Redwing (9 page)

Miserably, not knowing what else to do, he unloaded the mattresses and set to harnessing the mules. He would have to bring the mattresses into the caravan before they left—but right now he didn't have the nerve to face Aydin. It was on Rowan to apologize, he knew that. He still could hardly believe what he had said. He had been thinking only of a way to fight back against what he assumed was a mean joke, had never dreamed Aydin would take him seriously. But that was no excuse. Now he would have to find the words to make it right.

ELEVEN

N
ot that way.

On the second day out of Miller's Falls, Dusty and Daisy came to a halt before a fork in the road. The main way was clear—they were on an actual road now, not the narrow country lanes they had traveled in the backcountry. Rowan pulled the left reins to turn the mules away from the narrow side road branching off to the right and clucked at them to walk on.

And then…Had he really heard that voice? He'd heard it before; he didn't doubt that now. But…

Rowan hesitated, peering down the side road. The vegetation was thick and overgrown, the trees arching over the lane to form a green, shadowy tunnel.
Are there no robbers
in Prosper?
Aydin's earlier question came back to him. The Tarzine had been amazed at the dense woodland that sometimes came up to the very edge of the back roads. “In my country—well, except maybe for the badlands—this would be cleared back a bow's length to prevent ambushes,” he had said. Rowan shrugged. He wasn't worried about being robbed, not on lonely roads anyway. In the cities, where thieves clever at picking pockets and locks congregated, more care was needed. Still, the taboo against stealing the tools of a craftsman's trade was very strong, even if people no longer believed quite so fervently in the guild god's curse, and most of what Rowan owned was his instruments.

No, highwaymen didn't worry him. But the side road would be a detour at best, more likely a dead end petering out into nothing at the last farm or a lake edge. He turned back to the main road.

Not that way.

With a muttered curse, Rowan pulled up the mules, then turned and clambered under the canvas flap into the caravan. Grabbing the map, he spread it out on the little galley table.

“What is it?”

Aydin, up on one elbow in his bunk, his white-blond hair a matted tangle from sleep, eyed him blearily. It was an advantage of Rowan's curls—or as Aydin put it, the
one
advantage—you couldn't tell if they were tangled or not.

“I'm just checking the route,” said Rowan. With his finger, he traced the road from Miller's Falls and had just found what must be their turnoff when Aydin loomed over his shoulder.

“I thought it was clear—the main road all the way.”

Rowan hunched his shoulders in annoyance. For once he wished Aydin had just stayed in bed. After their Big Fight—Rowan thought of it that way—Aydin had accepted his mumbled apology with surprising good grace, after extracting in payment an extra day in Miller's Falls to sleep off his bad head. But to Rowan the truce still felt fragile, and he was not keen to get into another argument. “It is. I just…I just think maybe we should take this other route.” It was, in fact, a detour, looping around through a number of villages and rejoining the Western Carriageway below the Gull River.

Aydin poked his head out the front flap and then climbed right through. Rowan sighed and followed to find Aydin standing in the roadway, looking incredulously at the dark side road.

“There? You want to go down there? We are finally on a nice smooth road, passing through nice civilized towns and you want to drag us back into the bush?”

Rowan colored. He had been going to tell Aydin about the voice he heard—or thought he heard. He had thought maybe Aydin of all people would give it credence. But faced with such scorn, he couldn't.

“The mules didn't want to go,” he muttered, defensive now. “Sometimes they know—”

“The mules. I see. That would be the same mules that didn't want to go into the stable where a soft bed and big meal awaited them? The mules you had to drag away from the gripeweed they were determined to poison themselves with?”

Rowan stood glowering and tongue-tied, unable to counter Aydin's ridicule. When he saw Aydin's mouth open for another volley, he gave up.

“Forget it. It was just an idea.”

He picked up the reins and smacked them against the dusty flanks of the mules with a loud “HO!” Startled by the sudden action, they set off smartly down the road, the caravan following with a lurch.

“Bloody—” Aydin had to scramble up beside him to avoid being left behind.

