Once they had passed the guards at the south gate on their way out of Kushi, Briar let Rosethorn and Evvy ride ahead. He purchased steamed plum buns, pressed-rice cakes, and ham at the vendors who kept shop beside the road. It was there that he saw an old beggar or madman hobble through the gate, propped by a long staff. His sack bent him half over. He was utterly filthy, barefooted and bareheaded, missing teeth and blind in one eye. His mingled gray and black locks were lank with greasy dirt. He offered a begging bowl to one of the soldiers on the gate, but the man just pushed it away and ordered the poor creature to move along. The beggar stumbled on and offered his bowl to travelers who were passing him by. Several wrinkled their noses and pretended he wasn’t there. Others walked far around him.
Briar shook his head. People assumed they would always be well fed and well clothed. The beggar lurched toward him, bringing a wave of piss-stink and other smells with him. Briar breathed through his mouth and beckoned so the man could see him with his good eye. The beggar approached on stumbling feet, his staff clicking on the stones of the road. His feet, like his hands, were wrapped in stained and dirty rags.
“Good afternoon to you,” Briar said. “Here you go.” He put a handful of coins in the man’s bowl first, then covered them with one of his many clean handkerchiefs. On top of that he put two of the plum buns and three pressed-rice cakes. The man could chew those even with some of his front teeth missing.
“Thank you, young master,” the beggar said, lisping through the gaps in his teeth. “May Kanzan the Merciful smile on you all your days.”
Briar put his palms together and bowed. “May she smile on us all, friend,” he said politely.
The beggar stopped to tuck his food into various places in his upper garments. The coins vanished into a breeches pocket. Then he limped on, chewing a rice cake.
Briar turned to collect the rest of the food he’d bought for his girls.
“You waste your money on the likes of that,” the cook said. “He’ll just spend those coins on wine.”
Briar shrugged. “If it makes him warm and happy for an hour or two, I’m not the one to judge.” He bowed to the cook and tucked the bundle into the sling over his chest. Excusing himself to those he bumped, he wove through the walkers, wagons, and riders as he searched for Rosethorn and Evvy. He thought he would overtake the beggar in only a few yards, but he was well along before he passed the man. The beggar had managed to hitch a ride on the tail of a farmer’s cart, and was dozing in spite of the faint drizzle.
Briar grinned and passed the cart. Every step he took away from Kushi and their last ties to the caravan and the palace made his heart lighter. The Traders had been decent — they always were — and the people traveling with the caravan were pleasant enough to talk to, but it was hard to keep an eye on Rosethorn and Evvy among so many people. Here, too, it would be difficult, but soldiers would not be palace troops, fearing for their lives when the emperor learned that Parahan had escaped. Soldiers here would be bored and uninterested.
He soon caught up to Rosethorn and Evvy. They ate in the saddle while keeping a sharp eye on the pack animals. None of them had much to say. The cart with the sleeping beggar passed them by, but they passed him before too long. He was afoot again. The cart had turned down a smaller road away from the main one. The beggar, it seemed, wanted to go south, but not the farmer who had given him a ride.
More and more of those on the main road turned off it as the day drew to its close. Still, there were plenty of travelers remaining to enter the caravansary near sunset. Here, Rosethorn’s group was not far from the banks of the Grinding Fist River and the high bridge they would be crossing in the morning. The sound of the river’s thunder as it descended from the Drimbakang Sharlog was intimidating, though Briar would have bitten his own tongue rather than admit it.
Briar and Rosethorn told those few fellow travelers who had taken an interest that they could not afford the prices of a caravansary, and they set their small camp up not far from the gates. Briar wasn’t worried about bandits or wild animals here. Other travelers couldn’t afford the caravansary or chose to save money, so the camp outside the walls was a good-sized one. The guards atop the caravansary walls could see them and come to their rescue if there was trouble.
Rosethorn sent Evvy to a nearby stream to fill their teapot and soup pot. The girl returned to tell Briar, “You know that beggar fellow? He’s soaking his feet in the stream. He stinks. I got the water upstream from him.”
Briar and Rosethorn looked at each other. “You could put him downwind,” Briar suggested.
“Go get him,” she growled. “And keep him away from our chickens.”
“Oh, no, no, young fellow, thank you, no,” the beggar said when Briar made his offer. “I won’t bother anyone here.”
“You won’t bother us. It won’t be easy to see in the dark, and you’re off on your own. We’re making soup.” Briar used the voice he called his “best wheedle.” He could get things out of Rosethorn with that voice. “My mother can do very good things with soup. There will be ham in it.”
The beggar, it seemed, was made of sterner stuff. “I know what I smell like.” His lisping, slightly husky voice was gentle in the growing shadows. “I will be fine. Kanzan shower blessings on you and those kind women you travel with.”
Briar returned to Rosethorn, shaking his head.
The night passed quietly. When they woke, Briar returned to the stream for the morning’s tea water. The beggar was gone. A bowl that looked just like one of their own sat under his tree, freshly cleaned. Briar carried it back with the pot full of water.
“I took him a little soup after you went to bed,” Rosethorn said. “That’s all.”
Guards in imperial colors left the caravansary with the rest of the travelers that morning. Those who had camped outside were already lined up at the bridge, waiting for them to unlock the tall gates. Briar, Rosethorn, and Evvy were near the end of that line with a pushy merchant behind them. They waited as the guards looked through many wagons before they finally unlocked the gates and people began to stream through.
“What were you looking for?” Briar asked one guard as he was about to ride onto the bridge.
“Escaped prisoner,” the man said, and yawned. “As if he’d come this way.”
“Gods pity him when the imperial torturers get him,” the merchant in front of Rosethorn said bitterly.
Everyone murmured agreement. Then they rode onto the bridge, where the thunder of the river below drowned out the sound of their crossing.
9
THE GORGE OF THE SNOW SERPENT RIVER
Company continued to thin as people scattered to other roads. The land now was steep and hilly, with terrace farms on the slopes. Beyond them were mountains. By the map, Briar saw they were in a kind of funnel that would take them into the Snow Serpent Pass. Evvy would have no cause to complain after that. They would be traveling down a gorge through the Drimbakang Lho, the highest mountains in the world.
Briar kept a keen eye on the people around them, knowing that Evvy was too busy looking at the stones beside the road. The others were commoners by and large: an occasional priest on donkey-back, merchants on mules or horses followed by servants, peddlers, farmers, and the occasional beggar. Two days after they had crossed the bridge, Briar saw the man he had come to think of as
“He moves fast for someone with a bad back,” Rosethorn murmured.
“Maybe he’s used to it,” Briar suggested.
Suddenly she stiffened. “Look at his neck.”
The rags the beggar wore for scarves had come undone. The morning’s stiff breeze blew them onto the hillside. He was struggling to climb after them when Evvy galloped uphill to grab the flyaway rags. She had learned some riding tricks in their two years of travel, and she loved to show off.
Like Rosethorn, Briar was staring. The beggar’s neck was as dirty as the rest of him. What his dirt could not cover was the shackle gall around his throat, the kind of scar that would come from years of wearing a metal collar.
