Plain Kate (9 page)

What she saw—

It was a flash of horror and blood like a moment from a dream. Plain Kate screamed even before Drina did. But screaming did not wake her.

She saw a man holding Drina by the hair. He was pulling her head back, as if to cut her throat. He had a butcher’s cleaver. He was butchering Drina’s ear, cutting it from the top downward. Blood everywhere. More blood than if he had cut her throat. A sick bright color. A slaughterhouse smell. Drina was screaming, screaming like a gut-speared horse. Kate was shouting. She had her little knife out and she charged at the man. Taggle ran up behind her, leapt up onto her basket, leapt past her, leapt straight at the man with the cleaver. He was gray and magnificent, an angel of vengeance. The butcher dropped Drina and shrank back. Kate caught her friend in one arm and spun around, pressing her against the wall. Drina folded down, ripped with sobs. Kate faced the crowd.

They were just eyes and teeth to her, just spit and voices. It was a moment, even, before they became people: a man with one blind eye, another whose neck was thick with the lumps and weeping wounds of scrofula. The poorest of the market.

At Kate’s feet, Drina. Her scarf and shirt were torn open. And someone had chopped off her hair. Her turban was tangled around her throat. Her mouth was smashed full of blood. Blood from her flapping ear soaked half her head.

So much had happened, but no time had passed. The horse was still rearing, the carter struggling to hold him to the ground. Taggle stood between the girls and the crowd, huge and hissing. The attackers had wavered for a moment, but they were coming to themselves again, pressing forward.

The poorest of the market,
Kate thought again. And knew what to do.

“Silver!” she shouted, her voice breaking. “Silver to anyone who would let us pass!” Plain Kate could see greed fight with the fearful bloodlust in the faces in front of her. Drina had pulled herself up and clung to Kate’s knee. Kate hoisted her up by one armpit, and with the other hand opened her belt purse. Coins glimmered in her fist. It was more money than she’d ever had in her life. The money that was to buy her a place to belong.

“Any money made by magic belongs to the church,” came the reedy voice of the priest.

“Take it, then,” shouted Kate, and threw the copper and silver over the heads of the crowd. Everyone turned and scrambled. Kate and Drina bolted the other way, squeezing past the hooves of the horse and into the darkness of the alley, with Taggle at their heels, leaving a scattering of small bundles and demon faces lying in the blowing drifts of Drina’s dark hair.

¶

Drina sobbed and stumbled and Kate tugged at her. “Run,” she panted. “Run!” Taggle flashed ahead. Voices bayed like hounds behind them.

Then someone grabbed Kate by the elbow and jerked her through a doorway. She was blinded by the drop of light. Her rescuer was a dim shape against the light of the door. Then the figure turned, with Drina in her arms. It was the basket woman. “Quietly a moment,” she whispered. They all huddled together and listened. The chasers came close, and passed, and faded away.

Kate stepped away and banged her shin against a tub where willow wands were soaking. Half-plaited baskets nudged at her elbows. There was a thick must of herbs. “There,” the woman murmured as Drina sobbed quietly. “Don’t be frightened. They won’t find you. They won’t look, really.” She gathered up Drina and pressed the corner of her turban against her disfigured, gouting ear.

Taggle was at the door suddenly. “They’re gone. I let them chase me. I led them like a sunbeam and vanished like a shadow.”

At the cat’s voice, the basket woman drew her breath in with a sound like a sword unsheathing. But she said nothing.

Plain Kate picked up Taggle. “We have to get out of the city.”

“Aye,” said the basket woman, who was tying the turban tight across Drina’s ear. “Get out and don’t come back.” She fingered the notch in her own ear. “Marked so, little one.” Drina clung to her and hid her face from Kate.

Kate stood helplessly a moment, listening to the silent street and looking at the ruin of Drina’s black hair. “I’ll go,” she offered. “To the market of the animals. I’ll get Behjet. And your father.”

“Don’t look at me,” said Drina.

So Kate took Taggle, and she went.

Plain Kate found Behjet and Stivo in the market of the animals and stammered out enough of the story to send Stivo running. Kate started to follow him, but Behjet seized her by the shoulder to stop her. His hands trembled a little, but he kept his movement calm as he slid a saddle onto the dray colt. They mounted together, with Behjet behind and Kate squeezed between him and the horse’s pulsing neck. They rode out of Toila easily, so as to draw no eyes. But when they passed the city gates they went at a gallop.

