Three more merchants had left the autumn caravan. Would they give further orders? But they were swinging wide of the cookfires, headed for town.
Joker-Joker? Where are the chugs?”
Joker smiled and pointed toward the fog-shrouded mainland. “See, they can't climb back out. They can walk underwater against the current. There's better forage on the mainland, where fisher boats haven't stirred things up. And then they're home to stay, Tim, with a hell of a tale to tell, presuming chugs could talk. The autumn caravan won't take chugs that are marked.”
“It's beautiful,” Tim told him.
“We've done it this way for two hundred years. The autumn caravan picks three hundred or so. You'll see them straggling in all night. They haven't learned yet. The ones that get here last, they won't be taken.”
Willow Hearst had told them to leave, and the yutzes were all going back to the spring caravan. Could they abandon dinner at this stage? Hal wasn't here to tell him. Tim was senior chef. But the vegetables were cooking nicely, the fruits were arrayed and some were stewing, and what remained could wait.
The party of three was close now. They were all older men. Elders of Doheny, Spadoni, and Tucker were coming to meet them. They would dine in Tail Town and talk of things even the younger merchants shouldn't hear. Tim looked again and recognized Master Granger.
He let his placid yutz's face turn gently aside while his eyes followed the old man. Yes, that was his father's sometime friend, Master Sean Granger.
Tim's adrenal glands had known all along. His mind was only just catching up. Not three caravans. Two. In summer it was twenty wagons; in autumn and spring, some were left for repair. The people of the summer caravan, whom he'd eluded once, had come back as the autumn caravan.
Tim mingled with the other yutzes.
Villagers were passing the spring caravan, pulling a string of little man-drawn wagons. Tim sniffed great masses of sea life. The merchants swung wide; Tim edged close to inspect the fish, pulling other chefs with him. “Good haul,” he told one of the men.
“We say good catch,” the Tail Towner said.
-And the elder merchants were past, and the yutzes were among the wagons.
Tim climbed into ibn-Rushd wagon and onto the roof. Opened the trapdoor, pushed his head into the dark and set the tea bowl under him, before he let the terror have him. He felt like he might throw up.
Sean Granger was no threat. The old man would remember Jemmy Bloocher as a little boy, and Tim Bednacourt as a Twerdahi Town chef. But younger merchants had seen Jemmy Bloocher kill a man in Warkan's Tavern.
He'd kept his possessions in his carry pack. In a moment he could snatch it and run... where?
Anyone caught crossing the Neck would be shot.
The far side of the Crab would kill any swimmer.
Tail Town sprawled from Haunted Bay to the other sea. There was no path back that didn't run through Tail Town.
He couldn't join the autumn caravan. He couldn't run, not until dark: there was nowhere to hide. Did he dare to serve them dinner? Yes, with dark falling, but be ready to run at a moment's fright.
Run where?
Fingertips stroked his arm, wrist to elbow.
Tim straightened to kneeling position. He didn't look around and he didn't flinch. He reached back and let his fingers trace a slender neck and jaw and nape. Smooth. He leaned back. Rian. Good. Senka was just too good at reading minds.
He asked, “Do I get a spendid send-off?”
“Hey, didn't Marilyn Lyons use you up?”
“I damn well needed all the help I could get,” he admitted.
She laughed. “Tim, there are women in the autumn caravan too.”
“I haven't met them.” Witnesses. Women who would look straight at a murderer and know him half a year later. “Can I give you a splendid send-off?”
A breathy laugh. “You might not impress a lady if I get to you first.”
“Given the choice-” He turned. Their breath mingled. “It's a choice? I'll risk it then.” He wasn't just randy, and it wasn't because he'd never see Rian ibn-Rushd again. Never see any woman until he could reach Twerdahl Town and Loria. But he would have done it just to forget the risks he'd face tonight.
It was a splendid send-off she gave him. They'd never made love in the open, or in daylight. Perhaps they were even seen from other roofs. Even now he didn't see Rian naked: they kept most of their clothes on.
As his breath slowed it came to him that this was the lesser risk. The darker the better when he joined the other caravan, and if he had a decent excuse for delay... well, an indecent excuse was better than none.
An unworthy thought.
“Tim,” Rian whispered, “time.”
He nodded, and kissed her, and reached into the trap for his pack.
“Don't take the gun,” she said. “Guns go with the wagons. You'll get a new one.”
“What about these clothes?”
She laughed. “They're yours.”
He pulled the gun from his tunic pocket and dropped it into the hatch. He pulled out his travel pack, opened it, and spilled it across the flat roof. “Bctter see if I've got everything.” No second gun, see? The bandit's long knife, his trophy from the attack, was wrapped in spare clothing. The carved shell was too. He unwrapped it-“I bought this with something of mine.” No speckles either, see? He wrapped the shell again and shoved it into the travel pack, donned the pack, and dropped over the edge of the wagon.
Run now, or serve dinner?
Rian dropped beside him, flushed and lovely. She took his hand, and off they went across the Neck with the other stragglers. She'd made his choice. What the hell, he was ravenous.
13
All at Sea
If these creatures are anything like sapient, they must be left alone. Willow Granger is most emphatic on this point.
Willow and Randall Hearst met them as they arrived. She was even more large and magnificent close up. Her husband was shorter, slender, and dapper. Rian was amused and hiding it.
They showed him to Hearst wagon, third from the front. Tim and Randall climbed to the roof. Randall ceremoniously passed him a glarered shaker of speckles, then a gun and some bullets. “Sharks don't get this far into the bay,” he said. “Still, nobody likes surprises. Stow your pack. If you need a rest stop, it's over the hump.”
“I'd better.''
What remained of the Crest was shallow, but taller than he'd thought. Tim paused at the top. He was seven meters up, and the Neck and the bay and the far ocean rolled away to infinity.
The bay was flecked with white. The wagon trains, the fires burning in cracks in the lava, the tables in the middle, were all on the bay side of the hump. The far side was narrower, and dark.
How long had caravans been using this place as a toilet? And a garbage dump too. Even since Cavorite passed? Ever since there were caravans, surely. The smell wasn't intense, but it was inescapable, and ancient.
Along the Road there was always concealment to make a rest area. Here, nothing but distance. No problem, really. If people stayed apart, what could anyone see? But it seemed strange that nobody had put up a building or a wall.
No hiding place. We shoot anyone who crosses the Neck...
As he rejoined the cookforce, Randall Hearst joined him. Randall wanted to know about bandits; about his impressions of the Shire, the health of the various communities, and recent news of Twerdahl Town. Tim answered as best he could while he served Out toast spread with red fish eggs, then roasted potatoes. If Randall wanted to know what had changed since he'd last seen the Road, then his questions might tell Tim something.