did not make her bed until dawn, and rose not much later from a short and restless sleep. Head throbbing, she picked her way through the dense clusters of ferns until she was almost upon the Angot river. The ferry docking lay directly ahead—but the boat itself was anchored across the river. No one could she see on the other side.
So she might be here until midday . . . or until five days hence. With a party of Kothans close behind.
With Aerax close behind.
She would not be trapped like a rabbit caught in a snare until he arrived. She would swim the cursed river first.
Yet surely it would not be long before someone used the ferry—unless rumors of bandits had made travelers too fearful of taking this road without protection. If that were so, then she might soon find a job in Oana.
At the river, only one other traveler waited on the limestone shelf that formed a natural docking for the ferry boat. A woman sat with feet dangling in the water, a patchwork blanket around her shoulders and a fraying, homespun bag near her hip. Her eyes were closed and her face tilted toward the slanted rays of the early-morning sun, and the light picked out both copper and silver threads in her dark hair.
Deliberately Lizzan scuffed her boots against the ground, alerting the woman to her presence. The woman glanced back with the unconcerned manner of someone accustomed to traveling alone—or of someone who wasn’t truly alone.
It would be a fine place for an ambush. What better time to attack than when travelers were congregated at the edge of a river with nowhere to run?
But if this woman were a bandit, most likely she would be seeking to distract Lizzan now. Instead she turned her attention from Lizzan and reached down to tug at a line.
Fishing. Well, then. Lizzan would happily join her.
She settled onto the shelf with an arm’s length between them but didn’t dangle her feet over the edge. It was said that no large reptiles hunted this stretch of the river because the current flowed too swiftly. Yet Lizzan wouldn’t test that claim. Fishing, she enjoyed—but she preferred not to be bait.
“What do you use for a lure?” Lizzan asked. “Your toes?”
The woman’s lips twitched. “The bottoms of my feet are so hard and thick that a fish could not tell the difference between my toes and the stone we sit upon. I used a grub.”
With apparently no luck. “I have with me a hard cheese with a strong smell.”
“We will try that, then.”
While the fisherwoman drew up her line, Lizzan laid out half of the provisions that Mevida had shoved into her hands as she’d fled. If both fish and ferry failed to show, there was plenty for a midday meal—and the caravan would catch up to them long before their stomachs began crying for supper. Lizzan’s thirst and aching head would not be eased so quickly. She ought to have filled her flask from one of Mevida’s casks, as well. Knowing that Aerax was not far behind, never had she wanted a drink so badly.
With a word of thanks, the fisherwoman accepted her share of their breakfast. Lizzan could not judge the woman’s age. Her skin was as leather and deeply lined, as if she were a full generation older than the sparse silver in her hair suggested. “Have you been waiting long for the ferry?”
“I have no intention of crossing.” She threaded the cheese onto the bone hook. “Instead I will wait here until I am dead. Which will be soon enough.”
Lizzan grinned. Such a very fine companion this woman must be. Little wonder she traveled alone.
“Do you fear the ferry’s lines will not hold? I assure you they are stronger than they appear.” Lizzan gestured to the thin rope stretching from riverbank to riverbank, anchored on each side by a stone column depicting one of Nemek’s two faces. “It is said that Nemek wove their hair into an unbreakable chain.”
“It is also said the Destroyer returns.”
Ah. “So he is.”
“And so we will all soon be killed. Or violated again and left to bear that pain. Or see our children enslaved in his armies.” She glanced at Lizzan’s face. “You are too young to have known how it was.”
That was truth. Lizzan had been born five summers after the Destroyer had razed Krimathe and continued west.
Yet she was here now. “A great alliance is forming to stand against him. On this