“Be careful, my lord,” she whispered at the end of his instructions. “Be very careful.”
“You don’t hate me for sending you away?” he whispered in return. “You understand?”
“Oh, yes. I understand.” And, in truth, those two words were all that mattered, for he gave her such a smile of confidence and fondness that she secured the memory of it against her heart as though it were a golden locket.
She took the rest of the day to say good-byes, starting with the people and creatures of the stable. When she arrived in the stable yard there were four vehicles being packed for her journey: a wagon, a dray, a large closed carriage of the type called a company-trot, and a lighter, open one often called a hop-skip. Half a dozen castle servants were fussing over the dray and the ’trot. Her hand was in her pocket; the chipmunk nibbled at it and the feel of the tiny teeth made something blink in Xulai’s mind. She stood frozen for a moment, then went to find Horsemaster (always so addressed), who was speaking with Wainwright (who merited an equivalent title, as Wold had only one of each).
“Well, there you are,” Horsemaster said as she approached him at the back of the stable where he was bent over a great heap of harnesses. “Thought you’d be down.” He stood to his full height, which wasn’t much above his full width, a brown and ruddy rock of a man, red haired and with wonderfully white teeth.
“Horsemaster, Wainwright, this will be my first journey outside Wold. Well, the first one I’m old enough to know about. Are such journeys easy? What kinds of things go wrong?”
Horsemaster laughed his dry laugh, one that sounded like winter weed stems rubbing together. “You mean other than people behavin’ like jackasses?”
She grinned at him. Let him take it as humorous. “Well, you’ve told me much about that already. What about other than that?”
“Well, there’s animals runnin’ off or goin’ lame . . . ,” he began.
Wainwright interrupted. “Then there’s wheels doin’ more or less the same. Then there’s axles breakin’. Those things happen more often than landslides or floods or trees fallin’ on people, all of which I can remember happenin’ one time or another.”
She nodded to Wainwright. “My cousin Justinian knows your men will check the wheels and the axles very carefully early in the morning, before we go. He knows that as Wainwright you have probably even provided a spare wheel and axle for each wagon or carriage in case of accident.”
Wainwright’s eyebrows went up. His lips pursed. He was silent for a moment, staring at her. “Aye,” he said at last. “I would imagine someone’s done that.”
“That makes me feel so much better,” she said. “Everyone says I’m timid as a chipmunk”—she flinched, for she had been bitten through her chemise—“but knowing you take such care makes me less so.” She turned back to Horsemaster. “Tell me, why do horses run off?”
Horses ran off for a good many reasons, each one of which evoked a story that reminded Xulai of other stories and taught her a few things Horsemaster had not mentioned to her before. It was an hour or more before she returned to the castle bearing a sack full of grain and herbs, after which she spent an hour or two in the kitchen with the cook.
“You say we need honey,” said Cook, shaking her head. “As it happens, I have new honey from Hives Town, along the river.”
“And this grain,” said Xulai. “And these herbs . . .”
“Well, I never . . . ,” said Cook. “What a combination!”
With the baking done, she spent the rest of the day helping Precious Wind and Bear. Most things, small and large, that they would need during the journey and afterward had been foreseen and provided for. There were even new clothes for Xulai, made large enough that she could grow somewhat before she would need to cut into the lengths of fabric they were taking along. They also had linens and weapons to pack; Precious Wind had her traveling desk and Xulai the large wicker basket she had adapted for the cats, affixing a latch so the lid could be closed tight enough to keep them inside in an emergency.
“So you’re set on taking those cats?” demanded Precious Wind with a scowl at black and white Bothercat, who had just leapt across her desk, throwing all her papers into confusion.
“My cousin said the abbey allows it. I fixed the basket especially for them. It’s so I won’t be lonely.”
Precious Wind’s face changed. “You will have me, Xulai. You will have Bear, and Oldwife, and Nettie is going along to keep us all decently dressed.”
“Neither you nor Bear curl up next to my ear at night and purr,” Xulai said firmly. “Oldwife says she’s incapable of curling; Nettie would be embarrassed. Bear is far too much the warrior to curl, and it does seem an unlikely posture for you to adopt.” She cast a glance at Precious Wind, whose eyebrows were threatening to hide themselves completely in her hair. “Your eyebrows are telling me you think the curling may not be essential. I grant you that, but the purring is, absolutely.” As it was, for several reasons. Under the thick padding of the cat basket, she had
