The Beauty of Darkness - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,49

that vagabonds often camped near the outpost walls. I hadn’t seen Dihara’s band of wagons when we had approached yesterday, but in truth I’d seen very little besides the people flooding out to meet us. Now I wondered if she and the rest could be out there somewhere in the makeshift city.

“Of course,” Adeline said cheerfully. A small door in the massive watchtower gate was open, and as Rafe had ordered, soldiers four deep guarded it. Each one held a well-polished halberd. They let other soldiers pass through freely, but merchants were allowed only to leave messages and then were turned away.

As we approached, their halberds crossed and clicked like a well-timed machine to block us.

“James!” Adeline admonished. “What are you doing? Step aside. We’re going out to—”

“You and Vi may pass,” he replied, “but not Her Highness without an escort. King’s orders.”

I frowned. Rafe feared more Rahtan could be out there. “These ladies don’t count as my escorts?” I asked.

“Armed escorts,” he clarified.

I made an exaggerated point of looking at the daggers at each of our sides. We were armed.

James shook his head. Apparently our own weapons weren’t enough.

* * *

It was awkward walking among the merchant wagons with six sober-faced guards wielding sharp, pointy halberds, but we were lucky that James had rustled up even these, because none of the four at the gate would leave their posts.

The small wagon city reminded me in some ways of the jehendra. A little something for everyone and every taste—grilled foods, fabrics, leather goods, tents for games of chance, exotic brews, even a letter-writing service for soldiers who wanted to send home missives written with an elegant flair. Other merchants were there only to sell staples to the outpost and be on their way.

I was still pondering that the outpost seemed to break the treaty calling for no permanent dwellings in the Cam Lanteux. Why had Eben’s family been burned out when here in the same wilderness was a structure that housed hundreds?

When I asked Adeline about this, one of the guards overheard me and answered in her stead. “There are no permanent residents here. We are regularly rotated in and out.” His explanation sounded like a loophole exploited by the well-armed and powerful. I remembered Regan talking about the encampments where their patrols would rest, but I had always pictured them as temporary places of muddy ruts, shaky tents, and windblown soldiers huddling against the elements. Now I wondered if Morrighan had loopholes too and their encampments were more permanent than I had believed them to be.

I asked the whereabouts of the vagabond camps among the merchants as we walked, and I was always directed a short walk away, but none were the vagabonds I searched for. “The one Dihara leads,” I finally said to an old man who was pounding designs into a leather browband.

He paused from his work and used his chisel to point still farther down the wall. “She’s here. At the end.” My heart leapt, but only momentarily. His wrinkles deepened into unmistakable grimness. I ran in the direction he indicated, Vilah, Adeline, and the soldiers struggling to keep up with me.

When we found the camp, I understood the old man’s grim expression. The camp was tucked under expansive pine boughs, but there were no chimes hanging from them. No painted ribbons or pounded copper twirled from branches. There was no steaming kettle in the midst of it all. There were no tents. Only three scorched carvachis.

Reena’s carvachi was more black now than purple. She sat on a log near the fire ring with one of the young mothers. Nearby, Tevio scraped the dirt with a sharp stick. Behind the carvachis, I spotted one of the men tending the horses with a child on his hip. There was no gaiety.

I turned to the guards and pleaded with them to stay back. “Please,” I said. “Something is wrong.” They surveyed the surroundings and reluctantly agreed to maintain their distance. Adeline and Vilah planted themselves in front of them as their own kind of safeguard—a line not to be crossed.

I approached, my chest hammering. “Reena?”

Her face brightened, and she jumped up to meet me, squeezing me against her full breast as if she’d never let me go. When she loosened her grip and looked at me again, her eyes glistened. “Chemi monsé Lia! Oue vifar!”

“Yes, I live. But what has happened here?” I stared at her charred wagon.

By now several others had joined us, including Tevio, who was