She was quiet a long time. He was half-asleep when she said, her head pillowed on his chest: "Can I think about it?"
He tousled her hair. "Do that." And tenderly combed it, since it had gotten leaves in it. "Don't sleep without waking me. Understand?"
"Mmnn," she said.
But he waked with the crack of a branch in his ears and the sun on his face.
"Dammit!" he said, and rolled over with his heart pounding, grabbing after his sword.
But she was there in the dawn breaking twigs for the fire.
He let his head down on his arms and got his breath.
"I didn't go to sleep," she said. "I couldn't sleep."
"Well, a hell of a lot of time we're going to make today." He got up and went off to the bushes, and came back and washed and shaved at the riverside.
She had breakfast ready when he sat down at the fire.
So he ate, watching the riverside and watching the light on the water and thinking on as little as he had thought about in mornings at the cabin.
Except he missed the cabin. He wished he was there. With her.
He sighed and raked a hand through his hair. And patiently combed it and put it up before he set to putting his shin-guards on.
Taizu came and squatted in front of him, in shirt and armor-breeches, arms between her knees.
"Do you remember what you said last night?" she asked.
"What do you mean, what I said last night?"
She bit her lip, ready to take offense.
"I mean," he said, "I damn well remember what I said last night! What do you expect?" Damn, he had upset her. He was not his most diplomatic in the mornings. He threw the second shin-guard down and looked at her, at a very off-put Taizu, who had her jaw clamped. "Oh, hell!" Cross-purposes again. "It's not two merchants haggling over a load of salt, girl. It's not a financial arrangement. I've got nothing to give you—" He thought then, as he had not thought—what would happen to her if he were the one killed, and she were left, his wife, with his enemies, and that was enough to upset his stomach. "Not a damn thing I haven't already given."
"Can't you not swear at me?"
"I don't want to swear at you. Gods know I don't. All right, don't. Dont promise me anything." He picked up the shin-guard again and fitted it, beginning the ties. "It's all getting too complicated. I'm not trying to stop you."
"Then why are you trying to marry me?"
"O—gods." He rested his head against his hand. Looked up again with all the calm and patience he could muster, into two puzzled, earnest eyes.
"I want to know! You're asking me to do something, I want to know!"
Not surprising he made no sense to her, he thought. He made none to himself, nothing he wanted to bring into the light.
"What do you want out of me?" she asked.
He made the ties. He worked his arms into the armor-sleeves and tied the cords across his chest.
And she never said a thing to him. She just waited, arms on knees. Peasant-like.
So master Saukendar could get the lump out of his throat and get his balance back and manage some dignity. He hated being coddled.
Which was, he thought, close to what he was asking. Once in his life.
"I'm used to people loving me, girl. The whole world loved me. Love's damn cheap. You can buy it in the market and the court, two a penny."
She looked shocked.
"I'm too old for you," he said. "I was too old when you were born." He got up and felt the old pain, the way he felt it at every such move, always there. I'm not coming back, he thought again. Not from this one. Why all this thought of permanency?
"Master Shoka—"
Plaintively. Sharp as a knife.
He picked up the body armor and fitted it on, walking over to fetch Jiro.
"You're not old!" she yelled at his back.
And ran and grabbed at his arm, but he interposed a hand and a foul look, at which she was wise enough and respectful enough to stop.
So they took the road again, no different than they had begun.
Chapter Thirteen
The land became lower, the land became level, and rice-fields and dikes marked the beginning of farms, the tributaries of Ygotai.
And among the dike roads a pasture and a tolerably decent few horses.
"They belong to the judge," a farmer said.
"Stay here," Shoka said, and took the locket, the gold they had gotten, and the coins which he had, in the foolishness of their first acquaintance, proposed for Taizu's dowry.
And leaving Taizu to sit and guard their baggage by the dike-side, he rode to the judge's gate.
"My name is Sengi," he said, leaning an elbow on Jiro's saddlebow and looking down at the gatekeeper. "Captain Sengi, to see the judge—I understand he has horses for sale."
The magistrate was, thank the gods, not a man he knew or ever had heard of, a fat old man very nervous to find a mercenary captain at his gate; but a good deal happier to see that captain rattle a heavy purse and announce that he had given his remount to a friend and looked to acquire a serviceable animal—with tack.
So he left Jiro tied in the shade—calling out loud and friendly salutations to one of the judge's mares and generally giving grief to the judge's grooms—and walked out to the small pasture with the judge, to look at several fine mares, to admire their fine points, to talk horse-breeding, a passion of the elderly judge, and to agree with the judge's wisdom absolutely—which he figured might lower the price within his reach.
So one sat in the shade of the judge's garden, one sipped beautifully prepared tea—
—One remembered gentler times then, and felt a little pang, and felt the years shift back and forth in insane depth—
A garden, a path, a shade and a pool with an arching bridge.
His own house.
But it was forfeit. Confiscated.
"This is what I have." Shoka laid out the gold locket and the rings. And added a couple of coins. "I appreciate a fine horse. I'm afraid I know too well what they're worth. But the sorrel with the white foot. . ."
"Brood mare potential. You should have seen her sire. . . ."
"Certainly. But I couldn't possibly afford the bay . . ."
It took the whole damned afternoon. He imagined Taizu fretting and fretting out there on the road. He imagined a whole troop of imperial guards coming along and asking questions Taizu could not answer.
But there was no way to evade the old man, who asked him about affairs further north.
"M'lord, I've come in from Mendang. I've no idea. How are things in Hoishi?"
At which the old man temporized: "About what they have been."
"Cheng'di?"
"About the same. How in Hoisan?"
Cagey old wretch, Shoka thought.
And wished to hell he could get something current out of him.
But if he asked how were the crops, then the old fox would suspect something—a mercenary captain who went asking . . . might have banditry in mind; and the village judge was not the person to rouse suspicions with. So he drank the tea and talked over horses past and present.
He praised the old judge's favorite. He said—the truth—that he had seen the Emperor's own farms and—a lie—there had been none better. But he had no more gold, just a pittance of silver that he needed to live on.
They were down to bargaining for the tack.
Finally he turned out his purse and spent everything.
Thank the gods he had left a little reserve with Taizu.
"That," the judge said, "is a very fine horse you have. I don't suppose you'd part with him?"