The Rebellion (17 page)

I thought again of our gypsy and of the whole question of half and pureblood. She was a halfbreed, but she had let her
bondmate suffer torture rather than speak the name of a Twentyfamilies gypsy. Yet Domick had told me with absolute conviction that Twentyfamilies were estranged from halfbreeds.

I scowled. For a moment, I forgot my guilt and indulged anger instead. I had saved the gypsy from the Herder flame only to see her attempt suicide—and draw me with her! Even if I had broken free and let her go, her death would have meant my own if the futuretelling was true. It angered me that my life should hinge on a woman who valued her life not at all.

“Does it have to be a bird?” Kella asked.

I blinked at her, having lost the thread of the conversation.

“Does it have to be a bird you use as a messenger?” she reiterated.

“Any other animal would move too slowly and would be as vulnerable on the ground as a human messenger,” I said. “I might just as well send Matthew.”

“Gypsy pig!” a man hissed as I brushed past him.

I ignored him, but Kella paled. Belatedly, it occurred to me that I was endangering the healer by being with her. There was a definite antagonism in the eyes of anyone who looked at me. The Herders’ slur campaign against gypsies had been more than effective.

The sooner we got back to the safe house, the better.

Gahltha whinnied softly as we approached the public holding yard, and in spite of my tensions, I smiled at the sight of him. I had asked Dragon to dirty him, and the empath had surpassed herself. His coat was so matted and filthy that it was impossible to tell his color, and he smelled truly disgusting. For once, there had been no need to worry about leaving him alone since he looked and smelled far too disreputable to be worth stealing.

“Is the bird/sahric useful/capable?” Gahltha inquired politely.
Sahric
meant “those who sing.” I noted the coolness in his mental voice and realized he had not forgiven me for going to The Good Egg without him the previous night. I had promised not to do it again, knowing he felt his guardianship to be a sacred trust from Atthis, but clearly he still felt slighted.

“I’m afraid this bird/sahric is no more capable of hearing me than any of the others,” I sent, looking glumly at the cage.

I mounted him and then offered my spare hand to Kella. She wrinkled her nose in distaste and volunteered to walk.

Suddenly, her eyes shifted to something beyond me, her smile vanishing.

“What is it?” I resisted the urge to swing around and look for myself.

“That gypsy who was watching us before. He’s on the other side of the holding yard on a horse. I’m sure he is following us.”

I forced myself to be calm and think. Mistakes were made when people panicked.

“Are you sure it is the same gypsy?” I asked at last. Kella was easily agitated and much given to morose reflections. When she had first claimed a gypsy was watching us, I had dismissed it as overactive imagination. Gypsies were too much on both our minds.

“I was sure before and am surer now. He is looking directly at us,” the healer said forcefully. She looked near to fainting.

“Perhaps I should beastspeak his horse and ask it to tip him on his head,” I said. As I had hoped, her fear evaporated into concern at my flippancy.

“Be serious, Elspeth. He has obviously followed us
through the market, and he might now follow us to the safe house.”

“He probably follows us because he finds you attractive,” I said robustly.

She colored. “But I … I …”

“Oh, never mind. I won’t tell Domick you have been flirting with gypsies. Or perhaps I will, since he neglects you disgracefully.”

Her color deepened and then fled. “Oh, Elspeth, he’s coming around this way! I’m sure he’s trying to see your face.”

My heart bumped against my breast, but I kept my voice calm for the healer’s sake. She sounded on the verge of hysteria. “This is what we are going to do,” I said. “You are going to go back into the market and pretend to shop. If the gypsy follows you, I will ask his horse to drop him on his head. If he follows me, Gahltha and I will lead him out of the city and give him a run for his troubles. Either way, stay at the market a little while and then make your way carefully back to the safe house.”

Kella nodded, eyes wide and frightened.

I handed the birdcage down to her. “Take this.”

She took it and moved off as I had bid. I waved, turning my head slightly and scanning the area with peripheral vision.

Sure enough, he was there—the same tall, rangy gypsy in costly blue silk that Kella had pointed out earlier. I was puzzled. What reason could he have for his interest in us, other than the slight curiosity value of a halfbreed gypsy boy walking with a Landgirl? He did not fit the description of the gypsy Matthew had seen leaving Guanette. And that would have been odd in any case, since in Guanette he would have seen a girl when now I was disguised as a boy.

From the corner of my eye, I studied him. His dark hair was bound back in a plait, and the band of fabric about his brow was stained to match his shirt. Kella had said the elaborate and expensive garments marked him as Twentyfamilies, but this did not seem conclusive evidence to me. After all, a halfbreed gypsy might be vain enough to spend his coin on such things.

I pretended to adjust my trousers, watching to see if he followed the healer. Sitting astride his gray horse, he stared intently after her. But as she walked off, his eyes moved toward me.

I pretended to spur Gahltha. “Head out of the city.”

The black horse wheeled, and after a moment, I looked back as if I had remembered something to say to Kella. Seeing her gone, I shrugged and turned forward casually, but my heart was beating wildly. “He’s right behind us,” I sent.

“The gray equine ridden by this funaga who follows is named Sendari,” Gahltha sent suddenly. “He/Sendari tells that he has not been owned/ridden long by this funaga. He says this one’s hands and feet are skilled and gentle.”

I frowned. His ownership of many horses seemed to confirm Kella’s surmise that our pursuer was Twentyfamilies, but it still did not tell me why he was following me.

“Does Sendari know why this funaga follows?” I asked, just in case he did.

