The stableyard of the inn was crowded the next morning. Chak Zobu had come early, to deliver their purchases and to make sure that everything was to their satisfaction. Penrys had been delighted to change to new, well-cut clothing in the dark greens that she loved, and she approved Najud’s robes.
Now everything was packed away. The supplies for the journey itself were divided among three of the horses—a luxury, Najud had called it, but he thought there was no reason they couldn’t be comfortable and prepared for bad weather and the climb over the pass.
The rest of the horses in their two strings carried trade goods—the silks and linen fabrics that were always popular among the Zannib, buttons and ribbons, fine metal tools, a variety of sturdily packed ceramics, spices, seed for new varieties of crops, especially the oats that did so well in sarq-Zannib’s colder fields, and many other smaller items. Penrys had monitored Najud’s bartering sessions from the inside, fascinated by the complex combination of knowledge, pricing, and negotiation that made up a trader’s life.
So much for me to learn, all the skills of packing and travel. Is he wizard or trader?
The donkeys were waiting for them in Tak Tuzap’s care, along with the goods Najud had ordered from the markets in the main city yesterday afternoon. They would stop there, assemble packs for the donkeys, and then leave.
Penrys had been surprised at the size of the donkey jacks—they were almost as large as the small horses Najud had brought with him. Tak had been unwilling to sell him jennies, too, but Najud was insistent on building his own donkey herds, not to be dependent on someone else for jacks to cover his mares and produce mules.
“I plan to use mules for this caravan, as soon as they’re ready,” he’d told Tak, “Mules that are even tougher for the blood of our winter-hardy mares. I’ll be buying more donkeys to strengthen the blood of the herd, but these will be a start. No jennies, no deal. I can buy jacks somewhere else.”
Tak had looked willing to prolong the argument, but he laughed and gave in. “Only for you,” he’d said, “and only as long as you promise to come to me first for new stock.”
After they left, Penrys had asked, “What about those two mares you seized from the wizards? Will you be breeding them, too?”
Najud had grinned at her. “That’s why I took mares instead of geldings. But we’ll see how well they do, crossing the pass. They’re larger than our horses, but may not be as suitable for our life. Rasesdad has cold mountains, but it’s not horses that they use on them.”
Still, the two mares, tethered to posts and waiting for them to mount in the inn’s stable yards, looked good to her—sturdy, intelligent, and sound.
A small commotion at the inn yard’s gates turned her head, and she saw that Chak was back, and several people came with him. Some were clearly his family—a wife, two adult sons, and a smaller boy and girl, all of them well-dressed, as befit a tailor’s family. She couldn’t place the others.
Behind them came Dzantig, carrying a small bag. He waved at Najud and her, and then placed himself near the gate and waited.
Chak approached, with his family. He bowed deeply, and they followed his lead. Penrys and Najud returned the greeting, and Penrys said, “As you see, Tailor-chi, we are well-clothed by your efforts. Is this your family?”
Chak bowed again and introduced them. “I wanted them to meet you, minochi, hard as they worked. And my wife has a small gift for you.”
Penrys tried to keep the surprise off her face as the woman approached.
“My husband told me of his ill manners yesterday, and I wished to apologize on his behalf.”
She pulled out a square of fabric in a beautifully-printed soft wool, flowers and plants densely filling a golden ground. Shaking it out and folding it in a diagonal, she reached up and settled it around Penrys’s neck, covering both chain and bandage, and tucked the ends inside her shirt collar.
Penrys could hear the intake of breath from her family at the woman’s daring, and her own face must have displayed a welter of emotions. From the woman, she felt nothing but sympathy, and a bit of trepidation at her own initiative.
She grasped the woman’s hand, and bowed over it, speechless.
The woman gasped and pulled her hand back. She handed Penrys another square. “This is a lighter weight, for indoors. Please take it, minochi, with our thanks.”
Chak escorted his wife back to her children, and then brought the eldest son forward.