Given his head, the horse half reared, and jolted forward. Kate grabbed at his mane until the coarse hair cut into her fingers. The horse pounded under her. The road blurred. Her basket—with Taggle in it—banged at her knee. Behind her she could feel Behjet breathing hard. His arms struck her ears and the reins whipped her hair. Still, she risked leaning out and looking backward.

“No one’s following—” she shouted, her voice ripped away by the speed.

“Not yet,” said Behjet. “If they get to talking—if they remember she’s a Roamer girl—well. Everyone will know she didn’t come to Toila alone.

The Roamers were already striking camp when they arrived. Behjet reined in Xeri, who stamped. One of Daj’s daughters came fluttering up to them. “They’re here. Daj is with her, in the red
vardo
. Stivo too.”

“Is Drina much hurt?” Behjet asked. Kate leaned down to hear over the horse’s panting.

“Her ear, and a tooth or two—but nay. Stivo’s in a weeping rage.”

Behjet nodded. His arms around Kate were roped with tight muscles, spattered with mud. “We’ll go ahead. We must find someplace at least a little off the road.” He nudged Xeri with his heels, and the horse snatched backward at Kate, snapping. “Tell Daj I’ll lay a blaze.”

The Roamer woman nodded. “Do you think—are they coming? Those that hurt her? Or the watch?”

But Behjet kicked the horse and they took to the road without answering.

¶

Behjet got the ill-trained horse under control and they rode on more slowly. Every few hundred yards Behjet would pick a birch and slash a quick mark into the white bark: the blaze he promised. To stay close to the trees, they went splashing through the drainage trench at the edge of the road. They didn’t speak; Kate tried to gather her breath and think.

In Samilae it had been her the witch-hunters wanted.
It is your trouble and you must not bring it upon us,
Rye Baro had said. And Stivo:
Do not bring it on my Drina.
But she had. In letting Drina try to help her, she had made her friend a target of the mob. Behjet didn’t know enough to blame her, but Drina did—and Stivo would, even without knowing that he should. She should say something to Behjet, but it was hard to know what.

Taggle had worked his head out of Kate’s pack-basket, just in time to get a face full of water as Xeri hit a deep spot in the ditch.

Taggle ducked down with a yowl, and Behjet chuckled. “You’d swear he could talk. That sounded like a curse. Sorry, cat.” Deeper water raised another splash, soaking Kate’s leggings and raising a muffled ruckus in her basket. Behjet twitched the reins and the horse’s shoulders bunched and surged under her. They clambered out of the ditch and onto the road. “Bit damp, that,” said Behjet. “This rain is endless.”

“They…” Kate gathered her breath, “They won’t really come after us? They weren’t searching, in the town.”

“Most likely not. But people get odd ideas in the twilight. Sometimes dark stories take their hearts. And that town’s in trouble.” Behjet guided Xeri closer to the edge of the road. An egret exploded from the ditch, and the horse reared and wheeled. He turned three tight circles before Behjet could calm him. The man leaned far forward to stroke the horse’s ear and murmured. Kate could smell his sweat and feel his heat pressing into her. It was strange, being that close to another person.

Behjet eased the horse forward again. “They’re talking at Pan Oksar’s farm—but it’s worse in that market. The harvest is failing. There will be no crop at all if this rain doesn’t stop—not even hay.”

The rain. The rain she’d been so grateful for, the rain that concealed the warping of her shadow. It was going to kill people.

“But,” said Behjet, and let the thought hang. Plain Kate could feel the tension in his body at her back. Xeri’s hooves squelched and splatted in the mud.

“But there’s more than that. They say there’s something coming. Something coming down the river, down from Samilae and the high country: a kind of death. The traders are all talking about it. A fog that takes your soul. They say there’s a woman in it, and music. Roamer music. They say men fall asleep and do not wake. They say boats go and do not come back. It will be the
skara rok
again. Worse. They will come after the Roamers, as they did then.”

