“Doka did,” she confirmed. “Don’t use much. Draws attention in Unity. Bad attention.”
There was a warmth across his back now, one that had nothing to do with whatever ointment she was rubbing into his skin. It felt…it felt like the lights Teer saw when Kard was doing magic.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he promised. “Thank you.”
“Poultice good once made,” she told him. “Ointment…not so good without shaman. Both much better used with ishna.”
Teer didn’t know exactly what the word meant, but he could guess. Some form of magic or power—Kotan magic or power, a style utterly foreign to the Unity’s Spehari masters.
“You be fine,” Doka said, applying a fresh poultice over the wound. “Doka spend first night in town, make sure you healed up.”
“You won’t stay longer?” Teer asked, lifting himself up to let her wrap a cloth around him and then turning to look at her in the twilight. He could see the end of the forest past her, he realized. If he remembered the map right, they’d made good time to get this far.
“Carlon too big,” she told him. “Doka find it too much. Soft beds nice, but towns too loud.”
“Alvid is as large as I’ve ever seen,” Teer admitted. “Seven, eight hundred people. Seems loud enough.”
“You learn,” she warned with a smile. “If your gifts what Doka think, you learn.”
“My gifts?”
“Doka not blind. You not ordinary Merik. Doka told Kard to bring you to Doka’s people.” She shrugged. “You find more answers in tribes than Spehari, Doka think.”
“I follow where Kard leads; it’s his call,” Teer told her. “Carlon first. We’ll see what happens after that.”
“Doka knows. Doka stay one night in Carlon, enjoy soft beds and check on friend,” she asserted. “Then Doka see what wind and river hold for Doka.”
“We all will, I guess,” Teer agreed. “The future always holds its secrets. My ma used to say that.”
“She clever woman, your ma.”
22
“You’re on the coach again today,” Kard said flatly as Teer rose. “I know Doka’s poultices and you’ll be fine faster than you’ve any right to be, but you’re still riding on something with shock absorbers.”
“I’ll ask you what those are another time,” Teer told his boss as he slowly and carefully rolled up his bed. “I’ll ride on the coach, but I can drive it at least.”
“Fair. We can use Doka and Grump to keep things in order,” Kard conceded. “I’ll have her check with Kova and the others first. They might not be okay with it.”
“True,” the youth admitted. “Can you handle the prisoners on your own?”
“Isn’t the first time I’ve led a train of tied-up bounties,” his boss told him. “It’s no worse than cattle, most of the time. We’ll be done with them today, then you and I need to talk.”
“I follow where you lead,” Teer murmured. “Serve as you command. Pretty sure that’s what I swore.”
“It is, but fealty flows both ways,” Kard replied. “We’ll see what work is in Carlon, but I’ve spent the last few turnings adrift at the whim of the wind. We might want to take a different course now that there is a ‘we.’”
Teer nodded and finished packing his things into Star’s saddlebags. Doka materialized a moment later with mugs of tea and fire-heated trail bread for them both.
“Drink, eat,” she ordered.
“Thank you,” Kard told her. “Can you check with Kova and the others? Makes sense for Teer to drive the coach today, but I want to be sure they’re okay with it.”
“Better Teer than you,” Doka said bluntly. “He bled for them. And he less scary.”
Teer swallowed a cough of amusement as he remembered that everyone else saw Kard as a burly Merik with similar coloring to Teer. Even the Kotan didn’t see the knife-eared pale El-Spehari that Teer did.
Maybe one day they’d work out a way for Kard to create an illusion Teer could see, but right now, he saw through everything the El-Spehari created like it was a light fog at best. All he really got from Kard’s illusions was a headache.
“I figure the same,” Kard said. “But check. I feel more responsible for them than I do for this collection of bandit trash.”
“Doka ask,” she confirmed. “You eat. Drink.”
Teer obeyed the instructions, setting into the tea and hot bread with enthusiasm. The trail bread was packed with various ingredients to make it a meal in one piece, which meant it often tasted terrible. Doka had heated it and added something—honey, he figured—to make it far more palatable.
He was also hungry. The faster healing Doka’s magic was giving him likely had to be paid for somehow, and it was unlikely that her bringing him a larger portion than usual was an accident.
“We’re maybe five candlemarks from Carlon,” Kard told him. “We’ve made good time despite everything, and if we keep it up, we can be done with this bounty early enough that I can find Iko’s partners while it’s still light.”
“Can’t be that hard, can it?” Teer asked.
Kard laughed.
“Carlon is one of the larger towns in the Eastern Territories and the largest this far east,” he pointed out. “Ten thousand people, built up at the point where the Carahassee River stops being usable by barges. There’s a Unity fort there, but we won’t go near it.”
“Wouldn’t they pay out the bounty?” Teer asked.
“No, local Wardkeeper will handle that,” the older bounty hunter told him. “Fort has its own ward, even. Much stronger than the one for a town. No, we stay well away from the Unity Army.”
“Would they recognize you?” Teer asked in a whisper.
“No, the spell is proof against Spehari magic,” Kard murmured back. “But there almost certainly is a Spehari in Fort Carlon, and I avoid my kin.”
Further discussion was interrupted by Doka’s return.
“They okay with Teer driving,” she told them. “So long as Doka close. Doka take lead, Kard tail?”
“Clear enough,” Kard agreed. “Let’s ride. I’m looking forward to getting
