“Except for the bit where you had me worried, of course. But blowing up at Frederic? Running away like that? I wish you could have seen how guilty and worried he was! We’ll have him declaring his love in no time.”
I sighed. “Celine, I didn’t plan anything.” But the heat from his touch still lingered on my face, and my admonishment held less conviction than usual. I had wronged him. Perhaps I had wronged them all when I assumed they were just the same as those who had made promises to me in the past.
The excess of emotions had left me exhausted, however, and I couldn’t process the thought without a good sleep. Except that sleep would have to wait, at least until Celine had abandoned whatever plan she was currently concocting to throw me together with her brother. Because if she thought what had just happened was brilliant, I trembled to think what situation she might thrust me into next.
Chapter 20
Celine must have read the rebellion in my face because she refused to confide any of her grand schemes in me. If she hadn’t been a princess, I would have wrung it out of her, but even I had my limits in terms of how far I could push my position.
The next morning the remaining Tour guards and servants packed our tents and belongings and then stood back to watch the desert traders at work. I offered to help Ofie, but he turned me away with a grin.
“How many years has it been?” he asked. “Six? You’re out of practice, city girl.”
I glared at him. He knew how I had hated it when the children of Caravan Osmira called me that. But his laugh and wink took away any sting, and I couldn’t stay mad at him. His cousin proved to be adept with the animals and skilled with the loading despite his small stature, and I could see why he hadn’t been left behind with the rest of the children outside Largo.
“I earn my wage like a grown man.” The lad puffed out his chest.
My respect for Ofie increased. Most children among the desert traders helped with the work, but they did it to learn, and to increase their family’s strings and standing within the caravan. It was kind of Ofie to pay his cousin in coin.
The groaning and bellowing of the camels continued throughout the loading process, stopping only once all the provisions and tents were stowed and the loads complete. Most of the traders would walk, but some camels had been fitted with saddles for the royals and the nobles still accompanying the Tour.
Some of the older ones looked dismayed at the idea, but Celine and the princes clambered effortlessly onto the backs of the kneeling animals. The two princes shared a beast, and I was ushered up behind Celine on hers. I had expected to walk but secretly felt a little relieved. It had been far too long since I’d spent a day walking beside a camel string, and I wasn’t entirely sure I would still be able to do it. At least not for a full day.
Our camel was led directly by an older camel-puller, as was the one ridden by Frederic and Cassian. A line of camels stretched behind both animals, each secured to the one in front with a rope.
“Woah,” said Celine as our camel stood to its feet, rocking us in the process. She peered sideways and down. “We’re a long way up.”
I had managed to put together a very basic wrap for all three royals the night before. They would stay on at least, even if they weren’t as elegant as they would be once I put some more work into them. Celine looked over at the camel which carried her brothers, examining the bright material that draped over the saddle.
“I’ve seen camels before, of course,” she said. “Even if they rarely come into Lanare, they’re common enough in Largo. But somehow it’s different from up here. When I was a child I couldn’t understand why the desert traders were different from the regular traveling merchants, but it’s obvious really.”
“The camels used to scare me a little when I first arrived with the traders,” I admitted. “But I got used to them soon enough. You will too.”
She nodded, peering over the edge with fascination again.
The nomadic desert traders were an off shoot of sorts from the traveling merchants. They were much more restricted in their area of operation and differed in many of their customs, but they were still bound by the rules and treaties of the merchant council. I had thought this unfair when I first arrived since the desert traders only ever sent a couple of representatives north when a council of caravans was called.
But the traders had soon explained to me that the protections provided by the binding were worth the restrictions. “Without them we would be vulnerable,” the older camel-pullers had explained to us youngsters around the fire.
The traveling merchants operated apart from the laws of any individual kingdom. Their own complicated set of laws were administered by the caravan leader or, if necessary, a council comprised of the merchants’ most senior leaders. The treaty between the merchants and the kingdoms was one of the oldest in existence. It provided the caravans with freedom of movement and protection from persecution, among other things. Any violation of the treaty could result in a merchant ban against an entire kingdom, an event of which any sane ruler lived in fear. The merchant council would deal swiftly with any caravan greedy enough to enter a kingdom under a ban.
The camel caravans worked closely with the ordinary merchant caravans, the horses and wagons taking the goods on to the places the camels couldn’t go. Thanks to the desert traders, the merchants didn’t have to fight their way through the jungle down to southern Largo or take ships and risk the treacherous reefs along the coast. Instead they collected the goods closer to Lanare and distributed them to the capital and up to the northern kingdoms.
It was an arrangement that benefited everyone. And the protection provided by the merchant treaty was doubly needed by the desert traders who were geographically tied to Lanover and the Great Desert that ran along its eastern border. It meant they weren’t true subjects of the Lanoverian crown, but given their inability to move to another kingdom as the merchants could, they had long ago sworn a limited fealty to respect Lanoverian laws alongside merchant ones in exchange for protection and favor from the crown.
The desert traders treated the royals with all due respect, and slowly the Tour participants became somewhat inured to the burning heat of the desert sun. Celine never seemed to adjust fully to the dry heat, but she developed a strange affection for the grumpy camels that often made me laugh.
She marveled at their many uses, drinking the camel milk that sustained us all with delight and laughing every time she saw a camel-puller who had run out yarn for his knitting reach back to pull some hair from one of the animals. She made me explain to her how they could spin the hair into yarn on the move and even show her how to knit something herself.
But she was soon distracted from the camels by a far more fascinating situation.
“Evie,” she murmured quietly to me one day as we sat upon our camel for hour after plodding hour. “Have you noticed that beautiful girl?” She pointed to a young desert trader who rode a string ahead of us.
“Yes, of course,” I said. “How could anyone not notice Tillara?” I remembered Tillie from my days with the traders as a child. The few days I had spent with Caravan Adira in my childhood had been mostly spent with Ofie. But all the children knew Tillie. Even then she had been set apart.
The daughter of the leader of Caravan Adira, she had been trained as a leader, not a camel-puller, and had often directed our haphazard games. We had deferred to her naturally and would have done so no doubt despite her excessive beauty which stood out even in childhood. She simply had an air about her that made others wish to be near her and to listen to what she had to say.