The Burning City (39 page)

Kettle Belly stood when the woman came into the enclosed area, and after a moment Whandall did too.

“Whandall, my wife Mirime. I'm afraid she doesn't speak much Condigeano.” Kettle Belly spoke rapidly in a tongue that meant nothing to Whandall, but he thought he heard the word
harpy.
Mirime didn't look happy with her new guest, but finally she nodded and went out between the boxes to what must have been another room. In a moment she returned carrying a tray with two cups and a bottle. She set it down on the carpet, bowed slightly, and left.

Kettle Belly waved Whandall to the cushions. He filled both cups and handed one of them to Whandall. The cup reminded Whandall of the thin-walled cups the Lords used, and like the Lords' cups it had figures painted on it. There was a ship on one side, and a woman with a fishtail on the other.

It was filled with a wine that smelled wonderful. Whandall was about to gulp it down when he saw that Kettle Belly sipped at his, then watched Whandall. Whandall sipped too. It was smooth and sweet, nothing like the wines he'd had in Tep's Town. He sipped again. In moments the cup was empty.

Kettle Belly refilled the cup from the stone jug. “We saw big smoke last week,” he said. “Burning?”

Whandall nodded. “Yes.”

Kettle Belly clucked. “Never did understand that. Why would you want to burn your city down?”

“Not everyone wants to,” Whandall said.

“Sure. Ruby Fishhawk told me. There's two kinds of harpies, ones like her who put the fires out and the other kind.”

“Kinless and Lordkin,” Whandall said.

“Yep, that's what she called them.”

“Lordkin follow Yangin-Atep,” Whandall said. “When the fire god takes a man, the Burning starts.” The wine cup was empty again. Kettle Belly filled it without being asked. Whandall drank more.

“Lordkin do other things,” Whandall said morosely.

“Thieves, aren't they?”

“We gather. In Tep's Town that's not stealing. Not for Lordkin.”

“It is here,” Kettle Belly said.

“Willow is kinless,” Whandall said. He hesitated. The wine burned in his stomach. “So are the others. But I'm Lordkin.”

“Well, of course you are,” Kettle Belly said. The laughter was back in his voice, and his smile was broad.

“You knew?”

Kettle Belly roared with laughter. “Whandall, Whandall, everybody knows.”

Whandall frowned. “How?”

For answer, Kettle Belly called out, “Mirime! Bring the mirror.”

The woman came back in carrying a bronze mirror that Kettle Belly polished with a clean soft cloth, then handed to Whandall. “You don't have a mirror, do you?”

Whandall looked.

He saw a bright feathered serpent with a man's face under it.

“Other places, other customs,” Kettle Belly said. “Tep's Town isn't the only place that has tattoos. But they're said to be gaudier among the Lordkin harpies, and Whandall, no place have I seen anything like that! It's why no one was afraid of you, you know.”

“I don't understand.” Whandall found the wine buzzing in his head and heard his speech thicken. “The tattoo, it's prob'ly Atlantis.”

“Atlantis! But you're not from Atlantis.”

“No, no… made friends with an Atlantis wizard,” Whandall said, wondering why he was talking so much to this stranger.

“Well, he did you proud. But Whandall, anyplace you go, anything you
do, it'll be known all up and down the road in weeks,” Kettle Belly said. “You're the easiest man to describe on the Hemp Road!”

“Is it ugly?” Whandall asked.

“Takes getting used to, I'll say that,” Kettle Belly said. “But once you do, it's sort of pretty.”

Whandall drained his cup and held it out again. Kettle Belly leaned over to fill it, then stopped. “Sure?”

“No. Dumb.” Whandall's fist closed, hiding the cup. “But this, my brother was looking for this.”

“Meaning?”

“Good wine. Wanshig was
sure.
Never tasted anything like this, but he was
sure.
Like I was
sure
there's a way out an' I finally found it.”

Kettle Belly nodded understanding. “Question is, can you hold it?”

