Owlknight

chuckling. “Could you tell me who I would speak to if I were to wish to barter for some of the goods held in trust for Ghost Cat, k’Valdemar, and the Sanctuary?”

“Nothing easier,” he said, brightening at the idea that he would be able to do so high-status an individual a good turn. “My mother, Laine, has the authority to barter for those goods for the tribe. I am sure she will be happy to bargain with you.”

That was not in the least surprising; Laine was known to cut a shrewd bargain herself, quite as well as glass-maker Harrod’s wife. The only reason that she was not in charge of Ghost Cat’s dealings with the village was that she had not dared try the language exchange with a dyheli. In part, that was because she was strongly averse to any “meddling with magic and holy things” for herself, and in part it was because she didn’t want to court the horrid headache that always followed such an. exchange.

Not that Keisha blamed her.

Laine was learning Valdemaran the old-fashioned way, bit by bit, from her sons, who had gotten the tongues the “easy” way. This would not matter to Keisha, who spoke Laine’s tongue with the fluency of her own.

“Come,” Hywel said, gesturing grandly, “I will take you to her.” Keisha repressed another chuckle at that; she didn’t need Hywel to show her to his own house, she knew quite well where it was - but conducting her there raised his status another minute increment. The saying she had heard about the Northerners did seem to be true: “You are known by who you know!”

Not long after that, the two women were going over the goods in the storehouse, with all the pleasure of any two women anywhere in the lustrous furs, the warmth of the amber. His job done, Hywel had gone off to do “man things” - which basically meant sitting about with his young warrior friends, boasting about the animals they would hunt when fall came.

The familial resemblance between Laine and her sons was unmistakable; all three shared a distinctively high brow, deep-set eyes, and short nose. For the rest, they shared brown eyes, black hair, sturdy, muscular build, and heavily tanned skin with the rest of their tribe.

“Ah - these are what I wanted - ” Keisha said, when she finally turned over a protective layer of cloth to reveal the skins she was looking for. “How many do you think it would take to line the hood of a winter cloak?”

“Six,” Laine said instantly, the fringes of her leather dress swaying as she reached for one of the furs. She spread it over her arm, displaying it to Keisha, ruffling up the fur with her breath to show how thick and plush the hair was. “Yes, six. No less. You will not want the fur about the hindquarters, you see, and the belly-fur is thin. And were I you, I should have some wolverine as well, to put about the edge of the hood. The wolverine is so hot- blooded that the virtue goes even into the fur, and your breath will not freeze upon it.”

Keisha very much doubted that “virtue” had anything to do with it, but she did know that the rest was true. She started to agree, when Laine spoke again.

“And here - I think that Clanbrother Darian might well like one of these,” Laine continued, taking a cloth off another pile of what had appeared to be pieced and worked goods. She picked one up and shook it out - it was a vest, made of leather, but not tooled, dyed, or decorated in the usual fashions of the Ghost Cat tribe, but actually embroidered with designs. When Keisha examined it further, taking it from Laine’s hands, she saw that it had been embroidered, not with thread or yarn, but very cleverly with tufts of dyed fur of some kind.

The designs themselves were nothing like those the Northern tribes used, although they seemed faintly familiar. But try as she might, Keisha just couldn’t place them. They were more like some sort of foreign designs that the Northerners had tried to adapt to their own style.

“I think you’re right, Laine,” she said, as she held the vest in her hands, admiring the workmanship. “Darian will like this quite a lot. He’s not the lover of decoration that Firesong is - ”

“Ai, and who is?” Laine interjected, giggling, hiding her mouth behind her blunt-fingered hand as was the custom among Ghost Cat women.

“No one!” Keisha laughed. “But Darian does like to dress handsomely now and again, and this is just his sort of clothing.”

She and Laine bargained spiritedly for some time, and eventually arrived at a price they both liked. Ghost Cat craved Keisha’s dyes and the food-spices she raised - she would never bargain with medicinal herbs, but she had no compunction about using her spices as currency. The tribesmen had learned that spiced food was a fine thing; it was a taste they quickly acquired, for the spices gave their plain meals a savor they had never had before. In the cases of garlic and some peppers, it was quite good for their health, too.

In exchange for spices and dyes to be delivered by dyheli, Keisha carried off enough furs to line her hood and make mittens, and she also bought the handsome vest. She had stowed them away in her saddlebags by the time Shandi and Anda were ready to leave.

Darian is usually the one getting things for me, she reflected, very pleased with herself. It’ll be fun to see his face when I surprise him with a gift, for a change.

It was at that moment that Anda’s Companion picked up his pace, leaving Shandi and Keisha lagging a little behind. Shandi did not trouble to catch up, and the dyheli Keisha rode was in no great