BY LATE AFTERNOON they were nearing the river, and the mules were throwing up clods of mud instead of dust. There had been rain in these parts and plenty of it. Rowan had watched the hard-baked road become first damp, then slick and pocked with puddles. It was perfectly passable though, and it looked like the rain was done—the sky was bright, with only a few lingering clouds. They should easily make the town of Gull Crossing, just on the other side of the bridge, well before nightfall.

Rowan let his mind drift to the clop of hooves and the joggle of the caravan. There'd be no more anonymity once they got to Clifton. There would be people he knew, longtime friends and rivals of his parents. He'd have to go to the guild and report their deaths, register as a performer… and tell what happened over and over again. He wondered who he might run into, who he might find to play with. He tried not to think about the possibility that nobody would offer him a place.

The mules stopped again. Rowan looked up to see the Gull River glittering before him at the foot of a steep hill. The bridge was some way to their right, for the road had been cut diagonally down the bank to ease the pitch of the descent. It was muddy but not washed out, and Rowan wouldn't have given it a second thought if not for that voice he had heard. As it was, he climbed down and gave the mules' harness fastenings a thorough check, making especially sure that the shafts were secured so there was no chance of the wagon overtaking the mules on the hill.

Of course, Aydin poked his head out.

“What now?”

“Nothing,” Rowan said shortly. “Routine check before a hill. Go back to your beauty sleep, why don't you?” He felt himself color, embarrassed by his own hostility. It was pathetic how easily the Tarzine could get under his skin, how sensitive Rowan could be to any hint of ridicule.

And amazing how impervious Aydin was. Deliberately not taking the hint, he climbed through, instead, to the driver's bench.

“Why didn't you tell me it was such a fine day? Look at that river—don't you just love when the sunshine makes little diamonds all over the water? It's really a very pretty view.”

Gritting his teeth, Rowan checked Daisy's belly band and then climbed up beside Aydin and gathered up the reins.

They took it slow, Rowan doing his best to avoid the wheel ruts carved into the mud by the day's traffic. The mules were steady, and Rowan had just mentally relaxed when it all fell apart.

Dusty's back foot skidded in the mud, and she stumbled and danced to regain her purchase on the slippery surface. Daisy—startled by the commotion, or maybe just misunderstanding the pull from her partner and trying to keep up—kicked into a trot. Dusty, still not steady on her feet and now being dragged forward, got her front foot in a pothole and lurched forward. And then they were out of control, the mules scared and running hard to get away, the caravan swaying and bouncing behind, too fast.

Aydin shouted out in alarm and then yelled in Rowan's ear, “Do something!”

“Take these!” Rowan shoved the reins into Aydin's hands. “Pull steady, not too hard.” He groped at his feet for the brake lever, found it and pulled up.

“Not all the way,” he remembered his father coaching. “Just till you feel the drag. Otherwise you could flip the whole works.”

He felt the metal prong make contact with the wheel rim. It made a god-awful screech, but as he pulled harder, he could feel the drag on the caravan. He hung on, fighting the buck of the wagon.

“It's working!” Aydin's voice was a hoarse gasp in Rowan's ear. But he was right, the mules had stopped their panicky run and slowed to a trot. Ears twitching madly, flanks alive with shivers, they were still spooked but back under control. Maybe the more familiar feeling of the wagon pulling against them instead of pushing them forward had calmed them. Rowan looked ahead and saw that, although it seemed like they'd been careening down the hill for a lifetime, they had not yet reached its foot. He sent up a prayer to the god of travelers. They would not hurtle into the river after all. He was shaky with relief, barely able to keep his hold on the brake.

He looked again. They were way over at the edge of the road, the caravan's right wheels bouncing through grass and shrubbery.

“Aydin!” Crouched over the brake handle as he was, he had to crane his neck around to glimpse the tall boy's face. “Try to get them into the middle.”

And then he was flying forward, pitched headfirst over the footboard and into a crazy jumble of mule legs. The crack of breaking wood rang in his ears and filled his thoughts. “A wheel. Cursit, CURSIT! Must have hit a rock. Gods' curse—we get this far and then break an almighty wheel?” Even as he thudded into the earth, tasting mud and feeling the wrench in his shoulder, his mind clung stupidly to the wheel.