Gahltha paused, then reported the answer to my question. “He/Sendari tells that this funaga has ridden about much in these days soonest past, but he has arrived nowhere. He has spent much time standing/idle.”

Watching
, I thought uneasily.
Looking for us
?

I decided to probe the gypsy and sent my mind questing, but to my frustration, I encountered yet another mental
shield. Cursing, I withdrew, thinking it an odd coincidence that all three gypsy minds I had tried to enter possessed natural mindshields. Garth’s theory that more unTalents were developing mindshields was beginning to look as if it might be true.

I was indecisive. There was no subtle way to find out the gypsy’s motives. His natural shield would prevent my coercing him except at a subconscious level, and there would be no gain in that. I could ask him outright what he was doing, but I would have no way of coercing the memory of our meeting from him.

“Let’s lose him,” I sent to Gahltha. Obedient, he broke into a fast canter along a road leading toward the farmlands east of the city.

I could hear the clatter of hooves behind me, but Gahltha did not increase his pace, saying it would confuse Sendari’s rider if we behaved as if we were being followed. He was right, for the gypsy made no attempt to overtake us but rode at a distance.

Only when we reached the edge of the outlying farmlands surrounding Sutrium did Gahltha break into a full gallop, and I flattened myself to reduce wind resistance, thrilling to the race.

“He/Sendari follows,” he sent.

“Can you outrun him?”

“There is no need,” the black horse sent, with a faint echo of his old haughtiness. “Only the funaga race one another for no reason. Equines race for mate or lifesaving. Sendari knows that you are Innle. He will do what is needed.”

I was discomforted by the thought that the gray horse would let us get away because he believed I was a figure from beastlegend. I had tried endless times to convince Gahltha I
was not their heroic savior. It was enough that the Agyllians had incorporated me into their dreams and futuretellings without finding the animals were trying to do the same thing.

We rode swiftly along the dirt road; then, without warning, Gahltha turned sharply, cutting across a long, sloping grass plain. I clung tightly in case he stumbled on the rough tussocky ground, leaving it to him to decide how to proceed.

Looking ahead, I saw that he was making for a thick copse farther up the slope. He slowed only fractionally as we entered the trees, and in moments, we thundered out the other side of the stand onto open ground.

A rush of exaltation filled me as the ground blurred beneath us, and I gave a wild cry as we crested the hill.

Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw that the gray had fallen into a limping walk, just short of the copse. Even as I watched, his rider dismounted.

“He/Sendari has pretended lameness,” Gahltha reported, coming to a halt, too.

I saw the rider kneel to examine the leg and was impressed. Most men would have lashed their mount half to death rather than lose a quarry.

As if he sensed my thoughts, the gypsy stood and looked up to where I sat on Gahltha. I could not see his expression, but as we turned to ride away, I had a mad urge and held up my hand to wave in a cheeky salute.

The city center lay visible on the other side of the hill, and we went straight overland, jumping farm fences and hedges at a full gallop and making for a main road snaking through the hills and trees. We came out wider than I realized, for when we reached the road, we were in full view of a gate—from outside the city. There was no possibility of withdrawing
without looking suspicious, for the soldierguards manning the gate were gazing at us.

My heartbeat quickened as we approached for the second time in a few days. Fortunately, it was not the same gate I had entered before.

“Papers, boy,” a burly soldierguard demanded. It was an expedition rule that each of us carry papers on us at all times when we traveled away from Obernewtyn, so that was no trouble. I dug in my pocket and proffered them without a word, concentrating on reinforcing the coercive suggestion that I was a boy.

The other soldierguard stared at me narrowly, but it was not until his eyes dropped to Gahltha that I became concerned. He sauntered over and rubbed at the dried filth on the horse’s coat.

“Got some white, does he, under all that muck?” he asked.

It was such a strange query that I probed his thoughts.

He was comparing Gahltha to a description that he had been given of Zade. Fortunately, Zade was smaller and had white markings on his forehead and back legs.

“All black,” I said. Digging further in the soldierguard’s mind, I found a description of a gypsy girl that was clearly me, and, to my horror, there was also one of Matthew and the wagon.

Word of our rescue of the gypsy in Guanette had finally reached the Council.

“Been in the highlands recentlike?” the soldierguard asked, moving around and casually taking a hold of Gahltha’s rein. I told myself firmly that there was no reason to fear—Gahltha did not fit the description he had been given, and I was nothing like Matthew. Even so, my heart pounded.

“I came from Murmroth way just yesterday, and just now
from Kinraide by Rangorn,” I said in a bored voice, coercing the soldierguard who eyed my papers into seeing yesterday’s date on the entry stamp and a watermark from the Suggredoon ferry. I wrinkled my nose and gestured at Gahltha. “Mud keeps away the flying biters, but it smells none too good.”

The two men exchanged a glance, and the one with the papers nodded. The larger soldierguard’s thoughts told me he had decided that neither Gahltha nor I fitted the descriptions they had been given.

He shrugged, releasing the reins. “All right, then, boy. Get on.”

I rode off, trembling with reaction, and not just because news of the incident in Guanette had reached Sutrium at last.

While in the soldierguard’s mind, I had learned that the Council intended to institute a gate search for the missing gypsy and her two rescuers the very next day. Each gate would have a copy of the original Normalcy Register—which recorded each child at birth after Herder inspection—against which to check the authenticity of travelers’ papers.

This told me that either they thought we were heading for Sutrium with the gypsy woman and hoped to trap us as we entered the city … or, worse, they knew we were here already and meant to stop us getting out.

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