Sunset wasn't far off when a faint smell of cooking came to Kira. The woman showed up soon after. "Blankets?"
"How much?" Kira asked.
"You can each have the use of one for another couple of crowns."
"How about we have one blanket each for one crown total?"
The woman studied Kira. "How about three crowns, and include the blankets and meals until we reach Dorcastle?"
"Deal."
After the woman left, Jason spoke softly. "Kira. Look."
She followed his pointing finger. The road next to the river had few travelers with night coming on, but in the distance toward Danalee Kira caught the glint of light off of burnished metal as the setting sun shot nearly level rays across the land. She watched the glints bob in a familiar, rhythmic way. Riders on horses, wearing helms. Coming this way from the city.
"What do we do?" Jason whispered.
"Sit here and hope," Kira said. "We can't move any faster by any other means. The cavalry should stop searching once full dark comes on."
"If they're after us—"
"Shhh! Look at the movement of the helms. The horses are trotting, not cantering or galloping. If they were in pursuit, they'd be moving faster."
"How can you—?" Jason shook his head at her in admiration. "Oh, yeah. You're an officer in that cavalry of the queen's."
"Honorary officer," Kira corrected. "And don't say that! We can't afford for anyone to overhear it."
The cavalry drew steadily closer as the sun sank, twilight coming on. The river narrowed, higher banks closing in either side, and the current flowed more swiftly, pushing the barge along faster. Kira had worried that the barge would stop for the night when dark fell, but the woman lit a lantern at the bow and they kept on.
She could barely see the oncoming cavalry in the dimness when the river swept around a bend and Kira lost sight of the riders. It bothered her that the cavalry had kept moving as dusk fell, but they would surely have to stop soon for the night. Unlike the barge, horses needed rest.
The woman brought Kira and Jason chunks of stale bread and two large bowls of stew, then went back to relieve her husband at the tiller. Kira found that the stew contained a few vegetables, some fish, and a lot of watery broth.
"I liked the food in Denkerk better," Jason grumbled.
"They get water and fish from the river," Kira said. "We'll probably have this every meal."
He stopped eating and stared at her. "You mean this fish and the water in this stew came out of the same river we're on right now?"
"Yeah," Kira said, wondering why Jason looked alarmed.
"Was everything processed and sterilized?"
"What?"
"There are, like, animals using that water! And people!"
"Yes," Kira said. "She boiled the stew. You can tell from the fish."
Jason lowered his head, anxiously studying his bowl of stew. "If she brings us sushi, I am not eating any."
"What's sushi?"
"Raw fish. A lot of people eat it back…where I come from. It's good."
"You eat raw fish?" Kira almost gagged at the thought. "And you're worried about stew that's been boiled?"
"It's good," Jason insisted. "Sashimi and stuff."
"You gut it first, right? You gut it and scale it before you eat the fish raw?"
"Of course we do!" Jason started laughing. "I figured some stuff that you guys ate might gross me out, but I never realized some stuff I ate would gross you out too. I guess it's all what you're used to."
Knowing that they really should stand watches during the night, Kira was too weary to care. She spread her blanket on the deck.
"Kira?" Jason asked. "Where are the bathrooms?"
She pointed over the side of the barge. "The river."
"The river?" Jason groaned. "I don't think I'm going to be able to eat any more stew."
"Suit yourself." Kira must have fallen asleep almost immediately, her dreams haunted by images of worlds ravaged by terrible weapons that struck down millions at a blow.
* * *
They had reached Tiaesun about noon after another day and night of travel. Mari was standing by a window, looking out over the reborn capital city of Tiae, when a guard led a Mage into the room. "A message, Lady."
"Thank you." Mari glanced at Alain, waiting until the guard had left. The Mage waited too, her expression impassive, not engaging in even the unspoken social interactions that normally occurred among people. "What is it?"
The Mage's voice was impassive as well, not the dead tones of old, but still heavily influenced by the former Mage Guild's rejection of any form of emotion. "Elder," she addressed Mari, using the Mage term of respect, "this message came to this one from a Mage in Danalee. Master Mechanic Alli and Mechanic Calu of Danalee speak of one Gari, and say that one met the one Kira in their city. The one Kira rode a creature of the Mechanics to the west where Julesport lies. That one Jason was with her. Both looked well. Master Mechanic Alli adds that the one Kira threatened that one Gari with her Mechanic weapon, and that one Alli asks to know what the elder Mari has been teaching the one Kira."
The Mage stopped reciting her message, turned, and left to wait outside.
"Thank you," Mari called after her. "Isn't it just like Alli to add a comment to her message even at a time like this?" she asked Alain. "Although I can imagine Alli was pretty upset at the idea that Kira might have shot Gari."
"Danalee," Alain said. "Kira did go north, as you guessed. Perhaps you understand her more than you thought." He was seated at the small table which held the remnants of their morning meal.
"I don't understand her nearly enough!" Mari winced as she sat down opposite him. "Have I mentioned how much I hate long, hard rides on horses?"
"Not since before the Mage brought the message."
"My funny Mage," Mari said. "I should have known you were trouble when you first started trying to make jokes. Kira is not going to Julesport."
