The Hedgewitch Queen

because I am not one. Please, can you tell me, is there a steading or a town nearby?”

* * *

I do not know whether to call it chance or luck that I met Avier in that meadow. I do know he took a great risk in bringing me to his family’s wagons.

Avier’s people were R’mini, traveling tinkers and hedgewitches famed for their red-brown hair and their skill in mending, be it pots and pans or wheels and cogs. The R’mini have traveled through Etharial, from Far Rus to Arquitaine to Tiberia, and mayhap even as far as Tifrimat, since anyone can remember. With their bright-painted wagons and large, patient horses or sleek oxen, they were a welcome sight in the depth of winter when amusement was hard to come by — though there are those who accuse them of bringing disease and ill-luck in their train wherever they roam.

I do not know why d’Arquitaines fear a wandering people so much. Mayhap because the Angouleme and his Companions had wandered before finding a home, and we fear to travel again. Who can guess?

I was brought to their headman, Avier’s uncle, after the women had finished poking and prodding at me. Adersahl’s dagger I surrendered to them with no demur. After all, I thought it unlikely they were loyal to d’Orlaans. And I could hardly blame them — I would have taken away my dagger, too.

Avier’s uncle Tozmil sat on a small, decorated wooden stool by the fire. His wife, a lean dark woman dressed in the bright reds and golds R’mini women favoured, gilt coins dripping from her cap of bright meshwork, leaned against him. His daughters whispered and pointed from behind their mother, and the rest of the R’mini pressed close.

“Who are you?” Tozmil asked, after making a number of odd gestures. I did not know whether to laugh or weep. I found later his armwaving and finger-jabbing was meant to make me vanish in a puff of smoke if I was demieri di sorce.

The R’mini are cautious of such things.

“My name is Vianne.” I had decided prudence was best. “I have become separated from my traveling companions. I must reach Arcenne, in the mountains, good sieur, and I—”

“You stink of smoke,” he interrupted briskly. “Are you banditti?”

I did not have to feign the start that gave me. “No, of course not.” I sounded indignant. I wished suddenly for Tristan, or Risaine, or anyone. At least with my Captain I had some chance at guessing what he would do with me. “If you cannot help me, I will go on my way. I will not be the cause of trouble to you or your wagons, sieur Tozmil.”

Tozmil’s dark eyes sparkled. I did not know it then, but twas exactly the right thing to say. R’mini are often shunned and driven out of towns, and they sometimes feel a kinship with others similarly hounded. Yet for all that, they have a fierce pride, and those who come to them humbly are not oft well-received. “And how will you reach Arzjhen alone, V’na?” His accent mangled both my name and the name of the town. “You have no water, no wagon, no horse. Bad luck.”

If you only knew how much luck I have had, both good and ill. I dug in my pocket while his eyes narrowed, and fished out my emerald ear-drops. “I have means to pay for passage.” I opened my hand to show the glitter of gems. “These are all I have left of my life, sieur Tozmil. If you will help me reach Arcenne I will gift you these, and there may well be other reward as well.”

He examined my face, and his wife leaned down to whisper in his ear. He nodded, slowly. Then his gaze left me and traveled in a slow arc over the rest of his troupe — perhaps thirty people, young and old. There were several children.

I tried not to think on it.

The silence stretched. I sought to keep my hand from trembling.

“Very well,” Tozmil said. “Keep your gauds, we don’ steal from th’ poor. But you travel with us, you travel as R’mini, and you wear a woman’s skirts. We’ll have no g’ji g’jai in our wagons.”

I nodded wearily, feeling filthy and very, very tired. “I could not agree more, sieur. If I could have been wearing skirts this past month, I would have much preferred it.”

He stared at me for another long moment, then his wife laughed, tossing her head back. It was the high- pitched giggle that R’mini women use among themselves, a sign of cameraderie, though I did not yet know it.

At the sound of the women’s laughter, it was as if I had passed some manner of test, for Tozmil clapped his hands and his daughters came forward, laughing and tossing liquid streams of their strange language back and forth, drawing me away. I tried to press my ear-drops on them, but they refused, shaking their heads. They exclaimed over my hair and my strange skin, so different from theirs, and I was at that moment made a lowly member of R’mini Tosh Tozmil’hai Jan.

Chapter Twenty-Three

They thought me slow and stupid until they found I was simply unused to the work of going from place to place in their wagons. I did all they asked of me with good grace, whether it was scrubbing dishes and pots with soapsand or learning to wash clothes in streams. I was grateful for the chance to sleep among people, and further grateful that they asked no questions once Tozmil accepted me as a traveling member.

Very soon they found I was a hedgewitch, so I was set to helping Tozmil’s wife, Jaryana, the physicker of the troupe. The R’mini have their own form of hedgewitchery, and set I myself to learning as we traveled through the Shirlstrienne and the Alpeis, following a path I doubt I would ever be able to find again. The R’mini have their own secret highways and signs, even in the dark tangle of the haunted Alpeis, and the g’ji—as they call us — are hard-pressed to travel them without R’mini guides.

I have studied hedgewitchery most of my life, but I daresay I learned more in two months of travel with Jaryana than I had from all my books and even Drumiera’s careful tutelage. Jaryana was a fierce teacher, given to sting-slapping my hand if I looked about to add the wrong herb to a tisane or paste, but she was kind in her own way. It had been her voice tipping the balance toward allowing to me travel with them, and her eagle eye was the reason I did not fall prey to a forced wedding with one of the R’mini men. They have a custom among them — does an unmarried man want a girl past menarche, if he can force or persuade her to stay a night in his wagon he can claim her as a bride. I slept in Tozmil’s wagon or by his fire, and more than once Jaryana’s sharp tongue drove a R’mini man away from where I worked.

I did my best not to notice.

Avier was often away with his goats, but he seemed fascinated by my strangeness and would follow me about after he brought the herd back from their grazing. More than once someone mocked him for it, but he made proud answer, as if he had found an exotic pet in the forest and could not stay away.

They did not ask me about the Aryx, though they all must have caught glimpses of it. Indeed, I wondered what I could have said. The longer we traveled, the closer to towns we drew, and the more nervous I became. They guessed, in their quick way, that I was likely hunted, and a danger to them.

The R’mini wandered through the Alpeis for the last of the spring and the beginning of summer, the men hunting, the women gathering herbs, spring roots, and other things. I had no say in our route, and they saw no reason to hurry me to Arcenne. Many herbs and other valuable things are found by the R’mini in the forests and wild places, and their wandering is often along a route that would fair drive anyone direct-minded to distraction. I do not know if they sought to shake pursuit, or if they simply disdained to hurry, since anyone looking for one lone woman could certainly not be bothered to spend so long on our twisting trail. More than once I tried to tell Jaryana there might be some danger in harboring me, but she gave the notion short shrift.

The guest is sacred, she sniffed, each time. We hold to the Law.

Their Law is strict in some ways, lax in others. A woman’s virtue is guarded with a vengeance, since their inheritance passes through the male line instead of through the mother as Arquitaine deems right and proper. For all that, R’mini women have sharp tongues and a fierce spirit. No few of them carry short curving daggers, and hedgewitchery runs deep in them. Their Law does not give a woman lee to speak to strangers, but if she kills during a bloodfeud or to avenge her honor she is not seen as criminal. She may divorce a man by locking a wagon’s doors, but then she will have to bargain for horses or oxen to pull said wagon — for the man is entitled to take those.