"You didn't need to bow to them!"
"Dear wife, I thought I did rather well. We're well ahead of them, and if they mention us to the magistrate in Ygotai let's hope they report a doting fool and his spoiled wife who probably left their bones in the forest. I was Shoka to my intimates, not to folk at large, and I doubt they'll connect that name with Saukendar—but they might, if I'd cracked their heads. Wouldn't they?"
She still frowned, but she made no more argument,
"I didn't use the demon story."
"Oh, no, the next caravan through the village will pick that up, and we'll be famous!"
"Another reason why I thought you might just be right about making speed on this stretch. Their logical assumption is that we turned north at Ygotai, ahead of the caravan—if they realize it's me. We told them the truth about Hua. That's precisely what they'll think is a lie. So they won't look on that road."
Taizu turned around again as she walked, her expression thunderous. "On the other hand they just could believe Saukendar wouldn't lie."
"I hope I had a reputation for being smart. —Look out for that bush!"
She glanced back and skipped around it and the rock behind it. "All I can say is, if I was the magistrate in Ygotai and they told me about a gentleman clear out here with all that expensive armor, I'd be suspicious, and I'd know he was in some kind of trouble, and I'd know there wasn't any lord Shoka because that's not a proper name."
"He'd know there were a couple of mercenaries, that's what, one female."
"Who didn't want hire with the caravan."
"Because they had better prospects elsewhere. Gitu was hiring them ten years ago. I don't think he's changed. And you m'lord anybody with a full rig of armor. I'm at least a mercenary captain, and that's more than master Yi can hire. He knows that. If he believes the wife story, that's fine; if he doesn't he'll think we're mercenaries—"
"Who walked out letting those fools laugh at us!"
"They won't sleep well tonight. Mark me. That was stupid of them, letting us among them to see how many they are. That's why I acted the fool, and they laughed at the situation. When they get to thinking back on the style of the gear and the rest of it, they're going to have two and three thoughts on it, none of which agree, all of which are going to make master Yi damn nervous from here on, much more than if we were a simple pair of bullies they might have feathered outright. We walked away. They shouldn't have let us do that. And now I'm sure they're thinking about that and hoping we were fools."
She looked at him with her mouth open, walking sideways and backward. "You're so tangled up! You've told them so many things they'll suspect us for sure!"
"They won't know what we are. Till, as you say, some other traders overtake them. Then they'll know, and by then we'd best keep ahead of the rumors." He thought of plaguing her again about going back. And thought: Gods, there is no going back, is there? Ghita will know, soon or late. And assassins will come again. Even on the mountain there's no safety now.
Well, I knew as much when I began this. No helping it. No helping anything now.
Straight in and straight out, and maybe, if we're very lucky—go for the south and the mountains, and lose ourselves there, where even the imperial guard won't follow.
Damnable mess this woman's talked me into.
The sun became a golden glow behind the hills on the other side of the river, and a touch of gold at the peaks of the hills that rose high on their right.
That went too, as they came to the place where the river ran noisier over rocks, and where the hills of the Barrens truly closed in.
Beyond this was not a place to travel in the dark, a narrow place fit for ambushes, where the river flowed in a riven, sometimes wooded gap and the ground was stony and the hills were broken and tumbled on either side.
"This is where we stop," he said, when a turn of the hills brought them face to face with that.
"I did it by dark," Taizu said. "But I didn't have any horse, and I hid a lot, whenever I could."
He shook his head, thinking of her with that damned great basket, light as she had packed it; and her alone in that place made for ambushes.
And he climbed down and led Jiro off where there was still a little ground free of rocks.
"I've got an idea," Taizu said as they were boiling up a little water: it was yesterday's rice and jerky, with tea.
"Gods save us. What?"
"About the arrows. What we do—" She was sitting on her heels feeding twigs of scrub into the tiny fire while he sat cross-legged on their mats, close by. "What we do, I go in first, just right down the trail, and I make a lot of noise like a fool. And if there's anybody there, you'll be behind me and you can pick them off. That's better than both of us getting shot at or somebody hitting Jiro."
"No, they'll just shoot you outright. You don't look like a woman, from a distance."
She gave him an offended look.
"I thought you liked looking like a boy," he gibed at her. "There's nothing wrong with the idea, except making you the target. We could always wait for master Yi. I knew this was ahead somewhere: I remembered it, but I like the look of it less by twilight."
"I don't trust that man. I don't trust any of his people. And they won't trust us. Like you said, they've had time to think, and they'll want to have us back in their reach. I'm almost more worried about them than I am the bandits."
He frowned, thinking on that point, thinking about Taizu, too, who he had long known was not dull-witted, but by the gods, he began to see the journey she had made and how she had made it.
Damn clever girl. Damned clever.
One had to take her very seriously. Even if his own choice would be to go with the trader and crack skulls if it came to it. Taizu in the field had all the patience she lacked in other matters. Paradoxes.
"I knew a boy like you. Things were never real to him until the steel was out. Then he used good sense."
"He's dead," Taizu guessed. "All your stories come out that way."
He shook his head. "He's in holy orders. That's the only thing kept Ghita's lot from taking his head—last I heard. You know if you'd gone to Muigan, you'd have ended up abbess."
She wrinkled her nose at him, and sifted tea into the water.
"The nuns would have taught you the stick, you know. Same as I did."
"Too many do-this'es. And praying." She made a face. "Not me."
"Celibacy, too. I don't think you'd have liked that."
She made another face at him. "I said, tonight. After supper. I'm hungry."
"Well, I might be out of the mood by then. Who knows?"
The look turned wicked. "Master Shoka, you haven't been out of the mood since I've known you. Here." She held out the pot to pour tea. He held out his tea-bowl and trusted her accuracy.
"It's Shoka," he said. "Plain Shoka, if you please."
A worried glance from under brows. The smile was gone.
"I wish you'd gone back, master Shoka. Now I'm afraid they're going to hear about you leaving the mountain. And then what?"
"They've tried before. They tried several times when I first came, when they'd found me. They stopped. It got too expensive for them."
"This time they might not stop."
"They might not. So we leave to the south. We go through the hills. We find another mountain further away."
She looked at him a long, long time.