Weavers of Saramyr

Twenty-One

Time did not pass in Chaim. Rather, it elongated, stretching itself flat and thin, sacrificing substance for length. Tane had ceased counting the days; they had merged into one great nothing, a relentless, frowning wall of boredom and increasing despair.

The disappearance of Kaiku had hit them hard. At first there was something akin to mild panic. Had something been into the cave and taken her while they slept? Mamak searched and found no sign. It took a short while before Tane remembered the strange things Kaiku had been saying to him while he drowsed:

Perhaps this was not your path to take after all. Perhaps it is mine alone.

The storm kept them in the cave another day. Mamak flatly refused to let them search.

'If she's out there, the fool is dead already. When this storm breaks, I go home. You can come with me, or stay in this cave if you wish.'

Tane begged him, offered him triple his fee if he would find her. He told her that Kaiku had money, and lots of it. Mamak's eyes lit at the prospect, and for a moment Tane saw greed war with sense on his face; but in the end, his experience of mountain travel tipped the balance, and he refused. Asara shook her head and tutted at Tane for his loss of dignity in desperation.

'I want her back!' he snapped in his defence.

Asara shrugged insouciantly. 'But she is gone, Tane. Time for a new plan.'

When the storm gave up the next morning, they accepted the inevitable and returned to Chaim. Tane talked of raising an expedition to search the mountains for Kaiku – or her body – so that they might at least retrieve the Mask. Tane had not forgotten that without that Mask he had no hope of discovering who had sent the shin-shin that had massacred the priests of his temple. But the plan was unsound, and everyone knew it. Even Tane knew it. There was not a prayer of finding her in all the vastness of northern Fo, with her tracks erased by rain and wind. By the time they came down out of the mountains and were back on the path to Chaim, he had stopped talking about it.

Tane and Asara found themselves rooms in Chaim's single lodging house, a bare and draughty construction that catered for the few outside visitors the town received. Neither intended to leave, or even spoke of such.

'She decided to go on alone,' Tane said. 'If she makes it, she'll come back here.'

'You are chasing false hope,' Asara told him, but she did not argue further, nor make any move to depart herself.

There was nothing to do in Chaim. The unfaltering rudeness of the locals began to wear on them after a time, and they talked to nobody but each other. At first, there was little for them to speak of. Too many barriers existed between them, too many deceptions. It was just like it had been with Kaiku.

Gods, do we ever take our masks off, even for a moment? Tane thought in exasperation.

But gradually their enforced solitude bred conversation, as the slow trickle of water through a holed dam will erode the surrounding stone till it cracks. After what might have been a week of waiting and wondering, they found themselves back in the makeshift bar where they had first met Mamak.

'You know what I am, Tane,' Asara said.

The statement, put casually in the midst of the conversation, brought the young acolyte up short. 'What do you mean?' he asked.

'No games,' she said. 'The time has come for honesty. If you are to walk the same paths as I, as seems increasingly to be the case, then you should face up to what you already know.'

Tane glanced around the bar to ensure they were not being overheard, but it was almost empty. A bleak, wooden, chilly room with a few locals in a corner minding their own business. A scatter of low, rough-cut tables and worn mats to sit on. A grouch-faced barmaid serving shots of rank liquor. Spirits, he hated this town.

'You are Aberrant,' he said quietly.

'Well done,' she replied, with a hint of mockery in her voice. 'At last you admit it to yourself. But you are a strange one, Tane. You listen. You are ready to learn. That is why I will tell you this, for you may one day come to my way of seeing. So swallow your disgust for a moment, and hear what I have to say.'

Tane leaned forward over the table, his cheeks flushed. With the lack of anything to do in the town, Chaim's inhabitants had a lot to drink about, and the potency of the liquor attested to that. Asara was dead sober, as always; her Aberrant metabolism neutralised alcohol before it could affect her, and she did not know how it felt to be drunk.

'I am old, Tane,' she said. 'You cannot guess how old by looking at me. I have seen much, and I have done much. Some memories bring pride, others disgust.' She turned the wooden tumbler of liquor inside the cradle of her fingers, looking down into it. 'Do you know what experience is? Experience is when you have handled something so much that the shine wears off it. Experience is when you begin to see how relentlessly predictable people are, how generation after generation they follow the same simple, ugly pattern. They dream of living forever, but they do not know what they ask. I have passed my eightieth harvest, though it does not show on me. Since I reached adulthood, I have not aged. My body repairs itself faster than time can ravage it. That is my curse. I have already lived the span of a normal lifetime, and I am bored.'