It wasn't a familiar term to Whandall. It? Wine. “Sure.”

“I hope so,” Kettle Belly said. “Lad, I hope so. You're not the first, you know.”

Whandall frowned the question.

“Other Lordkin harpies come out. Why do you think we call you harpies? Most don't last. The lucky ones get put back. Most get killed when it's too much trouble to put them back.”

“What happens to the rest?”

“There aren't many. You met Ruby Fishhawk. There are two harpy guards with Lonesome Crow's wagon train, and I hear tell of a harpy leathersmith up in Paradise Valley. Not sure I know of any others. Maybe a few more women.”

Whandall thought about that. “There's no way to put me back.”

“I knew you were smart. You can control yourself too. Sober, you can, anyway.”

How would he know that? What magic did they have here?

“Tell you what, let's have some water,” Kettle Belly said. “More wine with dinner. First let me show you around.”

The wagons weren't like Whandall's. They were well designed and bigger. There were cargo wagons and wagons to hold bales of hay and fodder, but every family had one that was like a house on wheels. Those were covered by a roof of closely woven cloth held up by metal hoops, and they had a complicated harness arrangement to attach them to the weirdly shaped bison.

“Keeps our Greathand busy,” Kettle Belly said. “The blacksmith. And lots of leatherwork. But there's no magic needed. Lots of people on the road. Magic runs thin along the Hemp Road. Best not to depend on magic too much.”

Whandall nodded. “There's not much magic in Tep's Town.”

“That's what they tell me,” Kettle Belly said.

“You call it the Hemp Road.”

Kettle Belly shrugged. “There's other commerce. Probably as much wool as anything else. But hemp's a stable product. Always a demand for good hemp. Fiber, rope, smoking flowers, hemp tea, hemp flower gum. You can always get a good price for good hemp.”

“Doesn't it try to kill you?” Whandall asked.

“What,
hemp?”

“Maybe it forgot how,” Whandall muttered. Kettle Belly looked at him strangely but didn't say anything.

The wagons they lived out of were bare inside. Kettle Belly explained, “We don't so much live in the wagons as just outside of them. The wagon
boxes nearly fill the wagons when we're on the road, and make the walls when we're in camp. See, some of the boxes open from the side, some from the top. Stack the boxes, spread the canopy roof, spread the carpets, lash everything down, and you've got your travel nest. We can be done an hour after we make camp if everyone works together.”

It was all new to Whandall. No Lordkin, no kinless. Just people who worked like kinless but kept what they made….

“Who owns all this?” Whandall asked.

“Well, that's complicated,” Kettle Belly said. “Lot of this stuff is owned by the wagon train. Most families own a cargo wagon; a few own two; I own three. And every family owns a housewagon and team of bison. That's the bride's dowry.” He grimaced. “Five girls I've had. Married off two. Three to go, three more outfits to buy! But my girls get the best. You should see what I'm having made for Orange Blossom. There's a smithy fifty leagues up the road, makes great wagons. Like this one. We'll collect hers next time we're through there, sometime this summer. She'll have to beat the boys away with a stick after they see that rig!”

Like kinless, Whandall thought. Kinless men took care of their daughters. Lordkin men seldom knew who their children were. A boy could look like his mother's man, and then it was pretty clear, but you never knew with girls.

Dowry
. A new word, and Kettle Belly talked so fast Whandall wasn't sure of everything he had said. There was too much to learn. And yet. Whandall grinned broadly. He had learned one thing—he had a chance here. A real chance.

The market area was a field beyond the town. There were tents and wagons with platforms, and an air of messiness as townsfolk and wagoneers hastened to set up the fairgrounds. “It'll look pretty good in the morning,” Kettle Belly said. He led the way to a large tent at one corner of the field. Orange Blossom supervised as four children worked to lay out carpets, set up tables, and generally make preparations.

“So, Whandall, got anything to sell?” Kettle Belly asked.

