Baj recalled the woman's amusement when he'd touched his dagger's hilt by starlight. "I suppose so… yes. She perhaps could kill me."
"Soon," Nancy lay down to sleep, "- soon I will be able to kill you."
"Not until you remember better that a scimitar has a point to go with its edge." Baj spread his blanket, that smelled so warmly of goat and wood smoke. "Not until you remember that it's the first two or three WT inches of any blade that does most of the work. And not until you remember the left hand's dagger."
… Baj, lying down, tugging a fold of blanket over him, couldn't imagine what copybook "imp of perversity," what odd urge to anger her possessed him, that he added, "And likely not even then, since you're a girl."
Silence.
He looked across the failing fire, saw Richard's heavy-muzzled face a mask of comic apprehension.
Still… silence. But through eddying smoke, Baj saw burning yellow eyes.
In the morning, as he stood behind a fractured boulder, pissing, Baj heard the big Made-man's soft heavy step.
"Brave boy," Richard said, came to stand beside, unlaced to produce a dark peculiar cock, and relieved himself. "Brave boy," he said. "She must like you, despite your smell."
"And you know that, how?" Baj shook himself and fastened up.
"I know it, because you woke this morning with no tooth-marks on your throat."
They went back to the camp smiling, though were not met with smiles. "Robin country," Nancy said, "before and behind. No country for traveling fools."
At mid-morning, halfway down a wooded draw, Richard stopped, shrugged his pack off, and squatted in his odd way, waiting for them to catch up. When Errol trotted on to pass him, the big Person reached out, caught his dirty wool shirt, and held him still.
"Now, listen to me." Richard's great double-bitted ax lay across his knees, and he absently tested its keeness with a thumb. "I was a Captain of Boston's Guard, and know the country we're coming to – still Robin country, high and low, where the Wall's spring melt has run the New River wider… Then mountains east again, and soon along Map The-Valley-Shenandoah."
"I know those places," Nancy said, "from coming south."
"- This east corner of Map-Kentucky is Robin country," Richard said, "and will be their country in lowland and the first few mountains after, in Map West-Virginia, as on the oldest copied Exxons… We've kept our fires reverse of the ridges the last two nights – but from now on, no fires. If their light didn't reveal us, their smoke-smell might."
"Cooking…?" Baj eased his pack off, and sat cross-legged in an alder's delicate summer shade.
"You must learn raw meat, Baj."
"Very well."
Nancy, leaning on a sapling's slender trunk, made a sound in her throat.
"- I'll do what needs to be done." Another throat sound.
"I don't care what meat I eat," Baj said. "But I do care where we go, and why, and the achievement-how. You've said Shrikes, the Person Guard, and the purpose a secret… The Boston-woman told me that was for her to know, for me to find out. Well, I want to find it out now. I'm tired of climbing mountains on only the promise of harm to Boston."
Richard stared at him. "What we intend is not to be talked of, except to Persons – and Sunriser-humans too – who will accomplish it. You know accomplish?"
"I know it. I've read more and better than you, Richard. Words are close to me."
"No life," Nancy said, "- not even yours, Good Reader, is worth this being talked of so Boston knows it."
"I'm here," Baj said, "- whether you like it or not. I have my brother's blood, our friends' blood to answer to, and not to either of you."
Richard hummed a considering hum, deeper than most. "Baj, if you should in any way endanger this… even inadvertently, say by merest mention to any we might chance to meet going north – I'll kill you."
"Fair enough."
"… Very well. To come at it… Robins are the most many, and the most uncertain of the tribes. They claim to be the old Cherokee, though very few Red-bloods still rule them. They are people who can't be trusted, since they hate hard among themselves, though their daughters – chief's daughters, usually, and the daughters of other important men – have also been taken by the Guard campaigning south from time to time, as even down in Map-Tennessee, the Thrushes and Sparrows have lost girls to Boston."
"Took my mother," Nancy said.
Listening, Errol made a soft squealing sound, a noise with nothing human in it.
"Took mine, also," Richard said. "Made me, and kept her."
"The tribes' women taken, used, then some held in Boston?"
"Foolish boy," Nancy said. "All held, that live."
"How else?" Richard tapped the steel of his ax's head with a curved horny nail. "How else hold the tribes at bay, and keep Boston's Guard obedient – but by holding dear mothers, dear sisters, dear daughters hostage?"
"But you deserted."
Richard, squatting hunched and massive, stared at Baj with small brown eyes half-buried in a shelf of brow – and seemed no longer friendly Richard… A little time passed that seemed a long time, so Baj regretted forgetting advice from the Master. "If trouble might come, don't let it catch you sleeping or sitting on your ass."
But Richard seemed to ease, and said, "My mother, Shrike Tall-Edna, cut her throat in the Pens with a broken cup to free me."
"… Then," Baj said, and had to clear his throat, "- then Lady Weather bless that brave woman."
Richard nodded and seemed satisfied.
"- So," Baj said, "the Person Guard serves Boston with no choice but serving, since the city holds a number of their mothers hostage."
"All who live once breeding is done." Nancy showed her teeth. "Not so very many. But Boston holds those, and keeps their names and numbers secret so no Guardsman or tribal chief knows if his loved one lives or not. Boston holds them – and frees them never."
"My mother," Richard said, "- sent me word of her promised self-killing by a Faculty Instructor who owed a favor. Else I would never have known it."
"Still, the tribes…"
"Our mothers," Nancy said, "- are their daughters, so both Persons and tribesmen are knotted to Boston town by loved one's lives."
"And the Persons' own children…?"
"Those," Richard said, "- Boston also takes for itself. Though many of us… many cannot have children at all."
Baj said, into silence, "But the woman who Walked-in-air – Patience."
"From her, Baj," Richard said, "- they hold her child."
"The fools hoped they'd made a God-baby at last," angry Nancy lisping the s's into th's, "- to push the turning earth closer to the sun, and bring Warm-times back again."
"That is… not possible."
"So I think." Richard nodded. "For a few New England Talents to manage through the air is one thing. But greater than that, they don't have in them."
"They have shit in them," Nancy said. "And Patience's baby is only a dreamer – though a great one, dreaming forward and back."
"So… Boston rules the East by holding hostages from both fathers and sons."
"See how a Once-prince knows the means." Nancy spat into shrubbery.
"… I'm sure," Baj said, "that my Second-father understood Boston's way. The Chancellor, and my brother also. But knowing those bonds – and breaking them – are two different things."
"But with the mothers dead," Richard said, "- who are also daughters dead – then the bonds are broken for Persons and the tribes."
Errol, restless, tried to tug away, but Richard kept hold of him, made soothing puh puh sounds as the boy settled.
"Which is why we travel so far north and east, Clever Fencer." Nancy seemed to smile at Baj, but wasn't smiling. "- We go to join Shrikes and the Guard, their peace made to march together against Boston. A great revenge for you as well, Sunriser."