"You! Caravan Master. Is that damned brat going to squall the whole trip? Is it?" he demanded, folding his arms as Smith approached him.
"I don't think so," said Smith, staring down at Lord Ermenwyr's eyes. His pupils were like pinpoints, perhaps because of whatever drug the lordling was smoking in the long jade tube he presently had clenched between his teeth. It produced trailing purple clouds, vaguely sweet-scented. "Should you really be--"
"Smoking? It's my medication, damn you! If that child isn't silenced at once, I'll not be answerable for the consequences. I'm a sick man--"
"Master, you're raving again," said a silken voice from behind the curtains of the palanquin. "Stop that at once."
"--And if I'm harried to an early grave, or should I say an earlier grave,
well
then, Caravan Master, you'll pay for it in ways you can't even begin to--"
"Nursie warned you," said the voice, and an arm flashed between the curtains and caught Lord Ermenwyr around the knees. He vanished backward into the depths of the palanquin with a yelp, and there were sounds of a violent struggle as the palanquin rocked on its base. Smith stepped quickly away.
"Er--Smith!" cried his cousin. "I'd like you to meet your subordinates."
Smith turned to see a crowd of caravaneers who clearly disliked being described as his subordinates. They gave him a unanimous resentful stare as he approached.
"May I present the esteemed keymen? Keyman Crucible, Keyman Smith, Keyman Bellows, Keyman Pinion, Keyman Smith."
They were, as all keymen, compact fellows with tremendously developed arms and muscle-bulging legs, and so alike they might have been quintuplets.
"Nice meeting you," said Smith. They grunted at him.
"This is your runner." His cousin placed his hands on the shoulders of a very young, very skinny girl. She wore the red uniform and carried the brass trumpet of her profession, but she was far from the curvaceous gymnast Smith fantasized about when he fantasized about runners. She glowered up at Smith's cousin.
"Take your hands off me or you'll hear from my mother house," she said. Smith's cousin withdrew his hands as though she were a live coal.
"Young Burnbright hasn't earned her full certification, yet, but she's hoping to do so in our service," he said delicately. "If all goes well, that is. And here, Smith, is our culinary artist! May I present the two-time winner of the Troon Municipal Bakeoff? Mrs. Smith."
Mrs. Smith was large and not particularly young, though she had a certain majesty of bearing. She looked sourly on Smith.
"Do you do fried eel?" Smith asked hopefully.
"Perhaps," she said. "If I'm properly motivated. If I have the proper
pans."
She spat out the last word with bewildering venom, turning her glare on Smith's cousin.
He wrung his hands. "Now, dear Mrs. Smith--I'm sure you'll manage without the extra utensils, this one time. It was necessary."
"Leaving half my kitchen behind for those bloody things?" Mrs. Smith demanded, pointing at the carts laden with giant eggs. "They take up three times the room of an ordinary shipment! What was wrong with regular crates, I'd like to know?"
"In addition to her other talents, Lady Seven Butterflies is a genius at innovative packing and insulation," said Smith's cousin earnestly. "She had the inspiration from Nature itself, you see. What, after all, is the perfect protective shape devised by Nature? The egg, of course--"
"Balls," said Mrs. Smith.
"--with its ovoid shape, elegantly simple yet strong, a holistic solution providing plenty of insulating space for the most fragile creations--"
"How am I going to feed my boys, let alone serve up the gourmet experience for passengers so grandiloquently advertised on your handbills, you imbecile man?" shouted Mrs. Smith.
"We'll work something out," said Smith, stepping between them. "Look, I'm traveling pretty light. Maybe we can take some of your pans in the lead cart?"
Mrs. Smith considered him, one eyebrow raised. "An intelligent suggestion," she said, mollified, as Pinion and Crucible seized up a vast crate marked KITCHEN and hurried with it to Smith's cart. "We may get on, young Smith."
"Of course you will," said Smith's cousin, and fled.
It was nearly light. Those whose duty it was came yawning and shivering to the West Gate, bending to the spokes of the great windlass. The gate rose slowly in its grooves, and a cold wind swept in off the plain and sent spirals of dust into the pink air. A trumpeter mounted the turret by the gate and announced by his blast that another day of commerce had begun, for better or worse, and Burnbright answered with a fanfare to let the passengers know that it was time to board.