“
ROWAN!”
Ettie's voice was a shrill alarm.

Rowan lifted his face from the mud and saw the blurred flash of a hoof inches from his face. The wagon had come to an abrupt stop, but the mules had reached their limit and were in a bucking, braying frenzy—and Rowan was about to have his head staved in. Scrambling backward, he made it under the shelter of the tilted wagon and just crouched there on his hands and knees. He'd had enough too. His breath came in tight little heaves, his throat somehow too narrow to let it through. His arms trembled under him, the pain in his shoulder sharpening into an insistent throbbing ache. He didn't even realize at first that he was crying.

And that's how Aydin found him—hiding under the caravan, sobbing like a little kid.

“Get out of there!”

The anger in Aydin's voice cut short the tears as sympathy never could. Startled, Rowan wiped his nose on his sleeve and glanced at the face framed in the opening between the wheels. Aydin's golden skin was blotched white and red, as though he had broken out in hives. He reminded Rowan of a squid he had once seen in a tide pool, the colors fading and blushing across its translucent body.

“Are you hurt?” Rowan asked as he clambered out from under the caravan.

“Yes, I am hurt.” Aydin gestured to his pant leg, ripped and stained with blood on one thigh. He pushed Wolf 's concerned nose away from it. “But you—you could have been killed!”

Was this how Tarzines showed concern? Rowan wondered. Aydin still seemed hopping mad.

Aydin came up and thrust his face inches from Rowan's, as he had on their very first meeting. The anger then had been largely fake, Rowan realized now. This time it was real.

“It was her, wasn't it?” Aydin accused.

“What…?” It was a feeble stall for time—Rowan knew who he was talking about—but it was all he could find to say.

“Your sister! It wasn't the bloody mules that made you hesitate at that fork, it was your sister!”

“How do you know?”

“She was bright as bloody day during that run down the hill, practically sitting on your head. Idiot! You get a warning from the dead, and you blabber on about mules? The demons take you! I should kick in your head myself!”

Aydin turned on his heel and stalked off to the mules. At least he had thought to tie the reins together and hitch them to a tree before ripping into Rowan.

TWELVE

S
lowly, giving each other a wide berth, they took stock of the damage. Wolf was unharmed—he had been off the road investigating yet another enticing smell when they lost control. Aydin, who had always pleaded ignorance and left all mule care to Rowan, managed to get the mules calmed down and unhitched from their harness, and walked first Daisy and then Dusty up and down the road in front of the bridge, watching their gait carefully.

Rowan confirmed that the back right wheel was indeed ruined and saw with relief that the axle seemed undamaged. There was a spare wheel bolted to the bottom of the caravan, but he wasn't sure he could figure out how to change it. He wasn't sure his shoulder was up to the job either—he could almost feel it swelling up. He moved it gingerly in a little circle and grimaced. It hurt—really hurt. Not broken though, or he wouldn't be able to move it at all. Wasn't that right? He thought he'd heard something like that.

Aydin was on his way back to the caravan. Limping, Rowan noticed with a pang of guilt.
My fault.

“My ma had some doctoring stuff in the caravan. I'll go get it.”

“You might want to wash off first.” Aydin spoke mildly, the anger faded to a kind of careful neutrality. “You're filthy.”

Rowan was suddenly aware that he was coated in road mud—mud mixed with the excrement of every domestic animal that had ever been led or driven over the bridge. It was on his face, under his fingernails—and it stank.

Disgusted, Rowan hurried to the river, stripped off his boots and waded right in. It was shallow for a few steps and then dropped off, deep and cold. He sank under the icy water, scrubbing at his face, feeling the sting of the scrapes on his hands as his clothes billowed about him. When he surfaced, though, he realized his shoulder was too sore to swim properly. He made his way to shore with an awkward one-handed dog paddle, keeping his right arm tucked in close, and clambered out. He peeled off his pants, started on his shirt and realized that pulling it, wet and clinging, over his head was going to hurt like demons.