Meek

The sun seemed to brighten as the trees thinned and the forest dwindled into shrubland.

When Eli led Fern from the final stretch of heavily wooded land, Lara lingered behind to say goodbye. She spoke in dryn, a fluting, musical tongue that piqued Eli's curiosity every time he heard it.

Still, he forged ahead into the patchwork of helm-oak and broom and malla ash, to give her some privacy. He tilted his face to the sky and felt the warmth on his cheeks. The donkey whuffled happily, nibbling a clump of rough-edged grass. So he pulled a few and tasted them.

"Not bad," he told her. "But not as sweet as fern."

She nickered.

He started northward, confident in Lara's ability to track them. Partly because donkey tracks--and droppings--weren't hard to follow. But mostly because dryns were dryns. He was still impressed at how unerringly she'd chosen the best route across forest, the easiest path to their destination.

Although ... how did she even know how to reach their destination?

She was completely ignorant of Ehrat. He puzzled at that while he headed through a meadow. Well, some animals returned to their nests instinctively. Maybe dryn possessed a similar talent?

When she joined him twenty minutes later, he asked. "How do you know where Ehrat is, if you don't even know what it is?"

"I saw it on a map," she said.

"Oh, right."

"What did you think?"

"Nothing. A map."

"Leafy dryad magic?"

"Don't be silly," he said.

They followed a stream until they reached a hard-packed dirt road that snaked through the shrubs. Lara stopped and pulled a frayed dress over her tunic. "Because we might see people."

"Do I look okay?"

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Hunch your shoulders, so you'll look smaller."

He laughed at that, remembering the Head Clerk calling him a crab. And then, to take his mind off what happened to the Head Clerk next, he said, "Teach me to speak dryn."

"We don't share that with outsiders," she said.

"Oh, okay."

Then she started teaching him.

She only spoke dryn for the rest of that day. Which didn't attract attention, because they didn't see a single sign of human activity, not even after the narrow road joined with a wider one that headed north.

Eli had always been good with languages. One of his tricks was physically mimicking native speakers instead of simply memorizing the words. He tried to copy their gestures, their expressions, how they moved their mouths. In an exaggerated, embarrassing, way, almost like he was mocking them.

So he pursed his lips into a dryn-ish whistle and he tilted his head and made birdlike movements of his hands and learned a few phrases.

In dryn, 'Laranya' sounded like singing 'la-la-la' with a specific melody that eluded him for a full hour. She gave him a dryn name, too--something like "day-lo-lar," with a trill--but she refused to tell him what it meant.

So he spent the day attempting complex statements such as, "I like fruit" and "Tree is good" and "I don't understand," while keeping his sparks heavy and high. Observing the road from three yards above himself ... as they pulsed from round to flat, from appleseeds to fingernails. He didn't know if flattening them would ever prove useful, but the practice strengthened his link.

On the second day, he trained until his control became second nature ... and he spotted a small caravan headed toward them from the north. Two wagons and four horses and almost a dozen people.

After days alone, that felt like a crowd, so he and Lara stepped from the road to avoid them.

But over the next few days, eight or nine more groups of travellers passed, heading the other direction. He and Lara didn't hide again, though they didn't let anyone hear them speaking dryn, and didn't say more than a few words in greeting.

The people mostly looked like farmers and field-workers, though a couple of riders cantered along the road twice. Messengers or couriers. Both times, Lara held her 'fly whisk' a little looser and Eli hunched and hardened his sparks, thinking about the dagger at his hip. Thinking about taking them down before they galloped to Rockbridge for reinforcements.

He couldn't practice blocking darts while on the road, but he'd trained himself to clench them harder. So when the riders approached, he sent both sparks far enough past the comfortable limit of his range that his core ached. Getting ready to startle the horse and throw himself at the rider.

Fortunately, the riders ignored them.

The passing traffic stopped as the road headed northward along a river lined with cattails. Well, other than a shallowed-bottom barge that drifted past, low in the water, laden with barrels. The crew played tiles and ignored the birds pecking at the straw-covered deck.

Late the next morning, Eli and Lara came across an old couple resting in the shade of chimney, the only surviving part of a long-razed house. The man was grizzled and rheumy-eyed and the woman was round and rosy-cheeked. A white-muzzled dog snored beneath a handcart that was laden with goods covered by a dropcloth.

"How do, my young mirs?" the old man called, as they approached.

"Afternoon, uncle," Lara said, bobbing her head politely.

Eli nodded a greeting, but didn't speak. Taciturn farmer, that was the role he was playing.

"Look at you," the old man said, squinting one rheumy eye. "New-married and headed north to find your fortune, am I right?"

Lara gave Eli a theatrically adoring look. "My man is my fortune, uncle. But I wouldn't mind finding a bucket of coins to match."

"Ha! Well spoke, mir. And all you possess in the world is on that donkey of yours?"

"Don't go haranguing at the children," the old woman muttered.

