"No, I'm not feeling very trusting in these days. Nor should you."
4
They took flight at dawn from the prow of Toskala, riding the updraft high and higher until the city could be glimpsed as a whole below them. In days of old, Toskala had been founded on the promontory below which the muddy yellow-brown waters of River Istri, flowing inexorably down out of the north, met the bluer waters of its tributary, the Lesser Istri, rushing in from the northwestern foothills. The city had expanded beyond the original city wall onto the broadening spit of land between the two rivers, and was now protected by an outer wall and earthworks that spanned the ground from the western bank of the Istri to the facing bank of the Lesser Istri. The first ferries of the day had already started their crossings, men turning winches and hauling on rope as the flat vessels strained with the current.
Toskala was known as "the crossroads" because here a person had the choice of five major roads. Peddo and his eagle, Jabi, banked south, heading out over the Flats. The Snake, and Trouble, followed the Lesser Walk.
Joss was assigned to the fifth and least of the roads, the Ili Cutoff, which speared straight east through cultivated fields and orchards to the town of River's Bend on the River Ili, halfway between Toskala and the valley of Iliyat. He and Scar flew sweeps all morning, routine patterns over cultivated land that revealed nothing except folk out preparing fields for the coming rains.
The heavens shone blue, untouched by cloud. The landscape was open, cut by streams, swales, well-tended orchards, overgrown pastureland, and a few dense tangles of undergrowth and pockets of uncut trees. Fish ponds and small reservoirs dug for irrigation glittered in the hard sunlight, water drained low here at the tail end of the dry season. Twice he flew over the skirts of the Wild, an impenetrable forest so broad that no human had ever been known to traverse it on foot although several forester clans worked its fringes. The day was hot, as it always was in the last weeks before the rains, but not as hot as it had been in previous years. Not as hot as it could be.
At intervals he crossed back over the ridgeward Istri Walk, keeping track of a large guild caravan that had hired an entire cohort of guards for the journey to High Haldia, Seven, and Teriayne. Once, he glimpsed Trouble off to his left, on a sweep. A really beautiful bird, she had an especially golden gleam, which made it all the more annoying that she had chosen the Snake as her reeve nine years back after Barda's awful death.
Midway through the afternoon, as the heat melted over the land, he and Scar glided back over the Ili Cutoff. The caravan was pulling to a stop under the shade of a pair of ancient Ladytrees, a sweet resting spot beside a watering hole. Hirelings and slaves led the parched beasts to drink, and produced food and drink for the masters. Joss left Scar on a high rock towering over the far side of the pond, the kind of place he and his friends would have dived from when they were lads. The eagle settled on this perch and began preening. Joss strolled over to the Ladytrees. Distinct groups had already formed among the company: under the smaller of the Ladytrees gathered the apprentices and hirelings and slaves permitted to take a break while their brethren worked.
The elder Ladytree was, like a vast chamber, sufficient for "many families to gather in their separate houses under one roof," as the tale had it. The four Herelian merchants kept to themselves. When they saw him enter under the cloak of the tree, they turned their backs and sought the fringes of the shade offered by the vast superstructure of overhanging branches and boundary shoots rooted and growing thick like a fence.
A foresting master bound for the Wild and the cart master who supervised this train of wagons acknowledged him with a respectful touch of two fingers to the temple: I recognize you. He offered the same gesture in return. He would talk to them later.
He bent his path to where the other groups of masters had settled in three distinct clots. The first group was a trio of Iliyat merchants, two women and a man, wearing sturdy but plain traveling gear and deep in conversation. The second group rested apart from the others. Seated on a folding stool, a merchant wearing expensive silks inappropriate for travel was gesticulating as another man, also on a folding stool, listened with head bent and gaze directed toward the ground. This man's rank could be told not by his clothing but by the retainers hovering close by: a pair of armed guards, a servant holding a tray with a capped pitcher and cups, and a young man wearing slave bracelets and wielding a large fan to cool his master.
Joss halted beside the third group, five Haldian merchants seated on a single blanket. "Greetings of the day to you, Masters. I'm called Joss, out of Clan Hall."
The commander was the kind of person who kept digging into a wound long after the infection was cut out, just for the sake of probing. He meant to give her no satisfaction today by flinching from that which she guessed would cause him a pang. He nodded at the man he knew among their group of five. "Master Tanesh."
"Greetings of the day to you, reeve." That might have been a gleam of triumph in the merchant's expression, or else he was just perspiring from the heat.
"The journey finds you steady on your feet, I trust?"
"I've not much farther to go. I'll be home within my walls by sunset. But my guild-kin, these here, all live up by the highlands. They've an uncertain journey before them, eight or twelve days more."
His guild-kin introduced themselves: Alon, Darya, Kasti, Udit. A range of ages, they nevertheless had a tight bond: They were gossiping about the other members of the caravan. Master Tanesh magnanimously offered Joss a bowl of cold melon soup, and invited him to sit with them. Kasti and Udit moved apart to make room on the blanket. Udit, by some years the youngest of the group, measured Joss with the same eye she likely used to peruse goods available in the market. Then she smiled, a swift, inviting grin, and passed him a cup of cordial as a chaser to the soup. Joss sipped, listening as the conversation flowed around him in lowered voices.
"Those Herelians, I don't trust them."
"Did you see the bolts of silk they offered at the market? That was first-grade Sirniakan silk. How they'd get that, with the roads out of Herelia blockaded, eh? Or so they claim. Yet they got passage down for the conclave."
"They're shipping it in."
"Around Storm Cape? Unlikely."
"Out of the north, maybe."
"Nah, nah. It would be too dangerous. There's barbarians living in the drylands, beyond Heaven's Ridge, you know."
"How would you know? You've never been there. That's outside the Hundred. No one lives there."
"Someone lives there! These pasture men, with their herds, always wandering. The 'Kin,' they call themselves. And other tribes, too, farther out. Real savages those are. I heard there's a tribe out there that cuts up their women's faces, like marking a slave's debt, to show they are married."
The company hooted and laughed until the speaker, Udit, had to admit this detail was only marketplace gossip heard tenth-hand.
Tanesh shushed them. "Don't believe every tale you hear, Udit. But that doesn't mean there isn't a grain of truth where there's talk of trade. Even savages can be hired to guard merchant trains."
"Savages can't be trusted."
"Who can be trusted, these days?" Joss asked mildly, with a grin to take the sting off the words.
Not even Tanesh took offense at the words. He and his comrades considered them grimly. An aged slave filled their cups with more cordial.
In their silence as they drank, the loud voice of the well-dressed merchant of the second group floated easily under the canopy. "But I fear that the members of the Lesser Houses will not cooperate. Worse, we suspect they are ready to rebel against-" The man's voice dropped abruptly. The rest of his complaint was too low to hear across the gap.