The keymen mounted to their posts and began cranking the mighty assemblage of gears and springs in each lead cart. The passengers took their seats, with the Smiths' baby still crying dismally, as the last of the luggage was loaded by the porters. There was a moment of dithering with Lord Ermenwyr's palanquin until it was lifted and lashed in place atop his trunks. Purple fumes escaped between the fluttering curtains, so it was evident he was still alive in there, if preserving a sullen silence.
Mrs. Smith mounted to a seat beside Crucible, pulled a pair of dust goggles over her eyes, and with unhurried majesty drew out a smoking tube and packed it with a particularly pungent blend of amberleaf. She held a clever little device of flicking flint and steel to its tip, shielding it from the wind as she attempted to ignite the amberleaf.
Burnbright sprinted to the front of the line, backing out through the gate and calling directions to the porters as they wrestled the wheels of the lead cart into the grooves in the red road, worn deep by time and utility. Smith's cousin clasped his hands and prayed, as he always did at this point; and Smith, realizing belatedly that he was supposed to be in the lead cart beside Pinion, ran for it and vaulted into his seat, or attempted to, because the crate marked KITCHEN occupied that space.
Pinion just looked at him, poised over the tight-wound coil. Smith, determined to show he was game, climbed up and perched awkwardly atop the crate. He looked forward at Burnbright and waved.
She lifted her trumpet and blew the staccato call for departure. Then she turned and ran forward, swift as flight; for behind her the keymen threw the release pins, and the caravan lurched rumbling out through the gate, late as usual, a dozen linked carts impelled by gear-and-spring engines, following the grooved stone, bearing their disparate cargo.
Mrs. Smith got her tube going at last and leaned back, holding it elegantly between the first two fingers of her left hand, blowing a plume of smoke like a banner. In the cart behind her, the Yendri coughed and waved fumes away, cursing. The rising sun struck flame on the flare of Burnbright's trumpet.
They were off.
"This is pretty easy," remarked Smith after the first hour of travel. Troon was a distant clutch of towers behind them. Before them and to all sides spread the wide yellow fields, unrelieved but for the occasional bump of a distant harvest village. The red road stretched ahead, two grooved lanes running west to the infinite horizon, two parallels running east, and Burnbright had slowed to an easy mile-devouring lope a few hundred yards in front.
"You think it's easy, do you?" said Pinion, giving the key a gentle pump to bring the next spring into play. Once the initial winding had got them going, the keymen maintained forward momentum by steadily cranking.
"Well, yes," said Smith. "Look at it! Flat as a board. No place for a bandit to hide as far as the eye can see. Nobody's at war, so we don't have to worry about any armies sweeping down on us. Nothing to do but chug along, eh?"
"Unless a dust storm comes up," Pinion told him. "Which they tend to do, now the harvest's in. I've seen some cyclones in my day, I can tell you. Even the regular prevailing wind'll fill the channels in the road with dust, and if the little girl up there doesn't spot it in time, we might all rattle off the road into a field, or hit a block at top speed and strip all our gears--that's lovely fun."
"Oh," said Smith. "Does that happen often?"
"Often enough," said Pinion, pumping the key again.
"At least it doesn't sound like I'll need these," said Smith, looking down at his pistolbows.
"Probably not," conceded Pinion. "Until we reach the Greenlands."
"What's in the Greenlands?"
Pinion was silent a moment.
"You're a city boy, aren't you?" he said at last.
"I have been," said Smith, shifting on top of the kitchen crate. "Come on, what's in the Greenlands? Besides a lot of Yendri," he added, glancing back at their sole Yendri passenger, who had wrapped a scarf about his nose and mouth and sat ignoring the others.
"To begin with, that's where you've got your real bandits," Pinion said. "And not your run-along-by-the-side-of-the-road-and-yip-threateningly bandits either, I'm talking about your bury-the-road-in-a-landslide-and-dig-out-the-loot bandits. See? And then there's greenies like that one," he went on, jerking a thumb in the direction of the Yendri. "They may
say
they're for nonviolence, but they're liable to pile rocks and branches and all kinds of crap on the road if they're miffed about us cutting down one of their damn groves to build a way station or something."