“Minochi, my son has prepared a sign that he thinks we should display, but I wanted your approval.”
He waved at the other men who had accompanied him. “These men are witnesses, should you agree.”
Penrys glanced at Najud, who shrugged.
“Please, show me,” she said.
The young man unrolled a scroll, neatly lettered, that declared, in both Kigali-yat and Rasesni, “The wizard Penrys, destroyer of demons, is a satisfied patron of this business.”
She clenched her jaws to help her ensure a serious expression, and nodded consideringly. “It is no more than the truth, and I wish you well with it.”
The son rolled up the scroll, and the whole group of them bowed one more time and left the yard.
Penrys stroked the soft scarf.
Such a thoughtful gift.
It kept her from laughing out loud in front of the grooms and others in the yard and embarrassing those good people.
No scarf will help them if I learn to tap the chain directly for more than restoring the power it steals. Maybe that’s the fate of monsters like me, to experiment until we find like it too much, and only the power matters.
She shook the thought off. It hadn’t been many days since the fight, but it was beginning to worry her how long it was taking for the burns from the chain to heal.
Dzantig stepped forward from the shadow of the gate, with the bag in his hand and nodded to them both.
“Before you mount, I would like to give you a blessing, in the name of my god Dzangab. It is permitted?”
Penrys looked uncertainly at Najud, but he bowed deeply. “We would be greatly honored.”
Dzantig opened his bag and pulled out a short, decorated board with low bracketed feet. He placed that on the bare dirt of the stableyard and put a small bell and a tiny brazier on it, blowing on the coals to revive them. He removed a bowl no larger than his palm from the bag and filled it from the water pump. A small bit of dried fish, and a few crumbs of incense for the brazier from which sweet smoke began to rise completed the assemblage.
He bowed to them, turned and faced their riding horses, and then the strings of pack animals, then turned back to his place behind his improvised altar and bowed to it.
He rang the bell and let the echoes die out naturally, and Penrys followed along with him as he intoned, in the old, classical godly language, “Oh, Dzangab, look over these travelers and their beasts and keep them safe from hunger and thirst and the perils of the trail. May their virtuous thoughts rise up to heaven like this smoke, and their enemies be confounded.”
He rang the bell one last time and bowed again over the altar as the tones faded away.
Without speaking, he smiled at them, emptied the bowl, covered the brazier, and returned everything to his bag. Quietly, he walked away and out of the gate.
“I was forgetting most of the wizards in Rasesdad are priests,” Penrys said.
He nodded. “Got your letter, for Tak Tuzap to send?”
She patted the left side of her tunic and felt the thick crinkle of the packet, addressed to Vylkar. Najud had convinced her it was time to tell the Collegium something of what had happened to her. “Not right they should worry,” he’d said.
Her conscience had bothered her a bit on that score, though she didn’t think it would have been of any great concern to them.
He followed with a glance down to his replacement boots. “Next time I go traveling I will take extra boots with me, good Zannib boots. Three pair, maybe, or four.”
He mounted up, and Penrys listened to his low voice rumbling its mock complaints and hugged the sound of it to her.
I could listen to that all day.
What will sarq-Zannib be like? His family? The other wizards?
Penrys mounted from the wrong side, a concession to her absent hand. A groom gave her a leg up, and she settled into place.
“It’ll be cold sleeping out, headed into winter and the pass.” Najud waved his hand at the snug buildings surrounding them.
Penrys replied, “Warmer for two than for one,” and watched for his smile.
“Straight over the bridge,” he said, “Then we stop to pick up the donkeys and get them loaded.”
He laughed. “Have I ever explained to you how much fun it’s going to be with seven donkeys on a string, following the horses? I think a ‘destroyer of demons’ will be handy to have along.”
Penrys rolled her eyes. She had other things to think about. Like unwrapping the bandage in the bath last night and seeing the new flesh, the little finger buds just starting to show.
How many times has this happened before?