"I ain't haranguing! I'm just saying. Joining the harvest outside the Weep is risky work. Pays well, but wise heads don't linger long." He frowned at Lara. "You remember that now, girl."

"Joining the harvest," Eli said, fishing for more information.

"Is there where you're coming from?" Lara said, simply asking for more information. "The harvest?"

"No, no. We ain't young, despite my missus's girlish figure. When the boom started, we lived in one of the new cellar towns for a time. Saw too many horrors. Now we stay this side of the border and scratch out a living waylaying good folks like yourselves, begging for favors."

Lara gave a rough laugh. "Consider us waylaid, uncle. What can we do for you?"

"Spend freely." He pulled the dropcloth off the handcart to reveal rows of goods. Rough-spun clothing, farm implements, dinged canteens. "Take pity on two poor sinners."

"Don't listen to the old fool," his wife told Lara. "What we do is, we buy gear from those who're leaving, and sell to them who're coming, for just a few copper more."

"At the end of the harvest like this," the man said, "there's more sellers than buyers, though traffic's been slow the past few days."

"Too heavencursed quiet," the woman muttered.

"Quiet," Eli said.

"I knew there'd be trouble when that second mercenary company thundered past."

Eli wanted to ask about that, but the old man spoke first: "On the bright side, we'll part with anything that takes your fancy for little more'n a wink and a whisper."

Eli figured he shouldn't call too much attention to his interest in the mercenaries. So he slumped his shoulders wordlessly, and called a spark closer, to inspect the goods. He didn't see remotely useful--at least not for finding Brazinka. Much less for killing the Bloodwitch.

Still, Lara spent a few copper on a handful of pretty beads, chatting the entire time.

And a few minutes after they headed onward, she said, "You're not going to laugh at me for buying beads?"

"Course not," he told her. "You resisted the straw hat."

"You think you're funny."

"I think it was a bargain, buying that much information for just a few copper."

She made a satisfied noise. "Did you know about this 'boom,' the new olive farms around the Weep?"

"No. Three harvests a year, and each tree produces a thousand pounds of fruit? Nobody knows about that. That's like talking birds."

"You mean, it's a truth that you hadn't encountered yet?"

"Well ... yeah."

She rattled the beads in her hand. "You figure that 'mercenary company' means Lady Brazinka came through last week?"

"The timing works," he said. "It takes a company a good while to prepare for a trip like this. Though I don't know about a second one."

"Mm. I suppose they were either hired to join with the first, or to fight against them."

"It's definitely either one of those two things, or something completely different."

She made a face at him.

"I wonder if--if Brazinka is in Ehrat province herself," he said, a minute later, "or if she's waiting for word in Leotide City."

"You're angry at her," Lara said.

"Not that angry," he lied. "But I've got a few harsh words I'd like to share."

She eyed him for a moment. "I can't imagine a lady like her rolling into the Weep."

"I can. She travelled to Rockbridge to demand money from the marquis. What's she like?"

"Like a proper lady. Calculating. Cold. Well-spoken and well-dressed."

"Sounds charming."

"Probably, if she wants to be. You really think she'd come all this way, just for money?"

"Spoken like a true dryn. You all don't even use coin. Chests full of gold and gems is a fortune. And why else did Brazinka send that letter in the first place? Because she's trying to rise through the ranks by collecting long-forgotten payments from the provinces."

"Oh."

"An inviolate rule of the valley is, every provincial official dreams of working in the capital."

"Oh," she said again. "And, uh, what are 'cellar towns'?"

"In the years before everyone fled, most towns dug basements for shelter against angelbrood. Which turned into pretty elaborate underground homes by the end."

"Except everyone didn't flee," she said.

"Yes," he said in dryn before continuing in Iolian. "The olive groves must've lured some back. I guess that explains why there are 'new' cellar towns. There's good money in olives, and maybe ... " Eli scratched the back of his neck with a spark. "Maybe it's not so dangerous anymore."

"Sure, it's 'too heavencursed quiet' because everything is peaceful and lovely."

"You think she knows we're coming?"

Lara shrugged. "Who knows what a Bloodwitch can do? But something's happening, closer to the Weep. Maybe the lady and the mercenaries are doing something. Maybe the witch. Maybe something else. But for those two old-timers to start worrying, it's going to be ugly."

"Well, we never expected to fight in candy shops and flower gardens," he said.

Then he fell silent, toying with his sparks while he thought about what awaited them. A company of mercenaries on high alert--which they would be, in the Weep--would make it hard for Eli to get close to Brazinka. They'd protect their client, their payday, as fiercely as possible.

On the other hand, the Weep sounded like absolute mayhem at the moment. Two companies of mercenaries? Brood and witches, bandits and itinerant farmworkers? The rumor of chests bursting with treasure and the reality of smaller fortunes in olives?

Maybe Eli wasn't great at planning, but in chaos he'd thrive.