The envoy padded to the side of the road to cover the top of the post with his palm. The mey post stood chest height. It was square at base and top but tapered so that the base was larger than the squared-off top where, in time of peril, the base of a wayfarer's lamp could be fixed into a finger's-width hole drilled deep down into the wood. At first the envoy stared north along the road, which began here its most precipitous drop out of the mountains. Then he shut his eyes and bowed his head in prayer as the seventeen carts and wagons of the merchant train trundled closer. When he looked up, he gazed toward the nearest prominence. A rugged mountain rose just off to the east with forested slopes and a bare summit surrounded on all sides by bare cliffs. Keshad thought he saw light winking up there, as if caught in a mirror, but when he blinked, the illusion vanished.
"Home," said the envoy with satisfaction. He removed his hand and began walking again to keep ahead of the wagons. Kesh hurried after him. "And hope of a dram of cordial at the Southmost."
Brakes grated against wheels as wagons hit the incline. Kesh looked back. The black mey marking, which had numbered one viewed from the south, numbered sixty-four seen from this direction: the distance of the road called "West Spur" from founding post to founding post. The other end of the West Spur lay a few mey outside the market city of Olossi, their destination. For him, this was the last road he would walk as the man he was now.
He felt sick with determination, with hope, with memory.
"I will let no obstacle bar my path," he muttered.
"What? Eh? Forgive me, I didn't hear."
"It was nothing. Just thinking out loud."
"Like the winds, to whom voice is thought, and thought voice."
"No, more like a mumbling madman who doesn't know when to shut up. There's the border gate."
Stone walls stretched east and west as far as Kesh could see, with miniature towers anchoring each side of the road. Armed men leaned on those narrow parapets, eyeing the approaching caravan. Below, by the log barrier, a pair of young ordinands lounged against the fence, laughing as they traded stories with those of the caravan's guards who'd been walking point.
"Heya! Heya!" shouted their captain from the east tower. "Get you, and you, to your posts!"
The ordinands scampered back across the ditch on a plank bridge to take up their places at the second fence, this one gated and closed.
"The guard force has doubled since last time I came through here," commented the envoy.
"Are they expecting trouble?"
"It's always wise to expect trouble in border country."
Kesh grunted in reply as he dug into his travel sack for his permission chits, his ledger, and the tax tokens he had received from the Sirniakan toll stations they had passed.
"If you'll excuse me, holy envoy. I must see to my cargo. If you would be so kind as to share a cordial with me at the Southmost, I would be honored."
"Indeed! I thank you. I'll drink with pleasure!"
The envoy strode ahead. His staff, tattoo, and colors were chit and ledger enough. In the Hundred, the servants of Ilu could wander as they, and the god, willed. Only Atiratu's mendicants had as much freedom. Kesh certainly did not. He dropped back. The forward wagons creaked and squealed as drivers fought against brakes, beasts, the weight of their cargos, and the steepening pitch of the road. It was a good location for a border gate. Any wagon that did not slow to a stop would crash into the ditch, and charging horsemen who cut off the road to avoid fences and ditch would shatter themselves against the stone walls.
Farther back, a wheel, stressed to its limit by the wear of the brake, wrenched sideways and broke off its axle amid curses and shouting. The wagon tipped sideways and with a crack and a shudder blocked a third of the road.
"Out of the way! Out of the way!"
"You cursed fool!"
Kesh jumped back as his hired driver, Tebedir, barely swung past the wreck; then Kesh got a toe on the boards and leaped up beside him.
"I replace wheels before they is too weak to take the strain," said the driver without looking at Keshad as the wagon rocked with the shift in weight. "No savings in scanting on repair, if you ask me."
"It's why I hired you," said Kesh, "despite the cost."
"No savings by hiring cheap."
They jolted to a stop behind the third wagon, to wait their turn. Ahead, a pair of Silver brothers or cousins-identifiable by their pale complexions, slant eyes, turbaned heads, and the silver bracelets jangling from wrist to elbow on their arms-were arguing with the clerks checking off their ledger. Kesh chewed on his lower lip. Tebedir chewed a cylinder of pipe leaf, spat it out, thumbed a new leaf from the lip of his travel sack, and rolled it deftly before slipping it between parted lips. His teeth were stained brown, but he had a nice grin.
After a while, rubbing his stubble of black hair, Tebedir said, "Slow today."
Kesh wiped sweat from his forehead, although it wasn't unusually hot. "The guards are expecting trouble."
"Rumor in camp tells it no merchant can travel north past a town the Hundred folk call Horn."
"It's hard to imagine, although I've heard those tales, too. That would mean the markets of Nessumara and Toskala are closed to every merchant trading out of Olossi."
"Still, young master, we are only going this far as Olossi. It is no matter to us."
"That's right. No matter to us."
As the second wagon moved through, Tebedir gave the reins to Kesh and clambered down to take the beasts and guide them over the plank bridge. Kesh didn't like heights-they made him dizzy-so he didn't look over the edge and down into the ditch, although he'd heard that the ordinands cultivated adders in that trench. It always seemed when he crossed that he heard hissing, but that might have been the wind scraping through the pines and tollyrakes that grew in the highlands around them.
No, that was hissing. Aui! Had she taken it into her head to waken now? He turned. One of the girls was peeking through a gap in the canvas sheeting tied over the scaffolding.
"Tsst! No! Not allowed!"
She saw him. One dark eye, all he could see, flared as she startled back. The cloth was pinched shut. A voice murmured, too soft for him to hear syllables. Anyway, they didn't speak a language he knew, nor had he taught them words beyond the most basic commands. That way they couldn't talk to anyone.
Tebedir pulled the wagon to a stop where the guards waved him down. Keshad tugged his sleeves down to conceal his bronze bracelets. The captain strolled up, examined Kesh's face, and held out a hand.
"Let's see your ledger, ver," he said in a friendly way which suggested he preferred cooperation to belligerence.
And why not? A captain at this border station could turn back any man to whom he took a dislike. The Silvers' wagon had been released and was rumbling down the road toward the village that waited two mey farther along. Where the dust settled, the envoy walked along briskly in its wake, his arms swinging. He seemed to be singing, but he was too far ahead for Kesh to hear. The second wagon, piled high with bolts of silk wrapped in burlap, was under assault by a pair of shaven-headed clerks who laboriously matched each bolt to what was written in the merchant's accounts book.
"How slow they are," said Tebedir, indicating the clerks. "Why you Hundred people allow women perform the work belonging to men?"
"No use arguing against the gods of the Hundred," said Kesh.
Tebedir merely grunted in reply, then led the beasts off to a generous patch of shade, beneath trees planted long ago for this purpose. He sat down on a log placed there for drivers, sipped from his ale pouch, and settled back to wait as Kesh handed the ledger over to the captain. The man paged through it. Naturally he couldn't read, but a man in his position knew the old ideograms well enough to mark if everything was in its proper place. As his arm moved, Kesh glimpsed the tattoo on his wrist: the Crane, resting between the clean squares and angles that marked an Earth-born child.