the goddess Vela flew down from the moon to cast judgment upon the markings would any opinion carry more weight. They likely still made this woman uneasy.
Yet no unease did Lizzan see when the woman gestured to her drying bedroll and asked, “Is that the hide of a northern falt?”
“It is not for sale.”
Though she should sell it. The hide had once promised everything but now meant nothing. Lizzan should abandon it as easily as a bastard prince had abandoned her. But Lizzan could not.
Which did not make her entirely a fool. Like her mail tunic, which had also once meant everything to her and now meant nothing, the hide was useful.
The woman made a dismissive gesture, as if acquiring the valuable pelt had never been her intent. “You have spent time in the north?”
The pounding in Lizzan’s head worsened. “I have.”
“How far do you travel now?”
“Only as far as my next job demands.”
“Have you one?”
“Not as yet.” Lizzan’s eyes narrowed with dry amusement. “Do you have need of another escort with a sword? It would be coin well spent. For certain, a Nyrae warrior with a god’s blood in her veins isn’t protection enough.”
The woman gave a short laugh, and they both glanced toward the Krimathean, whose leather belt was studded with the eyeteeth of those who’d fallen before her blade. Fortunately it was a wide belt, or soon the warrior would need another one.
“We only travel the same route as the Nyrae until Oana. There our paths diverge.”
As the road did, continuing north or forking east toward the pass over the Fanged Mountains. “You intend to hire a guard in Oana?”
“We have little coin.”
Lizzan had already guessed as much. But their animals appeared well tended and each traveler appeared well fed . . . and an unmounted warrior could not always be picky. Far fewer jobs were available to those without a horse. Her gaze touched on the forward wagon, where two casks were nestled beside bulging bags of grain. A meal twice daily—washed down with whatever they kept in those casks—seemed at this moment a very fair price. “And which direction will you go: north or east?”
“North,” the woman said. “We hope to reach Koth.”
A rotten stone shifted in Lizzan’s stomach and threatened to expose a thousand crawling, squirming emotions lying beneath. Before they could wriggle up her throat and onto her tongue, she shook her head. “I can’t help you.”
“Then we would ask of the situation in that realm. Recently we have heard rumors that Koth has fallen and the people have abandoned the island.”
As had Lizzan. So she drank enough to forget most of what she heard.
“I know nothing of how Koth fares,” she told them. The old woman’s hair seemed even whiter now, its wintry brightness driving a throbbing spike through Lizzan’s brain. Desperate to escape, she gained her feet, towering over the women—and the young man, too. “I must hunt my midday meal.”
“We would happily share ours with you here beneath this fine shade,” the woman said, her voice steady and warm. “There is cheese and bread, and a bit of stewed boar.”
But the sharing would not come without a cost. Lizzan would have to talk of Koth. So although her mouth watered, she shook her head. “There is no need—”
“And palm wine,” the old woman said.
Lizzan sat again.
The younger woman’s lips curved with amusement. “Sweet or sour?”
“Sour.” It was stronger.
The woman turned to the young man. “Please fetch it for us, Bilyan.”
“But first drag that pelt into the shade,” Lizzan said. “Your mother and hers will find sitting upon it more pleasant than the damp ground.”
He did before loping off toward the wagons, all loose stride and lanky limbs. A boy who had not yet grown into his body. An awkward age for some men—and the finest age for others. Such as kind and generous young men who passed that awkward stage, only to become aloof, pig-swiving jackals.
And she had not yet made sense of this caravan. By heading north, they traveled in a direction that usually only merchants and traders went. But hearing them speak told her where they’d come from.
The goddess Vela had given everyone the same tongue so that all the realms might understand each other, but they did not all sound the same. Until Stranik’s Passage beneath the Flaming Mountains of Astal had opened three years past, the fiery peaks had prevented easy travel between the northern and southern realms. The speech of the southern realms just beyond