Xulai shivered. Had she said too much? A little, yes. They hadn’t known Prince Orez would be guarding Wold. But she hadn’t said anything about her cousin’s plans, just that he needed help, and everyone in Woldsgard knew that. His leaving was still a secret, and so was the eventual building of an abbey, but the horsemen who had passed tonight did not look like carpenters and stonemasons. She would keep that to herself.
“An excellent decision,” whispered the chipmunk from under her collar.
Eventually, Bartelmy asked, “Does this change anything?”
“We have our orders. We do what we set out to do,” said Bear, his jaw clenched. “And if Xulai has no particular feelings about it, we can do it in moonlight, the hidden way. With this many riders on the road, it would be better not to get involved, however casually. Hitch the wagons. We’ll move in darkness, have our own outriders, and stay hid daytimes.”
Xulai forbid herself to cry. Being frightened for the duke or for her home at Woldsgard did not help. He had sent her to Wilderbrook; if she could do nothing else, she could be obedient to his wishes and keep her mouth shut. Still, she could not get his face, the way she had seen him last, out of her mind. He had been weeping, and she had felt he had been weeping for her, Xulai. He must have thought his princess’s Xakixa was in danger, or why weep?
They moved onto the level road with only four of the six mules harnessed to the dray. Clive Farrier rode one mule at some distance behind them; Bartelmy rode the other well ahead of them; both outriders were far enough from the slight jingle and crunch of the wagons that they could hear riders coming from either direction. The road was almost level; the wide river wound among an endless series of ponds and small lakes that virtually filled the wide valley. The animals made good time, and the moon did not set until just before dawn. By then both animals and wagons had been hidden in the forest once more while the men moved between forest edge and roadside, raking the grasses upward to hide their tracks.
They built a small, smokeless fire, using dry wood they had brought with them in case of need. They had hot soup and tea, slabs of toasted bread with honey, then collapsed into their blanket rolls, all except Oldwife and Nettie Lean, who claimed first watch since they had slept in the carriage and were wide awake. Nettie was posted at the wood’s edge, watching the road, while Oldwife sat with her sewing kit inside the woods, her back against a tree, where she would hear Nettie’s signal.
When everyone was asleep except herself, Xulai eased open the basket in which the two cats were sleeping, rolled them into her blankets, and lay her face where they had been. The box the princess had sent her to find was there, close. The thing she had swallowed was . . . inside her, somewhere. Surely it could hear her if she spoke. “What should we do?” she murmured. “Is there something we should do?”
Only silence. Her eyes filled with tears as she put the cats back into their bed and pulled it close to her, one arm protectively around it, the other thrust into the pocket of her cloak, where the chipmunk slept in the palm of her hand. She had had him now for some time, but he had not grown at all. He was still tiny enough to need her warmth. Though she thought it would be impossible to sleep, she fell into a deep, dreamless slumber and did not wake until late in the afternoon when Nettie Lean shook her by the shoulder, laying a finger across her lips.
“Shhh,” said the woman. “More riders.”
The other blankets were already empty. Everyone was crouched at the edge of the forest, looking at the troops going by. Mounted soldiers, their guidons bearing the king’s emblem: a stone tower, truncated, with an eagle above it.
Xulai crawled up beside Bear. “How many?” she asked.
“Troop of one hundred,” he said. “Eight of them so far.”
“How many last night?”
He tilted his hand back and forth, meaning “More or less.”
“An equal force, then,” whispered Precious Wind. “To join with the others? Or oppose them?” She turned to stare at Xulai. “Do you have some sudden and wondrous insight into this, pet?”
Xulai shook her head. Nothing. Except a feeling that the duke may have left Woldsgard for a time. He had said he might go, and she was sure he had gone. He had not told her where.
But he went in health, not ensorceled, she told herself. Not cursed, as Xu-i-lok had been cursed. But then, she would not curse him in that way until she had him! And he has moved too swiftly for that. She did not speak it. Her people had enough to worry about. The night’s rest had allowed her to be sure of one thing: nothing had happened in Woldsgard that the duke had not anticipated and provided for. That anticipation was one reason he had sent her away so quickly. She had wondered at that, but it had been necessary!
They traveled at night for two more nights. At dawn after the second, they saw a ridge stretching from hillside to hillside before them, like a dike across the valley, the river thrusting its way through a cleft in its center and the road rising over its top at the left. Bartelmy rode up the rise and from there looked down on Benjobz Pond, another wide and shallow lake, this one cupped in a high, green valley with Benjobz Inn
