If she wanted to turn back, now was the time. She could be a less-than-good sailor. She could go home and look for another trade. There were plenty in Helwar, and women could do most of them. She hadn’t really wanted to fish in the ocean, not after she killed the fish in the basin. As for the other male activities, let them  have fighting and hunting dangerous animals! Let them log and handle heavy timbers! Why should women risk their lives?

She stopped outside the inn, almost ready to turn around. Then she remembered Perig in the most recent play she’d seen, at the moment when the play’s balance changed. A kinsman lay dead at his feet. It was no longer possible to go back. He’d stood quietly, then lifted his head, opening his mouth in a great cry that was silent. No one in the audience made a noise. Somehow, through his silence and their silence, Ahl heard the cry.

She would not give that up. Let men have every other kind of danger. This was something they had to share.

She went in and found the actors, a shabby group. As she had thought, they were short-handed.

The senior man was pudgy with a scar on one side of his face. “Have you any experience?” he asked.

“I’ve practiced on my own,” said Ahl.

The man tilted his head, considering. “You’re almost certainly a runaway, which is bad enough. Even worse, you’ve decided you can act. If I was only one man short, I’d send you off. But two of my men are gone, and if I don’t find someone, we won’t be able to continue.”

In this manner, she was hired, though the man had two more questions. “How old are you? I won’t take on a child.”

“Eighteen,” said Ahl.

“Are you certain?”

“Yes,” she answered with indignation. Though she was lying about almost everything else, eighteen was her age.

Maybe her tone convinced the man. “Very well,” he said, then asked, “What’s your name?”

“Dapple,” she said.

“Of no family?”

She hesitated.

The man said, “I’ll stop asking questions.”

She had timed this well. They left the next morning, through fog and drizzling rain. Her comrades on the ship would think she was sleeping. Instead, she trudged beside the actors’ cart, which was pulled by a pair of  tsina. Her tunic, made of thick wool, kept out the rain. A broad straw hat covered her head. Oiled boots protected her feet against mud and pools of water.

From this point on, the story will call her Dapple. It’s the name she picked for herself and the one by which she was known for the rest of her life. Think of her not as Helwar Ahl, the runaway girl, but Dapple the actor, whose lineage did not especially matter, since actors live on the road, in the uncertain regions that lie between family holdings and the obligations of kinship.

All day they traveled inland, through steep hills covered with forest. Many of the trees were new to her. Riding in the cart, the pudgy man —his name was Manif—told her about the company. They did mostly comedies, though Manif preferred hero plays. “These people in the south are the rudest collection of louts you can imagine. They like nothing, unless it’s full of erect penises and imitations of intercourse; and men and women watch these things together! Shocking!

“They even like plays about  breeding, though I prefer—of course—to give them decent comedies about men having sex with men or women having sex with women. But if they insist on heterosexuality, well, we have to eat.”

This sounded bad to Dapple, but she was determined to learn. Maybe there was more to comedy than she had realized.

They made camp by the side of the road. Manif slept in the cart, along with another actor: a man of twenty-five or so, not bad looking. The rest of them pitched a tent. Dapple got an outside place, better for privacy, but also wetter. The rain kept falling. In the cart, Manif and his companion made noise.

“Into the  halin, I notice,” said one of Dapple’s companions.

“And one another,” a second man added.

The third man said, “D’you think he’ll go after Dapple here?”

It was possible, thought Dapple, that she’d done something stupid. Cholkwa had warned her about the south.

“He won’t if Dapple finds himself a lover quickly,” said the first man.

This might have been a joke, rather than an offer. Dapple couldn’t tell. She curled up, her back to the others, hoping that no one would touch her. In time, she went to sleep.

The next day was clear, though the ground remained wet. They ate breakfast, then struck the tent and continued inland. The change in weather made Dapple more cheerful. Maybe the men would make no advances. If they did, she’d find a way to fend them off. They might be shabby and half as good as Perig and Cholkwa, but they didn’t seem to be monsters or savages; and this wasn’t the far north, where a war had gone on for generations, unraveling everything. People on this continent understood right behavior.

As she thought this, one of the  tsina screamed and reared. An arrow was stuck in its throat.

“Bandits!” cried Manif and shook the reins, crying, “Go, go,” to the animals.

But the shot animal stumbled, unable to continue; and the second  tsin began to lunge, trying to break free of the harness and its comrade. The actors pulled swords. Dapple dove into the edge-of-forest brush. Behind her was shouting. She scrambled up a hill, her heart beating like a hammer striking an anvil, though more quickly. Up and up, hoping the bandits would not follow. At last she stopped. Her heart felt as if it might break her chest; her lungs hurt; all her breath was gone. Below her on the road was screaming. Not the tsin any longer, she thought. This sound was men.

When she was able to breathe, she went on, climbing more slowly now. The screaming stopped. Had the bandits noticed her? Had they counted the company? Four of them had been walking, while Manif and his lover rode. But the lover had been lying in back, under the awning, apparently exhausted by his efforts of the night before. If the bandits had been watching, they might have seen only five people.

No way to tell. She continued up the hill, finally reaching a limestone bluff. There was a crack. She squeezed her way in, finding a narrow cave. There she stopped a second time, leaning against the wet rock, trying to control her breath. Somehow she’d managed to keep her bag. She dropped it at her feet and pulled her knife.

For the rest of the day, she waited, then through the night, dozing from time to time, waking suddenly. No one came. In the morning, she went down the hill, stopping often to listen. There was nothing to hear except wind in the foliage and small animals making their usual noises.