Xulai shook her head slowly, tiredly. “I don’t remember. It was all very strange and uncomfortable.” She stopped, holding her chest as though it hurt to breathe. “Though maybe it would be a good idea to put all those broken hobbles away in the wagon. If the horses were only loosely picketed, we can say we thought it was only a windstorm. I’d rather pretend it was a windstorm. We shouldn’t mention the thing, whatever it was. And, Precious Wind, please don’t tell Bear.”
“Whyever not? Don’t you think he needs to know?”
“Something tells me . . . something like that other telling, it says no, he shouldn’t know about me, about this thing that happens to me. Just you and me, Precious Wind. Nobody else should know anything about that.”
“And you think the duchess is going to drop in for a visit?”
Xulai reached for the reassurance of Precious Wind’s hand. “Wasn’t that what it was all about? Giving her an excuse to look at us.”
“Yes, but I don’t think we’ll wait for it to happen here, on her home ground.” Precious Wind moved toward the men to give them quick instructions, getting a brief argument from Bear.
Pecky filled in the privy. Xulai stamped down the disturbed earth and covered it with a few fallen branches while Precious Wind watched, wondering. Willum and Clive moved quickly to hide the broken hobbles and finish the harnessing. Black Mike rolled up the bedding and stowed it in the wagons. The kettle boiled; Nettie filled the tea mugs; Black Mike drowned the fire; Oldwife passed out bread, cheese, and fruit as everyone climbed upon or into the vehicles.
“You’re putting her in the open carriage?” Bear asked Precious Wind. “She looks very tired.”
“Oldwife will be with her. There’s going to be a confrontation; we both know it. She is far too tired to have it last longer than it must, so let’s get it over with. She will rest better once it’s done. And, Bear, I’m going to drive.”
He started to object, saw her face, changed his mind, and went to switch drivers about. Precious Wind leapt lightly into the driver’s seat of the hop-skip, Oldwife and Xulai behind her, in plain view of anyone who wanted to get a look.
They retraced their way to the crossroads and turned eastward. They had not gone far before Bartelmy, at the rear of the procession, heard the pounding of many hooves behind him. At once he began to whistle a lively air. Pecky joined in, then Black Mike. Precious Wind turned to look over her shoulder, saying, “Company arriving,” barely keeping herself from gaping in amazement. Behind her on the carriage seat a tiny child was playing with a kitten. Xulai was a child, yes, but . . . but she wasn’t this child. This one was a mere toddler, a child of three or four snuggled against Oldwife’s side, a rounded little face, deathly pale, a blot of dark jacket and flow of striped skirt, all perfectly solid and in keeping, except that bordering the little figure was an area of shattered vision, not a vacancy but a perfectly appropriate blotch of brown leather (the carriage seat), a fringy bit of rose color (Oldwife’s knitted shawl), and a spread of light brown cloth (Oldwife’s broad skirts), all correct, yet all subtly and worryingly wrong, as though the areas were reflected from somewhere else, the reflection bordering the child perhaps covering some larger being.
Oldwife looked ahead blindly, as though she did not see. Precious Wind faced forward quickly as the approaching horses came at a gallop. They broke into two groups, surged around the last carriage, and raced along the road on either side, sped by the first wagon, wheeled and blocked the road—some twenty of them, half with bows and half with lances, though their arms were at rest. Among them was one woman riding sidesaddle, her long, black skirts trailing almost to the ground, her pale, perfect face as still as though carved of stone, her lips angrily compressed, her eyes slitted, watchful, voracious. Beside her a tall, darkly bearded man on a huge black horse towered over them all.
Precious Wind pulled the team to a stop and adopted a posture of servility. It made her look fairly witless, which was often useful.
The woman rode forward, stopped beside the carriage, and leaned over.
“Well, pretty little one, where are you going?”
The child buried her head in Oldwife’s breast, peeking at the rider from behind the kitten.
“Pardon, m’lady,” said Oldwife without looking at Xulai. “She’s shy. Poor little thing.”
“You’re from Woldsgard,” said the woman. “And where are you headed?”
“To the abbey at Wilderbrook, m’lady. This little one will be schooled there ’til it’s safe to send her home to Tingawa, where her folks live.”
Xulai began to sob into Oldwife’s breast. Precious Wind shivered. The sobs were authentic. The child was frightened.
Oldwife murmured, “She’s sad to leave the castle. Poor little thing, she’s been there since she was only an infant.”
“Why?” demanded the rider, sneeringly insistent. “Why are Tingawans here at all?”
“Shush,” said Oldwife with some severity. “You’re frightening her.”
“I can explain, ma’am,” said Precious Wind, eager to draw the woman’s attention away from Oldwife and the child. “Among our people, when one of us dies far from home, we send somebody to be what we call a soul carrier, to bring the soul of the dead back to Tingawa. Some time ago, when Prince Lok-i-xan heard his daughter was so ill, he sent this child to be his daughter’s soul carrier. We’re just her caretakers; the old lady is her nursemaid. Now that the princess is dead, the war with the Sea People prevents our taking the child home by way of Wellsport, so Duke Woldsgard has arranged for her to be educated at the abbey