Kate was thinking hard. In Samilae, Boyar the fisher had fallen into a sleep from which he could not be awakened. And, escaping down the road from the town, she’d stumbled into a fog. And she’d heard… “Music,” she whispered.

“Aye. A fiddle.”

Linay had played a fiddle. Plain Kate’s chest felt tight, a pulling ache like an old wound. Fear. Guilt. The weight of her secret. “A fiddle,” she said.

“A Roamer fiddle, so they say.” Behjet reined the horse into an amble. “You’re squawking words back to me like a raven, Plain Kate. Did they shake you out of your wits, in that alley? Or do you know something?”

Not trusting herself to speak, Kate shook her head.

“If you do, you must tell me.” With sudden decisiveness, he stopped the horse. She couldn’t see his face, just his long fingers tight on the reins, the little knife in one hand. “Now you’re trembling. What happened, Plain Kate? What happened to you and Drina in that market?”

Plain Kate tried to compose an answer, but found tears stinging to the surface of her eyes. She shook her head harder. Xeri stamped and struggled forward, thrashing his head. Behjet gave him rein and he took up an easy ramble. And still Kate could only shake her head.

Behjet lifted his hand—knife and all—and let it rest over hers. “It’s all right, then,
mira
,” he said, and she could hear his mother Daj in his voice. His kindness broke her, and she told him. A flood of details came spilling out of her like fish from a net, last caught first: The basket woman who had saved them, the arc of the silver coins over the spitting crowd, the blood on the cleaver, the rearing horse, the booted watchman, the angry tinker—

“A tinker?” Behjet interrupted, sounding urgent. “Selling charms? What did he look like?”

Plain Kate sketched for him the bald man with the catfish whiskers, selling the cheap tin objarka off his own jangling coat.

“Ah.” Behjet relaxed. “I thought perhaps—well. Look here.” He turned the horse almost right around, and took them up a little track that ran slantwise to the road. It curved and wound into the birch wood. Branches brushed their knees on either side and clattered on her basket. Taggle popped his head out again, and this time got a face full of pine needle. He swore in cat.

Behjet chuckled. “Sorry, Taggle.”

They rode on. The track opened and spilled into a streambed of rushes and willow saplings. “It doesn’t go anywhere,” said Kate. “It’s just a deer track.”

“Ah, but that’s the point. Here the
vardo
may leave the road without leaving too broad a trace. And yet, it’s not a path the town folk will follow, if they come looking.” He swung down, then lifted her from Xeri’s back. She wobbled at the suddenly steady ground, and was hardly standing before Taggle sprang into her arms. She tumbled backward into a clump of marsh marigold. Behjet smirked—but kindly. She had never before known someone who could smirk kindly. He climbed back up on the horse.

“Stay here a moment,” he said, and rode off. Kate watched him go with a shaking heart, Taggle with a disgusted sniff.

“That,” proclaimed the cat, squirming down into her lap, “was awful. The jouncing. The rearing! The mud. I have decided that we will not travel again by horse.” When she didn’t answer, he poked her with his damp nose, and rubbed her thumb with the corner of his mouth. “Look, I’m still damp. Fuss over me.”

So she hugged the cat to her chest. “My hero,” she said. “My soft damp little warrior. What are we going to do?”

¶

Behjet was gone for a long time. The woods they had disturbed into silence filled again with birdsong and glimpsed movement, rabbits and deer. Gradually it occurred to Plain Kate that the Roamers could abandon her here, dump her off like a sack of kittens.

But finally Behjet did come back. Together they walked Xeri deeper into the woods, to where the stream widened into a clearing by the river. Behjet fished, and Kate tried to do the chores that she and Drina did together. It took longer, and was harder, drearier work alone. She was still piling firewood when the first
vardo
came nosing through the willow saplings, the horse straining to pull it through the mud.

The clearing was a miserable camp: more bog than meadow. Every step pressed tea-colored water from the grass. The wheels of the
vardo
sank halfway to the hubs. Flies swarmed and bit. The horses twitched and pulled at the sour-smelling grass. The people swatted and grumbled.

Daj and Drina did not come out of the red
vardo
. Stivo sat on its steps and sharpened his axe.

