They bought more cheese and smoked meat from the man, and paid far less than they would have in any marketplace. After that, there was nothing to do but bid him farewell.
"I hope we meet again," Cresenne told him, knowing of course that they wouldn't.
"That's kind of you, my dear, but I hope we don't. My life's on these plains, and this is no place for a family like yours."
He climbed onto his cart, clicked his tongue at his old horse, and started rattling eastward toward Bred's Landing.
Grinsa and Cresenne were soon ready to continue on their way as well. As it happened, D'Chul, the young lutenist, was also headed west toward Silverwater Wash. Cresenne was delighted to ride in the company of another Qirsi, and she expected that Grinsa would be as well. But for the first several hours of the day, he said little, and he appeared to be occupied with dark thoughts. He rode with his shoulders hunched, his eyes trained on the ground before him, his brow creased so that he seemed to be scowling. Cresenne wondered if he was brooding on something he'd heard the night before, or if he was concerned about what they would do if the skies opened up again, or if he simply didn't like D'Chul.
At one point during the morning, Cresenne steered her mount next to his and reached out to take his hand. His face brightened immediately and he smiled at her.
"Are you all right?" she asked quietly.
"Yes, of course."
"You seem troubled."
He shook his head. "Really, I'm fine."
Cresenne had nodded, taking him at his word. And why shouldn't she? Usually he kept nothing from her. But when she looked at him again only a few moments later, he looked just as he had before: tense, even apprehensive, which was not like him at all. She knew how strong he was, though, and she trusted that no matter what it was that had him worried, he'd find a way to overcome it.
For her part, she hadn't been this happy since the day they left the Forelands, more than two turns before. She liked D'Chul and she enjoyed hearing him speak of the clans and of life on the plain. He'd been born in a small settlement in the Berylline Forest along the western bank of the A'Vahl River. Listening to him speak of his home, Cresenne had to remind herself again and again that all of his neighbors, all the people who lived with him in the village, were Qirsi. She knew this to be true-she'd been in the Southlands long enough to understand that this was not at all unusual in the western half of the land-but every time she pictured the marketplace he described, or the sanctuary where he worshiped, or any other part of the village, she pictured Eandi faces as well as Qirsi, indeed, more of the former than the latter. She couldn't help herself.
Yet, at the same time, she thrilled to the thought that this was the world in which she would soon find herself. In just a few more days, she and Grinsa would cross into Qirsi land and, she hoped, quickly find a settlement in which to build a new life. Bryntelle, awake now, her eyes wide as she watched D'Chul, would grow up thinking it normal to live among only Qirsi, without the hostility and mistrust of the Eandi. No doubt she would take such a life for granted. Cresenne could think of no greater gift for her child.
Yes, she had Eandi friends, though not many of them. Once, when she had allied herself with Dusaan jal Kania, the Weaver who had sought to overthrow the Eandi courts in the Forelands and create a new Qirsi empire, she had believed that she hated all Eandi. She knew now that she didn't. Some among Ean's children had been kind to her in the days leading up to the Weaver's war, kinder than she'd had any right to ask or expect, given her role in the Qirsi conspiracy. But she had to admit that she longed to live the rest of her days free from prejudice and the constant tension that seemed to pervade the cities of the Forelands. And though she would have had trouble admitting as much to Grinsa, who counted an Eandi noble among his closest friends and who once even loved an
Eandi woman, she believed that the only way to find such peace was to live apart from all Eandi.
D'Chul proved to be a fine companion for such a grey day. After he'd talked about his home for some time, he began to sing for them, or more precisely for Bryntelle, who laughed and squealed each time he began a new song. Eventually, the young man's singing even drew Grinsa out of his dark mood. As was the case with the songs he had played the night before, Cresenne didn't know any of the ones he sang. They sounded like children's songs, and she had the sense that they would have been as familiar to a Qirsi child in the Southlands as "Four Tired Lambs" or "Moons and Stars" had been to her when she was a girl.
One song in particular delighted Bryntelle and caught Cresenne's ear, though probably not for the same reason. She couldn't follow the verses, which made little sense, but after a few rounds, she was able to piece together the refrain:
Little Dark-Eye, Little Dark-Eye,
Run away back home;
Little Dark-Eye, Little Dark-Eye, '
Tis not your land to roam;
Little Dark-Eye, Little Dark-Eye,
Run away and hide;
Little Dark-Eye, Little Dark-Eye,
No one's on your side.
It seemed that Grinsa also was struck by the lyric. When D'Chul finished singing, he asked, "What was that one called?"
" 'Little Dark-Eye,' " the man answered, grinning. "It's a grim song, eh?"
"I couldn't make out most of it," Grinsa said.
"That's because most of ifs been changed. It was a Qirsi war song; dates back to the first of the Blood Wars. You can probably guess what it's about."
"The last line of the refrain was changed, too, wasn't it?" D'Chul looked at Cresenne. "You could tell that, could you?"
She nodded.
"It was originally 'All your friends have died,' but that was changed long ago. Better for the little ones this way."
"How did you know?" Grinsa asked her, smiling slightly, but also looking annoyed, as if angry with himself for not figuring this out as well.
She shrugged. "It just didn't sound right. 'Died' is the natural rhyme there."
"You've got an ear for music," D'Chul said.
Cresenne laughed at that. She was just about the least musical person she knew. She couldn't even sing in tune. "No," she said. "I think I just have a dark humor."
"There's no escaping it, is there?" Grinsa asked, still looking troubled, his voice grim.
D'Chul frowned. "What do you mean?"
"This feud between Eandi and Qirsi. The Blood Wars. These songs you sing. The Eandi villages that won't give a room to Qirsi travelers. It's everywhere."
Cresenne feared that the lutenist might take offense, but instead, he regarded Grinsa for several moments and then began to nod slowly.
"It must seem that way to you," he said. "I don't think we give much thought to how our land might be perceived by strangers." He seemed to consider this for several moments. At last he nodded again. "Yes, I guess it is everywhere. The wars have been over for some time now, but the fighting didn't end because we suddenly stopped hating one another. I'm not sure people can do that."
"Then why did the wars end?"
He shook his head. "Neither side had the stomach for them anymore. The clans decided that the wars were costing too many lives, even as they continued to take land from the dark-eyes. Already there are more Eandi in the Southlands than there are Qirsi. Not by a lot-not the way we hear Qirsi are outnumbered in the Forelands. But enough to scare our leaders. And the Eandi sovereignties made no effort to continue the fighting. Every time a war was fought they lost land. It's not really surprising that they'd welcome a truce."
"So the two sides never really forged a peace," Grinsa said. "They just stopped killing each other."
D'Chul raised an eyebrow. "I suppose that's one way of putting it. I don't think there's much danger of the wars starting up again, if that's what concerns you."