She still liked being able to elicit a surprised reaction from Alain. "Why do you say that?"
"Because Kira is smart and sneaky."
Alain nodded. "She gets those things from you."
"She gets smart from both of us, but most of the sneaky from you," Mari said. "Which is why I know that if Kira was going to Julesport, she wouldn't have let Gari know she was heading that way."
"Dorcastle, then," Alain said.
"Do we go there?" Mari asked. "Kira might need us, but if we do go to Dorcastle that might draw the Urth people's search there as well."
"If others saw Kira and Jason in Danalee, reports of that may reach the people from Urth," Alain said.
"Good point." Mari stood up again. "I'm going to ask the long-range far-talker operators here to listen for anything from Danalee or near it, and ask that message Mage to send a reply asking for anything Alli or Calu might pick up. We're supposed to be looking for Kira, so if solid reports of her draw everyone else's attention that way it would look very odd for us not to go to Danalee."
"And if that happens, the Urth people will still search near Danalee, not elsewhere," Alain suggested. "They believe that we do not know they watch us."
"Have you noticed that we're getting reports of more of those drones being seen over cities and roads, but the one following us is remaining hidden? The Urth people must be deliberately letting most of their drones be seen."
"To overawe and worry the people of this world," Alain said.
"I am worried," Mari admitted. "But I'm a long ways from being overawed."
* * *
Morning on the river brought another bowl of stew and enforced inactivity. Kira sat next to Jason as he choked down his stew, thinking how strange it was that the opportunity to rest she had craved had so quickly become hard to endure as the barge made its slow, steady way down the Silver River.
"There isn't any faster way to Dorcastle, except on a Roc, and I didn't dare try to hire a Roc Mage in Danalee," Kira told Jason. The woman was back at the tiller,
nursing the baby as she steered the barge, out of earshot if Kira and Jason spoke quietly. Her husband and the other child were asleep inside the deckhouse. "Too many Mages know what my mother looks like, and Father said other Mages might be able to sense who I am if they get right next to me."
"How could they do that?" Jason asked, shuddering as he put aside his empty bowl.
"I don't know. It's some skill that Mages have—" To detect the presence of Mages powers. No way should she be telling Jason about that.
Jason, not seeming to have noticed Kira's abrupt ending to her sentence, squinted toward the riverbank. "At least I haven't seen any drones, so my mom's search probably hasn't expanded this far north. Why isn't there a rail line along here, running between Danalee and Dorcastle? I don't even see any signs of one being built."
"Mother has been involved in that," Kira said, hugging her knees as she looked at the passing traffic on the road. "Trying to work out something. It's the people who work the barges, and have done so for a long time. They think if a rail line gets built it will take a lot of their work away, and Mother says they're right. A lot of the families on these barges wouldn't be able to make a living anymore."
"Yeah," Jason said, "but you can't just keep things the same."
"Jason, how do you tell someone whose family has worked barges on this river for generations that things have to change and they have to find some other work somewhere else?" Kira bit her lip hard. "Sometimes I can understand why some people are angry at Mother. She couldn't just change the things almost everyone wanted changed. She also had to make things change that people liked."
He nodded, giving her a somber look. "That's the way it's been back home. Always. Stuff changes."
"It's hard to imagine," Kira said. "But Father says if Mother had failed, the storm would have come."
"Storm?"
"That's what the Mages called it, the visions that they saw," Kira explained. "The common people sort of going crazy, rioting in mobs, destroying everything. It's hard to believe that could ever happen, but the Mages saw it."
"I can believe it," Jason said, surprising her. "That's happened sometimes back home. Not a whole world, but parts of cities, even entire cities and sometimes countries. Everybody stops believing it will get better, everybody loses hope, everything falls apart."
"So you think the Mages were right?"
"I thought you were the one who believed in foresight," Jason joked. "But yeah, centuries of being forced to serve someone else, your guilds preventing any change, I'm amazed it didn't all blow up earlier."
"Why does change have to be so hard, Jason?" Kira watched as they passed another barge, this one tied up alongside the river, a family working topside. "If change has to be, why does it have to be hard?"
"I don't know," Jason said, his eyes on the same barge. "It's like growing up, isn't it? That's change. Remember being a little kid and how amazing the world was? All of this new stuff to see and to learn, and new friends everywhere you looked. You didn't know enough to be scared of other people or of what was happening in other places or of what the future would be like. And even simple things were so much fun. Remember that?"
Kira smiled, remembering life before she had learned that her mother was the daughter. "Yeah. That really was a great time."
"Would you want to be like that forever?"
She bent her head, thinking. "We'd give up a lot, wouldn't we? We lose things when we grow, but we gain things, too. I already know how much I'd have missed if I had never gotten older than six. I can't imagine everything ahead."
"Change," Jason said. "It hurts, but it has to be, and it gives us new things."
Kira turned her smile on him. "Why do you say you're not smart? Jason, you have great ideas."
"Nah." He looked away, embarrassed. "I probably heard that someplace."
"No, you didn't. You came up with it yourself. Jason, stop listening to people who tell you that you're not smart."
He laughed. "Who am I supposed to listen to?"
