She saw his jaw clench, and for a moment she thought she had been wrong to remind him. Then he put his hand under her chin, saying, “Hidden in the false bottom of the dray is a flat, rather large crate, tightly fastened and sealed. Inside is the case holding whatever it was she left to you. She never told me what it was. She arranged the matter with Precious Wind, and I have given instructions that it is to be put into storage for you at the abbey.” He frowned. “I fear someone may be curious about what is in it . . .”
She spoke, surprised by the words coming from her mouth. “Why, Cousin, it is only some of her court clothing in lovely silks and embroideries. The princess, your wife, set them aside for her soul carrier, as a thank-you, thinking I might someday grow into them or have them made over into something smaller before returning to Tingawa. I will wear them with joy in memory of her.” Precious Wind had told her that. Long ago. Long, long ago.
His face lightened, and he actually smiled, an expression at once fragile and mysterious, though with great longing in it. “You will never wear anything more becoming than what you are wearing now. I like that color on you.” He lifted her back into the carriage, taking some time to straighten her cloak. Oldwife took her hand and pulled her close. Bartelmy spoke quietly to the horses, and they moved away. Xulai could not stop herself. She leaned over the side to look back, seeing him with a kerchief to his face, weeping as he stared after her, almost as if she had been the princess instead of a mere Xakixa. Would he remember what she looked like? If she grew up, as Oldwife seemed to believe was possible, maybe she could have her portrait made and send it to him so he could know what she had become.
“He noticed what I was wearing,” she said in wonder, looking down at her ankle-length, sleeveless surcoat of fine wool striped in blue and brown—the brown from brown sheep, the blue from white fleeces dyed with woad—at the long, silky sleeves of her ivory gown, at the fine woolen cape around her shoulders, at her new and very shiny brown boots. “He noticed.”
“You are a very nice-looking girl,” said Oldwife Gancer, her own old wrinkled eyes suspiciously teary. “The duke has always thought so. He told Dame Cullen Crampocket that Nettie was to be allowed to make what she saw fit out of whatever fabric she liked, no pinching of coin. He said the same to the shoemaker. Bartelmy himself went to Wellsport to buy leather and fabric. His Grace said your clothing was a parting gift, there would be no stinginess in it.”
Xulai felt a great, horrid wave of sadness. “I will never return, will I?”
Oldwife did not answer immediately, as though trying to think of some soft thing to say without lying. She shook her head sadly and pulled Xulai close to her in a sympathetic hug. “Not unless something unexpected befalls our neighbor to the south. She’s possessed by something mad, or devilish.”
“Don’t our people talk to her people?” Xulai asked. “Isn’t that how neighbors usually find out what’s happening next door?”
“They talk with us, and we with them, of livestock, crops, and of their families, but we learn nothing of her, for she never speaks with her people. She leaves all that to her stewards, and they’re as bad as Dame Cullen, pinch lipped and wary of spending a word out of kindness. Altamont is enough to keep any twenty women busy with the farms and the dairies and the villages and game parks, to say nothing of the forests, so why she lusts after Wold, the Wasting God alone knows.”
By midmorning they had crossed the streamlet before Netherfields. Oldwife looked up the valley, remarking, “There is never a time, winter or summer, without flowers blooming at Netherfields: hellebore in winter, then winter jessamine and aconite, narcissus and wild iris behind great stretches of crocus, and then all the flowers of summer. In the autumn the roses and asters go on until the snow, and then the shining holly clusters its red berries along the walls. Always something blooming or fruitful there, where they laid the lady.”
“No,” said a voice in Xulai’s mind. “It’s only where they laid her body.” Xulai heard it clearly, stunningly, a familiar voice, but within a moment she had forgotten it.
They had packed lunches for this day’s journey, eating them as they went, Xulai remembering to put a crust or two into her pocket for the chipmunk. The chipmunk had no name as yet, and she had been puzzling over what it might be called, but nothing fitting came to her.
In early afternoon they passed through the village of Hay, and in late afternoon the village of Halter, towns named for the fodder and the harness each was known for. Just as the sun melted upon the peaks of the Icefang range, they arrived in Hives, the honey town, and stopped for the night at the oldest inn, the Queen’s Skep, where they were fed roast chicken with mashed parsnips, fresh cheese, salad stuff from the garden, and cream pudding with raspberries for dessert. Abasio went to his wagon to sleep. Five of the men slept bedded in sweet hay in the loft of the stables, while the three women and Xulai spent a comfortable night in a large, warm room with Bear stretched monumentally upon his blankets across the threshold outside.
The next morning they drank strong tea with milk, ate puffy fried bread with honey and sweet butter, then rearranged themselves among the wagons and were on their way early. They stopped
