Precious Wind’s usually expressionless face bore a look of astonishment. “So a chipmunk or something killed it?”
“So she said,” said Oldwife Gancer from among the blankets.
“What was it, and what might that something have been?”
Oldwife shook her head slowly, brow furrowed. “Someone sent something to prevent our leaving here. Someone else sent something to do away with it. You know, Xulai is, ah . . . distant kin to Xu-i-lok. And she was a granddaughter of someone very famous in their country.”
“I know. But she’s never before—”
“I’m just saying maybe she’s got some family talents, is all. If people’d let her be, they’d prob’lya known that by now.”
Precious Wind returned to the nest, Bear to his carriage seat. Though he wakened several times during the night thinking he heard horses on the road they had crossed, all was peaceful. In the morning all the mules and horses were back, trailing the ends of their severed hobbles and showing embarrassment in equine fashion, studiously chomping with their noses near the ground, tending to graze near Xulai while avoiding the eyes of those who harnessed them.
Precious Wind took Xulai to a private place among the trees and asked her to explain.
She flushed uncomfortably. “I’m not really sure. Remember I asked you if you thought I was carrying Xu-i-lok’s soul yet?”
Precious Wind said, “Yes. So?”
“You said I likely was. I asked because—I’ve been having these strange thoughts and ideas that seemed to come from . . . from someone else.” She fell silent, fumbling with the buttons of her coat. She was not going to say a chipmunk was talking to her. She had firmly decided that was one thing she was not going to share.
Precious Wind patted her shoulder. “Just tell me, Xulai. No matter what it is, you have nothing to be embarrassed about.” At this comforting, too-consoling voice, Xulai felt the strange feeling again. As though she wanted to snarl or shout, though she had never in her short life snarled or shouted. “I’m not embarrassed!” she said, in a voice a trifle more loud than her usual one. “That is, I don’t think so. It’s just, things jump out at me when I least expect it . . .”
“Things?”
“Fumitos. Velipe vun vuxa duxa vevo duxa. My cousin the duke said we would pass near Altamont. That’s a little thing. He said the duchess might be curious about anyone who was associated with Princess Xu-i-lok. That’s a little thing. Another little thing I know is that the duchess has had a spy in Castle Woldsgard—”
“How do you know that?” asked Precious Wind, trying to keep her voice very level and calm.
Xulai took a moment to decide among unrelated truths and came up with a plausible selection. “The duchess travels along the road. I’ve seen her, even though she hasn’t seen me. I overheard her telling someone.”
“You told the duke?”
“He already knew. The spy knows about you and Bear being at Wold, too. And she knows about me, of course. But that’s all she knows. Still, these little things assembled in my head and a picture came to me. No. It was more a likelihood than a picture, a probability of the duchess getting very close to us. Not merely close, but close while we were upset or uncomfortable. You know . . .”
“While we were at a disadvantage,” Precious Wind offered.
Yes, that was it! “Exactly. Well, if we were to be put at a disadvantage, something would have to happen to us while we were traveling . . .”
“Something?” Precious wind cocked her head.
“Something going wrong. So I asked Wainwright and Horsemaster what kinds of things go wrong when people travel. Horsemaster said aside from people behaving like jackasses, it’s usually a matter of horses running away; Wainwright said it was usually axles and wheels. So I suggested that the duke just knew he’d look at the wheels and axles very carefully right before we left. It seemed . . . appropriate.”
“Appropriate,” said Precious Wind, her eyebrows rising slowly into her hair. “And?”
Xulai murmured, “Wainwright found two wheels that had been trifled with, not very expertly, he said, but enough to cause us trouble. The spy is only a kitchen maid, and she probably didn’t have the tools to do much damage, and he had time to fix the wheels and to put spare parts for each in the dray.”
“And the horses?” Precious Wind demanded.
“People say Horsemaster has all his stock enchanted. He doesn’t really. He’s just trained all his stock to come to him because he regularly feeds them biscuits which they like very, very much. They are fed only at Woldsgard, or by him personally, so anywhere else they happen to be is non-biscuit country, and if they are away, they hurry home to biscuit country as soon as they can. So, Cook and I baked a great many Horsemaster biscuits for them. I’ve been feeding them some along the way whenever we stop. That made whatever place I am biscuit country. We must continue doing it, of course. They have to understand that biscuit country travels with us, and only us.”
“You have more of the biscuits?”
“Enough for a few days, and enough ingredients to make more. I know how to make them, even over a campfire. We should see that they get biscuits from us, no one else. All the horses and mules ate them last night, and once they calmed down when the thing quit chasing them, they came back to us.”
“What thing was that?” asked Precious Wind.
Xulai staggered slightly, as though she had encountered something unpleasant. “I don’t know. I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t see it!” She shivered. “Maybe something happened to it? Maybe it ran into a . . . protection, or something.”
Precious Wind put her hand on Xulai’s shoulder, squeezed it gently, and swallowed, trying to moisten her very dry mouth. “It bothers you that you couldn’t see it?”
“I should have been able to see it, don’t you think? I saw most of the rest of it!”
“Some things are hidden more deeply than others, but the
