They cut the fins off at the shoulders, but left the shell on. They set it on the fire, shell down, and trimmed off the fins while that side cooked.
“What's the Shire like?” Tim asked.
Hal said, “Hundred people. Tiny, but they'll cook for us and we'll trade our stuff for rice and nuts. Tim, do not try to sleep with any woman of the Shire.”
Tim just nodded.
“They're very serious about that.”
Tim didn't find that remarkable. “What if a woman asks?”
“Won't happen. Yutzes don't ever get asked. It's merchants who get the action, but not in the Shire.”
“How far is it?”
Hal said, “We'll be there in four days, barring bandits.”
''Bandits?”
“Guns aren't always for sharks.”
The way Hal was grinning, Tim wasn't sure how much to believe. He asked, “How far away are the Otterfolk?”
“We get to Haunted Bay in another fifteen days. From Haunted Bay there are Otterfolk offshore all the way to Tail Town, another six or seven.”
“You've seen them? Otterfolk?”
“Yeah.”
Bord'n passed, handing out the last ear of corn. They ate, then turned the fish. The grills looked like iron, but they were frictionless settlermagic stuff. Nobody but Tim ever worried that food might stick. It never did.
Tim expected the level of civilization to drop with distance from Spiral Town. But wherever there was humanity, there would always be a few ancient, hoarded miracles.
Ask Hal about Otterfolk. He's from Tail Town,” Bord'n said.
“Oh?”
Hal said, “They're easy to like. Don't touch unless they invite you, because they bite. They can't help it. They like to hear us talk, or sing. They can't talk themselves....” Once started on a topic, Hal tended to talk until some outside force stopped him.
Tim listened and wondered. Jemmy Bloocher was very far from his thoughts these days.
It had grown too dark to cook. Senka ibn-Rushd circulated with apples, and lingered to watch him eat. She said, “Tim, the families don't like quarrels in the caravan. Are you angry with my daughter about something?”
“Mph? No! I think Rian's angry with me. I turned her away, that night on the beach.”
“Oh, Tim, that was just... I'll speak to her.”
“Senka, don't. Ibn-Rushd family found me a married man, and that's what I told Rian.”
She stared. “Were you trying to annoy her?”
“She annoyed me! Does she think I'm stupid? She rubbed up against me to get me at a lower price!”
“I see. I- Now, Tim, do you mean you're thinking of not... rubbing up against anyone until you're back in Twerdahl?”
“I asked Loria if she could come-“
“Tim, where are you from?”
She knows.
Now wait, she can't be sure.
Could she? In the flicker of firelight, what could she see of his face? Or hear in his voice over the breaking waves? She was his youngest aunt's age, and wise with the wisdom of merchants, and he couldn't guess where he'd made his mistake. What did Twerdahls know, that Spirals did not, that Loria wouldn't have warned him about?
Tim hadn't thought so fast since Jemmy Bloocher killed a labor yutz. He made an intuitive leap and rode it. “All right, I hear what they say.”
“What do they say?” Senka demanded.
“Love a merchant, never get over it.” He was guessing, but not wildly. It was a thing Loria might have concealed, and a thing a merchant woman might like hearing.
Senka was nodding. “But you can't spend the whole circuit wondering about Cavorite and Otterfolk, can you? You'll wonder what you're missing.”
“Loria's wondering right now, back in Twerdahl Town.”
She searched his face. “You asked her to come? She must be flattered, Tim. But we wouldn't take her.”
“I wasn't thinking.”
“Would you like a visitor tonight?”
She might not see his nod. “Yes, very much.”
Her hand caressed his ear, and then she walked into the dark.
Haron Welsh had come home with no interest in Twerdahl women. That was Loria's fear.
A man wasn't expected to resist a merchant woman.
And Tim was burning to learn why. And yes, he was burning.
In the night a woman came to him. He knew a woman's rich scent that wasn't Loria's, that wasn't quite human. The dark hid everything but that.
She talked. They talked, voices in the dark, puffs of her sweet breath on his face. It made him self-conscious for a time, and then somehow it felt right. They moved together and peeled layers of gauzy cloth off each other. Then he was talking to a woman while they made love. It felt kinky, delicious.
Jemmy Bloocher was a virgin when he left Spiral Town. What he knew of sex was what the older boys told. Later he learned what the married men were willing to say.
Loria Bednacourt had taught Tim Hann. And all the glory and joy of the stories was real.
But Senka knew things he had never heard spoken.
They were making a lot of noise, his hoarse shouts, her wild laughter. In a moment of quiet he heard a distant chuckle, Joker's, and a querulous mumble, Shireen's.
In the morning she was gone and he must move.
Breakfast was always the same. Fires, woks and bread dough, chugs and sharks. Quicksilver didn't show at alclass="underline" for these few days it would be behind the sun. Put the gear away, then share out the bread. The caravan was in motion before he saw any of the family.
Senka greeted him cheerfully from the steering bench. Shireen and Joker leered. Rian wouldn't look at him.
Tim Bednacourt had kept no secrets last night.
The morning looked like coming rain. He lay on the roof and thought.
When Loria let him go with the caravan, she hadn't asked him to be faithful. It seemed nobody would expect him to do that... nobody outside of Spiral Town.
Spirals and merchants never mixed. They even danced separately in the Road outside Warkan's Tavern. What was wrong with Spiral Town?
Hybrid vigor: merchants mated with everyone along the Road. They were trained at love, and everyone came to know it. Except in Spiral Town.
On the strength of that alone, for a moment Senka had guessed what he was.
It was the eighth day since Tim Bednacourt had joined the caravan. Something was different. The hunting parties never moved out of sight, and what they brought back was skimpy. The drivers released their chugs in order, first to last, so that they could bring the wagons closer together.
On the eighth night Tim fell asleep hoping that Senka would come; but he slept dreamless and woke alone on a gray and drizzly morning.
He'd half-expected that.
She'd acted to keep peace in the caravan. Now that problem was solved; and after all, the woman had a husband; and if Damon's knowledge of lovemaking matched her own... Tim Bednacourt had better make breakfast.
On this ninth morning the wagons got an early start. Chefs handing out bread must walk farther to reach the lead wagon.
Tim had trouble describing what he'd noticed, but Bord'n knew what he meant. “Open territory. They're thinking about bandits,” he said.
Again the hunters stayed close through the day. And again the wagons released their chugs first to last, to draw the wagons together; but the first chugs slowed and waited, so that the entire line of chugs entered the water in a wave.
Again on the tenth morning the wagons, too close together, must hook up their chugs each wagon in turn. Lead wagons got an early start.
Tim mounted to the driving alcove. Joker, Rian, and Senka crowded the bench. Shireen must be resting in the cabin. Tim climbed to the roof. It had been cozy, all five of them huddling in the cabin with rain drumming outside. Better than this.