So Kate, by herself, took the buckets from their pegs on the green
vardo
and placed them—one, two, three, four—a few paces apart along the stream. She took the big bucket from the blue
vardo
and set off toward the river. One of the women, pulling piled chicken baskets out of the bear cage, called after her: “Not alone! It’s not the Roamer way—”

But Stivo interrupted her: “But she’s not Roamer, is she? And she looks after herself well enough.”

So Kate went alone. Full, the big bucket was iron-heavy. She and Drina usually carried it between them, their hands twined side by side on the handle, both of them leaning outward against the weight. Without Drina, Kate staggered. The bucket had to be held out far enough that it didn’t bang into her knee. It made the weight more; it was like carrying her secret. She shook with it.

It was too much. Drina hurt and hating her—her silver gone—her place vanishing—her shadow twisted away. Coming into camp, she caught her foot in a rabbit hole and fell. The water spilled. The bucket tumbled under the feet of the horses; Xeri shied and struck at it, and two of the staves cracked, and when Kate picked it up she was crying.

But worse was coming. It took her all of the evening to water the chickens, fill the kettles, and tend the fires, and through it all no one spoke to her, though there was whispering.

Where the men’s fire should be, the Roamers had put up a big tent, which she had only ever seen bundled and strapped beneath the biggest
vardo
. “Council tent,” said Behjet, who caught her looking. “This business in Toila was bad, Plain Kate. We must decide what to do.”

What to do with her, he did not say. She knew it, anyway.
I knew this,
she tried to remind herself. The test. After Toila, they were going to decide.

All the men went inside, and the women spoke only in their own language.
Drina,
she heard,
gadje, Toila, market, knife, blood, witch. Blame.

Kate settled onto the back step of the red
vardo
and tried to mend the bucket in the fading light. Inside she could hear Daj muttering and puttering, and Stivo—gruff, angry Stivo—singing a lullaby that her own father had once sung to her. She knew the tune, though he sang in the Roamer language:
“Cheya,
Drina,
mira cheya.”
Daughter, dearest daughter.

The fire burning inside the council tent cast the men’s shadows on yellow canvas—shadows so crisp and solid they looked like people made of shadow. Smoke billowed, dragonish, from the vent in the roof. In the women’s circle, the cooking fire smoldered and sputtered, smoking in the damp. The woods pressed close and the river muttered.

Plain Kate worked and listened to Stivo sing. Drina’s voice didn’t come. The night closed in.

One of the women came around with a splint and lit the lanterns that hung from the back doors of the five
vardo
, which Kate had always thought made the wagons look sweet as fireflies. But tonight—the lantern washed down over her as she struggled with planing a stave for the broken bucket. And after a moment she saw the way the shadow of the step made a fluttering line on the damp grass. Nothing broke that line. Of her own shadow there was no trace.

Kate stopped. Her hands went numb, her stomach seized, her breathing snatched. Gone. It was finally gone. Into the gathering dark, she hissed: “Taggle? Taggle?”

From the shifting dark shapes of the horses a smaller gray shape sauntered. The cat leapt onto the steps beside her. His shadow fell—alone—across the grass. “I found the horse,” he announced. “The one that gave us such a horrible ride. I scratched his ankle.”

“Ah,” she said automatically. She couldn’t even gather the courage to tell him, to speak the horrible thing aloud.
My shadow.
“Taggle—”

He had heard something, anyway. “Katerina?” He pricked his ears at her. His tail twitched and he sniffed at her, as if looking for the wound. “Are you hurt?”

“Taggle, my shadow—” But suddenly, inside the
vardo
, someone was shifting. The steps wobbled; the frame creaked. Daj pushed the curtain aside, and her shadow fell across Kate.
My shadow,
she thought again. But neither of them spoke. Taggle leaned his comforting warmth into Kate’s side.

Feeling Daj’s eyes on her, Plain Kate bent her head and tried to work. The curved length of the wood was clamped between her knees. She drew the plane over the wood toward her. Pale shavings curled up like carrot peelings. “Deadly work for such little hands,” said Daj at last.

“It’s not hard.” Though it was hard. Mending a bucket was a cooper’s work, and Kate had never done it. She had to guess how the wood might swell or shrink, bend or straighten, and the stave had to be perfect. If the bucket leaked, she thought, the Roamers would surely cast her out. Still, she said again: “It’s not hard.”