The horses were picketed on the far side of the camp. There were about two dozen drays: big, powerful animals, the engines of farms and towns. Scattered among them were a handful of draft ponies, and some of the smaller, faster, feistier horses meant for riding.
Drina flipped off the wall, heels over head, landed neat-footed, and ran over to them. Kate came cautiously with her. Drina was stroking a cart horse’s pink, freckled nose. The horse was nearly white, but dappled with dun patches, like butter floating in buttermilk. “This is Cream,” said Drina. She stooped and pulled a handful of grass and held it out. The horse wrapped her tongue around Drina’s hand. “She’s mine.” Drina glanced sideways at Plain Kate, then twitched a smile and amended: “I mean, she’s my favorite. I helped her be born.” Cream worked her jaw and whickered. Drina leaned her cheek into the hollow between Cream’s huge collarbones. Her face looked like stained walnut against the horse’s coat of pale new pine.
Drina looked at Plain Kate, eyes shining. “Do you want to ride her?”
Plain Kate looked up at the horse: way up. “I don’t know how.”
“I’ll teach you. It’s not hard, you just have to hold on.”
“I…?Shouldn’t we get back?”
“We should.” Drina wrapped her arms up toward Cream’s shoulders and kissed her chin. The horse whuffled and lipped Drina’s hair. “But I’ll teach you to ride soon. You can’t go the Roamer way without riding.”
?
There were a hundred things to tend to, a thousand things to do, in the breaking of a camp, and Plain Kate didn’t know how to do any of them.
She didn’t know how to unhook a cooking tripod and bind the three legs together into a single iron staff, or where to tuck the tripod under the cart. She didn’t know how to fold a wet rug so that it wouldn’t mold. She didn’t know how to oil horse tack or fix a harness.
There were eggs to gather and chickens to catch and stuff into wicker baskets, which were in turn piled into a rough iron cage. “A bear cage,” said Drina, her arms full of squawking feathers. “We had a dancing bear for the markets. She died.” Plain Kate didn’t know how to catch chickens.
“I’ll show you,” offered Taggle, who was still drowsing on her coat.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered, and hoped she could keep him quiet that long.
The Roamers hoisted the iron cage onto the top of one of the wagons with a block and tackle. Kate didn’t know how to use a block and tackle. She didn’t know why the one wagon was like a little house on wheels, built of solid wood, while the others were like tents. She couldn’t even keep the three women straight: one was Daj’s daughter, and the other two some sort of complicated cousins. She wasn’t sure where the men were or whether she was allowed to talk to them, since the other women did not.
But she did know how to scrub a pot. It was not too different from smoothing a finished carving, and was done with a folded square of leather, dipped wet into sand. Plain Kate scoured pots until they gleamed black as the night reflected in the river, and by the time that was done, the Roamers were ready to go.
And when they went, Plain Kate went with them.
five
the road and the rain
Despite what Drina had said, it turned out you could go the Roamer way without riding. Mostly, you walked.
The caravan bunched and inched down the road. People on foot went first, where the road was merely sticky and rutted with water. Then came the loose horses, with the horsemen among them. And finally, churning up the mud and the new horse dung, came the wagons. And last of all came Plain Kate.
Walking at the back was Daj’s idea, to keep Plain Kate out of sight until they were far from town. “Harder for some fool to turn you loose, then,” she’d said. Plain Kate had been taken aback; she’d thought her place among the Roamers was Daj’s to give. But, no, explained Drina. Big decisions like that were a matter for the men. “Never fear, kit,” said Daj. “Trust Mother Daj. I know how to lead from the last wagon.”
So Kate walked in the back. It was hard going. She’d lived her life on cobbles, and the mud of the road was new to her. It clutched at her heels like a dying thing. Her boots grew dark with water. Her tall socks got wet and her feet squelched and soon blistered. But she said nothing, and kept walking.
Her little town sank behind her. Samilae. She had never left it before, and had never had to think of its name. Her father when he was alive had been only Father. Dead he was Piotr Carver, and she had to say his name sometimes. And now her home was Samilae. She looked back and saw it become a huddle of roofs, with the tall spire of the weizi above them—her father’s handiwork, casting its finger of shadow after her. She did not cry, and kept walking.