It seemed such bathos that Tane almost laughed, a bitter hysteria welling within him; but the tone of Asara's voice warned him against it. 'Bored?' he repeated.

'You do not understand,' Asara said patiently. 'Nor, I think, will you ever. But when so much has become jaded, all that is left is the search for something new, something that will fire the blood again, if only for a short while. I was purposeless for a long time before I met Cailin tu Moritat, seeking only new thrills and finding each less satisfying than the last. When I found her, I saw something I had never seen before. I had thought I was a freak, a random thing; but in her I saw a mirror to me, and I saw a purpose again.' 'What did you see?' asked Tane.

'A superior being,' Asara replied. 'A creature that was human and yet better than human. An Aberrant whose Aberration made her better than those who despised her.'

Tane blinked, wanting to shake his head and refute her. He restrained himself. Her words were preposterous, but he would listen. He had learned her opinions on the subject of Aberrancy over the weeks they had spent together, and while he did not agree with much of what she said, it had enough validity to make him think.

'I saw then the new order of things,' Asara continued. 'A world where Aberrants were not hated and hunted but respected. I saw that Aberrancy was not a fouling of the body, but merely a changing. An evolution. And as with all evolution, many must fall by the way for one to emerge triumphant. If I am to live in this world for a long time to come, I will do all I can to make it a more pleasant experience for myself. And that means I must work towards that new order.'

'I think I see,' he said, recalling other snatches of conversation they had shared over the period of their self-induced confinement in Chaim. 'You help the Red Order because they represent Aberrants whose abilities make them greater than human. And the Libera Dramach… they work for the same thing you want; so you help them too.'

'But the Red Order and the Libera Dramach are working together for the time being, with one common goal in mind,' Asara said, enmeshing her fingers before her.

'To see the Heir-Empress take the throne,' Tane concluded.

'Exactly. She is the key. She is the only one that can reverse the blight on our land. She is the bridge between us and the spirits, between the common folk and the Aberrants.' Asara grabbed Tane's wrists and fixed him with an iron gaze. 'It must be this way. And we must do what we can to make it so.'

Tane held the gaze for a moment, then countered with a question. 'Why did you watch over Kaiku for so many years?'

He regretted it almost immediately. It had come out without thought, seeming to trip from his subconscious to his tongue without routing through his brain; and yet he knew by some terrible prescience what would be Asara's reply.

Asara smiled faintly and released him. She sat back and took a sip of liquor. 'I became her handmaiden at the behest of the Red Order. Her previous one met with an accident.'

Tane let this one pass. When he did not react, Asara continued.

'They found her through whatever method they have; their ways are a mystery to me. They knew she would manifest… powers sooner or later, and they asked me to watch her until she did. There was no way she would be coerced to join until she had her first burning. Who in their right mind would believe they were an Aberrant without any evidence?'

Asara's words dropped into Tane's consciousness like a stone into thick honey. The world seemed to slow around him, the whispering of the other denizens of the bar becoming a meaningless susurrus in the background. Across the coarse wooden table he could see Asara's beautiful eyes watching his face, evaluating the effect of what she had just told him.

'But you knew that, didn't you?' she asked.

Tane nodded mutely, his gaze falling. She relished it, he realised. He had asked her a question he already had the answer to, and she was amused that he still felt her response like a pikestaff in the ribs.

'Small things,' he murmured, when he could bear her wry silence no longer. 'When first I met her, she was raving about a woman named Asara. She told me you had been killed by a demon in the forest. Later you reappeared. No explanation was given, and I didn't ask for one.'

'You thought it was not your place to enquire,' said Asara scornfully. 'How like a man.'

'No,' he said. 'No, I suppose I didn't want to know. I was cowardly. Then there was you. I suspected you from the start. Add to that the lengths you went to to bring her to the Aberrant woman Cailin, the secrets you held between you that I was not privy to, the way you seemed to change…' He sighed, a strange noise of resignation. I'm not feeble-minded, Asara. I've been walking with Aberrants since my journey began.'