"Huh." Smith looked back at the Yendri uneasily.
"Of course, they're not the worst," added Pinion.
"I guess they wouldn't be."
"There's beasts, of course."
"They're everywhere, though."
"Not like in the Greenlands. And even they're nothing to the demons."
"All right," said Smith, "you're trying to scare me, aren't you? Is this some kind of initiation?"
"No," said Pinion in a surly voice, though in fact he had been trying to scare Smith. "Just setting you straight on a few things, Caravan Master. I'd hate to see you so full of self-confidence you get us all killed your first day on the job."
"Thanks a lot," said Smith. The caravan went rumbling on, the featureless fields flew by, and after a moment Smith looked down at Pinion again.
"I did hear a story about the Greenlands, now that I come to think about it," he said. "In a bar in Chadravac Beach, about six months ago. Something about a demon-lord. He's supposed to be called the Master of the Mountain?"
Pinion blanched, but did not change expression. He shook his head, pedaling away stolidly.
"Don't know anything about that," he said firmly, and fell silent.
All that day they traveled across the yellow land. With no companion but the sun, they came at evening to the way station, marked out by a ring of white stones.
It was a wide circular area by the side of the road, with grooves for carts running off and grooves for running back on. There was a tiny stone hut surmounted by a windwheel pump, enclosing a basin where a trickle of water flowed, drawn up from deep beneath the plain. The moment they had rolled off the road and into the circle, the Yendri was out of his cart and staggering for the pump house. He monopolized it for the next quarter hour, to the great annoyance of the other passengers, who lined up behind the hut and made ethnically insulting remarks as they waited.
At least the diversion kept most of them occupied as Smith oversaw making camp for the night. He didn't really have much to do; the keymen, long practiced in this art, had quickly trundled the carts in a snaked circle and set to erecting tent accommodations inside it. Burnbright and Mrs. Smith were busily setting up the kitchen pavilion, and politely implied that he'd only get in their way if he lent a hand there.
Smith noticed that Lord Ermenwyr was not among the carpers at the water pump, and he wondered whether he ought not to see if the lordling had died after all. As he approached the palanquin, the curtains parted and a woman slid out with all the grace of a serpent and dropped lightly to the ground.
Smith caught his breath.
That she was beautiful was almost beside the point. She had a
presence.
Her body was lush, tall, perfect, powerful. Her mouth was full and red, and her sloe-black eyes ought to have been sullen but glinted instead with lazy good humor as she saw Smith gaping at her.
"Good evening, Caravan Master," she said, and the voice matched the body: sultry, yet with an indefinable accent of education and good breeding.
Smith just nodded, and collected himself enough to say, "I was coming to inquire after the lord's health."
"How nice. His lordship is still with us, I'm happy to say." She tilted her head to one side and occupied herself a moment with loosely braiding her hair, which was black and thick as a bolt of silk. Having pulled it up into an elegant chignon, she drew from her bosom what appeared to be a pair of stilettos of needlelike fineness and thrust them through the glossy coils.
"I... uh ... I'm very happy to hear that. We're just setting up the tents now, if he'd like to rest," said Smith.
"That's very thoughtful of you, but my lord has his own pavilion," the woman replied, opening one of the trunks and drawing out a bundle of black cloth patterned all over with little silver skulls.
"I'd be happy to help you, miss--"
"Balnshik," said the woman, smiling. "Thank you so much, Caravan Master."
What an exotic name,
Smith thought dizzily, accepting the load of tent material while Balnshik bent over the trunk to rummage for poles. Something about the name suggested flint knives and attar of roses, and perhaps black leather ... though she was modestly attired in white linen, and he dragged his attention back to the fact that she was a nurse, after all. She drew out a tent pole now and gave it a quick twist. In her deft hands it shot up and expanded to twice its length, spring-loaded.
"I'm--Smith," he said.
"Of course you are, dear," she told him. "Just spread that out on the ground, won't you?"
He helped her assemble the pavilion, which was quite a large and sumptuous one, and then there was a lot of collapsible furniture to be set up, so it was a while before Smith remembered to inform her, "We'll be serving gourmet cuisine shortly, as advertised. We can offer his lordship--"