"Me."
Jason's laughter stopped abruptly. "Why…why do you care?"
"Um…I don't know," Kira said, startled by the question. "Can't somebody care about somebody else?"
"Sure they can, but you…and I'm…I'm just a je—" He broke off. "I almost forgot I'm not allowed to call myself a jerk anymore."
"See," Kira teased, trying to lighten a mood that had shifted in ways she didn't understand, "you're listening to me already."
"Why are doing this, Kira?" Jason asked, his face averted from her.
"Doing what?"
"Making it seem like maybe it's possible that… Never mind!" He turned his body away, hunching over to close out the world.
"Jason? Are you all right?"
He didn't answer.
She looked over the water at the banks of the river going by, wondering why Jason was upset and why her stomach felt so tight.
* * *
The female Mage returned to Mari and Alain's room, speaking her new message in the same impassive tones. "Elder, this message came to this one from a Mage in Danalee. Master Mechanic Alli and Mechanic Calu of Danalee speak of several who say they have seen the one Kira in their city. Three have been overheard since the day before using the Mechanic message creatures to speak with the ship from Urth in search of reward. That one Alli speaks of Danalee buzzing with those who seek to find the one Kira. The Urth creatures called drones have been seen flying. That one Calu says he thinks the elder and the master of mages should come to Danalee."
Alain looked to Mari after the Mage had left. He knew she was torn between rushing to her daughter and trying to protect Kira by keeping attention focused elsewhere. "Two Roc Mages wait on us. We need only decide to go."
"Is one of them Mage Alera?" Mari asked.
"No. Mage Saburo and Mage Alber. I am told that Alera is north of the Sea of Bakre, seeking again to speak with her relatives."
Mari grimaced, looking down at the table. "We should be helping her with that. Even Mages a lot more outgoing than Alera have had trouble reconnecting with the families they lost when the Mage Guild took them for training."
"We have been busy, and you are not speaking of Danalee," Alain prodded gently.
"I am deliberately avoiding that, as I am sure you know," Mari told him. "We shouldn't rush it. If the Urth people aren't already focused on Danalee, you and I going there will bring their full attention to that city."
"Three have spoken to the Urth people, saying they have seen Kira there," Alain reminded her.
"But there have been other claims, in a lot of places," Mari said. "The long-distance far-talker in Tiaesun has picked up several of them. Sien's decoys are doing their job."
"Why do you seek to argue yourself out of going to Danalee?" Alain asked.
She didn't answer for a moment, hunched over the table, her eyes closed. "Because I want so badly to go. I want to be there. I want to be right beside Kira. I want to be between her and any danger!"
"You do not need to second-guess yourself. Calu believes that danger is already focusing on the area around Danalee," Alain said. "He would not urge you to come unless he knew that was so."
Mari opened her eyes and looked at him. "If we go there, that danger will focus on us."
"Yes."
"Then as Kira's mother and father we have to do that." She gave Alain a rueful look. "I have a lot more sympathy for my parents than I used to, even though they never actually got shot at because of me."
"You can remind Kira of how much you have sacrificed for her," Alain suggested, remembering a number of such arguments in the past.
"Oh, yeah. That always goes over well." Mari stood up. "Let's go. At least we're flying this time. Let's find out how well that Urth drone can follow Rocs."
* * *
By late afternoon, Jason had apparently gotten over his upset, though he refused to respond to a couple of careful questions from Kira about it. He was sitting a short distance from her when t
he boy on the boat ran around the corner of the deckhouse and tripped over Jason's outstretched legs.
Kira had only a moment to wonder if Jason would react by yelling at the boy in a way that might betray them.
Instead, Jason laughed and helped the boy stand. "Careful there, Munchkin. You might go overboard."
The boy gave Jason a puzzled look. "What's a munk-kin?"
"Little guys who live in a place called Oz," Jason said.
"Is that where you're from? Is that why you talk funny?" the boy asked.
"Yes," Kira interjected hastily. "Oz is a place way…to the south."
The woman appeared, shaking her head at the boy. "The math lesson isn't done. Come along. Excuse my son," she told Jason.
"You're teaching him math?" Jason asked.
The woman stared but didn't comment on his unusual accent. "Yes. He'll need it if he inherits the boat. And if the boats go away as some say they will, he'll need it elsewhere. But he doesn't like it."
"Math is important," Jason said to the boy, startling Kira. "How about you and me take a look at that lesson."
Kira watched, horrified, as Jason got up and walked around the deckhouse with the boy. Had he lost his mind? Drawing attention to himself and his strange accent and his unusual way of speaking?
She scrambled to her feet, peering over the edge of the deckhouse to see Jason sitting down next to the boy, holding a chalk tablet as he talked. As Kira watched, he began walking the boy through simple math exercises as if he had done the same thing a thousand times, though he had obvious problems with using the chalk.
She should intervene. She should stop this. But Kira only watched.
Eventually, Jason stood up. "Keep on that!" he advised the boy, who grinned and nodded.
"What was that?" Kira whispered to Jason when they were both seated again on the other side of the deckhouse. "Why did you do that?"
Jason's shrug felt defensive. "He needed some help."