'Yet you believe your journey was ordained by your goddess, that you were spared for a purpose; but there is no greater foulness to Enyu than an Aberrant. Reconcile these things, if you can.'

Tane bowed his head, his shaved skull limned in dim lantern light. 'I can't. That's why I've been avoiding them.'

'Here it is in the open, then,' said Asara, brushing back the red-streaked fall of her hair behind one sculpted ear and leaning forward. 'She is Aberrant, gifted with the ability to mould the Weave as the Weavers do. But she is dangerous to herself and others; she needs schooling. I came to Fo for several reasons, but one was to stop her committing suicide. Every day she spends here increases the risk that her powers will break their boundaries again. Eventually, she will either burn herself or be killed by those that fear her.' She relaxed back, her gaze never leaving Tane, never ceasing to calculate him. 'I told Cailin I would bring her into the fold, and I will. Assuming she still lives, of course. I will wait in this spirit-blasted wasteland until hope is gone. That may be weeks, it may be months; but age has a way of foreshortening time, Tane, and I am a patient woman.'

Tane was silent. The sensation of drunkenness felt suddenly unpleasant, having soured within him.

'Join us, Tane,' said Asara. 'You and I share the same goals. You may hate Aberrants, but you would see the blight on this land stopped. And the Heir-Empress is the only chance we have.'

'I do not…' Tane began, feeling the words stall and clutter in his mouth. 'I do not hate Aberrants,' he said.

'Indeed not,' Asara said, raising one eyebrow slightly. 'For you love one of them, I suspect.'

Tane flashed her a hot glare, forming a retort that died before it could be born. Instead, he became sullen, and did not reply.

'Poor Tane,' Asara said. 'Caught between your faith and your heart. I'd pity you, if I had not seen it endless times before. Humankind really is a pathetically predictable animal.'

Tane slammed his hands on the table, spilling their liquor. He arrested himself just as he was about to lunge at her. She had not moved a muscle, staying relaxed on her mat, watching him with that infuriating amusement on her face. The others in the bar had their eyes on him now. He wanted to strangle her, to hit her, to slap her hard and show her that she could not speak to him that way.

Like father, like son, he thought, and suddenly he went cold, the rage in him flickering and dying out. He slammed his hands on the table again in one last, impotent display of frustration, got up and stalked out of the bar and into the night.

The chill air and knife-edge wind sawed through him eagerly. He welcomed the discomfort, hurrying away from the bar, away from the lights in the windows, seeking only to distance himself from Asara and all she had said. But he could no longer avoid it now. There was no question, no element of doubt any more. He had been treasuring that margin of uncertainty, for in that small space he could still stay with Kaiku and not offend his goddess, could still protest that he was never certain she was Aberrant. Now it was gone, and he was forced into a quandary.

There were few people on the rough trails that passed for streets in Chaim. No lanterns burned except through grimy windows. The moons were absent tonight, and the darkness was louring and hungry. He let himself be swallowed by it.

After a time, he came to a sloping, craggy rock atop a slope that looked out over the faint lights of the grim village, and there he sat. It was bitterly cold, but he had his coat on and his hood pulled tight. He meditated for a time, but it was hopeless. No enlightenment could come to a heart in such turmoil. Instead he prayed, asking Enyu for guidance. How could she have sent him on this way to ally himself with Aberrants, if Aberrants were corruptions of her plan? What was he supposed to do? So many uncertainties, so many unanswered questions, and he was left scrabbling for purpose once again. How could something as simple as faith be so contradictory?

It is my punishment, he thought. / must endure.

And there it was: his answer. This agony of indecision was only part of his penance. He must accept it gladly, and act as he thought best, and bear the consequences of that.

I owe the gods a life, he told himself. It was a phrase he had been using to account for his suffering ever since he was sixteen harvests of age, and he had murdered his own father.

He had no clear recollection of anything before the age of eight or nine, except of the fearful dark shape that lumbered through his embryonic memories, and the crushing inevitability of the pain that was to follow. Pain was a part of the jigsaw of Tane's childhood as much as joy, hunger, triumph, disappointment. In some form or another it visited him daily, whether it were a sharp cuff on the ear while he ate his oats or a thrashing in the corner for some real or imagined mischief. Pain was a part of the cycle of things: random and illogical and unfair, but only in the way that illness was or any other misfortune.

