The Chained Adept (1-4)

Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

“What’s this?” Commander Chang said. “We don’t have time for every stray along the river.”

He turned aside to finish a discussion with Tun Jeju.

Penrys waited patiently with Zandaril and the children in the command tent. Zandaril gripped Tak Tuzap’s shoulder in a strong hint to stand still, and the little girl was subdued and quiet.

The expedition was setting up for camp in mid-afternoon. There would be a review of the incoming information from the settlements and then a planning session that was anticipated to go on for hours.

Penrys’s thoughts still roiled from Zandaril’s casual remark down by the river, and she avoided meeting his troubled gaze. She hadn’t dropped her shield to mind-speak him since.

Children. The thought haunted her. Women my apparent age do have children, mostly. Zandaril’s sisters and cousins do. Even the other female wizards at the Collegium had families, if they were old enough, and no one thought it strange.

There were no stretch marks on her body, but then she had no marks at all. Nothing left a permanent mark. Even liquor rolled off her after a while. My makers built me well, if makers there were.

She was tired of these bitter thoughts, but had no defense when they returned periodically to batter at her.

She leaned down to sniff the head of the girl wrapped around her hip. Under the dirt, she inhaled the child-scent, and she felt a pinch at the bridge of her nose. You can’t have her. What if you vanish again in a few years? Better she not get attached to you.

She told herself she was only carrying her because the boy was too small to do it, that the girl was comforted by the feel of a woman’s body—any woman would do.

Tak looked up at her face with a questioning expression, and she tried to smile reassuringly.

Chang returned his attention to them, and Zandaril said, “Tak Tuzap here says he made it through the gorge three days go. He came to find you.”

Chang’s eyes narrowed, and he turned to the boy. “You knew we were coming?”

Zandaril dropped his hand and the boy stood on his own, ramrod straight. “I knew someone would come, Commander-chi. Yenit Ping, the Endless City—they were never going to let the Rasesni just take Neshilik away from them. That’s what my uncle said.”

“And who is this uncle?”

“Tak Paknau, of clan Cham. He was the leader of the tengom, the trader’s guild, at the head of Gonglik Jong, the Steps, where all the caravans resume. Those who want to continue west by water take their goods past the rapids to where the river runs smooth again.”

Penrys heard the quaver in his voice.

“We were going to come together, but… he got caught.”

He looked down for a moment, but then raised his head again. “I know I’m young, sir, but we rehearsed what we would say together, and now there’s just me.”

Chang glanced at the girl on Penrys’s hip and lifted an eyebrow.

Tak said, “I found her along the way.”

Penrys and Zandaril had already heard much of that tale, on the ride to the camp.

“You can’t go in through Seguchi Norwan, sir.”

“Start at the beginning, boy, and tell me what happened.”

Chang gestured an invitation to sit. Penrys pulled two camp chairs together and settled the girl in one of them, hoping she might sleep. “I already sent for some food for the kids,” she told Chang.

The boy cleared his throat and began his story.

“It was the beginning of summer, sir. The fields were all planted and growing, and those with the better ground had taken their first cut of hay. We’d had the spring traders, come and gone, and most of the summer ones had arrived and were busy with the gepten, the trade fairs.”

He stopped to explain. “The towns run the gepten in a sequence so the merchants can get to each town, one after the other. They’d worked their way down to Song Em in the south for the small villages and were coming back along the western border when we first heard about the fighting.”

He watched Chang to see if he was following along. “You know, most of the herds are in Song Em—it’s sheltered, see, in the winter, with the mountains on three sides. Most of the towns are in the north, in Wechinnat, near the river.”

“Did the attack come down out of Nagthari?” Chang asked.

“No, that’s what was so strange. We expect those raids—there are forts and men on watch, and a series of alarm beacons, y’understand? That’s where they always come from. They plunder what they can, and then they leave.”

With a quirk of his mouth, he added, “My grandma used to say, they come to see what we’ve done with the place since they left.”

Chang nodded.

“This time they came down through the mountains on the border of Song Em and drove people north. They kept the herds.”

He swallowed. “The traders who got out, they came and talked to my uncle. They said the Rasesni brought women and children along, too.”

Tak stopped for a moment, remembering. “It was bad. They all thought it meant the Rasesni were going to settle in Song Em, and they started to make plans about taking it back. Things were quiet for a couple of weeks, and the towns in Wechinnat busied themselves making room for the new folk from the south.”

He rushed on. “But then, all in one night, they came at us down the river from Nagthari, and out of the south, too. We were caught between them, and lots of people tried to get out through the Gates, but then we found out that some of them had crept along the Craggies in the north to Koryan. They came down at the Gates and blocked the road, and so we were bottled in.”

His voice had risen and Chang gave him a moment. “When was this?”

“About, um, ten weeks ago. Not yet mid-summer.”

He clenched his fists. “There weren’t nothing much we could do about it, y’understand. The bigger towns put a delegation together and sent it to find the head guy, but they never came back. That scared everyone, and things started to fall apart.

“Y’see, the mountains around Neshilik aren’t really that bad. There are passes, and old roads—some are well known and some are kind of kept in the family. But none of them are good for more than a few folk at a time, and the townsfolk couldn’t get out that way. And some of them didn’t want to, leave everything behind, lose it all. And no one trusted anyone else.”

“But you got out,” Chang said.

“One group wanted to run the gorge in boats. That never works—the river’s too strong at the Gates—but my uncle couldn’t stop them. He told me, ‘Let them do it if they must, and we’ll leave the same night.’”

He bit his lip. “Someone must’ve betrayed him. A couple of Rasesni salengno showed up at our camp with swords, and clubs…” His voice caught. “I grabbed my pack and got out while they were busy.”

He wiped his hands along his breeches and took a deep breath.

He c****d his head at the girl, sleeping quietly. “She’s the only survivor from the gorge, far as I know.”

Tun Jeju picked up a brush and readied some ink and a piece of papyrus. “Names, son—I need as much as you can tell me about the raiders and whoever is leading them.”

Penrys heard a disturbance at the entrance to the tent. She could smell the arrival of roast fowls without turning her head.

Tak ignored it. He bowed to Tun and leaned forward in his chair. “Everything I can, Notju-chi. But most important, I need to tell you about the passes. My uncle took me with him, all the time. I know where lots of them are.”