Battle Magic

“Back to work,” Rosethorn said. “Not you, Evvy, not chopping, anyway.” Evvy looked at her hands and had to agree. They were shaking too much for her to risk picking up a knife.

Briar sent her for a bucket of water. She got it, looking at the ground rather than the warriors. She almost dropped it on him when she saw three soldiers enter their set of rooms.

“The cats!” she cried. “They’ll knock over the gate stones!” She put the bucket down and ran to their quarters before Briar or Rosethorn could grab her. Two of the soldiers were looking into the bedchambers. One knelt just outside the line of gate stones and was scratching Ball under the chin.

“I’m sorry,” Evvy said. It was hard to think badly of anyone who petted her cats, even if it was Ball, who liked everyone. “I just wanted to warn you, the stones are magicked so they stay on that side of them.”

“There’s a nice trick,” the soldier said with admiration. “Useful when you’re traveling, I’ll wager. But … do they run alongside, or how do they keep up?”

Evvy showed him the carry-baskets and the basket the cats used as a privy. He told her about his own cats, to the point where she almost forgot to be terrified. She walked out with the three of them and, once the inspection of the caravansary was done, waved good-bye as they rode away.

Rosethorn and Briar walked up behind her as the other occupants of the caravansary took deep breaths and talked a little too loudly in their relief. “Did they try to get into our mage stuff?” Briar asked.

Evvy shook her head. “Not even enough to get hurt by the protecting spells,” she said, “not like those yujinons yesterday, looking into our bags like we’d bundled a big man into one.”

“Charmed by the cats again?” Rosethorn asked. Evvy nodded. “How many times have we used checking on those creatures to keep an eye on soldiers inspecting our things?”

Briar put an arm around Evvy’s shoulders. “They earn their keep, those cats.”

Rosethorn gently tweaked Evvy’s ear. “They do indeed.”

When Evvy turned to protest an unearned ear tweak, Rosethorn tweaked her own ear, then laid her forefinger beside her nose. That was a sign Briar had taught them both, a bit of thief sign from his youth that meant uncanny doings, or mage work. The tweak of her own ear was notice to both of her younger companions that Rosethorn suspected the soldiers had planted spy spells in the caravansary.

Evvy growled.

“You’re getting hungry,” Briar said wisely. He didn’t resent being spied on the way Rosethorn and Evvy did; he expected it. He did sigh when Rosethorn shook her finger, telling him silently he wasn’t to try to find and dismantle the spy spells. Evvy giggled despite her resentment. “Let’s finish working on that soup.”

After the soldiers’ departure the Traders retreated to their house carts. Evvy didn’t blame them. Too often, when nations were in upheaval and looking for someone to blame, they singled out Traders. In return, the Traders had strict rules in their dealings with outsiders. If Briar’s sister Daja, and in fact Briar and all three of his sisters, had not done some notable services for Traders now and then, these eastern Traders would not be so willing to help them now.

The company of travelers was subdued as they gathered for supper. Everyone had something to contribute: bread they had made on flat stones, different kinds of tea, pickled vegetables, cooked eggs, and fried fish. The other diners were loud enough in their complaints about people who broke the peaceful traditions of a caravansary that the silence of Rosethorn and her companions went unnoticed.

“I’ll tell you this for nothing,” said a merchant from Namorn who was also bound for the Pebbled Sea. Rosethorn had cared for a cut on his arm and he felt kindly toward her. “You won’t see anyone from a Living Circle temple between here and Hanjian. The emperor’s Magistrates of the Vigilant Eyes announced back in Seed Moon that they had uncovered a fearful plot against the Living Circle faith. For the protection of the temples and those who serve in them, they put them under guard, by soldiers. None of the dedicates or their novices, or even any of those that worship, are being allowed in or out.”

Rosethorn stared at him. “But I heard none of this where we were!”

“Yanjingyi people don’t talk about the doings of the Vigilant Eyes,” the merchant replied. “It’s bad luck.”

“It isn’t only the Living Circle,” another diner said. She was one of the drovers who handled the Namornese merchant’s mules. “Many of the foreign temples are either closed or under guard. Only ones for the Yanjingyi gods and goddesses are open to all, and too bad for us that worship other gods. We can only hope they hear us so far from home.”

“A pity you couldn’t go to Gyongxe,” a woman from one of the other groups of travelers said. “They say that even if your god has no temple, you still have a chance of reaching his ear with your prayer.”

“Oh?” the Namornese man asked. “How is that?”

“It’s Gyongxe,” the woman said, as if that made the answer plain. When the people from the Namornese group stared at her, she chuckled and shrugged. “That’s why so many build their temples there, even when their faiths have homes elsewhere. That’s why the rivers that spring from there are sacred. Gyongxe is the closest you can get to the gods without dying. Everyone knows that. The Drimbakangs, all three ranges of them, they are the pillars that hold the heavens aloft.”