Poppy and Larch spent the night in a village even smaller than Acorn, where the Voice turfed his family out so they would have somewhere to sleep. Poppy would have protested, but Larch shook her head. “It’s the warlord’s dignity we uphold,” she whispered to Poppy. “He wouldn’t sleep in a barn, so we shouldn’t.”
“I thought you were all Valuers around here?” Poppy whispered back. Valuers believed that all people were worth the same. The Last Domain was a stronghold for them, the place where the Valuers’ Plantation had been set up as a refuge for those running from injustice or for those who simply wanted to work toward equality.
Larch laughed silently. “Still working on it.”
Lord Arvid’s mother had been a Valuer, and Poppy knew that he respected those beliefs, even if he felt he still had to be the warlord. Why, he had set up a Domain Council even before the Resettlement. Grammer Martine was Valuer through and through, of course, although she wouldn’t say so. “I’m no respecter of rank,” was how she put it, which was funny because she was a warlord’s lady.
The mattress on the cupboard bed was thick linen over gorse branches, and it smelled wonderful, like honey and nuts and apricots, but the gorse prickles worked their way through the linen and woke her in the middle of the night. Poppy wriggled them flat and lay, listening to the dark.
The wind had risen and it was colder. She burrowed under the blankets and breathed the warm scented air, hoping the wind would drop before dawn.
But in the morning it was still cold, with a steady breeze blowing from the north. Her family never came to visit Grammer without bringing the felt coats her Aunty Drema had made them, and Poppy was glad of it as she pulled on the bright blue and black warmth and fastened the toggles.
“Nice,” Larch said as they mounted, and they talked clothes for a while as they rode further north, to Salt, a town in a low range of hills which owed its prosperity to a salt mine. They met the Salt Town Council in the Moot Hall, a big building for a town this size, with gilding on the doorframe that wouldn’t have disgraced a lady’s chamber.
The council, including its Voice, a woman of about sixty with jet-black hair who reminded Poppy strongly of her grandmother, were shocked and afraid at their news, although since they had spent a whole night without fire they were more prepared to believe it.
Then Poppy saw the Voice exchange a meaningful glance with another councillor, a younger man, and saw a small, acquisitive smile light his face. They would see this as an opportunity to make money, she realized. Salt would be the most sought-after commodity in the domain, the only sure way to cure raw meat and make it safe to eat.
Larch saw the smile, too, and stepped forward, holding out a letter.
“My lord Arvid knows that you will understand when he requests that you keep the price of salt to its normal level.”
The Voice looked sour, but she took the letter.
“Your trade will increase anyway,” Poppy ventured. It didn’t make them any happier, but then the Voice looked up from the letter and said, “He’s going to let us off taxes this year if we hold the price steady.”
That was Granfer Arvid, all right, a trader to his bones. The council relaxed a little and variously grinned or smiled or sniffed in disparagement, but the atmosphere had shifted to acceptance.
Outside the Moot Hall, the weather was sharper than ever. The Voice looked north, toward the higher hills, and shook her head.
“Not seasonable, a north wind this time of spring,” she said. “But there you are—might as well spit at the stars as complain about the weather.” She brooded a little. “If this goes on, we’ll all end up sleeping in the mines. Won’t be the first time. Last blizzard the whole town was down there.”
Poppy’s face must have displayed her puzzlement, because the Voice laughed, kindly. “Always the same down there, lass. Winter or summer, always a little bit cool but nothing more than that.”
She stomped off, waving to a boy to go and get their horses.
The wind picked up Poppy’s hair and flicked it painfully into her eyes. She blinked back tears, dug her coat’s matching hat out of her pocket and put it on, but she was still cold.
Larch reached out to tuck a strand of hair back behind Poppy’s ear, her fingers chilly. Poppy blinked in surprise and Larch snatched her hand back and stuck it in her pocket, looking down at the ground with a red face.
Oh, Poppy thought. Oh. Her body was swept with warmth. Looking at Larch’s face, she felt a sense of horizons widening, like taking the last few steps out of a valley and standing on a ridge, with all the world laid out before you.
“Thanks,” she said softly. Larch shot her a look and then paused, both of them caught by the gaze, both slowly smiling. The boy came back with their horses and waited impatiently. It wasn’t good to keep the horses standing in this cold wind.
“White Springs next, then Pine Hill, Shell Lake, and Timbertop,” Larch said, trying to sound businesslike.
“Aye,” Poppy said. “Let’s go.”
They rode off together as if they’d been doing it for years instead of days.