His father, Eris tu Jeribos, was a member of the town council of Amada, deep in the Forest of Yuna. Politics had always been his ambition, but while he was shrewd and clever enough to make headway time and again, he was forever dragged back by those facets of his personality that alienated him from his fellows.

He was pious, and nobody could fault him for that; but his extreme and puritanical views met with little favour among the other councillors. He made them uneasy, and they feared to let him gain any more power than he had in the council; yet though he knew this, he was a man of such conviction that he could do nothing but continue to expound his beliefs. And so he was always frustrated, and each time a little more of the humanity inside him shrivelled to a bitter char.

But there was something other than his obvious piety: an almost indefinable quality that he projected to only the most subtle of senses, so that his peers shrank from him without knowing why. He was cruel. And though he took pains never to show a hint of it in public, somehow it seemed to emanate from him and put people on edge. Perhaps it was the flat bleakness of his hooded eyes, or the curl on the edge of his voice, or his thin, gaunt, stooped body; but whatever it was, the things he did in private carried themselves to his public life whether he wanted them to or not.

Tane had been taught to hunt by his father when he was ten harvests old. He was a remarkably adept pupil, and he applied himself vigorously, having finally found something that pleased the strict patriarch. And if he noticed the gleam in Eris's eyes was a little too bright as he watched a rabbit thrashing in a snare, or that he took a fraction too much pleasure in snapping a wounded bird's neck, then he counted himself lucky that his father was happy, and less likely to turn on him without warning as he usually was.

When he was twelve, he was out walking in the woods and he came across his father skinning a jeadh – a long-muzzled, hairless variety of the wild dogs that haunted the northern end of the Forest of Yuna. The jeadh was still very much alive, staked to the ground with its legs forced apart. The spirits knew how Eris had subdued it like that. Tane had been attracted by the muffled whimpers and yelps that it forced through the crude muzzle Eris had formed when he tied his belt around its mouth.

He stood and watched, unnoticed by Eris, who was too engrossed in what he was doing to pay attention to anything else. He watched the slow, careful way his father parted the layers of skin and subcutaneous fat with his knife, drawing back a bloody flap to expose the glistening striations of pink muscle beneath. For half an hour he was motionless, standing in full view in the clearing, but his father never saw him as he meticulously took the beast apart, piece by piece, unpeeling it like an orange until he could see its heart beating in terror between its ribs. Tane looked from the animal to his father's face and back, and for the first time he truly understood that he was the son of a monster.

Tane's mother Kenda was a pale, mousy woman, small and shy and grey and quiet. It had occurred to him in later life that her marriage to Eris might have made her this way, but strangely Eris's cruelty never extended to his wife, and he never beat her as he did Tane. At most, he snapped at her, and she would scuttle away like a startled shrew; but then, since she seemed to possess no will of her own and dared not accomplish the smallest task without being told to do so by Eris, she never gave him a reason to be displeased with her. Tane remembered his mother as something of a nonentity, a pallid extension of his father's wishes, a menial thing that swept and scampered and was wholly ineffectual on her own.

Kenda had bore Eris two children. Each had brought her close to death, for her weak body could barely stand the trials of pregnancy; but Tane doubted that she had even considered herself or her health in the equation. Tane's sister Isya was six harvests younger than him, and he loved her dearly. She was the one anchor of humanity in their household. Somehow she grew up unsullied by the parents who raised her, taking on none of their traits as most children are wont to do. Instead, it was if her personality were formed in the womb, crystalline, rejecting any possibility of absorbing outside influences.

She was a happy child where Tane was serious, a dreamer, a creature of imagination and boundless energy, who would cry when she found a broken chick that had fallen from its nest, or laugh and dance when it rained. Tane envied her passion for life, her carefree joy; and he treasured it also, for just to be near her was to feel the warmth she gave off, and the world seemed better for her being in it. She endured the bumps and scrapes of childhood like any other, but he was always there for her, to bandage a skinned knee or soothe her tears. It was through learning to care for her that he first realised the healing properties of herbs, and began to apply them to his own bruises too. For her part, Isya adored her older brother; but then she adored everyone, and not even the stern manner of their father – who was careful never to beat Tane within her earshot – or the nervous shyness of their mother were enough to deflect her affection.

