twisted. "They'll let you take one dolly, Meryem. It's crates and bags and trunks of stuff I'm not sure about."
Luvo raised up in his sling so we were touching. You crossed five lands with your cats, he said so only I could hear. You wouldn't let anyone separate you.
"If we can't take it, then we'll sort it out on the docks, not a moment before! You don't tell us to give up our home and our treasures, too!" Nory was crying. "Treak, stop running around or I'll hit you, I swear! Find a blacksmith. Not the Master Blacksmith, we can't afford him. Maybe his apprentice will fix this rattletrap."
It wasn't my job to tell her the blacksmith had left before dawn. I dismounted and gave my horse's reins to Treak so he could ride for help. Then I put Luvo beside the road. I helped the kids stack their things, including the crated animals, on the grass, out of the way. Meryem seemed to think she and her dreadful doll were supposed to help me. Everywhere I turned, I tripped over her. When we stopped for a drink of water, Nory shoved an egg turnover at each of us.
"The rock says you'll be ill if you don't eat, Evvy. I didn't ask you to help," Nory told me.
I devoured the turnover. I never refuse food, even food grudgingly offered. Pride is something rich folk can afford. Nory gave Meryem and me another egg turnover each. Then we split one stuffed with chicken spiced with cardamom. I gobbled it, too. The headache that squeezed my temples loosened. "He's not a rock. His name is Luvo. He's as close to a god as any of us will ever get."
"He says you bought us time with a trick you played on the volcano spirits," Nory remarked.
"Heibei, take this bad luck and bury it," I said.
Nory thumped me in the arm. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Don't hit Evvy." Meryem was licking her fingers. "You don't hit me."
"I like you. I don't like Evvy. What's hay-bay?"
I sighed and rolled my eyes, which would have gotten me a tweak of the ear if Rosethorn had been around. "Heibei's the god of luck back home in Yanjing. I asked him for help. He's a good god, not undependable, like your Lakik. It's bad luck to say a thing is taken care of, even when it's Luvo saying it." I wasn't as sure as Luvo that it would take time for Carnelian and Flare to see they'd been tricked. I decided to keep that notion to myself. "I'll feel better when we're on ships and well away from this island."
"Your rescuers are here!" Jayat drove up in a cart that was some less rickety than the first one. The new one already held two trunks—his and Tahar's, I would have guessed. "You kids start loading up, all right?"
Meryem was the first to start loading the cart. The other kids scrambled to help.
Treak, behind Jayat, dismounted from my horse and tied it to a tree branch. Up the road came two of the inn's hostlers. They had a rig they could use to tow the broken cart into the village.
Jayat went to Nory. "Why didn't you have Oswin check that thing before he left?"
"He did. He's the one who fixed it so it would go." Nory could pout very prettily, I saw. She also knew how to use her beautiful eyes on poor Jayat. "I believed him. Even though I knew he was half out of his mind, thinking about every little old widow on the mountain. I should have seen his mind wasn't on the job." Nory grabbed a seabag and lugged it over to Jayat's cart. "Evvy's rock says we have more time."
Jayat looked around. "Luvo? How can this be?"
Luvo started to explain about Flare, Carnelian, and the quartz trap. I couldn't bear to sit still anymore. From the sun's position, I knew we weren't leaving that night. I untied my horse.
"I'll see the rest of you at the inn." I wanted a look at Oswin's map again. "Luvo, are you coming?"
"I will stay with the cart, Evumeimei. If there is a shock, I can steady the rocks under it, and reduce the effect on the wheels."
Jayat looked at him with appreciation. "Thanks, old man. That's kind of you."
"What's your rush, Evumeimei?" Nory's eyes glittered. "Or don't you like to be around us poor homeless waifs?"
"Nory!" Jayat looked shocked at the way she spoke to me.