I came closer, the shining of water reflected the last light in the sky. I came through a cow pasture to a tiny village on the shore of a lake. The houses were built up on stilts, and some stood right out over the water at the end of piers; there were boats docked, which I could not make out clearly. I was very tired and very hungry and the yellow glimmer of a lighted window was beautiful in the late dusk. I went to that house, climbed the wooden stairs to the narrow porch, and looked in the open door. It seemed to be an inn or beer house, windowless, with a low counter, but no furniture at all. Four or five men sat on a rug on the floor with clay cups in their hands. They all looked at me and then looked away so as not to stare.
"Well, come in, boy," one said. They were dark-skinned, slight, short men, all of them. A woman behind the counter turned around, and I saw old Gammy, the piercing bright dark eyes, the eagle nose. "Where d'you come from?" she said.
"The forest." My voice came out as a hoarse whisper. Nobody said anything. "I'm looking for my people."
"Who are they then?" the woman asked. "Come in!" I came in, looking hangdog, no doubt. She slapped something on a plate and shoved it across the counter towards me.
"I don't have money," I said.
"Eat it," she said crossly. I took the plate and sat down with it on a seat by the unlighted hearth. It was a kind of cold fish fritter, I think, quite a large one, but it was gone before I knew what it was.
"Who's your people, then?"
"I don't know."
"Makes it a bit hard to find 'em," one of the men suggested. They kept looking at me, not with a steady stare or with hostility, but covertly studying the new thing that had come their way. The instant disappearance of the fritter had caused some silent amusement.
"Around here?" another man asked, rubbing his bald head.
"I don't know. We were stolen—my sister and I. Slave raiders from Etra. South of here, maybe."
"When was that?" the innkeeper asked in her sharp voice.
"Fourteen or fifteen years ago."
"He's a runaway slave, is he?" the oldest of the men murmured to the one next to him, uneasy.
"So you was a little tad," said the innkeeper, filling a clay cup with something and bringing it to me. "What name had you?"
"Gavir. My sister was Sallo."
"No more than that?"
I shook my head.
"How'd you chance to be in the forest?" the bald man asked, mildly enough, but it was a hard question and he knew it.
I hesitated a little and said, "I was lost."
To my surprise, they accepted that as an answer, at least for the moment. I drank the cup of milk the woman had given me. It tasted sweet as honey.
"What other names do you remember?" the woman asked.
I shook my head. "I was one or two years old."
"And your sister?"
"She was a year or two older."
"And she's a slave in Etra?" She pronounced it "Ettera."
"She's dead." I looked around at them, the dark, alert faces. "They killed her," I said. "That's why I ran away."
"Ah, ah," said the bald man. "Ah, well ... And how long ago was that?"
"Two years ago."
He nodded, exchanging glances with a couple of the others.
"Here, give the boy something better than cow piss, Bia," said the oldest man, who had a toothless grin and looked a little simple. "I'll stand him a beer."
"Milk's what he needs," said the innkeeper, pouring my cup full again. "If that was beer he'd be flat on his face."
"Thank you, ma-ío," I said, and drank the milk down gratefully.
The honorific, I think, made her give a rasp of a laugh. "City tongue, but you're a Rassiu," she observed.
"So they're not on your trail, so far as you know," the bald man asked me. "Your city masters, down there."
"I think they think I drowned," I said.
He nodded.
My weariness, the food filling my hunger, their wary kindness and cautious acceptance of me as what I was—and maybe my having to say that Sallo had been killed—it all worked on me to bring tears into my eyes. I stared at the ashes in the hearth as if a fire was burning there, trying to hide my weakness.
"Looks like a southerner," one of the men murmured, and another, "I knew a Sallo Evo Danaha down at Crane Levels."