be of some use. We’ve got to find all of these eggs for the poor caravan master!”
With yells of glee, the three older Smith children jumped from the cart and ran obediently down the embankment to him. Burnbright came running back to help them. They set about hunting through the bushes for the remaining violet eggs, most of which had stopped rolling around by then.
“The wheel assembly’s undamaged, sir,” Crucible reported. “Both axles sound, but the hitch is wrecked.” He held up a hook-and-rod twisted like a stick of Salesh Sweetvine. “We’ve got spares, of course. We’ll just replace it, sir, shall we?”
“Go ahead,” said Smith. He had another gulp from Mrs. Smith’s flask, watching the children following Lord Ermenwyr about like puppies. He had stripped off his shirt, and they were putting all the eggs they found in it. “This is good stuff. What is it?”
“It’s a cordial from the Abbey at Kemeldion,” Mrs. Smith informed him. “The Father Abbot’s own private receipt. We invented it together, he and I, when we were a good deal younger and less spiritually inclined than we are now.” She groped in her pocket for her smoking tube and lit it. “Lovely man. Always sends me a barrel at the holidays. Nothing like it for a restorative when one travels, I find.”
“Think it’ll stick glass butterflies back together?” Smith wondered. “Maybe if we pray a lot?”
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to pray. Don’t worry, Caravan Master.” Mrs. Smith kissed his cheek. She smelled of amberleaf, and food, and good drink. It was a comforting kind of smell. “Whatever happens, I’ll fix you a dish of fried eel when we get to Salesh. You’ve certainly earned it.”
“My cousin won’t think so,” said Smith morosely, and had another drink as Lord Ermenwyr clambered up the bank toward them, accompanied by the Smith children with their arms full of violet eggs. He carried a great number of eggs in his shirt. His bare skin was pale and fine as a girl’s, though he was otherwise quite sinewy and masculine.
“You know, Caravan Master, I don’t believe this is quite as bad as we thought at first,” he said. “None of these seem to be broken at all.”
“So maybe only that one smashed?” Smith felt his mood lifting, or perhaps it was the cordial.
“I saw a man get his foot crushed in a wheel rut in Mount Flame City once, and there was just nothing left of it even to be amputated,” said Burnbright encouragingly. “No wonder that one egg broke! I’ll bet the rest are fine, though.”
“Perhaps it’s Lady Seven Butterflies’s ballocky holistic packing method saving the day yet again,” said Mrs. Smith.
Lord Ermenwyr threw his head back and laughed, in the fox-yipping way he had. Smith felt Mrs. Smith stiffen beside him and catch her breath. He looked at her, but she had turned her head to stare intently at the young man as he emptied his shirtful of eggs into the righted cart. When he had added Burnbright’s and the Smith children’s contributions, they started back down the embankment again for more, and Smith leaned over and murmured, “What’s the matter?”
“Remarkable thing,” Mrs. Smith said, more to herself than to him. She followed Lord Ermenwyr with her eyes as he waded through the bushes, barking orders to the children. “May not be important. I’ll tell you later.”
To Smith’s immense relief, it turned out that only the egg that had been ground beneath the wheels had broken. The remaining violet eggs, all 143 of them gathered from the embankment, proved to be whole without so much as a crack. The cart was repaired, a spare cargo net tied down over the surviving eggs, and they were on their way again.
That night at the camp, after the passengers had retired and the fire was beginning to think about settling down to coals, Smith edged over to Mrs. Smith. She sat regarding the autumn stars in silence, sipping a drink. She had been uncharacteristically silent all that evening.
“What did you see today?” Smith inquired in a low voice.
She glanced aside at him. “It had been nagging at me the whole journey, to be perfectly truthful,” she told him. “Something about that big strapping wench. Something about that dreadful young man. Rather amazing sense of déjà vu, though I could not, simply could not place what was so familiar. This afternoon it all came back to me.”
“What came back to you?”
Before she replied she fished out her smoking tube