“You can see the wagon's empty—”

“Mostly I see it's got a false bottom.” Kettle Belly chuckled. “No telling what you've got in there. Of course that's the idea. Anyway, I won't charge you much to set you up a table in my tent.”

“Is this a good place to sell?” Whandall asked.

Kettle Belly shook his head. “Depends on what you're selling. Oh, well, not really. Not a lot to buy here, either, other than food and hay, leastways not going north in spring. We'll buy some berries. Crops ripen here quicker than they do up north; sometimes you can turn a good profit moving berries north while people are sick of winter food. But they won't have
much, and you have to be careful. Berries spoil fast if you hit a stretch where the magic's weak.”

“Then why do you stop here?”

“Heh, lad, we don't have any choice. The bison go only so far, then they stop for a couple of days. Have to let them rest up and fill their bellies. That's most of this town's excuse for existence, wagon stop on the Hemp Road.” He eyed Whandall critically. “And now we have to come to some agreement.”

“What does that mean?” Whandall turned wary, and crouched slightly.

“Knife fighter. Lonesome Crow tells me you harpies are good at knife fighting,” Kettle Belly said.

“Good enough,” Whandall said. “What kind of agreement?”

“Boy, you keep asking for information. It cost me to learn what you want to know. Should I tell you for free?”

Whandall considered that. “Wizards trade information,” he said. “Tellers trade stories. I studied with a teller.”

“Yes, but you don't know anything I need to know,” Kettle Belly said. “Leastwise I doubt you do. Stories are good. You can eat off good stories. Any night you have a good story, dinner's free. But what do you know that I need to know?” By now he must have seen Whandall's grin.

“Great Hawk Bay,” Whandall said. “They'll pay well for herbs and spices.”

“Depends on the spices,” Kettle Belly said. “We don't get that far west. There's a market in Golden Valley that pays better than Great Hawk, for that matter. Great Hawk's on the sea, they get ship trade. Whandall, do you have Valley of Smokes spices in that wagon bottom?”

Whandall considered his options. None of them seemed very good. Might as well tell the truth. “Some.”

“Hold on to them. Golden Valley's the place to sell those. If you can get there.”

“Why would that be a problem?” Whandall asked.

Orange Blossom giggled behind them. “It won't, if you stay with us,” she said. She was using a broom to sweep off the carpet.

“It can get tricky,” Kettle Belly said. “Bandits. Maybe you can fight them off, but generally there's more than one. Then there's the tax collectors. Every town wants a cut. They'll take all they can get from a lone traveler. You go alone, you won't get two hundred miles.”

Whandall didn't say anything.

“You're tough,” Kettle Belly said. “And damned mean looking to boot. But one man alone isn't enough to fight off tax collectors.”

Whandall thought of the Toronexti. “Are you making an offer?”

“I'm thinking about it.”

“Do, Father,” Orange Blossom said.

“Yep. Whandall, you travel with us to Golden Valley. If there's fighting to do, you'll fight on our side. You pay your own travel expenses, that's food and fodder. We pay the taxes. You keep up with us. It costs you a third.”

“Father!” Orange Blossom said.

“Hush, child!”

“A third of what?”

“Of the value of everything you have when we get to Golden Valley.”

“What does everyone else pay?” Whandall asked.

“A fifth. But you'll be a lot more trouble than they are.”

“Starting from Condigeo,” Whandall guessed. “They pay that starting from Condigeo.” He wasn't used to bargaining. But a Lordkin must have guile….

“Well, you have a point,” Kettle Belly said. “And besides, my daughter likes you. A quarter, Whandall, and that's my best offer. A quarter of what you're worth when we get to Golden Valley.” He paused. “You won't get a better offer.”

Supper was a big affair. A huge pot of stew bubbled over an open fire in the middle of the wagon camp. Carpets and cushions were spread out around it. Men and older women sat while children and younger women served out bowls of stew and small pots of a thin wine generously watered.