It was Isya and Isya only that made life bearable for Tane as he grew into adolescence. It was as if his father had somehow sensed the disgust his son now felt for him, after seeing him torture the jeadh in the forest. This, coupled with his increasing frustration at the town council, led to the regular beatings that Tane suffered suddenly intensifying. He would be set impossible tasks of learning, told to go to the library in Amada and memorise entire chapters of Saramyr history to recite word for word. If he failed, as he inevitably did, he was thrashed until his body was bruised black and his lungs rattled for breath.

He took to retreating into the deeper forest for days at a time. His father's lessons in hunting and survival served him well during these periods when he was away, and he began to yearn more and more to stay on his own, surrounded by the animals and trees, none of whom could possibly be as cruel to him as the lean ogre who waited at home. But there was one thing that always drew him back: Isya. Though his father's casual violence had been hitherto directed only at Tane, he did not dare leave his sister to Eris's mercies, in case one day he might seek a new target to vent himself on.

When he was sixteen harvests and Isya was ten, that day came.

He had been away for a week, searching the stream sides and rocky nooks for a particular shrub called iritisima, whose roots were a powerful febrifuge, used to bring down fevers. By now most of the time he was not away he was at the library, learning the intricacies of herblore alongside the futile task of keeping up with his father's lessons. Isya missed him, but he was faintly dismayed to see that she got along fine in her own company, and did not need her older brother half as much as he liked to think. She had cultivated friends in the village, too; real friends, not the acquaintances Tane had. He could never begin a true friendship while he still had to hide the bruises and mysterious convalescences that were part of his routine.

When he returned home to the cabin, sitting beneath the shade of the overhanging oaks that leaned over the low cliff at its back, he found it silent. The day was warm and humid, and his shirt was damp with sweat. Using his bolt rifle as a walking staff – the way his father had warned him never to do – he made his tired way to the door and peered inside. A quiet house usually meant Eris was away, but this time there was a certain malevolence about the peace, something that prickled at his intuition.

'Mother?' he called as he propped his rifle inside the porch. Her face appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, a flash of fright, and then she disappeared. He felt something cold trickle into his chest. Striding quickly, he went to Isya's door and opened it without waiting to knock.

She was huddled in a corner by her simple pallet bed, curled up like a foetus, her hair a straggle and her face puffy with tears. In that moment, in one terrible second, he knew what had happened -hadn't he always feared it, secretly? His breath stopped, as if to plug whatever it was that was rising from his belly to his throat. Seemingly in a dream, he crossed the room and crouched next to her, and she threw herself into his arms and hugged him tight, desperately, as if she could crush him into her and he could take away the pain as he had always done before. The veins on his neck throbbed as she screamed into his shoulder; his eyes fell to the spatters of dark, dark blood on her pallet, the bruises on her thin arms where Eris's hands had gripped. Her saffron-yellow dress was a dull rust-brown where she had gathered it between her knees.

He remembered holding her. He remembered brewing her a strong infusion of skullcap and valerian that put her to sleep. And then he went out, into the forest, and did not return till the next morning.

His father was back by then, sitting at the round table in the kitchen. Tane went in to check on Isya, who was still asleep, and then sat down opposite Eris. He swung a half-full bottle of liquor on to the table. His father watched him stonily, as if this were a day like any ordinary day, as if he hadn't ruined and dirtied the one precious thing he had ever created, forever destroyed the fragile innocence of a creature more beautiful that the rest of her family combined.

'Where did you get that?' he asked, his voice low, as it always was before he struck.

'It's yours,' Tane said. 'I took it.'

His mother, who had been hovering by the stove, began to scuttle out quickly, sensing the rising conflict.

'Get us two cups, Mother,' Tane said. She stopped. He had never ordered her to do anything before. She looked to his father. He nodded, and she did as she was bade before retreating.

'You're drunk.'

'That's right,' said Tane, filling the two cups. Eris rarely drank, but when he did it was always this: abaxia, a smooth spirit from the mountains.

Eris looked steadily at Tane. Ordinarily, Tane would be rolling and pleading beneath his fists or the buckle of his belt by this point. But Eris had sensed he had gone too far this time, crossed some invisible line, and Tane was strong enough now to stand up to his father. There was a belligerence about his manner, and beneath that a look in Tane's eyes that he had never seen before. A kind of emptiness, like something had died inside him and left only a void. For the first time in his life, he secretly feared his son.

'What do you think you're doing?' he asked slowly, warily.

