the wound. “Are you hurt?”

“Taggle, my shadow—” But suddenly, inside thevardo, someone was shifting. The steps wobbled; the frame creaked. Daj pushed the curtain aside, and her shadow fell across Kate.My shadow, she thought again. But neither of them spoke. Taggle leaned his comforting warmth into Kate’s side.

Feeling Daj’s eyes on her, Plain Kate bent her head and tried to work. The curved length of the wood was clamped between her knees. She drew the plane over the wood toward her. Pale shavings curled up like carrot peelings. “Deadly work for such little hands,” said Daj at last.

“It’s not hard.” Though it was hard. Mending a bucket was a cooper’s work, and Kate had never done it. She had to guess how the wood might swell or shrink, bend or straighten, and the stave had to be perfect. If the bucket leaked, she thought, the Roamers would surely cast her out. Still, she said again: “It’s not hard.”

“Well, it looks hard,” said Daj. “Leave off now, kit, you’ve lost the light.” She plucked down the lantern and peered into thevardo.“Not much room in here, I’m feared. Full as the king’s pocket. Why don’t you pitch the bender tent, have a night on your own.”

Alone. At Daj’s words, Plain Kate did something she had never done. She let the plane slip.

The blade skipped off some knot in the wood and sliced into her forearm. She watched it cut a strip of skin like bark. Taggle howled.

Daj almost dropped the lantern.“Mira!” She rushed and stumbled down the steps, yanking off scarves.“Aye! I’ve jinxed you!” Plain Kate’s arm was seeping blood the way the bog seeped water. Daj tied the scarf around it, tight. The pink flowers were at once soaked through.

“Blood,” hissed Taggle, and over him, Kate said, “Oh.”

“Ah,” Daj sobbed. “I’ll never forgive myself.” She yanked Kate up—“Comeon, kit”—and pulled her by the wrist, staggering, toward the big tent, with the cat tangling around their feet. They burst into the yellow light and sudden silence. Faces turned to them.

There was no men’s fire ceremony, no “May I pass between you?” Daj barked: “Tea!” Her husband, Wen, rose, creaking, his hands on his knees, and shuffled over with the black kettle. Daj seized it and pushed Kate onto one of the trestles. Taggle leapt up. Daj swatted him away. She ripped off the bandage-scarf. Before Plain Kate knew what was happening, hot tea was pouring over the open wound.

“Just brewed that,” said Wen.

Daj thrust the kettle lid at him.“Can’t you see the child’s hurt?” She slapped a handful of steaming tea leaves on Plain Kate’s arm.

“What happened?” Stivo was pushing through the tent doorway behind them. “Carver cut herself, did she? Little girl with a big knife?”

Plain Kate looked up at him. He was strangely colored in the yellow light, like a smoked fish. Daj looked at her looking and said,“It weren’t her fault. I jostled her. And she’s a better carver than you are a horseman, boy.” She dropped the bloody, gaudy scarf into the teapot, and tied another scarf over the tea leaves, and another over that.

“What news of your daughter, Stivo?” Rye Baro’s voice came from the other side of the fire. To Kate, it seemed as if the fire itself was speaking, as if it wanted to claim Drina.

“She’ll live,” said Stivo. “And it’s not thanks to this one.” He gestured roughly at Kate.

“What—” Plain Kate felt dull as the dark of the moon. “What did she tell you?

The voice came from the fire again.“What should she have told, Plain Kate Carver?”

That it was my fault, Plain Kate thought.That she was only trying to help me. That I knew it was dangerous, and I let her help me anyway. I let her go alone.

Taggle sprang back onto the trestle beside her, sniffling at the tea-soaked scarf arpund Kate’s arm, bleating wordlessly. His pink tongue flicked out like a bit of flame. Beside her, Wen suddenly spat out his tea. “Bah! Who brewed the bandages!”

“Plain Kate?” said the fire, in Rye Baro’s voice.

“I—” she croaked.

“ ’Tis not the time for questioning the kit,” said Daj firmly, lifting Kate to her feet. “Come along, Plain Kate. I’ll clear you out a patch to sleep.”

“It’s full as the king’s pocket.”

“No, you’ll see,” said Daj, leading her out into the night. “You can sleep by me,mira.” She put an arm around Kate’s shoulders and guided her back across the river meadow, through the echoing, thickening fog, as if to the land of the dead.

“Blood!”

Plain Kate struggled to wake. She was wrapped in blankets, lying on Daj’s bunk in the hotvardo. Taggle was asleep. Drina was lying in the other bunk, her face turned to the wall, the roughly chopped hair sticking out and matted here and there with blood. Kate could see the heave of her ribs and hear the rasp and shudder of her breath. It was daylight, not too long past dawn: The gaps around the door curtain let in long slants of sun.

Kate shook her head, trying to remember what had wakened her. An angry voice, the wordblood. That voice from outside came again.“And what does that tell you?”

