Yet talking with the children gave Fiona confidence; the language hypes had drilled the vocabulary and grammar into her, but there was so much that was missing: nuance, slang, dialects, homonyms, and those words that made up the bedrock of any culture, those that defined its social structure, its ideals, its metaphysics. Her language was entirely bland, schoolgirlish; there was no ethical structure behind it, no color, very little slang — and the slang she knew she was afraid to use, for fear she would get it wrong. From the children she learned much, chiefly confidence.
The fourth morning their paths separated: Kira was going due north, to the twin cities of Neda-Calacas; Fiona would continue northeast to Arrandal. There was little said, and though throughout the morning they both smiled a lot, it was without conviction. At last the moment came, and they embraced, bussed, and promised to stay in touch. Fiona thought her inner clothing and hood to a bright red color in hopes of cheering herself.
That night she joined the main road, and crossed from one world to another. She had been among mountain folk who lived in isolation, away from the main passes, and though they ostensibly owed allegiance to one lowland baron or another, each steading was in effect independent and the doings in the lowlands scarcely affected them. They were all poor, earning a precarious living from their mountain meadows and clearings; but on the other hand they were also left alone, and ran their own affairs.
Now, on one of the main roads over the mountains, she was continually on a path controlled by semi-independent barons, who sat above the passes in their stone fortresses like malevolent raptors waiting for prey. They had lately been tamed by the coastal city-states, who had forbidden the worst of their excesses, but still the barons ruled their subjects with a hand composed half of steel and half of cruel whimsy, and Fiona felt her heart suddenly thunder as she turned a corner in the narrow road and saw a steep-walled castle looming over her path.
She declared her occupation to the guard and paid the toll for herself and her beasts. The guard asked her to wait and howled a query up to the castle; the answer was affirmative. Fiona was requested to stay the night and amaze the baron with her wonders: in return she’d be given a warm bed, a meal, a handful of white money, and a chance to tell her life’s story.
Any real magician would, of course, have accepted. There was no choice.
In the hours before her performance was scheduled to start she tried to call Kira on her spindle, hoping to hear a few words of encouragement, but there was a mountain between them and the only way to make certain of the call was to route it through the ship overhead, a tactic Fiona was reluctant to use. For the first time in her life she had stage fright: the supper the kitchens provided was tempting but there was no possibility of eating more than a few bites.
Nevertheless her first performance on the planet was flawless: she gave the baron and his court minor miracles, sleight-of-hand, juggling, tricks with her special decks of cards — she’d been pleased to find they used cards here. Only at the end of her routine did she use a trick that required her home technology: standing alone in the darkened room, she raised her arms; a red fire shot from her wand, turning into a blazing dragon, breathing fire and glaring with angry yellow eyes; and then the dragon burst into flame-petal fireworks, raining incense down on the wondering faces below — it was an idea stolen from a recently-discovered piece of Terran literature, and no one here would ever recognize the source.
Fiona accepted payment and thanked milord; he brought her to his table and plied her with questions. Where was she from? What kind of name was Fiona? If she was from Khensin, why didn’t she have the accent? What kind of accent was that, anyway — he couldn’t quite place it. She didn’t look Khemsinla; she was brown and the Khemsinla were usually fair, and taller. Fiona sensed a malevolent interest behind the questions. She fended them off, giving her prepared answers, conflicting apprehensions warring in her. Did this bearded, jowled baron, half-reclining on his settee, his eyes flickering with ill-concealed maleficence as he asked his lazy questions — did this gross brute suspect her of being a spy? If so, he would never know how close his suspicions came to the truth. There was a deeper fear, closer to the bone, that chilled her: was milord bent on rape?
Carefully her eyes flicked over the room, seeing the baron and his family sitting behind their table, the guards loafing at the doors, the guests, minor nobles and local tradesmen, talking among themselves. She could fight her way out if she had to; there were more pyrotechnics at her behest than those in her magic show; she could kill the fat baron on his couch, burn the guards to cinders, and leave the place in flames if she desired. The laws of her calling, rigid though they were, did not rule out self-defense; but she had no desire to descend to the lowlands with a reputation for slaughter at her back.
The baron asked another teasing, malevolent question, then turned to speak to his son. Minutes passed, and it became evident that milord had, like a cat distracted from a mousehole, lost interest. Her tension ebbed; she had passed her first major test. That night she blocked her door with her chest of tricks and slept comfortably enough on a straw pallet. In the morning she took her breakfast in the kitchen and continued her ride to the plains.
She found a caravan and joined it, less for the protection it offered than because it would have looked strange had she continued on alone. Six days later, having reached one of the plains cities, the end of the long caravan route, she sold her horse and mule, changed from trousers, reluctantly, to the more proper skirts, and bought passage for herself on a barge.
Stretching north to the sea were great, low, fertile flatlands, cut with interlinked waterways: massive rivers, irrigation ditches, and canals, all winding north and northeast from the mountains. By river barge she could reach her destination more swiftly than she would by following the winding paths that might be flooded with the spring runoff, or barred with the toll gates of local barons.
The barge was eighty feet long, with a deep hold forward and cabins built aft; there was a giant rudder requiring two men at the tiller, and a big square sail amidships. Mules were stabled on the bow to pull the barge when the wind was not with them. Fiona took a cabin for herself, stowed her baggage, and left the barge for an inspection of the town half a mile from the landing. There were mercenary bowmen guarding the landing stage, and Fiona wanted to know why.
The landing stage and its warehouses were half a mile from the town, which was small and walled in brown stone with about thirty towers. The buildings inside the walls were mostly mud brick and stone, with a few larger, ornamented buildings utilizing half-timber construction — timber was probably rare here in the plains, having to be rafted down from the mountains, and its use in building was, Fiona assumed, a sign of wealth. There were peat-sellers moving in carts from door to door, offering what was burned in fireplaces and ovens instead of the wood they probably couldn’t afford.
The place seemed moderately prosperous: there was no overcrowding, no obvious poverty. There were a few modest temples to the local gods, and these seemed clean and in good repair. In one corner of the town was a stone castle with a round keep; there were mercenary cavalry moving in and out, as well as local town militia. The walls showed sign of having been recently put into repair. The flags flying over them were dark and tattered.
She stepped outside the gate opposite the river and instantly walked into misery. Outside clustered the huts and dugouts of a half-starved population: men and women old before their time, toothless crones with their begging bowls stretched out on the ends of arms like sticks, children with swollen bellies. Fiona recognized rickettsia, scurvy, infections that she could not give name to... the town, she saw, made some effort to feed them. Men in livery were moving from one point to another, delivering food and castoff clothing, probably less for compassionate reasons than to give the objects of their charity the strength and means to move elsewhere. There was a black market in the camp of the starving ones, slick, quick-eyed men, a little better fed than the rest, profiting from their fellows’ desperation.