'You and I are going to take a drink,' Tane replied, pushing his cup towards him. 'And then we're going to talk.'

'I'll not be told what to do by you,' Eris said, rising.

'You'll sit downV Tane roared, slamming his fist on the table. Eris froze. His son glared at him with raw hatred in his eyes. 'You'll sit down, and you'll take a drink, or the gods help me I'll do worse to you than you did to Isya.'

Eris sat, and with that the last of his authority was gone. For so many years he was used to his word being unchallenged in his own home that he simply did not know how to react when it was. His hands were trembling as Tane composed himself again, brushing a flick of dark hair back from his forehead. His skull was unshaven then.

'A toast,' Tane said, raising his cup. Shakily, Eris did the same. 'To family.'

With that, he drained his cup in a single swallow, and his father followed him.

'She was all I had, Father,' Tane said. 'She was the only good thing you ever did, and you've ruined her.'

Eris's eyes would not meet Tane's.

'Why?' he whispered.

His father did not reply for a long time, but Tane waited.

'Because you weren't here,' Eris said quietly.

Tane let out a bitter laugh.

Eris looked at him then. 'What are you going to do?'

Tane tapped the bottle of abaxia with a fingernail. 'I've already done it.'

His father opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. The expression of horror on his face was something Tane had never seen before.

'Tasslewood root,' he said. 'First it paralyses your vocal cords, then robs the strength from your limbs. After that it gets to work on your insides. It takes up to fifteen minutes to die, so the books say. And best of all, it's practically undetectable and the cadaver is unmarked, so it seems like a simple heart failure.'

'You… but you drank…' Eris gasped. He could already feel the numbness at the base of his throat, his larynx swelling.

'It's quite a plant, really, the tasslewood,' Tane said conversationally. 'The leaves and aerial parts provide the antidote to the poison in the roots.' He opened his mouth, displaying a wad of bitter green mush that he had kept concealed under his tongue. He swallowed it.

His father tried to reply, to plead or beg; but instead he slumped off his chair and fell to the floor. Tane got down and crouched next to him, watching him twitch as he lost control of his limbs. His father's eyes rolled and teared, and Tane listened dispassionately to the soft bleats of agony that were all Eris could force from his body.

'Look what you made me, Father,' Tane whispered. 'I'm a murderer now.'

He took the cups and the bottle when he left. They were the only evidence that could be used in accusation against him for his father's death. Not that he believed he would be accused. His mother did not have the initiative. He walked into the woods with the sound of her rising scream coming from the cabin behind him, as she discovered the body of her husband.

That day he roamed the woods, half mad with grief and self-loathing. He had no idea what would come afterwards, how they would keep going, what would become of them. He knew only that he would look after Isya, protect her, and never let a man such as Eris harm her again. He only hoped she would emerge from her ordeal as the same girl he had known before.

He returned to the cabin at night, and it was once again silent. He found his father still lying in the kitchen. Of his mother and Isya, there was no sign. At first he felt a flood of panic; but then reason calmed him. They had gone to a friend's house, or to have Isya seen to by the physician in Amada. Whatever else, his mother did not have the strength of character to leave her home permanently. He took the corpse away and buried it in the darkness, and settled to wait for their return.

After a week it became apparent that they were not coming back. He had underestimated his mother. Perhaps her need to run had overcome her fear of facing the outside world without her husband. Perhaps she truly loathed her son for what he had done. Perhaps she was terrified that he would come back and kill them, too. He would never know. She had gone, and taken his sister with her. He had lost the one he meant to protect, and now there was no one and nothing. Only him.

Towards dawn, he returned to the lodging house briefly to collect his possessions. He avoided Asara's room, not wishing to face her. There was much he had to think on, insoluble questions he had to find answers to. He could not do it here in Chaim, and he could not do it in company. He would leave Asara to watch out for Kaiku's return for the time being. He trusted her that far, at least.

He had gathered everything from his draughty, rickety wooden room and was about to leave when he saw a note on his bed, signed in Asara's flowing hand. Hesitantly, he picked it up.

Should you change your mind, he read, take this note to the priests at the Temple ofPanazu inAxekami. Tell them you wish to come to the fold. They will understand.

A ghost of a frown crossed his tanned brow, and then he pocketed the note and left. There would be trader carts going south with the sunrise. He intended to be on one of them.