race was indeterminate, and he gave no address. He was very large and said very little. He took a seat in the cart just forward of Lord Ermenwyr’s baggage cart and slouched there with his arms folded, and the screaming of the Smiths’ baby didn’t seem to bother him in the least.
Smith staggered out to the cart leaning on the Yendri doctor, who helped him up to a sort of couch the keymen had made out of the flour bags from Old Troon Mills.
“You must continue to take the infusion each night until the new moon,” the doctor told him. “Your cook has the mixture; she promised me she’d make it up for you. When you reach Salesh, go to the hot baths in Anchor Street and ask for Levendyloy Alder. Tell him you need a detoxification, the full treatment. You should feel much better afterward.”
“What’ll it cost me?” Smith asked crossly, trying to find a comfortable position. He had just settled accounts with the Housekeeper, and was very glad his cousin had a business expense letter of mark.
“You can pay for it with this,” the doctor replied, pressing something into his hand. Smith squinted down at it. It was a pendant of some kind, a clay disk on a woven cord. He slipped it about his neck.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Be careful, Smith,” said the doctor.
“I will be,” Smith assured him. “Flowering Reed’s still out there somewhere. You know, for all your people’s talk about how much nicer you are than us, I always thought you were probably right. It’s a real disappointment to find out you’ve got hypocrites just the same as we do. Or does your religion permit murder?”
The doctor made a wry face. “Hm. Not my religion, Caravan Master.”
“How’s a man like Flowering Reed become a killer, then?”
After a long silence the doctor answered sadly, “Who knows what is in his heart? But love can leave more death in its track than the most ardent hatred.”
Smith nodded. He had learned that lesson elsewhere, long since.
“Go in peace, Caravan Master,” said the doctor, and touched Smith’s forehead briefly in blessing.
The carts jolted forward as the keymen hauled them into the ruts. The watchmen worked the gate capstans. There was a last-minute boarding scramble. Burnbright trumpeted their departure from the Red House. They rolled away into the forest of bright leaves and left that place of smoke and death behind them.
It was rough going, uphill and down, and the keymen pedaled until their bulging calves seemed ready to burst outright. The red stone road was uneven here and there too, or buckled and cracked from the roots of trees, imperfectly patched with cement. Sometimes it crossed the faces of high hills, hairpinning and skirting breathtaking drops into gorges far below; sometimes it ran through the bottoms of valleys, following watercourses, and cool air flowed with them as they shuttled along through willows going bronze in the frosts.
The black mountain loomed still above the red leaves. Smith, watching it from his elevated position mile after mile, had the eerie feeling that it was watching him in return.
Sometimes he thought he could make out structures at its peak, when no slate clouds obscured it: black walls and battlements, sharp obsidian spires, megalithic giants scowling blind in the sunlight. Sometimes he could see nothing but tumbled stone, a high field of basalt and fallen stars above the tree line.
But no one descended howling from that vast height, and when they made camp at night a profound stillness ringed them in. Even the Smiths’ baby seemed subdued. Smith took to sleeping by day as much as he could, to watch the shadows beyond the trees after dark. Only once, one night, was there a distant scream that cut off abruptly. It might have been an animal. There was no sign of anything untoward having happened when they broke camp next morning.
Mr. Amook neither said nor did anything suspicious, but rode in stolid silence. He had no tattoos that Burnbright could spot, no matter how much she lingered near the watering huts. She was half-mad with curiosity about him.
The day came when the road began to slope downward again, a little obscured by drifts of leaves, and there was undeniably more light and air getting through the ancient branches. Not only that, the black mountain began to diminish behind them. They could glimpse the smoke of distant cities below on the plain, and far off a level horizon so perfect, it could be none