well. She had so much draban that any human and most beasts could hear her when she chose. Petro could hear and understand her perfectly, for though his mindspeech was not as strong as hers, he would have heard her even had he been mind-deaf.
That he had no strong dook was not unusual; among the Rom, since the Evil Days, it was the women that tended to have more draban than the men. That was one reason why females had come to enjoy all the freedoms of a man since that time—when his wife could make a man feel every blow, he tended to be less inclined to beat her . . . when his own eyes burned with every tear his daughter shed, he was less inclined to sell her into a marriage with someone she feared or hated.
And when she could blast you with her own pain, she tended to be safe from rape.
As she skipped along beside Petro on the worn ruts that led out of the palisade gate and away from town, she was vaguely aware of every mind about her. She and everyone else in the kumpania had known for a very long time that her dook was growing stronger every year, perhaps to compensate for her muteness. Even the herd-guard horses, those wise old mares, had been impressed, and it took a great deal to impress them!
Petro sighed, rubbing the back of his neck absently, and she could read his surface thoughts easily. That was an evil day, when ill-luck led us to the settlement of the Chosen. A day that ended with poor Chali senseless—her brother dead, and Chali’s parents captured and burned as witches. And every other able-bodied, weapons-handy member of the kumpania either wounded or too busy making sure the rest got away alive to avenge the fallen. She winced as guilt flooded him as always.
You gave your eye to save me, Elder Brother. That was more than enough.
“I could have done more. I could have sent others with your mama and papa. I could have taken everyone away from that sty of pigs, that nest of—I will not call them Chosen of God. Chosen of o Beng perhaps—”
And o Beng claims his own, Elder Brother. Are we not o phral? We have more patience than all the Gaje in the world. We will see the day when o Beng takes them. Chali was as certain of that as she was of the sun overhead and the grass beside the track.
Petro’s only reply was another sigh. He had less faith than she. He changed the subject that was making him increasingly uncomfortable. “So, when you stopped being a frighted tawnie juva, did you touch the qajo, the Townsman’s heart? Should we sell him old Pika for his little son?”
I think yes. He is a good one, for Gaje. Pika will like him; also, it is nearly fall, and another winter wandering would be hard on his bones.
They had made their camp up against a stand of tangled woodland, and a good long way off from the palisaded town. The camp itself could only be seen from the top of the walls, not from the ground. That was the way the Rom liked things—they preferred to be apart from the Gaje.
The tsera was within shouting distance by now, and Petro sent her off with a pat to her backside. The vurdon, those neatly built wooden wagons, were arranged in a precise circle under the wilderness of trees at the edge of the grasslands, with the common fire neatly laid in a pit in the center. Seven wagons, seven families—Chali shared Petro’s. Some thirty seven Rom in all—and for all they knew, the last Rom in the world, the only Rom to have survived the Evil Days.
But then, not a great deal had survived the Evil Days. Those trees, for instance, showed signs of having once been a purposeful planting, but so many generations had passed since the Evil Days they were now as wild as any forest.
Chali headed, not for the camp, but for the unpicketed string of horses grazing beyond. She wanted to sound out Pika. If he was willing to stay here, this Mayor Kevin would have his gentle old pony for his son, and cheap at the price. Chali knew Pika would guard any child in his charge with all the care he would give one of his own foals. Pika was a stallion, but Chali would have trusted a tiny baby to his care.
Petro trusted her judgment in matters of finding their horses homes; a few months ago she had allowed him to sell one of their saddlebred stallions and a clutch of mares to mutual satisfaction on the part of horses, Rom, and buyers. Then it had been a series of sales of mules and donkeys to folk who wound up treating them with good sense and more consideration than they gave to their own well-being. And in Five Points she had similarly placed an aging mare Petro had raised from a filly, and when Chali had helped the rom baro strain his meager dook to bid her farewell, Lisa had been nearly incoherent with gratitude for the fine stable, the good feeding, the easy work.
Horses were bred into Chali’s blood, for like the rest of this kumpania, she was of the Lowara natsiyi—and the Lowara were the Horsedealers. Mostly, anyway, though there had been some Kalderash, or Coppersmiths, among them in the first years. By now the Kalderash blood was spread thinly through the whole kumpania. Once or twice in each generation there were artificers, but most of rom baro Petro’s people danced to Lowara music.
She called to Pika without even thinking his name, and the middle-aged pony separated himself from a knot of his friends and ambled to her side. He rubbed his chestnut nose against her vest and tickled her cheek with his whiskers. His thoughts were full of the hope of apples.
No apples, greedy pig! Do you like this place? Would you want to stay?
He stopped teasing her and stood considering, breeze blowing wisps of mane and forelock into his eyes and sunlight picking out the white hairs on his nose. She scratched behind his ears, letting him take his own time about it.
The grass is good, he said, finally. The Gaje horses are not ill-treated. And my bones ache on cold winter mornings, lately. A warm stable would be pleasant.
The blacksmith has a small son—she let him see the picture she had stolen from the qajo’s mind, of a blond-haired, sturdily built bundle of energy. The gajo seems kind.
The horses here like him, came the surprising answer. He fits the shoe to the hoof, not the hoof to the shoe. I think I will stay. Do not sell me cheaply.
If Chali could have laughed aloud, she would have. Pika had been Romano’s in the rearing—and he shared