“That my fool of a husband can’t tell a bandage from a tea leaf.” Daj’s steady rasp came from just outside the doorway; she was sitting on thevardo steps.“ ’Tisn’t news.”

Plain Kate eased her arm free of Daj’s quilts and wiggled her fingers. The new wound felt tight as dry leather, but everything moved as it was supposed to be. She felt a stab of relief—and then of guilt. What kind of carver cut herself? There had been so much blood.

“He drank her blood and now he’s witched.” Plain Kate finally recognized Stivo’s voice. There was a tremble that hadn’t been there before—not just anger but fear. That was what had confused her. “Thatgadje child has a witch’s eyes.”

Taggle’s eyes cracked open. “Don’t like him.” She shushed him and rubbed a thumb between his ears.

“Well, let’s look, then.” The steps creaked as Daj lumbered down them. Plain Kate heard the voices fade away. Outside a horse whinnied, uneasy.

Kate tried to pull herself together.“What’s happening?”

Taggle opened one gold eye.“We’re napping.” He rolled over and stretched belly up in the crook of her arm. “You may scratch my throat.”

“I meant—Stivo just said—” The cat was going to be no help, clearly.My fool of a husband, Daj had said. Wen. He’d spat out his tea last night, made some crack about the bandage—the bandage with her blood on it, in the kettle. Wen had drunk her blood. Plain Kate sat up.

Taggle spilled out of his crook and onto thevardo floor. He gave her a sidelong look.“Huh!” he complained.

“It’s Wen,” she said. “Something must be wrong with him. And Stivo thinks—” She pulled herself up and thevardo sloshed around her. Her arm stung.“We have to go see.”

“Oh, all right.” Taggle stretched and spread the fur feathers between his toes. “Afterward you may find some food for us. I smell sausages.”

Plain Kate to the wood’s edge as she crept across the meadow. She was carrying the bloodied smock she had worn the day before, and trying to look as if she wanted no more than to go to the second bucket, where the washing was done. Taggle scoffed at the quality of her sneaking, and vanished into the tussocks and reeds. Plain Kate said a little prayer for some unlucky mouse or frog.

At the stream, she bent over the smock, scrubbing at the stained arm, and watching. The Roamers, men and women alike, were huddled outside the open flaps of the council tent. Up from the riverside where the horses were picketed, a small procession was coming: four men holding the corners of a sleeping roll, and on it, Wen sprawled limp. Stivo and Behjet at the head of the blanket were like a matched pair of stallions.

In the trampled grass, they put the blanket down. Kate lifted her head, feeling danger like a deer. She could see only Wen’s white hair, one gold-pierced ear, one hand lifeless as a glove. Daj crouched beside him. She leaned her ear and cheek close over his mouth and waited. The crowd held its breath.

Daj rocked back on her heels.“He’s breathing, any rate. Is it drink?”

“Not a drop, Mother,” said Stivo. “On my life.”

“It’s true there’s no smell of it.” Daj picked up the white hand. “He’s cursed cold.”

“They’re talking in that market,” said Behjet. “Talking about a sleep—” He left the thought hanging. For Kate, who knew what he was going to say, the wait for him to say it was awful. “They’re talking about a sleeping death. Come down the river from Samilae.”

Someone said,“Death!” but Stivo said, “Samilae?” Kate ducked her head.

The knot of people stirred and Rye Baro edged through them, inching on his two canes. He spoke to Daj in the Roamer language. She answered in the same, and after a moment stood up. Behjet and Stivo both started talking. And still Wen did not move.

Then Rye Baro spoke again, and Plain Kate heard him say her name. It dropped from the foreign language like a stone from the sky. She sank low over her washing and held still, pinned by its weight.

“But she’s only a child,” whispered Daj.

Plain Kate never heard the footsteps, but suddenly Stivo was looming over her, yanking her up by her arm. She yelped and jerked: Her wound cracked open.“Here she is,” called Stivo. He dragged her toward the turning faces, to where Wen lay as if ready for the grave. She twisted, terrified, and saw her smock lift and drift downstream.

“Bloodying the water,” said Stivo.

“She’sgadje,” said Behjet. “She doesn’t know.”

“Sheshould,” snapped Stivo, still clenching her arm.

“Bring her here,” said Rye Baro quietly, and Stivo did. Rye Baro stood with his legs wide, leaning forward onto his canes. “Plain Kate Carver,” he said, looking down at her. His leathery face was solemn and kind, like a horse’s. “In the city it is different. But you are now among the Roamers. You must learn that your blood is unclean. You must wash it at the fourth bucket. The farthest downstream.”

Was that all? Plain Kate, wide-eyed, nodded.

“See where Wen lies, witched.”

“I see.”

“What can you say about this?”

Kate drew herself straight.“That it is not my doing.”

Rye Baro looked at her, long and careful.“Child,” he said, “you have no shadow.”