“Oh, look,” Mar said, as she turned aside to watch two women pulling strands of ever thinner dough from hand to hand, doubling and twisting the strands until they were almost as fine as hairs before hanging them to dry on racks made of thin wooden dowels.
“Noodle makers,” Lionsmane said, stopping beside her. “Much more popular than rice or potatoes here. They say you eventually get tired of eating noodles, but it’s never happened to me.”
After a while the streets got wider, the market squares larger and noisier, and Mar began to wish for a horse after all. Lionsmane and Wolfshead moved through the crowd as if they were alone on the trail. Light glinted off the little beads and bits of metal woven into Wolfshead’s narrow blood-red braids. Mar glanced ahead at Lionsmane. They both seemed so relaxed, striding along bareheaded and empty-handed. Both had put away their traveling leathers and were dressed once more as Mar had seen them when they had first met. Both in loose-fitting trousers tucked into half boots, the Lionsmane in a light brown tunic embroidered with gold threads that caught and reflected the gold in his hair, the Wolfshead in her quilted vest, bright with beading and ribbons, her arms bare, her skin white in the chill morning air. For the most part the two Brothers smiled as they spoke to each other and to Mar, pointing out here a spotted horse like Wolfshead’s Bloodbone, there a seller of spiced rolls that Lionsmane insisted on buying, and pausing at one point to watch a group of children play a skipping game. But Mar noticed that the Wolfshead in particular scanned the people around them, as though she were looking for something or someone in particular, not just checking for possible danger. Mar followed one especially narrow glance at a redheaded man before she realized what it was the Wolfshead looked for.
Red Horsemen, Mar thought. She’s looking for other Red Horsemen.
The streets became more crowded as businesses opened and serious marketing began. Still, Mar noticed that people seemed to clear a path for the Mercenaries without being aware of it.
At one point she saw three people dressed in the dark green of the Marked. There were a few stony looks, but most of the passersby ignored them. With the crowds, entertainers appeared, and after so many days on horseback Mar was grateful for the rest stops, once to watch a particularly good juggler, and once a person who seemed to be swallowing swords. Mar turned for one last look as they continued on their way.
“How does she do that?”
“Sword’s dull,” Wolfshead said, as if that explained everything.
“Oh, and another thing…” Lionsmane was imparting a steady commentary on manners and protocol over his shoulder as they walked. Mar swallowed, her head was starting to spin.
“Parno, for Sun and Moon’s sake, leave the Dove alone. You told her all this on the trail, and she’s asked you all the questions she can think of. If she hasn’t memorized the eating tools by now, she’s not going to the next few spans.”
Mar flashed the older woman a grateful smile, hoping it didn’t look as stiff as it felt. Now that she was on the point of putting Lionsmane’s instructions to use, Mar was finding it vastly less entertaining than it had seemed on the road. And perhaps less to be wished for than it had seemed in Navra.
“Have we much farther to go?” Her feet hurt, and her legs weren’t used to walking. Part of her wanted to get there, to get it over with. Part of her hoped that this walk would never end.
Dhulyn was enjoying herself as much as she could in a city-fine places to visit, she’d always thought, but you wouldn’t want to live in one. They crossed a broad avenue and turned uphill, entering a sizable square where three streets met, and the corner of a warehouse butted up against a half-ruined garden wall. Here, such a crowd had gathered that it almost blocked the passage through the area entirely. A man in red-and-brown robes was standing on what was left of the wall, raised above the crowd to about the height of a person sitting on a horse. Dhulyn wondered if this particular bit of wall had been chosen for just that reason. Get the people to see you as an authority, either noble or military.
And the man was a Jaldean priest, no doubt about it, though certainly the youngest one Dhulyn had ever seen. Hair and beard close-cropped. High forehead and a spot showing where he would be bald in a few years. A much older man in robes of the same colors stood on the ground near the speaker’s feet. Dhulyn slowed to let some of the people coming the other way pass by on her left side. She’d thought she’d seen a flash of green as the older man’s head had turned away, but she couldn’t be sure unless he turned back again. The crowd closest to the priests certainly looked slack-jawed and blank-faced, but they did not display any of the destructive behavior she and Parno had seen in the mob in Navra.
Mar’s hand tugged slightly on the front of Dhulyn’s vest as the press of people moved them farther apart, recalling Dhulyn to her charge.
“Just keep moving,” Dhulyn told her. “Keep your hand on Parno, don’t worry about me.” She smiled when Mar took hold of Parno’s sword belt before letting go of Dhulyn’s vest. Smart girl. It was hard to navigate in this big a crowd if you didn’t know how. Easy to lose your nerve.
“Now there’s no doubt,” the young Jaldean was saying, “that the Caids knew how to awaken the Sleeping God. And there’s no one who has seen the Dead Spots, where the land is blackened and sterile, melted and fused like glass, who doesn’t know what happens when the Sleeping God awakes.”
Dhulyn raised her eyebrows, but kept her grimace from moving so far as her lips. She remembered, years before, walking through a market square with Dorian the Black, and stopping to listen to an old man, a Jaldean priest. All that old man had talked about was how the Sleeping God kept watch always in his dreams, ready to awaken and protect everyone from harm. She’d still been a child then-at least in some ways-with a child’s way of looking at things, and she’d wondered just how blooded bad things had to get for the blooded god to wake up and help people.
Today’s priest seemed to have come a long way from that.
“And we think-we hope-that knowledge has died with the Caids, but has it? I ask you, my friends, has it?” Several voices called out “no,” but the man continued as if he hadn’t been answered. “We can’t know for certain, and that’s the fact. But we can take precautions, we can take care.
“We don’t know that there are snakes in the grass, but we can thump the ground with our walking sticks as we go, to be safe. We don’t know that the Cloud People are going to rob the caravan, they say they won’t…” Here the man smiled and shook his head as if he could say a thing or two about that, and smiles and winks passed through the listening crowd as if they, too, knew something about the real behavior of Cloud People. “But we can hire guards to keep ourselves safe.
“Now, the Marked say they’re not trying to awaken the Sleeping God, that they don’t even know how. And many of you have Marked among your neighbors, kind, helpful people and they tell you they don’t know how to awaken the Sleeping God, and you think it must be true. You don’t see how they can be so dangerous and so wicked.” The Jaldean pursed his lips and nodded, as if conceding the point. “But we know,” his voice fell like a hammer, “that the Marked are the descendants of the Caids. Where else would their special talents come from, remember, talents that can’t be taught to all or any-talents that draw on the Sleeping God’s power, draining it, bringing him ever closer to wakefulness. No my friends, however kind and helpful they might be as individuals, as your neighbors, as your friends, the Marked are a danger to you, and a danger to themselves. They must stop. We must learn to do without their aid, their deceptive aid, in order to preserve the world. We must take steps to save ourselves. And to save them too! All they have to do is come to the shrine to be blessed. All they have to do is come to the shrine to be cleansed, to be purified. Let us help them to keep us all safe…”