but Meri did.
She put her head down on Kira's shoulder, and pressed her mouth up near Kira's ear, as if she couldn't hold her head up any longer, 'Jkathan,' she whispered, a mere thread of sound.
The man who'd helped them seemed to feel a little sorry for them now; he hovered over them both for a moment, then went a few paces off and returned with a huge fur rug -- a bit motheaten and bare in patches, but warm. He wrapped it around both of them, and actually tucked it in awkwardly.
'I don't s'pose you want anything to eat?' he asked. 'Beans ain't done, but they're cooking in broth, you could have a bowl of that an' bread.'
Kira's gorge rose at the mere thought of eating, and she shook her head as violently as she dared. Right now, though, she'd have traded every valuable she had ever owned for a mug of willow tea for her aching head.
'Just sit there an' get warm, an' when you wanta sleep, take the rug into the wagon with you. I don' need it,' he said gruffly, and left them alone.
There was a pot on the fire in front of them, which Kira's nose told her was the one that held the broth and some simmering beans; next to the fire was a stack of joumeybread, and a stack of bowls beside it. Good; the little seeds wouldn't stand out in a pot of beans. Hopefully, before they got chased into the wagon, her stomach would settle and she could slip the seeds into the pot under cover of getting bowls of broth for herself and Meri. If this was a camp like any other, the beans were for breakfast, as it would take that long for them to soften in the cooking enough to eat.
Meanwhile, she and Meri pretended to doze as sick children do, and she watched as much of the camp as she could see without moving her head. Slowly, her stomach settled; slowly her headache went away. The cold air helped, and so did the fact that they weren't moving anymore.
Although these men were dressed roughly, they didn't act like anything other than a well-trained group, accustomed to working together -- so the shabby clothing they had over their armor must have been a disguise. Three of them quickly put up a small but luxurious tent, got coals from the fire for a brazier to heat it, and brought in a generous amount of bedding, before arranging their own bedding beside the fire. Kira got a brief look at the tent's owner before he went inside and laced the door shut; he wasn't shabbily dressed, and she thought he was the owner of the Jkathan accent.
The rest of the men seemed to relax a little when he went inside his own little quarters, though they studiously ignored the girls' presence. Some of them had been hurt in the fight, and they took this opportunity to get each other bandaged properly. Kira was obscurely grateful that she hadn't known any of her own guards; it would have been horrible to sit there watching these people patch themselves up, while wondering which of them had been the murderer of someone she knew.
Some of the men went out of the camp and didn't come back -- they had gone out on guard duty, Kira was fairly certain, which made it less likely that she and Meri could slip away under cover of darkness.
Some of the men dipped out bowls full of broth to soak their bread in and sat down on their bedding to alternate broth-dipped bread with bites of dried meat. They didn't seem inclined to talk much, not even with their fellows; as soon as they finished their abbreviated meals, they crawled into their bedrolls and were soon snoring. Kira wondered how they could sleep so easily after the awful fight, after killing and being wounded. Shouldn't they be staring up at the sky, sleepless, or haunted by nightmares?
The thought was too horrible, and she resolutely put it away. Feeling bad wasn't going to fix anything right now. What she and Meri needed do was to get their own plan in motion, to slow their captors down.
Maybe in the process, they'd find an opportunity to escape. 'Want to go back to the wagon?' Kira whispered. 'I'm feeling better.'
'I could eat broth and bread -- if you were thinking of that.' Meri squeezed her hand to show that she remembered the plan for Kira to doctor their kidnappers' food. 'I'll take the robe back to the wagon, if you can bring food for both of us.'
One of the men roused from sleep and watched them as they got up, but lost interest when they crept about with all the symptoms of still being ill and weak. Meri dragged the heavy robe back to the wagon and climbed inside; Kira feigned equal weakness and wobbled toward the fire.
She was afraid that the helpful fellow would show up and dip out the broth for her, but evidently he was on guard duty, and the only men still awake looked pointedly away from her. Maybe their consciences were bothering them -- here were these two poor little girls, obviously sick, who should have been at home in bed, not dragged about in a prison-wagon. That only made her subterfuge easier, and she whispered a little prayer of thanks as she made the most of her opportunity. The seeds were in a drawstring bag that matched one of Meri's dresses and had been meant to hang on her belt. The bag was up her sleeve, and she'd already unfastened the mouth of it. As she dipped out the second bowl of broth, a steady stream of seeds poured out of her sleeve into the pot, the splashing they made covered neatly by the noises she made dipping out the broth. She made sure to take enough bread to hide in the wagon for breakfast -- they would not want to share those beans, and could easily feign an attack of nausea to cover their disinterest in food. Once the caravan got back underway, they could eat the bread without fear of discovery.
